PushingJelly

Just a short one today to note that our favorite fruit flavoured computer company has released an update to its music player.
iTunes 4.8 came out today and its main new features: sync of some info with the iPod (I’m sure iSync used to do that) and wait for it…..Movie Playback!!!!

Well, I have installed the software and the video playback interface is not all that. There doesn’t seem to be any UI when its playing back in full screen mode. You really need something other than breaking out back into iTunes. Either a panel like the DVD player or the transparent interface you get in iPhoto or Tiger’s mail.app
This is a water test. Apple has previously put out technology tasters like this and most of the work was already there with Quicktime anyway.
As we already have Quicktime’s Player application I can’t see that they would have brought the feature in just to play the occational movie, I think this is a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of delivered feature films I have written about before in “Jigsaw” and I am pretty convinced that it is going to happen this year (“the year of HD”).

Interesting times to come I’m sure.

Back to work this week feeling mostly better.

It’s been an eventful few days, with Nipper getting his next Karate belt, the fish tank situation and changes at work to boot.

As I have mentioned before, my kids are being schooled in the art of Karate, specifically Shotokan Karate. It started with classes in their real school and has progressed to several times a week and occasional weekend sessions too. My daughter has achieved the level of Green Belt and Nipper was Orange until Saturday’s grading.
Little bud tries really hard and although not blessed with the natural ability of his sister (something to do with the Gymnastics and Dance she used to do), he does quite well.
This weeks grading was however a bit of a wild card for us, in that the step to Blue belt takes a higher level of commitment from the student and a more intensive test than usual. Well he pulled it out of the bag. Breezing through the Kata section then demonstrating some really cool self defense moves, there was a Blue belt and a second class distinction waiting for him at the end.

About a month ago we decided to buy a fish tank for the family. With the loss of our family dog, Sam, I was very reluctant to get another pet. Sam really was a member of the family and we all really felt it when she passed away last year.

I have always liked the idea of having fish and thought that the family might be less inclined to become attached to them in the event of eventual loss. You can’t cuddle a fish.

Not having fish before (apart from a goggle eye gold fish when I was little), we started small with a 40l tank and took our time to get it running properly, then added a few fish and again waited – following the advice from the shop.
Our fish (four platies and a pleco catfish called A.J.) did really well and bizzarely we become very attached the little guys. A.J., who belongs to Nipper, is an entity to himself and completly ignores the other fish, happily cleaning and hiding. In fact he really should have been called Waldo for the number of time we ask “where’s A.J.”. The other fish havebecome atttuned to our feeding regime and will come to the glass when we look in closely in order to solicit food. Platies apparently do two things: Eat and breed, mostly eat.
After a month and with the tank’s nitrite levels dropping (with the addition of some magic bacteria) we decided to buy some more fish. Four guppies and some tetras. Suddenly our little tank was looking decidedly full.

We discussed from the outset, waiting about sixmonths or so and seeing how it goes then looking at getting a bigger tank. Well we went out to look at bigger tanks and ended up spending about £400 on a fantastic looking tank, just a few months early, thats all. Money boing a bit tight at the moment, wifey and I have made the tank our birthday present.
After waiting a week I have now transplanted the boys (and girls) from the little tank, over to their new home and they look a lot happier with the space.

For the last few years my role at work has been largly project related. Ian and I did the Mac Manager rollout and some other bits and intersperced with helping out the other engineers (when they can’t be arsed to think about a problem or read the documentation we have already produced for them) we have worked on non support stuff like projects.
With the draconian attitude on the support side towards thinks like; dress code, timekeeping and music, we have both wanted to move to another department for some time (well, Ian wanted to leave really).
Before Xmas we had discussions about the two of us moving with the IT director and several managers, however I assumed that nothing would come of it because the muted deadline came and went without the changes to the overall structure being put in place. Well finally it did happen and Ian and I now work with what used to be called Sys Admin but which is now called Infrastructure and encompases Solaris and Wintel servers as well. Hopefully this will lead will to more Unix experience and I suspect some Solaris training will be forthcoming.
The positives, For day to day work out role (for the time being anyway) will not change that much, just our reporting structure has changed ) With some luck we will spend more time on the project and less time helping.
The drawbacks – well there are always some. This time it is the loss of our dear back room hideaway. There is a lot to be said for a place you can call your own at work and our backroom is such a place. A plethora of Macs will have to be transplanted to our original desks in the IT main area. Health and safety may have something to say as they prefer one CPU per workstation however we need the machines so they will just have to lump it.

So there you go, another week passes and another twist in the road is negotiated. The older I get, the more I realise that its much easier not to think (worry) about the twists and turns, sometimes you are on a pushbike and sometime its a rollercoaster, the secret is just to sit back and try to enjoy the ride because you are onboard anyway and there is only one way off.