Making the leap to Windows 7; part 1

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Paul

Ok, so it wasn’t such a great leap. I only use Windows on my netbook; I am still very much a Mac user and my MacBook is very much my main computer. That said, I get a hell of a lot of use out of my netbook: I like the form factor; I love how light it is; I love how ably it performs most of the day-to-day tasks I throw at it.

My little netbook

I bought my Asus EeePC 1008HA netbook for £200 at the start of this year, with my share of the winnings from the Guardian Student Media Awards,thankyouverymuch. It came with Windows XP pre-installed. It was strange buying such a new computer with such an out-dated operating system installed. But that said, it’s common knowledge how prevalent XP remains. It’s cheap to run, and performs as ably as most homes and businesses require. The cost of upgrading even just one machine to Windows 7 is off-putting enough for most, and the trend remains that people only tend to upgrade their OS when they upgrade their hardware by buying a new machine with the new software as standard.

With this in mind, I’ve been more than happy with XP on my little netbook. Given how old an OS it is, it’s very snappy on this modern, stripped-down hardware, and thanks to software and plugin compatability, has kept up to speed with all the latest and greatest software via the Web.

Flirting with Linux

I’ve flirted a couple of times with Jolicloud – an Ubuntu-based OS with an HTML5 front-end. It’s an admirable project, and for a geek, it’s fun to play around with to see how operating systems can be done differently. It’s also easy to install alongside Windows, without the pain of partitioning or the like. As such, I have spent many weeks dual-booting it and mucking around in it – but I never got beyond enjoying the novelty of it.

As soon as I just approached it as the default OS and tried to do my usual tasks, I found it hiccupped. It was either the interface that needed to be refreshed, or its sluggish performance when it came to flash video (not Jolicloud’s fault, apparently) which ultimately meant it couldn’t be fully relied upon to use as my primary OS.

After two several-week-long sessions trying Jolicloud out, once as its beta version -based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix – and once as the v1.0, HTML5-based version, I reluctantly gave up and uninstalled it. Jolicloud can be commended once again here – uninstalling is as easy as any other Windows program.

The Windows 7 question

I’d been vaguely aware of netbooks coming with Windows 7, and was interested to see how it performed on my own model. Many reviews and YouTube videos were looked at, and the consensus seemed to be that both battery life and performance were comparable with XP – so no real benefits to be had from upgrading.

Still, there was something vaguely alluring about Windows 7 – it was the newest version of Windows, and had received a much better reception than its predecessor Vista. It had many features – visual or buried deep in the code – that Apple nerds liked to claim were stolen from OS X.

But at this stage, the idea of stealing ideas kind of blurs into insignificance. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but in tech and software development, new trends need to be taken on board to ensure innovation and a sense of keeping up with the Joneses.

With this in mind, I wanted to see for myself just what the fuss was all about. I missed out on the period when Windows 7′s beta was offered up for free, mostly as I’d rather wait and play with the proper final release candidate. For a long time I just decided I didn’t need Windows 7, and that XP was doing my netbook life justice enough.

But one nagging thought at the back of my mind was that – as a student in a field that relies so heavily on knowledge of software and hardware, from the retro relics to the absolute bleeding edge -my lack of a current working knowledge of Windows 7 was potentially a rather serious problem.

More than once in recent months, a couple of people have asked for some help with their computers, seeing me as some sort of daylight-fearing, basement-dwelling super-nerd who “just knows about that sort of thing.” Worryingly enough, while that may be largely true, when it came to the question at hand, if it was a Windows 7-specific question, I simply had to raise my hands and admit I hadn’t once touched it. True, there’s a lot of crossover between old Windows terms and technologies, but without a working knowledge of Windows 7, I would be unable to assist.

And as a super-nerd studying a library/information degree, my desire to assist others in such fields is impulsive and in-built to the extent that I feel quite bad if I can’t help.

It was inevitable

So it was inevitable that I would one day grab Windows 7 and give it a go. But until recently I hadn’t considered actually buying the thing, and the idea of pirating a piece of software so fundamental to the running of a computer was unthinkable, at least for me.

I saw a link being passed around on Twitter the other day, offering money-saving tips for students starting university this September. I initially dismissed it, thinking I was some sort of savvy, veteran of student life with an entire room full of gold that I dive into daily, like a scruffier, bearded version of Scrooge McDuck.

When I remembered the unfortunate truth, I decided to at least glance over the Guardian article for any new tips. It contained mostly stuff that should either be common knowledge (Deposit Protection; shopping around) or disregarded (NUS Extra), but it also mentioned that Windows 7 is available to students for just £30. A bargain, right enough, and because we live in bizarre-o world, cheaper than the student discount version of the MS Office suite.

So I decided to investigate a little further…

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Peter Broderick – How They Are

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Paul

I’ve been a fan of musician Peter Broderick for a couple of years now. He’s one of those multi-talented chaps who seems to be constantly writing and recording new music, whilst somehow squeezing in collaborations with artists and tours around the world. And amidst all that, he’s constantly taking photos and videos, and showing them to anyone interested. Like me.

Broderick has released a fair amount of music over the past few years, bridging the gap between classical piano and ambient electronica via rootsy folk.

I fell in love with his 2008 sister albums Home and Float, which both feature music from different ends of his repertoire, but which compliment each other beautifully.

His new mini album How They Are is out in September on Bella Union in Europe and Hush in the US. I was very lucky to be given an advance copy in July when I was in Denmark, but for some reason I forgot I had it – until yesterday that is, when I listened to one of Tom Ravenscroft’s recent shows for 6music. He played the album’s closing track, Hello To Nils. I thought it was a very sweet song, plaintively reflecting on the sad fact of saying goodbye more often than saying hello. I even thought to myself, “this sounds a bit like Peter Broderick, I must see who it’s by.” Well, I’m glad I did.

How They Are is a small but perfectly formed set of songs which sees Broderick stripping his songwriting back to its roots, with sparsely recorded piano and voice with a dash of guitar. Opening track Sideline starts off exclusively vocal, before being joined by a simple piano line. The mini album was recorded and mixed in Oregon all in one day in April this year. The production has lent it a very intimate feel, and it’s a joy that Broderick’s soft, beautiful voice is given such room to breathe alongside his remarkable piano playing.

As I mentioned earlier, he barely seems to sleep, let alone take breaks, and Sideline is accompanied by a rather special video made by Broderick on his travels. At first glance it’s a neat, lo-fi stop-motion animation – but as he explains:

It consists 3446 still photos taken in the program Photo Booth. I started to take some photos and scroll through them to create a sort of animation, and then I got the idea to take enough photos to match the length of this song. In the end I could scroll through the photos on slide show mode, and one rotation through all the photos matched the length of the song. And I filmed my computer screen while doing this. Basically a very tedious way to make some cheap looking animation! I worked on it over several months, shooting small scenes in the many different places I’ve stayed.

It’s a lovely video, matching the track’s intimate, sparse and solitary feel:

To promote the release, Broderick will be playing dates in England, Ireland and some of Europe in October. Dates can be found on his website. I’m thrilled that he’ll be calling at Manchester on the way –  I saw him 18 months ago at Manchester Academy 3, and reviewed it for PULP magazine. I’m very much looking forward to seeing him again.

Posted in manchester, me, music, video | Tagged | Leave a comment

On BBC’s archivists and bloggers

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Paul

I suppose it’s fitting that, with a few weeks before starting Year Two of my Information Management degree, I’m getting more and more eager to get stuck into it. With that in mind, I’m keeping my eye on my new units, and am anticipating the release of my reading lists to get started on.

But I’m also being excited by other sources. The BBC is increasingly a great source of fascinating information via its many and varied blogs. There are several which accompany its flagship programmes and series, and others with more in-depth looks at topics in the news.

But my favourites are those concerning its use of archives, the Internet, and web standards. The BBC Internet Blog and BBC Research & Development Blog, amongst others, have recently been very helpfully showing people how they do things and, crucially, why they do them in a certain way.

A recent post on the Internet Blog starts out with some interesting stuff about the BBC’s Content Management/Publishing System (including a screenshot!), before getting pretty complex in its discussion of best practices and semantic structuring of HTML, as well as a look at the BBC’s choices in structuring of URLs. Obviously, I was rapt.

And the Internet Blog has a great post today on Safeguarding The BBC’s Archive, which opens with a cool photo of archivists holding some of the different formats they have to deal with, before going into a breakdown of some of the very niche formats the BBC has dabbled with over time.  The links at the bottom of the post lead to a Guardian podcast of a recent visit to the Windmill Road archive, and there was a link to a great post from 2005 by Martin ‘currybet’ Bellam after a visit to the archive.

There’s also a post from the R&D blog today entitled Intimations of the Archive, in which engineer Richard Wright waxes poetic about the BBC Archive:

The archive is enchanted: Sleeping Beauty awakes, a hundred years disappear.  In the archive, experiencing the archive, we are enchanted; timeless.

And there’s another post from the About The BBC blog which ties some of this stuff together with the recently-begun series on 20th Century British writers like Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence, In Their Own Words.

In his blog post, Roly Keating, Director of Archive Content, makes a point I’ve been considering myself for some time. In it, he writes of archived items:

Some are historically significant, and we want to curate them and make them available. Others may matter only to one person or one family, but they should still be discoverable.

Last week, I was having a conversation with David Davidson, an architectural advisor at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, where I recently had my four week summer placement. As I had been drafted in to assist with the Trust’s not-insignificant archive of tens of thousands of documents, this was a very relevant topic. The Trust’s archive holds some unique, important documents which need to be kept forever, along with copies of correspondance and architectural drawings, sometimes in triplicate, that could arguably be called less important.

When I’m explaining my interests and passions and how they link to my current degree and career choice, I am often sheepish in describing my archivist tendencies as a form of hoarding. When I explain that it’s my preference to keep everything, just in case someone needs access to it, this is often the cause of some debate. There’s obviously a compromise to be made somewhere, between the practicality of physical storage and the necessary retention of information.

But it’s pleasing to know that senior archivists at some of the world’s most important archives have the same attitude. It’s just another subtle indication to me that I’m doing the right thing after all.

Thanks to those bloggers who take time out to write engaging, detailed breakdowns of the essential work they do ‘behind the scenes’. Joe Bloggs (no pun intended) might not find it all that interesting or relevant, but to someone like me, it’s fascinating and reassuring.

Posted in geeky, library stuff, me, university | 1 Comment

Die! Die! Die! – Wasted Lands (NZ Tour 2010)

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Paul

Blink’s done it again. Ian Jorgensen is the genius behind all things A Low Hum. He’s responsible for putting some of the best NZ music from the last ten years on the map, as well as putting together one of the best music festivals in the world. And he also happens to be a shit-hot photographer and filmmaker.

What a bastard.

And he’s done it again. Check out this wonderful clip of Die! Die! Die! touring New Zealand recently in support of their brand-new album, Form, out now on Flying Nun Records. He’s cut some beautifully-shot clips together, taken from various venues up and down the country, and set it all to one of the most thrilling tracks from the album, Wasted Lands.

Whilst I’m at it, I must say I feel bad for not having given Form a more detailed write-up until now. I’m a huge Die! Die! Die! fanboy and have been for years. And whilst I’ve loved almost everything they’ve ever recorded, this new album just blew me away in terms of the production, the overall vibe, how full the sound is, and how well it works as an album.

There still remains the trebley guitars, relentless rhythm section and desperate, shouted vocals – but Form adds so much more to the mix. Deeply layered guitars and a much smoother mix are added to arguably better songwriting and structure and a palpable sense of pace. It just sounds so much bigger than anything they’ve done before. And it isn’t immediately as jarring as some of their earlier work could be described – yet it still maintains the razor sharp edge that so permeates their live shows.

And hopefully as videos such as that above will show, Die! Die! Die!’s live show is second to absolutely none. I genuinely think they are the best, most exciting live act of their type on the planet right now. When they tour near you – and they will, they’re relentless buggers – go and see them.

Until then though, get Form. It’s only officially out in New Zealand so far, but you can still order yourself a copy from the newly-launched Flying Nun Records website. You can order a CD or vinyl – or simply get the MP3s for only NZ$10! That’s less than a fiver in sterling!

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Diaries: don’t burn them!

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Paul

I was interested to read, in last Friday’s Guardian, a question from a reader concerning what to do with their diaries. The question was as follows:

I’ve been keeping a journal since I was 18 and I’m now 65. I have more than 80 in a trunk. I don’t want my children embarrassed by them when I die but I can’t bring myself, yet, to burn them; they are still part of me. Might my grandchildren, with a bit more distance, be interested? Or is there some way I could turn them into something creative? I’m thinking art, not a book.

I was initially confused to read how quickly the person would consider burning them – why, after all, would you bother to write and store something, if destroying it wouldn’t be unthinkable? Of course, the writing of diaries isn’t purely about keeping them for the future; the sheer act of setting something down, like talking it out with someone who will listen, is useful in itself.

But where does that leave the mounting archive of diaries? I understand – to a degree – the idea of potential embarrassment if your children got hold of them. Diaries can be confessional, intimate, and often never intended to be read by others. Perhaps they include direct, negative references to those who could end up reading them. More likely, they just reveal facets of our personality we inevitably keep covered up. It’s not lying or deceitful to do such a thing – it’s a part of life.

A quote is apt here, from Otto Frank – father of Anne:

“After I read Anne’s diary, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t the Anne that I knew. Then I thought, ‘Do we ever really know our children?’”

I would paraphrase the quote by asking, “do we ever really know anyone?” Inevitably, diaries are going to highlight things we didn’t know or expect about their author. But surely that’s what’s so compelling about them?

Anyway, it’s a tricky question with a thousand possible answers and attitudes. The responses to the above question are interesting – the paper itself published the best of these, along with emailed and written responses, but the comments under the question give a broad overview.

As a hoarder, a history nerd, a diary-reader and writer and an aspiring librarian and archivist, I like the general vibe from the suggestions that the diaries (and hence all diaries) are important, relevant, and have a home somewhere, whether in the hands of family or an institution which can look after them.

Posted in diaries, geeky, library stuff | 1 Comment