Month: July 2008

… you probably can’t afford it.

At least, that’s how the saying goes ! In real life it can be a little different, like when you darn well know the price of the gadget you’re wanting but you’re not looking to be ripped off by one shop selling it for more than the proper amount.

My latest target gadget is an Airport Express, made by Apple. It looks like a pretty promising little widget :

So what is it and what will it give me ?

It actually does more than I’m interested in, cos it’s a wireless router. I’ve got one of those (although my current one is looking to be thrown out the winda), what I’m really looking for on this is Airtunes …

This little widget should allow me to fire up iTunes on the laptop, connect wirelessly to the Airport Thingy and have the Airport pass on the iTunes music to my better speakers. That should be a hefty improvement over the laptop speakers as I’m finding out that those Really Hate It when I ask them to squawk out the Enya. Enya has an amazing voice and does great music but my laptop’s speakers just don’t get on at all well with it. I could run a long lead across the room with laptop & proper speakers but I’d be highly likely to trip over it and break stuff.

Sounds like a ThingummyBob that could improve my listening pleasure doesn’t it ?

PC World actually have this in stock but they haven’t marked up anywhere how much it would be. It’s on their web page, for exactly the same amount that it is on the Apple online store (£65). I was actually expecting it to be £50, so this particular toy will be waiting on the shelf a little longer.

However – there’s always Ebay 😉

I wish I understood the logic – or lack thereof – that’s used to decide when to air certain ads.

Here in the Great White North, regulatory oversight of television programming applies only between 6 a.m. and midnight. So as soon as midnight hits, all bets are off: Suddenly, we’re inundated with ads for all-night chat lines, infomercials and other things I wouldn’t want my kids to see.

Truly frightening. It’s enough to make me want to sell the telly entirely!

The “theme” ads that come on for certain sponsored programmes can be amusing 🙂 Things like the Natwest Piggy banks that are in the cricket and the Famous Grouse ads that used to be on the rugby.

It’s amazing that with so much research going into ads, that some of them miss the mark extraordinarily badly. There’s a major bank that I won’t have any business with because they sent me a letter that said I was an idiot for not having their card. Hmm – calling someone an idiot is not a great way to get their business …

I’m currently watching Sky Sports and it’s lunchtime in the cricket, so they’re showing previous moments in history between the two sides, England and South Africa.

One of them is the England v South Africa Test Match at The Oval in 1994. This is one where England were looking down the barrel after getting a thumping at Lords earlier that summer. This game was looking fairly balanced, with South Africa getting a short lead at halfway.

This is where Devon Malcolm entered the stage.

Devon Malcolm was a fast bowler who was playing for England for a little while. He’s a big fella who when he played, was England’s fastest bowler by a long way and one of the fastest in the world. He could barely bat but that didn’t matter. I revered the guy like a god at the time (I was 17 and hoping for big things from my bowling), it didn’t matter that his place in the side was always in danger because his accuracy was pretty poor. For American readers, think of a pitcher that can do 100mph fastballs but has trouble locating them over the plate.

Back to the game. South Africa made a critical error just before the halfway mark … one of their bowlers managed to pin our Devon right between the eyes and hard enough to dislodge a decent chunk of his helmet. Unfortunately I missed what was to come because I was also playing cricket that day. Devon Malcolm’s a good fella but in the words of David Gower, “don’t make him angry”. Revenge for the helmet was promised and was duly delivered over the course of the day.

An awe inspiring spell of bowling totally changed the game, with our Devon getting 9 of the 10 South African wickets in their 2nd innings. That’s one hell of an achievement, because the wickets are usually shared and it shows how dominating our Devon was.

And I missed it cos of playing cricket for the village side !

Also, thoughts today go out to Phil Williams of Wayfarers Sports Club. Phil Williams is an amateur cricketer hit on the head by a ball during a midweek game this week. He’s now recovering in hospital with a skull fracture and has been unable to move the left side of his body. It’s further grim evidence that I got away with one a while ago. Like me with my nose, Phil didn’t have a helmet on, it’s still not got through to club cricket culture that accidents happen and helmets help turn those accidents from life threatening to rather less serious. Like the second time I got hit on the head, without a helmet I’d have got carted off to hospital again, with the helmet I carried on batting and anchored our side to a handsome win.

There’s guidance by the England and Wales Cricket Board (governing body in the UK) for all players under 18 to wear helmet with facemask or grill but past 18, it’s up to the player. Cricket is a very random game, not enough people below the professional level wear enough protection to keep themselves safe from when accidents like my nose or Mr Williams’ skull fracture happen.

Here’s hoping that Phil Williams makes a full recovery 🙂

the ad agencies have all kinds of data about what their client’s demos are and who a particular TV program attracts.

A van ad during cricket is similiar to a van ad during an American baseball game. Family men thinking about a vehicle all the kids can fit in.

The late night “find a lover” ads are mostly because studies show that lonely single people are the 2nd group most likely to watch late late shows, elderly/college students are tied for first – funny I know.

I’m with you on the sleaze ads as I call them, one of the most disgusting is where they advertise to loan $$$ against your paycheck. they never mention how the fees and interest add up to 300% being paid back.

Have a great Suday and be careful of those ads! 😉

There must be some science behind how people decide when to put their adverts on the telly.

The most recent trend I’ve noticed is the commercial van ads surrounding the cricket … The science bit must be making the advertisers (and it’s not just one manufacturer) think that the people watching the sport/cricket are the ones more likely to get a van. I wonder if they’ve considered putting their adverts on to the documentary channels, especially the historical ones, to see if they can catch the re-enactors.

The other pattern is the one that kicks in around 11.30pm or midnight … This is the phone text adverts (get your self a friend by texting anonymous people) that infest the breaks. I get the feeling they’re on at that time because they don’t want to spend the extra cash that would go with prime time ad breaks.

Vulture adverts annoy me, although I can filter them out. These aren’t just the injury lawyer adverts (“I slipped cos I wasn’t looking where I was walking – giz 10 grand”), it’s also the moneylender ads too. These definitely have the science bit fully engaged, they almost always paint a dark, depressing or troubled scene for the person looking for cash, that magically changes to Bright, Happy and Confident outlook when the person goes for the loan. I can recognise the psychology there, which gets me walking away every time.

So – vans & cricket – how come the science bit is getting these adverts on connected with the sport ? I dunno, I’d have expected cricket to be more associated with sunny cars like the panoramic glass ones and convertibles. They might also be looking at the typical cricket player, it seems a more middle class game than football or rugby, so the players could well be interested in commercial stuff through their work instead of their play. It wouldn’t go as far as needing the van to fit all their kit in :

Leg pads, helmet, gloves (multiple pairs), bats (probably a couple), spiked boots, tape, drink, munchies, jumpers, hats. It all adds up. As an allrounder, I could still get away with a lighter bag but I know players who carry so much junk around they have to get what is nicknamed a “coffin” which can get close to being a 2 man lift for size.

Oh – I’ll also happily admit that however much I’d have liked to drive one of the two Mazda sporty cars around, I don’t think I could have put even my small cricket bag into either the MX-5 or boot of their RX-8.

Time for a bit of lunch/breakfast now and then more cricket. England are well and truly on top at the moment, although with South Africa’s underlying class it will get a lot closer.

I had wanted to see this series. 🙂

I should have gone to bed an hour or so ago because ever since I got home from work, I’ve been struggling to keep my eyes open. So I missed most of the Middlesex vs Yorkshire Twenty20 quarter final and my dinner was one sandwich.

(I’m chubby enough to not really get into trouble for a missed dinner, plus I’m eating too much junk at work)

Why am I still up ? I’m currently watching the second episode of Long Way Down, which is the follow up to the series Long Way Round from a few years ago. The first series had Ewan McGregor and his mate Charley Boorman riding from London to New York, going East (through Russia etc). Long Way Down has them going from John O Groats to Cape Town.

The bikes they have rival cars for width !

Series has started in the same form as Long Way Round, looking forward to the rest of it. The two boys take the watcher on a tour of far away countries that we’ll probably never see but present it rather differently to the normal Attenborough type presentation of the wild … I like it 🙂

I’m stuck a little for knowing what game I want to waste my time with at the moment, so I’m looking at the old ones again.

This time it’s the turn of Rowan’s Battle of Britain, a fairly old one that has two modes. One mode has you in the position of the air commander for Britain’s defence in Summer 1940. The second mode has you jumping into the cockpit of a Hurricane or Spitfire to do your part from the flyboy’s seat. (You can also fly as the Germans)

However, when this game came out, it had a critical bug where the game would crash in the campaign mode after just a few minutes of waving the mouse around. I could go into the technical details but that wouldn’t add much. So why the “Yey!” moment ? I’m currently reading through the manual for the official patch and hidden in there is my name, given credit for spotting the root cause of this particular bug. I didn’t fix it but my fault finding efforts allowed the BDG developers to squish da bug within about 2 days of being notified.

Having credit like that gives you the belief that occasionally, you do actually know what you’re talking about with software 🙂 I don’t get that all that much at work, because the technical content is mainly with the contractor with us looking after project management. And project management is far less interesting (to me) than seeing what’s happening with the Wiggly Amps.

Oh – it’s also just started raining at Wimbledon. Nadal is up by 2 sets at the moment but Federer has a chance to get back into it. Good game so far.

Weekend ahoy !

Been a relatively busy one. And varied too in what I’ve been up to at work. I’m looking at a bit too much finance at the moment though, instead of being more interesting engineer type busy. Still, it’s useful stuff as the bosses don’t let us buy as many toys if they think we can’t control the budget.

I’ve been attempting to keep up with the telly stuff and that will ease some over the next week or so as a group of series that I watch are finishing their run. I’ve been watching a rerun of Star Trek Voyager, which has got to nearly the end of its third of seven series. House and Heroes are another which are finishing, like Jericho last week. Jericho seemed a bit rushed in how they finished it but at least it’s been allowed to have a good closing out, unlike series like the new Bionic Woman which just fizzled.

Doctor Who should be a cracker tomorrow, it adds a bit of anticipation when BBC do such a good job of rumour control. There were a couple of flashes of what’s ahead but what we will see is a complete mystery. The writers for the new Doctor Who have been producing some good output but I can’t help feeling that they’re steadily tripping up over what they’ve done before. Sometimes a series can build up a little too much history, Buffy is a good example. I think series 5 had Buffy up against a God, it’s like – ok, they’ve beat a God, where do they go from there ?

The Crazies watched Prince Caspian on Wednesday. Not quite sure what to make of that one, it’s up to the normal Disney production standards and has some very spectacular battle sequences. Somehow it was missing something though. Can a film have a soul ? At least the pizza before was excellent as usual, even if Pizza Hut’s brainwave for how they present garlic bread is rather flawed.

We’ll be watching Wanted tomorrow. It has Angelina Jolie as one of the lead roles, so I’m expecting something special there.

Right – back to Voyager now and later a bit more Warcraft. It’s Alterac Valley weekend, which means most of the players who can participate will be hitting that particular battleground because it’s the most efficient way of earning a currency known as Honour which goes towards buying better gear.