2006 — Day 21 - the past is a foreign country
They do, indeed, do things1 differently there. Some things never change, though. Microsoft software, for example, seems happy to remain sluggish no matter how many MHz or GHz you put at its disposal, or how many MB for that matter. Perhaps you can tell I've just been feeding all my carefully-ripped MP3s into the Media Center (sick?) Library just to see how it gets on. It gets on, but boy does it take its sweet time.
And from a throwaway line in my new favorite magazine (Micro Mart — don't worry, the enthusiasm will doubtless fade) Vista will be some 15% slower than XP in its graphics. (I've been crashing and freezing my system from time to time over the last year by using Stardock software to apply various themes that apparently deliver a taste of the upcoming eye candy; what can I say? I'm obviously a masochist.)
Although I was for over a decade a happy Acorn bigot, I still have a hankering for an attractive GUI, and I expect I will know it when I see it.
Fish and bicycles
Steve Bell's cartoon re Trident in today's Guardian is particularly brilliant. As is Chris Ware's cover for The New Yorker contrasting Thanksgiving in 1942 and now. I gather it's one of a set of four — a first for the magazine. I have the one he's called "Conversation".
My affair with First Direct is over
Their closing balance statement tersely asserts (if that's what their unexplained code "FM FD" means) that I am now £6.24 better off in my real account. Oddly, they haven't told me to destroy my card — I would of course do so, if I could find it. Not so much as a "Goodbye" :-)