Yak & Natter

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Saturday, Ealing, London: a day out in the park on what must be close
to the hottest day of the year so far.

The excuse: a free extreme day organized by the
local government, where we could try out various extreme sports. It turned out to be dominated by kids, but hey… we invited the New Scientist web team over,
we had fun and discovered that Cathy rules
at shooting because she was taught to shoot at school in France.

The end of the day was spent drinking, chatting, and playing football in
another park, followed by great tapas at La Siesta. Mmmm… great tapas,
and enough veggie options to keep Ash happy.

As you’d expect, there are eyemodule photos.

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[oh, BTW, this blog is late because we’ve come to rely on
JPEG Wizard to trim the fat from our images, and the
site was down for a day or two]

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New toy for Jane

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I had a nice long think about what I wanted. I decided that, with the hopeful move to Brighton, a portable MP3 player would be a really cool gift. So, we started researching them, and there are SO many to choose from. All with different features, some have radio, some have 64MB, some have 96MB, one has 128MB. I decided that I didn’t want one of the “burn MP3s to CD” versions, as they are quite large (a good idea for the car, but not for lugging around). Some of the other cool ones, mainly due to their size, were the Panasonic e-wear models and the Sony ones. Both of these, however, record the mp3s into their own format. So, despite them coming with a usb connector, it could still take 20 minutes to copy the songs across. I didn’t like the idea of storing songs in yet another format, and so looked around a bit more.

We ended up decided on a SoundsGood springboard module that fits into the handspring visor. The module itself it small, and fits snugly into the visor springboard port. It has 64MB onboard, uses a USB connector (just the standard cradle) and comes with a desktop application for putting music onto it. It seems to take about 5 minutes to transfer the 64MB across, which I think is pretty reasonable. It also comes with a registered version of musicmatch. We also got the EnergyClip battery pack. This is the bit that swung it for me really. This takes one AA battery and the module just slips into it. So, you can carry your music around without the visor. You don’t get an LCD display or anything particularly pretty but it’s functional and means that you don’t have to carry the visor with you to listen to music.

Because it only has 64MB, I’m busy converting some of my favourite tracks to a lower bps rate (96) working on the theory that whilst sitting on a tube or train, the loss of sound quality isn’t going to worry me so much. However, I’m looking for a better way to convert them as doing it one album at a time is going to get pretty boring.

A review will appear on the gadgets review page when I get around to it

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Update: 20 May 2001 The 2 reviews are now available – Sounds Good MP3 player and Energy Clip

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This weekend I purchased some helium from Balloon
works (Kew, UK) to inflate the Flying Saucer that the New Sci people gave me as a leaving gift (see blog#3307474).”

Under the balloon hangs the turbofan unit: two fans you power forward or back independently with a remote control. You add putty to the fan unit to give the saucer neutral buoyancy (or as close to it as you can get).

The first instinct is to go full throttle and send the saucer across the room as fast as possible, and then send it into a high speed spin. After that it’s more interesting… you use small bursts of fan power
and then watch how the saucer reacts, another small burst of power to adjust the saucer.. and so on… until it reaches some goal (buzzing the dog, trying to get the saucer round a slalom course, etc etc).

It’s fun. More pictures to follow.

Fingers crossed, we’re off to Brighton (coastal UK town),
so our flat in London is for sale.

I’ve put the full estate agent’s details on-line (direct from Word, so sorry for the layout).

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On Saturday evening there was a rainbow over Ealing. It looked really beautiful next to the blossoming tree. So, I took a photo of it. I wasn’t sure whereabouts on the site to display it, so I figured I’d just include it as a blog.

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We found this picture yesterday in the art centre of Syon House and Richard bought it and a frame for me as part of my birthday present. I hadn’t seen any of Jack Vettriano’s work before, and this picture really appealed to me. I was surprised to find out he is Scottish, as this picture really makes me think of the USA, probably because I associate the style of dress with gangsters. “The Billy Boys” is on display at Portland Gallery in London, and I feel that I may need to go and see the picture in the flesh (so to speak).

I’ve just finished reading an e-book, one of only two that money has been spent on. I’ve read quite a few classics from memoware.com (available free of charge). The first book I read which was only digitally released was “Jagged Greenstone” by Loren Teague (get it here). Whilst the story, from what I recall, was possibly a little weak, I found the experience of reading it on the visor a pleasant one.

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The book I’ve just finished,
“Presumption of Guilt” by Jay Abramson, was not such a good experience. I like the whole e-publishing idea. I think it’s a good way to get published, and a good way to test the waters with a story. However, I do not think that it is an excuse for poor spelling, poor grammar and missing words. “Presumption of Guilt” is littered with them. This distracted from the whole experience for me, and I feel that the $6 that my friend paid to buy this book for me could have been better spent.

I am not going to let this unpleasant experience stop me from reading more books in this way. But, I might be more careful in how I choose them. (Pdabookstore.com allow you, in most cases, to download a free excerpt, normally a chapter or so). I don’t think digital publishing should do away with the quality elelment. If money is being paid for an e-book, then I want it to be of the same quality as if I was paying for printed media. The odd mistake is understandable, even bestsellers have those, but the amount of errors in this indicated that it had never even been proof-read.

Ironically, “Presumption of Guilt” is actually a pretty good story, lots of twists and turns, possibly a little bit slow in places but overall pretty good. It’s a shame that I don’t feel that I could ever recommend it because of the grammar and spelling errors.

My grammar may not be perfect, but I’m not charging you $6 to read this 🙂

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Yesterday I completed my notice period and left my job at New Scientist. I’ve been working with them since the site launched on 5 October 1995. So, it’s going to be odd, but I needed to find something else to do and move out of London. Not sure what that will be. Hopefully I won’t miss the people, because I’m going to try to stay in touch 🙂

Thanks for the send off guys! And the geek toys! There are more photos.

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