The Rift’s opening!

Don’t get too close! He’ll fuck you up!

You find yourself sitting on a train, waiting to leave at the station platform.

In one hand, you have a ticket home which can only be used today. In the other, a ticket home which can be used only tomorrow.

The train won’t leave for a couple of minutes. You have time to make the decision. And what a decision.

I get could off the train, quick. I could stay another day… I could get hurt, or it could all be okay.

I could stay on the train. I could go home, lick my wounds and spend my week’s food budget on alcohol, and try again another day.

Risk it all; I could win and life would never be the same again, or I could lose and be found floating face-down in Cardiff Bay. Or play it safe and just carry another scar.

The moment was electric. I knew that whatever I decided, it would affect me for months afterwards.

I already had both tickets. There was no financial cost to worry about. Which ever way I went, I had food and water and a place to stay.

…and just as I stood up, the doors locked.

“You spent $120 on… trousers?”

The GPS and everything is great and all, but this is why I need to upgrade.

Nope, I’m not bored of this song yet. Not yet.

There’s a great demo video on the site, and it’ll really show you everything you need to know, but I discovered something awesome last night, and now I’m totally sold; on the Mac, it installs itself into the “print to PDF” menu, so now I can send receipts straight into my library.

Keeping all my documents and receipts together now is such a no-brainer, and I can get at them from my iPhone, my Mac at home and my PC at work. If/when I hit the free service’s limits, it’s a dead cert I’ll get a premium account.

Fantastic!

1. Go find Becky at the train station.
2. Convince Spirit to go out for coffee.
3. Buy a delivery label slip so I can SEND MY FUCKING XBOX BACK AND GET IT REPAIRED OH GOD MY LIFE IS EMPTY WITHOUT GUITAR HERO.

Me: LOL!

Andy: “Lots Of Love”? I don’t think that’s very appropriate…

Me: No, it doesn’t mean…

Andy: Doesn’t it? I thought it did. “Oh, you’re sick? LOL!” Or, “Is that your leg over there? LOL!”

Me: LOL!

And then the day ends with that episode of Doctor Who. And again, I don’t want to say anything more, for the sake of anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

But, OH MY GOD, this was one of the big ones. This one had a little bit of everything, with a shout-out to Torchwood and those two beautiful, incredible words…

I remember when last year’s “The Sound of Drums” kinda evoked “Children of Men“’s urban dystopia, but hell, that’s got nothing on “Turn Left”. British society decimated, martial law, refugees, labour camps (or, at least, “that’s what they called them last time” and FUCK ME how dark is this going to get?)

But don’t let my dumb grin fool you. Maybe — MAYBE — I was a little harsh on Catherine Tate being in the show, but Donna Noble has still been majorly fucking irritating at times. These episodes have been despite Donna, not because of her.

But hey, forget that for now. I’ve had an amazing 40 minutes of TV, and an incredible teaser for next week to boot. I’m blown away.

It really is exciting to see the BBC discussing and embracing standards.

…I’m a little bit in love.

The game and the hardware look great, but GOOD GOD do I want to snub it just to spite whoever thought that video was a good advertisement.

Now all I need is to be allowed to merge my normal Google account with my Google Apps account. My contacts are held in the “Google Apps” side, and everything else (i.e. my YouTube account, my maps and Reader) are in the normal Google account. This sucks.

Oh please oh please oh please…

If you have a LiveJournal account then you already have an OpenID. On the login page, just enter your LiveJournal URL (e.g. “foxboomdotcom.livejournal.com”) and you’re done!

Likewise, if you have a Yahoo! account then you can make that an OpenID too.

And if you for sure don’t already have an OpenID, you can get one from myOpenID, like I did.

Love for you all!

[Edited: Terrana is totally right.]

Love!

This article has the solution. Much love!

Damned Cardiff, getting all the interesting weather…

Since light moves at the speed of, well, light, we can look at distant objects and see them how they looked in the past. Look to the very ends of the visible Universe, and you see light that was emitted billions of years ago, shortly after the Big Bang.

It’s handy, but there’s a problem. That mysterious dark energy force, which is accelerating the expansion of the Universe is making the most distant galaxies move faster and faster away from us. Eventually, they will cross an event horizon and appear to be moving away from us faster than the speed of light. At this point, any light emitted by the galaxy will cease to reach us. Any galaxy that crosses this horizon will fade away from view, until its last photon reaches us. All galaxies will disappear from view forever. (“The End Of Everything”, Fraser Cain)

I knew the expansion of the Universe was accelerating but I never took it to that natural conclusion, and the rest of the article is just as cool.

“Napalm Pie!”

“…Napalm Pie!”

…so says Rune.

I posted a bunch of photos from my commute to my Flickr gallery. Go and revel in my routine.

“I don’t even know if I can take credit for writing ‘Cliffs of Dover’ … it was just there for me one day … literally wrote in five minutes … kind of a gift from a higher place that all of us are eligible for. We just have to listen for it and be available to receive it.” (Eric Johnson)

OMG I totally love Guitar Hero III.

“I need to get some rice in.”

“Ricin?!

“…no, rice in.”

On my iPhone, I prefer the native calendar application to the Google Calendar web application. On my laptop, I prefer the Google Calendar web application to iCal. I want to be able to create and edit events on the iPhone application when I’m on there, and in Google Calendar when I’m not. On top of that, I need my calendar to be published online so I can import it into my work calendar in the office, and so my housemate can see it.

So far, I’ve had to ditch Google Calendar, and just sync my iPhone with iCal, and have iCal automatically upload my calendar to a private server so my housemate and work can get to it. The problem is, I need to remember to open iCal every time I sync my iPhone, otherwise changes I’ve made on it don’t get uploaded immediately.

This is too much hassle. Like, way too much.

I’ve downloaded the trial version of BusyMac. I’m hoping to be able to use the iPhone native calendar and Google Calendar together, depending on where I’m logged in, use Google Calendar as the public version, and publish my calendar on my LAN via Bonjour.

Yep, that’s nice and simple… kinda. If it works!

“Wow, your comic is so emo, it breaks the fourth wall!”

My friends are taking so much more awesome photos than I am lately.

I’ve got an all-day event starting on March 28 and ending on April 3, but there’s a dot on April 4 too. If I move the end date back, the dot moves back… but there’s always a dot on the day after the event ends.

This isn’t right… right?

The last time I reported a bug to Apple, it turned out that I just misunderstood how the thing worked. I don’t want to make a boob of myself again, so I’ll ask you guys first.

There was a double rainbow outside work yesterday. See?

I’m sorry, yes, it’s quite awful.

I was there!

I just uploaded a couple of new shots. Like this one!

I love the score for that show. It’s on edge — there’s always danger. It’s tribal, primal. It’s so human, yet from another time. It’s beautiful.

I am!

Maybe that’s a little harsh… but seriously, we don’t need another ‘virus makes people crazy’ show.

But I’m gonna watch it anyway. I love the novel, I love the movie… it might not be so bad.

Go!

There’s an official answer, but I just figure it’s somewhere between blogging and instant messaging. There are Twitter clients for a million platforms and mobile devices, and you can use them at any time to broadcast — in 140 characters or less — what you’re doing or thinking or feeling. And if anyone cares, they’ll get an SMS, or their Twitter client will pop up, or their RSS reader will get a new item, or whatever.

Can I call it “micro blogging”? Can I call it “targeted broadcast IM”? Is it a fad that’ll be forgotten next year? Is it the next big thing? Or is it just free and fun?

I am FoxBoom. Follow me.

However, since the 1.1.3 firmware update lets me put links right onto the home screen… it turns out I only use a handful of websites on the iPhone, so I’ve put them all on there and I haven’t touched my bookmarks since.

Which means I’m back in Firefox, and back on del.icio.us. Good stuff!

I’ve tried Don’t Forget The Milk and some others… I’ve totally forgotten about them. Yeah, they were that memorable. I guess to be fair, I was really looking for a client-side application rather than something web-based. Apple Mail handles to-do items, but I don’t use it because I prefer GMail’s web interface.

I realise the inconsistency of my desires. They make me fun to be around!

But, hey! Things looks pretty awesome. I’ve mapped the “new task” command to ALT-space, so I can record things anytime. It’s super-simple and fast. And the preview release is free until Spring. Get!

1. Dude I’ve been trying to see is in a relationship. But looking at his partner, I’m not his type anyway.
2. My Jabber ID was out of date. It’s jon@foxboom.com and nothing else.

It’s like, OMG, what’s wrong with me?

I bought some gin on the way home, but I couldn’t find any tonic water. Crazy!

1. I have been confused for a girl three times.
2. I have been accused of being a lesbian.

The BBC’s iPlayer now works on the iPhone.

The website itself isn’t really iPhone-friendly for reading, but the videos are just simple H.264 streams which play full-screen. There’s an awesome blog post on the technical details if you’re interested.

I just got a letter from HM Revenue and Customs telling me that I should have been paying back my student loan all of last year, but my employer only handled the last few months, and so, the 700 GBP/1400 USD tax bill still stands.

I rang them up, and they totally confirmed it.

I’m gonna head out to the bank and see if I can pick up a loan, otherwise my laptop will have to end up on eBay.

OH POOP THIS SUCKS REAL BAD.

It isn’t a bad movie… but it isn’t great. I can’t even call it good. It’s just… there.

I spent the last month or so trying to avoid spoilers, and you know what? In the end, there’s nothing to spoil. There is absolutely nothing unique or original about this movie that I can think of.

And am I missing something here, or did the movie start by saying the footage was found on an “digital SD card camcorder”, but during the movie it keeps rewinding and fastforwarding and recording over bits of existing footage and… man, I don’t know.

I can’t fault the filming techniques or the special effects. They were awesome. But everything else… this movie was exactly as good as ‘The Blair Witch Project’. Take from that what you will.

P.S. Cloverfield sucks.

Expect random phonecalls. Especially at inconvenient times if you’re in the States.

In a post about the difficulties of getting protected media into the living room:

“Mentioning this to a very tech savvy colleague this morning, he replied that he downloaded programmes through BBC iPlayer, stripped the DRM (hence his anonymity!), re-encoded the file, burned it to DVD from his PC, then took it to his DVD player connected to his TV in the lounge.” [Ashley Highfield, “IP to TV: How?”

The blog also confirms that the BBC wanted to get the iPlayer onto the Xbox 360 but it didn’t work out, and are interested in getting content on the new Apple TV — now that it handles rentals, and not just lifetime purchases. But at least I can look forward to iPlayer on the Virgin Media television platform.

I’m really interested in these new television distribution models. Not least of which because my 40″ TV still doesn’t actually pick up any broadcasts, and it’s gonna be so much easier for me to plug in some kind of IP TV than to get an aerial fitted.

Speaking of J.J. Abrams, you lucks sods in the States got Cloverfield today. Man, I’ve been looking forward to this one for so long, but I’ve got to hang on for a couple more weeks.

That was a bit of excitement.

This morning, whilst enduring an ad break during Deep Space Nine, I browsed through the settings on my phone, and found the “default search engine” page. Just for fun, I hit Yahoo!, and gave it a whirl.

For comparison, this is what a search for “Jon Eccleston” looks like in Google:

…and here’s the same search in Yahoo:

Wow! Look at that! Yahoo! has formatted the results for the iPhone, giving them a nice big, readable font, with iPhone-like list item separators.

Google, despite having the more accurate results (though I don’t mind my photo gallery being the top match) has to be zoomed to be useable. Yahoo! is useable as soon as it loads, and it looks great to boot.

Plus, you can’t tell from the photos, but Yahoo! lists the first few web matches, then also includes a few image matches, and any matching photos from Flickr. There’s a whole variety of results, presented in one simple, easy to read list.

Yahoo! oneSearch FTW!

“Payment processing is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

I’ve been trying again and trying again for months. I’ve been trying my other credit card, and my debit card for months.

I don’t know why it took me months to write to Apple Support, but last night I eventually did… and they told me it was my bank’s fault. But all those cards work just fine anywhere else online or in retail…

I’m sick to fucking death of Apple Support telling me “.mac is fine, it’s just you” or “iTunes is fine, it’s just you”.

This is the company I had to take to court because their support team stole my iPod. This is the company whose support team had to repair my Macbook Pro three times because they didn’t test it before returning it. This is the company whose online backup service wouldn’t let me restore my backups! And now, the company I’ve been evangelising for years won’t help me buy from their music store.

They build great hardware, but so help me, Apple’s service and support really pisses me off.

And: I found out this lunchtime that this guy I’ve been fawning over for, like, months, has, like, totally already got a boyfriend. I feel quite angry and slightly used.

And: tonight, Swolf cooked the best chicken I’ve ever eaten. Two large chicken breasts dusted in paprika and wrapped in bacon, then wrapped in foil and stuck in the oven at 200c for 30 minutes.

Happy New Year, mailbox-heads!

I know my photos have been used on a bunch of websites (and I’m totally happy, since all that I’ve seen always link back to the original gallery), and this new statistical view should be great for keeping tabs.

Time for a new emo profile photo… and, look! A phishing link in the first comment! Now I feel popular!

I’ve reported the link to Flickr, and I’ll delete it as soon as they’ve looked at it.

My vote always has and always will be for SparkleNinja.

I used to have “joneccleston”, but I forgot the password and its associated e-mail address is long gone…

You can now watch FoxBoom! on LiveJournal by adding foxboom_rss.

• Yes, I hate the opening theme.
• Yes, the plot was a smooch bland.
• Yes, the special effects blew my mind.
• Yes, I did blink and miss where most of the characters went. Like, what happened to the dude in the purple suit? And on that same note: Yes, I did lose count of how many characters fell to their deaths. Did they get a special deal on the wire rig or something?
• No, the trailer for Catherine Tate’s season did nothing to alleviate my fears.

Is Christmas finished now? It was good to catch up with Orona.

And OH MY GOD I’ve had a cake in the fridge now for three days and I haven’t had a chance to eat it yet. TOMORROW.

“joneccleston@mac.com” is going to expire, and I don’t know whether to create a new AIM name or go back to a previous forgotten one.

My first choice for IM is still foxboom@googlemail.com on Jabber (i.e. Google Talk, LJ Talk, etc.), but AIM is a close second-choice just because I don’t have to launch anything else outside of iChat.

Oh God…

“All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin.” [GlaDOS]

Okay, we all know GlaDOS tells a few fibs, but we have to at least assume that the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device can survive that heat. I’m happy to assume that if Aperture Labs can (and have good reason to) build a portal gun capable of withstanding 4000 kelvin then it’s no great stretch of the imagination to see a storage cube surviving the same.

But this raises the question, why the pretence of euthanising the Companion Cube if it’s known by the test’s designers that the cube will survive? I think it’s clear that the experiment is testing Chell just as much as the portal gun itself, and I believe the forced perception of incineration of the Companion Cube is to invoke an emotional reaction in order to influence the upcoming tests (i.e. to change Chell’s perception of the experiment’s handlers, to invoke feelings of revenge or determination, or potentially depression). Following on, I believe it’s possible that the Companion Cube’s re-appearance at the end of the testing could be a helpful component of the test subject’s counselling.

“I’m not even angry,
I’m being so sincere right now,
Even though you broke my heart and killed me,
And tore me to pieces,
And threw every piece into a fire,
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!” [GlaDOS]

But we know those euthanising fires aren’t totally harmless to all Aperture Labs technology. GlaDOS herself admits she died when you threw her components in the fire, but if she’s “still alive” then how can this be?

We already know that GlaDOS tried to kill the human inhabitants of the lab, but rather than dismantle her, it was decided to keep her alive and working, but to also fit a “morality core” to stop it happening again. GlaDOS proved herself to be a dangerous machine, but for one reason or another, it was worth keeping her alive.

It seems to me to be perfectly plausible that, beyond that “morality core”, a simple fallback method of destroying her would also have been implemented. And given her total control over all the computer systems in the lab, I’d expect that termination procedure to be entirely physical… say, the physical removal and destruction of her core components? Say, by making the core components easy to remove and fitting a euthanising tube in the room? And not one of the “fake” tubes used for emotional and psychological testing… one hot enough to even destroy Aperture Labs materials? And isn’t it possible that GlaDOS could become aware of this contingency, and personally arrange for some backups to be kept in a quiet little storage room somewhere…?

“There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn’t come because you murdered him.” [GlaDOS]

But of course, there was a party! And there was a companion cube there… but was it your Companion Cube? I say yes!

Let’s assume your Companion Cube survived the fire. He sits and waits, and is plucked out by a robotic transporter, like the ones seen placing turrets… and the one at your party, with your Companion Cube?

As I said earlier, I believe it was the designers’ intention to rescue the Companion Cube and re-unite you with him. The mechanisms for retrieval (i.e. survival capability and transport devices) are present.

Companion Cube is still alive.

• “do you see what i just said”
• “aperture labs coffee mug”
• “portal ending lyrics”
• “lol andenanden an den hepuditin indabox andenhe eeted it lololol!”
• “westward bound shop”
• “westward bound the barbican plymouth”
• “im so excited and delighted today”
• “cloverfield evangelion”
• “pete darkfox”
• “terrorists”
• “lesbians”
• “my dreams are all dead and buried sometimes i wish the sun would just explode”
• “cbeebies”
• “feedghost setup”

These Christmas cards are different.