Is there food?

I still haven’t written about the John Prine gig I went to a few months ago, and I had intended to before the year’s end but I guess I’ve missed that deadline now! If I had already written about it, I’d have said it was one of the unexpected highlights of the year. I say unexpected because there are certain gigs I’ve attended last year where I knew they would be great; Springsteen at the Albert Hall back in May, for example, or CSN in Birmingham. Robert Plant at Wolverhampton Civic Hall on December the 12th would also be included in my list of surprisingly excellent gigs of 2005. The thing about both of these gigs were that my expectations were not astronomically high. I’m certainly more familiar with Plant’s work than I was with Prine’s, but didn’t hold either in such high regard as someone like Steve Earle or Springsteen, and so wasn’t expecting anything like the charismatic, absorbing performances that I got. After seeing both live, I have a new appreciation for their talents; indeed, both Prine and Plant’s latest albums would easily be included in my top ten of 2005 (assuming that Prine’s album was released in 2005, I can’t be bothered to check this morning). Looking back, 2005 was an amazing year for gigs (Sigur Ros and Bob Dylan aside), and I look forward to some great gigs in 2006. Some of which are already booked…

In an effort to kill two birds with one stone (and in order to clear out the back catalog of draft posts I’ve got left over from 2005) I’m going to post my thoughts on Narnia and Harry Potter in the same post. Hopefully this will act as a useful comparison of the two films.

Personally, I consider them each to be different cinematic experiences, but critics (and the vast majority of the viewing public) seem to bundle them together as the two “Christmas heavy weights for kids” (Kong isn’t a kids movie - yes, adults will take them to see it, but they’ll laugh at the wrong bits and won’t appreciate the “inhumanity” of a large chunk of cgi being blown to bits atop the Empire State building, or something).

I’m sure everyone is familiar with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and that most people are aware of Harry Potter, even if they don’t know the ins and outs of his adventures. Both are well loved children’s “classics” (I use the term very vaguely with regards to Potter, but assuredly with regards to TLTWTW), and both feature child protagonists and magical adventures. Narnia, however, is far more epic than Potter’s latest, and in its theatrical form feels almost like a child’s version of The Lord of the Rings.

For viewers of both, this might not work in its favour - the inevitable comparisons between Rings’ final battle scenes and Narnia’s will bemoan that apparent attempt at trying to “out-Rings” Peter Jackson’s film. I had no problem with the final battle scenes in Narnia; the protagonists here are children, and I found the final battle scenes engaging and visually effective (the White Witch’s polar bear led sleigh is a fantastic image).

Potter’s latest (The Goblet of Fire) is, in my opinion, a slightly more entertaining film than Narnia. It’s paced brilliantly, using each of the trials to break up the films other sections (which is the past have been given far too much screen time, and leave a somewhat rancid taste in the mouth). This might be a good point to mention that I’ve not been a fan of Potter movies so far - I found them to be unimaginative, over-long, and really quite dull. This latest Potter movie does everything right: It has a great villain, a good pay-off, it’s excellently paced, reasonably well acted, and has some nice effects. It does rely on knowledge of the previous films, and does feature a little too much “trendy” dialogue for my liking (Ron tells Harry to “piss off” at one point, for example). All that said, Potter gets a thumbs up from me for now.

Narnia, on the other hand, takes a little more time to get going, never quite feels like it’s paced entertainingly enough to engage viewers for its duration, but offers some great final scenes, and is probably a better film for younger children (Potter gets quite dark, and quite scary towards the end). The White Which is brilliantly portrayed, as are most of the talking animals, in all honesty. I thought talking beavers would cause me indescribable amounts of physical pain, but at no time did I find myself wanting to stab knitting needles into my ears (a good thing, in my book). The film has some moving moments, although the excellent cgi Azlan never quite feels real enough to produce genuine emotion in his later scenes, and the children, on the whole, do a great job.

I wasn’t terribly keen on the photogenic young thing cast as Peter (his acting talent was obvious a secondary consideration after his looks), but Lucy, Susan, and Edmund are all convincing (Lucy in particular). So, both films are well worth seeing, and neither feels like anywhere near the letdown that is Kong (but I’ve been there once already and won’t be going back until the DVD release).

Recently, I flogged my M500 (the Orange equivalent of the I-Mate Jam) and got myself a T-Mobile MDA Vario. The key differences, in brief, are that the Vario has a slide-out (qwerty) keyboard and runs Windows Mobile 5. I’ve had the device for a few weeks now, and I think the time has come to document what I think of it.

For starters, it’s slightly bigger than the Jam, M500 etc. (From now on, I’ll just say M500, and you can infer the other models). The sliding keyboard adds a little extra depth and the end result, especially when placed in its case, is that it’s a little bulky when carried in the trousers. The application of a decent screen protector, presence of mind to not place it in the same pocket as keys, and sufficient trouser capacity to carry it negates this problem. Typically I’m wearing a count with sufficiently voluminous pockets to not really notice a bulky phone.

The keyboard is an absolute joy. Texting on the m500 was a genuine pain in the arse. The stylus was required all the time in order to achieve any sort of accuracy, and made sending even the smallest messages a bit of a chore. On the Vario, you just slide out the keyboard (and the screen will handily shift through ninety degrees when you do) and type your message using the full QWERTY keyboard. Send text, close keyboard, put phone back in pocket.

Windows Mobile 5, whilst not without its quirks, is a massive leap up from Pocket PC Phone Edition. Whilst PPPE always felt like a phone application running on to of the Microsoft’s pocket OS, Mobile 5 feels much more like a complete phone solution. It’s been more intelligently designed so as to use context sensitive “left” and “right” buttons (as do many phones) to carry out the most common functions. Dismissing those pesky battery low, or message sent/received notifications is now possible without using the stylus, simply by using these context buttons. Upon viewing a contact, you’re presented with options to call them, send them a text, or email them, rather than simply viewing the contact a la Outlook on the PC. It all feels far, far more elegant than it did before.

T-Mobile’s signal strength in my area (Leicester and Coventry) is perfectly acceptable, and I’d much rather settle for a slightly above average signal everywhere, than achieving a perfect signal when I hang the phone off my television aerial using a complex system of pulleys.

The Vario also has Wi-Fi built in, which is particularly useful when checking your email in bed. I always find a laptop requires you to wake up a bit too much to remain suitable enslumbered, but having a quick check on the phone isn’t too bad. If I could configure gmail to push emails down to my phone (like text messages) I’d realise some sort of Utopia…

I haven’t tried TomTom yet, although I hear they’ve released a new version which supports 2005 correctly. Similarly, I’ve not installed any other apps - the m500 struggled with any today screen plugins (causing the keyboard not to display, a common problem with that generation of OS) and so I’ve been conditioned to not run anything. Who needs anything more than Jawbreaker anyway?

So I’m impressed with the Vario. I’ve seen the Universal type devices (o2 Exec, Jas Jar, etc) and while the screen and form factor is superb, they’re a little too heavy to slip into the trouser area without encountering the occasional gravity problem. They also, I’m told, have a couple of design flaws when used as a phone, but I’m sure Ashleigh will post on these at a later date. I can’t see me changing the Vario for some time - it does everything I can realistically expect a phone to do, and if I get sufficiently bored I can try writing some applications for it again!

I’ve been having a bit of a play with the Performancing plugin for Firefox. It allows you to post to your blog from within Firefox, in a very similar way to the recently launched Flock browser. It’s certainly one of the finest plugins I’ve come across for Firefox, and seems to be quite stable. I suppose the theory is that posting from within the browser should increase the amount I post, but I’ve never actually found that to be the case!

As long as Steve keeps doing his thing, the bloggers will write about it. I’ve posted my reaction to Apple’s keynote (are they really keynotes?) presentations before, and I’m sure I will do again. The last time, I moaned about how unexciting the new iPod With Video was, and how it hadn’t convinced me to buy one. And then I bought one. This time things are different.

I had hoped Apple would release a new and improved Mac Mini, or perhaps an Intel equivalent to its current PowerMac G5 line, but instead they’ve launched the “MacBook” and the new, Intel based iMac. Um…wow? I do realise how significant the shift to Intel is for Apple, I applaud the impressively swift migration from PowerPC to Intel, and I appreciate the potential benefits of using the Intel platform. The thing is, the two products Apple have launched are, for users who’ve not yet “switched”, quite dull. Surely only the more techy users care what’s “under the hood”?

On the one hand Apple achieve mass-market appeal with the iPod, and are attempting to make web-publishing and photo sharing easier with the launch of iWeb (although many of their iPhoto “innovations” are “borrowed” from Flickr), while on the other they devote a whole presentation to the launch of two uber- powerful machines which are unlikely to convince any iPod-owning Windows users to make the jump to Apple’s OS. The two new machines are far from cheap, and sport specifications which appear to more aimed more at the power user than the average home user (indeed, demonstrations of Aperture and Final Cut were displayed, which are undoubtedly “power user” apps).

I can understand why Apple have done this; their goal for this particular announcement was to demonstrate how powerful the Intel hardware is, how clever they’ve been in porting everything across to it, and how exciting the future will be. For the vast majority of us though, it wasn’t terribly compelling.

That said, I fancy one of those FM-radio, iPod remote dongles :) Damn you Apple…

BoingBoing have written a piece on iTunes 6.02’s potential spyware antics. According to Cory: “The question is: how does Apple know which version of the Mini-Store to show you unless iTunes first transmits the current song that you’re playing to Apple?”

It’s possible that the mini-store is simply doing a lookup for the artist you’re listening to (using something like a query string in the url, eg:www.itunesmusicstore.com?mode=mini&artist=dido) and displaying a frame of results in iTunes as a result. Certainly, the mini store functionality doesn’t require Apple to store your listening habits, but perhaps their iWeb application does. It claims to allow you to publish information on your listening tastes, so does this mean that iTunes needs to phone home to update it? Is this phoning home happening regardless of .Mac membership? Who knows.

The question, for me at least, is: Does the average user mind/care if Apple know what I’m listening to? Given the popularity of services like AudioScrobbler (or Last.fm) would users actually enjoy an Apple hosted service which gave the world (Apple included) a window onto your listening habits.

Things I don’t like about Performancing:

No option to post to the blog as a draft.

Formatting gets somewhat messed up when I post (mental note: check source view if I continue to use it).

Had a nasty problem when entering links which resulted in the whole post becoming a link (mental note: see above).

Hmm…I might try Flock again…

I’ve been using Mint since October, and have been massively impressed with it. It looks great, has fantastic plugin support for developers, and works (which is always a bonus).

Recently a new version was released, but it wasn’t until today that I thought I’d upgrade. In an uncharacteristically foolhardy fashion, I neglected to backup my Mint database before hand, and, in a characteristically typical fashion, my upgrade failed. Bye, bye Mint database. It appears that due to some sort of cookie problem (that I’ve only figured out AFTER blatting my entire database) the upgrade process didn’t run correctly. Oh well.

While on the subject of Mint (and while rounding them all up) here are my favourite Peppers (Mint plugins):

[Session Tracker](http://beaucollins.com/notes/2005/12/08/session- tracker-v095/)

Trends

Location (Link broken)

Outclicks

Sparks

XXX Strong Mint

Referrer Rollup and Pies

Search Engine Spiders (not yet finished)

FreshView

And, finally, a handy homepage for Pepper updates can be found here: http://massiveblue.net/pepperminttea

I had intended to review each of these on my site, but so far I’ve only managed to watch the first one! Hopefully I’ll watch them as the air over here and post my reviews. Bravo (UK) is screening each of the 13 episodes starting this Friday (the 13th). Assuming they don’t mess with the running order, I know I can heartily recommend the first episode “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road”. Enjoy.

Apparently, Apple have fixed the iTunes Mini Store so it’s a little less interested in your listening habits. Well done Apple.

Sky+ is costing me too much money. I’m paying £42.50 a month (or some similarly moronic amount of money) for all the movie channels, all the sports channels, and everything else. What do I actually watch? The BBC and ITV channels, and my son watches Playhouse Disney. Having started weening him off Disney in favour of Cbeebies, I don’t think he’s going to be bothered. Plus, he’s 8 months old - how fussy can he be?

So, here’s the plan - ditch Sky+, build Windows Media Center Edition PC, sit MCE PC in front room next to TV, enjoy.

I originally thought I’d have all sorts of aerial installation fun ahead of me, but it turns out I can get Freeview with my existing aerial afterall (just plug the cable into the right port on the back of the TV, Dan). So, all that remains is to purchase the components for the MCE machine (tv card, video card with tv-out, larger hard drive, remote control) and build it.

I will document my trials and tribulations here.

According to [this](http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=38898&post days=0&postorder=asc&highlight=force+landscape&start=0) thread, it’s possible to enable 802.11g on the HTC Wizard (so Vario) using a couple of simple registry tweaks. You’ll need to register for xda-develops before you can see attached binaries on posts.

I haven’t tried this yet - I’m posting this on my iBook and it’s somewhat tricky getting activesync running on an Apple machine :) Needless to say, as soon as I get back to my Windows PC (such a long way away, all the way up those stairs) I’ll try it.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was massively dissapointed by the BBC. They had the capacity to produce world class, character driven, dramatic television of a standard equivalent to (or higher than) most of the American networks, and yet they never managed to pull it off. Lately though, things have started to change. Spooks started well, dropped in quality for a bit, and returned to form with its latest series. Last years triumphant return of Doctor Who proved that the BBC can do decent Sci-Fi. And this year is looking to be just as good, if not better than past years. Which brings me to Hotel Babylon, and Life on Mars. I’ll cover Mars later. I wasn’t expecting a lot from Hotel Babylon. I knew it had Tamsin Outhwaite in it, and I knew it had Max Beasley in it. I also knew it had Dexter Fletcher in it (or “that bloke from Pressgang”) but I was determined not to let that put me off. Needless to say, it suprised me. Having watched a couple of series of Las Vegas, it’s easier to see the similarities between that show and this; the flashy camera moves, the aerial shots of London, and the general tone are very similar. There is a notable abscense of James Caane, but in fairness the same could be said for later series of Las Vegas. What I liked about Hotel Babylon, is that it’s teasing little details about characters. It’s not trying to do too much, too quickly, and has a certain degree of confidence which allows it to find its own pace. Beasley is good, as is Outhwaite, but I found Flethcher’s performance to be particularly enjoyable. So, keep it up BBC! I’ll post about Life on Mars later

I blogged about the Performancing plugin for Firefox a few days ago. One of the things I didn’t like about it was the lack of a “post as draft” option.

1.1 is now available. I’ve just upgraded, and am pleased to see that I can now tick the “Post as Draft” checkbox in Publishing Options. Nice.

As for the formatting problem, only time will tell…but it’s looking good so far.

Right, in order to construct my Media Center PC I’ve purchased a low-profile ATI 7500 graphics card for the machine, and a Sweetspot DVB-T tv card. Which leaves a Microsoft Media Center Remote and roughly 5 meters of aerial cable left to buy.

Then, if it all goes according to plan, I’ll purchase a second Sweetspot card for dual recording. Yummy.

Yesterday, I received my shiny new AL1916W monitor. For the last 18 months or so, I’ve used a LG 17” Flatron screen, and it’s served me well. With the arrival of the Xbox 360 though, my trusty LG wasn’t cutting it. You see, the 360 is unashamedly a beast of widescreen proportions. Trying to shoehorn its widescreen goodness into a standard 4:3 screen is like trying to watch this summer’s next big blockbuster on your video iPod - unsatisfactory.

So I started to wonder whether I should get a widescreen monitor. There’s nothing wrong with my LG, and I’ve grown quite accustomed to it, so what if I change my screen for the 360 and it makes using the PC something of a chore? After much research, changing of minds, and scratching of heads, I decided to go for the Acer AL1916W. There are other options; there’s an equivalent Viewsonic screen, and there are a variety of 20” screens (such as the Dell 2005fpw), but they’re all far, far more expensive than the Acer (which retails for roughly £170). Tales of backlight bleed, ghosting, and other such undesirable qualities lurk in the darkest corners of the internet, and I had some concerns as to whether the screen would satisfy my needs. Our friend the [Monkey](http://www.psychoticmonkey.co.uk/2006/01/24/entering-the-world-of- hd/) also ordered one, although the purpose of his purchase was to replace his 14” 4:3 television. I had no doubts he would be ecstatic with his purchase, for obvious reasons :)

So it was with some trepidation that I carefully unboxed my full 19 inches of potential widescreen pleasure. The screen looks very nice, it certainly doesn’t betray its relatively cheap price tag. The power button is a little on the spongy side, but I can live with that. The screen is significantly wider than I had expected too. It has a native resolution of 1440x900 - exactly the same resolution as Apple’s widescreen powerbooks (and presumably other widescreen laptops). Thanks to the talent behind PlasmaDesigns I was able to get some very slick looking desktop wallpaper, specifically designed for this resolution. So far, so good. Windows looked nice - although getting used to extra width took some time - and the screen is clear and responsive for typical Windows activities (browsing, email, etc).

A quick flick of my switchbox toggled the screen over to the Xbox 360. Given that I’ve been using a VGA cable with my LG screen, I wasn’t expecting much more than some extra screen space. Running the 360 on a 4:3 screen usually results in “letterboxing” - borders at the top and bottom of the screen. This means you’re rarely going to get full screen gaming using a 4:3 display, and end up with a visible resolution of something like 1280x800. I’ve always felt a little deflated by the picture quality using the VGA cable; I expected so much more, especially given how magnificent the output can look on an HD screen. I didn’t consciously expect the Acer to change my opinion of the 360’s VGA output, but it did.

The first thing I tried was Geometry Wars. I wanted something fast moving, colourful, and widescreen to try the screen. Everything looked great - there was no ghosting, and the resolution looked spot on (set to 1368x768). I was quietly impressed. Next, I tried the Quake 4 demo I’d downloaded, and was similarly pleased. I gave Condemned a quick check to see if the backlight bleed would prevent me from enjoying such a dark game, and found that I was quite happy with that too - there’s some obvious backlight bleed present, but not so much that I can never play any dark games again. For my next trick, I dropped Kameo in the tray and was blown away. Using the VGA cable and my 4:3 screen, I always thought Kameo looked pretty, but it never looked quite as “next gen” as some articles had claimed. On the Acer, it looks majestic: colourful, vibrant, and immersive. I am truly in awe of how Kameo looks on this screen.

Finally, I played a round of Madden against das Monkey and got spanked. The difference in quality between Madden on my 4:3 LG vs the 16:9 (well, 16:10 if you’re being fussy) Acer is very similar to the difference in Kameo - everything just looks so much better.

So I’m happy. Very happy. If anyone wants to buy a 17” LG TFT let me know :) I’ve heard stories that some buyer’s Acer screens have issues. I know for a fact that mine and das Monkey’s screens are perfectly fine. My advice to you would be don’t hesitate to buy one, whether you’re interested in widescreen gaming on the PC (Everquest 2 looks particularly nice in widescreen) and especially if you’re running an Xbox 360 through anything other than a widescreen HD display. Just make sure you buy one from a reputable company with a proven customer service record (Amazon springs to mind, mine came from Misco). In short, this screen or one like it is an essential purchase if you’re using an Xbox 360 on a standard resolution, small screen tv, or monitor.

I took my first steps down the magical green brick road that is Windows XP Media Center Edition last night.

It was all going so well; I’d fitted my DVD drive, and new graphics card, installed Windows, and connected everything up to my television using my new scart to s-video cable. Windows looked surprisingly good. Crap in comparison to a monitor, but much better than the last time I tried TV out. When launched, the Media Center interface looks excellent - perfectly acceptable by my standards and apparently sufficiently attractive to meet the exacting standards imposed by my wife.

But then it all went wrong. Launching Media Center results in a “your card or drivers aren’t supported” error. Media Center then runs, but won’t play any video. A few frantic minutes of research later, and I find that Media Center requires a card with greater than 32mb of ram. Guess how much the one I bought has? So I located a sneaky registry hack that turns of the memory check, but that doesn’t do a lot of good either. Video still doesn’t work, it just does it in a slightly less elegant fashion (black screen instead of friendly error message).

I did more research, and discovered that Media Center ideally needs a Direct X 9 compatible graphics card too. So, I’ve just ordered one. The problem is, I don’t know whether it will work or not. My AGP port is a 4x AGP port - the card is 8x AGP. AGP is supposed to be backwards compatible, but voltage issues can cause incompatibilities. Assuming the new card runs at 1.5v, everything will be fine - it would be nice if I could find a voltage indicator somewhere on the internet then, wouldn’t it?

Hopefully Amazon will get the card to me asap. Hopefully it will work. Having phoned them at 10:52 on Thursday the 26th of January 2006, and having been told by John that they’ll take the card back if it doesn’t work (aren’t blogs handy, eh?), I have nothing to lose.

GeoMint is great :)

It’s a Google Maps Pepper for Mint which displays your hits as flags on a google map of the world.

Did I mention how great it was?

[Major Nelson](http://www.majornelson.com/2006/01/26/xbox-live-integration- with-msn-spaces/) has posted a note on his blog to say that there are some shiny new things to play with on MSN spaces. It appears that Microsoft have switched on a few gadgets/widgets/web parts/plugins that enable various parts of your Xbox Live profile to be displayed on your MSN Spaces site.

This is all well and good, but what about those of us who use Wordpress, or another (apparently there are others) blog engine? Come on Microsoft, share the love and give us some web services we can hook into to display this sort of information on our own sites!

Tonight, I was having a browse around DeviantArt, trying to find some wallpaper for my new screen. Being widescreen, the new monitor doesn’t really show off the vast majority of the wallpaper I’ve archived over the years so I’m trying to build up a new collection. Whilst browsing I found some really superb artwork, which I’ve linked to below. If you’re not familiar with DeviantArt, it’s well worth having a look around - there’s bound to be something you like.

Justin Maller

Robert Maschke

Tigaer

And just in case you’re curious as to which [particular](http://www.tigaer- design.com/V4.1/gallery/picture/terragen/tw_std.jpg) wallpaper I selected…

Here’s a list of all the interesting upcoming cinema for 2006 (UK release dates taken from IMDB).

February:

• 3rd Walk the Line, Zathura
• 10th Final Destination 3
• 17th Aeon Flux
• 24th The Fog

March:

• 3rd Evil Aliens
• 10th The Hills Have Eyes
• 17th V for Vendetta
• 31st Firewall, Slither

April:

• 21st When a Stranger Calls, Hostel

May:

• 5th MI 3
• 19th The Da Vinci Code
• 26th X3

June:

• 2nd Poseidon
• 19th Venom (DVD?)

July:

• 6th Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• 14th Superman Returns
• 28th Garfield 2, Cars

August:

• 4th Miami Vice
• 11th Monster House
• 18th Sin City 2
• 25th Lady in the Water

September:

• 22nd World Trade Center

October:

• 6th The Reaping (Dark Castle?)
• 20th The Grudge 2

November:

• 17th Casino Royale

I had the chance to see Nick Cave for the second time last night, although Birmingham’s gig was quite different to the last time I saw him. In Wolverhampton, Cave had several musicians with him, including a gospel choir on backing vocals. This time, the performance was stripped down to Cave on Piano (with occasional guitar fiddling: “I got that guitar as a Christmas present”), Warren Ellis on Violin (which doesn’t just mean playing with a bow, btw), Jim Sclavunos on drums and Martyn Casey playing bass. Personally, I thought the more minimal ensemble suited Cave. It made most of the songs far more personal, and all the more affecting as a result. Highlights were a superb slowed-down, moody version of Stagger Lee, a strikingly vicious rendition of Henry Lee, and a particularly passionate version of Mercy Seat. That said, I don’t think Cave failed to impress all night; he was humorous and relaxed, yet at the same time fiery and intense. I’m reasonably sure that within his field, he is without equal. Nobody can create the kind of intense noise that Cave and band can. More importantly, nobody can effectively combine those staggering outbursts of noise with movingly quiet, almost delicately fragile moments. Here are a few tracks I recall (I know I’ve missed a few, West Country Girl, for a start):

• Stagger Lee

• God is in the House

• Mercy Seat

• Weeping Song

• Abattoir Blues

• Babe, You Turn Me On

• Red Right Hand

• Henry Lee

• Rock of Gibraltar

• Tupelo