A good flight!

Wow, I actually had a good flight even more wow as it was on BA which I always have low expectations of. It started off well, with a remarkably attractive and helpful girl at the check in counter. Not the usual miserable hag who makes me feel bad because I actually want some say in where I might want to sit on the aircraft. It was almost a shame that check in was so quick and painless. Heathrow Terminal 4 is still awful, lots of rubbish shopping nowhere to sit and tiny departure gate areas that can barely handle a third of the passengers destined for the plane all milling around. Then add in electric carts driving through the middle of the crowd beeping like demented microwaves and you have a recipe for boarding chaos. Ended up with a seat at the back of the cabin against the bulkhead, which I normally hate as you cant recline the seat properly but it all worked out because I had the middle seat next to me free. On a full plane i kept waiting for the huge guy I knew was going to plonk himself down next to me, making the next nine and a half hours a frenzy of shoulder rubbing and arm rest fighting. The other seat was taken by a South African pilot who flew private jets for a living. He turned out to be great company and with a weakness for red wine, which suited me fine! Unusually for me we spoke for about 4 hours, and even more unusually had many of the same views on the world, ranging from the strategic differences between the Boeing 787 dreamliner and the Airbus A380, via religious extremism to the absurdity of American homeland security. I then managed to fall unconscious for four and a half hours, thanks at least in part to the five bottles of wine I had consumed, waking 20 minutes before touchdown. Managed to keep my thoughts to myself whilst being fingerprinted and photographed at immigration and then interrogated at customs about how I met my friends in the States. The purpose behind these inane questions elude me completely, it would only take the minimum of preparation to be able to answer completely unflustered and just contributes to a very negative impression of the whole concept of homeland security. Getting downtown is really easy from seattle there are local buses that take about 20 minutes or so and only cost $2.00 now thats good value.

Technorati Tags: Travel

The jailing of David Irving

Todays jailing of David Irving in Austria for denying the holocaust is a terrible day for free speech in Europe. This is particularly important now, because of the outrage over the cartoons in the European press of the Prophet Mohammed. Free speech must be free, regardless of the topic that it happens to discuss. There are plenty of ways of refuting David Irving's point of view, most serious historians disagree with him and there is not a great deal of popular debate on the subject. As much as I disagree with his views, I think he must be free to express them just as I must be free to refute them. By jailing David Irving we expose ourselves to accusations of hypocrisy over free speech.

Series 60 Phone Screenaver

Finally someone has put together a decent screensaver for series 60 phones like my Nokia 6680. XXL Screensaver is fairly customizable and shows you a big high contrast clock plus all the other little bits and pieces you want to know when glancing at your phone. Be warned though to download it you have to go to just about the most hideous website I have seen in quite a while, have your sunglasses at the ready. It is definitley worth it at the always fantastic price of free. Link

Valentines Surprise

Had a surprise parcel in the post yesterday from a friend in Singapore. It was a pure coincidence that it arrived on valentines day, but it did contain something special, a handwritten letter. I cant remember the last time I received or even sent a handwritten letter. It is easy to forget how nice letters are, they are incredibly personal, and have the opportunity to communicate on so many levels from the quality of the paper to the hand writing. Note to self; write someone a letter, you know they will like it.

Random Blog Linkage

I am sure there is a good reason that kevinkon.blogspot.com links to me, though it totally escapes my addled mind as to why or who. I am enjoying the geographical distribution of my blog, currently including New Zealand, Singapore, Europe the US and Canada. I can only assume they got lost wandering around the vastness of the internets. Ok well thats enough navel gazing. On a related note this information, is all down to the wonder of Google analytics which really is very impressive for analysing all kinds of web stats analytics.google.com

Latest design for bright light site

Here is the latest design for the bright light innovation site. Now its time to test my mad CSS skillz.

Fantastic Touch Screen Interface Demo

This is a great demo showing a multipont touch screen. It allows the user to touch the screen at more than one point simultaneously, giving them the abilty to in interact with the display in a much richer way. I particularly like the way the user can zoom into an image by moving his hands apart.  I have never been a fan of touch screens but I would love to play with one of these. Check out the video here Via Digg

Doing my bit for the media scrum

Well the publicity has started for the Apprentice UK which features my business partner Samuel Judah. He is going to be blogging after each episode over on samueljudah.com. Apparently according to the Evening Standard he is:

... Ford product developer SamuelJudah, 35, a black belt in jujitsu and wing chun, claims the martial arts have taught him not to "panic and lose your head". ...

Technorati Tags: Samuel Judah, TV, Apprentice UK

This could change your life (if you own a lot of T- Shirts

This had to come from Japan the land of folding things, and it does. Its a miracle way to fold your T-Shirts beautifully in no time flat. It works so well even | can have a closet full of lovely folded T-Shirts. Check out the instructional video here: Jengajam.com Originally Via Boing Boing

The 12 Cartoons of Doom!

The 12 cartoons of the profit Mohammed certainly have proven controversial. This is not at all surprising, but I think a necessary stage in the development of free speech and the throwing off of religious dogma. It is interesting to compare what is happening now in terms of outrage in the Muslim world to the outrage caused amongst Christians when people spoke out against the church. This outrage continued even relatively recently when the Monty Python Film, The Life of Brian was nearly prevented from being shown by a prosecution under blasphemy laws. It must be a condition of speech that if you wish to promote one way of thinking, then others must be able to offer another or even poke holes and make fun of yours. Ironically the very prophets that these people now follow so dogmatically had to overthrow the dogma of their time to ascend to their present position. How do we know now that we are absolutely right have the one truth, any more than the people of the prophets time did. What are the followers afraid of, surely these newspaper editors will be punished by the very god they parody? Surely a picture can't damage a prophet a god, to argue that it can is surely demeaning to that god. I entirely support the newspapers that published these caricatures and believe it is a necessary confrontation. Free speech must not be constrained by fear that you may offend someone, or some group of people, or it is no longer free.

Exercise & Happiness

I know this, I have learnt this lesson a dozen times or more but still I am continually amazed at how much better I feel when I exercise. Feeling pretty crap after a particular set back with bright light however, it seems lifting heavy weights over your head can make you feel better again. Note to self: Remember this next time you feel low.

Very cool video mash up

http://www.industrial-technology-and-witchcraft.de/movs/roundabout.mov An excellent advert for some DJ product, this video is really well conceived and beautifully executed. I particularly like the end. Via Metafilter

Places I have lived in London

Golders Green Richmond Shoreditch Bow St Johns Wood

Apple mighty mouse

Not new I know but I have to say the Apple mighty mouse is decidedly mediocre. I have been using it on my laptop for a few days now and it really does not compare with my Logitech MX1000. It has a tendency to wander off at random, its not particularly accurate, and the right button click is very contrived. I do like how easy it is to use in single button mode, but I would certainly have expected a lot more form Apple. I think there are a lot of better mice out there on the market, this is one time that I am not falling for the Apple hype.

Its not just the BBC, Senators figure out DRM too

Good article via Boing Boing on Senators beginning to understand the implications of the broadcast flag and the truly ridiculous level of control it hands to the studios. Some choice quoutes below.

[Sununu] pointed out that "we have a whole history of similar technological innovation that has shown us that the market can respond with its own protection to the needs of the artists." And he concluded with one of the most damning depictions of the ahistorical nature of the flag (clip from Congressional RealVideo) you'll hear on the Hill: "The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?" The second revelation, dropped into the later discussion of the RIAA's audio flag, was that Senator Stevens' daughter bought him an iPod. This is unhappy news for the RIAA. Once again, their representative was forced to burst into praises of MP3 players (a technology his organization attempted to sue out of existence in 1998). And when Stevens asked whether with the audio flag in place he would be able to record from the radio and put the shows onto his iPod: that's when the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol really began to sweat. With that simple question, the octogenarian Senator encapsulated arguments about place-shifting, interoperability, and fair use that would have taken whole federal dockets to explain a few years ago. Even more damning was Senator Sununu's follow-up question, in which he asked if, post-flag, the Senator might record three songs from the radio today, and listen to only one of them again tomorrow. Of course, under the RIAA's proposed controls, you may not: this is "disaggregation" in their language. This flag, which was sold to Congress to impede piracy, appeared to be designed primarily to control and inconvenience law-abiding, ripping, mixing, modern-day Senators.

Via Boing Boing

The BBC on DRM

Looks like the issue of DRM is beginning to hit the mainstream media. There is an article over on BBC news covering the problems of DRM and largely coming down on the side of the consumer. Personally I wont be purchasing anything encumbered with DRM. I am quite happy to pay for content, but I really want the right to be able to play it where I want, when I want and on any device I may want. Not to mention using it for home movies or slide shows. I can only imagine the nightmare of having purchased thousands of pounds worth of content and have a hard drive fail or the company you purchase it from go out of business and be unable to authenticate your rights. Lets hope that the people vote with their wallets an buy high quality content that is not broken through godawful DRM and the distributors figure this out sooner rather than later. BBC News

Dogs as Birds

This is one thats worth checking out if you either like fantastic high speed photography of dogs being thrown into the air, or the sounds of hard electronic breakbeat. Its called birds and you can check it out here: Pleix films:

Technorati Tags: film, Music

Busy Busy Busy

Which is great really, but I haven't really found time to write anything of any interest recently. I am currently working on a big presentation for British Telecom. We will be presenting on the 31st of Jan. I constantly seem to have 4 different jobs, none of which seem to pay enough even when combined!

Apple Store needs more bandwidth

Sitting here with all the other leeches sucking down Apple Store bandwidth. It reminds me of the good old days of 56k modems. Not that productive when looking for stock images!

Adobe Lightroom

Downloaded the first beta of Adobe's new photography workflow software today. Obviously Adobe are trying to limit the damage of Apple's Aperture software. Lightroom brings a whole new interface design, different to ayhting I have seen from them in the past and actually feels very influenced by current trends in webdesign. On the feature side of things Lightrooom seems fairly underdeveloped, with great colour tools including an excellent grayscale mixer. There are also nice controls for slide shows. However, I have yet to find a straightening tool or a crop tool, two essentails for me. One feature that I really like is that when importing photos Lightroom allows you to manage them from their current location or bring them into its own library.