Old car, pic taken in Luxembourg

Having been fortunate enough to have had a car since my late teens, I've grown accustomed to the convenience and feeling of secure independence that it brings. At any moment if I need to travel somewhere, I can. Or at least I could until four days ago, when I sold my car leaving me with an empty spot in the garage. The whole thing came about very quickly - a call from the dealer during the previous week led to an appointment during a promotional event on the Saturday. The deal was good, a trade-in was agreed and on the following Wednesday I paid a deposit and handed over my keys.

In less than a week I had gone from independent to dependent, on either public transport or access to my wife's car. I know it's not the end of the world, and the majority of people live perfectly well without a car, as will I. It's just a weird and slightly unnerving feeling to lose that independence. It also feels rather sad - the old car was despatched very rapidly and rather unceremoniously, and today I can't really find any nice pictures of it. There are plenty of heartwarming memories associated with that car, from trips to the Lake District and a long jaunt around Europe, to the year that we spent working down in Cornwall. The Kernow flag sticker (seen on many vehicles in Cornwall) has gone with the car, one of only a few constant reminders of a strong candidate for the greatest year of my life. I fondly remember strapping surfboards on the roof and driving down to the beach in the freezing cold over winter. Good times! Great times!

There's no doubt that this week has been pretty emotional for other reasons and that is contributing to my reflective mood, but I'm writing this mainly so that I may recognise the significance of this companion for the last 6+ years. It's pretty ridiculous to get philosophical about an inanimate object, particularly a luxury such as a car, but the time that was spent with that object is totally unique and it is the memories that it is capable of evoking that are the main cause of such pondering, not really the object itself. I find myself wondering what the next six years will bring, who will share the journeys and memories made in the new car and indeed, where on Earth we will be...!

"Do you own any of the following: jeans, white trainers, black turtlenecks or old-fashioned glasses?"

Apparently it's important for them to know whether I like to play Steve Jobs dress-up now and again. Morons, what an enormous waste of money!

In the end it took me 3 hours to get inside and then a further hour to do the purchase and activation, largely because the two Apple employees that were serving me were quite poorly trained and not the typical Apple uber-geeks that I have come to expect. They were pleasant enough but a bit slow and made loads of mistakes throughout! They will get better though, it's just launch-day teething.

It was finally activated at about 10.30ish and I've spent much of the rest of the day using it. Briefly, my impressions are that it is fast, that multitasking works very efficiently and that both the screen and camera are gorgeous. On the downside, I have to admit that the flat back looks like a cheap Shenzhen knock-off. To be honest, none of the recent models has had as classy an appearance as the original aluminium-backed 2G. I will be adding a few photos to this entry that document my efforts to be among the first to acquire one of these bad-boys.

We've been with the normally excellent O2 broadband for nearly 3 years now, and have been benefiting from the cheap rate of £7.50 for 8Mbps (no need for more speed, is there?!). Unfortunately, the quality of the connection suddenly deteriorated last month, and led to disconnects every 5 minutes or less, which lasted for nearly a week before I got it fixed. This was happening regardless of usage intensity, and didn't seem to be a busted ADSL filter as a new one didn't help. Now, the wiring in our block of flats is terrible - both mains electrics and telephone lines. We had two completely random phone numbers that connected to our phone line at first, and a whole load of Caribbean-sounding people kept getting confused when we answered the phone and not their auntie, so something was seriously wrong. Whilst it had been stable for a few years, it was still in the back of my mind that some kind of interference/wiring cock-up on the line could have caused the problem. Through a bunch of different websites, I came across this: the iPlate. Annoying name, but apparently the 'i' stands for 'interstitial', because it goes between two bits of your phone socket. It's essentially a filter that blocks the bell wire on your phone line, which is a common source of noise and is no longer necessary. I believe this wire can carry sufficient power to ring the mechanical bells inside old-school phones. You don't need it, so the iPlate gets rid of it, and possibly does some other fancy filtering also.

It cost me just under £8 from eBay and was not difficult to install. Here's how it is goes in (it's the part in the middle, the rest is just the original socket):

And here's how it sits in our seriously grim-looking master socket:

It worked instantly. No more disconnects since then, and our speed has gone up - about 800bps faster download and 200bps faster upload. More importantly, we can watch BBC iPlayer without any dropouts.

If you're happy with your broadband then you've no need for this, but if you are having problems with stability or speed then something this cheap and simple is at least worth trying.

Chopin Ballade No. 1

Chopin Ballade No. 2

Chopin Ballade No. 3

Chopin Ballade No. 4 pt.1

Chopin Ballade  No. 4 pt.2

Unfortunately the Bluetooth hardware started failing regularly, after periods of as little as 30 minutes use. This meant that the wireless keyboard and mouse that let you browse from the sofa would lose their connection, and made the whole system quite irritating in daily use. Of course, a USB keyboard/mouse would let you carry on using the machine but they are not practical in the living room set-up, and the wireless solution is so elegant.

Some early digging for causes and solutions revealed this blog posting that suggested downloading SMC Fan Control, a free utility that allows you to specify the fan speed for your computer instead of having it automatically drop to the lowest safe speed. Some bright spark had noticed that the Bluetooth tended to cut when processor temperatures were too high, and showed that by increasing fan speed the temperature could be brought down, usually resulting in resumption of normal Bluetooth services. I tried this, and it definitely worked, but only for a while. The problem gradually crept back, and with really high fan speeds, I found the noise distracting whilst watching movies or listening to music. So I have fashioned a new solution that seems to have fixed the problem. It's not pretty but it has worked so far, and I thought I'd share it. As always, proceed at your own risk, I'm not responsible for any adverse outcomes of the method described here.

In the photo above, you can see that I have unscrewed and released a little circuit board that carries some of the Bluetooth module's electronics, and it's now floating about an inch above its usual position, supported by two cables. From my experience, it appears that this little board is the part that gets too hot and kills your connection. Note that this is not the main AirPort card, which is much larger and is buried deep in the bowels of the machine.

To release it, you will need to first pry the case off of your unplugged Mac Mini, perhaps following these instructions over at Method Shop. In fact, there are also a couple of pictures at their site which show how to remove the Airport antenna at the top right of the machine (the green circuit board in my picture), which you'll need to do in order to unscrew the little Bluetooth board pictured above. I put the screw from the Bluetooth board back into the slot where it came from and left the board flying high above everything else, where the air circulation can keep it cool.

As a result, I've decided to leave the case off the Mac Mini permanently, which is probably not ideal but I've had no problems so far and plenty of game modders run their PCs wide open so I'm not too fussed. As an aside, simply removing the Mac Mini case did not fix the problem in itself, despite me trying it for a few weeks - it wasn't until the Bluetooth board was "flying" that the disconnections stopped. If you were so inclined, you could possibly cut a hole in the top of the Mac Mini case and feed the wires through, allowing you to replace the lid with the board hovering outside. But I can't be bothered with that, and the machine is tucked away under our TV so it's out of harm's way. You can hear the fan more clearly now because the case that I've removed is intended to reduce some of the noise, but it's not unbearable and it doesn't need to run so fast anyway because the machine is naturally cooler. I don't notice it now during the quiet moments of a DVD.

So there you go, I thought I'd give something back to the people who always provide help on the internet. Hope somebody somewhere finds it useful!

And a parting thought - if you have a technology problem, Google it. Learn how to Google it good and hard. I seldom find that someone else hasn't already provided a solution that works.

Today, Apple released a minor update to the iPhone firmware - taking us to 3.1.3. Took about 20 minutes to do the update (did a full backup beforehand, which also took about 20 minutes!). So far, not much seems different, and according to the release notes it's mainly bug fixes for the 3GS, so for people like me who are stuck in the slow lane, not much to get excited about. The only thing I've noticed is that it seems to have improved the keyboard accuracy when compared with the last update, which gave a significant deterioration over normal function. My text messages were particularly garbled whilst I was using the previous version.

By all accounts, the iPad is running 3.2, and it's likely that this will filter down to the rest of us around the launch date of that model, which is scheduled for March 2010. Then, later in the summer, it's expected that v4.0 will be released along with new iPhone hardware. If true, this will be good news for me as I've been holding out since my 18-month contract ended in December 2009, resisting the temptation of upgrading my aging 3G to a 3GS that will itself be pseudo-obsolete in 6 months time. As we now know that the iPhone is generally updated once a year in July, it makes less sense to get an 18-month contract that eventually forces a choice between immediate winter upgrading to an 'old' model or a 6 month out-of-contract wait 'til the new one comes along. Given that you end up paying for 24 months of service charge either way, it seems to make more sense to pick the 24 month contract and have the cheaper initial purchase price. I have an inborn hatred of long contracts (before the iPhone, I would always choose 12-months), so it will be excruciatingly painful for me to sign off on 2 whole years, but what choice do you have?! Unless Orange or Vodafone decide to offer a 12-month deal. That would make things interesting...

Last weekend we had Dim Sum for a friend's birthday at China Palace, in Excel, Docklands (recommendation by bleungberg). We ate like pigs (between 8 of us) and it was £15 each with Chinese tea only, i.e. no alcohol. The dim sum was very authentic, they had all the dishes we would like, as well as a good range of Chinese desserts that are often difficult to find in many Dim Sum restaurants. It helps if you have someone Chinese with you to deal with the Chinese-language tickbox order form/menu, as opposed to the "tourist" menu. I think you can access some special dishes this way, and allegedly you may even be able to get a discount, although we didn't. Still, at £15 it was a very worthwhile experience, despite it being a bit of a trek into darkest Docklands. There's some car parking out front - simply collect a pass from the reception of the restaurant and display it in your windscreen.

I have been using Google Chrome on Snow Leopard for about 8 weeks now, along with a great deal of other critics on the net ;) - for what it's worth, here are my impressions:

1. It's fast. Faster than Safari 4.0 and Firefox 3.6 for me (in general use), and it loads very quickly from scratch.
2. I like the quick launch layout - the 8 most frequently visited sites appear as thumbnails when you open a new tab. Safari has a similar feature, but it's choice of sites seems less accurate, and it relies on fancy graphics to give it a cover-flow style layout that thereby makes it slower than Chrome. 8 sites is enough for me but some people, quite rightly, are asking for the option to add more. Google have not yet included this option.
3. It doesn't deal with all web page plugins so well. I've found that embedded quicktime can sometimes not respond to clicks, and Flash is sometimes similarly impaired.
4. It's still not fully stable with some scripts - for instance, it doesn't deal with the Save Draft/Preview/Publish buttons perfectly in the WordPress backend. Firefox does this better.
5. Bookmarks are pretty uninspiring, as is the history. Basically, it's just a Google search, which makes it quicker to process and display but I do miss the bespoke interfaces of the other two browsers. I don't keep a lot of bookmarks, but when I do, I like to have them presented more gracefully.

Those are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. As it stands, the greatest testament to it's current position as favoured browser is that it has become the first app I load when I start my computer in the morning. If a particular page doesn't work so well in it, I try Safari next, and then Firefox, which may not make much logical sense because both Chrome and Safari are WebKit browsers, but stems from the fact that I preferred Safari to Firefox before Chrome came along. Undoubtedly, many extensions will become available for Chrome in order to enhance functionality, but as it stands, it's early days. If you are into customising your browser, the obvious choice is Firefox. Personally, I've never really been too bothered, so for the time being I'll stick with Chrome on the basis of it's superior speed.

Another year, another blog. I've never found a blog system that's been easy and inviting to maintain, so I'm hoping that WordPress (which is basically the most popular system) will be amenable to that. I installed it via the Fantastico DeLuxe system that my hosts (JaguarPC) provide, and immediately applied the latest upgrade. Installation threw up no problems and I've added this new theme which is better than most, and looks to be customisable without too much pain. So there! Another year, another blog! Bring it on!