2010 and still no space odyssey

It's traditional to make resolutions for the new year to come. However I don't really have to try too hard for change as in January I go part time at the BBC (after eight years) and take up another part time position as technical manager for a large church.

It's a job I've effectively been doing as a volunteer for the last few years but having the paid time means I can do it properly and hopefully get some life back.

I've written before about how I, and seemingly everyone around me, is too busy with no life balance. Recently I've become aware that I've been operating at my limit, occasionally beyond, as I try to do a paid job, work for a church and somehow try to fit in other things I want to do.

I'm not an artist, but I do miss being able to spend time on creative outlets of photography and music.

This year I want to get back to making music. I also want to take my wedding photography forward, got one job booked, want some more.

But I'll still be juggling two potentially demanding jobs so organisation is the key. Those that know me will tell you this isn't one of my strengths. I'm very good at detailed planning but keeping track of the day to day is a different matter.

So I'm turning to technology (iPhone) and have just bought a copy of David Allen's book Getting Things Done. I'm told GTD appeals to people with complex lives who like frameworks but dislike rules.

I'll post thoughts here as I get my head around GTD and how I can implement it appropriately for my situation.

But I do have some resolutions after all:
- consume less (energy and food)
- make music
- take more photos
- make more time for my wife
- make more time for my God
- leave work at the end of the day and leave it there.

I fear it's the last of these I'll struggle with the most.

Time will tell.

Happy new year.

Is HD tv pointless?

For some foul reason I was watching Herbie fully loaded the other day on BBC1. I was at my parents where they have a nice 32" Sony Bravia and a HD freesat receiver. The film was also on the BBCHD channel so we switched to that. It was noticably higher def. The racetrack fence wire could be clearly made out etc. But was it any better? And after a few minutes did we even notice any more.

You have to try quite hard to buy a tv that isn't HD ready these days and, with Sky (cue spitting noise) leading the way HD is now available via satellite to the UK. So far I've resisted, sticking to an aging CRT tv and using our excellent Topfield Freeview PVR.

To shoot HD means the cameras have to be better, and I think that shows on standard def broadcast.

But here's the big HD con. High Defininition as promised by Sky is usually nothing of the sort. The broadcast resolution may be higher but the feed so heavily compressed the resulting quality is terrible.

It's a bit like smearing your expensive HD tv with Vaseline. High resolution is meaningless if the detail is smeared by heavy compression.

HD broadcasting is marketing fluff. More is better. That's easy to sell. So HD is more and must be better. Even when it isn't.

Finally, consider that first example of the terrible film. When someone left the room I switched it back to standard def. When they returned, they didn't notice.

So by all means buy a high def tv if you need a new one. And buy a blueray player as HD discs benefit from a nice high bitrate and films do look good. But as I sit watching sky HD (away from home) I can tell you it's a complete waste of money.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone. Yeah iPhone. How cool and culturally relevant am I?

iPhone's won me over

For some reason I always go for the underdog. Maybe it's just the British disease, who knows. But when everyone I knew was getting an iPhone I went for the new kid on the block, Google Android on a T-Mobile G1. A decision I've regretted for the last year.

I've moaned about Android before so no need to go over old ground but suffice to say my experience of Android has been of an inelegant OS that until at least v1.6 wasn't ready for general use.

I still think Android will be a significant positive force in the smartphone market, but Google's decision to launch their OS on the severely underspecified G1 really annoyed me. I accept early adopters pay a premium and suffer heavy depreciation etc but my G1 is only running the later Android goodness courtesy of the excellent work done by rom cooker Cyanogen. The G1 is unlikely to ever see Android 2.0 whereas the Original iPhone is happily running the latest version of the iPhone OS.

Which brings me to my iPhone; a second hand original GPRS only iPhone from a friend and it is, quite frankly, brilliant. It syncs with my Kerio Mailserver via Activesync, google calendars with Caldav and in true Apple style 'it just works'. I should add that I managed Activesync support on the G1 with an app called Touchdown. Works but the G1 memory is inadequate for the app and it doesn't integrate with the google calendaring app, which for some reason annoyed me.

Using a 2g iPhone on T-Mobile (who don't have EDGE) means web access is slow and painful but what use is speedy data access when you don't have the app support to do what you want.

As soon as my current contract ends it's bye bye to T-Mobile and a swift move to another provider and a 3GS. When it launched the iPhone was a game changer in the smartphone market and everyone else is still playing catch up as far as I can tell.

Helping the poor

As I sit writing this I'm in Pret, enjoying a coffee and chocolate croissant that's cost me about £3, money I don't think about spending, despite having just passed the Big Issue seller outside M&S. Poverty can become invisible to us if we choose not to see it. It can also be well hidden. How many well to do families have recently fallen on hard times because of job losses in financial services. I wonder how many don't admit it and try to hide it from friends.

Last Sunday Tim Jones, vicar of St Lawrence's church in York, said in his sermon that it was better for people in dire financial circumstances to shoplift rather than turn to say burglary or prostitution.

Whilst in principle I agree with these sentiments what Rev Jones actually said was "my advice as a Christian Priest is to shoplift". He qualified that he does not consider stealing a good thing but the least of a number of potential evils that desperate people might turn to.

He then sent a transcript of his talk to the local press.

There can be no doubt that he knew what sort of response his statements would get and that he wanted this out there in the media.

However I doubt he expected quite such a widespread reaction with media across the world covering a story that started in a small church in York and retailer groups condemning his statements.

The problem is that stealing isn't ok and claims from any shoplifter facing prosecution that they were stealing to avoid the alternatives of burglary or prostitution are likely to fall on deaf ears.

Whilst I haven't looked up stats I know the retail industry reports most shoplifting is of higher value items, not essentials.

What's more, most people in our society who become involved in prostitution or burglary do so because they have a substance abuse problem, usually an expensive habit to feed, and not because they can't afford to buy bread.

For me Rev Tim's argument is flawed and his reasoning questionable but maybe that isn't the point. Maybe he just wants to spark a debate. Playing devils advocate often works and he has managed extraordinary media coverage.

Time will tell how this pans out and whether he's branded as rogue vicar talking nonsense or people engage with the debate.

I can't help feel Rev Jones has gone about this the wrong way and risks overshadowing the tremendous good the Church is already doing. For example Christians Against Poverty, a national dept counselling charity that's helped thousands of people out of crushing debt. Or closer to Rev Tim's home there's the fantastic Family Matters York.

There is a big issue with the distribution of wealth in the UK. I'd like to see more people engaging in a debate about what to do about this, how to help those most disadvantaged in our society, particularly the homeless. The Church ought to be at the forefront of this and so many other social issues, challenging the well off and comfortable. All to often that isn't the case.

Has Tim Jones helped?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Everybody's too busy

I once heard it said "the devil trembles when we pray but laughs when we get too busy", or words to that effect. Just of late it seems everyone's too busy. I really do mean everyone I encounter.

Ecclesiastes 2:24
A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God,

The trouble is that for me, and it seems so many around me the balance has tipped into something that isn't satisfying. I found myself wishing for another few hours in this afternoon to try and get everything done. There can be no satisfaction because the job can never be done. There's always more being asked/demanded/required. Even those doing something with a definite end point seem under pressure to get there quicker.

There seems to be a climate of fear across so many organisations large and small. "We've all got to just do what it takes." That's what so many people seem to hear from their managers at all levels and behind it is the usually unsaid "you're lucky to have a job".

I am lucky to have a job, a good job and one that for the most part I enjoy. I spent yesterday doing some virtual Christmas shopping for radio, I get to record live bands and present a music programme... Brilliant. I dreamed of such things as a teenager, well maybe not the Christmas shopping...

But without time to be creative, to enjoy the work, to find satisfaction the greatest of jobs becomes a joyless struggle.

I'm not sure what the answer is, especially for someone with a fairly strong work ethic and a determination not to let colleagues down.

Maybe a national week of work to rule.

All ideas welcome.

Life with a windy hackintosh

I dropped my expensive macbook pro. It broke. Fortunately insurance paid out and I bought a new one. Then I dropped it, in exactly the same circumstances (although this one didn't break). So yes, I'm an idiot. Because I'm not as wealthy as Stephen Fry I can't afford to keep buying Macs so decided I needed something cheaper as a day to day carry about computer.

I'd been interested by netbooks but the few I'd looked at didn't suit my needs. However the MSI Wind U100 seemed to be getting generally good reviews, and a lot of people had successfully installed OS X.

I ended up with the Advent branded version called the 4211C (£200 from the PC World online refurb section). Installed a bigger hard disk, another gig of RAM, OS X Leopard and I'm very happy. I also bought an extended battery, it adds weight and bulk to the machine, but also doubles up as a handy carry handle. That wouldn't be for everyone but it gives me a good 5+ hours use. I like that.

I've been using this machine now for several months and it's become my main day to day computer. The wind is a well built little machine for the money with a very usable keyboard and a nice bright screen. It runs OS X well. The user experience is nicer than the installed Windows XP Home, then again I do just prefer OS X. Give it some serious thinking to do and you soon encounter the limitations of the Atom N270 processor, but I'm even using the machine to put together some radio programmes for the BBC. Rendering the project on Reaper can take a little while, but that isn't the end of the world.

There are a few little niggles with Leopard on the Wind however. It's necessary to mess about with some drivers (.kext files) to get the display working in the correct resolution. Sound isn't perfect: on install it's built in speakers only. A bit of messing about can give you the headphone socket but no mic or external input. I also haven't managed to get the webcam to work at all. Wifi is something of a compromise: the standard realtek card isn't recognized by OS X, but realtek have made a utility that makes it work well enough. On the subject of networking the ethernet needs a manual DHCP prod after the machine's been asleep.

That's quite a list of niggles, but for me it really hasn't been a problem. What I've gained in a small, cheap, highly portable and adequately powerful computer running my favourite OS makes it worth dealing with these things.

I do hope Apple enter the netbook fray and build something like this, complete with the perfectly smooth user experience us Apple users have come to expect. In the meantime idiots like me who can't be trusted not to drop their Macbook can instead potentially destroy something that's about a 7th of the cost.

Would you second this?

Something currently doing the rounds of e-mail, that you may come across at some point is a letter supposedly sent by an American housewife to a local paper. I received this from a Christian friend with the tag line of "Will you second this? I do".

The full text is below, but in essence it's a pro-American, pro-war, pro-army, anti-Islamic list. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on other religions, or any religion for that matter. But the sad thing about this letter is the way it uses the name of Jesus Christ. The idea seems to be that if you're pro-Christ, you must be anti... everything else.

For me this represents a fundamentally skewed view of the Christian faith.

Christ commanded his followers to love their enemy and to forgive others their sins. How many people across the globe regularly say the Lord's prayer that contains the phrase "forgive us our sins/trespasses, as we forgive those who sin/trespass against us."

For Christians this means forgiving the moron who cuts you up when driving. It means forgiving the inconsiderate colleague. It means forgiving the terrorists who blew up a train on the London underground. It means forgiving those behind the 9/11 twin towers outrage.

As that great philosopher Sheryl Crow once said: "No-one said it would be easy, but no-one said it'd be this hard".

So no. I can't second this:

Written by a housewife in New Brunswick, to her local newspaper. This is one
Ticked off lady..

'Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started
By Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001 and
Have continually threatened to do so since?

Were people from all over the world, not brutally murdered that day, in
Downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from the nation's capitol and in a
Field in Pennsylvania ?

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning
Or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a few Taliban were claiming to be tortured
By a justice system of the nation they come from and are fighting against in
A brutal insurgency.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for
Incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring
About the Holy Bible, the mere belief of which is a crime punishable by
Beheading in Afghanistan .

I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off
Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat..

I'll care when the cowardly so-called 'insurgents' in Afghanistan come out
And fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in
Mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blows themselves up in search of
Nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide
Bombs.

I'll care when the Canadian media stops pretending that their freedom of
Speech on stories is more important than the lives of the soldiers on the
Ground or their families waiting a home to hear about them when something
happens.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a CANADIAN soldier roughing up an
Insurgent terrorist to obtain information, know this:

I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to
Move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank ..

I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and
Fed 'special' food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that
His holy book is being 'mishandled,' you can absolutely believe in your
Heart of hearts:

I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled 'Koran' and
Other times 'Quran.' Well, Jimmy Crack Corn you guessed it,

I don't care!!

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail friends
Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous
Behaviour!

If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you
Choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed
By radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may I add:

'Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in
The world. But, the Soldiers don't have that problem.'

I have another quote that I would like to add, AND.......I hope you forward
All this.

One last thought for the day:

Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:

1. Jesus Christ

2. The Canadian Soldier.

3. The British Soldier.

4. The US Soldier, and

5. The Australian Soldier

One died for your soul, the other 4 for your freedom..

Orange really has got better

So it's been a while since my Orange broadband connection suddenly seemed to be getting a half decent speed... And, it's held up.

So I have a new benchmark. A domestic Orange 8Mb ADSL line is giving a real world 6Mb+. This contrasts sharply with BT Internet domestic 8Mb which gives under 2Mb. Not only that but at work we have a BT Internet Business connection. This promises to be faster with lower contention ratios. Download speed still doesn't even reach 2Mb though and upload is no better than Orange.

BT, you really are holding Britain back.

Orange broadband suddenly seems better

Because I live in a village our local exchange isn't scheduled to support LLU (Local Link Unbundling) until about 2012 which means we don't have access to all those tasty ADSL2+ services offered by the likes of Bethere.co.uk

I've used Be's service and it's very good. A reliable 15Mb/s realistic download speed is pretty good in my book.

But we've got the Orange broadband Max 8Mb service. I've always found any 8Mb service only seems to offer a realistic 2Mb downstream at best. My parents have BT Internet's 8Mb service and it's terrible.

However I tried the BBC iPlayer network performance test and it reported I was getting 6Mb/s download and the Orange connection now seems to be able to support upwards of 5Mb/s streaming.

Last time I checked I was only getting around the 2Mb/s mark... so what's happened? Is this some sort of fluke or have Orange/BT done something with their networks in recognition that it really isn't ok to charge for an 8Mb connection and only provide 2Mb.

I'll keep an eye on it.

Virtual piracy

It was the era of tapes and Sony Walkmans but vinyl was still king and CDs only found a home in hifi cabinet of serious audiophiles. I used to tape songs off the radio, usually Radio 1's top 40 countdown on a Sunday evening (long before the dreadful Fearn and Reggie). This was of course illegal. I knew lots of people who did the same but somehow the world kept on turning and people kept buying records.

Record company execs weren't happy that it was easy to record from vinyl onto audio cassette and then lend, or even give this copy to someone else, but the first time I remember the copyright protectors declaring the end of music for all time was the advent of the twin tape deck. At the press of a button you could copy a tape, sometimes even at high speed. But somehow the world kept on turning and people kept buying music.

Fast forward a few years to the next big technology jump - the domestic PC CD burner. Not only could you now copy music, but it was an exact copy (more or less) with no loss of quality. This really would bring about the end of music. But somehow the world...etc etc.

Today's 'end of the world' technology has been around for a surprisingly long time with MP3s circulating from the early 90s. Initially those distributing large numbers of MP3 files tended to do it on website. Easy to deal with those, just shut them down. What's really spoiling the business lunches of record company execs is bittorrent - filesharing.

Bittorrent allows me to make files on my computer available to other people. As others download the files, they make them available too. The result is a world wide network of computers all offering the files meaning the download is spread across lots of machines. It's very clever, very efficient and quite difficult to deal with.

If you've been paying any attention to the news circulating around nerdy tech circles then you'll know about this. The Pirate Bay people were offering a bittorrent tracker, and so were an easy target. Targetting those who are actually doing the sharing is much harder, not least because there are so many.

Here lies the crux of the problem; a generation of people now exist who think media (music, TV programmes, movies, even newspapers) cost nothing.

There are lots of places 'blame' can lie for this and I think it's too simplistic to argue that filesharing is entirely responsible. It has a big part to play, but so does advertising supported services that are so common.

People who create should get paid for their efforts unless they choose otherwise. Therefore taking music, movies, software, etc for free when you should pay for it isn't fair. However what's equally unfair, particuarly in the music industy, are the HUGE profits made by record companies when the artists may get very little if anything.

What's particularly concerning is that across the world increasingly complex and punitive legislation is being used to combat copyright violation. It's bad in the US and could get particularly bad in the UK.

Because of all this it's incumbent on responsible adults to lobby politicians to combat unfair and unreasonable legislation. Be under no illusion that highly resourced companies with lots of lawyers are doing exactly this. We should question and combat the FUD circulated that copyright violation is theft (it isn't), that copyright violation is funding terrorism (there's no evidence it is) and that any change to the status quo will ruin the world (it won't, but it might ruin the bank balances of a few individuals). We should demand fair use; a system that allows the use of music clips, movie clips and credited photos for no commercial gain, and allows trialing of software without restrictions.

Just as importantly we should also do our bit to educate others, particularly the young, that just because you can get something for nothing, doesn't mean you should.

I could go on. A great deal needs to be overhauled, not least the highly questionable Performing Rights Society in the UK. The bottom line is fairness. Treat me unfairly, force draconian DRM measures and awkward software copy controls and I won't treat you fairly in return.

In other news...

It was nice to put together the ragbag of bits that is by PA system for the first time in a year and find it all works as expected. Got an irritating and difficult to trace fault with a Tascam digital mixing desk. The desk keeps losing track of where one particular fader is. Tried replacing it, no different. Probably means there's some impedance measuring going wrong. Actually I have no idea how it works... only that sometimes it doesn't.

What's the point of Duffy?

that something or other avenue song was ok... but for the most part she sounds like someone who's accidentally swallowed a party squeeky thing. Rubbish.

Too much to do

Concerned at how I'm beginning to struggle to get things done, with a little too much falling by wayside I recently had a chat with a friend of mine who's into the whole personal development time management side of things. Turns out I'm just trying to do too much. So it's less my inability to manage time effectively and more that I just don't have enough of it, or more accurately that I'm trying to do too much with it.

With spring now here I think the first thing I'm going to do is make sure that I take more time out to really do nothing, or at least relax and read.

The whole sabbath thing is probably the key to this. I haven't been observing it particularly carefully. Ok I haven't been observing it at all. I subscribe to the idea that the day isn't all that important. What matters is there's a day, a whole day that's devoted to resting, to spiritual matters, to God.

That I haven't been sticking to this eminently sensible idea is daft and I'm really beginning to feel it now. So as of this week, Sunday (for that is the day that fits best in my week) will be that little bit more special. Let's see if that helps.

Any economists out there?

For as long as I can remember whenever I've heard talk of national debt I've found myself wondering who a nation can be indebted to. I always figured it was a richer country (which it is in the case of many) or banks, or some really rich guy who had a few spare dollars he found down the back of the sofa.

But right now, as far as I can tell, every country is hugely indebted by sums of money that are completely mindblowing. When the richest country in the world is in debt, all the banks and indeed some previously well off countries are broke and the economy is seemingly falling apart... From who are we borrowing money?

Twittering Archbishop

It seems Archbishop of York John Sentamu has joined the twittering masses so you too can keep abreast of his latest thoughts, even as he's having them.

Though he's new to Tweeting, or so it seems, it's slightly disappointing how few people he's following. One thing that's often struck me about Sentamu is his disconnectedness with people in the church. He just doesn't seem interested.

I like his focus on international injustice and on making the church relevant to modern culture. However I do wonder if he isn't doing enough to take people already in the church with him... Just a thought.

is modern paint rubbish?

I've been decorating a small room for what feels like 900 years. Interestingly all domestic wood/metal paint now seems to be water based. This is good for the environment, and doesn't have the same tendency to give you a headache.

The downside seems to be that it just isn't very good. I've been painting something that was white a subtle off white colour and it's taken four coats.

I'm really bored with painting.

Good room, good mics, what more do you need?

Just got back from recording two live band sessions for BBC Introducing. Sounding pretty good considering... Considering that is the whole evening takes four hours and in that time me and my colleague take all the gear to the venue we use (a church building) setup record two bands and then pack up and put it all away.

We're getting pretty good results too. Often as good as those from much higher profile and better equipped studio facilities on big bucks network radio. Partly that's down to our extreme skill (we're modest too) but mainly it's about the space.

Half decent instruments in a good space with some reasonable mics are going to sound good. Get the space wrong and you spend an age messing about trying polish that particular turd.

We're lucky in that the mics we have are good ones. So even though the mixing desk is cheap and the compressors are Behringer (shudder) the results are still pretty good.

Roland Digital Snake - a thing of wonder

Anyone who's done a significant amount of live sound or location recording will be familiar with the joys of lugging around huge heavy multicore cables. This is the way of getting the signals from the stage to the mixing desk. Good quality cable is expensive and cable of any quality is heavy. Then you have the interference and loss problems of long cable runs, especially when lighting's involved.

Bring on the (relatively) affordable Roland Digital Snake. It uses gigabit ethernet to link the stage and front of house boxes. The stage box contains mic preamps, so low level mic signals don't have very far to go. Then it's all converted to digital at 96k 24-bit. Nice.

At the other end there's a front of house box that brings it back out in analogue. There's a simple controller that lets you set the channel gain, pad and switch phantom power. The base system is 16 channels with eight returns. At approaching £2000 it's considerably more expensive than a long piece of cable, but far more flexible.

For example if you're working in a building with structured cabling installed, you can run the digital snake through that (although don't plug it into a network or you'll upset people as it all stops working). You can have the boxes 100m apart, but if you fancy going further, just stick a gigabit ethernet switch in the middle and go another 100m.

Having played with one of these for a few jobs it just works. Roland have kept it simple and done a great job of building something that's really as easy as it could be.

The only criticisms I have are: the controller isn't always as reponsive as I'd like. When you switch channels it takes about a second before you can change the gain. Not a problem really, but slightly irritating. I'd really like the FOH box to have ADAT outputs. Digital desks are very common these days so by breaking out in analogue there's another unneccessary digital conversion.

These are small gripes however, it works, it's light, and... well, that's enough.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children

I am against all forms of child abuse. I am against imposed internet filtering/censorship.

"What, you don't support internet filtering? Why do you support terrorists and paedophiles?"

I think the first two statements I made can sit happily together. Unfortunately a coalition of children's charities don't agree and seem to believe the only way to stamp out the evil of child porn is to ensure all internet providers are blocking it.

There are lots of problems with this approach and key among them are that I, and many others far more expert than me, don't believe it makes the slightest difference.

The other day I was standing outside a railway station. Across the road a family stood at a bus stop. The mother (I presume) was screaming abuse at a young boy. He must have been 10 or 11 and was being told he'd ruined the weekend, she and everyone else hated him and he was stupid. It was a foul mouthed tirade, a horrible thing to see and I really felt for the poor kid. But what did I actually do? I simply turned up my iPod so I couldn't hear and read my magazine so I couldn't see.

Internet technology has made it more likely that child porn will be seen by someone who finds it as abhorrent and upsetting as indeed they should. A number of these people have made the mistake of blaming the internet technology for this arguing since the technology brought this into our home, technology can stop that from happening.

Well that's true, it can. But unfortunately, and this is what really matters, it can't stop abuse from taking place, from having taken place or counsel the individuals concerned.

It's the internet equivalent of turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to child abuse in the street. Has internet technology made child porn more prevalent? I don't know, but really nasty stuff has been around for a long time before affordable broadband internet access and the kind of people this appeals to will seek it out in whatever form it takes.

So not only is it a waste of everybody's time and money (and it is very expensive), it's also potentially doing some serious societal damage. Once a government controlled internet censorship system is firmly in place how long before it's seriously misused? It may start with preventing access to known child porn sites. Then it's employed to help prevent terrorism... after all you don't want the terrorists being able to find bomb making recipes online do you? Then it's used to help 'keep the peace' and ultimately to 'quell dissent'.

That may sound like paranoid rantings, but it is a very slippery slope and one best avoided no matter how well intentioned at the start.

Nobody is going to campaign in favour of child porn and access to it. However I will campaign against internet censorship, and that doesn't amount to the same thing. Because the protection of children is important and emotive many are scared of accusation that they either don't care or much worse and that gives a very weak argument far more power and political weight.

What I would add is there are lots of ways individuals can choose to effectively restrict access to unsavoury and illegal material online. There are personal internet filters available but my favourite is to use openDNS. It's a free service that will work with pretty much any computer/network and does a really good job of controlling the blocking of content based on categories. I use it on the networks I maintain.

The key to this is choice. I will choose what I want to block. I do not want that choice made for me by someone else who thinks they know best because how do I know I can trust them?

Language it's a beautiful thing.

Right now I'm sitting on a train opposite a very pretty girl who, while on the phone to her dad asked, and I quote "is my room full of shit?". This made me wonder what sort of plumbing emergency might cause such a thing. Later she stated to her friend that her dad was "literally up to his neck in shit". In which case it's fair to assume that some of it may have made it into her bedroom. I can understand the concern.

Android after a few months

Since November 08 I've been the owner of a T-Mobile G1. For those not in the know, this is the first phone to use Google's Linux based smartphone OS called Android. Android is quite a big deal for the mobile phone world for two reasons. Firstly it means manufacturers don't have to pay hefty license fees to a company like Microsoft, secondly because it's an open source OS manufacturers can tinker with it to make it an ideal fit for their device.

So Android's lovely and we should all embrace it. Well... no. There are a number of problems right now, some of which are the fault of Android (Google), others are down to the inadequate hardware of the T-mobile G1 phone.

The G1 is made by a company called HTC who've been making Windows Mobile based devices for years. I've had two of them and been pretty happy with both. The phone we all call a G1 is in fact an HTC Dream and it's a bit poor. HTC have made several phones with a screen that flips up to reveal a keyboard. Each of these has been a slight evolution of the previous model. The G1 does away with all this sensible design and uses a strange hinge that leaves the keyboard blocked by a huge lump of phone. Also the keys have such a low profile that they're actually quite hard to use by feel. These are minor gripes compared to the pathetic battery life and internal memory capacity. Anybody who's used to working with 3G networks knows that 3G eats batteries for breakfast, leaving nothing by lunchtime. The Dream needs a considerably bigger battery. The phone also hasn't got anywhere near enough memory, 8GB of internal memory would have been about right. But my biggest gripe is with Android itself.

I mentioned the lack of internal memory. The G1 does have a card slot and now comes with an 8GB card, but this is almost entirely useless for most people because Android's security model doesn't allow applications to live on the memory card, they can only live in the phones internal memory, which is tiny. Effectively what we have is hardware designed for Windows Mobile, not Android.

To be honest I can't help but feel this OS simply isn't ready. All the basics are there. The OS works, it's stable and by all accounts the API is nice enough to use so developers are happy working on it. But the included applications are a long way off. Considering this entire OS and all its included apps are from Google why is it that Google Maps and You Tube are a pale imitation of their counterparts on the iPhone? The browser isn't bad, but doesn't handle zooming in a very elegant way. But the e-mail client is quite possibly the worst piece of e-mail software I've used for a very long time, on any platform. I'm not going to go into what's wrong with it, but suffice to say it feels like I've stepped back about 10 years. Some folks have created a forked version of the Open Source code in the form of K9, an attempt to better the bundled mail app. It's better, but still woefully slow and awful. Clever people who understand these things will tell you that Google have optimized Android for the wrong thing, low memory use instead of fewer processor cycles. Memory is cheap both to buy and to run, but processor time costs precious battery life.

You'll be getting the idea that I'm not happy with my G1. You're right. I'm not. It's a long way from being what it should be. This phone is being marketed as a rival to the iPhone and in pretty much every way it just isn't. I have no doubt that Android has a reasonably bright future but I'm very disappointed that Google chose to release it when they did. Many people will have done exactly what I did, bought the G1 because it has Google's name on it and expected great things. Instead what we've got is a developers toy that probably won't be ready as a viable platform until the end of 2009/early 2010. By that time Android will have come on a long way and there will be new hardware on the market.

Sadly those of use who were early adopters with a G1 will probably find T-mobile/HTC lose interest and we won't get the juicy updates. I understand Flash has been announced for Android. I'm willing to bet it won't run on the G1 with its limited memory.

So after several months of use I'm afraid I can't recommend the G1 to anyone. The slick simplicity of the iPhone betters it in every way. I'd even go for one of the current crop of Windows Mobile devices over the G1 if I had the option. Unfortunately I'm stuck in a contract until May 2010

Turning 32

So today I've turned 32. Like all human dates it has no real significance at all, but it does leave one feeling the inexorable march towards the grave. Still as someone living in grace I don't really have to worry about that.

I could spend time worrying about how much stuff I'd like to get done before I have to stop. However my family has bought Guitar Hero for the Wii so now I can spend even more time procrastinating rather than getting on with something useful.

Welcome

Often baffled by blogs I've always considered them to be largely pointless unless published by someone who's opinion may actually be interesting to others. So the BBC's editorial blogs, CEO of a large company etc... that all makes sense. The rest? Total waste of time. 

So I'd long ago decided I wasn't going to contribute to the ever growing quantities of wittering nonsense that seems to make up most of web 2.0 yet here I am doing just that.

I suspect this mainly this will turn out to be a cathartic exercise. I find myself ranting at family and friends about things they don't really care about, so instead I've decided to publish my thoughts and rantings here.

I remain quietly confident that nobody else is actually going to read any of this. Which is absolutely fair enough. If however I manage to share something even remotely useful to a fellow human somewhere on the planet that's more than I could possibly hope for.