devolute.net

Here in the UK, the iPhone arrives in approximately ten tears time. When we finally get it, the crippling restrictions that will be put on it in terms of bandwidth and connectivity by the traditionally stingy mobile phone providers will render it almost useless. It’s smooth, rounded, shiny and you could probably loose it if you sat on one too quickly, but all that is irrelevant if the absence of network support renders it useless. Could someone please tell the BBC this? Listening to the radio this afternoon, it seems that not only are they determined to advertise a product (someone should take a flick through these documents, perhaps?) but they are advertising one that isn’t even available to people in this country! It’s worth pointing out that other equipment is available that does what the iPhone does (well, almost). I think that perhaps the (alleged) generous 20% discount that Apple gives British journos may have something to do with the constant repetition of Apple-propaganda which is very, very boring. We expect this crap in some places, but on the BBC?

Maybe they just feel guilty for what they’ve done to Apple elsewhere? In short: Don’t believe the hype, Auntie Beeb. np: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

The constant rain and subsequent flooding yesterday was pretty amazing. I’m lucky that I live and work on some of Sheffield’s higher ground, so I wasn’t personally effected. However at work we could watch the citys traffic cameras online. Roads either became blocked with traffic, closed off, flooded or in some cases blocked with abandoned cars and flooded. We saw industrial buildings to the North of the town catch fire and Sheffield Forgemasters (who coincidently, I’ve helped develop a website for) were pretty much submerged. I’m now quite familiar with Sheffield and it was eerie to watch recognisable places and structures suddenly acquire their own moats in real time. The local web forum was full of people posting pictures of their homes and offices partially submerged and their cars floating. The roads, bridges and the station is still a mess.

For me, it was also interesting to see how locals made pretty much immediate use of web forums, imageshack pictures, blogs and youtube posts to spread their, sometimes quite scarey, stories.  All in all, a case-in-point example of a so-called Media 2.0 ‘hard news’ day.

On Sunday, it was brought to my attention by a friend that once a year, the kindly folk of Haigh Hall throw a free music festival for those in the area, presumably by way of compensation for them being in Wigan. I rolled up half smashed to find out what was going down with my homies.
Haigh Hall is a genuinely beautiful place, and I’ve come to the opinion that all music festivals should be held in the grounds of stately homes if simply for the reason that, surrounded by two or three square miles of semi-landscaped woodland, there was no problems with the toilet arrangements.

(more…)

Everyone should be pretty much aware of not only the musical Genius of Mark E. Smith, but his unwillingness to co-operate and knuckle down for (usually feckless) presenter-led interviews. This Guardian arts blog round-up of the most horrid interviews is a perfect way to celebrate. It includes, of course, the infamous Newsnight appearance after Peel died.

One of my favourites is a recent interview by the lovely, if not a bit soft in the head, Lauren Laverne. So uncomfortable, yet enticing, to watch. Her poor treatment wasn’t very surprising. She introduced him by reciting the same old boring tale that the Fall wouldn’t have been stirred into action, were it not for the famous Sex Pistols Manchester Free Trade Hall gig in 1976. Shockingly, there was actually music in the North of England before the Sex Pistols came to play to a couple of hundred Mancunians. So I heard anyway.

There have been rumours about this floating around for a while but it just happened! As soon as Jobs ended today’s WWDC keynote (yes I did follow it live, yes I do need to get out more) a beta release of version 3 was made available, for Windows as well as OS X. I’ve tried it and to be honest, I don’t particularly like it. The interface is too clunky. However; that’s pretty irrelevant. As a developer this is great news. I can test my sites double quick to make sure they work in Safari. It even uses Mac-like font smoothing. The prospect of more developers being able to test their work thoroughly has got to be great news for Mac users. Way to go Apple.

The other good news is that OSX will support ZFS (presumably this will lead to better interaction with linux machines) and they finally got rid of that horrible brushed metal effect. It always reminded me of my primary school serving counters at lunchtime. Ugh. I used to shudder as cheap cutlery slid across the surface. Regardless, I’m thinking of doing that unspeakable, bighting the bullet and buying a Macbook so although I feel a little dirty, all this Mac progression is all good. I just got to make sure I don’t turn into one of those Mac rumour-mill fan-boy types.

That’s not a typo. This is a new comedy about a folk-pop band composed of two New Zealanders in New York. Wikipedia tells me that the act was created before the HBO show, but it’s so hard to tell what’s genuine these days isn’t it? I blame the internet. You can see the 1st full episode in lovely streaming flash video here. It features the oldest Fleetwood Mac joke ever, mockery of the New Zealand tourist board and peripheral ‘Peep Show’ actor Rachel Blanchard. Watch for hipster-friendly music references and cringe-worthy relationship development and a promise of Welsh legend, Rob Brydon.

It’s been low-blog count limbo round here for a while. I’ve been over-rung with websites to maul at work so I’ve been somewhat terrified to even look at a TinyMCE text entry box. What else have I done? Well, I’ve been all the way to Westminster in London Village to try and help raise some more funds for soon to be internet-sensation Catch21 Productions. Well, we hope. We’re certainly going to try. I reckon we could do some pretty exciting stuff with it anyway. More on that, hopefully much more, later in the year.

I’ve also been to a wedding, a stag do, paintballing (ouch), go-karting (crunch) and to see some downright awesome bands like 65daysofstatic (for the 4th time!) and A Silver Mt. Zion (for the second time, but this time wasn’t half as good – slackers). I went to watch ‘28 Weeks Later‘ which was disappointing, but not surprisingly so. I just loved the prequel far too much and naturally the usual disappointment in a sequel followed. I also watched the start of Big Brother UK Series 384, but I’m too ashamed to talk about that…

BBQ this weekend down ‘sarf. Maybe next week I’ll reveal some shiny new website designs I’ve been working on. Oh larks oh lawdy! Hurrah!