In order to test a game that I’m developing at the moment I built myself a budget Steam Box (because what’s the point of building a high-end box when I want my game to be accessible for everyone?) The all-in cost came to less than £200, using a 1.6GHz quad core Athlon processor, and I’m far more impressed with it than I thought I would be.
Having built my box, I took it for a test-drive. Some things work amazingly well (power frugal games like Braid, for example, but big hitters like Brütal Legend are very playable too), but let’s back up a moment… Continue reading “Steam What?”
Ill Communication
“Be more dog”, O2 say. What they mean, I suspect, is roll over and let us kick you for a while. As you might have guessed, I’m not entirely happy with O2 customer service – and so I’m moving back to a supplier that I’ve learned to trust.
It’s not one problem, it’s many – and I’m fed up. I’m kicking back. So, in no particular order… Continue reading “Ill Communication”
The Managers Guide to Employee Feedback
The Managers Guide to Employee Feedback by Glenn Devey is essential reading for all managers, no matter how experienced you believe you are. Even as a manager of seven years I found the tips in this book to be useful, backed up as they are by real-life examples. In fact, I’ve been on management training courses that weren’t as well considered or developed as this little book. Continue reading “The Managers Guide to Employee Feedback”
Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business
I wish An Coppens all the best, of course, but I’m at a loss as to the purpose of her book ‘Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business‘. Much of the focus, at least in terms of examples given, is on mega-business. Microsoft. Google. Facebook. That’s all very well but, if you’re hiring for a mega-business then these tips are already likely to be ingrained into your company culture – and, if you’re not, then you probably can’t afford to hire in quite the same way that they do. That’s not to say that a small business can’t attract excellent graduates, of course, just that they techniques that they’ll need to use are rather different. Continue reading “Attracting IT Graduates to Your Business”
A rather special website…
The internet is full of oddities and wonders, from the educational to the appalling – and sometimes both educational and appalling at the same time. Little wonder then that television is feeling the pinch – the internet has sites at least as entertaining, but with interactivity to ensure that the consumer (that’d be all of us) doesn’t become a dribbling moron in the process. That’s the theory, anyway. Continue reading “A rather special website…”
The Xcode 4 Cookbook
The Xcode 4 Cookbook (by Stephen F. Daniel) is the most misleadingly named titled that I’ve read in a while. If you’re after an Xcode 4 Cookbook and you’re planning a little Mac OS X development then, make no mistake, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re after an iOS Cookbook (that name is already taken hence, I suppose, this title) then read on – this book might be right up your street.
Which one to buy?
I’m often asked which computer I’d recommend. I don’t have a stock answer to this question – what I say depends on many things. How technologically savvy the asker is, for example, and what sort of tasks they want to do. If the asker only has basic requirements then I’ve usually recommended a low end Mac of some kind, perhaps second hand, depending on the budget. If a server is required then I’d recommend Linux for heavy lifting and OS X Server for small work groups. For serious, heavy duty, computing then there is very little (which is to say nothing) to beat a medium to high end Mac – I use a Mac Pro tower myself. For the seriously cash strapped then Raspberry Pi is hard to ignore, and it will be impossible to ignore once the Raspberry Pi Foundation manages to sort out a case for it.
Now, though, there’s a new OS that deserves very serious consideration for light computing duties. True it’s been out for a few years now, but I’d say it’s now definitely ready for Prime Time. What is it? Chrome OS.
Who Should Use It?
Anyone who only has light computing requirements. If you only need to browse the web, email, do a little word processing or spreadsheeting and play a game or two then Chrome OS is perfect.
Why Should They Use It?
It has an elegant UI and it’s very user friendly. Google has put some serious thought into Chrome OS, and it’s a doodle to use – even for someone who has never really used a computer before. It doesn’t even require any maintenance. Best of all, it doesn’t require any user accounts to be set up on the computer – a Chrome OS user either signs in their Google account, or signs in as a Guest.
What Are The Disadvantages?
Google doesn’t seem to be as confident of their OS as I am. Either that, or they’re too busy peddling Android (which just isn’t as nice as it’s competitors). This is a pity, because Chrome OS is definitely the finest OS of its kind. Given that it is also the only OS of its kind, this might seem like damning with faint praise – but it isn’t, I assure you. Chrome OS is genuinely a thing of beauty.
And this is the main problem – the only official means of getting a Chrome OS computer is a laptop like Samsung’s Chrome Book which is an over-priced, underspecced, KIRF knock off of the old black MacBook. Good luck finding one of those in Currys or Dixons. You could, of course, download the OS and then install it on your own computer – but if you aren’t very computer literate then that kind of defeats the main point of Chrome OS.
Other than that, the only real disadvantage is a paucity of available software that will run without an Internet connection. This isn’t a big deal though because the main bases are covered and as Chrome OS grows in popularity (and I hope that it will grow in popularity), good quality software is sure to follow.
Reeder. First Impressions.
I discovered NetNewsWire soon after I started using Mac OS X, and it changed the way that I use the internet. Before NetNewsWire I didn’t really know much more about RSS than what it stood for. Before NetNewsWire I aimlessly clicked around the dozens of websites that interested me, mostly just checking to see if they had anything new to offer. What a waste of time. RSS changes all that. With RSS the updates come to you – there’s no need to check for updates because they’ll all be delivered to you, in one location, when they happen. And NetNewsWire on the Mac was the best, so when it came out for the iPhone I was delighted – and paid up immediately.
Bad move. It is easily the buggiest piece of software that I’ve used on the iPhone – an application which tarnishes the NetNewsWire brand. It frequently fails to update the status of its feeds correctly, so that I can’t see which stories I’ve read and which ones I haven’t. The refresh button doesn’t fix the situation – so the only solution is a restart of the app. Despite this, I stayed loyal to NetNewsWire. But now, and just after NetNewsWire was sold to Black Pixel, I’ve decided that enough is enough. I’ve decided to try Reeder.
At first glance, Reeder does the same thing that NetNewsWire does – it syncs RSS feeds with Google Reader, and makes them available for reading on your iOS device. At second glance, Reeder does a whole lot more. It’s more configurable. It has an Instapaper like reading view although, unlike Instapaper, you do need an internet connection to use it. If you want the whole page, Safari style, you can have that too – the downside being that you need to be prepared to wait for the whole page to load, images and all. The muted theme, black on grey, is very restful; far easier on the eyes than the stark black on white (with the occasional bright blue highlight) of NetNewsWire. The icing on the cake is that it seems to be faster and it hasn’t crashed either, well – not yet anyway.
I haven’t had Reeder for long. These are first impressions. But so far I like it alot, and I consider it to be money very well spent. When my iPad arrives I’ll doubtless be buying a copy of the iPad version.
As for my Mac, that still has NetNewsWire on it – but I notice that Reeder is available for Mac OS too. I suspect that I might abandon NetNewsWire altogether soon, but I will keep an eye on its development and I hope that Black Pixel can turn it around.
On not buying Apple hardware…
For the first time in twenty years, I decided to build a PC. This project isn’t born of an idle whim – it’s born of my dislike for the Virgin+ box. Seldom have I seen a more ill-conceived piece of hardware. I’ve certainly never seen a system which glows more brightly on standby than it does when it’s ‘on’.
The requirements started simply. Any box that I build will be able to record freeview television programmes, convert them to a format that I can play on my Mac or my iPhone, and make them available on my home network so that they can be copied off easily. I don’t have time to watch much TV at home, so I’d really like to be able to watch my recordings on the train to and from work. The box will also need to be able to play DVDs and I’d really like it to be able to play my MP3 files too. If it can connect to Boxee then so much the better.
As for the hardware requirements, it will need to be exceedingly parsimonious. A box that records will need to be on standby much of the time, and I don’t want it to chug though the juice like an alcoholic in a brewery. I’d like it to be remote controlled from the sofa just like all my other kit. An LCD front panel would be nice too – if only to make it look more like a hifi separate and less like a computer. While we’re on the subject, it’ll need to be quiet as well.
I decided not to skimp on the quality. The kit I bought is all good, albeit at rather less than the manufacturers RRP. I decided what I wanted and then went looking for it at the lowest possible price. My shopping list, and my rationale, went as follows:
- Antec Micro Fusion 350. The Antec Micro Fusion 350 is a nicely compact PC case, a good match for my hifi. On paper at least, it’s quiet and it boasts an efficient power supply. It comes with a remote control and it has an LCD front panel, so it disguises the computer quite well.
- Asus E35M1-M PRO. ASUS are a good brand, a big PC name that I trust. Their website isn’t bad (by PC manufacturer standards) and I was able to find their support pages fairly easily. On the whole, I don’t buy products if the provider doesn’t offer solid and usable support. I chose this board for its AMD Zacate CPU which uses very little power whilst still offering reasonable performance. I’m impressed.
- Western Digital Caviar Green Power. I’ve used these hard drives before, for archive on my Mac. The Green Power range isn’t fast, but it is power efficient and it does seem to be reliable. This is the first time I’ve used one as a startup disk – but power efficiency is more important than speed for my media player.
- Memory. I get mine from Crucial, and I’ve installed 4GB. The board will take up to 8GB so I may upgrade again before too long. I don’t want page faulting to occur at all if I can help it, and especially not with a slow hard drive.
For this posting, I’d like to leave aside the issue of OS (I chose Mythbuntu, but I may yet decide to use Windows Media Centre). The Mac vs. Windows vs. Linux is a meme as old as the hills, and not as interesting. I know which is best for me, and I know which is most likely to crash with a virus and a blue screen. I’d like to pick a different fight today…
…Hardware. Good lord, common PC hardware is crappy. The stuff I bought isn’t bargain basement – but it doesn’t even come close to the quality that I’ve come to expect from a computer. And even if I’d spent thousands on the most expensive kit possible, it’d still lag behind Apple because of the need to maintain compatibility with the woeful generic PC standard. I beleive in elegance. I don’t want to see a rat nest of cable inside my computer. In fact, I don’t want to see any cable – I want all the wires to be hidden neatly away so that they don’t bugger up the airflow inside my machine. It isn’t just a matter of aesthetics, it’s a matter of longevity.
This home build isn’t my only experience of generic PCs. As well as my Macs, I do have a bog standard generic PC. It’s a Dell XPS tower (not the latest generation – and I certainly won’t be buying another). It’s crap. It’s a professionally built machine, the top of Dell’s line, and it still looks like it was assembled by a crazed magpie. To use the car analogy, this isn’t Mercedes engineering. This is Trabant. On a bad day.
Sadly, it isn’t possible to do what I’m attempting to do with Apple hardware. Apple doesn’t make a machine with the form factor that I’d like. So I’m making the best of a bad job. Software-wise though, I’m very much open to conversion. Suggestions for alternative software stacks and improvements that I might make to my system will be gratefully received.
If, on the other hand, you don’t need a custom computer, if all you want is a machine that you can work on and, perhaps, use to play the odd game, if you don’t want shoddy build quality and worries about reliability then I’m afraid that you don’t have a great deal of choice. Only one manufacturer offers the machine you want. Guess who?
Fear and Trembling
As every good reviewer knows, one should never judge a book by its cover. If one were to ignore that rule then the Penguin Great Ideas edition of Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard would garner the highest praise. The cover design of slightly embossed text is plain but beautiful and, unlike many publishers these days, Penguin employs typesetters who understand the importance of ligatures. This is a book that feels wonderful and is a joy to look at.
No, one should never judge a book by its cover. The only sound way to review a book is by its smell. Open it up and bury your nose in its pristine pages – only then will you truly know whether the book in your hand is worth a second glance. A book may have many smells: knowledge, excitement, adventure, romance, paper, ink and glue. Mainly paper, ink and glue I concede. Try it for yourself. Grab your favourite novel and, lets say, the Microsoft Windows user manual. The Windows manual will probably have you reaching for a bucket – which is entirely appropriate considering the subject matter. Fear & Trembling, on the other hand, smells unexciting but mind expanding which I put down to the high solvent content of its raw material.
I mentioned earlier that Fear and Trembling is a joy to look at. It isn’t, however, a joy to read. That isn’t to say that it’s not interesting – but it is a bit of a headful and it’ll take longer to read than its diminutive 152 pages suggest. I’m a fast reader, I can polish off the Lord of the Rings in a week (although I admit that I do tend to skip the dire poetry and the boring battles, which helps). It took me the same amount of time to read Fear and Trembling, because I’d reach the end of a section and, realising that I hadn’t fully grasped the concepts, have to reread it. If you have no interest in philosophy and theology then you probably won’t want to put the necessary effort in and if, like me, you’re an amateur in the field then you’d be better off dipping into it rather than reading it in one go.
It’s a dangerous book too, because it doesn’t present a cut-and-dried philosophy for the reader to accept or ignore. It retells and then dismantles the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, subjecting it to the kind of forensic analysis that’ll boil the blood of any dyed in the wool ‘it’s in the Bible so it must be true’ zealot. It considers whether Abraham’s faith was justified and whether or not he was on ethically sound ground. There are people who attempt filicide today, claiming that their offspring are demonically possessed or that they were acting under orders from God. We, rightly, lock them up for the loonies that they are, but how are they any different from Abraham? Of course, the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular, is full of nasty, violent, prejudiced and contradictory claptrap. The intelligent mind questions it and excises the poison from the basic worthwhile message, but one can understand how the socio and psychopathically inclined (think of Alex from A Clockwork Orange or any number of real life cult leaders) are drawn to it like flies to rotting meat. All Kierkegaard does is shine a light on this paradox. According to Kierkegaard, Abraham chooses faith (do as God says, unquestioningly) over morals (thou shalt not kill). In doing so, Abraham surrenders free choice and becomes an automaton for another Mind. Even today, there are zealots in every creed who claim that, like Abraham, their faith is the most important thing in their lives. Like Kierkegaard I’d argue that they are dangerous and that the world would be better if they lived their lives morally instead. A truly faithful person can abdicate responsibility for their actions and commit the most appalling atrocities.
I’ve long believed that one should never accept only one point of view and that everything should be questioned – and Kierkegaard goes far beyond my own limited enquiries. Fear and Trembling should be read by anyone, of any faith, who claims to have any interest, however limited, in religion. It is not an easy read but, if nothing else, it’s laid out nicely and it smells quite pleasant.