The iPad – is it out of date already?

Like Mélissa Theuriau, the iPad looks great but makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the iPad recently.  Mainly because every time I watch the Internet, somebody’s talking about it.  Or about John Terry bedding the wife of one of his football buddies.

Most of the people talking about the iPad thingy are full of praise for the way in which it’s going to revolutionise the computer industry.  I have to say I’m completely unmoved by it.

This isn’t because I dislike Apple – admitting to this sort of heresy in public is likely to have me swinging from the pub sign before the day is out – but I do have to confess I’m not a huge Apple fan.  It’s a personal thing, you understand.  I don’t like football, either.

I did, however, watch the launch of the new iPad with some interest.  Everybody was talking about it, so I didn’t want to miss out.  But when Steve Jobs produced a very big iPhone, all I could think of was Dom Joly’s mobile phone sketch on Trigger Happy TV.

The iPad is undoubtedly very pretty, but then Mélissa Theuriau makes watching the French news interesting too, even though I have no idea what she’s saying.

And that’s my problem with the iPad – it looks fantastic, but I have no idea what it’s saying to me. 

It does everything the iPhone does, on a much bigger screen, yet it doesn’t fit in my pocket.  The iPhone has that wonderful twiddly thing you can do with your fingers that allows you to zoom in and out of pornography easily whilst watching it on the bus on your way home from work.  The iPad does the same, just on a bigger screen so the bloke sat behind you can enjoy exactly the same bit of the movie that you are.

You can read e-books on it, which is probably causing Amazon’s Kindle some sleepless nights.  And so on and so on.  All the arguments for and against the iPad have been heard countless times.  No point in repeating them here.

There is no doubt that Apple’s latest baby will have put the willies up one or two manufacturers, but despite the Apples Are Ace crowd screaming that it signals the death of the PC and the printed document, I can’t quite believe it does.  In fact, it may already be out of date.

This video, featuring MIT genius Pranav Mistry, takes “smartphone” computing to a whole new level that even Captain James T. Kirk would struggle to get his head around.  Best of all, this technology’s apparently already available.  And Mistry has made it Open Source…

The video’s fourteen minutes long, but it’s worth finding the time to watch.  It might cause the iPad some sleepless nights.

2010 Formula One Car Launch dates

“When, oh when?” people ask, “are the Formula One cars launching?”

Well I’ll tell you.  Okay, I won’t – autosport.com will.

The first one is tomorrow, with Ferrari officially launching their 2010 contender on the 28th January, swiftly followed by McLaren on Friday.  Sauber and Renault are launching theirs on Sunday.  Michael Schumacher’s new team – sorry, Mercedes GP – will launch on Monday 1st February, as will Williams and Torro Rosso, while sister team Red Bull won’t launch theirs until February 10th and new-comers Lotus will launch on February 12th.

That just leaves Force India and the remaining three New Boys – Campos, US F1, and Virgin – to announce their launch dates.  If they turn up at all.  Which I’m sure they will…

“Have you found any cock yet?” And other text message blunders…

Years ago, while returning from a long-distance meeting, I sent Ali a text message that said “On way home, be naked, I want a snog.”

When I got home, Ali was tucked up in the corner of the sofa, wearing the thickest woolly jumper she possessed, and hiding behind a magazine.  She also looked a little bit worried.

Showing me her phone, the text message she’d received said “On way home, be naked, I want a pooh.”

Understandably, she was unsure of my intentions and had chosen to watch Big Brother instead.

Over the years, similar such text message blunders have occurred when the predictive text language has opted for another word instead and I’ve not scrolled through the options, including once assuming a friend’s wife’s name was Yummy before I’d finished typing in Yvonne.

This morning I sent Ali a text message suggesting she stop by the local garage to pick up some coal as we’re still waiting for the delivery.  What she received was “You better go to the garage for some cock.”

Interestingly, I’ve just discovered the same permutation of letters results in anal, too.

Memo to self: always check the text message before you press send.

So, has anybody else had any amusing text blunders?  Or is it just me…?

Gran Turismo 5 – the elephant in the gaming room…

What is going on with Sony’s flagship racing game, Gran Turismo 5?

Originally the idea that spawned the games console itself, GT5 is – was – the driving game to beat all driving games, needing a much more powerful console to render itself on and therefore being probably the only reason to invent a whole new games console, the PlayStation 3.

Indeed, when the PS3 was launched it originally came with a teaser game, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, just to whet your appetite and get you excited about the prospect of spending fifty quid on an upgrade of your favourite driving game.

But, since it’s launch in 2007, nothing else has come of the game itself.

Sony keep releasing online trailers, teasers and, just before Christmas, a Nissan-based competition game just to keep fans excited about the three-year wait for the game.

But gamers are getting bored and now Sony have released information that the game, which had been delayed again until March 2010, will now be postponed “indefinitely”.

The company are citing production related difficulties behind the ongoing delays, but I’ve got another idea: perhaps they’re just scared by the level of competition out there now and maybe GT5 isn’t going to be as good as all the hype has promised. 

I’m beginning to think I should jack the PS3 in, get an XBox and play Forza Motorsport instead…

Spring, it’s the fault of Global Warming.

322’731 new potholes in England and Wales caused by the snow and ice.

That, of all the statistics relating to Britain’s Big Freeze – as cited by today’s Independent on Sunday – is probably my favourite of them all.  Mainly because it’s tangible: there are two potholes in my driveway that have appeared during this winter and, before long, I’m sure we’ll be able to use them to follow Professor Von Hardwigg to the centre of the Earth.

The others, whilst probably factual, are little more than hyperbole and scaremongering.  Like the 40’000 people government experts believe will die because of the freezing temperatures, or the record 463’000’000 cubic metres of gas used on Friday.  Of course it’s a record: today, more people live in this country and use the gas supply than ever before.

Or how about the 8’500 schools closed so far due to the weather.  Why?

When I was a kid (here comes a rose-tinted moment if ever there was one) the only reason we got snow days was if the diesel in the school bus froze.  And Malachy, who’s about to turn ten, tells me that when they are at school on a snowy day, they’re not allowed out to play in it in case they get hurt.

But isn’t that the point of being a kid?  Snow angels, snow balls with ice hidden in them, that type of thing.  In my day, the best game was to make an ice path right outside the entrance to the building that housed the headmaster’s office.

Without getting caught.

These days they close because the teachers can’t make it in, even if the kids can.  But aren’t teachers supposed to report for duty to the nearest school if they aren’t able to make it to their normal base?  The problem, as a customer-in-the-know explained to me yesterday, is that the teacher’s CRB check isn’t valid for other schools, only the one they work in – so they might not be safe to work in other schools…

The Big Freeze is due to last a further ten days, and one of my favourite sights since it started snowing in the weeks before Christmas has been watching drivers of 4x4 cars career off the road and then get out of their cars, scratch their heads and wonder why their vehicle wasn’t impervious to the white stuff.

The reason is simple: snow and ice, in a car fitted with ordinary road tyres, makes no difference whether you’ve got one-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive – if you haven’t got traction You Will Crash.  Here, in England, we never seem to understand how to drive in these conditions, yet in snowy climes such as Switzerland all they do is fit skinnier tyres to their Porsches, cover them in snow chains, and then they can still drive up in to the mountains to throw themselves back down on two slim planks of wood.

Walking with my family around the local Fen this morning, another thought occurred to me.  Despite the exclamations that this weather is the worst in more than thirty years, potentially the coldest in the past hundred (does that still make it the fault of the motor car?) and with almost two weeks of it left to come, the Climate Change environmentalists appear to have been silenced.  (If you ignore Peru for a moment, that is, where the unprecedented flash floods are being blamed on Global Warming.)

But despite the promise that there are at least ten more days of this weather to come, I noticed the snow around us is already melting, and where snow abounded just this morning there are now puddles.  Including in my newly acquired potholes.

This means that soon we will be seeing The Big Freeze’s sequel, The Big Thaw and, as we head inexorably towards Spring, we’ll see the country start to warm up again.  At that point, somebody is bound to pop up and say that the flooding isn’t caused by the seasons changing and the snow disappearing, but by Climate Change.

I suggest you start sand-bagging now…

Games Consoles Are Taking Over My House

“all I find myself craving for is a good game of Jet Set Willy…”

I swore I would never let it happen but, very subtly and without me really noticing, Games Consoles have inexorably crept in to every room within the house.

Now, before I sound like a moaning old minnie, I love computer games.  I don’t know why, as I’m not actually  very good at them, but for as long as I can remember I’ve always had a games console.  My dad got me the Sinclair ZX81 the day it was launched.  Then I upgraded it to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48k of memory, which I quickly upgraded to the 128k (much to the annoyance of my Dad) the day it was released, citing – as only a fourteen-year-old can – that the 48k had suddenly become rubbish overnight.

Then, as my teenage years dwindled and adulthood loomed, I bought the Sega Megadrive.  And then the MegaCD the day it was released, funding them both by the delightful discovery of a finance account with Lombard Tricity.

In fact, it was computer games consoles that probably saw the demise of my credit rating before I’d even hit the ripe old age of 21, as no sooner had I started paying for the Sega equipment than Sony popped up with the original PlayStation.

And I just had to have one of those the day it came out…

As the years disappeared behind me I thought I’d grown out of the games consoles, until I went shopping one day and somehow came home with a PlayStation 2.  I think I’d actually gone out for potatoes.

The PS2 sat gathering dust under our television for many years, as Ali bought me Sony’s portable version, the PSP, almost as soon as it was released.  The idea was simple: I spend a lot of time away from the house part of this building, so the PSP was a much easier way to get my gaming fix than finding time to sit down in front of the television.

Then, Christmas 2008, my Dad bought me a PlayStation 3.  It is, without doubt, my favourite gadget – not because it’s a brilliant gaming machine, which it is, but also because it’s a fantastic Blu-Ray player and, as the past year has gone on, it’s become a stunning media machine too, complete with the ability to download hi-def films to its hard-drive, or watch iPlayer through the LCD in the lounge, rather than on this tiny laptop screen.

I truly think it is almost Godlike, a status almost everybody else seems to think should be given to the iPhone.

The PlayStation 2 was consigned to a Tesco carrier bag and placed in a corner of the office.  Until Malachy discovered it was there a few days ago, and hasn’t stopped harping on about it being put in his and Jacob’s bedroom ever since.

The thing is – quite how this has happened, I don’t know – both boys, and Ali, already have their own Nintendo DS each.  And, over Christmas, I promised I’d bring the Nintendo Wii up to the flat from the pub as Sky Sports has put pay to anybody wanting to use it on a regular basis.

I always said I wouldn’t let this house become dominated by games consoles, but I seem to have failed.  All of a sudden there’s a PlayStation 3, a Nintendo Wii, three Nintendo DS units, a PlayStation 2 and my Sony PSP up here.

And all I actually find myself craving for is my old 48k ZX Spectrum and a good game of Jet Set Willy.   Fortunately, I still have it, in its original box too…

In December The Renault Used…

When the Vel Satis broke down last month it wasn’t strictly the car’s fault that it happened, but I quickly found reason to become frustrated with the blessed thing.

Adam and I worked the bar for a wedding reception on Friday 18th, ironically the day before my own wedding anniversary and an untimely reminder that I’d completely forgotten to get anything for it, and we eventually finished lugging all the equipment back to the pub at about two in the early hours of the Saturday morning.

With the weather heavy with the snow and bitterly cold, I’d parked the Renault at a jaunty angle in the car park  so I could use its headlights to light up the interior of the shed we were unloading in to, before we took the mountain bikes for a quick spin around the pub car park.

Cold, tired and in need of a beer after the night’s work, I decided to leave the Renault where it had stopped, locked it and wandered in to the pub where, even at that late hour, a couple of friends were waiting to keep Adam and I company.

With the weathe r so full of snow that weekend neither Ali or I ventured out in the car at all and so it didn’t get moved but, come Monday (a day we usually stay shut for lunch time so that we can have a bit of time off), I decided I’d treat Ali to a surprise, two-day-late Anniversary lunch and, under the guise of taking the kids outside to play, walked them up to a friends house where I’d arranged for them to stay while we went out.

Then I walked back, calmly told Ali to put her posh frock on, and headed out to the car to get it all nice and warm and clear the snow off it.  Walking towards it I noticed that my keycard didn’t appear to be unlocking the Renault, but that didn’t really come as a surprise: that particular card is notoriously unreliable so I went back and got Ali’s keycard.  Which also didn’t unlock the car.

It was at that point that I noticed that the rear left door, which Adam and I had unloaded some of the equipment through, wasn’t properly shut.  Which meant that the interior light had been on since Friday night – and that, in turn, meant the battery was flat.

Frustrated with myself for not checking the car before I’d gone in, I unlocked it with the magic key and popped the bonnet, which basically reveals nothing but a whole load of plastic panels, none of which tell you where the battery might be located.

Eventually I found it, then wandered next door to where some builders were working and asked if I could borrow one of their vans to jump start the car.  Eager for the chance to down tools and take a tea break, they came round to help but we couldn’t get close enough for the jump leads to stretch because of the humorous angle I’d abandoned the car at before the weekend started.

Ordinarily, this would be no problem because you’d just stick the car in neutral, take off the handbrake and roll it back.  But this is the sodding Vel Satis we’re talking about here, which happens to have an electronic handbrake, and the car will always put the brake on automatically when you switch the engine off.  Once the battery is flat, you can’t – it would seem – get the brake off again.  According to the local garage, they have to come out (at great expense, I’m sure) and use their computers to release the handbrake.

Not prepared to bow to them, we tried daisy-chaining the jump leads, but that didn’t work.  So I went and borrowed a trickle charger from a friend and set about charging the battery slowly.

This, of course, meant I couldn’t get Ali in to town so we wandered up to our friend’s house where the children were staying and her Surprise Anniversary Lunch turned out to be a cheese and ham toastie cooked by Yvonne…

Normally, I’d stop there and give you the atrocious running cost figures for the month, but I thought I’d also share this picture of Uncle Paul having to dig the Renault out of the snow when we got stuck getting in to another pub’s car park for my Dad’s birthday,  and we did also take a run down to Fulham between Christmas and New Year to see Ali’s sister.  I made the mistake of using the car’s inbuilt Satellite Navigation to get us there, which works fine when it’s not having to navigate you anywhere but permanently thinks it’s on the A6 if you try and get it to actually direct you.

Eventually it got us down the A10 to the North Circular Road and roughly in the direction we were supposed to be going.  But then it got lost.  Then it got confused by a turn I chose to make whilst waiting for it to figure out where we were so it gave me one last direction – towards the Hammersmith Flyover – and then promptly switched itself off, leaving me in a part of London I’m not completely familiar with and no choice but to admit to Ali that she’s been right all along, Satellite Navigation systems are hopeless, and then listen to her crow on about it as she deftly navigated me to her sister’s front door.

Renault Vel Satis 3.5V6 Performance Log

In last month’s report on the car’s behaviour I made the mistake of saying I hoped it behaved over Christmas.  As that clearly asked for trouble, this month I’ll just predict that it’s all going to go horribly wrong before the month has even got under way.  Meanwhile, here are the stats:

Fuel Used: 36.9 gallons (up from 29.9)

Economy: 22.9 miles per gallon (up from 21.9)

Distance: 846.3 miles travelled (up from 655.6)

Average Speed: 30.0 miles per hour (up from 29.1)

Service due in: 12’572 miles

Odometer reading: 65’856 miles