Roller Derby? Sign Me Up!

Howdy!, new blog post, new passion and a new name.

I want you to picture the following in your mind:

“Tough full contact sport, regular practices, huge bruises, encouragement, tournaments and an international federation, fans screaming their favourite players name, the passion of the fans rubs off on the players, and oh what a block! “

Sounds like rugby, or American football and its as tough if not tougher, the difference is these players do it all while wearing fishnets and roller skates.

The sport is called Roller Derby and is enjoying a blossoming revival as a legitimate sport away from its 1970s fake fights and scripted wins. The modern sport was reanimated in Texas in the early 00’s and today comes in 2 main flavours and has spread to nearly all the continents on the planet.

But what is Roller Derby I hear you cry (thats your cue…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2W2b1WBmm4 <– this link explains it really well.

One of the fun things about this sport, from a spectators point of view is that all the skaters and refs have a Derby Name or a Skating Name. These can range from a personal meaning to the puntastic with names such as Gorgon Roller, Fran Grenade, Crash Matt, Cindi Launch’er and Iona Sextoi.

How did I get involved? well my girlfriend has taken this and is at present training hard to become a member of the bouting team and me? Well i am of the the Non Skating Officals or NSO’s as they are more commonly known. Another term for us is Stats geeks as we keep track of the score, the number and types of penalties that the girls accrue as well as timing their stays in the penalty box.

My Derby Name: Stat Damon and my number is 00k

Yes yes got to get the monkey reference in there somewhere.

How to Choose a Martial Art

I have seen a lot of people ask over the years, “How do I pick a martial art” or “Which martial art is best for me?” and unfortunately there is no simple answer, but there is some ways to break it down to make the choice a little easier, I will divide this into steps (something you have to do) and decisions,

Decision 1 – What do you want out of it?

Look at why you are wanting to do a martial art, is it for fitness, self defence, to take up a new hobby, a personal challenge or something you did when you were younger and want to go back to? For fitness you want to look at striking arts more than grappling ones as they are more aerobically intensive, other differences and a break down of the arts is covered later. If you have something you want to go back to then it then comes availability which is again covered later.

If you are wanting a hobby or a challenge then the style is less important than if you are going to enjoy the club and the training.

Decision 2 – What do you want to spend?

Once you have worked out what you want from your new art you need to decide on the cost, both in time and money, both of these are important as if your budget is £5 per session that may count some clubs out, similarly if you can only train at the weekend, or only on Wednesday nights this will also limit the number of choices.

Step 1-Find out what’s out there

Before you can narrow down your choice you need to find out what Martial Arts are available in your location. If you are lucky enough to live in a big city then likely you will be spoilt for choice with some well known arts such as Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Kung Fu, Thai Boxing,Jjiu Jitsu, or boxing to slightly less well known examples such as Escrima, Krav Maga, Jeet Kune Do, Ninjitsu, RBSD (Reality Based Self Defence), Hapkido, Aikido, Tang So Do, and Iaido, and the list continues. If you are in a more rural area then your choice will likely be more limited – but that just makes your decision easier

Step 2 – Make a short list.

As you now know what you want out of your new art, as well as how much time and money you initially want to spend you can start filtering out arts that don’t match your criteria. Once you have your short list its time to look at those clubs more carefully. Here are a list of some of the things you may want to consider:

1) What does the club’s website say about it? Is it friendly with information easily available for new members to find?
2) Does it offer a number of free sessions as a trial?
3) Does the club “brag” about the accomplishments of its instructor

This last point is a personal bug bear of mine in that all to often I see what are initially good club pages that extol the masters that their instructor has trained with, this immediately turns me off. The reason for this is in that over the last decade I have spent training (well its over a 20 year period) I have run into a couple of instructors who proclaim loudly that they have trained with this name and that name – and this is exactly what it is naming dropping to appear more legitimate than they are. A variant of this is the I have trained with this instructor who has trained with that instructor who was awesome, and it is to the same end – to claim greater legitimacy.

For example, I currently training in Gracie Jiu Jitsu, I am taught by Sacha, who was taught and graded by Rener and Ryron Gracie who are the grandsons of Helios Gracie who created Brazilian/Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Does this mean that I am epically good? No of course it doesn’t it doesn’t even guarantee good training – its is often a marketing ploy.

The times when it is a ploy are generally ease to spot – particularly when the instructor is quite young and has trained in 12 styles with big name instructors – that would be a club I would avoid, however if the instructor was in their 30’s, had been training since they were in the womb and has trained with a couple of big names in a couple of styles then I would likely be cautious but would want to see for myself.

Step 3 – Visit the clubs on your short list.

This may seem like an obvious step, but visit all of the clubs on your short list, just because you like the first club, doesn’t mean you wont like one of the others better. When I attend a new club I look for the following things

1) Is the club friendly? when you walk in does one of the members greet you, do an introduction of the club (what and how they do what they do) and an introduction to the instructor.
2) Are there free sessions? You should have got this from the website, but a good club will give you a couple of sessions where you don’t have to pay fees or insurance payments as a trial.
3) Does the instructor spend time with you? A good instructor will put some time aside at some point during the visit to speak to you, this “interview” will give both of you an impression of the instructor and a chance for him to answer any questions you may have about the art and club.
4) Are the costs laid out for you? Is it a pay by session or a pay monthly, what are the insurance fees (there will be some), are there any club affiliation fees, how much does it cost to grade and how much does your training uniform cost?

While this may seem like a lot to ask a well run club should have the answers to all of these ready for your questions with no problem.

REMEMBER DO NOT HAND ANY MONEY OVER AT THIS POINT – YOU ARE THERE TO HAVE A LOOK AND TRY IT OUT – DON’T BE FOOLED!

Step 4 – Join the club of your choice.

By now you should have visited the clubs that interested you and made a decision as to which one (if any) you want to join and made your wishes known to the club. At this point you will have to buy a training uniform (normally called a Gi) and pay your insurance for the year (normally £25 – £30 a year), once this is done you are good to go!.

So now you should have picked your club. If you would this useful let me know.

Mass Effect 2 Review

Being the huge Bioware fan that I am in some ways Mass Effect 2 was a bit of a no brainer for me: Is it made by Bioware – Check. Does it allow me to continue saving the galaxy as Commander Shepherd (gender unrecorded)? – Check. Does it have women with Blue Boobies? – Check. So far so good but I have to admit I approached the sequel with a measure of trepidation because I loved the first Mass Effect, and I remember when I finished the game I was exhilarated, there was a huge space battle, I saved the galaxy and did it with style. In fact I enjoyed the ending so much I reloaded it and played the entire 40 minute end sequence again just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.

Racking my Monkey brain to describe to those who haven’t played it all I can think of is take the space battle from Return of the Jedi, add the more dystopian universe and humour from Fire Fly, a dash of hero/anti hero (your choice) and then to finish allow the player choice. This last section is important because I cannot stress what an important part of the game this is, from micro events like how you want your Shepherd to look (including gender) and their interpersonal skills (if you are nice, or a complete arse) to bigger choices like much of your teams is force to sacrifice themselves to macro choices like genocide and the elimination of the ruling council for all known space.

This was all like catnip to me and I was a little apprehensive when I heard all the things that Bioware were stripping out of the game, but then they pulled me back in with the following piece of information:

You can bring your character and all of your choices with you.

Now this may seem like a minor point but let me explain. In the first game, you created your commander Shepherd and spent 30 – 40 hours shaping them and the game world into the way you wanted it, and now you can take all of those choices and build upon it in this game, with every choice defining the game experience that you are having ever more uniquely. Bioware then pounded the final nail home: you can take the character at the end of this game across to the third one with all the decisions from upwards of 70 hours of play coming with you and the universe you have created. Wow.

Alas I am getting a little off point here as I was going to talk about Mass Effect 2. The game picks up shortly after the conclusion of the first game and at this point the enemies for this game the “Collectors” are revealed and so the next 30 hours of Bioware’s epic kicks off in grand style. This is the first real indication of the development teams revaluation of the weaknesses in the previous title becomes clear in that while Mass Effect 1 was a slow burner, (I personally think it took about 4 hours or so to really get going) this one grabs you and pulls you kicking and screaming through the first hours delivering the dialog and story that Bioware are rightly known for in a tighter and more focussed manner that I have seen them deliver previously. Right from the off the intrigue builds in that old enemies are now allies and your old allies have given you up for lost — its powerful stuff.

The second indication of the changes is that listening to player feedback the developers have reevaluated the classes of player character (Soldier, Support, Biotic which is this games version of a magic user) and have made many change to make sure they play more individually and the chance to make changes to your character is given at the start of the game ensuring that the player gets the most out of their time. this extensive soul searching is evident in how gameplay mechanics from the first game have been removed and replaced with ones that work better, the first games quick time are gone and have been replaced with pattern matching and memory games, the inventory, that RPG staple, has been removed and so has the wonky planet exploration sections.

The same care has been taking to ensure that the technical issues that plagued the first game are not repeated in this one, so no over long lift sections to load the next section – replaced with animated wireframe loading screen so the loading time is reduced. The texture pop in which was so prevalent in the previous title is now almost non existent occurring just once for me in over 40 hours of play.

Its not all good however the wonky planet exploration mechanic was replaced with scanning planets from orbit, more realistic maybe but very boring, and I found the finale of the game fell slightly flat for me but these are minor points in an otherwise excellent title.

I know I made a lot of noise at the start of this post about the importing of the characters but people new to the series are catered for as well allowing you to create your character from fresh, at this point the game will ask you some questions giving you the chance to make some choices while it makes some others that ensure better story telling, you will end up with a less personal start point than someone ow played Mass Effect one, but by the end of the game it will be your universe and not having that background will not matter.

In short if you havent played this yet play it, but if you want the best experience grab the first game (its cheap now) play it through and then start this one but if thats too much effort, grab this one sit yourself down and enjoy!

Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are PC and Xbox 360 exclusives – sorry guys!

First Consulting Job

Time to blow to cobwebs of this and start blogging again.

So last yesterday I got a call from a friend of mine whose business PC is not in a good way, and more to the point the offer of payment was discussed!

First consulting/tech job I will have been paid for outside of my Main job since I did odd little bits when I was younger – much excitement.

Oh well I suppose I had best go and write that report.

How to kill a Mac and raise it from the dead – all in under 4 hours. Or the Monkey Vs Kernel Panic..

 

Welcome back, sorry for the lack of posts, but its not like anyone expected anything else, is it, I mean really?

So after owning my Mac for about 8 months I managed to kill it, completely, no saving it and I got my first introduction to Kernel Panic (just remember to salute as he is not to be messed with!).

First I need to explain how I broke the Mac and had my first introduction to the Kernel.  All *Nix (Uniix, Linux, Mac etc) are all based on an index, and much like the Yellow Pages if you want to look for the Photography section you will look at the index page and go “oh its on Page 230”.  This index means the OS can find anything quickly from your latest guilty purchase on iTunes (I know you bough groove is in the Heart – go on admit it) to the photos from your best friends wedding,  but without this index it has less chance of finding what it is look for then trying to find clean socks in an all Male university halls of residence.

Now imagine the scene, i am sat here trying to rid a stubborn file from the Trash (the OS X equivalent of the Windows Recycle Bin) and after some serious Google-Foo I found a set of commands that I had to enter that would rid me of these pesky files, only thing was I had to be running as an Administrator on the effected account.  My normal practise is to run as a non privileged user so no rights to install anything and less chance of breaking things, so to make the changes I logged out of my Bad_Monkey account and instead switched over to my admin account and made the relevant permission changes, while I was there I thought I would change the name of the  account from Bad_Monkey to just plain simple Monkey.  This was all well and good, and I logged into the freshly renamed and empowered Monkey account, ran the commands I had found and…… Nothing, nada. Well that was unexpected, perhaps the permissions didn’t apply properly I thought so back to the admin account I went only to meet Kernel Panic.  For those of you unfamiliar with this Gentlemen let me introduce him:

 

  So yep this is what you get, a nice splash screen saying reboot, the equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death, so I treated it the same, Reboot log back in. Fine I thought I deal with this in Windows, this is just the same. Oh how wrong I was The Kernel will not be so easily deterred.  Over the next 10 minutes I logged into both accounts only to be foiled from making changes by the Kernel.

At this point My good lady dragged me away from the Mac for a walk along the canal (and no that is not a euphemism – get your mind out of the gutter!).  While we were out walking i have to admit I was not relaxing and enjoying the walk instead I was concocting my plan of attack.  I got to wondering, what would i do if this was a windows box, well i would ask these questions:

1. Is the data backed up?
2. Are the system and software disks available?
3. Will blanking the system be a worse cure then the problem?

The answers to this questions came back as Yes, Yes and No, so now I have a plan of attack: Reinstall OS X, restore the data from the Time Machine drive and then reinstall the programs as necessary.  The Kernel doesn’t stand a chance.

I returned from the walk happy that I had a plan and immediately went to engage in battle with the Kernel again.  I dug out the system disks and dropped the first DVD in, selected wipe and reinstall and then left it for 40 minutes or so to do its thing, checking in occasionally to see how it was going and swap DVD1 for DVD2 at the appropriate point and then doing the restart as necessary.  With a chime the mac sprang back to life and then started to play the OS X intro video and then came a surprising screen, one that turned the tide in my favour, this screen asks a simple question and gives you some options as shown here:

So I selected from time machine, it asked me which drive (the Time machine one) and what I wanted to restore (everything) and then I left it running, popping in occasionally till I was I given the logon screen I was used to.  With some trepidation I logged into the Bad_Monkey account and………..

 

Nothing, it was fine just sitting at the desktop waiting for me. I had vanquished Kernel Panic.  There were a couple of things I had to reinstall including the NTFS driver I use to write data to my other 500gb drive.  I plugged this drive in and BAM! the Kernel returns in a surprise ambush.  I restarted the Mac and the same thing happened again, now at log on.  By this point I am thoroughly confused until I remembered that Mac’s are indexed machines, during the restore the OS will have rebuilt the index but as the NTFS drive wasn’t connected at the time It will not have had the opportunity to rebuild the index. Now that I have worked that out the problem became how to solve it, and this is where my Mac was saved by my work laptop which runs little old XP. 

When the Mac indexes a location it stores the resulting information in the .Spotlight V100 file in the root of the drive, i deleted that out of the NTFS drive, disconnected it from the XP machine, plugged it back into the mac and all was well.

So I suppose the moral of the story is if you decide to make large sweeping changes to the Mac’s file system – give it time to reindex everything or Kernel Panic will visit you as well.

The Big Switch to Mac part 3 – What the Mac does wrong

 

So part 3 of this ongoing discussion – I have to apologise that this has been quite a long drawn out process and by god it has been busy at work, but that is another post.

So where do Apple go wrong? Well mainly its in these areas:

1. Price
2. Focus on the consumer market.
3. Wanting to go its own way

Lets take them in that order shall we?   Without a doubt any Mac, or indeed Apple product in general, are monumentally expensive, to give you an idea of how expensive that Macbook I am typing this on including the software and Apple Care (Apple’s extended warranty) came to just shy of 1400 of my Great British Pounds.

I Just winced as I typed that, in most peoples books that is a stupid amount of money to spend on a laptop, and with the recent hardware refreshes announced last week the entry level iMac (the desktop that looks like its only a screen) is now close to 800 notes!  800 for something not as powerful as this Macbook but with a bigger screen.  So why do Apple do this to themselves, surely they would attract more customers with a lower price point so why do it?

The answer is actually found in the car market generally and with the Volkswagen group specifically.  Volkswagen own Skoda and indeed many of the parts from the Passat are found in the Octavia but the Passat costs nearly 10K more! In this case there is 70% – 80% of the parts are held in common, are the remaining parts the dogs dangly bits? maybe but I doubt it mostly it is to do with the name, the prestige of owning a premium product in Apples view they are the Rolls Royce of the consumer electronics market.  Partly they are correct (have a look at the previous entries for my view on this) however they are not that correct.

Simply but the kit is impressive but it simply can’t cost them that much to make so most of that high price is “Apple Tax” for owning their product.

 

Mistake 2: Apple is regarded as a consumer electronics company – would you regard HP in the same light?  No even though they compete in many of the same areas and are seen as a premium product.  HP’s main focus is the business market in all its guises from laptops and desktops up to their servers (I do like their servers) they do release consumer products but that is not where they concentrate.  I have been asked on many occasions about recommendations for home machines and time and time again I advise HP as they are reliable, well made, well supported products that I have had positive experiences with in a work environment.

Secondly to this point where do you think most computer spending is sourced from businesses or individuals?  Businesses clearly, you all use one at work, everyone does (and I thank you as it keeps me in a job) but Apple with its consumer focus and lack of serious provision for businesses keeps them out of the arena.  Now I know people do use them in work, especially in the coloured pencil department (read anything to do with graphics or design) but this is very much a niche market, and the really serious business kit of servers for instance there is almost no provision, in fact in my IT career I have seen only 1 business run on Apple servers and even they had their reservations about how developed as product it was.

Until Apple develop a better business strategy they will only ever slowly grow their consumer base.

 

Mistake 3: Apple make their own way. This is less of a mistake and more or a two edged sword as it is also one of Apples greatest positives as well but what it can mean is that Apple make a gamble and adopt a technology that makes it difficult to use their equipment with non Apple kit, or a technology of which they are the only major proponent.  As some examples I give you Firewire and the Display Port.  Firewire was Apples version of USB but has always been faster, the first version was about 40 times quicker then USB 1 (400 mb/s vs 10 mb/s) and the second version, called Firewire 800, is roughly twice as fast as USB 2 (800 mb/s vs 440 mb/s).  It also had all the benefits of USB, daisy chaining and being Hot Swappable, so where did it all go wrong.  Well it just never really “hit” it was being found on many high end consumer digital items like camcorders and some digital cameras but the cost of having these ports on computers was a lot higher then USB and as USB gained dominance so Firewire is slowly being doused even by Apple with USB ports now out numbering the Firewire ones for the first time when taken across the product range. 

Then there is the display port.  The Display port is a proprietary display adapter that Apple uses on its monitors and as the output from their laptops.  I really cannot make my mind up on this as it is either Apple being contrary or a good marketing idea as you cannot use your new laptop with any non Apple branded monitor unless you buy the Adaptor, and god help you if you want to attach to either a VGA or DVI monitors, its now two adaptors, Oh you want to connect to your HDTV well that’s another adaptor to turn your DVI output to a HDMI one.  See what I mean, these adaptors must cost Apple the square root of naff all to make and yet I have had to purchase 3 all three to achieve what I want to.

The last section of this mistake comes from its stubborn non adaption of Industry standard kit, as by now I think it is fairly safe to say that Bluray has won the Hi Def format war and yet Steve Jobs (The Apple CEO) has categorically started that your Mac will never have Bluray support as he views it as a dead format already in that he believes that digital distribution is the way forward.  That in and of itself is a valid belief but saying that Apple will not support one of the major video formats surely has to be short sighted, doesn’t it?

 

So there you go there are some of the mistakes that I think Apple make, and it is purely my layman’s perspective on the issues, but hey it’s my blog so I can get away with it.

Let me know if you think I have hit the nail on the  head with these of if you think I have missed the point by so much I nearly hit myself.

So I am now an MCP

Well I got the fist exam of the year out of the way last Monday with a solid 80% so I am now, finally, a Microsoft Certified Professional.

Looks like the next one will be less studying but more exams due to changes at the training provider I use, of which I will post more on when the situation clears up.

In the meantime back to the hang over.

The Big Switch to Mac part 2 – Apple Software and Mac vs PC

For those of you just joining us here is the summary so far – I have bought a Mac and spent the last post giving a brief history of why I think there is an Apple resurgence and what I believe the two defining Apple design concepts are: a simple to use interface and the need to make a well designed desirable object.  Obviously one of these will transfer over easier then the other, so how do you go about making software desirable?

At the very base of it all what do all operating systems have in common be it on your phone, laptop, set top box, watch or microwave?  They all provide the structure for you the user to interact with the device.  How they go about this is a very different matter and indeed causes many an argument over which operating system is better on many Geek forums across the land.  The argument has three sides and goes something like this:

• PC: We are the everyman solution, everyone uses windows and because everyone has one the computers are very cheap.  We are the defacto choice for business and our office suite is again the industry standard.
• Mac: Windows is just a rip off of Mac OS and always has been.  Name one thing the PC can do that the Mac can’t.  Oh yeah and our hard ware is better to!
• Linux: will everyone keep it down I am to busy typing in commands to deal with all of you, and oh yeah my OS is free!

Do they have a point? well they all do in some cases.  Ignoring the Linux issue for now (and to be honest that is likely to continue) and concentrate on the Mac vs PC debate.

Taking a look the stats it is hard to argue about who is winning with Microsoft having between a 96% and 98% market share, with Apple coming in second and other OS’s making up the remaining decimal places.  That right there is a tough figure to argue with, do you know any other industry where one corporation holds such sway over a market sector?  Windows is the industry standard with nearly every computer sold coming with it in one form or another and when most people think of computers they don’t think of the typically boring beige box but the interface that comes with it.  Microsoft really spearheaded the movement of computer strictly for business to the idea that it is something that can be found in most homes in the world. 

However if you look at the evolution of Windows against that of Mac OS you seem some disturbing trends in which Microsoft lags behind the Mac OS and implements an idea that Apple had, and normally that is done badly.  Examples? sure taking Windows Vista and Windows 7 and comparing it against OS X you have:

The Aero interface.  included in Vista was the much touted Aero interface.  This graphical overhaul included translucent windows and a “Rolodex” style rotational system for switching between applications with active previews of each app as it goes.  Also included in Aero was the preview of programs on the start bar.  These are al ideas borrowed from OS X, firstly the translucent display came with OS X and wowed users with it’s smooth implementation and lack of system over head to use.

 

(The Aero Interface)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Expose)

 

 

 

 

The “Expose” system allows users with a single key or button press to arrange all of their active windows so they can all be viewed at once, these windows are all live and displaying current data with the user just having to click on the app they want as opposed to scrolling through.  The dock in OS X (the bar at the bottom of the screen) doubles as both an application launcher and a preview of minimised apps.  The MS implementation of this has been taken forward with Windows 7 in which they have done away with the application tittles in the start bar and have taken to an icon based system just the same as the OS X one.

Active Corner.  In Windows 7 if you move your cursor to the lower right corner of the screen it will minimise the current application, this is very similar to an option in OSX called Active Corners.  Active Corners allows you to assign an action to each corner of the screen should you so choose, for example I have the upper right hand corner set to activate the screensaver, but all four corners of the screen are customisable for what ever action you like.

The Search and Lunch bar.  Vista brought in an integrated search that would allow you to type the name of a file and executable and run it with a few simple presses.  Windows 7 builds on this by allowing you to use the name of programs.  For instance in Vista if you wanted to launch Word you would have to type winword.exe and not just Word as you can now in Windows 7.  This is a very basic implementation of the OS X feature named Spotlight  However spotlight does much more then just index files, instead it integrates a calculator, a dictionary, it searches all your contacts, calendar entries, emails, “to do” items and Web favourites and allows you to bring any of them up with a “natural” word search that begins as soon as you start typing and with each additional key press is further refines the results.  These results are categorised into top hit and then by the category each result would fall into and are selectable with a mouse click or enter.  The reason the search is so quick is because all the items are indexed, which is nothing new but for an out of the box feature Spotlight is very well implemented and integrated will all OS X apps.

There are others but after the first few examples it starts to get tedious.  So just what is it about the Mac os that is so good?  well for a start it runs incredibly well, mainly because there are so few hard ware combinations out there that Apple can really focus on the important bits.  It is very user friendly in that it isn’t obtuse in the way it asks you to interact (Shutting down the computer by clicking on start?) and not everything is nested in layers upon layers of menus.

As an example of it’s simplicity I will take one of Leopard’s (the latest version of OS X) apps :Time  Machine.  At its heart Time Machine is incredibly boring in the fact that it’s a backup system and I know how we all find that dull.  So what makes Time Machine Special? the fact that I don’t have to think about it, or do anything with it at all in fact, ah I see you are slightly more interested now, allow me to expand on this.  Before you first activate Time Machine (ok going to refer to it as TM now) and you connect an external hard drive Leopard ask would you like to use it as a TM drive? If you select yes it brings you to the time machine menu where you move a big switch from “off” to “on” and that’s it, the end of your interaction.

 

The Mac will now take a complete backup of everything on there (this one took a while) and after that it backs up like this:

• Hourly backups for 24 hours
• Daily backups (takes the last backup of the day) for a week.
• Weekly backups (last backup of the week) for a month
• Monthly backup (Last backup of the month) for as long as you have disk space.

Now while this is certainly impressive its by no means more impressive then some of the third party apps out there for windows so what is so impressive about it?  Well remember I said that spotlight indexes everything? well it keeps that record for your backup files.  So say you lost some files for work and you had searched for them using spotlight but with no avail, you activate TM and while keeping what you have searched for in mind shows you loads of windows going back for each time it took a backup of your file allowing you to preview the file select the one you want and restore it easily.  

 

 

 

 

Very impressive I hear you say but what about laptops, they have a tendency to move round don’t they? well yes they do and I was somewhat concerned by this until I found out that even if you disconnect the TM drive and go about your business when you reconnect the drive it compares the last backup with what is now there and backs up all the changes without any user input. Magic.

At the start of this, much longer then expected, post I asked how do you make software desirable?  It turns out the the answer is very simple, make it powerful, make it user friendly and make it attractive.  I think that Apple have got this down to a fine art now but they are not without there problems, but that is another post.

The Big Switch to Mac part 1 – a discussion of Apple

So after a number of years of Windows system administration I jumped from the good ship Redmond and bought myself an Apple Mac.   Now if you like me have ever gone into any Starbucks in a major city or town you will have seen Them. You know Them the smug look, the very bohemian attitude with every. little. thing. Just. So.  The centre piece of this smugness? normally the Apple Mac they are on.  As with  nearly all Apple products there seems to be a very studied approach, a very deliberate attempt to be cool, and you know what it seems to be working out for them.

Think back a few years to when the iPod first came out, the MP3 is just taking off and Apple, who were at that point were not long come from a spell of making utterly horrible products have just welcomed Steve Jobs, one of the founders of apple, back to the fold. He brought with him a new focus – Design.  This design focus has two objectives: firstly to create a desirable product and secondly to make the user interface as easy to use as possible.  These two principles are summed up in the Ipod, the simple clean lines, the revolutionary interface made it an instant hit with people as they hadn’t seen anything like it before.  Even people who were not normally gadget orientated (and shame on them!) wanted to be part of this, they too wanted a piece of the ineffable cache of cool that the Ipod seemed to represent, and so a phenomenon was born.

But everything isn’t so simple as that was it?  No, with the launch of the iPod came the launch of iTunes which, love it or hate it, is now the biggest music retailer in the States which is a fairly big claim for a company who had never made a music player or online service before.  It was a very smart move by apple to integrate a music store with the software you use to manage your iPod.  That being said however they did cop for some flak as they tied your music purchase in with DRM or Digital Rights Management, it is essentially a copy protection but something I will go into more in a future post as it is slightly off topic for this piece.  However even with this flak it marked an upturn in the fortunes for Apple.

The Mac resurgence continued with the iMac.  If you watch any American based TV you will have seen one, an all in one computer that looks like a screen with a lamp base (or it did at the time).  Again a simple an elegant design that most importantly is not a beige box with another beige box attached to it for a screen.  The iMac was white and curvy and again was projecting the a factor of cool as it looked and was different.

The final three stages of Apples resurgence came in the following items: The Intel Dual Core Processor; the Macbook and the iPhone.

When Apple announced they were dropping their previous chip lines and moving to Intel chips the geek world was all of a chatter, most of which your host ignored with an air of complete indifference – “so the Mac’s now use Intel chips, so what PCs have had them for years” and then went on with my day.  I had really missed the point.  With the adoption of the Intel chips makers of PC software suddenly had a really god idea how to make their programs run on Mac hardware, and makers of emulation software would be able to make Windows run on the Mac.  As a change of direction it was huge and ushered in a wave of new development.

This new development included the Macbook, which to this day remains the best selling Mac Apple have ever produced.  Take a look at the Macbook and again there is that “cool” factor we have been discussing.  It has very simple lines which are not disrupted with ports for this that and other strewn willy nily around the case meaning it has a very distinctive look, and of course has the Fruit logo set inverted on the lid so that when you open the screen you announce to the world just what you are using.  But if you actually sit an look at what is inside these machines you may be surprised as they generally feature more power then a desk top at the time and included wireless, Bluetooth fire wire, an integrated webcam and either DVD/CD Writer or DVD/DVD writer on  on all the models.  A very high spec for what is for most of the range a 13.3” (or 33.78cm for our metric friends) laptop.  The spec and the software (another post) made for a very attractive package.

Lastly we come to the iphone, an object which at its heart is a phone, you make calls on it and everyone wants one. Including me.  Again there is Apple’s design principals at work, a simple non fussy casing with an elegant user interface.  Damnit them it is like crack….  The latest iteration of the iPhone is of course the iPhone 3g which won so many awards for :gadget of the year” last year I think Apple must have been sick of the awards and have given up counting.  At this point I am going to stop talking about it however as currently I am an informed spectator where as soon I will be an owner so will talk about it more then.

One of the things I have avoided talking about so far is the price as this is normally the argument that people make against Apple products, however I will cover this but again it will be in a future post.

The next few posts are likely to be continuing this subject with a discussion about the Mac software and my experiences and frustrations so far as another post, so join me for our continuance in a couple of days.  As right now I am off for a vodka and some food.

2009 eh? Well I must get something done..

So New year, new start and all that?  Well not in an attempt to sound cliched but managing it all the same so what do I want out of this year? Money, women, an Adonis like physique, oh you expect me to be serious and grown up about this?  Really? fine if you want to play like that I will even split them into work and personal.

Work

I need to pass 4 Microsoft Professional exams this year they are

• 70-271 Supporting Windows XP users and computers. Deadline: December 2008
• 70-271 Supporting Windows Desktop Applications Deadline: 31st March
• 70-270 – Windows XP Professional Deadline: 30th June
• 70-290 – Server 2003 Deadline 30th September

i also need to pass a personal communications course, as apparently I don’t play well with others.  Now shockingly I know but I don’t believe this is the case, people get the messages I send out, it just happens that the majority of the messages are, “no you are doing it wrong” and “Why yes you are a cock, please go to the head of the class”.  My boss tells me that this doesn’t go down well.

However in all seriousness he gave me some feedback which I did find interesting in that I used “closed” language a lot.  For example I will write “you will” instead of “you should” and because of this I come across as dictatorial and aggressive when this is not necessarily the case.

Personal

Well my personal goals are slightly less well defined and mostly fitness related

• Run a mile by the end of feb
• Enter and complete a 2K – 5K run by the end if the year.
• Swim a mile by Easter
• Get my purple belt at Jitsu.
• Make up my mind on if I am going to Marry my girlfriend.

Oh well the objectives are set – lets see if I make them.