I know it’s still in beta, but Firefox 3 is looking really really nice.
Really fast, funky drop-down preview/autocomplete thingy in the location bar, nice styling and look and feel. Lovely.
Give it a whirl from Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html
PS It seems to co-exist fairly happily with FireFox 2 under Windows.
I really should implement comments. 🙂
Anyway, some early responses from friends. I’ve edited for brevity/anonynmity as I haven’t asked them if they mind!!
H says:
- Life on Mars = yes
also
- The West Wing
- 6 Feet Under
Both remarkable pieces of programming. I am currently on series 2 of
6 Feet Under and series 3 of West Wing, and they’re gripping, still.
The DVD box set thing is just the job for telly IMO – I can’t get organised to watch things at a particular time, but having a few box sets on the go is fine.
I probably would have put West Wing on my ‘possible’ list, but I’ve never seen an episode. Similarly 6 Feet Under caught my eye, but I haven’t quite manage to catch it yet.
When I commuted to Leeds every day, one of my co-passengers had a video iPod type whatsit, and he was making his way through Enterprise, squeezing in about an episode and a half each day. He’d done the full West Wing as I recall, and spoke very highly of it. If I was still having 70 minutes on the train each day, I would be very tempted to adopt a similar approach.
With some further reflection I might add
although I’m unconvinced this would survive more than one or two watches. I also wonder if Ghost Whisperer might be worth investigating?
Anyway, back to my friends; C tells me I’m very wrong about Lost
. Over to them:
Personally, now I’m part way through [Lost] Series 4 (of the total 6) I’m really looking forward to rewatching from the start to see how much they’d tied together from the
very start. It feels really joined up at the minute, with things from the
first few episodes onwards still being explained.
Others you’re missing are definitely Murder One, at least the first couple
of series of 24. X-files is one I’m not sure I’d want to watch
back-to-back, but wouldn’t want it lost. Buffy is a definite yes.
Murder One is not even on my radar – not sure I’ve ever heard of it! Although I never got into X-files, I would probably agree it should be saved for posterity. 24? Series 1 was very good, it’s true – but even that ended up being a bit too much like hard work for my liking (so much so I didn’t even start any of the later ones). I can’t see that I’d particularly look to watch it again.
Utterly unrelated, I wonder if Red Dwarf deserves an honourable mention?
A month or two ago I happened across the last ever episode of Friends being re-broadcast on some channel or other. Actually I only caught the last 5 minutes – and it’s not an episode I’ve seen in it’s entirety. All very emotional.
Anyway, voice over lady announces at the end that we needn’t be sad, because, starting the next evening, the whole lot would be shown again from the very first episode!
OO-oo
thought I. How exciting – I could watch every single Friends episode, in order!
Then reality hit – quite aside from the practicalities, do I really want to spend the next half a year of my life watching an episode of Friends every night?? I don’t think so.
But it has got me to pondering some of the truly great TV series of our time. The ones that would survive a dedicated onslaught of watching. The ones you could pass on to your children. The ones that you wish you’d seen every single episode, from start to finish, ideally in order. What would be on my list?
I haven’t yet settled on a definitive list, but mine would look something like (in no particular order)
Other contenders would include All Creatures Great and Small, possibly Buffy, maybe Heroes (didn’t see enough to make up my mind), and Smallville has a look in. Life on Mars is close, but I’m not sure it would take two viewings. Similarly Doctor Who and Torchwood pass the “watch every episode” criterion with flying colours, but I’m not sure they would really take more than a viewing each.)
Definitely off the list is Lost – and a few others I don’t have time to write because parental responsibility calls!!
Just a quick note – I’ve recently discovered The Ethical Superstore (http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/), who have supplied all my Easter Eggs this year.
What an efficient organization – ordered the items, paid no more than I would have done at the supermarket (except for the postage, of course), and they arrived the next day! They offer bulk discounts too.
I’d already decided that I am going to have a Fairtrade Easter this year, but it’s not always easy to track down Fairtrade items. But this site has a really good range of ethical goods (by which they mean “eco”, organic, and/or fairtrade) – and they invite you to offset the carbon cost of the delivery with a donation.
So a full marks recommendation from me.
I almost had my poorest Lent performance ever last night (Ash Wednesday). We were having slightly-late pancakes, and one of the youth had brought Nutella (YUM!!), so I carefully covered my pancake with Nutella and squirty cream, rolled it up, and was about to tuck in when I remembered that chocolate is my Lent this year.
I’m not desperately good at Lent, but 19 hours would be a new all-time low for failure time. To be fair, when I break my Lent it’s usually because I forget, rather than a deliberate choice, but still…
One year I gave up tea and coffee, and expected to feel healthy and virtuous. Instead of which I felt like cr*p; major headache, shaking hands, general grumpiness. At the time I was quite disturbed by the extent of my caffeine addiction… these days I’m philosophical about the fact there are worse things I could be addicted to.
Lent itself is a strange beast. It’s a remembrance of the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness after his baptism, and also the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert. It starts 40 days before Easter, on Ash Wednesday. Except it’s not really 40 days, ‘cos that only takes you to Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter). Turns out that Sundays aren’t in Lent (due to these being a standing day of celebration), which means the 40 days takes you up to Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Day). The Roman Catholics actually only manage 38 days, as they stop on Maundy Thursday.
My household is divided on whether, if you’ve given something up for Lent, you should be allowed it on Sundays. This is technically correct, but my other half feels this is not in keeping with the spirit of the thing – it’s no sacrifice to only give up something for 6 days (even if you do so for 6 weeks in a row). This is a valid point, but I might say that by the time you’ve not had something for 6 weeks, you’ve forgotten what it was like, so it’s not difficult anymore. Whereas if you have it every Sunday, it reminds you of just how nice it is, making of consistent difficulty throughout Lent.
The whole notion of sacrifice is counter-cultural these days, but I think that self-control and willpower are important characteristics – and that they’re like muscles: use it or lose it.
Anyway, I was pondering some things that one could give up, outside the obvious
chocolate/sweets/alcohol/tea/coffee thing:
The trendy thing in church circles these days is to take something up for Lent. I guess you are implicitly giving up some time in order to do this, but it is a more
positive approach. So common things to take up:
Churches seem to run lent courses quite often too – a 6 week study on something or other.
All in all I like Lent. It’s an opportunity to deny yourself something for a fixed (and fairly short) period of time, and generally be a bit more reflective about life.
My new place of work is very close to the Yorkshire Showground (most famous for the Great Yorkshire Show), so I sometimes notice interesting sounding events being advertised as I cycle past.
One such event was the Bradford Small Animal Show (“With approximately 3000 Rabbits, Guinea Pigs, Gerbils, Hamsters, Mice and Rats attending the show over the two days, the Bradford Excel Small Animal Show really is the Crufts of the Small Animal world, and you can’t afford to miss this spectacular gathering!” – from the website, which I guess will disappear soon.).
Having a 4 year old son, and being a bit of a softy myself, this caught my eye, so we all went along.
Yes.. Well.. It was certainly an eye-opening experience. For instance, where you aware of the following esteemed organisations within our shores?
It was actually a little disturbing to see grown men and women obsessing over rabbits (and it was mainly rabbits), and them being judged and being awarded “Best of Breed” or whatever.
All my hopes of a cuddly interactive touchy-feely happy time were quickly dashed, as I came across rows and rows of cages – literally thousands – each one having a rabbit. No access allowed (although there was a “discovery” area where you could stroke one).
And what rabbits. I had no idea there were so many different types of rabbit. HUGE rabbits (dog sized!), tiny rabbits. Verrrrryy long eared rabbits, and rabbits with tiny stumpy little ears that made them look like bats. Long rabbits and short rabbits. Incredibly fluffy rabbits (poodle central).
.. but all firmly shut in their cages and NO TOUCHING.
I suppose in hindsight I should have expected this from the website, but I got caught up in a romantic notion.
I did see a hare up close for the first time in my life, and they really are very much like kangaroos.
So I wouldn’t particularly recommend the show to anyone who wasn’t a rabbit breeder (or cavy breeder, or fancy rat breeder, or …), but it was an experience. Really must try and made it to the GY show this year though (missed it for 8 years when it’s 10 minutes walk from my front door – bit lame really.)
Well, I’m not at all sorry 2007 is over. An almost infinite improvement on 2006, but still a way to go…
I spent the entire working in a job that is, without a shadow of doubt, the worst I have ever had. To be fair, this is as much a reflection on all my previous jobs (I’ve never previously left a job out of discontentment) as it is on this job. The irony is that, as a job, it was actually quite good. Reasonable pay, interesting work, essentially got on well with colleagues (and very well with one of them).
I don’t really want to be negative, so I won’t go into details. But I have learnt the importance of having a good working relationship with one’s boss, something I have been very lucky with in every other job I’ve done. Don’t get me wrong – my ex-boss is a very nice chap, and we got on very well socially. We just didn’t see eye to eye on how the business should be run. At the end of the day it’s his company to run how he sees fit, and I genuinely wish him all the best with it.
So positive things from 2007?
Well, I’ve hugely enjoyed doing the youth group at church. I feel like I’ve got to know the teenagers well over the last year or so. They might drive me mad with exasperation from time to time, but I love ’em to bits!
The missus got back to full fighting fitness again, after a spell of being off work, which is absolutely fabulous.
I had a brilliant trip to Boston MA (which I’ve mentioned elsewhere) – which again ironically was a work trip in the context of a job that even at that stage I was finding frustrating. Then an (almost) all expenses paid trip to Madeira, which was a lovely holiday (also mentioned elsewhere).
The summer was lovely. We went camping near Ripon, had a week in the Lakes (climbed Catbells!), and visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Bolton Abbey, and the National Railway Museum.
Of course, there was Deathly Hallows – very pleasing closure on the Harry Potter thing. That was a lovely day, devouring a book the day it was published!
Got my bicycle up and running again (and not too soon – going to be cycling to work!! Yay!!) Discovered Facebook (101 friends – Yay! They’re all people I know too…). I dusted off the vision mixer and it saw use for the first time in about 5 years. I also had a non-Skype foray into VOIP (very impressed).
Low points. Well, a job that sucked, obviously. Waving farewell to the crazy ordination thing for the foreseeable future (not something we’ve entirely worked through yet). On the plus side, I’ve discovered contemplative spirituality in a new way, and in general we are both deeper and more interesting people as a result of the last couple of years.
And, lest we forget (and in direct contradiction to that last sentence), we got a Wii! It’s awesome!!! SO MUCH FUN. It’s good for my pride too, being whipped in ten-pin bowling by a three year old (208 was his score last game. Two Hundred and Eight!!! That’s more than I’ve ever managed to score. My best Wii score is 176, which is still substantially more than I’ve ever managed for real, but still…). It was a little reckless buying a games console give our circumstances – but we have quite a few things to celebrate moving into 2008, so the missus gave in to my relentless nagging. 🙂
So here’s to 2008. May it be brighter and better than 2007.
I dug out one of the DVDs I made of my boy from 3 years ago, when he was coming up to 1. He loves watching himself on TV, so we all settled down to watch…
TV shows toddler banging a fridge magnet on the washing machine.
You used to spend hours banging away like that – do you remember?
No.
TV shows toddler attempting to walk.
Do you remember when you couldn’t walk?
No.
TV shows toddler sitting in high chair being fed carefully and lovingly prepared beef stew, processed to be suitable for young person who still needs spoon-feeding…
Do you remember when you couldn’t feed yourself?
No.
Well – do you remember that high-chair?
YES – it’s in the loft now!
That’s right.Short pause, while we watch the meal being consumed.
I ate dog-food all the time.
I will leave his mother’s response to this comment to your imagination!! 🙂
I had a bit of a tricky thing to solve over the summer.
I had to perform 100,000,000 calculations, each of which took nearly a second, and I didn’t have 1,150 days spare, unfortunately.
No problem – throw it on a big beasty computer cluster (60 CPUs), do some multi-threading magic, and realise that actually the solutions are symmetrical so there’s ‘only’ 50,000,000 to do – there you are, job done in about 10 days (including faff time). I was quite pleased with this.
However it turns out that there’s a much better way to do it.
Tweak the algorithm a little, and instead of needing to do 10,000 x 10,000 calculations that each take a second, you can do just 10,000 calculations that each take a second, and get the 10,000 results for each of those for ‘free’. Well, there’s a little bit of magic to weave, but we’re talking 1/250 of a second for each.
So suddenly, instead of taking 10 days on a 60 processor brute, you can do it 5 days on a single desktop computer, or overnight if you hijack 5 office computers. And this is without taking advantage of the symmetry.
I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think of this over the summer – sometimes big isn’t always beautiful, and raw power is not (always!) the answer to thorny problems!!
Yay – I’ve got a new job!
It starts on the 2nd Jan, and the company are based about 5 minutes cycle away from my house. It’s along a similar vein to my current job, i.e. software development in a GIS context, so mapping and routing, that kind of thing.
The company seem amazing – in fact I’ve been a little bit spooked because the whole thing seems too good to be true. In my experience, things that seem too good to be true often are often exactly that (i.e. not true), but I’ve decided to take the chance that this might be exactly what is seems; that is a job I enjoy doing interesting stuff with nice people in a place that values its staff and does things properly and is near where I live. It wouldn’t be my first job along these lines, but at let’s just say that not all of them necessarily apply to my current position! 🙂
The other thing that spooked me a bit is that this is the first time in my life I’m starting a job that I could realistically expect to still be in 15-20 years time, or indeed might even retire from. Scary…
AND I get Christmas off as I use up my accrued leave – bliss!