shiny shiny (again)

I've just seen the Apple show of all the various shiny shiny new items which will be hitting the stores in time for the end of year festivities.

I paid attention, because I'm in the market for a new iMac. A short time ago I even prepared but then cancelled an order on the basis that the new box was just around the corner.

It raises an interesting point though, because pretty much all of the Macs I've ever owned are still quite usable and have been pressed into service as secondary devices or hand-me-downs.

Not so with the old PCs, which have usually managed to develop some kind of unrecoverable fault or collapsed under the burden of operating system updates. There's still a variety of boxes and bits in the garage from various unsuccessful resuscitation attempts.

With the Macs, the main failure has been disk drives which eventually either get full or have needed replacement - oh and occasional new batteries. My relatively ancient 15inch Powerbook still works but has had a disk upgrade. It is still used for mainly music related projects but runs a very recognisable version of the Mac system.

And similar updates to a few of the other boxes right up to my current shape 'early 2008' iMac. It just won't handle the new very fast external disk for video editing.

It's still quite interesting seeing the rest of the new stuff announced. The iPad refresh was inevitable, based upon the predictable introduction of the new Lightning connector across the range. The old Apple connector - like the two I have in my car for iPod and iPhone - is now becoming a legacy connection.

The new iPad mini has been talked about for months and notwithstanding the price differential, there should be quite a tablet market share scramble leading to the end of the year.

It raises some questions though...

• Is the new refresh cycle now as low as six months for this technology? The iPad 3 only lasted 6 months before the iPad 4 appeared.
• Will the thinning down of all the devices mean that there really are no user replaceable parts? Check out the new case on the iMac and the circa 1mm thick battery in the new iPad mini.
• Presumably the new designs have considered heat? I've had a couple of timecapsules die from what seems to be heat related component fatigue.
• Will the iPad mini game-change smaller tablets - I've preferred a Kindle for reading because the iPad was too heavy, not very readable in sunlight and a bit expensive to get sand in.
• And will the iPad mini be more or less a 'consumption' device rather than one for 'creation'?

It's an interesting period for all of this stuff, because there's quite a few new possibilities and options around - including the Android and Windows 8 + Surface stuff. I'm a great fan of what I call 'quiet technology' - it just works - and where this pushes the market. It looks alike an interesting six months/few days(?) until the next tranche arrives.

lazy hazy grey sunday

A lazy Sunday, although this evening I will have some work prep ready for tomorrow. At least I'm not packing bags and driving somewhere on Sunday evening, although I have a feeling I may need to next weekend.

So today has been a gentle day, with a few home chores, a visit to the supermarket because we forgot to hit enter on the Ocado list, and a bike ride.

I'm into the last 200 miles of my revised target for 2012 now. I originally set it at 1,800. Then 3,000 (which constitutes my 'silver medal') and finally 4,000 miles, which I'll call a gold. I'm planning to use a chocolate wagon wheel to get that Olympic size.

I've realised that using targets is quite important to the process and acts as a bit of a spur. I originally set my targets back in January and have been keeping an eye on them as the year unfolds. The fancy telemetry on the bike also helps by offloading the numbers to various software. There were some dips like when I was in the USA and when I was trekking around Europe. Also the great bathroom project in March impacted progress. The so-called music room project looms and may also create a further blip.

Despite it all, I somehow managed around 800 miles back in September, which was a combination of hitting the 3k and then getting moving towards the 4k.

Of course it would be madness to attempt 5k by the end of the year. I still need to get the mudguards for the orange bike.

no snooze buttons involved

Not one of my finest photographs, but representative of the last few mornings. Those first few moments staggering towards the kettle for an early cup of tea. Awake before the dawn and leaving the house in the barely light.

The days this week I've used trains I've also returned in the dark.

This morning was different. I somehow slept well past sunrise - and it's still another week before the clocks change.

fix mac mail speed with mountain lion

A slightly technical post today because I have been experiencing some hiccups with Mac mail and Mountain Lion.

It worked fine when I first upgraded to Mountain Lion some time ago, but a two-week ago mini update to Mountain Lion seems to have created a few problems.

I noticed that the mail system wanted to rebuild its database on the iMac and the Macbook Air and I just hit yes.

I should probably come clean that I have multiple email accounts across iCloud, POP, IMAP and Exchange as well the related contacts folders and calendars. Oh and 10s of thousands of emails that I haven't archived. And quite a few smart folders. Let's say its a quite large email environment.

Anyway, that spinning beachball re-appeared - something I hadn't seen for ages. I also noticed that the Address Book was behaving suspiciously and wondered if the two were linked.

I had to go into the kind of problem solving that I'm rather familiar with on my PC, but is rather a novelty to me in the Apple world.

I will cut the long story short.

How I fixed it.

The usual caveat applies to not try this unless you know what you are doing, but simply put, it was a case of rebuilding the Address Book, which has regained the normal speed for everything.

Because I use iCloud and Exchange, all the address entries were stored elsewhere, so I had a safe copy of everything before I started. I quit mail and address book.

I then used the Finder 'Go' command to access the '~/Library' directory (which lets you see the hidden Mac folders).

I navigated to the Application Support folder and deleted the Address Book sub-folder - if you don't use the '~/Library' way to access this area you won't see the folder. A warning from me that deleting this folder will delete all of the address book entries - hence the need to be sure you have them stored somewhere else.

I then restarted Address Book - which had just one entry in it - me.

I then added the iCloud directory back in via Preferences. It took about 10 minutes to repopulate a few thousand entries and to rebuild some lists.

Then same again (in my case) for the Exchange directory. Another 10 minutes.

Restart mail - it was still slow because (presumably) it was rebuilding something.

A hardly ever done reboot (for good measure) and the whole thing was then running back at its proper speed. Fast email, fast address book. Yay.

So I've posted this for anyone else with a similar problem - I had to fix both the iMac and the Air, so I am fairly sure this is a general situation

Dear Apple - I think this needs some attention before the next Mountain Lion update.

black cab music for when the bandages come off

It's on my list of things to do. Getting the recent Amanda Palmer album.

I heard it a couple of weeks ago. I've held the album, but not my own copy yet. This is one of the ones where I'd buy a physical copy, rather than just a download.

So my surprise to be in a black cab when the cabby switched on the radio and there was a new track from the album being performed live.

Not the typical cab soundtrack, but one that lasted for more or less the whole journey.

And in my mind a whole lot longer.

Here's the vid from the album launch party - it gives an impression of an evening with Amanda.

Amanda's set with the Grand Theft Orchestra starts at about 15:00. For a quick look try around 33:12 where the band all swap around during "Missed Me". Or better still watch the full 2h35.

plumbing the shallows

Late evening and I was absently listening to the BBC World Service when the US Presidential debate (round 2?) came on.

I wasn't intending to listen but kind of got sucked into the vortex. Careful citizen questions and bland answers. I was genuinely surprised that even compared with the UK's foray into similar formats, this took the biscuit for not saying anything.

Or rather, what crumbs it did provide were so non-specific that it was actually quite difficult to get a taste of anything tangible. Romney, in particular, just described revisionist views of his past and tokenist views of how things could be.

Kind of: "I'll make sure the sky is blue and the sun shines, except when we need the rain. It'll all be fine."

It was keyword politics. Find a keyword in the question and play back the nearest mp3 response. Not the whole track, just the requisite verse.

An exhibition of the classic three Ms of media, money and marketing driving outcome, playing to candidate like-ability with a mere hint of domestic (let alone international) agenda.

In fairness, I thought Obama unloaded a little more content, but maybe they should just introduce some judges and an X-factor style red X over the candidates to guide them toward more (excuse the deliberate X-factor word) "relevance".

Aside from the presumed electorate fatigue after 18 months of television, I can't understand how this superficial debate determines leadership of a world power.

gunpowder in the supermarket

Simple enough, I was leaving the supermarket, having just bought some milk. The doors to the colder outside were open when I caught a tangy chemical smell.

Not damp, more sharp and something that pinged back to childhood. A mix of cold air and something else. Black powder nitrates. The smell from the inside of a sparkler packet.

Strontium, barium maybe copper. Flashback to scarves and improvised displays.

Different nowadays, with most fireworks organised.

Then I spotted the locked freezer-like box in the entrance to the supermarket. Almost stealthily, November 5th is approaching.

the music in that guinness cloud advert is

My supply of emergency posts has pretty much run out.

Blog trade secrets, I know, but I usually keep a few posts that could fill in a gap when I'm particularly busy and occasionally I pre-schedule them if I'm on the road or something that would otherwise create a long gap.

The usual problem is that they go out of date or get superseded by something else.

I'll make an exception with this post-dated post, which is about the recent Guinness advert on telly. I enjoy an occasional pint of the black stuff and recognise that they have some good adverts.

The advery above uses a Danny Elfman music track, which I think is called Ice Dance but most people would recognise as from the Edward Scissorhands movie soundtrack.

A good excuse to post an excerpt from one of Tim Burton's finest as well...

wombled without mudguards

I awoke today to what looked almost like frost on the grass. It was certainly a very dense dew. My original plan had been to join a cycling event but from quite early it started to unpick.

The phone rang and I received a plaintive request to make a special trip to Wimbledon to hand-deliver some forgotten tickets. It was one of those comedy sketch things where I drove to Wimbledon (as instructed), only to be told it was actually Wimbledon Common where I was expected.

They are only a mile or two apart, but it was enough in busy traffic to create a time penalty. And then more comedy as I tried to find the spot on the vast common without an address or road name or anything. Just a vague description that it's opposite 'the tent'.

Several phone calls later the tickets were delivered and I could head back for home through the now busy traffic of south-west London. Not a Womble in sight, although I have just heard that they may have been singing in the tent.

I think the round trip took the suspicious part of two hours scuppering my original plans.

Instead I took out the bike I'm preparing for winter use. All the main bits are working and I clocked around 20 miles. I think the orange colour will be suitably autumnal. A useful spin and it's helped me remember that I still need some mudguards. That'll be a small project during the week.

preparing the stochastic Dirichlet Chinese restaurant method randomiser

The phenomenon of that dancing competition programme affected us all at the end of last week. I'm trying to remember if we were eating a Chinese takeaway when it was on. I'm pretty sure we were drinking some red wine.

The thing is, I somehow got roped into generating a sweepstake linked to whoever will win the competition, which is on BBC television for the next few weeks.

It's probably the last of the not blatantly commercialised shows and seems to be more about positive re-inforcement rather than the negativity inspired concoctions of the Svengali shows.

We had the usual problem of too many people wanting to enter compared with the number of competitor names available, but a simple randomised draw soon fixed the problem.

It was one of those occasions where we could have used a fancy algorithm ensure the sequence had a uniform bound on the compressibility of its initial segments. Instead we used a few strips of paper cut up and placed in a sparkly hat which seemed to do just as well.

I gather the first knockout from the competition is tomorrow. I have - er - Lisa Riley from Emmerdale Farm as my entrant. Go Lisa.

drinking machu picchu coffee can't fully explain the speed of this week

This week has been zinging by. I've only had local travel and even had some reschedules, so I'm not quite sure why its going by so fast.

I'm wondering if its the coffee I've been drinking. I chanced upon a stash of Peruvian Machu Picchu a few days ago - on unexplained special offer in a local supermarket.

The real deal, French-style roasted beans waiting to be ground. Mysteriously on special offer, so I gave them a try.

One of those moments when you know they are going to be brilliant. Like Pacific oysters bursting with wild sea from Elliott's in Seattle, or vintage Champagne from Castellane in Epernay, you just know it's going to be great.

A handful of the beans gives an aroma of high mountain slopes, mist and rain. You can just sense the terrain of the Incas.

Then as it's ground there's a further aroma like chocolate, but still underpinned with a kind of wild damp mountainside.

Of course, you have to actually make it into coffee and drink it.

A fabulous simple pleasure.

Maybe that's why my week has been spinning past so quickly?

mycurtainsareclosedbecauseistartedworksoearly

I'm back in London this week, after my travels of the last week and a half. Actually, I only arrived back on Sunday afternoon and then spent time unpacking bags and sorting out laundry.

This morning I was up before the lark and started working without even opening the curtains or blinds.

But I gather that not opening the blinds is now frowned upon, according to our Chancellor on talk radio this morning.

In fact, the subsequent #mycurtainsareclosedbecause hashtag on twitter could have been stopped me from working if I'd been following the aftermath.

Update: Kate has storified a few of the tweets from various people here