Spoiler Alert

Vader is Luke’s dad — The Empire Strikes Back Rosebud was his sled — Citizen Kane She’s her sister and her daughter — Chinatown Norman is the killer (in drag) — Psycho Verbal is Keyser Sze — The Usual Suspects Doc is dead — The Sixth Sense Earth, in the future — Planet of the … Continue reading “Spoiler Alert”

Vader is Luke’s dad — The Empire Strikes Back
Rosebud was his sled — Citizen Kane
She’s her sister and her daughter — Chinatown
Norman is the killer (in drag) — Psycho
Verbal is Keyser Sze — The Usual Suspects
Doc is dead — The Sixth Sense
Earth, in the future — Planet of the Apes
Dog gets put down — Old Yeller
Soylent Green is people! — Soylent Green
He dumps her — Gone With the Wind
Life is a simulation (whoa) — The Matrix
Husband is in on it — Rosemary’s Baby
She is a he — The Crying Game
Dave disconnects HAL — 2001: A Space Odyssey
Split personality — Fight Club
Citizens paint town red — High Plains Drifter
Wife’s head in box — Se7en
Maggie shot Mr. Burns — The Simpsons
Mistress shot J. R. — Dallas
Laura Palmer’s father did it — Twin Peaks
Double suicide — Romeo and Juliet
42 — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Boys are rescued — Lord of the Flies
Whale destroys boat, lives — Moby-Dick
Shark destroys boat, killed — Jaws
He buries himself — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Gatsby is murdered — The Great Gatsby
A-P-P-L-E — The Da Vinci Code
John commits suicide — Brave New World
Burned books are memorized — Fahrenheit 451
Mark Felt is Deep Throat — Watergate
Greek soldiers in horse — The Trojan War
Samus Aran is a woman — Metroid
Prisoner is saved — The Pit and the Pendulum
She’s an actress — Lonelygirl15
They’re all in on it — Murder on the Orient Express
There is no Santa — Christmas
– Steven Leckart

Some of these are fabulous. I can’t believe some of them. Saves me watching/reading/waiting…

Gizmo does the instant messenger thing right…

Om Malik on Broadband talks about Gizmo 3.0 “The company claims that it is the first VoIP software client to tie multiple popular VoIP networks. Gizmo Project 3.0 include real-time file sharing which users to exchange files with other Gizmo Project 3.0 users, or send files directly to any major Jabber client. To make a … Continue reading “Gizmo does the instant messenger thing right…”

Om Malik on Broadband talks about Gizmo 3.0

“The company claims that it is the first VoIP software client to tie multiple popular VoIP networks. Gizmo Project 3.0 include real-time file sharing which users to exchange files with other Gizmo Project 3.0 users, or send files directly to any major Jabber client.

To make a call, users simply type the username or ID of the person they want to call plus the network domain, for example, username@yahoo.com or username@hotmail.com. Gizmo Project 3.0 users can also call international Yahoo Messenger users for free in France, Spain, and many other countries, for example username@yahoo.fr or username@yahoo.es.”

Why is this not the way that all things work? Why have we had to wait so long?

Why is AIM/iChat not on the list?

Pfeiffer on Vista UI “Friction”

This ComputerWorld article syndicated on Yahoo News highlights some of what I have always found to be the problem with the Windows UI. Friction is a good word for it of course. It just slows you down. The issue I’ve found is that although Windows, including XP and Vista, included items such as fades, transparency … Continue reading “Pfeiffer on Vista UI “Friction””

This ComputerWorld article syndicated on Yahoo News highlights some of what I have always found to be the problem with the Windows UI.

Friction is a good word for it of course. It just slows you down.

The issue I’ve found is that although Windows, including XP and Vista, included items such as fades, transparency and drop shadows, they simply weren’t used properly. Everyone accused Mac OS X of having useless eye candy. This isn’t the case. The eye candy was there, sometimes prematurely, to help guide you to a 3D appreciation of the desktop.

In Mac OS X, menus appear instantly and fade out. The behaviour is fluid.
On Windows, menus take time to fade in before you can make a selection. Waiting for the fade-in slows you down.

In Mac OS X, drop shadows indicate clearly which window is foremost due to the thickness of the shadow.
On Windows, drop shadows don’t indicate layering, they’re just eye candy. It takes longer to notice which window is foremost. This slows you down.

This is exactly what we mean when we say Windows gets in the way.

OpenCoffee Clubs?

Link swiped from EirePreneur What is it? An attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting. Something that can be replicated in anywhere else at little or no cost — though we do want to build … Continue reading “OpenCoffee Clubs?”

Link swiped from EirePreneur

What is it?
An attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting.

Something that can be replicated in anywhere else at little or no cost — though we do want to build a list of all the places where entrepreneurs can meet and who will be around for them to talk with.

Call to action: Irish OpenCoffee Clubs
Dublin, Cork, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Derry, etc.
Lets pick a location in each of these areas – coffee shop – an open space – one with wifi – etc.

James Corbett of Eirepreneur suggests the lobby of the Clarion Hotel in Limerick.
Eoghan McCabe suggests Biabar, Coffee Society or Dakota in Dublin.

So….Belfast?

John Gruber on Playing Fair.

Before I start, this isn’t some impassioned plea for one side or the other on the DRM debate (but I guess I’m acting a little like a headline whore mainstream journalist by including the words play and fair. Gruber, in his rather great web site, Daring Fireball, writes about whether the interview with Bill Gates … Continue reading “John Gruber on Playing Fair.”

Before I start, this isn’t some impassioned plea for one side or the other on the DRM debate (but I guess I’m acting a little like a headline whore mainstream journalist by including the words play and fair.

Gruber, in his rather great web site, Daring Fireball, writes about whether the interview with Bill Gates conducted by Newsweek’s Steven Levy was fair enough.

I agree with Gruber. It was bogus.

We expect Gates to be in favour of Vista but his statement that:

“Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.”

is, as Gruber writes,

Flabbergastingly false.

I may be old-fashioned here but when an interviewee comes up with something that is flabbergastingly false enough to be considered at best a downright lie or perhaps worse a cynical loogie in the face of the general public whom Gates assumes must be stupid, hairless tree-dwellers, then I would expect a journalist to actually comment on it. The article read like a press release. Was that the price that Newsweek paid to get Gates on board for the interview?

I can only assume that when you’re that rich and you’re trying to buy your way into heaven, you have to have some sort of mental aberration from sleeping on sacks of dollar bills. We know the man has some sort of problems. He can probably remember most of the lines of code he’s ever written but he couldn’t recall the shady dealings his company was convicted of during the infamous flop that became the DoJ trial. Now he’s under the delusion that Windows is secure.

My explanation for the latter is this:

Bill Gates doesn’t do his own IT, is not the first person to see his own email and has probably never had to actually reboot one of his own computers. He’s never had to deal with spyware or viruses because he has legions of Microsofties to filter everything for him. He doesn’t use instant messengers, has no idea what Web 2.0 is and would be very surprised if he realised the morass that his customers find themselves in. He honestly believes he is being picked on.

My explanation for Stephen Levy’s lack of journalistic integrity:

His editors told him to cut that bit out as Bill’s first answer was not convincing. And it’ll fuel the link revenues anyway. Bill has a history of not being an effective speaker and I can guess that his first statement was probably as unconvincing as his interviews during the DoJ cross-examination. And Levy doesn’t give a damn.

Tom Murphy defines Web 2.0

Tom writes: The exciting thing about Web 2.0 is that people can come together online with a host of new channels, tools and technologies and do amazing things. I was just going to write: Brave Man. What is web 2.0 really about? Funnily enough it’s just over a year since I defined it for myself. … Continue reading “Tom Murphy defines Web 2.0”

Tom writes:
The exciting thing about Web 2.0 is that people can come together online with a host of new channels, tools and technologies and do amazing things.

I was just going to write: Brave Man.

What is web 2.0 really about? Funnily enough it’s just over a year since I defined it for myself. I don’t really buy the user-generated-content thing when there’s media-created effigies creating adulation on YouTube. A lot of the rest turns into noise. How many YouTube videos are worth watching? Likewise, with blogs.

Tom continues:The exciting thing about Web 2.0 is incredibly intelligent people collaborating and sharing.

Sadly this is probably true which is why there are worldwide A-list bloggers, regional A-list bloggers and A-list genre bloggers. And millions of blogs out there owned by people who wonder desperately how to get good results in Webalizer (and wonder further whether their neighbour gets good results and then ponder what exactly a “good” result is?) In Web 2.0, everyone is an eyeball or bandwidth-whore.

Web 2.0 shouldn’t just be about incredibly intelligent people. Or maybe I’ll have to wait for Web 3.0 (and now I’m waiting for O’Reilly to hit me with a trademark violation).

There’s a lot of noise about whether or not Blogging has Peaked.

I don’t think so.

My Dad, card-carrying Luddite that he is, has expressed a desire to start a blog. I have a friend across the world who hates her computer yet is slaved to her anonymous blog. The WOW4KIDS team launched a blog-based reviews system for parents to read reviews and comment on them and, it is hoped, contribute reviews themselves (EDIT: Actually launching proper next month!). If anything, blogging hasn’t peaked but rather has started to cross the chasm.

Plain text is just hokey compared to “plain text”

Ian Betteridge writes:After a couple of months of using Thunderbird as my main mail client, I’m back to Mail instead. … So – despite the hokey format that Mail stores your email in – I’ll be back with it for the foreseeable future. Ian has a problem with….plain text? Here’s a little screenshot of me … Continue reading “Plain text is just hokey compared to “plain text””

Ian Betteridge writes:After a couple of months of using Thunderbird as my main mail client, I’m back to Mail instead. … So – despite the hokey format that Mail stores your email in – I’ll be back with it for the foreseeable future.

Ian has a problem with….plain text? Here’s a little screenshot of me using vim in Mac OS X to edit a mail file. Nothing “hokey” here.

Using VIM to edit Mail EMLX files.

Honestly….must be a slow news day… Thunderbird uses plain text too…in fact you can drag and drop Thunderbirds files into Mail’s folder innards and avoid the import, if you’re a Mail hacker.

What’s On Where 4 Kids launches…

This month, I took some time out to launch What’s On Where For Kids in Northern Ireland, a web site aimed at parents who want to find out what’s going on in the province as well as get some sort of accurate user reviews of places. The guys working there have been reviewing venues and … Continue reading “What’s On Where 4 Kids launches…”

This month, I took some time out to launch What’s On Where For Kids in Northern Ireland, a web site aimed at parents who want to find out what’s going on in the province as well as get some sort of accurate user reviews of places. The guys working there have been reviewing venues and writing articles for “rainy days” and they’ve got a big directory of places to go, things to see and stuff to do coming Real Soon Now.

I threw my not inconsiderable weight behind this because, at the end of the day, I’m a parent and come the weekend when I have the kids all to myself, I want to know where to go and what to do with them other than keeping them in the house and trying to teach them shell scripting.

“No, Jake, the bang character goes here! After the hash!

He is only 3 years old so what can you expect?

The coming months will be a lot more exciting for my kids as the site develops and I get a slew of ideas on what to do and where to go. I’ve already had a sneak-peek at their directory and signed up to help review some places so I’ve a fair idea for the next few weeks anyway!

I honestly reckon they should note the WiFi coverage in an area for us Bedouin Dads.

Brooker hates you. Probably.

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian writes: I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. He goes on further to describe how Mac people are the sort of scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers … Continue reading “Brooker hates you. Probably.”

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian writes: I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did.

He goes on further to describe how Mac people are the sort of scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work.

Exsqueeze me?

What did the average Mac user do to Charlie to deserve such invective? Did they kill his dog? Steal his wife? Covet his ass?

To be fair, I do know a few Mac users who would provide the same invective about Windows users. But these fall into one of two categories.

  • Clueless kids who want a banner to shout behind
  • Recent converts to the Mac who express a feeling of freedom from the shackles of Windows. (I kid you not).

I know his article is tinged with humour but the problem is that not everyone will read the article and this kind of partisan journalism just gets tired really quick. Here’s a quick primer:

Mac users really don’t are what computer you’re running. They only care about what computer they’re running. The people who seem to cause most of the heartache in this area are people who insist that the world should use a Windows PC. Just because we do not choose the same computing platform doesn’t mean we should be hated, feared or even imply that your choice was a poor one. You don’t need more people to help justify your decision in buying your computer.

Get over it.

The article is tired, sounds like one of a thousand Mac-bashing articles with a grain of humour that have been pumped out by the Dvoraks, the Enderles and now the Brookers of technology reporting. The humour is tired because, frankly, we’ve heard it all before. Does Brooker think that he’s going to suddenly invent a new joke after 25 years of the Mac?

At least he didn’t bring out the old “Apple is dying” chestnut.

I make bees look idle.

One of the biggest problems with being involved in several things at once, is that there comes a time when everything just piles up and you end up with a Gridlock Day.

One of the biggest problems with being involved in several things at once, is that there comes a time when everything just piles up and you end up with a Gridlock Day. This is different to a Groundhog Day 🙂

I’m having one of those days today.

The clutch went on my car yesterday afternoon and I spent the afternoon doing two things.

1. Cursing that I didn’t go for the All-you-can-eat-as-long-as-it’s-less-than-1-GB-per-month data service.
2. Playing mini-Golf on my new phone.

This was because I needed to wait for my car to be recovered and brought to the garage. To their credit, the garage was very prompt, provided a courtesy car and I’m now road-worthy again. They also managed to give it a full service (though I have to pop back Monday for a new radiator). If I hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere I might have spent more time getting my mail but I kept myself busy enough. Some of those mini-golf holes are really quite ingenious.

Anyway, that was yesterday.

Today I’m playing catchup.

Seeing clients (WiFi network installation, image server crashing), working on web sites, discussing designs, finding two new graphic designers and chasing down advertisers for one of the web sites has been the majority of my day.

And tomorrow I will do today’s work….
Continue reading “I make bees look idle.”