Nixta Sinks

To those in the industry (the advertising industry), the points outlined here are doubtless familiar and accepted. For the same reason I don't like politics, and that I dislike most advertising, and that I believe that most people live in a blissful naieveté that surpasses even my own (pet rocks, Simply Red, a second term, etc.), I found the article pretty tough to read whilst keeping my blood-pressure down, but it's nonetheless fascinating. As are the numerous comments (I only got in at 350), but you wonder how many were planted as a demonstration of some of the methods talked about.

Still. I got over it. My blood pressure stayed low. Another example of how I'm my own worst enemy.

Viral Marketing can be great

Labels: Advertising

LOL nixta. Also the amazing LOLa CANaMero!!1!! (via Jilez).

Labels: LOL Cat

Go on, do it

This is rather interesting. Buy one OLPC XO Laptop to be donated, and get one yourself (for the child in you, or... er... some child you know). I think that I count as a child, at least for a little while until I give it to a real child. In the meantime, a real child somewhere will have one anyway.

And I get a year's worth of free T-Mobile WiFi access (good on you, T-Mobile). $200 of the $400 tax deductible too, so two laptops for $330, both of which will eventually end up in the hands of some sproglet somewhere.

If anyone else feels the urge to donate but is hampered by a lack of a US address, drop me a mail (yes, I'll take all your tax deductions, but think of the children!).

Only 15 days left to do this, by the way. End date is Nov 26th.

It's also a very clever longer-term strategy of course, to keep numbers of these laptops within the US and consequently in the minds of many affluent and charitable (or guilt-prone) people with credit-cards. That's no bad thing of course either, and can only help the long-term availability and support of these things.

Via Hedgy. Note that Hedgey (with an E) is some unknown with a javascript experiment to the tune of "Fuck off", utterly unrelated to Hedgy.

Labels: OLPC

F8 and F9 = Hours of Tartleyesque Amusement

Spaces and Expose work well together. Using F9 (or whatever mapping you have) to show all the current windows has already been useful for years under Tiger (OS X 10.4 for the unitiated). Now that Leopard introduces Spaces, which seems to be hotly debated as to its usefulness, we get a nice visual which is actually remarkably useful. Press F8 to invoke Spaces (if you have it enabled, if not, read up on it and have a play) then F9. See all windows across all spaces and be able to choose the one you want. Works very nicely, thanks.

That said, Spaces has a little way to go yet - it doesn't automatically switch window focus for example, so even though you think you're in the current window of the current space, your keyboard focus may be elsewhere. But it does do some things very right. Windows update in realtime (including video, though Lightroom goes a bit gaga). Preview's Screen Grab works. It covers dual screens, even though it looks ugly as hell...

Damn it. Here's a video that covers it perfectly, and I thought I was being so clever and inventive...

Spaces and Expose working together

Stacks in slow motion are fun for a second or two. Hold Shift while you open or close a stack. In fact, all windows animations of this kind work the same way. Minimize or restore a window with the Shift key held (that also worked under Tiger).

Lastly, and quite usefully for me, a stack for recent applications. Just open up the Terminal app and follow the instructions on that page. Oh, all right, here they are too (all on one line please):

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

and then type:

killall Dock

Note that it's case sensitive (and there's a typo on the original page - "dock" should be "Dock"). It's best to copy & paste the first line. This will add a new item to the Stacks area of the dock. You can remove it by just dragging it off the dock...

My advice? Wait until 10.5.1 is released. Leopard drops my 802.11 connection from time to time (DMC's too), and that bug with interrupted moves leading to data loss hit me twice (although I was moving Jamie Oliver videos at the time, so it was no great loss). I also encountered two out of three installation problems (one on each of our MacBook Pros). Mine kept ejecting the Leopard install disc until I'd put in a video DVD and then the Tiger DVD. DMC's wouldn't find the internal drive when the machine rebooted into the installer (solution? Just wait). Even Vista does better than that...

Update: The original Google video I used (here) doesn't seem to be available in Europe? Or at least Slovenia (thanks for pointing that out, Tomsk). Very interesting. Reminds me of the difference between videos available for the iPhone YouTube service over those available through YouTube.com. Very very interesting.

Labels: apple, Hints, Leopard, Spaces, Stacks

Keep your miles topped up almost anywhere, including eBay!

This is very very useful if you live in the US and don't travel with BA that much. It should keep your miles topping up, and your account alive. I've looked for the small print, for the caveats, but there don't seem to be any. It is 3:34am and I can't sleep, but I don't think I'm dreaming this. BA Shopping.

Some of the shops are very generous with their returns in Airline Rewards terms (12 miles per dollar!), but more impressive is the range and high profile of shops that are participating: Target (8 miles per $), Apple Store, AT&T, Home Depot, Nordstroms, Toys'r'us, NewEgg, Buy.com, B&N, Best Buy, Circuit City and very interestingly eBay... I have bought stuff from Newegg.com recently, for example, which would have got me 140 miles. In the last 6 months, I'd probably be able to claim 1000 miles through eBay alone, as would DMC.

Just remember to go shopping via BA.com, I guess (and sign in with your Executive Club info).

Labels: British Airways, Shopping

The first episode of the new Mighty Boosh series is available now here on the BBC website (presumably only for Brits). Also available via TheBox.bz, though membership is required - I just set my homepage to their sign-up page for 10 minutes and got an account - it's not hard at all.

Labels: Mighty Boosh

Too real to feel real.

It's utterly crazy. How many cellphones do you think are sold in the UK each day? I don't know either. But let's assume that 1/10th of the population has a plan that upgrades them every year. That's 6 million cellphones a year, or 18,000ish a day. Another way to look at that is there are roughly 18,000 cellphones decomissioned every day (BIG assumptions here - 1/10th of pop - perhaps very high, and that the market is saturated - perhaps truer).

Let's divide by 2 for safety. 9,000 batteries and LCD screens, the vast majority of which probably still work just fine. Each day. In the US there are some 300m people, but cellphone saturation is probably much lower.

Who really knows what the numbers are here? Oh, Chris Jordan does. 426,000 EVERY DAY. 120 million a year. Over one third of all americans get a new phone each year. I wonder where he gets his stats, but even if it's only half true, it's revolting. There's no reason to believe the UK is any better - my estimates above would go from 9,000 to about 70,000. Ouch.

While on the subject, take some time to scroll through Chris Jordan's fantastic Running The Numbers pieces.

What, no rapist (image TSF).

There're two things of note there. The first is Apple's/Jobs' iPod Lifespan syndrome spreading through the gadget marketplace. It's quite amazing how accepting people are of their $400 devices crapping out after just two years because the new ones look so much better, behave better, store so much more even though the justification for the original device hasn't changed. And I'm guilty of that. I've just bought an iPod Touch. I have an iPod Nano (which was admittedly gifted to me by the ever generous and prolific TSF - it's red, you see, back when they didn't have red ones). I still have a 4th Gen 20Gb iPod (two, in fact, both of which had crapped out completely, and both of which seems to work again somehow now that I've tried them for the first time in over a year) and a couple of 1st Gen iPod Shuffles (both of which still work), and a 1st Gen iPod which just sits like a stoneage relic at the bottom of a pile of cables and floppy discs although I'm now attempting to revive it for nostalgia's sake, but although it works, no computer I have recognises it - iTunes conspiracy?

When your iPod battery dies after 2 years, it no longer an outrage or even (mostly) a pain in the arse. Rather it's a convenient excuse to get that latest iPhone or iPod Touch. Come on. 2 years? 3 years? What seems right to you? 7 or 8 years might be acceptable.

Gadgets have become disposable. You wouldn't throw away a $300 umbrella (I know, I have one). It's a lifetime purchase. So why is an iPod any different? These figures on the carelessness of people's cell phone ownership as as depressing as Chris Jordan's pieces. 855,000 cellphones dropped in the toilet each year?! In the UK alone?!! Better trouser-pockets are needed, methinks. Topshop - you have a lot to answer for.

But this is about cellphones and the lifespan issue is made even more laughable by the subsidised "freeness" of phones in the UK.

In the US you still have to pay something for your phone, even though you are subjected to all the same constraints that justify a free phone in the UK. A restrictive contract, fartingly pointless cashback offers that never materialise (and that most people are too lazy to follow up on), and some constraints that are laughable, including phones that are not just months but years behind the rest of the world, even if they're sold for use on a GSM network. Apple (again) has changed that and shaken things up with the iPhone. Now I'm really interested to see how the market adopts it in the UK (once the initial furore has subsided) where people are most definitely not used to paying for their phones.

Either way, every new release of technology sends a new wave of money to the tech manufacturers. It makes me quite dizzy, and sick because it's so rarely deserved from an innovative perspective - it's a drip feed - there are always more lemmings nearing the cliff's edge. I freely admit I've not been strong enough to fight it. I've indulged in it. It's been a disease with me at times. I'd be just as happy if the iPod Touch didn't exist and I hadn't spent $400 on it. Buying patterns are so different now. In today's world debt is not a source of shame but a matter of course. For the last few years I have hand-wavingly dismissed debt-based societies (specifically the US and UK) as untenable and perhaps the current uncertainties in the US markets will alter things a little. I still believe that Brits in general are living well beyond their means and using the cash they don't own to mask all sorts of insecurities and uncertainties (binge-drinking is as much a function of new-found short-term affluence as it is of the British propensity to find escape in the bottom of a bottle); entirely the result of concerted long-term marketing trends imported from the US. It's worked very well. People are dependent. Entirely dependent now. We're all junkies. We're all Jonesing after the Joneses.

Back to the point though. No-one repairs things any more. No-one borrows from a library (if only there were a gadget-library). Of course it's not all Apple's fault. People were replacing year-old Palm devices with new iPaqs when Apple was still wallowing in its Jobsless years. Jobs has just taken the trend away from overweight nerds in CompUSA eager to balance their belt-based gadget collection and given it to the Burberry masses who need a belt that matches their gym outfit and fits around their arm.

I would not part with my iPod Touch though, despite my disgust. I guess I still have the disease even if I feel I may be getting it under control (I still haven't bought an iPhone - my AT&T scars are still too raw).

Labels: Cellphone, Environment, Mobile, Recycle, Waste

Finally, after some years of waiting for that tosser over at that Peter Cook site to post the remaining few episodes of A Life In Pieces, I've managed to get hold of them from another source. Copyright be damned, the world needs to see. I suggest you watch them in order (1 to 12 in case your mind works in a nursery rhyme way).

Anyway, it's nothing compared to The Meades Shrine.

Labels: A Life in Pieces, Peter Cook

Was colour once the only forgery deterrent?

This is not a RCOPIWS blog.

Labels: Keyboard, Philately, RCOPIWS, Stamps

Note the in-flight toilet	Mulletzone soundtrack alert!

My father always wanted to be able to buy himself a glider. I'm never quite sure why he didn't, other than perhaps the massively increased likelihood of him dying a gruesome death half way up a Julian Alp on the border with Austria (it happened depressingly often).

We used to have lunch at Lesce airport from time to time. Curiously, it had quite a good kitchen for a while. And as we sat on the terrace we'd watch glider after glider being towed a few thousand feet into the air and released near a mountainside where it was more likely to be sent upwards either on convection or just plain old simple mountain winds.

The gliders varied from locally made fiberglass models by Elan (more famous for its skis, and in particular ski-jumping skis) to old wood and fabric dealies. Not once did I imagine I'd see something like this: A flying wing launched manually by standing in a wind (I can't imagine you could run with the thing). No tail, and landing with very little between your backside and the ground.

As always with sailplanes, there is only one landing. Awesome.

Update: Less awesome - hang-glider training typically teaches you NOT to pay attention to the very factors that could kill you. Actually, in a hang-glider almost anything can kill you, and will often try.

Labels: Flight

Burn your heart out, Rube

Fischli/Weiss burn lots of things in turn. Curious that I hadn't heard of them before, given my earlier brief fascination with Dr. R's brief fascination with Pitagori Suichi. I wonder why we never built any when we lived together in London. We had a perfect opportunity - huge outdoor terrace on top floor, isolated... Hmmmm. (via a misguided comment at Gizmodo)

Labels: Fischli, Pitagora Suichi, Rube Goldberg, Weiss

Old news now, but funny nonetheless. Amazed that those buffoons at social services haven't confiscated Pearl yet.

Labels: Child Actors, Date, Landlord, Pearl, Will Ferrell

Blogger Status
Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Blogger is currently having trouble publishing to a number of FTP hosts. We're investigating and will update as the situation develops. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Graham at 12:41 PDT

Just pure coincidence that this happened the very day I started up again? We shall see....

Labels: Blogger

Making flying better

I do an awful lot of flying these days. Not Peter Batty quantities, but a fair amount nevertheless.

In the past, I've had the odd scallywag of a flight attendant try to throw some humour into the largely pointless waffle that comprises the safety briefing (a trip to San Francisco was particularly entertaining, ending in the obligatory "Shift happens" line). I say pointless because of all the things it doesn't tell you what to do, it's things that will actually save your life in the unimaginably unlikely event that if you really need to leap out of the plane after it's crashed AND you've miraculously not been sliced to bits AND you haven't been burnt to a cinder AND you are still conscious AND able to breathe. Did you know that most people have trouble undoing their seatbelts after a plane crash because they reach to their side as if they were in a car? No-one ever tells you that.

This is a little light-hearted prequel to the post that I am only now, three months after the event, getting up the strength to be able to write in a new series entitled "Customer Service in America" or "I have your money already, now fuck off". Note that even though I have the strength, there are many days worth of writing ahead of me.

Labels: Airline, Flight Attendant, Humour

POS blogger web 2.0 arsetwittery todgeslappers are constantly blasting my ftp server and not a single updated makes it through.

Labels: Blogger

Nixtasinks Readers' convention (in the dark)

Clearly desperate at the prospect of not having anything to entertain them in the cold winter months, my fine readership has of late embarked upon a concerted campaign of petitioning me to post something here again. Those wags of the WGA have threatened such stalwarty shows as Leno, Letterman, and (God, how I wish this were true) L'Oprah. Now, those that like to think ahead and prepare for our horrific winters have written at least one comment apiece urging me with varied politeness to write something up already. All right, you schmucks.

I know a screenwriter or two. OK, just one. But they're not in America, and so not one of those dyslexic wags that writes all that pap that we see over here in the states. They write for that other detestable nation of half-wits, the Brits, and I'd be being unkind if I were to refer to their output as pap. Oh wait, I do know one over here (and so do my two readers), but he's firmly entrenched in the New Media Revolution and so won't really serve my argument one jot.

My amusement at the comments on the BBC's piece about the strike served as a fine coffee substitute this morning. They're well worth reading and have been vetted/invented to provide a humorous dialog on the strike, which causal factors seem fairly reasonable on the face of it, taking into account the entertainment industry's pathological and paralytic fear of adopting technology (control-freak issues that they should really see a therapist about). You see, like your dear parents, the state of the industry for which these screenwriters work is the equivalent of your old man not being able to work the VCR or your dear mama not being able to send e-mails or decypher the radio times, except that your dad has already learnt how to do that and you mum can figure out what's on quite fine by now, thank you very much, and can probably send you an SMS about it too (although it'll probably be a TXT in her mind). They'd die otherwise, but people cling on as they get older. On and on and on, and there the industry slips right back into fitting the analogy, only they do it like a Nazi with a pair of Rottweiler (all three of which have just been kicked in the nuts for added pazazz).

I don't have much sympathy for the people behind American television. That said, I am addicted to it:

• The Simpsons
• Scrubs
• Southpark
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• The Daily Show
• The Sarah Silverman Show
• Heroes (A guitly pleasure - it's often terrible)
• 30 Rock
• The Office

And if it wasn't for the advertisement-skipping facilities of my DVR I'd watch almost none (my TV is lucky to be in one piece given the adverts I've inadvertently seen). But it's all so safe in structure. In fact, it was the last WGA strike in 1988 that caused the last serious revolution in that (and a major devaluation of TV currency), when stations were forced to entertain us with the half-baked embryonic reality shows that required no writers, they created, out of desperation, a channel into a fascination and ratings rouser that until then hadn't been tapped. Writers have since worked out how to make that work under script (The Office, 30 Rock, and 24 are all high-profile examples), but if this strike means the Rise Of Road Rules and the return of MTV, I'm emigrating to Cheney's Venezuela (aka Paddington's Peru).

Labels: 30 Rock, Rant, strike, TV, Warts, WGA