August 2009 Archives

Last time I tried to install VMware Server, when it was in beta, it was a disaster. I had to do stacks of manual configuration, and in the end it was flaky and unstable. I know it's unfair to judge a program by its beta, but in my mind VMware Server 2 was a 'problem' upgrade.

So it was with great trepidation that I tried again, now the product is out of beta. I'm glad I did. Everything works smoothly out of the box, and it's running just great. It's not VMware ESX, that's for sure, but it's free (as in beer) and it's cool.

...and yet it fails to be a reliable way of getting legitimate copies of music.

I shall explain.

Every time I've gone to buy a single track from the iTunes store, it's been marked as 'album only'. For non-iTunes users, that means that whilst you can download most individual songs, the most popular ones - i.e. those you'd most want to download individually - can only be obtained by purchasing the entire album.

Traditionally, this is the point in the blog post where a big rhetorical 'why' would be deployed. That's not necessary here; it's perfectly obvious why that do this - money. At least, I'm sure that's the reasoning used to justify giving the user an annoying experience. Trouble is, I doubt that it actually works.

I'm one of those that believes that musicians, filmakers, actors and so forth should be paid for their work. So, whilst I frequently torrent stuff, if I watch it and like it, I make a sanctimonious prick of a point of buying it. Battlestar Galactica is the best example, but there are many others. I've spent a fortune on DVDs based on an initial torrent download.

Unortunately, the reverse also applies. If I've tried to do the right thing and buy legitimately, only to be frustrated by shitty DRM or brainless album-only restrictions, I really don't have a problem with torrenting the tracks I want, and paying noone. I tried it their way, and failed. Move along. Nothing to see here.

My group at The Big Bank are in the middle of a huge software deployment. Because so many of the team I'm in have left or are on holiday of one sort or another, I've stepped away from the day-to-day parts of the deployment, in order to do a lot of day-to-day work that noone else would do otherwise.

I figured that having the idea for the big project, doing the design for our company, picking the product, writing the main documents, and administering the special-case early deployment product would count for something.

I was wrong.

Now, I'm 'not involved', and that 'I'll be more involved for the next phase'. I am fucking involved! Every time they deploy one of those appliances, they're deploying something I have pushed through the initiation ritual of the Big Bank Ministry of Wasting Time and Money. Every time they look at the virtual machine it's installed on, they could see that the direct-to-VM deploy is something I suggested, almost everyone opposed, and now everyone seems to think is the best idea ever. Every time they lift a piece of config straight from the old systems and onto the new and it works perfectly first time, they might remember that it's specifically designed that way, to make it easier.

I guess you're only as good as your last status email.

HP excessive packaging world record put to the test (thanks Blue's News).

This is absolutely the way it is at The Big Bank, except that five people could never make a decision unless two were very senior executives.

The blogging software on the Blackberry wasn't up to much, but iBlogger looks a lot more like being useful.

So now I have no excuse for not updating more frequently. Damn.

Those nice folks at LivingDot just upgraded me to Movable Type 4.3. I was having huge problems with the automatic database upgrade, it was taking forever and failing randomly.

Then the penny dropped. Before the upgrade I was desperately trying to make publishing faster, and I put in a default fastcgi handler for .cgi files. Turning it off in my cPanel fixed the problem completely.

Silly me.

Anyway, the upgrade seems to have helped publish speed enormously. It takes about half the time it used to. Yay. Not really tried out any other new stuff yet.

I stopped using Google Chrome as my primary browser. I missed Xmarks. I missed Adblock. I didn't use it in anger enough to really miss FoxyProxy, but I'm sure I would have got there.

Sorry guys, those addictive li'l plugins just pulled me back to Firefox.

It's a shame, really. Chrome is a lovely browser. Process-per-tab just feels right to this raddled old UNIX guy. And it's so very fast. I miss the good bits of it. I know plugins are coming, let's see if the devs follow. I may just have to be one of them.

I tried to fill my car with diesel this morning, as you do. I could not get the nozzle to fit into my car. After risking a potential comedy-person-looking-down-the-barrel moment (which probably would have blinded me, had it gone wrong), I gave up and went into the kiosk.

Tiredly, the lady asked, 'What type of car are you driving?'
'Er, a diesel?', I offered weakly.
'No, what make?'
'Er, a Merc?'
'Oh, there - it works for everything but Mercs.'

Well! I stormed out of there in a flurry of English non-complaining. I feel discriminated against! I mean, just because a lot of Mercedes drivers are cocks doesn't mean we all are! They're fiddling with the pumps now.

In my mind, I stormed back in, having changed into all-black clothes, with a big leather jacket and a beret. The theme from Ironside would play. I summon all my righteous indignation and demand: IS IT COS I IS IN A MERC? YOU AIN'T GOT DA RIGHT!

In my mind.

ps. If by some astounding chance a Daily Mail journalist reads this article: This is a bendy-banana story. The pump was damaged, it's not a conspiracy. I am kidding. Go back to scaring people with dishonest stories about immigration. Stick to what you know.

Waiting now for my iPhone to be updated to 3.0.1. I've had the little thing for a few weeks now, and I just love it. It has that magic that the iPod used to have, of a device that feels good to use.

My friend Lee has an Android phone, and there's a part of me that knows that it's technically better, and morally it makes more sense because the apps are open and the source is available. And yet... And yet... I just don't care. Apple have done a wonderful job, in their own stylish, overpriced, and slightly overbearing way.