It’s not about features. What is? It’s about cool. The iPad has a nice big screen, crisp clean colours, it’s thin and light and it’s expensive. Apple’s ‘unbelievable price’ tagline made BHG smile, although perhaps not for the reason intended.

 BHG watched a fellow commuter drag one of these out of a bag, poor guy flipped through a couple of emails, scanned the newspaper and then settled in to a game of golf. BHG did the same, on his iPod Touch, all the while eyes sliding to the gorgeous display of the iPad. It really does look amazing.

 It’s ‘fun’ device though. This isn’t a laptop. You won’t be enhancing your productivity by owning one of these. Instead it’s a great way to consume. You can play games, watch movies and listen to music and that’s all about screen size. What you shouldn’t expect to do is contribute using one of these devices.

 BHG thinks that a lot of the criticism levelled at the iPad probably comes from this root misunderstanding. You work at a computer, you blog from your laptop, you consume through your iPad. It’s quite clever really, there’s a clear reason for a person to own a full quite of Apple devices. You can see the automotive industry struggling to do something similar but it’s a tactic suited to consumer technology. Everyone has been flogging the obsolescence horse for a clear two decades combining obsolescence with multiple single focus multi purpose devices is just the next step in cute marketing.

 Apple, we who are about to buy, salute you.

My own travel was almost as easy as being flown. At least it was after I discovered that my mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson C903, includes an efficient route finding programme called, easily enough, Navigator. It was that discovery that brings me to my topic for today. Satellite Navigation systems or Sat Nav’s.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about roads which lead across farmers’ fields, through buildings, off cliffs and across impassable gorges but the more common problems are always the most unsavoury, not least because the common problems are the ones you are probably going to have to experience yourself. After all, no one worries too much about the person who drives off a cliff following a merry yet authoritative voice’s instructions. We can console ourselves with the sheer remoteness of the possibility that this might ever happen to us. It is horrible of course, yet most people have untold capacity for ignoring those horrid things which happen to others as long as their personal occurence remains most improbable.

When the probability of something untoward occuring personally increases, man’s ability to defer his concern reduces in directly inverse proportion. Terror becoming certain when the terrible thing itself become certain. So it is with satellite navigation. The notions that your battery might give out on you, that you may lose that precious signal or that you may pay too much attention to the screen and not enough the world in which you are driving are not only unpleasant but pretty likely too.

What surprises me really is that we render so little attention to the fact that a pocket portable device which can retain a charge for over a hundred and twenty hours can tell me where I am and show me where to go so that I might arrive at where I am going. Most of us are less concerned with the how than we are with what it sounds like when it rings or the colour of the case it comes in. For example, did you know that sat nav systems have to account for relativistic differences in time, produced by the distance and relative speed of the satellites, when calculating your location from the signals they receive? Thank you Einstein. Thank you Sony Ericsson.

Now, if only my C903 had come in glossy red.

Word of the Day: Insatiate
- Adjective

1 – Insatiable: insatiate greed
2 – not satiable;  incapable of being satisfied or appeased

When I made a comment along these lines to the host of the party he smiled and indicated that Andrei had taken photographs of his own children; as well as some portraits of his wife. One small conversation led to another until I found myself speaking with Andrei. His name is russian and russians roll their r’s. Something I’m not the best at really. After a couple of tries he smiled expansively and invited me to call him Andrew. It soon emerged that Andrei had been involved in photography professionally for around fifteen years. Photography had moved from an enjoyable hobby or pastime right through to a business, Creative Photogenic.

Ok, I admit it, I’m jealous. My opinion of my own photographic abilities is pretty high and I was crestfallen when my wife pointed out that I could use a photographer for an ongoing project. Nonetheless, when I took a look through the portfolio at creativephotogenic.com I was really impressed. Several shots stood out to me particularly. One was a grey scale with elements of colour in it; they draw the eye and give the image movement and focus. Another was an artistic grey scale and his portraits of children which really capture their vivacity and energy, like this one. 

If you live in London and you are looking for an affable and affordable family, wedding or fashion tographer then you could do little better than look up Andrei.

Instead let’s take a look at some of the functions I have been playing with lately to save my time in processing data for reports.

Replace:

This neat little gem allows you to edit the values in a column. For example, if your database uses some values with context values included then you can remove the context element on the fly. For example, your database includes customer type in front of each order reference number, like this ‘Bus – 657483′ for business users. You put the context values there for a good reason but now you just want the order numbers. What do you do? You use a Replace function, that’s what you do. Something like this,

Expr1:Replace([warehouse.orders],”Bus – “,”")

The replace function includes some error handling so you might want to nest this within an IIF to handle exceptions. For instance, if your report includes some null values there will return an error value. I do it this way, it may not be the best way, but hey, we live to learn.

Expr2:IIF([warehouse.orders] is null,”",Replace([warehouse.orders],”Bus – “,”"))

Short, sweet, and simple. I think that’s enough for now.

Word of the day: Demotic
- adjective
1 – of or pertaining to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language; vernacular: a poet with a keen ear for demotic rhythms.
2 – of or pertaining to the common people; popular.
3 – of, pertaining to, or noting the simplified form of hieratic writing used in ancient Egypt between 700 b.c. and a.d. 500.

Ah well.

Greenwich to Stratford

It’s a good route. To cross the north bank of the Thames I make my way through the Victorian Greenwich Foot Tunnel. As far as I’m concerned it’s a life saver. If you took the time to follow the link then you now know that this is a pedestrian tunnel. If you anywhere near as pedantic as I am then you will be wondering how on earth a cyclist can become a pedestrian.

You’re not alone.

Many of the cyclists who pass through the tunnel appear to be confused on this point. Allow me to explain. The tunnel is subject to all sorts of useful laws. One of these classifies the tunnel as a public highway, which may not sound like much but in practical terms it means that the tunnel doesn’t close; it’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Another law prohibits cycling through the tunnel. If you ever visit the tunnel you will be able to observe cyclists stood on one pedal in a sort of half-hearted effort to comply with the requirement to walk.

Needless to say, I walk. In a very similar way to the dock workers for whom the tunnel was originally built. Championed by William Crooks and designed by Sir Alexander Binnie, who specialised in crossing over the Thames, the tunnel replaced a rather slip-shod ferry service; quite unlike the fabulous ferries operated in NYC. But that’s a topic for another day.

Season one was something else. Within our circle of friends it was remarkable. We got together and watched the episodes in small groups of three or four. I can’t remember if we split the cost of the boxed set or if one of us had already purchased it. Without the regular advertisements episodes are about 43 to 45 minutes long and they are awesome. Pure awesomeness.

24 is now done with seven seasons. That’s about 125 hours of my life gone forever. Do I mind? No.

Well, perhaps a little. Season four wasn’t any good. While writing this post I’m watching episode nine of season seven. You know what. I think we’re done here.

Word of the day: Isthmus
- noun
1 – a narrow strip of land, bordered on both sides by water, connecting two larger bodies of land.
2 – Anatomy, Zoology. a connecting, usually narrow, part, organ, or passage, esp. when joining structures or cavities larger than itself.
3 – Ichthyology. the narrow fleshy area between the sides of the lower jaw of a fish.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Word of the day: Trichotomy
-noun
1 – Division into three parts, classes, categories, etc
2 – An instance of such a division, as in thought, structure, or object
3 – The three part division of human beings into body, spirit, and soul

Casey Johnson, herself thirty when she died, lay for what appears to be at least three days, unmissed. I’m not sure this says a great deal in favour of her fiance, a person I shall avoid naming or referring to ever again. Casey Johnson didn’t answer her phone and she stopped twittering. But no one called by. No one else was inside her home for one reason or another until an unfortunate maid dicovered her body in a bedroom. On a side note here, two members of my family have been or are police officers. Both of them have discovered bodies in varying degrees of death. Both report that it is a deeply unpleasant experience. Both insist that death, once properly encountered, is not forgotten. Because of them I appreciate my naieveté. In short, I feel for that maid. I presume of course that she is not in the habit, so to speak.

Many, some themselves socialites or famous, have expressed their electronic condolences to Miss Johnson and her family. I have something of an issue with electronic condolences. You see, electronic sentiments mean very little, save those which are hand delivered. Hand delivery is also meaningless (we call it the post, unless the hand is itself known. Empathy for loss doesn’t come cheap. You certainly can’t register for it. I’m not sure empathy works en masse either. Quite unlike advertising, which works best en masse. I’ll let you decide which this is. To be crystal clear about this, I don’t think these individuals are expressing faith in life after death when they tell a person they are missed, I think they are taking advanage of an aquaintance even when they are dead.

Told you it was morbid. Reading the article led me to the obvious question. My answer? If it happened right now, then I would guess a couple of hours. My wife likes to check on me when I stay up to use the computer, it’s a practice of hers I encourage. I suppose there are times when I might go unnoticed for a while. The more I think about it, I think that considering it carefully would encourage anyone to be a better person. I don’t mean idealogically, I mean selfishly. The ultimate selfishness in this sense would be to serve others wholeheartedly and without reservation, then you would be missed. Think about it.

How long would it be?

Word of the day: Denouement
-noun
1 – the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel.
2 – the place in the plot at which this occurs.
3 – the outcome or resolution of a doubtful series of occurrences.

What you can do is plug in a wireless microphone which means that should you graduate from poorly lit unsteady home video clips there are plenty of ways to produce semi-pro videos with this microscopic device. The Kodak Zi8 has a built in rechargeable battery pack, but if you want energy wherever whenever then you could stick with flip as their HD device takes AA batteries. Great for those of us who don’t want to get caught out with no charge.

Wait! I hear you cry who is this gift for?

Oh, you got me! You can check out the video quality here. And while that video was made by someone else I can prove that my Zi8 really was a gift by directing you to the first video that my wife made and uploaded to YouTube using the bundled software.

Ok, yes, I did shoot that video.

Word of the day: Bayou
-noun
1 – a marshy arm, inlet, or outlet of a lake, river, etc., usually sluggish or stagnant.
2 – any of various other often boggy and slow-moving or still bodies of water.

Wired internet and network access becomes very slow.
Wireless internet access remained at normal speed.
Multiple PCs/Mac experience same issues.

When I say slow, I mean ten times slower than dial-up!

The short answer: Replace the modem/router box.

The Ethernet ports in my router had failed. I replaced the router and was back to snappy internet and network performance in ten minutes. If your symptoms match mine, this could well be your problem. Because it might not be I would suggest that you read some more about what happened to me. Oh go on!

Because I run a vista machine at the moment I naturally made mistake number one. I googled for ‘vista very slow internet’. Don’t do that, whatever you do. If you do, and I did, then you will learn all about something called autotuning. Along the way you will learn to do things like run elevated command prompts, use the netsh command. You will read endless pages about TCP/IP protocols and then you will work out that there is in fact nothing wrong with your Vista after all.

Word of the day: truculent
–adjective
1. fierce; cruel; savagely brutal.
2. brutally harsh; vitriolic; scathing: his truculent criticism of her work.
3. aggressively hostile; belligerent.