(Hard Drive) Death in the Family

Mmmm, nothing rounds off a two week holiday like a corrupted 1.5TB external hard drive and the simultaneous death of your PS3 hard drive. 72 hours and some expenditure after these sad events, most data has been or is being recovered. Thankfully a lot of it had been backed up recently and a large chunk of the remainder is being recovered at the moment by a heaven-sent program called 'uneraser' but you know what they say - these things come in threes. Hmm, makes you wonder what's coming next in terms of data corruption. Umm, now what was I on about?

Now I can't say these two things haven't taken a pounding over their lifetime, and I can't say they always got turned off in accordance with the tedious 'eject your drive/ turn off your system safely' processes. Still, if these things are made to be used on a daily basis by children or people who don't work in IT, shouldn't they be a *bit* more robust? They are, fundamentally, consumer goods which are made to be used for a few years before going wallop. And in both cases, unless you are relatively IT literate, you wouldn't necessarily know what was what the problem was. The lack of substantive guidance or built-in data protection systems just seems poor to me. Who the hell wants to set up a RAID array or endure the tedium of regular back-ups every weekend?

It just seems like the people who make these things have shoved responsibility for flakey and fragile technology onto people who don't live eat or sleep platters, clusters and allocation tables. And I think that's poor. I am cheered by the fact that the nerds who make this stuff will have to deal with this though. This is because if you want us all to shell out for downloading HD material, we're going to need weapons-grade hard drives for Granny Lumpkin to watch Coronation Street on.

Holy Upgrades! It's The Fiddler!!

Yes, in my quest to crack Hollywood, I have come up with a brilliant idea for an original villain in the next Batman movie. Not only that, but he's someone I can personally identify with as a villain for our times, based as he is on...me. By the way these uploads are timestamped so anyone nicking my idea and claiming it as theirs better watch out. Villains are litigious, baby.

The Fiddler is someone who just can't leave things alone. Casting wise, probably would be played by Stephen Fry (but then again only if Hugh Laurie was playing Batman). If it can be upgraded, improved or slightly altered in terms of appearance, The Fiddler will be there. Slightly faster processor available for your PC? Bang goes half a day sorting that out. New internet browser which might run a bit quicker than internet explorer? it'll be downloaded quicker than you can say 'where have my favorite websites gone?' DVD recording? Kiss goodbye to those VHS tapes with deleted content you can't buy. Sadly, his ambition always slightly outstrips his ability, resulting in bad-tempered hissie fits, malfunctioning equipment and bashing of said equipment with hammers. All of this as a result of an accidental overdose of nerd radiation from a faulty Tiny Computer P-75. That and a close encounter with fellow villain Early-Adopter Man (and he knows who he is).

I wonder if there is therapy for this sort of thing. You don't see Stephen Fry complaining about this sort of thing. Would certainly restore a bit of free time. But then that free time wouldn't be shiny and fast-running would it? No, and nor would you have anyone to advise you on your choice of AV equipment.

Oh well. Back to programming my multi-platform universal remote control..

My Own John Denver

One of my abiding memories of my childhood is my father singing in the car. John Denver, Glenn Campbell, Abba, Billy Jo Spears, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond (but only the OST from the Jazz Singer) and the OST from Phantom were all aired routinely. I seem to remember some Peters and Lee tapes floating around as well but thank God they never seemed to make it into the car. My Mum on the other hand was always listening to Gloria Hunniford on Radio 2 whose show sucked big time because she was always playing 50s slush.

Now however I realise my tastes have been shaped by my parents. Not only that, but I am shaping the musical tastes of my own children. Apart from Billy Jo Spears and Peters and Lee, all of the above are on my i-pod. Courtesy of the shuffle settings on my i-pod though, the childrens' tastes are becoming quite eclectic. The eldest of course loves Hannah Montannah but is also partial to rock music, Ladytron, and other up tempo stuff. She cannot stand slow ballads or tinkly piano songs. Our youngest is a bit of an 80's fan though, and quite likes 'Doctor Doctor' by the Thom(p)son Twins and most stuff by the Pet Shop Boys. They are also both quite happy to mosh along to the Doctor Who theme. Ahem..

So how does Bob Seger (singer of blue collar C&W rock) fit into this? Well, another memory I have is buying this album from Something-or-another-Mart in the US in the summer of 1991 and then playing the album to death until I wore it out circa 1994. The tape eventually found its way into the loft and then a few days ago I finally got round to buying it on CD. Which is now being played to death again. Not quite sure why it took me so long to buy it on CD, but funnily enough, the current warm weather reminded me of sitting in the back of the rental car in 1991 listening to this and thinking then it was quite a John-Denvery thing to be into aged 19. Tissue memory is a funny thing I guess.

Anyway, the kids are about to get a high dose of Bob over the next few weeks, so we'll see how they get on. Maybe in 20 years they'll be blogging about him too.

A postcard from Lisbon

So here I am in a deserted five star hotel with unseasonally warm and sunny weather for company. This unusual state of affairs arises from attending a work conference on Thursday/ Friday and deciding to stay on over the weekend for some R&R. Having not been anywhere sunny and warm for a while, I forgot how much I miss the sun and blue sky in England, but then again if we had this sort of weather generally I would probably have to change jobs and become a gardener or something. How anyone sits in an office all day with the sun streaming through the window is beyond me.

So Lisbon then. Strange place. Walking anywhere seems to involve super steep climbs up narrow roads and then equally steep descents down more narrow roads. Why the authorities therefore send out trucks and dustbin carts to clean the streets during the evening is a bit of a mystery because it requires relatively inebriated people to dodge trucks by pressing themselves against the walls of nearby buildings.

There's a castle, a suspiciously-familiar-I've seen-that-somewhere-before suspension bridge, and some museums which are quite interesting, but the hours everyone keeps are quite...unsociable. Most people don't go out in the evenings until very late (clubbers go on duty at 2am...TWO AM?!) and we're out of tourist season here anyway at the moment, so the place is relatively empty for a capital city during the hours Londoners are used to keeping. Still, it made getting a seat at John Malkovitch's restaurant on Friday night a bit easier.

Anyway, having done the touristy bit, I am now having some quality 'cave time' to myself by the pool. Definitely need a bit more of this and a bit less leafing through the Radio Times looking for things to put on the Sky+ box..;-)

Sky Plus HD - things they don't tell you

As you may have noticed, Sky are rolling out a new HD box which contains a 1TB hard drive (compared to the old 300GB drives in their first generation HD boxes). Cost of the new box is £250 plus installation. Cost of a 1TB hard drive? Around £75. So with an out of warranty box to hand, I decided to see if a cheaper upgrade could be done..

Installing a new hard drive in a sky box is no great shakes but the result was a 'no signal' error on several channels. This is theoretically strange since you wouldn't think that the storage function is linked to the signal function. Sky's customer service unit (and I use the expression in its broadest possible terms) thought it was a connection problem. Amazingly enough, they are of course wrong.

It seems that power units inside first gen sky hd boxes are prone to fail, according to various sources on the internet. The 'no signal error' is a classic tell-tale, by all accounts. Replace the power unit for £30 and you are back in business (or at least I was). Of course, Sky don't tell you any of this..

So, £105 later and I am a happy viewer of a much upgraded sky service. No longer will I have to ponder weekly which recordings have to go to make room for new stuff. A by-product of this is also a better picture generally on standard def broadcasts by the way. Hurrah!

So, by all means 'believe in better', but don't believe you have to shell out £300 for a new Sky HD box.

The Fingerbobs Tower

This is the 42-storey Strada Tower, which is currently being built next to the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre. As part of its unique design, it is going to have three large fans on the roof, presumably as some sort of energy saving measure. Unfortunately, no-one seems to have noticed that the fans, when combined with the sloping roof design, cause the top of the building to take on the appearance of 'Fingerbobs', the 1970s childrens tv icon. Also, being 42 storeys high, it is not exactly a discreet building, and can be seen from miles away, its two giant mouse ears, eyes and teeth peering out across London (looking presumably for some giant 42 storey-tall piece of cheese?)

Now I'm all for innovative design, and I love 30 St Mary Axe (the Gherkin to you, Peel) but really, how did this get missed? Or is it deliberate because it is really the new not-so-secret headquarters of Dangermouse? or the mice from Bagpuss who have retired and gone into property development? Whatever the answer, it makes me chuckle to think London's famous skyline now sports a giant rodent-topped building alongside the London Eye and St Pauls..

Windows Updates that kill your display..Great!

Yep, thrilled to report that Microsoft have managed to release an update that crashes my display every single time the auto-update function attempts to install it. So now the auto-update function is turned off. This means when something I *do* need to stop a windows exploit hacking my machine comes along, that *won't* get installed and my system will no doubt die horribly whilst offering me some cheap Viagra. How idiotic is that?

Mind you, I shouldn't be surprised I guess. Let's face it, Windows has never been what you'd call a friendly operating system that invites you in for a cup of tea and a biscuit whilst it does something useful. It's more like a description I recently heard being applied to a certain nation's foreign policy: kiss my **** or I'll smash your face in.

BTW, if you think I'm kidding, try googling "windows update display crash". Returns? 792,000. And the energy used to run that search probably took half the polar caps with it. Microsoft may as well just burn some peat and tyres in their HQ's car park all day and release a slightly better update process. It'd be easier on the environment in the long run.

Roll on Chrome OS machines. Maybe.

Not a proper Christmas without Big Trak

Yes yes I know, where have I been? Here..there..you know how it is. Anyway, in the words of Agent Smith, I wanted to share with you a revelation that I've had. It's about Christmas. This year was not very Christmassy for me personally. Not because it wasn't all cold and snowy, or lacked Slade being played to death on VH1 or anything, mind. Nope, all the usual things were all present and correct: family, children, time off work, chocolate, etc. and so forth. This got me thinking about what was missing and I can now reveal after a solid 32 minutes of consideration that it was...Big Trak.

For those of you who haven't the faintest idea what I'm on about, Big Trak was a six wheel programmable tank which looked like a paraplegic battlestar but which was the must have toy circa 1980 or so. Absolutely every boy my age wanted one, and whilst they were distinctly limited program-wise, they were real kudos acquisitions, provided you didn't send it one length too far and over the top of the staircase.

Nowadays, there are no must have toys for boys of this calibre. Sure, you get the presents coming out that everyone are told they want like those go-go hamster things but (a) those are girls toys so they don't count or they are (b) just rehashes of old ideas (like that Thunderbirds rush about 10 years ago). Nothing like Big Trak, or Star Bird, or even a Star Wars AT-AT. There's so much choice now for cameras, laptops, televisions, ipods...there's nothing really..'special' as such. Big Trak was perhaps one of the last of those kinds of toys? I dunno. Even 'Simon', that four colour follow-the-sequence game was lusted over on the 'bring your toys to school' days we used to have. Those and 'Game and Watch'es..Ah happy days. You know what I mean though. These days it's all a bit 'meh' when it comes to gifts. Not much about that's really off the wall yet immediately desirable.

Now I'm not saying Big Trak changed my life, but it made that Christmas a memorable one, as did a few other things of that nature in other years. That sense of really really really really really ***REALLY*** wanting something and seeing that Santa had come good, even if his handwriting on the gift tag was suspiciously familiar.

Now does the wish for that feeling ever go away just because we grow-up? I think not. It just gets applied on a rather more modest scale to things like...dishwashers..and toasters.

So listen up Hasbro and others: get producing something insanely cool, indispensibly 'must have', and in the words of the immortal Glen Campbell (almost) give me back that old Big Trak feeling. Then maybe we'll get Christmas back for grown-ups!