Question for the audience

Is a Playstation 3 and GTA: IV worth bankrupting myself for?

'Cause I'm sorely tempted...

New Portishead album out tomorrow

Should be good.

3:10 to Yuma

Having recently watched it on DVD, I have to echo Courtney's recommendation.



Like most great films it has a relatively simple plot: A damaged war veteran (Christian Bale) volunteers to help escort a charming but psychopathic bank robber (Russell Crowe) across country and put him on the 3:10 to Yuma, a prison train. Between them and their destination lies both Crowe's gang and hostile Apaches. I'm not a big fan of westerns, but it's well worth watching for both the breath-taking scenery and mesmerising performances from Bale and Crowe.

Something I'd rather not have known...

According to the 'Brain Challenge' game I just got for my iPod Nano, I have the cerebral age of 71.

Surely, in this day and age...

...assembling flat-pack furniture should be a lot easier than it is.

The palm of my hand is raw from the butt of the screwdriver digging into it. And I almost sat on the tube of glue supplied.

(I know they always include spares, but is it normal to have about twenty small screws left over?)

Brokeback Mountain

Watched 'Brokeback Mountain' last night.

I'd initially avoided it as the trailer made it look quite dull and incredibly "worthy", but a few people had recommended it to me so I decided to give it a go.

My opinion: Meh.

Sadly, my trailer-based suspicions were more or less correct and I found myself fairly bored by it. I wanted to like it: Ang Lee's not a bad director and both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal can act, but the biggest problem seemed to be that none of the characters or ideas in the film were really developed. There's not much to the two main characters beyond the fact that a) they're cowboys, b) they're gay/bisexual and c) they have trouble reconciling those two things. The changing (and unchanging) face of mid-American society was interesting, but never really gone into. And the impact of the two characters' affair on their families was treated in, what seemed to me, a fairly shallow fashion.

Maybe it was just a little too subtle for me, but I found it difficult to engage with and care about what was happening.

Did I miss something?

Want to watch 'Doctor Who' on your iPod?

Step 1: Download a Youtube to iPod converter.

(Note: Any downloading from the Internet is done at your own risk and I accept no responsibility whatsoever for any viruses, malware or sentient digital lifeforms that come with it.)

Step 2: Find the numerous copies of the 'Doctor Who' episode on Youtube

(Note: I'm not condoning what is clearly a grievous breach of copyright by these people. Uploading is naughty. Very naughty.)

Step 3: Download these videos with the converter.

Step 4: Arrange them, in order, in a playlist with iTunes.

Step 5: Copy the playlist to you Ipod nano.

Step 6: Watch them on your iPod nano.

(Note: 1. I haven't actually done this, so I don't know if it actually works. It should. In theory. 2. I accept no responsibility for any damage done to your eyesight trying to watch a 45 minute episode on that tiny screen.)

UPDATE: Tried it. iPod went slightly mental. Might not be due to this though and it's working fine now.

Informed comment

Bit windy today, isn't it?

Skipping tracks on an iPod.

A little while ago I posted on the problem of spoken word tracks getting mixed up with music ones when using the 'Shuffle' function on my iPod. A problem that I apparently wasn't alone in having.

I have now solved the problem.

Adulation is welcome, but unnecessary. Well... maybe slightly necessary.

Anyway, the solution turned out to be fiendishly complex in its very simplicity. After some arduous googling on the subject I was initially led in the direction of file extensions. (Windows now goes to such trouble to hide these away that I'd completely overlooked them). This, unfortunately, turned out to be a dead end. While it's true that audiobooks in iTunes have a different extension than music files (m4b vs m4a), changing it didn't seem to make any difference whatsoever. With nothing else to work on, I resigned myself to simply creating smart playlists that simply excluded any non-music files - an inelegant, but adequate solution.

However, I now have a proper answer - one that does away with the need for special playlists and excludes non-music files from the shuffle feature! I found it by way of 'Doctor Who', Big Finish's 'The Holy Terror' audiobook, to be precise. I bought 'The Holy Terror' (which is an excellent and surreal story, if you're interested - "All hail Frobisher! All hail the big, talking bird!") years ago on CD. This being the modern age, I decided to copy the CDs onto my computer and then put them on my iPod. (Far easier said than done - They're on the CD as .cda tracks, which iTunes can't read. so I had to use Windows Media Player to rip them from the CD, converting them to .wma files in the process, then import them into iTunes. Once I'd manage that, I then had to sort out all the details - as the CD doesn't name the tracks and the listing changes from CD to CD... I won't bore you any more with the technical details - if you've ever tried to copy a multi-CD audiobook onto your computer then you probably know what a hassle it is). While mucking about with all the various options to get it to play properly on the iPod I noticed something I'd managed to overlook previously...

If you want to exclude a file or files from the shuffle feature - Select the file, then select 'Get Info' from the menu. Then select the 'Options' tab. This should bring up a 'Skip While Shuffling' option. Tick it, copy the file onto your iPod and... bingo!

Now I just need to figure out a way to bring about world peace. I fell like I'm on a roll...

Question of the day

Does anyone else develop a serious intolerance for sweetness* when drinking?

(*the taste, not the behaviour)

Annoyance against the machine

Does anyone know of a way of getting a file from one section of iTunes ('Music', for example) to another (such as 'Podcasts' or 'Audiobooks')?

Changing the genre after selecting 'Get Info' doesn't seem to make a difference - files will be tagged as 'Podcast' but still show up in 'Music'.

The reason I ask is that I tend to download a fair few spoken word files and these get mixed up with the music ones - causing problems when I try to use the 'Shuffle' function on my iPod. It's fairly annoying having to take the iPod out and skip the track whenever, for example, a radio interview with Richard Dawkins comes on instead of a song. Ideally, I want to somehow classify these files as non-music. But iTunes doesn't seem to have this ability, locking the files into whatever category it sees fit to assign when you first download/import them.

Thought for the day

If, as the packet claims, multivitamins are supposed to be taken only as a supplement to a balanced diet (i.e. one containing the right proportion of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, mineral salts and fibre) why do they often provide 100% of your recommend daily allowance?

One, two, three... um... lots?

Over at Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait asks "What use is maths?" - to which Tim Worstall has provided this helpful and interesting reply:

There’s two things that statistics are extremely useful for. The first is to teach you how to gamble: that’s the root of the whole subject anyway. Seriously, it really started with people trying to work out how to win at cards and dice. Things like the Fibonacci series, which explains things as varied as the placing of petals on a flower and possibly the curling of a wave, also explain the liklihood of throwing a 4, 5 or any other number with a pair of dice. From that we derive ! and so on.

But the second thing it’s extremely useful for is politics. The standard intro by some pantywaist who wants to steal your liberty, livelihood and freedoms is "research has shown that….". Statistics enables you to evaluate whether research actually has shown (the death rate from Ebola is 80% so yes, clamping down on movements and civil liberties during an outbreak can be justified) or not shown ("the part time pay gap for women is 40%", no, it isn’t, that’s comparing the wages per hour of part time women against full time men. Comparing part time women against part time men gives us 11%.) the point that the speaker is trying to make.

If there is one area of my education that I'd like to improve, it's my maths.

My family had a tape of the times table set to music, which my brother and I would listen to as kids. At secondary school I achieved a D (nearly a C) in statistics and C at maths. Statistical analysis was normally interesting and I remember quite enjoying stuff like algebra.

But to this day I struggle to do basic arithmetic off the top of my head. I don't struggle much, admittedly, but it's far from automatic - even something as simple as 5x6 apparently requires my brain to switch, awkwardly, into a different gear. Actually, we don't even need to get into multiplication - ask me what 7+3 is and I'll be able to tell you, but they'll always be that element of doubt at the back of my mind: That is right, isn't it? It's like my brain still needs to go through all the steps each time.

I wouldn't say I'm innumerate - but if my reading skills were on the same level as my maths I'd definitely be one of those people who have to trace the words on the page with their finger.

I'd like to blame genetics, but my brother's an accountant.

Damnit.

Quick Question

Is there any real difference between these two statements:

I don't believe in X
I believe that X does not exist

Time travel

I'm (hopefully) down the pub right now.

This post, however, is brought to you (again: hopefully) through the magic of Blogger's new scheduled post feature.

Not that I actually have anything to say. I just wanted to see if it worked. I suppose I could use this opportunity to tell you that, after a short period of joyous harmony, my iPod and iTunes are back to a rather antagonistic relationship that sees them working together only on an irregular basis. Thankfully, I don't want to change the content on my iPod too often, but it's still quite annoying.

Update on iPod*

iPod and iTunes now seem to be working in perfect unity - with none of the freezing or crashing from the first week. In fact, the whole computer, after apparently tottering on the verge of a complete breakdown for a few days, is running along fine.

It's all working so perfectly that I've started to get worried.

(*Because I know you were all waiting breathlessly for news)

APC_INDEX_MISMATCH

Typical.

Just as I'm getting used to my nice new iPod* (and it's rather turbulent relationship with iTunes), my four-month old Dell decides to kick up a fuss.

Out of the blue, it starts developing problems if I put too much strain on it (and by "too much" I mean stuff it previously had no trouble with). If I try to run a handful of programmes at the same time (or just a single resource-hungry one) it starts running at a snail's pace in a weird fashion: 40-50 seconds of snails pace, then 2-3 seconds of normal speed, then 40-50 seconds of snails pace, and so on... until whatever it's trying to do is completed.

At this speed, the computer is unusable.

It runs fine in Safe Mode. I've done a thorough malware and virus scan. I've also gone through and uninstalled any software I wasn't really using in case one of them was hogging resources in the background, using CCleaner to fix any broken items in the registry - and yet the problem remains. I even tried a system restore, which not only didn't work but managed to crash the computer!

If I take care to only run one or two small programmes at a time it runs without a problem - until about an hour or so in, when random background programmes start encountering errors and have to shut down.

It's crashed a few times in total, and the annoying Blue Screen of Death revealed that there had been an "APC_INDEX_MISMATCH". According to 'Microsoft TechNet:

This is a kernel internal error. This error could be caused by a mismatch between KeEnterCriticalRegion and KeLeaveCriticalRegion in a file system.

...which means absolutely nothing to me.

A bit of googling reveals that this is a memory problem, normally caused by conflicting hardware or software. But I have no idea what could possibly be causing it. The computer has been running fine for months and any software on it has either been uninstalled or has run on it for ages.

If the problem continues then I'll have no choice but to back up my personal files and try a clean re-install of Windows Vista, which will hopefully wipe any corrupted files.

(*Not only is the timing suspicious, but every time I have to change settings or delete software iTunes starts working perfectly [for a time] with my iPod, as if to say "Look at me, this is the kind of smooth running you'd get if you switched to a Mac")

Lost

I bailed out on 'Lost' somewhere in the middle of season two. It's an interesting series, but the thought that they might just be making it up as they went along put me off. Just look at the mess 'The X-Files' descended into.

When it comes to an end I'll use the reaction of the show's fans to decide whether it's worth watching it all on DVD.

That said, watching stuff like this does make me wonder if I'm missing out...

Lost - Seasons 1-3 in 8 minutes 15 seconds:

300

I finally got round to watching '300' last night.

My opinion of it is the same as that of 'Sin City' (also based on a Frank Millar comic and utilising CGI backgrounds) – stylish, but ultimately a bit empty.

As with films like 'The Matrix', the violence here (while bloody) is entirely choreographed and highly stylised, giving the impression more of dance than warfare. Through the magic of CGI, the screen is soon full of flying limbs and copious splatters of blood. As with 'Sin City' there's more than a hint of sadism in the various battle scenes, as death and mutilation is portrayed in loving detail. After the first couple of battles however, I found myself getting increasingly bored.

The crucial weakness of the film, for me, was that, aside from a natural sympathy for the underdog, I didn't really find myself rooting for the Spartans. The characters have no real depth and no real personality beyond banging on about honour and family.

The depiction of Spartan society also failed to ring true. I don't believe that films like this have a duty to accurately represent the events they depict. All fiction works on a metaphorical level. So while I think that all the “Spartan” rhetoric about “free men” and “liberty” rang hollow, it's purely because it conflicts with what we see of their society in the film itself. It's a bit hard to take Leonides' talk about freedom seriously when he's king of a society in which children are forcibly taken from their parents aged seven (and then put through a brutal military training programme) and priests are allowed young women as slaves.

Maybe it's a bit much to expect a realistic portrayal of ancient Sparta in an action film. But if you don't care about the people you're watching then no amount of technology can save it.

So all-in-all: Interesting, but not something I'd make an effort to watch again.

Almost...

A few days ago I bought myself an iPod Nano.

Until now, I'd always seen the iPod brand as just an overpriced MP3 player range. But I needed something that played a wide range of formats and figured that, as I was looking at an expensive model anyway, I might as take the plunge and see what they're like.

While I only have cheap models to compare it to, the iPod Nano is indeed a classy thing - solid, stylish and great to use. Should I have to replace it at some point (assuming that point isn't in the next year or so), I'll definitely give Apple another look.

The only downside is that it can only be run through iTunes. In itself, this isn't too bad. I've had iTunes on my (Dell) computer for quite a while now and never really had any problems with it. If, however, Apple rush out a new version of iTunes in order to support their new (US-only) movie download service, a new version that, for some unfathomable reason, doesn't like working with iPods, then it's a problem. A big problem.

At first I thought it was the iPod that was dodgy. But a few minutes on google revealed that I wasn't the only one having issues. iTunes 7 is just buggy as hell.

My computer recognises that the iPod has connected no problem. iTunes, though, freezes up for a good five minutes before either grudgingly connecting to the iPod or crashing. Even assuming that it's the former, which is rare, it then takes ages to complete even the simplest task and has a tendency to start syncing random playlists from iTunes. Clicking on eject causes it to freeze up completely.

What's more annoying is that on the rare occasions it works, it works beautifully: Downloading the latest podcasts in my collection and transferring music files seamlessly.

I love my new iPod. If iTunes 7 worked the way it's supposed to, I'd be writing a post about how I'd finally joined the Apple love-in. Maybe I will write that post when the next version of iTunes is released.

Maybe.