Sunday, 28 October 2007 – 12:14, pm
Now that’s it all properly installed on my mac-mini I feel that it’s time for a blog post.
Friday: Leopard Launch Day
I arrived at the Southampton Apple store at about 3pm and joined the queue as soon as it was set up. And I have to say that the queue was a really great social atmosphere and that everyone there was really friendly and I must thank great high wolf from macrumors forums for doing a drinks run. Also, it was really cool that the Apple store employees handed out chocolates and water- it certainly makes a change from many companies launch night arrangements. (I’m looking at you Sony)
Saturday: MacLiveExpo
Due to several thousand football fans and a line closure it took well over an hour and a half on the tubes (mostly packed) to reach the expo. There was some interesting loot to be picked up, namely some nice juggling balls from Konica Minolta- now if everyone did that I wouldn’t have been able to get home due to a vast surplus of said juggling balls. 
There was an interesting showing of Leopard by Apple, which would have been more interesting if I’d seen it prior to launch- but my fears that Time Machine would need a dedicated drive were put to rest. It only needs free space on a not-booted HFS+ journaled disk. There were some very good hardware deals going on at the show, and if you can pick up the early bird free tickets and get a reasonably direct train then it’s probably a good idea to buy a mac there. Unless you’re taking the tube, then it would be buying a mac for a random stranger on your train.
As for Leopard itself; the new dock (the non-3d one that is) is shiny and Mail is a lot more responsive and powerful, and is now no longer embarrassing to search for emails with.
Monday, 15 October 2007 – 10:55, pm
Climate change is a massive problem.
The chances are that whatever methods that can be employed against it are going to basically require on thing:
Humanity to willingly leave it’s comfort zone.
There’s just no real way to do justice to that.
Sunday, 30 September 2007 – 10:11, pm
In something both fairly awesome and scary at the same time: I now have a car.
I’m gradually getting to grips with the intricacies of a gearbox and should be at least moderately competent at changing between the gears by the time I have my first driving lesson, which I would have been having a lot earlier had I applied for my driving license with adequate time to pre-book some driving lessons.
That’s my car:
^_^
Monday, 24 September 2007 – 8:55, pm
Well, today’s the day. I’m 17 and themak.org is no more and instead; I welcome you all to madebyalex.org enjoy your stay- have a coffee- leave a comment. And sit back and enjoy.
Also, my iBook can’t be repaired due to a myriad of incompetence’s. Bugger. Those thinkpads are looking like a mighty fine option now. (Fedora Core 8 also)
Later,
Alex.
Monday, 10 September 2007 – 8:49, pm
I’ve been unable to make any new posts for the last few weeks on account of everything being exceptionally busy. But do not fear this blog will be returning to usual service in exactly two weeks time! For on the 24th many exciting things happen:
- I become 17 and thus able to start learning to drive a car.
- themak.org is retired and replaced by madebyalex.org
- I update the code behind this whole endeavor to Wordpress 2.3- which will be released on that very day. A nice birthday present, I should think.
- I change the design of the site to resemble this (help doing so would be greatly appreciated), or use one of the shiny sandbox themes.
Until then,
Alex
Friday, 31 August 2007 – 6:30, pm
Is coming straight from the Apple Store in Regent Street.
Wow.
That is all.
Thursday, 30 August 2007 – 4:12, pm
Thursday, 23 August 2007 – 1:14, pm
Today was the infamous results day for GCSE students across the counry. I don’t quite know what to say:
- ICT: A*
- History: A*
- RE (short course): A*
- German: A
- Geography: A
- Maths: A*
- Biology: A
- Chemistry:A*
- Physics: A*
- English: A*
- English Literature: A
- Statistics: A
Congratulations to all the other candidates who just received their grades, and I hope that they all acheived what they wanted. In other news:
Monday, 13 August 2007 – 6:07, pm
I recently returned from the NAGTY 2007 Summer School at Leeds University where I spent the past two weeks studying the Japanese and Thai languages interspersed with many fun activities. I met tonnes of awesome people there and had a completely awesome time. Anyhow, for you guys at Leeds the photos are here, and there’s a forum that’s been set up which the address should be working it’s way around now. If anyone’s still without my email, msn, social networking sites etc. then leave a comment and I’ll email you the links.
Sunday, 5 August 2007 – 9:39, am
Just a quick post today as I’ve finally got to a computer with internet access. The NAGTY summer school is awesome fun and everyone is great. I’ve finished the Japanese part of the course- which has been awesome fun and am looking forward to the Thai part next week. Meanwhile it’s obsenely hot outside and I’ll be away for the next week.
Saturday, 28 July 2007 – 8:52, am
The BBC appear to still be convinced that only windows XP users deserve the ability to watch television over the internet. This is in part due to their settling on Windows Media Video with DRM as the apt way for them to deliver this; it seems all the stranger that they’ve chosen this as the BBC already have a perfectly serviceable codec, which is self-acclaimed to be well suited to internet streaming.
To me, the BBC seems like the perfect institution to develop a DRM technology which is moderately open and least inconvenient to the user- although I cannot see the difference between them broadcasting an open MPEG2 stream using DVB and them broadcasting an open MPEG4 one using http.
I know that there are major legal differences between broadcasting it over the internet and over DVB, and that the files can be downloaded in faster than real time, but this does not have to be combatted by a completely opaque, utterly intrusive platform which will eventually lead to a locked down media file which can only be watched at it’s leisure and the viewers expense.
It seems to me as if the BBC is in a unique position here, where they have the chance to be able to redefine internet television with an open standard which allows all broadcasters to reach their audiences using whatever platform, whatever player. If this becomes the new distribution platform for television- then copyright law in Great Britain should recognise it as analogous to television and appreciate that it will have the same problem with copying that modern television does- which are insignificant to the BBCs DVD sales.
And I’m not the only person who would buy something I especially enjoyed on DVD, because the BBC have some really great stuff, and after all, every television owner in the country paid for it.
Anyway, to those of you unlucky enough to be using WINXP: gorge yourself on some telly.
by Koushun Takami. While graphically violent, it definitely served the plot very well and proved to be a most excellent and gripping novel and was impossible to put down- the dystopian backstory certainly adds to the plot.
