Archive for January, 2007

The Ashbies

Saw a gig by a local band called the Ashbies tonight – I was really impressed; they have two guitarists both of whom sing with very different (but both good) styles. They looked so young that I felt ancient.

They have an album launch in a local school on Saturday 10th, if they’ll let someone as comparatively geriatric in then I’ll definitely go along!

Update: Updated the Ashbies URL

Cities and Villages

This weekend I visited friends in Leeds. I had a good time and like usual when I travel by train, the pleasure started before I arrived. I spent a leisurely few hours starting to read the intriguing “Unbearable lightness of being”. We drank too much and played too much poker but we did visit an extremely good Italian restaurant. I’ve also hurt my arm playing Wii Boxing; injured playing a computer game? What a wuss!

Sat in a Burger King in London on the way home trying to avoid catching the attention of a (drunk? high? crazy?) bloke a couple of tables away I remembered why I’m often more comfortable in the small towns I’m used to. In tiny villages strangers may make small talk (“Awful weather isn’t it?”), in towns ignoring each other seems entirely normal. Large cities, on the other hand seem to have more people you have to actively ignore. If 1 in 5000 people are obnoxious, crazy or intoxicated enough to be unpleasant to strangers you’ll basically never see such people in Winchester whilst a typical trip across London will often include multiple encounters.

Paper Cuts

Via UserFriendly‘s Link of the Day I found the website of Peter Callesen who makes “Paper Cuts” – I’m so impressed; they are beautiful.

On a more technology related note, Tim Bray talks about the elephant in the room in discussions about ODF vs. OOXML. I haven’t read either spec but I have a strong emotion disposition towards one (which has nothing to do with my employer); anything I say about the whole subject could be labelled biased

OpenMoko Schedule

This morning, Sean Moss-Pultz sent an email to the Openmoko community mailing list with the schedule for the release of the Neo1973

The time table looks like this:

  • 2007-02-11 Phase 0: Free phones sent out to key community members so that software starts to be written “ahead” of the main launches. Also community websites (including a wiki, a bugzilla and a planet aggregator)
  • 2007-03-11 Phase 1: Official Developer Launch, anyone can buy a phone for $350USD + p&p (<£200)
  • 2007-09-11 Phase 2: Mass Market Sale: “At this point, we hope that your mum and dad will want one too”. At this point also the 2nd gen device will be introduced

I suspect I’ll have bought one before the end of March, there’s a few things I definately want to write for it.

I’m really looking forward to this, I really hope it’s a big success.

Quick Update

It’s been a good few days, this weekend I saw the Rivers of Sound live at the Wedgewood Rooms, ate curry with Pete and some of his friends (in celebration of his birthday) and now Em’s mum (Carole King – an artist living in Wales) is visting.

In between I’ve done a little more on a software project that I’ll talk more about here when it’s nearer to actually useable.