Inspirational video

I'm not sure what it is but I really like this video.

MacBook Pro battery

I have had my MacBook Pro for just over 2 years now (2 years and about 3 months) and I just started getting a warning sign for my battery. I went to the apple store and they told me that my battery had expired. It has had its 300 charge cycles and needs to be replaced.

Now don't get me wrong I am very happy with my MacBook Pro and based on my experience 2 years is about right for a laptop battery. This is my laptop and I'm not planning on replacing it until June/July next year (I'm on a minimum of a 3 year replacement cycle). I see no need to replace my MacBook Pro right now I have a 2.4Gh Core 2 Duo processor with 4Gb of RAM and nice as the new MacBook Pros are, they aren't enough better; maybe when quad core ones come along.

So I have to ask myself do I spend £97 on a new battery now, or do I wait. So far although the apple store says my battery is at 60% of capacity and needs replacing I can still get 1-2 hours of usage from it, which is good enough for me generally. So right now I wont be buying a replacement battery. I'm guessing in 9 months time I may reconsider and if the quad core MacBook Pros are out I may go for a replacement computer, otherwise I guess I'll be buying a new battery then.

Alasdair

Verified by Visa

I have considered for a while writing up my thoughts on Verified by Visa, in fact I have started and thrown several blog posts away. So here goes what I hope will be my last attempt.

Verified by Visa is a "new" scheme introduced by Visa to help combat internet credit card fraud. The system is "voluntary" although many banks are forcing their customers to enrol. The scheme essentially works like this:

1. You enter your details onto a website to make a purchase.
2. The website either redirects you to a website owned by your bank, or it does an include of the website owned by your bank. The include looks like it is part of the retailers website and while the content is generated by the bank it looks like part of the retailer website and you cannot see the banks certificate information.
3. The new website presents some secret information you have previously agreed with your bank, to identify itself to you.
4. You enter a "password" you previously agreed to use.
5. You are redirected back to the retailed and the transaction goes through.

So having seen this program I had to ask myself "what problem is it trying to solve?". It took me a while to come up with an answer, and it is a little underwhelming. It "solves" the problem of you loosing your card and someone picking it up in the street and using it online; it also solves the problem of someone copying the information on your card down. These people will not have access to your password (assuming you did not choose "password1").

As far as I can tell so far it does not help alleviate the problems of unscrupulous retailers, or man in the middle attacks.

Although I describe the problem being solved as underwhelming I would still, in theory, use it, defence in depth is important and it is an extra layer in the defence.

In a future post I will explain why I refuse to use Verified by Visa as implemented by my bank.

Alasdair

Snow Leopard experiences

So I've been using Snow Leopard for a while now, so I thought I would detail some first impressions. First the good things:

1. Cisco VPN support built in. The Cisco VPN client on the mac caused me many problems, and frequently caused kernel panics. Snow Leopard has a built in client so I've uninstalled the Cisco software and my system is far more stable.
2. It is smaller. I got hard drive space back. This is great.
3. Faster. It feels much more responsive.

There are some things I want to try out, but haven't had a chance to. I have a mac and an iPhone and keeping my email, contacts and calendar in synch is not as easy as I would like. Snow Leopard has added Microsoft Active Sync support, and the iPhone has it, so I want to try that out and see if I get a better solution. The only problem is that I need to get an email provider that has ActiveSync.

Finally the not so good:

1. Wireless is less reliable. I turn my wireless network off when I'm not using it. If my mac is turned on when I turn the wireless network on then it doesn't pick up the wireless network. I suspect this might be related to my wireless network not broadcasting its network name, but it is still not good.
2. 1Password does not work with Safari 4 very well. I have it working now (I had to make Safari 4 run in 32-bit mode), but each 1Password update has a habit of breaking things

So generally I'm very happy, other than a few minor niggles

Thanks
Alasdair

Back from Holiday

I've been back from my holida for a week now, so it is time to do the obligatory post holiday blog post including photos. First off a brief summary of what I did:

• Spent four days attending an OSGi alliance face to face in Palo Alto. Technically not vacation, but I did it and it was a lot of fun.
• Went to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. This is free if you enter between 9-10am Monday, Wednesday and Friday and it is really peaceful. I would definatly go again.
  
• Went to San Francisco Zoo. This only cost $15, which is much cheaper than Marwell Zoo (my local zoo), but was much smaller, and the animals all seemed very bored and the cages seemed small. I would not go back.
• Went to Vancouver to visit my friends Tim and Steph. Incidentally they took me to a restaurant called Naam which was really good, they had vegan and vegetarian food, but I would not suggest going for the burgers.
• Visited the Vancouver Aquarium, which was great. I got to see some dolphins, which I have always wanted to see. They had been caught up in fishing nets and could not be released into the wild.
• Went to Los Angeles, and got a tour of Universal  Studios.

I had a great time. I also got to play Lucidity which is a new XBLA game from LucasArts. It is kind of a mixture of Lemmings and Tetrus. The artwork is great although I am biased because my brother worked on the game.


So holiday is over and I'm back to work now. I've finally caught up on email (over 500 in the one week I hadn't checked email) although I had to spend time at the weekend catching up.

And finally some links to photos:

San Francisco 2009

Vancouver 2009

There are a few I really like, ones which I would have entered for the Hursley Photo competition, if the submission date hadn't been the day I got home from my holiday.

A particular favourate is this one:

I just need to plan my next holiday now.
Alasdair

Veggie in San Francisco

So I have been in San Francisco for just over a week now and I have been very well catered for veggie wise. Two highlights:

1. Underdog. A hot dog store on Irving and 16th Ave, along with their selection of "normal" meat hot dogs they have a Veggie and Vegan selection. Photo to the right.
   
2. Pizzaiolo in Oakland (5008 Telegraph Ave, just off 52nd St), while they do not have Vegan food on the menu (and their veggie selection is very small) they had heard of vegan and were able to prepare a varient on one of their dishes that contained no cheese or meat, very good. There is no sign so you need the address, they have a patio too.

For those who know how adventerous I am not I have had Japanese tea in the Japanese tea garden in the Golden Gate Park. Green Tea with brown rice mixed in. No I didn't finish it, but I drank most of it (it got cold towards the end).

Well goto go, Mexican tonight with some of my brothers friends, fingers crossed.

Alasdair

AA gold status

I currently have gold status on American Airlines (AA) air miles program. I have not flown yet this year, so I had resigned myself to loosing this status. For those who don't know gold status gives you a bonus on the number of miles you earn per mile flown. It is either 25%, or 50%. You get priority boarding and checkin, you can request an upgrade in advance, and that is about it. It might not seem much, but it really makes things go much more smoothly.

So last week I got an email telling me that AA were launching a double elite qualifying points system. This means that for a few months this year if you fly 10k miles then it will be counted as 20k miles for gaining status. You need 25k for gold status. So I went off excited thinking my trip to San Francisco would help me, in one go, get gold status. But it wont. I'll be about 1,000 miles away :(

So I need an extra 1,000 miles to get gold status again. So a return flight to LAX will do it (337 miles each way with double qualifying points). I'm not fussed about visiting LAX, so anywhere up or down the Pacific will do. Looking at the options.

Alasdair

P.S. Just saw a trailer for a new series of Merlin. WooHoo!!! I just hope it doesn't start while I am on holiday, or if it does that iPlayer has it series linked. I just wish Nimueh was not killed in the last series :(