Yep, it's my Newton 2000U, caught on my mobile (at a rather jaunty angle I must admit) at Newton railway station just outside Glasgow. A Newton at Newton, you might say ;)
Monday, 17 January 2011
It's been a while...
... and to celebrate, here's a nice picture...
Yep, it's my Newton 2000U, caught on my mobile (at a rather jaunty angle I must admit) at Newton railway station just outside Glasgow. A Newton at Newton, you might say ;)
Yep, it's my Newton 2000U, caught on my mobile (at a rather jaunty angle I must admit) at Newton railway station just outside Glasgow. A Newton at Newton, you might say ;)
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Changes - Tue 1/6
Bah. In the middle of rebuilding a PowerBook if the wrong time to discover that your IM provider has decided to go all secure and disable non-SSL logins, and that yo,r Newton IM client won't let you suffix the server name with an alternative port number. Oh well. Goodbye hot-chilli.net, hello neko.im. In other bigger news, the Mondeo has decided to give up the ghost. Well, very annoyingly the shell of the car would keep going for a good while yet, but it has blown the replacement engine I got for it last year, so it really needs to be replaced now. Thankfully dad qualifies for a Motability car, so we now have one on order, so we have to wait for it to arrive. MG is in for its MoT test. Failed as expected, but not as horribly as feared. Should have it back soon, complicated by next weeks trip to London for the UK Ingres Users Association conference. But that's for next time!
Bah. In the middle of rebuilding a PowerBook if the wrong time to discover that your IM provider has decided to go all secure and disable non-SSL logins, and that yo,r Newton IM client won't let you suffix the server name with an alternative port number. Oh well. Goodbye hot-chilli.net, hello neko.im. In other bigger news, the Mondeo has decided to give up the ghost. Well, very annoyingly the shell of the car would keep going for a good while yet, but it has blown the replacement engine I got for it last year, so it really needs to be replaced now. Thankfully dad qualifies for a Motability car, so we now have one on order, so we have to wait for it to arrive. MG is in for its MoT test. Failed as expected, but not as horribly as feared. Should have it back soon, complicated by next weeks trip to London for the UK Ingres Users Association conference. But that's for next time!
Friday, 23 April 2010
We Pray For Your Election - ask General MacArthur...
So, it's election time again. Thoughts on the parties, as twittered at various points recently...
- The Labour Party (or specifically, "New Labour") : traitors
- At least you know where you are with the Conservatives - on the wrong end of a kicking
- The Liberal Democrats : an attempt to mean something to everyone that ends up meaning nothing to anyone.
- So what's left ? Probably the Greens, or the Scottish Socialists if they can keep it together this week and field a worthwhile candidate...
I still think the only way to get the general public to re-engage with politics is to take politics out of the hands of professional politicians. Back in the day, when I were a lad (cue Largo from The New World) Labour MPs had done a real job for some time, and probably come up through the union ranks as a shop steward, to councillor and eventually to MP. A Tory MP would likely have been in the military, or in business or perhaps gentleman farming. The point is, they would have done *something* in life that wasn't directly to do with politics, and would bring that knowledge and experience to bear on the issues of the day.
Now, we have a parliament crawling with solicitors and sundry others who have effectively made a career out of politics. Labour gets blasted for introducing new laws at a frightening rate, but the trend had started under previous Conservative administrations - when you have that many lawyers stuck in a room, with the ability to create new laws at the drop of a hat, they are going to churn out legislation like there's no tomorrow. The other problem with career politicians is that it gives inordinate power to the party whips; in much the same way that you don't go out of your way to tweak your boss's nose at work, you offend the whip at your career's peril - representing the genuine views of your constituents be damned, if the whip says how you should vote, that's the way you vote lest you be marked down as a "maverick", and that's your chance of a bench job gone for a burton.
Another problem, of the many facing British parliamentary democracy, is the fixation on the personality of the party leaders. This is because, although in your constituency you vote for your local MP to represent you and your neighbours in parliament, that is also effectively a vote for the leader of that MP's party. So what if you, say, think your local Tory MP is doing a fantastic job, but you really want a Labour government ? Well, you're stuffed in the British electoral system, basically.
And that's all before we get to the relative injustices of devolution, or the age old (and really comparatively irrelevant) saw about proportional representation. Or indeed, the position of the Church of England as an established church, or the constitutional awkwardness that would result if a Roman Catholic (or indeed a practicing Jew) became Prime Minister. (Thankfully there is no "Muslim Emancipation Act" to create similar problems for followers of Islam.)
So, what is to be done ? Well, we could start by taking politics back to grass roots level. We have effectively all colluded in allowing affairs to get to the state that they have - it's all to easy to say "I've done my bit - I voted" then step back and leave the elected to do as they will. The problem is that we all seem to have forgotten that we elect a government to do what *we* want *them* to do - not for *them* to tell *us* what to do.
The term "soviet" springs to mind. In its original form as a local or workplace council, rather than how it was deliberately overrun and perverted by the Bolsheviks, the soviet was a forum for members of a community or workplace to come together to discuss the issues of the day. We should create a similar mechanism to bring together workplaces and communities to give their views and opinions directly and regularly. A representative would be elected by those present at the soviet to take the decisions of that soviet to the next soviet up (e.g. from community to town to region to nation). That representative could (and indeed should) change every time the soviet had decisions or deliberations to pass on to the next tier. The representative would be fully accountable to ensure they gave the decisions of their soviet rather than their own opinions. To ensure attendance at soviets, possibly an increase in your local taxes if you miss three in a row ?
OK, so it's not exactly a thoroughly worked out proposal. But it would do something to get people back involved in politics again. Too many people say "I'm not political" - but the fact is that every action is in some way political, because politics is really about how a population interacts and decides - the term "politics" has been defined to count only "party politics" and this is part of the reason the ordinary "man on the Clapham omnibus" feels detached from the whole process.
All Power To The Soviets !
- The Labour Party (or specifically, "New Labour") : traitors
- At least you know where you are with the Conservatives - on the wrong end of a kicking
- The Liberal Democrats : an attempt to mean something to everyone that ends up meaning nothing to anyone.
- So what's left ? Probably the Greens, or the Scottish Socialists if they can keep it together this week and field a worthwhile candidate...
I still think the only way to get the general public to re-engage with politics is to take politics out of the hands of professional politicians. Back in the day, when I were a lad (cue Largo from The New World) Labour MPs had done a real job for some time, and probably come up through the union ranks as a shop steward, to councillor and eventually to MP. A Tory MP would likely have been in the military, or in business or perhaps gentleman farming. The point is, they would have done *something* in life that wasn't directly to do with politics, and would bring that knowledge and experience to bear on the issues of the day.
Now, we have a parliament crawling with solicitors and sundry others who have effectively made a career out of politics. Labour gets blasted for introducing new laws at a frightening rate, but the trend had started under previous Conservative administrations - when you have that many lawyers stuck in a room, with the ability to create new laws at the drop of a hat, they are going to churn out legislation like there's no tomorrow. The other problem with career politicians is that it gives inordinate power to the party whips; in much the same way that you don't go out of your way to tweak your boss's nose at work, you offend the whip at your career's peril - representing the genuine views of your constituents be damned, if the whip says how you should vote, that's the way you vote lest you be marked down as a "maverick", and that's your chance of a bench job gone for a burton.
Another problem, of the many facing British parliamentary democracy, is the fixation on the personality of the party leaders. This is because, although in your constituency you vote for your local MP to represent you and your neighbours in parliament, that is also effectively a vote for the leader of that MP's party. So what if you, say, think your local Tory MP is doing a fantastic job, but you really want a Labour government ? Well, you're stuffed in the British electoral system, basically.
And that's all before we get to the relative injustices of devolution, or the age old (and really comparatively irrelevant) saw about proportional representation. Or indeed, the position of the Church of England as an established church, or the constitutional awkwardness that would result if a Roman Catholic (or indeed a practicing Jew) became Prime Minister. (Thankfully there is no "Muslim Emancipation Act" to create similar problems for followers of Islam.)
So, what is to be done ? Well, we could start by taking politics back to grass roots level. We have effectively all colluded in allowing affairs to get to the state that they have - it's all to easy to say "I've done my bit - I voted" then step back and leave the elected to do as they will. The problem is that we all seem to have forgotten that we elect a government to do what *we* want *them* to do - not for *them* to tell *us* what to do.
The term "soviet" springs to mind. In its original form as a local or workplace council, rather than how it was deliberately overrun and perverted by the Bolsheviks, the soviet was a forum for members of a community or workplace to come together to discuss the issues of the day. We should create a similar mechanism to bring together workplaces and communities to give their views and opinions directly and regularly. A representative would be elected by those present at the soviet to take the decisions of that soviet to the next soviet up (e.g. from community to town to region to nation). That representative could (and indeed should) change every time the soviet had decisions or deliberations to pass on to the next tier. The representative would be fully accountable to ensure they gave the decisions of their soviet rather than their own opinions. To ensure attendance at soviets, possibly an increase in your local taxes if you miss three in a row ?
OK, so it's not exactly a thoroughly worked out proposal. But it would do something to get people back involved in politics again. Too many people say "I'm not political" - but the fact is that every action is in some way political, because politics is really about how a population interacts and decides - the term "politics" has been defined to count only "party politics" and this is part of the reason the ordinary "man on the Clapham omnibus" feels detached from the whole process.
All Power To The Soviets !
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
nBlog & Me - Tue 23/3
Well, I can't say I didn't try. Over on the My Apple Newton blog (http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2010/03/nblog-update_14.html) there was an update that suggested that nBlog's Refresh Blog List function would work for brand new accounts on Blogger. So, I had a minor brainwave - create a new account, add that account as an author to the four blogs I update, refresh the list, and off we trot.
Sadly, it didn't work out that way. I created and added the account ok, changed the nBlog prefs and... nothing. No difference at all. So back to the old idea of reading the nBlog source code and either using SBM Utilities or writing some NewtonScript to create the soup entries.
At least the exercise got me the blog ids I'll need to create the soup entries.
In other Newt news, the 32Mb Compact Flash experiment is still going well. Write speeds are OK, reliability has been fine so it's all good so far!
Sadly, it didn't work out that way. I created and added the account ok, changed the nBlog prefs and... nothing. No difference at all. So back to the old idea of reading the nBlog source code and either using SBM Utilities or writing some NewtonScript to create the soup entries.
At least the exercise got me the blog ids I'll need to create the soup entries.
In other Newt news, the 32Mb Compact Flash experiment is still going well. Write speeds are OK, reliability has been fine so it's all good so far!
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Return Of The Flash - Wed 17/3
When I revived my Newtons, I made the foolish mistake of installing a 2 gbyte Compact Flash card as the default store in my "main" Newt. I partitioned it as 4 500 Mbyte stores and put different content in each one (apps in one, books in another etc) Everything started ok, but gradually things got slower and slower until they pretty much ground to a halt. Two things seemed to coincide - an increased use of Mail V, with a rather silly setup (multiple email accounts for a single owner slip) leading to lots of timeouts and reboots, and the 2010 problem making resetting the date and time every reboot both necessary and tedious. Add to that the 5 minutes between rebooting and the Newt becoming usable again and using the Newt was becoming a pain rather than a pleasure.
So, I admitted defeat, and went back to a trusty old 20mbyte card I had lying around. Suddenly restart times went from 5 minutes to 1 minute and fixing my Mail V setup to have separate owner slips for each email account dropped the number of timeouts and restarts. Joy to the world!
But I had got used to all that lovely space. I had no books on line any more. And then I started using PaperBoy for Usenet news, and suddenly needed space for articles.
Having bought the wrong kind of 32 mbyte Flash card, I decided to give Compact Flash another go. The reasoning being that the Newton wasn't really designed to have one 500 mbyte store, never mind four of them at the same time so it was a bit unreasonable to expect it to cope happily with that scenario. So, off to eBay I went and bought a job lot of old, small Compact Flash cards and installed a 32Mbyte card, partitioned into two 16 mbyte stores. So far, it has been working quite well - not as fast as linear Flash but not as horrific as the 2 gbyte card. Reboot time is more than the one minute with a 20 mbyte Flash card, but only about 1.5 - 2 minutes, and I have more packages installed. Who knows, I might get bold and try the 64 mbyte card that came in the lot at some point!
So, I admitted defeat, and went back to a trusty old 20mbyte card I had lying around. Suddenly restart times went from 5 minutes to 1 minute and fixing my Mail V setup to have separate owner slips for each email account dropped the number of timeouts and restarts. Joy to the world!
But I had got used to all that lovely space. I had no books on line any more. And then I started using PaperBoy for Usenet news, and suddenly needed space for articles.
Having bought the wrong kind of 32 mbyte Flash card, I decided to give Compact Flash another go. The reasoning being that the Newton wasn't really designed to have one 500 mbyte store, never mind four of them at the same time so it was a bit unreasonable to expect it to cope happily with that scenario. So, off to eBay I went and bought a job lot of old, small Compact Flash cards and installed a 32Mbyte card, partitioned into two 16 mbyte stores. So far, it has been working quite well - not as fast as linear Flash but not as horrific as the 2 gbyte card. Reboot time is more than the one minute with a 20 mbyte Flash card, but only about 1.5 - 2 minutes, and I have more packages installed. Who knows, I might get bold and try the 64 mbyte card that came in the lot at some point!
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Adventures in Backlighting...
Given that I use my Newtons pretty much every working day (and since I got the E5830 working, as my principal email client), I keep something of a stock of the little green blighters, just in case something should happen to them. The current fleet consists of two MP2000Us (upgraded by my own fair hands with motherboards from JK Sales), two MP2100s, an MP130 and an MP120. The 130 and 120 don't really get used any more - the 130 because, well, it's just too *slow* for me, and the 120 because it runs NewtonOS 1.2, and having started with NewtonOS 2.0 on the 130 it just felt like a retrograde step to me.
For some reason, I really prefer the aesthetics of the MP2000 to the MP2100. I've no idea what it is; maybe it's that the "Newton Technologies" in the top left hand corner is a bit fussy, or that the screen printed Apple logo on the cut out disc that was supposed to have the Newton Technologies logo looks a bit "home brew" and unfinished... I dunno, but there's *something* about it. So it was a pain to have to retire my first MP2000 because the backlight just became too dim and useless, and it was even more of a pain to notice that the second MP2000's backlight was starting to go the same way :( Only one thing for it then; replace the backlights !
Luckily, Knowledge Navigator has been advertising backlights on eBait recently, so it was easy enough to get them. I played it conservatively, and bought one "white" backlight and one ordinary green backlight - on the basis that if I really didn't like the white one I could always swap it back for a green one.
Having swapped the motherboards, I thought it would be a doddle - Frank's web pages at www.pda-soft.de has pretty good instructions after all - but it proved to be a bit more of a pain than expected - for two reasons. First was my chronic fear of my horrendous soldering non-skills melting the backlight, the display, or everything else in range. This meant that first time round I didn't get good contact with the backlight wires, so had to take it apart and do it over again. The other was that there is a little metal tab at the top of the metal surround on the display top, which has to go in the opposite direction through the plastic to the digitizer cable. I hadn't noticed it, and first time around just could not get the case back together properly at all.
So, first time around it took about 4 hours to get the thing apart, swap the backlight, then get it back together again. Second time around was about 40 minutes ;)
And the result ? The white backlight is actually surprisingly nice to use. I thought I'd be too used to the green display to appreciate it, but it's actually easier for me to read in most lighting situations, and it gives the text a quite nice blueish tint to it. The backlight doesn't seem *quite* as bright as the backlights on the MP2100s, but I think that's just perception - the white might not need to be quite so bright to be perfectly readable, even in awkward lighting. The new backlight doesn't seem to be any harder on batteries, so all in all I'm pretty happy with it thus far. It's also allowed me to put the original MP2000U back into service as my daily use Newt, which I'm quite happy about as my second MP2000U's screen door clip doesn't work properly, so the door has a tendency to flail around a bit rather than actually cover the screen !
Didn't take any pictures on the way through, but if I do swap the other MP2000U's backlight over I'll take some pictures as I go and post them. Frank's pics are pretty good, but I don't think he mentions that darn metal tab, so I really need to get a pic of that...
For some reason, I really prefer the aesthetics of the MP2000 to the MP2100. I've no idea what it is; maybe it's that the "Newton Technologies" in the top left hand corner is a bit fussy, or that the screen printed Apple logo on the cut out disc that was supposed to have the Newton Technologies logo looks a bit "home brew" and unfinished... I dunno, but there's *something* about it. So it was a pain to have to retire my first MP2000 because the backlight just became too dim and useless, and it was even more of a pain to notice that the second MP2000's backlight was starting to go the same way :( Only one thing for it then; replace the backlights !
Luckily, Knowledge Navigator has been advertising backlights on eBait recently, so it was easy enough to get them. I played it conservatively, and bought one "white" backlight and one ordinary green backlight - on the basis that if I really didn't like the white one I could always swap it back for a green one.
Having swapped the motherboards, I thought it would be a doddle - Frank's web pages at www.pda-soft.de has pretty good instructions after all - but it proved to be a bit more of a pain than expected - for two reasons. First was my chronic fear of my horrendous soldering non-skills melting the backlight, the display, or everything else in range. This meant that first time round I didn't get good contact with the backlight wires, so had to take it apart and do it over again. The other was that there is a little metal tab at the top of the metal surround on the display top, which has to go in the opposite direction through the plastic to the digitizer cable. I hadn't noticed it, and first time around just could not get the case back together properly at all.
So, first time around it took about 4 hours to get the thing apart, swap the backlight, then get it back together again. Second time around was about 40 minutes ;)
And the result ? The white backlight is actually surprisingly nice to use. I thought I'd be too used to the green display to appreciate it, but it's actually easier for me to read in most lighting situations, and it gives the text a quite nice blueish tint to it. The backlight doesn't seem *quite* as bright as the backlights on the MP2100s, but I think that's just perception - the white might not need to be quite so bright to be perfectly readable, even in awkward lighting. The new backlight doesn't seem to be any harder on batteries, so all in all I'm pretty happy with it thus far. It's also allowed me to put the original MP2000U back into service as my daily use Newt, which I'm quite happy about as my second MP2000U's screen door clip doesn't work properly, so the door has a tendency to flail around a bit rather than actually cover the screen !
Didn't take any pictures on the way through, but if I do swap the other MP2000U's backlight over I'll take some pictures as I go and post them. Frank's pics are pretty good, but I don't think he mentions that darn metal tab, so I really need to get a pic of that...
Monday, 15 February 2010
Gym Bunny Gone Missing Shock - Mon 15/2
Vaguely productive day at the office - finally managed to finish building a pile of legacy applications on our new platform - but tonight should really brush the dog and/or go to the gym, and neither prospect is terribly appealing. I'm struggling to think of good, plausible excuses though...
Came up with one - had a session with aerobic bands instead :)
Came up with one - had a session with aerobic bands instead :)
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