Arriving moments
Monday, August 25, 2008 ~ 4 Comments
As I stood waiting on my niece to walk through the sliding doors, I took in the scenes unfolding around me, a quiet bystander of life.
Around me people stood quietly waiting, tentative, excitedly patient, tensing with each noise, each footstep and the rolling trundle of baggage trolleys. Strange languages on either side couldn’t mask the the nature of small talk, the stilted chit-chat filling the last few moments.
Cameras whirr and click as friends and family embrace. A blonde haired girl drops her doll to the floor as she runs for her father, scooped in joyous arms, smiles bouncing of walls. Mobile phones are turned on and quizzed over by bemused faces, as gaggles of red tanned faces laughingly grasp hold of the last few moments of their holiday.
Laughter explodes over the growing din, handshakes and hugs are squeezed in over bags and suitcases, as a solitary man strides past it all, oblivious and sullen, determined in his gait as he has somewhere else to go.
These are the snippets I capture as I too am waiting, each quiet hiss of the sliding doors calls my gaze.
And then, as she almost walks right past me, there is my niece and I join in the throng of welcomes. A hug and kiss before we trundle off towards home.
Can’t Blog, Won’t Blog
Sunday, August 24, 2008 ~ 5 Comments
I should write up my thoughts on the Olympics as they are now over.
I should mention that I managed a 15 minute jog this morning.
I could write something about the cat.
I could write something about my sister’s engagement (party next week).
I could write about the Wii Fit we were given as a present on Friday night.
I could write up how old my Gran is looking these days, and how many memories it brings back of watching my Grandpa slowly fade.
I could publish the beginnings of a rather crap short story I’ve had sitting in draft for months.
I should ask if anyone knows the maximum dimensions for hand luggage on a Ryanair flight.
But I can’t, I won’t.
This may be the fault of Twitter - if I’m updating there I’m still getting my ‘communicate with people online’ fix out of the way - or it may just be because I can’t be arsed.
No, that’s not true. It’s not because I don’t want to but because I just can’t seem to get started on anything. I had hoped procrastinating on the topic may have helped but, alas, no.
Next week will be a busy one, both at work and at home, so don’t expect much from me here. Mind you, no doubt I’ll be twittering for Scotland. Catch me there.
The post with no title*
Thursday, August 21, 2008 ~ 6 Comments
I was working at home yesterday as our car decided it was bored with it’s old brakepads and would quite like new ones please, and no it wouldn’t stop making that horrid grinding noise (which meant new rear discs as well, ouch).
I also had another physio session, more ultrasound and another lung-busting, leg shredding session on the “stepper”. After that, 30 squats with my heels raised whilst holding a medicine ball out in front of me was… interesting. I’m taking the approach that in the long term it will only make me stronger, right?
That aside I took advantage of working from home to run some lengthy backups of my home PC, and I also managed to update 3 Wordpress blogs to version 2.6.1. As long as you haven’t hacked any of the core WP files the process is rather simple and only requires a few steps. All in, excluding upload time, it takes less than 5 minutes.
Last night we went to see The Dark Knight at the IMAX in Glasgow. It was quite something, some of the scenes are stomach-tiltingly awesome and the sound was loud enough to rumble your seat! As for the film itself, I thought it was excellent, a little drawn out but carried well. Needless to say Heath Ledger was the star, and I do wish they’d cast Maggie Gyllenhal in the first movie as well (way better than Katie Holmes).
And, finally, I updated my iPhone with the latest version of the software and, as before, it was a smooth and simple process. Admittedly they do seem to replace the ENTIRE operating system, meaning a 270-odd MB download, but I did read a few reports of people still having issues. It is certainly in the minority though, and to paraphrase a comment I read on this very issue “what the hell do you guys DO with your iPhones that you are continually having problems?”.
Or, to paraphrase a colleague of mine “sucks to be you!”.
* Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that this was originally posted with no title, and also that when I did add a title I used the word “tittle” instead. Which, apparently, one reader believes are “happy boobs”.
Lazynet iPhone request
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 ~ 2 Comments
Dear iPhone Developers,
This may exist already, but if it does I haven’t seen it. I’d really like an application that turns off all system sounds except the alarm clock between preset hours. If it could be activated when the iPhone is docked that would be even better, and finally if it could somehow keep the display turned on then that would be excellent!
You see I’d quite like to use my iPhone as an alarm clock.
Now, I can do that right now by setting an alarm but that means that I’ll still have email notifications playing. Of course I could turn them off every night, and back on in the morning again but that’s a little bit more hassle than is needed.
I also like having a clock next to the bed so that I know the time when I wake up, so keeping the display turned on would be great (especially if I can use the Digital Clock app).
Hmmmm, ok I think that’s it.
Ohh and yeah, I’d pay a couple of quid for this. Get to it!
Sincerely,
Gordon “Probably could build it himself but can’t be arsed” McLean
A night in Edinburgh
Monday, August 18, 2008 ~ 1 Comment
For the past few years my mate Keith has worked in Edinburgh producing the lighting for the Military Tattoo. I’ve never managed to get across to see him, or any of the Edinburgh Festival before, until yesterday.
He gets accommodation for the few weeks he is there, and as luck would have it there was a spare bed last night. So I packed an overnight bag and hopped on the train, meeting Stuart who was coming through for the night. There were no real plans, just a few beers, dinner and maybe a show if the mood took us.
And we did just that, partaking of a few shandies, and a rather good Thai meal in a nice restaurant tucked away down Old Assembly Close (I think, it’s a couple down on the right from Fleshmarket close). We then managed to get a couple of tickets to watch the Jim Rose circus. Keith knew someone who was working on the show so we got in for nothing which was just as well as it was gratuitous nonsense.
That said, I can now say that I’ve seen a woman spurt blue paint from her arse onto a canvas… can you?
It was a good night, followed up by pancakes and bacon for breakfast. However I am a little fuzzy still, age making hangover recovery just that little bit longer.
Private Private
Friday, August 15, 2008 ~ 14 Comments
Continuing the terrible titles, this is a take on Catch-22, for no particular reason other than being able to play on the word “private”. Think yourselfs lucky I didn’t choose the schoolboy route and go with “Show us yer privates”.
Oddly the only reason I’m writing about this is because Twitter is currently dead, if it wasn’t then my comment on the issue would’ve been something along the lines of “@plasticbag - nice pic on BBC website! And don’t some people get in a tizzy sometimes..”.
At this point I should probably explain that I’m talking about the recently opened Fire Eagle service which
“… stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…”
[from Fire Eagle help page]
It’s a smart idea, and one which plays nicely into the fact my iPhone has GPS built-in so I can ping exact location information back to the Fire Eagle website at any time I choose. Clever.
But, of course, the privacy nutters (I use the term advisedly) have leapt all over this, stating that locational information could be stored by any of the 3rd party websites or applications that use Fire Eagle and then they’ll know where you have been!
Don’t get me wrong, I realise such things could be abused but from what I can make out Fire Eagle has considered such things. For starters they let you control the level of granularity of the geographic information that you share with other services, from pinpoint co-ordinates to a “I’m near this city” level location. Whilst you can purge your current location from the service at anytime, the privacy busters are more concerned about the historical information that could be stored.
Now I can see that will be an issue for some people, and that having a system know where you’ve been is worrying as it will, no doubt be used to guess where you will be at a given time and then… umm… yeah. Not sure what happens then.
Worse is the possibility of a hi-tec burglar watching out for your location changing before breaking and entering your house. These days I’d guess it’s not that hard to find an address for someone who looks rich, use Google maps to get the geographic co-ordinates of their home and then just wait until they update Fire Eagle with a new location (hey hang on, that DOES sound simple, eep!!).
Or, you know, if you are worried about it DON’T USE IT!!
And no, I’m sorry but the argument of “some people won’t know any better” doesn’t cut it. If they don’t know any better why are they signing up for a service they don’t understand? The Fire Eagle website does a pretty good job of telling people what it is all about so perhaps we need to shift a little responsibility on to the individual?
I’m sure some of you have stronger opinions on this topic than I do, I’d love to hear them. But be prepared to be mocked for, if I’m honest, I really don’t believe the end of the world is nigh because someone knows where I am.
