Simon Speight

We’ve just bought ourselves a new monitor: specifically, one of these.

Its amazing.  We’ve gone from a 17″ CRT (which had gone decidedly dark) to this 22″ wide screen LCD and the difference is breath taking.

Its so bright we may have to turn it down a bit, its so big you can comfortably read things from further away, its so wide our background photo now looks stretched and its so thin that we’ve reclaimed some space on the desk!

But damn it, we deserve this.  Apart from my first PC I ever bought 11 years ago, this is the first new monitor I’ve ever owned.  Our previous monitor, the 17″ CRT, was a hand-me-down from a relative.  The previous, a 15″ CRT, was also a hand-me-down from my parents when the one before (a second-hand 19″ CRT which I got cheap off a bloke at work) broke.  I can’t even remember the one before that - probably a 15″ CRT.

So this time, a few more pounds were spent to get us something approximately up to date.  I nearly went 19″ but when I saw the price of this (and the excellent reviews, which I must agree with) I couldn’t resist.

What was more surprising was that my graphics card (a 64Mb NVidia GeForce 2 MX 400, which must be 6 years old as its the same age as the PC) coped perfectly.  I wasn’t sure it’d reach the 1680 x 1050 resolution that the monitor requires for optimum performance, but bless it, no sooner had I plugged the monitor in than it gave me that as an option.  Stirling stuff.

I haven’t watched a DVD in this new wide-screen form factor yet but I can’t wait, I bet it’ll look great.  And if the DVD itself isn’t in wide-screen then that’s also easy - there’s a button on the front of this incredible screen that switches it into 4:3 aspect ratio in one press.  Astounding.

If you’re after a new screen I can heartily recommend this one (and get it from Ebuyer too, great price and incredibly quick delivery even though I opted for the ’slow’ free option).

If you can’t get a new monitor then you can just be jealous of mine

Earthcomber Sues TechCrunch

If I’m honest I haven’t the first clue what the lawsuit is about, I’ve never heard of Earthcomber (is that the point?) or Loopt but that isn’t what I want to write about.

Its Mike Arrington, or rather his style.  He’s notoriously blunt and straight talking - something of a rarity these days.

But the thing about blunt people - its funny how often you agree with them. So while I know nothing about this situation, I admire his principles when he says:

We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win.

More people like Mike in the world, while initially daunting, would ultimatly be A Good Thing.

I, like many others I imagine, use Google Reader to read my RSS feeds.

But just lately it seems to be displaying an odd behaviour.  I read all the new items in a feed from the top down, but when I get to posts I remember reading yesterday Google Reader still reports a few unread in the subscription list on the left.

But I can never find them.  And if I tell Google Reader to show me unread items in that feed, it says there are none.  The only way I can find to clear it is to click “Mark all as read”.

This has always happened occasionally to me, but I never really minded.  But now its happened to me a few times just today, and that’s starting to become too often.

I moved to Google Reader from being a very happy Bloglines user.  One use of the then-new Google Reader made me switch instantly and I’ve never even looked at another RSS reader since.

Flakiness like this though means I might start looking, just in case.

Is anyone else seeing this problem in Google Reader or is it just me?

Last year I tested the speed of my broadband connection using Speed Test.

Having randomly come across that post, I thought I’d test my connection again today.  Here’s the result:

Its slower!  And not just a bit either, that’s a significant difference.

Hmm, not impressed.  I’m still paying the same price to Virgin (and I’ve got issues with the price - since they’re offering new customers half that price) so why the hell has the speed dropped?

I’m going to do this test a few more times over the coming days, at different times of day.  If I’m not happy with the results then someone is going to hear about it…

I’ve just been busy lately.

Work is crazy - being the start of the University academic year we’ve had so much to do.  In my job this means preparing for new members of staff (involving setting up of new PCs, giving IT inductions and, this year, 20-odd office moves) and getting all the new student’s (this year over 300 undergraduates and nearly 200 postgraduates) data together for our administrative databases and timetable.  And all of this with our team being one person down - there really hasn’t been much time to stop and think.

Been pretty busy at home too.  Life generally brings with it a certain amount of stuff you have to do, but I’ve also been busy working on a few web sites in my spare time.  The money is of course extremely welcome and most of the work is now done (with some more on the horizon, I hope) but for a while there I was just working all both ends of the day (and weekends).

Still, as I always admit, I’d complain more if I wasn’t busy.

So, its been a very long time since I wrote anything here.

This time, its not that I’ve been excessively rubbish, I’ve actualyl been trying out using Tumblr for blogging.

I actually found that I really, really like Tumblr and for a while I was planning to use it as my blogging platform, but…… I just love WordPress too much!

So I’m back, and this is my ‘return to WordPress’ post.

I’m going to try and port some of the posts I made in Tumblr over to this blog, so for those (few) of you reading this via the RSS feed, apologies if you see some posts appear with dates in the past - its not a mistake, its me moving content.

I may go my entire life without ever learning to be as succinct, straight-to-the-point or as witty as Mark is.

His point is worth repeating here:

To all Hillary supporting but non-Obama voters: Just what was it that made you racist?

Following on from my last post, I had to counter it with some antidote to the mindless flotsom of the modern popular music scene.

This is Machine Gun by the almighty Portishead.

I am madly in love with this song.  My reasons for this are threefold:

1. The newest Portishead album, Third, was a little disappointing but this song (which managed a mere track is far far far far far and away the best thing on it.
2. This is the most innovative song I’ve heard in many years and honestly has rejuvenated my belief in the originality of a whole generation, which was seriously in question.
3. I can use this song to introduce people to the beautiful possibilities of the electronic sound.

Bless you Portishead.  May you live long, happy, prosperous and prolific lives.

I couldn’t agree more.  After 50 years of the same formula (4 piece band, guitars, lead singer yaawwwnnn) it amazes me that we (in this country at least) keep churning the crap out and call it “new” music.

I’m glad someone finally said it.