Monthly Archives: December 2008

new battery..

5

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2657
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 2986
Health Information:
Cycle count: 160
Condition: Check battery
Battery Installed: Yes

Full charge should be around 5500 apparently and the cycle count is about half way. Time to speak to a genius.. (I have no applecare).

Update:
According the the “genius” at Apple Highcross the battery I have is working just as it should. Because it is “so old” it cannot hold charges. While I’d expect some degradation this much is pretty damn stupid.
And note it says “Check battery” not “Give Apple a hundred quid for another”.

This is not a console

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How does Apple plan to sell large quantities of iPods this holiday season in a depressed market already saturated with MP3 players?

By repositioning them as high-end game machines. CNN Money.

Does it do 2 player? No.
Can different people enter high scores with their name? Mainly no.
Does touchscreen or accelerometer suit all games? No.
Is the range of decent games wide? No.
Does it need charging very often? Yes
Did any other company think a console controller with one button would storm the world? No.

It’s a cool toy, but as a games machine that’s all it is – a toy. There are some nice games – Field Runners for example – but they are few and far between.
Games need atmosphere and no handheld console can do that, even one from that media company called Apple.

Comments at sixapart.com

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One thing I do a lot is View Source. It throws up some interesting information sometimes.

At sixapart they are pimping what they offer in the face of an excellent WordPress 2.7. The link to the post popped up in a feed so I go to look. Scrolling to the comments I see one comment that presumably stayed because it has a bit of a pop at Akismet.

six apart splog

It’s a pity the author url was not checked – it’s a spammy comment.

I View Source and to get to the comments I look for the author of the comment – Penny. ctrl-f for penny and there is nothing. Paste the whole lot into Smultron and search for Penny and Akismet. The comment does not appear. There is a lot of what I assume is javascript where I think the comment block should be.
Rewind to January 2008 and another post on that same blog. Check for a commenter name, search the Source and it is there. All the comments look just as you would expect.

Why wrap the comments out of sight of search engines? Not prepared to link back? And why hide the comments like that when you have confidence in your own product to block spam? (And why on earth have comment moderation when a link like that can get through?).
And why have Recent Comments in the sidebar when you never show them on single post views?

Facebook Support – nonexistent

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I read the information on Facebook’s help page about deleting my account. (It’s the top Help search). There is a link in that page which takes you to another page which explains the deletion process. I emailed Facebook.

Hi,
I have a Facebook account.

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

Does that actually remove all information from your servers?

And I just got a reply that had been copied from the page I was looking at there. It is totally obvious where I was, that I had read enough to find that link and I asked a very specific question. But Jordie at Facebook either (1) cannot read that sentence of mine or (2) is having a bad day and couldn’t be bothered to find the answer or (3) is not allowed to say.
As I blogged yesterday I don’t actually give a feck if they keep it but at the very least I’d expect an actual answer from an actual person.

Making it go away

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Vox blogs deleted
Blogger blogs deleted
Facebook delete button clicked. If I do not login it goes in 14 days.
Myspace account deleted
Xanga deleted (cute ‘shutdown quiz’)

Some Google details (credit card, newsgroups etc) removed.

There is probably other stuff that I do not use and will delete when I remember. Why keep what I do not use?

Still not my ..

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“The PlayStation 3?s answer to an online community, Home, will finally be available for mass public consumption tomorrow, Sony has confirmed.” according to Regardware
3 gig of disk space, wait while each new section downloads as you try to enter, no keyboard? no fun. My girls like all this social stuff and are active in the usual online spaces but Home? Total time in Home is less than 10 minutes, maybe even 5.

No hulu here

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I wanted to try (again) to watch hulu.com. Grab an ssh tunnel manager program, open 1Password and copy the domain password. But when I get to enter the password for the ssh connection it will not let me paste the password. I know it’s copied because I can paste it into a text editor but the option is greyed out for this action. Why? Why on earth stop me from pasting information? I can understand it not showing me what I copied but why not let me paste the pw in? If it’s wrong I’ll try again. I use horrible passwords for domain access particularly so I really do have to peck at the keyboard and this makes absolutely zero sense, none whatsoever.

And no, even using dynamic forwarding through the server this domain lives on means I cannot see Hulu. As for what I wanted to watch, no idea. I just wanted to see if this worked so I had an option if I wanted.

Not my ..

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Phil Harrison, the former head of Sony Worldwide Studios … had a few nice things to say recently about the work his former employer has been doing.
Harrison revealed that he’s been playing the PlayStation Home beta — a project that began under his tenure — and he approves of what he’s seen. Sony “brilliantly realized their ambitions,” Harrison said, adding that he believes they “will have a very successful platform.” 1up.com

I got the beta code 10 days ago. I’d love to say more but Sony sent this in their email:

Please understand that your participation is subject to our Terms of Use which will be presented to you the first time you connect to Home. Please keep all discussion of your experiences within Home limited to the official SCEE forums or within Home itself.

I suppose I should go to those forums and see how many people feel the same as Mr Harrison. If any.

But will we fly back..

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My youngest and me are flying to NYC on 22 January, returning 26 January. It is just because she has been bugging me no end to go to America so it’s weekend charging round all we can see there. We got the trip just after the $:£ rate got really good for us and before everything financial started to crumble. And we got it before I knew when the US Inauguration was going to be. Hmm. So Obama takes the oath on the 20th and 2 days later I’ll be in a plane heading for what would be a prize city. If you google ‘Colin Powell January‘ you will see Jan 21/22 mentioned and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that doing something spectacular just after the 20th would make all the headlines. I know Powell was the one who gave the Iraq WMD presentation but he is a guy who would know stuff too. This makes me nervous.