Robert Peston on why Vista is evil

Dear Bill Gates

Give me back my weekend. I bought a new Windows Vista laptop – and that’s when the trouble began.

My dislike of your new user interface you can put down to the conservatism that comes with advancing years. However having loyally stuck by the galumphing, unaesthetic functionality of your operating systems over the past 15 years, while faced with ridicule from pretentious Mac-loving types, I resent your attempt at an elegance transplant.

But what really grates is that your system is incompatible with two of the vital tools of my trade. Vista refuses to load the software for my newish Olympus digital recorder. And here’s what takes the biscuit. Vista rejects my HP IPAQ handheld device – even though the software for that was created by Microsoft!

So in order to put Vista at the centre of what I do, I would have to buy hundreds of pounds of new hardware. Which may be great news for your industry, but makes me regret never having defected to Steve Jobs. Perhaps now’s the time.

more on the BBC website

Jaffa Cakes, Yoghurt and veggies

The past couple of days in Hammersmith Muller have been handing out a variety of yoghurts. On Tuesday they handed out the Omega 3 variety. Half way through munching I realised they didn’t have a nice vegetarian friendly green tick or for that matter an ingredients list. I checked their website. Are they suitable for vegetarians? NO! more here due to the refined fish oils. Yum. Tasty.

Yesterday they were giving away the regular Muller Light. Not to be fooled like I was on Tuesday I checked the website before tucking in. Are they suitable for veggies? No. I guess they have ground up hooves and trotters or lips and arseholes or gelatine as the food industry like to call it ;o)

So today Clare brought in Jaffa Cakes. I know these are veggie friendly and also delicious. However a little interwebnet sleuthing and guess what. They aren’t orange after all. The jelly is merely orange coloured – it is in fact made out of Apricot Jelly and only contains Tangerine Oil. Who knew?

note to self: cheer up!

I’ve been in a bit of a funk recently for reasons best kept to myself but find myself listening to music that isn’t helping. The stuff that makes me emotional at the best of times let alone when a hundred and one other things are happening.

Snap out of it!

mactop

Okay so I now am the proud owner of a brand new MacBook 13″ 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo with the regular 60Gb hard drive and 512Mb RAM. More here.

Now don’t get me wrong it was really nice of the boys to go to the Apple Store when they where in the US and buy it for me however, and heres the crunch. Two of them who aren’t even Mac fans (well they are now obviously) bought MacBooks while there and there were two slightly higher spec ones instore. Rather than asking me if I wanted one – they bought the better ones for themselves grrr!

Still I’ve got my memory on order and I’m converting my G4 Cube into a file server so my 60Gb should be fine for now.

I haven’t had much of a chance to play yet sadly been busy with work. Looking forward to playing at the weekend though.

away for christmas

Andy and I are in Paris at the moment waiting for our flight to Johannesburg. We decided to avoid Christmas in London and not go home to parents.
Can’t wait to get some winter sun :o)

stalk to your hearts content

I built a tool like this when I first started at AOL. It was using an old proprietary coding language only AOL use and would not have been suitable for member use so I just used it to stalk ahem I mean search for people on gaydar and AOL.
Gregg.com goes a bit further though and lets you look up on a few other sites too.

I so need one

Well actually no one really needs a loo that lifts the lid for you, heats the seat and has a handy little ahem washlet but I want one anyway. The remote is more complicated than any we currently own for TV or other equipment.