Techiedog-blog

So, we travel all the way to California and bump into a band from Leeds!!! Camera phone pic - sorry! The Music - Caines Bar and Grill, San Diego 13th March 2005.

A conversation with a bunch of colleagues yesterday got me to thinking. We were in our usual free form Socratic Dialogue mode and were discussing the drive to digitisation of personal media and what concept, if any, the general public had of the longevity or persistence of their data. With the human weakness in our inability to empathise with our future selves and the short term focus that a fast moving society engenders, have we really thought things through sufficiently. When I upload my photos to Flickr , I’m just assuming they are going to be there forever or more accurately I don’t perceive of any time at which they won’t be there. If I think about it a little longer I suppose I assume that the Flickr system will ensure a roll with the times and that my pictures will be retrievable and trans-codable into whatever system makes sense as the years go by. The Urban myth would have us believe that the data which ran the ‘69 Moon landing is no longer readable and we’ve forgotten the for...

T-Mobile is trialing WiMax as a method for providing 'high-speed' Internet access on trains. The trial is currently running on Southern Trains' London to Brighton route. "To date, internet access has been connected to on-board Wi-Fi networks through fast satellite links, with slower GPRS connections used as a fall-back when the line of sight between satellite and antenna is blocked. T-Mobile says its WiMax-based set-up, designed and installed by Nomad, will maintain high-speed connectivity throughout the journey." Register article here .

I like the idea of this a lot more than the practice!!!! GNER have equipped more of their trains with WiFi Internet access. As a regular traveler on GNER between West Yorkshire and 'that London ' I finally got around to giving it a go. The free trial ran until the end of January so now access is free in First class (not that I'd be able to test that - though I am intrigued as to whether I can sneak onto the freebie by sitting in the 1st standard carriage) and in the First Class lounge at Kings Cross. If however you work for living you have to pay: £2.95 - 30 minutes £4.95 - 1 hour (60 minutes) £7.95 - 2 hours (120 minutes) £9.95 - 3 hours (180 minutes ) So what’s it like? Well true to form it not quite as simple as it should be, at least on my XP enabled laptop. " Most Wi-Fi enabled laptops automatically detect the wireless network" boasts the GNER - well yes, my lap top did detect the network, it just couldn't access it - that pesky 'Out of Range'...

Been getting back into Audioscrobbler recently and have finally pumbed it into my 'soundtrack' sidebar. Thanks to a couple of useful starting points for PHP scripts to parse the RDF. An PHP Audioscrobbler feed display script which plugs into MagpieRSS Find them: MagpieRSS an XML-based (expat) RSS parser in PHP Feed display script My Audioscrobbler profile is here The Audioscrobbler plugins are a lot less cluncky than the app I was using before and hence the Sountrack bar is a lot more up to date.

On a wander around town yesterday, and the usually visitations to a series of purveyors of consumer electronics, a started to take an interest in the range of DAB digital radios which are currently available on the high street. Am I the only person of the opinion that the design of the DAB units are universally awful! What is it about wood paneling, bulbous 1950's retro styling or 60s modernistic design that offer themselves as the winning look for manufactures. As for leather binding ........ I mean, some of these units are truly hideous. Just exactly which type of household are these things supposed to fit in? I can only come to the conclusion that there is either: a) A desire to make the technology less daunting for users by making them look old fashioned b) An attempt to make the devices 'date' even more rapidly in an attempt to stimulate further sales. A report last month suggested the digital radio sales were set to boom - really, looking like this...

The first snow of the season fell here yesterday afternoon. So, I know I'm a 'grown up', but I can't help but get excited by such things. My Dad always said that people loose the wonder and excitement of snow fall once they have to start commuting to work. I'm lucky, if I look at the window and the roads are impassable, I don't have to bother heading off to the office. Thanks to the technology of my trade home working is habitual anyway. Is technology responsible for allowing me to keep a sense of wonder, and enjoy the vagaries of mother nature for what she is, rather than seeing her meteorological mood swings only in terms the effect of my daily grind. Maybe, or maybe I'm just an entry level weather geek! Whatever, come lunchtime I'm off to take Monty the dog out to play in the snow!