The Obvious?

The bottom line

xkcd via McGee's Musings

How the blogosphere stays healthy

Some time ago I said that the only blogging guidelines we need are "Don't write crap, don't link to crap and if you see someone else writing crap take them to task about it."

Tom Reynolds gives a good example of how to do this.

Bye bye TV hello EyeTV

I haven't really got into television for many years now and my engagement with it had become much like my music listening before iTunes - half hearted and sporadic.

However I have been using EyeTV for some time to watch television on a Mac - in fact we watch hardly any TV on the TV these days. Now with the new version it has become trivially easy to scan the schedules using filters (to show for example only films or only documentaries) make my selections for which to record and then EyeTV records them, converts them to H264 and dumps them into iTunes. I can then have a playlist of different types of programming that I can stream to any machine in the house, including my iPhone, or take with me for long journeys.

So in other words EyeTV has done for TV exactly what iTunes did for music. Freed the programme from the schedule, in the way that tracks were freed from the album, and allow me to watch pretty much what I want, were I want and how I want.

As to DRM my response would be that all I am doing is time shifting in just the same way as I have been able to with VHS for decades. Wouldn't it be madness for broadcasters to criminalize their "customers" the way the music industry has, especially as I have already paid for the content through my licence fee or advertising, just at the point at which I am getting back into watching the stuff that they produce ... wouldn't it .....?

Stretching my legs and stretching my mind.

Prompted by a few unkind comments about the amount of weight I was carrying in the video of my talk at BiF I resolved to get serious about getting into shape. I love walking, find running destructive and hate gyms so the solution was obvious. I bought a superb Digiwalker pedometer and have built up to the weight loss inducing minimum of 15,000 paces a day (around seven or eight miles). I do most of the mileage in the evenings as a means of causing minimum disruption to home life and have come to appreciate the steep hills and streetlights of our neighbouring towns Chesham and Amersham.

The biggest joy of all this though is having the time and the excuse to listen to speech audio on my iPhone. As most of you already know I love Leo Laporte's podcasts and look forward to the latest editions of Macbreak Weekly, Twit and his radio show The Tech Guy. Through Leo's sponsorship deal with Audible I was reminded also of the delights of audio books. I was lucky enough to meet the founder of Audible many years ago on BBC trip to MIT just as he was staring up the service. I had subscribed in the past but never had the time to really get into book length recordings. My current evening walks give me just the excuse I needed and in fact the joint reinforcements of really looking forward to listening to the podcast or chapter in my current book (A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson at the moment) and the joy of feeling my body get back into shape again make my evening walks one of the best bits of my days.

Why I opened up my wifi

One of the joys of my iPhone (and they are many and various) is its ability to easily find and join wifi networks - but only if they are open. I have learned to really appreciate people who leave their networks open as opposed to those who lock theirs.

In contrast, in my own home, I had allowed myself to succumb to general paranoia about security and locked my wifi network. Now, however, having real this Wired article I have decided to reverse that decision.

I wanted to do my bit to get back to the good old days of open access and "warchalking". The fact that I live in the middle of bloody nowhere means that the impact of this decision will be minimal but at east I am trying!

Memo to self

Apparently when once asked if she would take part in an anti war rally Mother Thrresa replied that she would rather be pro peace. I must more frequently remind myself that being stridently anti things is invariably unproductive.

Pre Macworld Tao Wisdom

The five colours blind the eye,
The five tones deafen the ear,
The five flavours dull the taste,
The chase and the hunt craze people's minds.


Wasting energy to obtain rare objects
only impedes one's growth.


The master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
He prefers what is within to what is without.

Shame I won't be paying the slightest bit of attention to it ....

iPhone fodder

I am discovering that my iPhone has an insatiable appetite for quality, thought provoking video content. I have been feeding it TED talks for a while but Big Think looks like it'll help fill that 8 gig.

This will come as no surprise to most of you

96%How Addicted to Apple Are You?

Thanks to Cormac for the nod

Prediction markets

Many moons ago I wrote an e-mail to the BBC's Ashley Highfield, Director of Future Media and Technology, suggesting turning the CelebDaq engine inwards and using it to let staff participate in markets on possible strategy or even which programmes should be commissioned. I never even got a reply which seems ironic, given the high regard in which BBC execs appear to hold Google in in terms of companies worth emulating, and the fact that Google has been using prediction markets to good effect.