xset

2 massive Weekends and summer’s last hurrah

// August 31st, 2007 // No Comments » // Personal

The weekend is almost upon us … again. It seems that these things come round more often than I’d expect.

Either way, this weekend sees Jersey play host to the music event of the island’s season – Jersey Live 2007. It’s not quite Glasto but for this ickle island I’d think that 20,000 over 2 days is pretty hefty. The line up doesn’t look bad either although not quite my cup of tea. And tickets? You can still grab them on eBay for a nominal sum. I’m not attending as a festival goer but will be in residence in my day-glo jacket on Sunday night.

Much more important (to me at least) is next weekend … Thursday, Friday and Saturday (and possibly Sunday if they have anything left) is the CAMRA (Jersey) Beer Festival – a fantastic event spanning 3 days, some 200 beers and a whole lot of generous half pints. And this year I’ve managed to get the Friday off!!! So I’ll be there from 13:00 on Friday afternoon and probably from 13:00 on Saturday as well

And then … that’s it. Jersey will have finished its festivals for another year (at least until Christmas) and nothing more than the day to day will happen for months.

Which is why I’m very glad I’m off to Poland for 2 weeks in October

122 years ago…

// August 30th, 2007 // No Comments » // Personal

and the world felt the roar of the first motorbike … well roar is possibly overstating things slightly. Put-put-put would be a more accurate description.

The initial foray into the world of two wheeled automobility was made of wood (heh) with wagon wheels and an outrigger that looked remarkably like a set of stabilisers.

Bumpy, noisy and remarkably ugly it’s amazing to think just how far we’ve come.

Happy Birthday Motorbikes everywhere

(Src: wired.com)

A couple of birthdays

// August 20th, 2007 // No Comments » // Personal

I’m currently going for the “most sporadic poster” award 2007

So I wanted to say happy birthday to 2 things that have given me much joy over the past years.

Firstly, the humble CD is now 25 years old! It doesn’t seem like yesterday that it was still in short trousers. Over the course of a long and distinguished life the CD has fought off newcomers in the form of the Minidisc, has found it’s way into wallet sized editions and has continued to provide 74 minutes of music at a time for the world in general.

The first CD I ever bought? The Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation.

And the other birthday of note? XSet (the blog you’re reading) is now 4 years old! I know this may be difficult to believe given that the archives are still missing (I am planning to get round to that some day) but for those who want the goodness you may have missed then the Internet Archive has it for ya.

Over the past 4 years I’ve completely failed to get to number one in the Google rankings and have set the record for most sporadic blogger ever.

Here’s to another 4 years of one post every two months

Lappy Toppy

// August 13th, 2007 // No Comments » // Tech

Who would have though getting a new laptop would be such a mission?

As my lovely Apple Mac is getting a little tired of the constant abuse of being lugged back and forth to work and as the lovely Apple Mac is my lovely Apply Mac I decided to put a case to my employer that they should buy me a computer. The only reason I’m using my mac in the first place is because the PC I was assigned when I started here was a Toshiba Pentium with about 16MB of RAM … it’s now holding the door to the kitchen open (a task to which is it infinitely better suited than computing anything at all).

I first asked a couple of months back and got a verbal “Ok” and submitted a spec for approval. I was asking for a Lenovo x60 (the ‘nix hacker’s lappy of choice) with a few extras. Uber small and uber light and uber … black.

Time trickles by and I finally think to mention this to “them in charge”. Not a problem, say they, and fomrally approve the expenditure. “just resend us the spec”.

By this point the X60 is hens tooth esque in its rarity and I’m now looking at the X61 (a bit bigger than the X60 inside but no bigger outside). Trouble is, Lenovo have given the 61 a price hike and I can’t find half the bits anywhere (no internal CD-ROM means base station and extras). Plus none of our suppliers can find it either.

So I had to switch again, dismiss the Lenovo for the time being (although it’s still a lovely bit of kit and I’ll be keeping my eyes open for a cheaper one later in the year … you know … for research , and find a new workhorse…

My final choice is going to surprise some of you and before you fall of your chairs laughing I’d request you read round some of the reviews and bear in mind it will NOT be running Windows.

I’m getting myself …

… a …

… Dell XPS M1330 (hereby known as the M1337)

Sure it may not look like much (actually I think it’s the prettiest Dell I’ve seen in a long time) but equipped with the Solid State Ram drive and White LED screen plus the graphics power of a dedicated GeForce GFX board wrapped in a portable 3.5 lb package. That’s pretty damn sweet.

Now I simply await delivery