Armand David’s personal weblog: technology, media, stuff and nonsense.
Arvind’s Inside Pictures tour of LA continues. He’s been manhandled by homeland security, met Intrepid on the beach, witnessed the baroque, talked to the producer of the Dark Knight and learned some lessons about penny pinching from David Fincher (lesson = don’t).
Follow him at the Slingblog.
My birthday’s coming up and my Dad bought me a new hi-fi kit to replace my aging B&W speakers and relatively cheap Cambridge Audio amplifier as a present.
I’m now the proud and happy owner of a Roksan Kandy L3 Integrated Amp and some beautiful Rosenut B&W CM1 speakers. As someone who’s always enjoyed good music through hi-fi (thanks to a good induction as a child with my Dad, who used to take me around Singapore listening to speakers that cost tens of thousands of pounds, none of which we were ever going to buy, but y’know, it’s good to have a benchmark), it’s wonderful to have the system in place.
The only thing missing from my hi-def living room now is a Blu-Ray player… Hmm…
I’ve meant to blog this for a while; our friend Nate (originally Arvind’s friend, but like all good friends he has been adopted into the wider family) has been hard at work prepping for the launch of Lodger Footwear, his premium shoe shop and service… but that description somehow doesn’t do it justice. Nate has a vision for living, wearing, eating, well — and part of that ethos is the driving force behind the brand.
Check out the blog, where you’ll learn some fascinating facts about the creation of fine footwear and other things related to living well.
I don’t own a pair yet, but I’m very envious of Arvind’s shoes!
Brands2Life is fielding a team for this year’s Byte Night charity sleep-out - a team of five will head onto the streets of London and rough it for an evening to raise money for Action for Children - a great cause.
Byte Night this year is on the 3rd Oct — my birthday — so needless to say I’ve made a craven excuse and ducked out — but would really like to support the cause, so encouraging my readership to donate, and donate generously! I have donated some cash towards an office bake sale the team coordinated, offered my (limited) skills as a guitarist as a prize in the raffle silent auction (I’ll be giving someone a guitar lesson), and will make sure I have an ‘extra cold’ beer the night they’re camping out.
Please do donate generously here.
They launched the T-Mobile G1 today (they being T-Mobile, Google, HTC and everyone else, but also the T-Mobile team across the office from me).
It looks pretty awesome, the screen is really responsive, the long touch thing is cool, the UI is lovely, the browser is nice, the screen is pretty.. it’s generally cool. Register your interest here.
I want:
- one handed texting
- pre-emptive dialling
- video messaging
…and I think it needs Exchange support (much as I think Google Apps is awesome — and yes, they’re a client too) for those business users. But maybe someone can write an ‘app’ for the phone to provide this functionality…
Did anyone else bear witness on Saturday? Ok, so the CGI dragon is a little ropey, but it has all the ingredients of awesome. Hopefully they’re done with exposition for now and can get on with some real drama… Very glad its set up for a 13 episode run as am sure it’ll sell well beyond the UK and earn itself new seasons.
Was anyone else a bit weirded out to see Gwen Cooper shifting forms?
…is the next film from Slingshot, and I didn’t even realise that the website is up! Well, ish, you can register for more info… but expect blood curling trailers to follow…
… for those who don’t know, it’s a teen horror movie featuring zombies aplenty. And apparently an inhaler (I’ve only seen a few outtakes). It stars Alex Pettyfer, the actor from the Stormbreaker film a few years ago.
Clearly Tormented will be awesome (but not for the squeamish)… so there are three films awaiting release from the Slingshot stable to look forward to in the next year or so: Faintheart, French Film and Tormented… and more in development, including movies from comic book legend Mike Carey and comedian David Baddiel.
My brother is on a trip, doing a course with Inside Pictures and blogging the experience for Skillset.
What that means is he’s touring LA for a few days, meeting film directors, probably movie stars, and talking about the experience on his blog. Check it out.
I originally posted a needless rant here, and decided in the interests of being constructive and not wanting to look like a ranty loon forever, to take down the post and instead write about how I addressed a recent frustration I had when troubleshooting my brother’s Macbook (much easier than editing my original, slightly inane, post). I’m a PC user so apologies if the following is unbelieavably obvious…
So the problem was: iTunes and Software update would not connect despite the fact the internet was otherwise working.
To fix the issue, change your location to the profile for your local wireless network instead of ‘automatic’.
It was incredibly simple but when I originally Googled whatever the exact error message was I couldn’t find an answer. So hoping this helps anyone who has experienced the same issue, and I’ll live with the embarrassment if the reason I needed help with this was that most Mac users find this as natural as uninstalling an application by dragging it to the recycle bin…
Thanks to Rich whose comment on my original rant was reasonable and helpful.
At some point, growing up, you turn against your parents in a small way. Or at least, I did — it felt occasionally a duty rather than a pleasure to see and hang out with them and a distraction from the every day business of going out with friends and generally tearing up the world.
Maybe I’ve matured, or its the stabilising influence and general inspiration of going out with Amanda, but over the last few weeks with my folks visiting, it’s just been amazing to hang out with them. My folks are talented, funny, interesting and brilliant (what else, I guess, would you expect when their progeny includes, well, me), and I’m pleased to have reached a point where I can enjoy and appreciate them as people, not just as their son. Of course, they’re not without their limitations but everyone is, and there genuinely feels to have been a change in me that I am more able to accept them (and others) as they are.
My Dad used to talk a lot about shifting your perspective when I was younger. Speccifically in the context of wasted food much of the time, or in addressing complaints that I was ’starving’ (”Think of the children in Africa… are you really starving?”) — but something seems to have shifted recently. And it feels good.
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