Aidan Williams - High Acuity

I just so happen to be one of the only white guys working in my office. Kashif, one of the directors of the law firm downstairs, knocks on our door and enters…

Kashif: “Hi guys. Just to let you know, we’re having a camera crew come round the offices to take video and pictures for a TV and print campaign we’re getting done, so no funny business okay?”
Me: “Wait, why did you look at me when you said that?”
Kashif: * starts laughing and then looks at Sanj * “Come on, man, keep the ethnic minority under control alright?”
Sanj: * crying with laughter * “I will do, don’t worry!”

WTF is this!?!?!? It’s usually me making these jokes towards others, not the other way around!

Quite frankly the whole thing is disgusting. I’ll sue!

Yes, that’s what I’ll do… I’ll sue the law firm…

Two weeks ago I got a call from my brother:

Angus: “Hi bro, the new iPhone is out.”
Me: ”Really? Great! I’ll check the site.”
Angus: “… Oh and they updated the Macbook Pros.”
Me: “What!? Nooooo!”
Angus: * starts crying with laughter *

So two weeks after we bought our new 17” Macbook Pros, Apple update them. Hahaha!

Luckily the updates were just a 0.1GHz increase in processor speed, but we decided to get in touch with Apple anyway. We were within the time period where we could return them and get them replaced with latest ones, but we decided we were too busy with work to accommodate the disruption.

Instead we asked if there was anything else they could do and they refunded us both £100! Not bad at all, Apple. Thank you very much!

On Friday, I upgraded from my first generation iPhone 2G to an iPhone 3G S. I know I could have upgraded to the 3G for free last year, but I didn’t feel the need to do so and the 2G has served me well. In fact I wasn’t even sure I really needed to upgrade to the 3G S (sorry Apple). What are we really getting here? Faster processor, slightly improved camera, video recording, a voice-recording app, voice control, compass functionality, spotlight. And most of these will be free when anyone upgrades to the 3.0 update on the older generation iPhones, so that really just leaves just a few reasons to upgrade.

These are all things we may want but certainly not things we need. This isn’t a dig at Apple though, it’s really a testament to just how well the first iPhone was built.

I decided to buy the 16GB White version, purely to have something different to all my friends. Why not 32GB? Virtually everyone in the store was buying the 32GB version and on every tariff available from O2, the 32GB version cost one hundred pounds more than the 16GB model. £100 for an extra 16GB of memory? You can find countless 32GB USB flash drives on the net for around £35, and 16GB USB flash drives for £20. So I thought Apple’s price hike was a little steep and was their way of saying to customers “If you want the best, you’ll pay a premium!”.

Well, I really don’t need the extra 16GB. I saved £100 and I have an identical iPhone to the 32GB owners with more than enough space to accommodate my iTunes library.

Having used the new iPhone 3G S over the weekend, I have to admit I was surprised with how much faster both the 3G connection is than the 2G model, and the general speed of applications. The performance of games has especially improved on the 3G S, some of which chugged on the iPhone 2G model. The camera also seems a lot higher quality, producing sharper photos with better colour depth and the video is also surprisingly sharp too.

My favourite improvement is the compass functionality though. I’ve used Google maps on the iPhone to get to meetings a lot in the past, and generally find directions to places to visit all around London. I’m shocked my iPhone-owning friends don’t use this more just to open, type ‘bar’, ‘restaurant’, ‘café’ and find a place close to their current location. Now that Google Maps has had the compass functionality integrated, I don’t have to look at the street names so find out which direction I’m facing relative to the map, I just click the compass icon and the map will turn to face the direction I’m walking. Simply point and walk – perfect!

None of the improvements to the iPhone 3G S are life-changing when compared to previous generations, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend people upgrade to it especially if you have the 3G version. Unless the iPhone is the only camera you use and you really crave the improvements and video options. And in reality all these changes really mean is that I’ll be able to find places with a little less fuss in Google maps, apps will run smoother, and maybe I’ll be posting more pictures taken with my iPhone.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with my purchase though…. Apple has made some very nice improvements to an already brilliant product. Just don’t buy a white iPhone – it looks nice at first, but it gets dusty very quickly. I think Apple will probably do something quite special with the next iteration, like a complete overhaul of the design, greatly improved camera with a flash, much higher storage capacity as flash drives become more common and cheaper, etc.

I’ve always loved 1950s/1960s retro sci-fi design, from those sweet torpedo-styled space ships to the ridiculously square robots. So knowing my sci-fi obsession, my girlfriend picked up a couple of the coolest clocks on the face of this fine earth for Valentine’s Day.

They now take pride of place on my rather sparse desk at work. The best part is that they’re solid metal and rather heavy, so I can beat people with them if they’re not working hard enough.

They instantly reminded me of the video John and Mark created a few years ago for their masters degree in computer animation: ‘Short Lived‘. What’s so amazing about this video? The robot in every one of the shots isn’t real – it’s not based on a real toy (John & Mark designed it themselves and named it ‘Deedar’) and has never been a real physical object. Youtube doesn’t do the video justice but when you see this you understand why they’re now working on so many Hollywood blockbusters.

The use of Internet Explorer 6 has been steadily declining over the last year. Unfortunately most IE6 users have moved onto IE7, but some sensible people have moved over to more secure browsers like Firefox and Safari. Still, the use of IE6 has recently dropped below 20% and I have to say; I will miss the challenge of coding for it when we finally deem it obsolete. Don’t get me wrong, coding for IE6 is a complete pain, but IE6 has such esoteric idiosyncrasies that finding ways to make sure a website displays identically in IE6 just as other the more modern browsers was sometimes a fun challenge.

Still, a website has been created in preparation for the old dinosaur’s demise. So if you’re going to miss the old boy, you can leave your respects here. Some of the comments are NSFW, but most of them are pretty funny.

Twitter has now become so popular that even Google is getting in on the act. Its first ‘tweet’ on 25th February was:

“I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010″ which can be translated first from binary to decimal ASCII codes to letters and says “I’m feeling lucky.”

Welcome to Twitter, Google! Oh and…

01001001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 01101100 01101001 01100101 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101110 00100000 00100000 00100000 00111011 00101001