Listening to: Sunshine (Interfearance Remix) - Rhian Sheehan

So the jungle drums are starting to beat about the Cell Processor:

• GamesBiz

• Slashdot

• The Register

• BBC World
• EE Times

It is interesting to read these in context of the recent achievements that IBM has
made in their TPM
benchmarks. I think we’re already seeing significant bits of the Cell processor
floating about.

Listening to: Miles Away (Age Pryor Remake) - Rhian Sheehan

VS2005 (check)… Avalon CTP (check)… Bouncing Amiga Ball (check)…. Working VS2003
Environment (No)… D’OH!

Need to poke ’round to get VS2003 and IIS playing nicely again… but given that
I am not really going to use any other tool but Word this side of Christmas I think
it can wait.

And yes it is very cool.

Listening to: Fly My Pretties - Fly My Pretties

Pay day last week… so music purchasing this weekend. As I find myself doing more
and more… my purchases were all NZ.

• Music
  for Nature Documentaries - Rhian Sheehan Remixed
  I am a big fan of Rhian Sheehan… there is something a little “old school electronica“
  in his music that really appeals to me. It is a delight to listen to other peoples
  take on his music.

• Fly My Pretties - Fly My Pretties
  Every now and again there is a local production that makes my little kiwi heart proud.
  Over the last few years this list has included work by Shihad, Pitch Black, Rhombus
  and Fat Freddy’s Drop… now, at this moment, it is Fly My Pretties. It sums up all
  that makes me love NZ, living in NZ and why NZ is home even if I had to leave. It
  is a brilliant album.

• Dreams - Evermore
  It is great pop… listening to it all at once it gets all a bit samey but, just as
  with Cold Play, it makes a great seasoning when you set your playlist to random.

Listening to: Lucky - Fly My Pretties

It was a long, busy, week and so I didn’t manage to get into the lab on Wednesday.
None-the-less I made up for it on Sunday. I tidied up my first structural
lay up and set it for further processing … OMG it’s strong… and that is with
only one side of carbon.

I am now running two experiments… well, it is now only one because it became obvious
very fast that the first one would fail. The result of the remaining work will
determine how exactly I will produce things moving forward.

Note to self: Carbon fibre shards are deadly… as I discovered after having two splinters.

Listening to: Dreams Call Out to Me - Evermore

Ok so this is one of the long standing wet dreams (aside from the resurrection of the Newton…. which stands about an equal chance of happening) - the Apple Cell Phone:

Steve Jobs has a mobile phone. I’m not sure which mobile phone it is, but he’s definltely got one. And he hates it. He curses at it every day. He hates it like he hated the original IBM PC. He hates how hard it is to add contacts and make calls and he cringes at the web experience and the Java games, if he’s even bothered to try them. He holds it in his hand during long trips and admires some things about it, but knows *he could do it better.* He knows that if Apple decided to make a mobile phone, it would be the most intuitive and elegant mobile phone in the world. And he wants that phone. And what Steve Jobs wants, Steve Jobs gets. Not much to argue here.

That is taken from a post by Russel Beattie. Again he underplays the effort required to enter into the market… sure Apple is a huge brand but the service providers rule the roost in the market and convincing them seems to be too big an ask… They have finally cowed the likes of Nokia and so I have a bit of problem working out why they might be comfortable with an even bolshier hardware provider. iPod != Cellphone… a really important equation, entry barriers high in one and low in the other.

If the iPhone is ever going to happen it is more likely to be VoIP WiFi arrangement… here Apple controls far more of the experience (which they leverage very well when they do) and a good deal more of the value chain (and we all know that Apple loves to control the valuable bits of the value chain).

Of course I will be the first one to be pleased if I am proven wrong.

Listening to: It’s Too Late - Evermore

I saw Garden State on Friday. I
was delighted to see that it didn’t feel like a long episode of Scrubs. Zach
Braff (writer, director, star…. too talented for his own good) has wonderfully
summed up that “High School (check), University (check), first lame job (check),
childhood (check), parents as humans not as authority (check)…. wtf do I do
now?” feeling you get when you’re in your mid twenties. Natalie Portman
is very good as the hyper active Sarah and Peter Sarsgaard is also brilliant
as the slacker Mark. The movie has this very surreal aspect to it that I also enjoyed
because it was executed so well (it felt like magic). It won’t be for everyone…
but I think those that do get it will love it. It also has a great sound track going
for it.

Listening to: Fast Cars - U2

A few months ago I came across a great
article that that looked at UX in context of advertising spend and considered
how advertising without UX investment negatively impacted brand loyalty.

“Well,” she responded, “we already spend $30 million a year just on advertising,
so there’s not much left over.”

Needless to say, the project never happened. The CEO decided to continue to “run
a few surveys” with his $20,000-or-so budget; his $30 million in ads continued to
drive customers to a website that frustrated them.

Let’s review the numbers.

Amount           Annual budget for…
$30,000,000…Advertising (driving people to the website)
$20,000…….Customer experience (what happens when they get there)

So… a good chunk of every dollar the company earned went to sending potential
customers to have a bad experience. A tiny percentage of those frustrated people would
muddle through and become paying customers; the vast majority would click away, never
to return.

Is this any way to run a business?

Mark Hurst has followed up with an great
article that builds on his first.

The spread of Internet connectivity worldwide makes it much easier for people
to communicate with each other about experiences they’ve had - commercial or not -
specifically, whether they’re good or not. A good experience will spread via the ether
of the Internet, powered by millions of thumbs and fingers, typing and e-mailing and
texting and IMing the referrals to friends all across the world. (I don’t need to
tell you that a bad experience will spread the same way - maybe even faster.)

Oh, and advertising might help a little bit on the side, too.

Listening to: City of Blinding Lights - U2

Ok… lots of XAML stuff has hit the net since the Avalon CTP. Here’s my round up
(more for my own reference … so I don’t lose the links):

• There is now a XAML
  viewer for Whidbey (src: Longhorn
  Blogs).

• More for the trainspotters… here is a few
  lines of code that show you the visual tree for a XAML form.

• A new
  release of XAMLPad is available.

• This is more of a link that will appeal to the old school… the Amiga ball, in 3D, declared
  in XAML (here’s the original
  post with src).

• Here are a couple of posts (1, 2)
  about hooking up windows forms in XAML.

Listening to: A Man and A Woman - U2

Found this on BoingBoing.
Here is a before and after photo of Viktor Yushchenko - the opposition leader in
the Ukraine. Reportedly the results of bio-weapons poisoning (or bad sushi… depending
on what side you’re on)…

… it is utterly chilling.

Listening to: All Because of You - U2

From MocoLoco: