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As far as I can remember, televisions have been remarkably simple things. You switch them on, you get a picture. You can change the channel, watch other stuff but a TV is as simple as it gets in terms of technology. Not any more it would seem.
When I switched it on earlier tonight during the England/Germany football match, my TV petulantly said it needed to download an upgrade. From what, I don’t know – does it have a secret wi-fi connection I don’t know about? Where does it get the data from?
More importantly, while it was downloading, it wouldn’t be able to show me a picture. Which is the raison d’etre of a TV, after all. A TV without a picture is a useless TV. You’d think it’d still be able to provide one whilst downloading data.
Still, ten minutes later, the update was done and … I’ve not seen anything different about the TV at all.
Wait till I’ve forumlated my opinions about the BT Vision box – but so far, it seems like an overtly complicated attempt to do a Freeview recorder. Plus it’s a lot slower than the Freeview decoder on my main TV.
Do you Web 2.x ?
Jul 21
Just curious, do any of you fine readers happen to use such Web 2.0 thingummies like Blogger, Vox, LiveJournal, Typepad, Facebook, Wordpress.com, Twitter or Pownce?
Oh, and I have a few Pownce invites to give away if anyone wants them.
Shower radios are generally a very useful thing – they keep you informed and entertained while you’re in the shower. I certainly wouldn’t like to live without one – but I’ve had to ever since the radio dial on mine stopped working.
However, even I fail to see why I’d get a Cyberman shower radio over a normal one. There’s no clock on it, no flashing digital numbers to tell you which station you’re tuned into. There’s probably just an on-off/volume dial, and a tuning dial. No fancy gimmicks, no gizmos, nothing to seperate it from the rest of the shower radios on the market, aside from a ludicrously huge design that’s not shy about itself, and is going to do nothing but give future bathroom visitors a mild shock when they visit your bathroom for the first time. It might even put a sizable dent into your love life.
And yet….
The technical blogs have all been reviewing the new beta of Safari (Apple’s answer to Firefox) that’s been released for Windows, and have mostly found it lacking, slow and dull. In other words, nobody can see a reason to use Safari as your main browser.
Except me, of course. Despite the fact I’m not a Mac lover, every time I’ve seen a website running on a Mac browser (mostly via Mark Boulton), I’ve always cooed over the font display, and just the way the website looks *crisper* on the monitor. And now I have it on my PC, should I want to use it.
I’ve got no real idea whether I just like the new look of font aliasing after 10+ years on a PC, or if it really does help to make websites look better in my eyes. But I’ll probably give it a test drive this weekend and see if the beta software can stand up to my heavy usage of the Internet. And whether I can cope without various extensions.
Mind you, I’ve yet to find a Mac user who does use Safari…
The formerly-stuffy-old BBC have done something I never thought I’d see them on most nights, let alone election night. They’ve started quoting from the blogosphere.
Not content with having two chief bloggers working away behind the scenes, they’ve interviewed them on camera, and reported rumours from the rest of the blogosphere. Which certainly makes a nice change from the 2005 General Election coverage. They even had Huw Edwards “commenting” back on a couple of the comments pointed at him.
So either the BBC have truly embraced user-generated content and blogging, or they had some air time to fill while waiting for results to come in.
Still, it makes a nice change from having to see some of the god-awful websites that represent the Welsh political scene at the moment. I never thought I’d see an Assembly Member using Myspace – but then again, I suppose it’s better than the Aberconwy Labour Party not having updated their website since nominations closed – and not having had time to even look at it on a PC before publishing it.
I’ve had my old trusty Canon Powershot G40 for a good few years, ever since I bought one for about £300 using some amazon.com e-commerce earnings back in November 2002. It’s stood me in good stead over the last five years, but the holes are beginning to show – it’s slow to start-up, and most of the buttons don’t work these days so it’s hard to adjust any of the settings.
Technology, of course, moves on and now thanks to a £60 Canon cashback offer available this weekend, I’m severely tempted to get a new Canon camera. Although if you happen to be a camera expert, I’d love to hear your recommendations for a new Canon camera out of the ones available – and, whether you could answer any of the following questions:
- How useful is image stabilization?
- How useful is a ten-megapixel image? Is that just a ridiculous figure for the sake of it?
- I’ve already got a Nokia N73 camera with a three-megapixel camera which seems to do for most daily shots. Do I really need a new camera? Am I just better off saving up for the next rainy day instead?
The wonderful world of Wii
Apr 16
So Miss R and I have had a weekend of being with the Wii … and while Miss R has not tried to wrestle it from my hands, we’ve had a good couple of games of tennis and bowling on it. Which she beat me at (oh the shame!).
On the Friday night, Miss R’s sister and brother-in-law happened to pop over, and so we showed them the console. The brother-in-law, having had some boxing and golf experience, took to boxing like a duck to water – and it was amazing watching him playing the game while adopting the classic boxer stance. Because while you can sit on the sofa and play these games, why would you want to? Now I’ve got two controllers, I’m wondering whether to get two more in case any visitors pop round!
Having said that, it does take some time to get used to the controllers. Holding it sideways for Sonic? The thing that really baked my noodle for a while was in Call of Duty 3 when you have to move it fast in a certain direction to wrestle a rifle from an enemy. I’m still not sure how that happens, to be honest!
Making a Wii for myself was rather quirky fun, but that’s where my love affair with the cutesyness of the Wii control panel ended. All those jolly sounds, all that Japanese animation – it can get quite grating after a while. Give me the tentacle monsters of anime anyday!
Right now, though, my Wii has been trying to download a systems update from the wireless internet since midnight on Sunday. It still wasn’t done at 8am this morning – hopefully it’ll be done tonight. And for a putatively simple console the whole family can use, getting it online is a bit of a struggle.
Of course, the real test will be whether Miss R likes the Wii enough that she plays it by herself…
I still want a Playstation 3 though! In that spoof Apple-style parody video for the PS3 versus Wii – the “cute as a button” skinny blonde/Nintendo Wii would have me reaching for a garrotting knife sooner or later. Or maybe I just want to keep up with the electronic Jones’ in the work office next door…
Wii vs PS3. Fight!
Apr 13
Like most gadget/tech/game-obsessed folk, I’ve been dreaming and arguing with myself between the PS3, the X-Box 360 and the Wii as my next games console of choice. Which is rather silly, considering I mostly play RTS games and I don’t use my existing game consoles that much any more. But dream on, I do. And unlike Angelina Jolie, a games console is within reach. At least, theoretically.
Why would I want all three?
A Nintendo Wii will get me off the couch, it seems like great multi-player fun and it might just turn Miss R on into the possibilities of gaming.
A Playstation 3 – well, it’s just the games console equivalent of a great big thundering V8 turbo-diesel Ferrari. The idea of downloading games and trailers in HD quality does sound appealing – even if I have a traditional CRT TV set. Plus, the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV had me *drooling*.
As for the XBox 360 – well, it came out before the PS3, it;s cheaper and it promises better integration with my PC and online, with downloadable movies and trailers. But then the PS3 promises that as well, doesn’t it?
All this came to a head last week, when on one day whispers on the Internet abounded of a discount code that let you get 40% off any goods in their catalogue, at least for the 20,000 customers. Including a Playstation 3. So I ended up ordering a Playstation 3, and wondering if I could have better spent the money on something else. Like a house.
The next day, Miss R told me (on request, she doesn’t check on this all the time for me!) that the local game shops had managed to secure a supply of Nintendo Wii’s. Before I had time to think about it, I’d popped down to the shop, handed over my credit card and became the proud owner of a Nintendo Wii. Mostly because I had aspirations to selling it on eBay – but also because I did want to play it, see what it was like, and perhaps turn Miss R onto the power and greatness of gaming.
Alas, to sell it on eBay meant not touching the Wii. So it’s been sat on the living room floor for the last week, lonely, untouched, unplayed with me only occasionaly salivating at it, wondering whether someone would pay me a lot of money for the privilege. But it was not to be – the only two flickers of interest came from someone in the Phillippines who wanted two (scam alert! scam alert!) and someone from Scotland who wanted it for their church youth group and wondered if I would do a deal.
Of course, in the midst of all this, I was starting to stress about just what I had done, buying two games consoles on two consecutive days. At least until the letter came through saying that the discount code had been withdrawn, and that if I wanted the shiny gleamy Playstation 3, I’d have to pay full-price for it. Baluga. Although my parents are in Hong Kong at the moment, where PS3s cost 73% less than they do in the UK…
So tonight, after the total failure of my attempt to make some money (that’s my application to The Apprentice cancelled), I at least have the small consolation price of having a Wii to play with tonight. Unless you want to buy it from me? 
