You see, when you download your label, it comes as a PDF with “SAMPLE” in large, unfriendly letters across the front of it and a small box explaining that this wouldn’t print out on the final label. Which was true, whether you were using Adobe’s official PDF viewer, Adobe Reader or Apple’s Preview, which ships with Mac OS X and doesn’t come with a load of crapware attached (Adobe Air? Acrobat.com? Fuck off Adobe). However since Royal Mail “upgraded” the service, if you print the label in Preview it also prints the unfriendly “SAMPLE” and the notice that it won’t print the word “SAMPLE”.

So you have to use Adobe Reader instead. However this doesn’t work either, as I found out. Not only does it force you to install other services that I didn’t want (Still here Adobe? FUCK OFF), but when I first launched it, it halted to install updates. That’s right, updates on software I just downloaded and installed. Then, say for example you told Royal Mail you wanted to print out a DL envelope. Well Adobe Reader can’t manage to print that out for you. Instead, it assumes that the envelope itself is A4 and scales it down to fit on the envelope. Which it then fails to print on, only managing to fit the top 25% of the label on the bottom of the envelope, rendering it useless.

So congratulations Royal Mail. You’ve taken a useful, if little known, service and rendered it useless for me. I guess I should be thankful you haven’t closed the Post Office at the end of my street.

Up until fairly recently, Apple were displaying the US prices on their UK site, with a note that international prices had not yet been announced. This, to me, seemed a strange move for Apple considering their UK prices have usually been substantially more than the (US price * exchange rate) + VAT. Perhaps for once they were going to actually do that, but since the initial announcement of the iPad sterling has slipped considerably against the dollar, which I think was what prompted the removal of the US pricing. They are, however, still trailing it as being available at a “unbelievable price”. Unfortunately for those of us in the UK, this is more likely to be unbelievably high than unbelievably low.

These are the current US prices:

Current US prices in sterling at current exchange rate (£1=$1.517):

What I expect sterling prices to be for the iPad:

It is very much possible that they may be higher, they may be lower. I have no insider information, but on past evidence I would expect prices to be at least those I have listed. There is precedent for worse; Apple TV is available in the US at $229 (£151 at the above exchange rate) but its UK price is £223.

Anyway, regardless of that, which iPad should you buy? Let’s start by thinking about which model to go for – Wi-fi or Wi-fi + 3G (which I’ll refer to just as the 3G model after this point to prevent confusion). I personally think it is unlikely that the iPad’s main use is going to be going on the Internet while on the move, that’s what the iPhone is for. So you could make the case that you don’t need to buy the 3G model. However, the 3G version also has GPS, which to me is justification to spend the extra money on that model. The 3G chippery itself is a mere bonus. The possible applications of GPS in location-aware apps is very exciting and I wouldn’t want to be excluded from that. So get the 3G model.

Next question is how much storage should you go for? When buying a hard drive, my advice is usually to think about how much you need and double it. My 16Gb iPhone is full and only has one movie on it. The iPad is going to be a million times better for looking at photos and watching movies, which will require much more storage. Better to be able to take as much as possible with you rather than wishing you’d put movie x on rather than the selection you brought with you. So I’d go for at least 32Gb, preferably 64Gb.

Does that mean if you can’t afford the £699 top of the range 64Gb 3G model, you shouldn’t get one? No, it doesn’t. If you want one, get the one you can afford, but I’d go for the 16Gb 3G model before looking at the 32Gb Wi-fi model because it gives you more possibilities with it’s GPS. You can always swap around your content if necessary, even if it is a bit of a faff. You can’t swap the features around.

So, am I going to buy an iPad? No. Not yet anyway. At the moment the iPad doesn’t offer me enough to justify getting a device between my iPhone and MacBook Pro. It’s close, though. I suspect the mark 2 iPad will have a forward facing camera, which will make it a great device for video conferencing and all the stuff the mark 1 can do. Roll on the 2011 model.

Mr Foster,

Thank for you for letter regarding the CCTV situation in Worcester. I will be filling in the survey and returning it to you shortly, but I thought I would take a few minutes to give you my thoughts regarding some of the points you made in your letter and related issues.

The overall impression given in the letter is that the camera will no longer be there and that we will be less safe without them. You say
that you have “seen the statistics showing arrests made thanks to CCTV evidence”. Neither of these points are particularly informative or
helpful to me. If you have seen the statistics, I think it would have been useful to put that information in your letter, so that I and
others receiving it could make a more informed decision. Without that information how am I to know whether or not manning the CCTV
monitoring room is a cost effective use of council resources?

Which brings me to the second point,  the use of CCTV as a deterrent. Before writing to you, I thought I would take the time to look at the news stories on the issue, to make sure that I was fully informed. None of them say that the CCTV cameras will be taken down, or that
they will no longer be recording. They say that they will no longer be monitored. If this is true, then the deterrent benefit is still there
because the evidence will still be stored.

It saddens me greatly that the image that you portray in your letter is one where we all need to be watched, constantly, to ensure our
safety. Technology and surveillance are not a panacea. The only long term answer to our society’s problem is education. Knowledge is a
shining beacon against ignorance. By informing the young they will grow up to be thoughtful, intelligent people. I would far rather my council spent it’s money on educating the people of Worcester than watching them.

I really do not think that it is the “professional” criminal that makes people feel unsafe in our city. Rather it is the things that CCTV cannot prevent, merely observe. Things like vandalism, drunk and disorderly people, gang violence, etc. I am not surprised that you do believe that it can stop these things with CCTV though, since you are a Labour MP. I find the Labour Government’s cavalier attitude to putting us all on databases and giving us ID cards, so you can track our every move very disturbing. I know the argument, if I’ve done nothing wrong I’ve got nothing to fear. What if the Government does something wrong and gets me confused with someone else with the same
name. How can I argue against the system? Our civil liberties have been hard won and no one deserves, as you voted to allow, to be locked
up for 42 days without charge, even if they are a “terrorist”. Who decides tomorrow who is a terrorist? Could it be someone who disagrees with you?

Which brings me onto my final point. I find it deeply distressing and abhorrent that you raised the 2005 terror attacks in London as a reason to support CCTV. In this case it neither prevented the crime, nor caught the people involved. They had blown themselves up, along with 50  other people. CCTV could not save those people. CCTV will not comfort the people who lost loved ones. The warm glow of the CCTV monitor will not put any warmth back into those people who died. You should be ashamed.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Mace

Other than that, I’m hoping that 2.2 will cure the crashes of Safari and Facebook that I’ve been encountering. Safari will sometimes crash when scrolling through a big page and Facebook just crashes randomly sometimes. I haven’t noticed either crash since I updated, but I haven’t used it that much today. I’ll comment back on how I get on.

Anyway, this evening Katie & I watched “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”. It was a very long film, but I enjoyed the breathing space this gave to the story. It was a great film to watch on Blu-ray too, which helps. It reminded me a little of “The Talented Mr Ripley”, only much better because I actually enjoyed it…

However, I’ve just done a quick search on Google Product Search (sidenote: which is a terrible name compared to its previous name, Froogle) and I apparently could have got one for 79p. Damn.

In the short term I plan to evaluate what blog software is out there at there at the moment and possibly switch from Wordpress. I also want to transistion from using this domain name (whythehell.co.uk) to alexmace.co.uk and setup proper redirects.

Books:

2006 Big Road Atlas
A History of the Modern World
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Accelerated C++
Accidental Empires
American Jihad
An End To Suffering
Anna Karenina
Bravo Two Zero
Business at the speed of thought
Cardinal of the Kremlin
Damon Hill:Grand Prix Year
Delia Smith’s Cookery Course Part 2
Detox
Families & How to survive them
FHM Presents: Bar-Room Jokes
Gaia Peace Atlas
Great Expectations
Guinness Book of Records (1987)
Harry Enfield and his Humorous
Home Networking Bible
How to turn your ex-boyfriend into a toad and other spells
If Chins Could Kill:Confessions of a B-movie Actor
Instant Web Scripts with CGI/Perl
Internet 1997 Unleashed
Introduction to Windows 98 Programming
Lorna Doone
Madame Doubtfire
Making of Star Trek: First Contact
Nintendo Choose Your Own Adventure Book:Flown The Koopa
Official Guide to Command & Conquer
Organizational Behaviour (4th Edition)
Patriot Games
Perl 5 Quick Reference
Personnel & Human Resource Management
Pride & Prejudice
Princess
Sex: A User’s Guide
Sons & Lovers
South Wales A-Z Road Map
SSN
Star Trek: Ashes of Eden
Star Trek: Covenant of the Crown
Star Trek: Federation
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: TNG Technical Manual
Star Trek: TNG: All Good Things
Star Trek: Voyager: Caretaker
Star Trek: Voyager: Cybersong
Star Wars: Ambush at Corellia
Star Wars: Assault at Salonia
Star Wars: Children of the Jedi
Star Wars: Darksaber
Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Showdown at Centerpoint
Star Wars: The Crystal Star
Student Grub Guide
The Age of Innocence
The Book Thief
The Concise Encyclopedia of Formula One (2001)
The Crystal Maze: Choose Your Own Adventure
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
The Driver’s Little Instruction Book
The Hunt for Red October
The Jungle Book
The Last of the Mohicans
The Machine Gunners
The Mystery of Banshee Towers
The Portrait of a Lady
The Road To Nab End
The Simpsons:A Complete Guide To Our Favourite Family
The Star Trek Encyclopedia
The Star Trek: TNG Companion
The Third Policeman
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Formula One (1994)
The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook: Dating & Sex
Why Pandas Do Handstands and Other Curious Truths About Animals
Winnie Ille Pu (Winnie the Pooh in Latin)
Women in Love
Women who run with the Wolves

Videos:

A Life Less Ordinary
Bagpuss
Beavis & Butthead Do America
Best of British: Mini
Clarkson: No Limits
Dirty Dancing
Ducktales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
Fergie’s Six of the Best
Fever Pitch
Gone with the Wind
Harry Enfield:Undressed
Independence Day
Man Utd unauthorised: Whose Club Is it Anyway?
Manchester United on Video:Volume 2 Number 1
Men In Black
Muriels Wedding
Murray’s Magic Moments
Patsy Palmer’s Club Workout
Pride & Prejudice, BBC Version
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Red Dwarf Series 3: Volume 1
Red Dwarf Series 3: Volume 2
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Shakespeare in Love
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Generations
The Very Best: Ryan & George
They Think It’s All Over: Full Throttle
Twister

It is sad to think really that Horizons was demolished and replaced, Journey Into Imagination had many revamps that weren’t as good as the original and ImageWorks was removed. Test Track was an improvement on World of Motion, but it did seem like a lot of holidays were spent wondering if and when it would open. That was (mostly) done in the 90s though when EPCOT was the age of a spotty teenager… We all make mistakes in those years. Last time I was there they had added Soarin’ it was absolutely fantastic so here is hoping the future is bright.

I remember being in the World in 1991 for the 20th Anniversary of the opening and again in 1996 for the 25th, etc, but those days didn’t resonate with me, probably because at the time (I was 9 and 14 respectively) 1971 seemed like pre-history. EPCOT, my favourite park turns 25 today though, which makes it the same age as me, so perhaps that’s why it means something to me. I hope to still be going and enjoying it in another 25 years when I’ll be 50 too.

The script does have a limitation though. When it creates a dump it is put into the configured dump directory and uploads it into the S3 bucket with a filename that only refers to the revision numbers contained the in file. When a dump is created from another repository it will upload the resulting file to the same bucket and potentially overwrite a dump from a different repository with the same filename. One way around this would be to create multiple copies of the script with different configurations to put the backups into different buckets. This is not ideal. As our projects have a repository each, I had to modify the script to work with multiple repositories.

The script now assumes the last part of the path to a repository to be the name of that repository. It will use this to store the local dumps (if you keep them) in seperate directories and also to prefix the files that are loaded to S3 with this name so that the files do not conflict. I have also modified the restore script so you can pass it the name of the repository you want to restore and the path to restore it to. Thus one copy of the script can manage the backup of multiple repositories.

It was an interesting little project to play around with as I’ve hardly looked at any Ruby before so I’ve dipped my toe into that pond for the first time. It certainly seems easy enough to pick up and read anyway. Also, obviously big thanks go to Max for creating the original script. Full instructions for installation are on his page. Don’t forget to test the restore function – if it doesn’t work then you’ll just cause yourself problems when the worst happens!

Get the modified version here – s3-svn-backup.tar.gz