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I’ve managed to get Tiger installed, and for the most part everything seems fine. The only oddity is something that cropped up after I had been running everything with no problems for a while. In certain applications (but not others), I get doubled spaces or characters when I type. This is most disruptive in Mail. I find that I can’t type any spaces at all in a new mail. As soon as I type a space, I get a system error beep and I can’t add anything else. Pasting text in to the document seems to work fine. On some of the other applications where I had this problem (like Safari), trashing the preferences seemed to sort the problem out, but it didn’t work for Mail.

I have a hunch that it might be related to the Spelling facility in some way, as I remember getting similar problems years ago when I had Spell Catcher and cocoAspell isntalled. When I try to select the “Spelling…” dialog, nothing happens, so I can’t check what language it’s set on. The red underlines also don’t appear. However, I don’t have any of these running, and I’ve also disabled Typeit4Me in case that was causing issues. Has anyone else come across this?

Other than this—-admittedly very irritating—-problem, Tiger is great. Spotlight is fantastic, and I love the Smart Folders in Finder. I’ve got one set up to look for all files in my home folder modified today, which is really useful for quickly locating active documents. I’m also finding the Dashboard widgets surprisingly useful too. I’ve already translated some French text with it, converted measurements and looked up words in the dictionary. I didn’t think I would be using them much, but they are pretty cool. And that ‘ripple’ effect when you add a widget to the screen is pure eye candy.

As for last night’s adventure, I didn’t make it to the front of the queue before I had to leave for the party. I trudged sadly past the Apple Store, looking longingly at all of those people trotting happily in to the shop and felt very jealous. As compensation, the party was great fun, and I’ll go to the Store when it’s less busy. I could even make my own Apple T-shirt, though it wouldn’t be quite the same thing. Queueing was actually quite fun, particularly overhearing the incredulous remarks of people walking past and finding out that thousands of people were queueing to get in to a computer shop. The best quote was from a couple of lads, said in a rather dismissive way: “Pfft. Geeks.” Yep, we’re geeky and proud of it, baby.

OK, I’m so excited, it’s just ridiculous. What with getting my copy of Tiger delivered, trying to make it to the opening of the Bullring Apple Store, and then trying to make it to a party (by which time I may be thoroughly geeked out, and even less comprehensible to others than usual), it may be a day before you hear from me again. Or it might be longer if I manage to stuff the installation up…

I hope everyone has fun, but remember to backup first!

For a number of reasons, I’ve had some niggling worries on my mind recently. None have been particularly earth-shattering, but they were annoying enough that I’ve been mildly gloomy and pre-occupied, as if I’ve been walking around with a small stone in my shoe. I had a very busy day yesterday, but suddenly almost all of the things which had been bugging me resolved themselves—-just like that. To top it all, the weather—-which had been grey, wet and oppressive all day—-abruptly changed for the better, and everything sparkled in the brilliant light.

I ended the day with a little celebration at work with some colleagues (involving a certain quantity of alcohol, which doubtless helped a bit), and left for home feeling like a different person. I started to read a book on the train, but then just let myself daydream, looking out of the window and enjoying the odd, weightless, connected and yet disconnected feeling.

The train was nearly empty, and opposite me a man in a suit sat with his briefcase on his lap. His hands were resting gently on his copy of “The CEO of the Sofa” by P.J. O’Rourke, and his chin touched his chest as he slept. I felt slightly guilty about watching him while he slept, but he looked so peaceful and still that I was fascinated.

We did some more work in the garden over the weekend, and I planted some lettuce seeds in one of the beds. When I got home from work today, I went out in the garden to have a look at them, which was slightly ridiculous. I knew perfectly well that nothing would have germinated in 24 hours, but I wanted to look anyway. Growing plants from seeds is such a magical process, even if you know—-in theory—-how it works.

As I stood casting an encouraging, “grow, please” eye over the beds, it started to rain, and I suddenly caught that fleeting, subtle, exhilarating smell of the first rain drops on warm tarmac. I breathed deeply, enchanted and surprised by it, because it’s a smell that I associate with the heat of summer. Then I realised that I was getting unpleasantly soaked while standing mere metres away from a dry sofa and tea making facilities, and went inside. So much for my Earth Goddess moment.

1. …you order Tiger reflexively on the day pre-orders are announced, and then mark 29th April on the calendar with the words “Tiger arrives”, adding more exclamation marks than are strictly becoming for a woman of your age.
2. …you find out that a new Apple Store is opening in your home town, and go out of your way to walk past the closed shop, just to look at it. You do this despite the fact that you generally detest shopping and shopping centres. You also realise that the opening night coincides with a party that you’re going to, and you make elaborate but impractical plans to try to get in to the Apple Store when it opens (and perhaps get a free Apple T-shirt!), and yet still make it to the party.

These days I tend to prepare talks and lectures using two main bits of software; for lectures to undergraduates, I use beamer (a LaTeX based style for producing PDF presentations), and for seminars on my own work I use Keynote. So, it’s been along time since I’ve had to fire up PowerPoint in anger. However, I’ve recently had to produce a talk in PowerPoint (for boring and complicated reasons), and the experience has reminded me why I fled to Keynote’s open arms.

It’s true that Keynote doesn’t have all the features of PowerPoint. The drawing tools included in Keynote are very simple, but I just use OmniGraffle which works beautifully and is dedicated to producing graphics. You can either copy and paste graphics in, or import them, so it’s very little extra hassle. There are also fewer options for building animations (though this has improved with the latest release), but I can’t say that I find that a problem.

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Watching this film really had nothing to do with my recent visit to Japan, despite appearances. I put it on my Lovefilm queue long before I even knew that I was going, but it floated to the top of the list after I’d got back. As it turned out, the film is only tangentially about Japan. The story follows the relationship between Sandy (an Australian geologist) and Tachibana (the son of an important potential client of Sandy’s company). Sandy is instructed to drive Tachibana around the desert, and generally be nice to him—-a role that she deeply resents.

At the start of the film, you think that it’s going to be a standard culture clash romance, but it turns into something more subtle than that. They each come to understand one another a little better, and as they do, we see them more clearly as rounded and complex characters rather than as stereotyped citizens of their respective countries. The casual racism of those around them becomes more obvious—-a man hired to row them out on a lake talks about how most of the land is now owned by ‘you people’ (referring to the Japanese), but smiles as he says it in a “no offence, mate” kind of way, as if that does actually make it less offensive.

There’s a massive and—-to me at least—-wholly unexpected twist in the middle of the film, which radically changes the mood of remainder. Since I don’t want to give anything away, this means that I can’t really discuss the second half of the film at all. I can say that—-quite apart from the characters and plot—-the Australian desert is absolutely stunning, and almost makes the film worth watching even if you don’t like the other components of the film.

I’ve had one of those weekends where almost everything I’ve tried to do on the computer or with anything electronic has gone wrong. My computer has crashed twice while I was in the process of putting it to sleep, some work I was trying to do on Tracks [hasn’t worked out][1] and I don’t know why, and—-most aggravatingly of all—-my phone keeps crashing.

By lunchtime today, I had reached my tolerance limit, and wanted to deal with something for a few hours that couldn’t crash. Some friends of ours are in the process of moving house, and have been tidying up the garden and dividing plants. They came round this morning to give us some of their spare plants¹. So we spent a very therapeutic few hours in the garden, weeding, planting and trying to rip ivy out². Ivy is amazing stuff; as you pull big lumps of it out, more seems to appear from nowhere, like one of those handkerchief ropes old-fashioned magicians produce from people’s ears.

The garden is looking surprisingly neat now, and delving about in non-crashing soil for a while did me the world of good. We also found a gorgeous bee on one of the new plants. It had beautiful orange ‘fur’ on its thorax and abdomen, and its head and legs looked like black velvet. I’ve just looked it up and found out that it’s a [Tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva)][2]. I hope it likes its new home.

¹ A note to non-gardening geeks: think warez-sharing, only legal and more muddy.

²Further note to non-gardening geeks: like trying to get rid of spyware.

[1]: http://dev.rousette.org.uk/changeset/68 “The ‘BROKEN’ title says it all” [2]: http://www.insectpix.net/Andrena_fulva.htm “A lovely photograph of Andrena fulva”

I spotted a link to a site called Liveplasma.com on the Textdrive forum, which claimed that it mapped similarities between bands or artists in a linked-node-and-path-type graphic. I like a lot of rather dissimilar bands, but also some who have particular connections to one another (like Mouthmusic and Talitha MacKenzie and Martyn Bennett, as one example), so I decided to check it out.

I problems with it in Safari, but it worked fine in Firefox. At least, I think it did… Off the top of my head, I decided to start with Kate Bush. She’s had some interesting collaborations over the years, and I thought for sure that it would display Peter Gabriel close to her node.

Gabriel did indeed appear close by, as did some other similar artists like Bryan Ferry and David Bowie, but there was also a band called Krokus quite nearby. I’d never heard of them, so I did a search on Krokus out of curiousity. This image shows the result. How—-in the name of Wuthering Heights—-did Kate end up orbiting Iron Maiden and Mettalica like a small lost moon? Is there some bootleg heavy metal version of the Hounds of Love that I’m not aware of? I tell you, it’s keeping me awake at night.

It was slightly unfortunate that we left Japan about two weeks before the cherry blossom season really kicked in. We saw one or two isolated (but very beautiful) trees, but there’s nothing like the full on effect of blossom en masse to make you feel as if Spring has well and truly sprung.

Anyway, I’ve been really enjoying the flickr tag ‘blossom’ recently, so I thought it was about time to spread some vernal feeling around.

At some point, I was going to write an entry about the fabulously hi-tech nature of Japanese toilets, but I see from Tom’s links on plasticbag.org that imomus got there before me; Japanize your ass! has a glorious and detailed history of the various kinds of Japanese sanitary facilities.

I’m also grateful to have a proper name for the electronic, all-singing, all-dancing toilet: the washlet. Not knowing the correct name, I had been referring to it as a ‘techno toilet’, which had a certain Wallace and Gromit quality about it, but was hardly accurate. Given my well-known adoration of all things electronic and geeky, I think it probably goes without saying that I was in thrall to the washlet. I made it my duty to try out all the buttons in a spirit of pioneering exploration, though there was a certain amount of trepidation until I had worked out what they all did.

The heated washlet seat is particularly welcome for another reason—-central heating is very rare in Japan. I find it bizarre that Japan—-a country that can organise highly efficient and thorough recycling of waste, and a train system in which trains depart on time to the second—-doesn’t have widespread central heating. It’s especially strange when you think that in the North of Japan, there’s snow on the ground for large chunks of the year, and when almost all houses and businesses have very efficient air conditioning for the summer. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but then a lot of cultural practices don’t make sense when you’re on the outside.

I haven’t had so much fun watching a Sci-Fi series since the days of Farscape. And I don’t remember the last time when there was actually anything worth watching on the TV on a Saturday night. But Saturday night has become [Doctor Who][1] Night chez bsag. In fact, we even try to watch it live if at all possible. That would explain why—-when dashing from a hasty shower and hurtling down the stairs on hearing the ‘diddle-dee-dee’ theme music¹—-I managed to pull a muscle. The trouble with rampant nostalgia for a childhood TV series is that you aren’t young and fit enough to hurtle downstairs to watch it without doing yourself a mischief.

Last night’s episode featured a Victorian Cardiff (it was supposed to be Naples, but the Tardis went a bit wrong), and Charles Dickens (played by Simon Callow—-hooray!), along with some zombies reanimated by gas creatures. Again, there was some wonderful, playful dialogue. The Doctor asked an undertaker if there was a location in his establishment that was particularly prone to ‘ghosts’:

Undertaker: That would be the morgue.

Rose: Is there any chance that you were going to say ‘the gazebo’?

The Doctor acts like a total fanboy when he finds out that he’s sitting next to Charles Dickens:

[Very excited] Go on, do the Death of Little Nell. That always cracks me up!

I love it. They play with every stereotype of Sci-Fi, including ‘Shaun of the Dead’ style slow zombie walking and giant rotating blades blocking access to a vital switch straight out of ‘Galaxy Quest’, but they tread the line between drama and pastiche perfectly. Like Dickens’ writing, they also switch effortlessly between humour, horror, drama and sentiment, often in the same scene. I have a sneaking suspicion that Russell T. Davies is a bit of a Dickens fan. The very deep and deeply ambiguous relationship between Rose and The Doctor is also developing nicely. Now, if we can only persuade Christopher Eccleston to change his mind and do another series…

[1]: http://www.rousette.org.uk/blog/archives/2005/03/27/dr-who/ “I rave about the first episode”

¹I heard Mr. Bsag doing the ‘diddle-dee-dee, diddle-dee-dee, wooo-eee-oooo’ bit in the garage later on, while he was rummaging in the freezer. We are **seriously** addicted.

I lived in Oxford for 13 years, and over that time I owned a succession of bicycles, some of which were quite good quality. Despite the fact that Oxford is one of the great bike theft capitals of Britain, I never had a bike stolen. Mr. Bsag went to Oxford today on the coach, taking his nearly new Brompton folding bike with him. You can probably guess what’s coming next.

I got a phone call from him at lunch time to say that he’d left the bike outside a shop for ten minutes—-locked to an immovable object with a decent cable lock—-and had come out to find it gone. However, there are worse things that can happen. It’s just property after all—-and insured property at that. It’s annoying and inconvenient, but as long as the insurers are reasonable about it, nothing more than that. Still, I’m going to miss the little folding yellow fella sitting in the garage.

Part 3 of a series

(Read Parts 1 and 2)

We had to do it. Not just because we were in the home of karaoke, but because PD made us. She, it turned out, is a bit of a karaoke addict. I think it’s fair to say that GS and I were a bit dubious about the whole thing to start with, though we were encouraged to hear that you get your own private—-and more importantly, soundproof—-booth. At least we would only make idiots of ourselves in front of each other, and we do that all the time anyway.

After a somewhat later than planned dinner, and a quantity of beer, we headed off. PD told us that you can take your own drinks and snacks into the karaoke places, so—-to guard against the danger of being insufficiently inebriated—-we bought some more beer and a pack of Pocky (the slim and elegant Japanese cousin of the chocolate finger) in a convenience store. At that point, we couldn’t put it off any longer—-even by laughing hysterically and taking photographs of a chocolate bar called Horn—-so we took the plunge and hired a booth for an hour.

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Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d set up a borrowed turntable. The next step, of course, was to buy some vinyl. I haven’t had a turntable of my own since I was a very small child and had a plastic, two-part turntable on which I played the hits from Disney films, so I needed to go out and start a collection. My brother kindly started me off by giving me the excellent album ‘Riot on an Empty Street’ by the Kings of Convenience on vinyl for my birthday. As a newly-recorded album, this was rich and detailed, and the warmth and presence of the medium showed off the delicate vocals and intricate acoustic guitar playing to their best advantage. This was an excellent start.

I headed out to Birmingham’s finest second-hand record shops in search of bargains. There are several good shops, which all have slightly different markets, but my favourite by far was [The Diskery][3], the very place where Steve Winwood used to buy American R&B albums. They have a huge selection in all kinds of genres, their stock seems to generally be in excellent condition, and they are very reasonably priced. After much shuffling through the £1 bin and ‘general rock’ sections, I came away with four discs for a grand total of £11. Another advantage of vinyl is that you can get a lot of music for your money if you stick to second-hand, non-collectable discs.

If you promise not to laugh, here are my choices:

[3]: http://uk.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=B5%206QB&title=The%20Diskery&scale=25000 “Map showing the location of The Diskery”

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