No not the iPhone 3G - but the Olympic Games

iPhone 3G - source: mobilewhack.com

I am utterly fed up with hearing about the new iPhone 3G from Apple - and fed up with pictures of mugs queuing up for days in the street to buy the latest "must-have" from Apple. Talk about "get-a-life"! The rest of this article has nothing at all to do with Apple or the iPhone - this was just an opportunity for a bit of a gratuitous rant!

Anyway, soon I shall be fed up with the Olympic Games. I am sorry to say that every four years, I have felt utter boredom gathering around my head as the games play out to media saturation - they have never had any interest for me. However this time there is an element of anger too. I have already written about the forthcoming Peking games here but was especially interested to see the warm (in more than one sense of the word) welcome awaiting any visitor foolish enough not to toe the official line.

No, not for a barbecue as we know it - this is a flame-thrower...

A real old-fashioned welcome then!
Pictures: The Boston Globe

Now of course the Chinese are quite correct in preparing in case of terrorism, that curse of the modern age, but personally, I find flame-throwers un peu de trop...

More excellent pictures and text in the article in the Boston Globe.

Until the next time

A Mixed Celebration

A Pentium 4 Chip
Picture: PC World

Intel, the principal maker of processors for computers is celebrating its 40th anniversary. A huge success commercially of course, Intel can look back with satisfaction at the staggering technical progress made during its lifetime.

Consider that Intel made the first true micro-processor, the 4004 in 1971; its speed? 108kHz. By 2005 Intel had announced its Pentium 4 "Extreme" version, running at 3.8GHz - a 3,000,000% improvement. Since then of course, multi-core processors have taken over, with four-core processors becoming increasingly common and eight-core types in the pipeline. PC World has produced an interesting "Timeline" story.

On the other hand, as time passes and companies grow, they are apt to become increasingly aggressive in defending their market share, or in Intel's case, dominance.

And so it is, with arguably rather unfortunate timing, the EU regulators have, following lengthy investigations, accused Intel of paying distributors not to stock - or delay stocking - products containing rival AMD's processors and also paying computer manufacturers not to use AMD products in their machines.

The full story from the BBC may be found here; it seems that the EU regulators have the power to fine Intel up to 10% of its turnover, a tidy sum by any standards and a most unfortunate un-birthday present!

[Note to Intel: this article was composed on a computer that is equipped with an AMD 64 5600+ dual-core processor]

Until the next time.

Sunday Afternoon

"Friday night is my delight,
So is Saturday Morning,
Sunday noon comes too soon,
I HATE Monday morning."

And as Tony Hancock famously pointed out, Sunday would be much better were it not ruined by the thought of Monday - he actually developed this further by pointing out that in fact the thought of Sunday (ruined of course by the thought of Monday) ruined Saturday too.

Anyway, here's a bit of nonsense that might lift the mood for a minute or two.

Until the next time.

Head-Scratching Time

It is said that life is full of surprises. When I hear this old saw I generally stifle a yawn and respond "Oh yeah?" reflecting that I had not received a welcome surprise whilst checking my lottery numbers.

But today I was surprised; a cynic such as I might have remarked that I shouldn't have been, but nevertheless I was.

Yes alright, I'm coming to it.

What surprised me was to find that there is a website in England called Readersheds.

Believe it or not, this site concerns Garden Sheds... "We ♥ Sheds" is the heading on the page!. There is a long list of blogs with such riveting titles as "Shedweek - Do you want a rotating mechanism in your shed?" (pass) or possibly more entertaining "What do YOU do in your shed?" (possibilities there I think).

I clicked on one of the pictures on the site and was thrilled to read that this picture had had 2980 views.

I now wonder if I really actually do need to get out more...

Until the next time

Robot Art

Sometime ago, I featured the lovely work of Alex Dragulescu. I was reminded of this (a bit) by seeing some interesting work from Japan on this site. Here art is blended with robotics; I am sure that you will find the work most attractive. The site includes a video of one of the works in action and there are more examples on the site Impress.

Until the next time.

XP is Dead; Long Live XP

Image source: here

30th June was supposed to be the official end of Microsoft Windows XP - the most successful MS product ever with around 780 million copies sold.

For me, a fugitive from Vista, as you well know, it was a black day; CM on her blog Jour Après Jour summed it up perfectly.

However there have been for some time cracks in the facade as MS struggles with Vista's problems. Now it seems that MS is promising support for XP up to 2014 and the likelihood is that XP will be available until 2010. HP & Dell, the giants of the mass computer market are packing XP discs with their new Vista computers (sadly HP didn't with mine last October...).

Read all about it in this article from Internet News.com.

Long live XP - Vive XP!

Until the next time