jcm's blog

Apple confirmed our fears today by announcing that they are to screw us over by shifting architecture once again. They want to become cheap and nasty PC boxshifters of the kind many of us have been trying to avoid. I’m annoyed.

While it makes perfect sense from their business point of view (most customers don’t care what’s in the box, just how good the box looks), I used to think there was something special about Apple having a hand in the processor design, platform architecture – the whole hardware stack – which lent itself towards them producing superior kit. Now, I’m afraid it’ll all be cheap whitebox trash within five years. I might be wrong, I hope I am.

So, one last Powerbook to go before that’s it. Better keep two around, just in case.

Jon.

I was just listening to a new Runrig track I got hold of, simply titled “Canada“. It’s great (not just because of the name). Like most of their other music. Alan Cox was indeed wise to recommend them to ajh, whom I’m glad decided to pass on the recommendation on our road trip back in February. I have been listening to a fair bit of their music and have learned that they are over 30 years old – why didn’t I discover this kind of music a lot sooner?

Anyway, if anyone wants to buy me anything, you can get me one of their albums.

Incidentally, I’ve been using Audioscrobbler for a while now and it has begun to profile the kind of music I like to listen to (or maybe just the music it happens to be logging at the time). Here’s my top 10 artists and tracks:

Artists

1 Runrig
2 The Arrogant Worms
3 Enigma
4 Garbage
5 Enya
6 Brad Johner
7 Bay City Rollers
7 Captain Tractor
9 Danny Elfman
10 A-ha

Tracks

1 Runrig – Rocket to the Moon
2 The Arrogant Worms – The Canadian Crisis Song
3 Brad Johner – The Last Saskatchewan Pirate
4 Bay City Rollers – We Built this City on Rock-n-Roll
4 The Arrogant Worms – Boy Band
6 Runrig – (Stepping Down The) Glory Road
6 Rita McNeil – Farewell to Nova Scotia
8 Enigma – Silence Must Be Heard
9 Garbage – Supervixen
9 Danny Elfman – Descent Into Mystery

Unforunately, it doesn’t currently account for listening I do when on the go so much of the above is just whatever I randomly decided to play with xmms when in a particular mood. To get a proper representative sample will require me to get gtkpod to talk to audioscrobbler and inform it of the music I have been listening to whilst away from a terminal.

Jon.

Photo: Jon Masters wearing a Kilt (Blackwatch Tartan, substitute for Devonshire Tartan).

I wore a kilt. I enjoyed doing so. I decided to continue wearing it even after I’d left the kilt fitting session at the store and had had some coffee to build up enough courage to do so. I think I might have to buy my own now and I think Joe is seriously tempted to get his own kilt too. Hannah doesn’t seem to much mind about him doing so either. Maybe I’ll see some on sale in Edinburgh.

Paul had randomly turned up by the time I got home and answered the door. So we decided to have some coffee and I procrastinated some more. We went out for some Geocaching earlier on this evening but we apparently couldn’t manage to find GCN4N4 – “Flint’s Folly” – even after we called Joe to get hold of the hint. Meh.

Photo: Paul Sladen and Jon Masters.

Jon.

I decided to book the New York train. It was around 50-60GBP and will give me a day to explore the New York City area before I return to Ottawa to catch up with whoever is still around.

Nova Scotia and Newfoundland can wait until my next trip to Ontario, at which point I will investigate taking a brief Maritime excursion.

Jon.

I just saw breaking news on BBC News 24 stating that the US has confirmed soldiers did desecrate a copy of the Qur’an (English: Koran) at Guantanamo Bay.

Every time I don’t think it’s possible for the US Administration to be even more tactless and stupid in its handling of prisoners illegally held at Guantanamo against all international treaties and better judgement, I am once again proven wrong – it is possible for them to be this damn stupid.

In other political news, two other events that interested me yesterday were the announcement that police would use “anti-terror laws” at the Edinburgh rally (that’s just plain wrong – it’s a peace rally, not a march of assembled terrorists and the police have no right to abuse US lead hysteria laws to enforce crowd control) and that a peace protester who has been outside Westminster Palace for over 4 years is likely to be moved as he spoils the view (and there are laws against that too now). It had better be a brave new world that we live in.

…and if none of the above makes you feel disgusted. Try “Schools restrict use of Tasers“. Since when was it ever a good idea to have police officers using stun guns on kids in school? I like to think that if that were tried over here there’d be such a public outcry that the relevent police chief would be forced to resign – but in Florida it is now just considered something to use as a “last resort”.

Jon.

Photo: Lake Champlain view of The Adirondack from Montreal to New York (taken from the Amtrak website).

Amtrack run a service between Montreal and New York. I knew of this, but couldn’t actually locate the service in a casual search because I wasn’t specifically requesting Montreal as a starting point (it’s annoying that information about much of those possibilities offered by North American rail transportation seems to be only available if you know roughly what you will be looking for in advance).

The Adirondack (presumably named for the mountains in upstate New York that we drove around back in February en route to Boston) runs twice daily and costs around 50-60 pounds return. So I think I’ll try to figure out what events are planned for after OLS asap and then book a day trip to NYC.

If I don’t go to New York, I’m tempted to spend the time on a train to Halifax in Nova Scotia (otherwise I’ll go there next time I’m in Canada). I really want to see the Maritime provinces whenever I get the opportunity as they are meant to be truly beautiful.

Jon.

Flag: 51st US state added to theoretical flag.

Apparently there’s a design for a 51 star US flag in case a 51st State is ever added to the US. I think now would be a good time for me to consider my earlier statement of playing with the GIMP 2.2 with a view towards merging this design with that of the Union Jack. Or perhaps our combined flag would feature the UK islands outline as a small glyph within the image.

I spent far too long reading Wikipedia again tonight. It’s infectious – I only wanted to look up a bit about Edinburgh but ended up reading about Alexander Graham Bell (famous Canadian after relocation) and even Tony Blair (I didn’t know he was born in Edinburgh). There also seem to be a few Geocaches matching a search for the City. Sid has just expressed an interest in joining me on the trip, so I might have some company – I also mentioned that there is going to be an LBW up in Scotland (in Killin) in August.

Jon.

P.S. That’s probably enough posting fever for one day. Heck, I can if I want to.