Nice jumper! Nice hardware! Stupid price.

The verdict? It is a giant iPhone. In fact it is a giant iPhone that weighs the same as a hardback book that cannot be used on  flat surfaces, with a screen so shiny that once you’ve got over the shock of seeing the faces you pull whilst web browsing, you’ll be too scared to touch the screen for fear of leaving incriminating fingerprints that could be used to trace your sordid web-browsing history.

Nope, the iPad is not for me, in fact Charlie Brooker’s launch day article sums up my feelings towards it in a manner that my slowly degrading GCSE grade C English will never be able to articulate. Despite my comparative lack of words we come to the same conclusion – you will want to own an iPad, but only when it becomes lighter and cheaper.

This Dalek appears with its ‘election special’ counterparts  in this week’s edition of the Radio Times. There has been no official confirmation that this new ’2010 Dalek’ is the genuine article but already the Internet is hailing this new design as the worst thing to happen in the world, ever! We’ll just have to wait until the broadcast of this week’s episode, Victory of The Daleks, to find out if the world does actually come to an end or not.

Unlike the rest of the Internet, I quite like the new-look Dalek.

I needn’t have waited. The series opener was fantastic!

In this fifth (or thirty-first to be precise) series Matt Smith is the eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan is the companion, the TARDIS has been redecorated, the theme tune has been updated and the show has a new head writer/producer in the form of Steven Moffat. That’s all you need to know, that and the fact that it is bloody brilliant!

Matt Smith’s doctor looks too young for the role, looks too weird, acts and dresses as an old physics teacher (one that can run and jump around), pulls silly faces, is clumsy, doesn’t like apples and is possibly channelling Patrick Troughton. Everything that the Doctor (who is an alien after all) should be.

Karen Gillan’s companion, Amy Pond, is Scottish, a kiss-o-gram, sassy, sexy and possibly as mad as a sackful of snakes – everything a Doctor’s companion should be.

The TARDIS has regenerated into a time-spanning amalgamation of useful junk and bric-brac, like a high-tech antique shop powered by a nuclear reactor with see-through floors. Everything a… you get it by now.

So everything has changed. Or has it? It’s still modern Who yet somehow more like a fairytale, possibly due to the bright colours of the show’s appearance on BBC HD. In recent interviews head writer Steven Moffat admits that Doctor Who IS made for children and is nothing but a fairytale. He adds that although a fairytale sounds weak and insipid, fairytales are actually scary, dark and terrifying, and everybody loves those. As someone who grew-up watching Tom Baker’s Doctor I can agree with this, but I’ll admit that in my young childish mind I was more scared of Baker’s face looming out of the time vortex in the title sequence than I was of the Daleks!

Speaking of title sequences, I seem to be the only person on the Internet who likes the new version of the theme music.

Doctor Who is back, and better than ever!

Yes, of course I do! It’s a new gadget, who doesn’t want to have new gadgets?

Will I buy an iPad?

No.

Well, maybe…

Unless you’ve been living under a self-imposed media embargo you’ve more than likely been made aware of the existence of Apple’s latest gizmo, the iPad. Essentially a larger version of it’s existing iPhone, the iPad will supposedly revolutionise the way we use computers, harmonise the interface between man and machine blah blah blah…

This is the iPad. It’s an iPhone for giants:

"Jesus" Jobs and an iPad

The pro-iPad camp, perfectly represented by Stephen Fry’s unashamed gushings on his web site, claim the iPad to be yet more evidence of the second coming of Christ. It’s a certainty that Apple fans will be queueing outside of their local Apple dealer on the morning of the iPads release, ready to cash-in their latest trustafarian cheque to procure themselves God’s latest… sorry, Apple’s latest creation, regardless of whether it is actually any good…

Those who are firmly anti-Apple claim that the iPad’s lack of multi-tasking, lack of built-in camera, expansion capabilities, SD-card slot, closed architecture, low memory and inevitable high-pricing will doom it to a future shared by it’s forbearer, the Newton.

An iPad would sit nicely on my coffee table. Its memory would be stuffed full of geeky PDF documents (instructions for my hi-fi, video game manuals etc..) and the occasional eBook (one must never be without a copy of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). I would use it as a TV guide (going to a TV listings web site is far quicker than using Sky’s E.P.G.) or as a way of quickly firing off a few emails without having to use the PC upstairs in the office – nothing that a netbook or smartphone cannot do, but it would be so much nicer doing it on something with the form-factor of the iPad.

The iPad will be released at the end of March. There is no doubt that it will be overpriced.

That’s right, you read correctly, a Star Trek convention.

I discovered that I had poor vision when we were sat in a hot, sweaty conference room with a few hundred fellow Trekkies at the Leicester Holiday Inn. We were sat listening to various luminaries giving entertaining talks about their time in the Star Trek universe. The charming George ‘Mr. Sulu’ Takei was present, as was the rather witty Max Grodénchik (Deep Space Nine’s half-wit Ferengi ‘Rom’) who had managed to win the audience’s adulation with a comedic re-enactment of Ferengi mating rituals.

At least that’s what I think happened, I couldn’t really make out what he was doing because I had difficulty seeing any great distance in front of me; the people sat in the rows of seats behind me had no problem interpreting Grodénchik’s spasmodic movements but I was clueless, seeing only what I could interpret as a short blurry human-shaped mass strutting across the stage making painful squealing noises. Not wishing to miss any other opportunities to witness minor celebrities make complete fools of themselves, I ensured that we sat near the front for the rest of the convention.

George Takei is very short in real life.

A week or so after the convention, an eye examination revealed that I was indeed short-sighted. I was forced to purchase a rather expensive pair of plain-looking spectacles and endure the sudden, yet predictable jibes from my friends and colleagues.

“Hey, four-eyes!”

“You speccy twat!”

Oh how we laughed!

Over a decade later my eyesight has not improved and the price of glasses has sky-rocketed. Those wrap-round Oakley reactive glasses may have looked the part, but with the frames costing £150 and the special lenses coming in at twice that amount some serious money had to be spent before 20-20 vision could be achieved. As I write this, I am having lunch in my favourite Swindon café (how bohemian) waiting for my new overpriced prescription spectacles to be made by the lovely people at Vision Express. As my prescription now features a ’0.50 prism’ on each eye, I need special lenses that are going to cost just shy of £200!

I think this’ll be the last time I’ll be able to eat at a café for a long while.

Or will it? Last year a colleague of mine introduced me to the concept of ordering glasses online. He’d purchased some specs from Glasses Direct for the princely some of £30. Sure, they weren’t a high-fashion pair with tinted lenses and infra-red night-vision, but they were very nice for the price. As someone who regularly breaks his glasses, either through the rough and tumble one receives working as a heating engineer or through the pain of slamming one’s face onto a quaint, cobbled Dublin street, £30 for a pair of throwaway glasses is a steal! So from now on I’m going to buy my extra specs online.

Oh, and as I now have a prism on each eye, does that mean you can shine a torch in my face an recreate the album cover to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon?

]]> http://www.worldofme.co.uk/2010/02/curse-my-eyes/feed/ 1 http://www.worldofme.co.uk/2009/09/noodles/ http://www.worldofme.co.uk/2009/09/noodles/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:18:12 +0000 nige http://www.worldofme.co.uk/?p=940

The Noodles of the Gods

Before I update the World of Me with a huge report from this year’s RAFTA Project, I would just like to add that Shin Cup Noodles are possibly one of the best noodle-in-a-cup-based foodstuffs in the world. Ever.

If you haven’t seen the new Star Trek movie I suggest you do so immediately. If you have seen the new Star Trek movie, read on…

I won’t write a review of the new Star Trek movie as I am a geek and I would be forced to dissect every second of this film to see how it fits in to the existing Star Trek universe (and write you an essay on the science of Transwarp Transportation in the process). Instead I’ll give you a list of pros and cons:

The good:

• The casting is excellent. Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban as McCoy were inspired choices
• Star Trek is fun again! Just like the 60′s TV series we are allowed to have fun on the Enterprise
• The Uhura/Spock romance actually works
• Leonard Nimoy
• The death of a redshirt
• The alternative reality factor that satisfies the need for a reboot and those bent on canon
• The destruction of Vulcan -  if we needed proof that the bad-guys were bad, this was it

The bad:

• Product placement (oh do f**k off Nokia)
• Scotty’s pet Oompa-Loompa
• Simon Pegg’s accent
• The destruction of Vulcan – and the planet looked so beautiful too
• Cut scenes – search online to find out what scenes were cut to save time. Hopefully they will re-appear on the DVD

So the Star Trek of 2009 is a winner with both fans and newcomers alike. I look forward to the next Star Trek movie regardless of whether it’ll feature Khan.

Nice isn’t it? I admit the place mats are a bit rubbish but they are from ASDA (a store not known for it’s contemporary style) and they are cheap (£2.99 for the set). The fruit bowl is from my parents and it always contains a combination of apples and/or bananas.

But why has it taken me nearly four years to get a kitchen table? There are two reasons:

First, I had no room for a table as I used to keep my computer desk in the corner of the kitchen. I didn’t do this by choice, it was the only location in the house that had a spare phone point suitable for a DSL modem.

Second, I was a tad embarrassed that whenever I had guests staying round they were forced to eat breakfast from either a cramped coffee table or the afore-mentioned lounge-trays.

Something had to be done. I decided to get a kitchen table and move the computer to the spare room.

The spare room – a perfect example of modern aesthetics and ergonomics! Although it displays all the symbols of bachelorism and geekism, it wasn’t the most welcoming of spaces. And should the room be required to house staying guests again it would be difficult to position an inflatable double-bed twixt the various wires and disc-drives on the floor.

Again, something had to be done. I leafed through the pages of the Ikea catalogue.

Scouring the Ikea catalogue is always a joy for me. Not only can I get inspiration for new furniture or decorating styles, I get to snigger at all the seemingly  rude names of all the products (such as Fhart, Felj and the excellently-named range of clothes hangers called Bumerang).  Flicking through the work spaces section of the catalogue I came across the rather attractive Vika range of worktop/trestle combinations. Rather than buy a dedicated desk, I could mix and match trestles, cupboards, drawer units and worktops to create my very own custom work area.

One trip to Ikea later I was in possession of a worktop and two storage units.

The required tools for any form of DIY are a hammer, battery-powered screwdriver and a cup of tea. As luck would have it, the supplied instructions for the storage units stated that I would need a screwdriver and a hammer (but no cup of tea) to assist with assembly!

Much hammering, screwing and cups of tea later…

The completed office (although strictly speaking it’s a computer room, but as that brings back memories of a school classroom smelling of burnt-out BBC Master computers and failed attempts at learning Boolean logic, it’s an office).

As I ended up having more space available than I had originally planned I was able to set up most of my music equipment in a semi-permanent basis. And any future guests will be pleased to discover that the room has been laid out in such a fashion that it can easily accommodate an inflatable double-bed with minimal disruption (plus they’ll get to eat their breakfasts in a more civilised manner).

The room is not quite finished. I want to add some sort of  mood lighting to the underside of the worktop and the storage units need another shelf added to accomodate all of my collective geek-crap. As it stands, it’s nice to have a space dedicated to performing all of my computery and musical tasks. It’s also nice to have the computer out of the kitchen – it was difficult trying to work without making numerous visits to the fridge.