* The new Girls Aloud album isn’t as good as Chemistry – what is? – but Call The Shots is yet another perfect pop single. The baby seems to like it too.
* I’ve got a new camera lens. It’s an f1.4 which, photo buffs will appreciate, is several Fs less than standard kit lenses. Those absent Fs give me super photo powers, or something.
* passports for babies. What a load of (expensive) shite.
* amazon’s ebook reader. Not the iPod of the book world.
* that Robert Plant / Alison Krauss album is really rather wonderful, you know.
* the royal bank of Scotland’s new online banking system. Yet another bloody bank card, yet another pin number, plus a portable card reader you need to use for arranging transfers and the like. How very convenient!
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0 responses to “More sleep deprived odds and sods”
Ah yes, new camera lens. I had a new expensive lens once, it came with *lot’s* of F’s …when I managed to let it roll off the worktop.
RBS. Well you don’t think they’ll make it easy for you to get to your money?
What gets me about the passports for babies is that they don’t have to be renewed for five years. If we’re going to have them, they should be for security. I for one feel strangely uncomforted by the fact that they actually make it easier for child abductors to get children across borders: if you’ve got a genuine passport for a 6-month-old, you can use it for pretty much any five-year-old, since it is so usual for kids’ appearances to change dramatically during that time.
Yep. You might as well draw their picture with a biro.
I know a UK citizen who works for Texaco. He’s recently moved from their Texas HQ to the Hague office. Taking his Italian wife and US born kid has been a nightmare, involving several trips to the British Consulate in Canada and from now on 18 month renewals in the UK.
amazon’s ebook reader. Not the iPod of the book world.
It certainly isn’t. But it is what the ignorant say the iPod is: a closed system that can only interact with one company’s store.
It isn’t in another way. The iPod was a way to take all of your music with you in a small and convenient package, so that you could listen to any song, whenever you wanted. Which makes sense when you consider that most songs are only a few minutes long, you can listen to them in any order, and you might want to hear different songs from different albums, all shuffled together.
The Kindle is a way to take, well, not your entire library, but then, at least, all the books that you buy from now on, on Amazon, from the Kindle store. Hmmm. But I can take a paperback with me now, very easily. It usually takes me a few train rides to read a single book, so I only need one book with me at any given time, and I never get the urge to read a few pages from another book, while I’m reading the book I’m currently reading. And my book doesn’t need to be recharged regularly, doesn’t break if I drop it, can be lent to friends, and I can borrow books that belong to friends.
The iPod was a solution to a problem I had. The Kindle is a solution to problems I can’t even imagine, let alone have.
and its fecking ugly too.
I think it’s the answer to a problem that doesn’t exist. I like the idea of electronic ink, but can’t raise any enthusiasm for the Kindle at all.