Cool Dad

This morning on the radio they were saying that the best way to see the new Batman film is on the super large IMAX cinema screen.

Like we are doing this evening.

I mentioned to number one son how lucky he is to be able to hang around with me, what with me being a person who does so many cool things.

"Yeah." he replied. "Like opening the fridge door...."

I'm really going to miss him.

Love that Long Tail

When I was younger I used buy single records on 7" plastic. I've got a whole load in a box up in the loft, alongside the turntable that I used to play them on. Occasionally I get one out, look at the tiny wavy groove on it and shake my head in amazement that we actually used to store music that way.

Last week I really fancied hearing one of my old singles again ("Living by Numbers" by New Musik). So I searched out the YouTube video and had a very retro TV experience, even down to the blurred picture and muffled sound we used to get on our telly back in 1982. And then I wondered if I could still buy it. And it turns out I can. Amazon have links with vendors that sell all kinds of old stuff and so earlier this week the CD with the entire album ("From A to B") turned up in the post.  (great album. Starts with a very convincing doorbell sound which actually had us checking the front door......)

This is called "long tail" marketing. There are probably not that many fans of New Musik out there, but there are enough worldwide to make it worth someone keeping a bunch of copies of the disk and sending one out every now and then.

Now I'm looking for some albums by Synergy.....

The eeePC Comes of Age

I am sad. And weak. And I go through phases where I buy new computers. I also sell slightly older ones on ebay, and so it kind of balances out. Today I bought another computer.

Last week I sold my Asus EEEPC 701 because although it was lovely and implausibly cheap I never really used it much. And besides I needed the money to pay for yet another computer that I seemed to have bought, of which more later when I actually get my hands on it.

Anyhoo, having sold lots of things on ebay for more than I expected I found that I could afford to buy the computer that I've got today (I hope you are all keeping up).

The 701 sold me on the idea of a mini-laptop, it was just that I wanted one that was genuinely useful. And to me that means running Windows. I quite like Linux, but it turns out that most of what I want to do has a Microsoft flavour. We managed to get the 701 to run XP quite successfully, but the small screen size made using it a bit of a pain, and the lack of a proper keyboard was also somewhat irritating. And to put all the software I wanted on the device would have filled the solid state memory several times over. So off it went.

What I actually wanted was a mini-laptop with a proper keyboard, a slightly larger screen, a hard disk and running Windows XP. And it turns out that you can get exactly that in PC World, for only sixty pounds more than the original device.

The Advent 4211 is a re-badged MSI Wind. This is one of the newer mini-laptops with one of the latest Intel Atom processors. It comes with 1G of memory, a 90G hard disk, a lovely 10" display delivering a very useable 1024x600 resolution and it works a treat with Windows XP. It is nowhere near as funky looking as some of the mini-laptops, being a rather somber black, but it goes like a rocket. And it only costs 280 quid, which to me is a major bargain.

This afternoon I put Visual Studio Express and XNA Game Studio on it and was soon running some of my XNA demos with no problems at all. It won't have the grunt to do the 3D stuff, but for simple programs it is well up to the job. Windows XP on the Atom seems to zoom along very satisfactorily. The keyboard is nice to use with good sized keys and the screen looks great. It also plays movie files extremely competently, the only let down is the rather poor quality of the internal speakers (but you can of course add headphones or an external amplifier).

It actually comes with a copy of Microsoft Works on the hard disk which means that you can be writing documents and spreadsheeting to your hearts content straight out of the box. I've not had a chance to test out the battery life yet, but from the reviews I reckon that a couple of hours should be tenable. And there is also a high capacity battery available.

If you are in the market for a dirt cheap, and very portable, laptop then I don't think you should look any further.

Profound Question

Whilst looking in the fridge for my ration of strawberry flavoured milk I noticed that we had some "Thousand Island Dressing" in there. I started to wonder (always a bad thing) how the name came about:

Marketing Drone 1: "We've got this new pink stuff that you can put on salads"
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. Is it anything to do with the sea?"
Marketing Drone 1: "Nope"
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. Ships?"
Marketing Drone 1: "Nope"
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. Landfall?"
Marketing Drone 1: "Nope"
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. How about 'Island Dressing'?"
Marketing Drone 1: "Nah. Not impactfull enough."
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. How about 'Hundred Island Dressing'?"
Marketing Drone 1: "Nah. Too small fry."
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. How about 'Million Island Dressing'?"
Marketing Drone 1: "Now you're just taking the piss."
Marketing Drone 2: "OK. 'Thousand Island Dressing' it is then."

Actually it turns out that it was named by actress Mary Irwin, at a posh dinner party in a hotel. But I guess you already know that.

Whether Forecasts

I've been watching the weather forecasts again. I watch them for one reason really, to find out if it is going to rain on me or not.  This is kind of annoying, in that most of a weather forecast these days is taken up with telling me what weather has already happened in places where I'm not. Usually focusing on conditions in London. However, I have become quite good at decoding what their sayings mean in respect of the question "Will it rain on me?":

"scattered showers": we don't know

"outbreaks of rain in some areas": we don't know

"changeable": we really don't know

"unsettled": we really don't know, and don't rule out hurricanes

I think, actually, that perhaps the best job to have is weather forecaster. You get paid whether you are right or not. And apparently if you just say "The weather today will be the same as yesterday" you are correct more often than not.

Update on Thursday, August 7, 2008 at 09:40AM by Rob

Number one son has asked me to point out that I really did mean to use the word "Whether" in the title of this post. He is somewhat concerned that readers might think that I'd mis-spelt "Weather", rather than attempting a (in my opinion) rather clever pun.