James’s posterous

James’s posterous

James Evans  //  It's just somewhere to post stuff that I find interesting - if you don't like it, feel free not to read it. Hang around here and you may learn the secrets of life, the universe and everything (but I wouldn't bet on it).

Oct 18 / 2:34am

Search your local Tesco from your iPhone
via cultofmac.com

This will only be of interest if you have an iPhone, shop at Tesco and, frankly, are a bit weird. Tesco have launched an app to help you find things in their shops and it seems to work really well (although I haven't actually been to a store to check - that's beyond the call of duty). With this and the self-service checkout you can complete your weekly grocery purchase without speaking to another human being. Progress rolls relentlessly on.

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Oct 17 / 3:42am

Leeds Airport; not bad, considering

Ok, so it's fairly small, and the selection of shops and restaurants is fairly limited, but service this morning was quick and there were no hold-ups anywhere. If only Gatwick ran as smoothly.

Almost bought a book at WHSmith called "Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter". High quality fiction if ever I saw it, but I resisted temptation and walked away. I'll get it from Amazon instead when I've finished reading "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies".

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Oct 14 / 9:50am

JK Rowling denied top US honour for promoting sorcery

Matt Latimer, former speech writer for President George W Bush, said that some members of his administration believed her books promoted sorcery.
via news.bbc.co.uk

The thing about promoting sorcery, even if you do it deliberately, persuasively and over an extended period of time, is that sorcery doesn't work in the real world, and I think that's an important lesson for anyone interested in Government. The key point is to distinguish between fiction (Harry Potter et al) and fact (the real world, where magic never works and we no longer burn witches); anyone who can't do this deserves quite a lot of sympathy and help.

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Oct 14 / 9:46am

Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually "unnecessary".
via news.bbc.co.uk

I think I can forgive him this minor flaw; the web makes life so much easier in so many ways that I'm not inclined to grumble about such a trivial inconvenience as occasionally having to type a couple of extra characters.

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Oct 13 / 11:12am

The view from Waterloo Bridge

The iPhone camera may have its problems, but you can still take moderately interesting photos, even in poor light (I think - I may change my opinion when I've seen these shots on a big screen). These were taken this evening as I hurried to catch the 1905 from Waterloo.

   
Click here to download:
The_view_from_Waterloo_Bridge.zip (269 KB)

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Oct 12 / 11:08pm

The Guardian Prevented from Reporting Parliament

What happens when newspapers can't report on Parliament? Well, almost anything. Why gag The Guardian? What is the Government scared of?

The story is here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament) if you're interested, and it's worrying enough that you really should be: 

"The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights."
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Oct 10 / 2:36am

Restaurant Elevant, Moose and Crocodile

How do you pick restaurants? Reputation, food, value, proximity, ambience and even service might be considerations; on Wednesday evening we choose Elevant (http://www.elevant.ee/en/ - very nice, worth a visit) in Tallinn because they had curried moose on the menu.

I quite like trying strange foods (or, to be precise, the idea of trying strange foods; the dishes themselves are often pretty awful) so curried moose had a certain appeal, being interestingly unusual, but then somebody noticed the Crocodile in Mango Sauce and all thoughts of moose were chased away by thoughts of spicy reptile.

So, you ask, what was it like? The sauce was quite good (although I'm not sure mango is a good match for crocodile), the starters were very tasty, the rice was rather nice. The crocodile itself was fairly tough and tasted a bit like fishy chicken; it wasn't unpleasant, and I finished it, but my colleague's curried moose was definitely more palatable.

So, tip of the day; avoid the croc, choose the moose. Or the wild boar. Or the lamb. Or the chicken. Next time, I'm hoping for curried herring.

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Oct 9 / 1:26am

iPhone OS 3.1.2 Now Out

And it's a big update! Well, no, actually it isn't, but it looks like it might be a useful improvement, particularly if you use the phone to make, you know, phone calls. Full details:

iPhone OS 3.1.2 Software Update

This update contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following:

  • Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
  • Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
  • Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming
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Oct 7 / 7:44am

Suliko Gruusia Restoran
via suliko.ee

I'm in Tallinn at the moment, and the website of this food outlet (I can't bring myself to call it a restaurant) is quite astonishing. It looks very much as if their translation work was handled by a drunk monkey with a faulty thesaurus and a desire to torture the English language.

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Oct 2 / 2:28pm

The New Apple TV

It's only a rumour, of course, but the expectation is that Apple will launch new versions of the Apple TV sometime fairly soon; they've dropped the old 40Gb model and reduced the price of the 160Gb version, presumably to clear stock. How are they going to do it? I don't actually know, but the feature set of the existing Apple TV is pretty much identical to that of the iPod Touch, with the obvious exception of the form-specific elements, and maybe Apple could produce a next-gen TV product by marrying the iPhone OS to a decent CPU and a very large hard-drive. 

Would they want to sell apps to customers sitting in front of their TV? I can't see why not, and if they marry this hypothetical product with a decent controller they've got a pretty neat games console and a media centre able to exploit the huge variety of apps and media available through iTunes. It's a compelling idea.

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