Aidan Williams - High Acuity

* casually walks past the blog and then notices you * Oh hello! You’re still here huh? Wow… I guess it is about time I gave you an update.

So last year when I called my mum, she casually let me know that she had been invited to visit the queen for her services to Relate (bereavement, relationship and child counselling) and Samaritans. My mother is sickeningly modest – virtually no one in the family knew about this and I really don’t understand why she didn’t tell anyone, but I’m very happy for her.

She reminded me of a few other family members who have met the queen. Such as my father who was presented to the queen in 1979 at Queen’s College Cambridge University for his contributions to the university and his college, generally being a good student, president of the debating society, etc.  Or my grandfather who was awarded an OBE by the queen for his role at the Institute for Hospital Administrators in helping to start the NHS, as well as a St George’s Cross for his bravery in World War II. And my grandmother who was awarded an MBE for her work in travel for British subjects in the commonwealth… No, I don’t really understand what that means either.

So, since I will never have the opportunity to win any such awards, it’s nice to remember these things. I don’t think winning the award for most profitable person of the year at my last agency is quite on the same level. Close though! Close.

Wait what’s that? This blog is about me and not the ancient members of my family? Dude! I just slipped in an immodest mention that I won some sh*tty award a few years ago, what more do you want!?

Alright alright… The start of this year really sucked for me. At the end of what I’ve officially declared the worst week of my life thus far in which every day was twice as bad as each previous one, I was out with the guys and while they were very generously attempting to cheer me up, my bag was stolen… This was the real icing on the cake for that week. This included my new Macbook Pro, my white iPhone 3GS, my wallet, my umbrella, etc. The response from the police was wholly pathetic and I won’t get into the details of that, since I’ve heard from many friends that seems to be pretty much par for the course. But I will say that I’ve decided to run for prime minister and when I get into power, I will change the system so we only pay the police when they get results. Now THAT will save the taxpayers a lot of money. I hope the criminals who stole it at least got something good out of the deal, otherwise that’s just a huge waste.

I have since replaced the Macbook with a 17″ Macbook Pro with i7 processor. Sanj and I created an un-boxing video as an experiment to see how many hits it would get on Youtube. But it will most likely never see the light of day as it hilariously features Sanj shouting at me for five minutes as I do various things wrong… Sanj: “What are you doing!?!? Sniff the manual! They all do it! Sniff the f***ing manual!!! This is so wrong; I feel like a porn director.”

On the good side, my girlfriend has been incredible throughout this year, just as she has always been. I’m constantly amazed by everything she achieves, and that she still has energy to come home and look after me at the end of each day. Sanj would be annoyed that I mentioned him at all but he’s also been pretty incredible this year, as has Andy, and I want them both to know that I appreciate them both just a little bit more each day * little tear *. Hey it’s my first blog post in a year, I’m going to talk about this crap, okay!?

My brother also had a truly beautiful 1930s styled wedding weekend on Burgh Island (where Agatha Christy wrote her books). I could write a novel on what an incredible experience this was for everyone attending, but instead I would like to thank my brother for choosing such a wonderful venue. During the day you can walk across the beach to the mainland and then in the evening the tide comes in and you’re marooned on the island, inside this very beautiful art deco styled hotel. The highlight for me was the best men’s speeches, which reminded us all of what an amazing person my brother is. I really don’t think we give him enough credit for everything he has achieved in his life. If he sets a goal, then one way or another, he will achieve it. He’s also kind, generous, intelligent… Sorry, one second, a little vomit just came up into my mouth.

Wow this is getting sycophantic. Oh well, I might as well go all out, right!?

Well kids, I think it’s about time we put this post to bed, don’t you? But if there’s one thing I would like you to take away from this post, one life lesson that you take with you for the rest of your days, it’s that I WON AN AWARD FOR BEING THE MOST PROFITABLE PERSON OF THE YEAR B*****S!

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.

Sanj and I have spent the last year and a half debating what new computers we should invest in when we next upgraded and it ultimately came down to two choices: Should we go Mac and get 17” Macbook Pros and  Apple Cinema Displays? Or should we go PC, get great LED displays, very powerful desktop computers and buy ourselves separate laptops as well for the same price as the Apple setup?

After a couple of post-meeting visits to the Regent Street Apple store in Soho, and a bit more prodding from me, Sanj started coming round to the idea of switching to Mac. We decided to go ahead with the caveat that if they were hard to use or caused any problems for him, I would never be allowed to make any hardware choices in the company again. Haha – sounds good to me!

We ordered two 17” Macbook Pros, two 24” Cinema Displays, two Wacom Bamboo Tablets, and two Rain Design mStands, as well as a few other extras individually.

The packages arrived from China and were left sitting next to us in our offices upstairs while we focused on finishing two projects. We finally found the time to open them up and get everything set up and installed a few days later and we are both very happy people indeed. As with all Apple products it was fast and simple and, aside from a few questions as he’s getting used to the OS-X way of doing things, Sanj is loving his new Apple experience so far.

We were very dubious about the gloss on the 24” Cinema Displays that under certain light seemed unbearably reflective. We only ordered them after checking with Apple that we could return them within 14 days with no questions asked if we were unhappy with the results. However, the gloss has not been an issue for us so far at all. The performance of the screens is astounding with incredible bright colour reproduction, very high contrast ratios and a fantastic viewing angle. The design is also stunning and with the in-built magsafe connectors we can power our Macbooks straight from the displays and leave our other Macbook power adapters at home. We’ll see what we think after we’ve been using them for a couple of months.

Click here to view the extended version of this post and see some of my old setups.