Toms View of the World

Another story about another truck getting stuck somewhere it shouldn’t have been that tries to blame the SatNav rather than the driver.

The SatNav may have advised the driver to go up a lane clearly signposted as “unsuitable for heavy goods vehicles” - but it was the driver that decided to ignore the roadsign and go with the satnav - which was no doubt designed for use in a car, rather than being a unit set up for a large vehicle. The driver is ultimately responsible for observing road signs and conditions, he clearly should not have driven up a road which was signposted as being unsuitable.

I think this is just another example of how bad the general driving standards in the UK are. The satnav is there to help you, if it suggests something that is clearly stupid, (i..e taking a narrow country lane in a 40ft artic, or going up a recently redesignated one-way street) IGNORE IT. The driver is responsible for following the roadsigns and the laws - not the SatNav.

As the song says “War, What is it good for, Nothing”

Of course, I’m talking about the High Def. Disc format war in this case - today Toshiba issued a press release which basically says “We’re not making the players any more” - and as they were the major player behind the HD-DVD format, that’s pretty much the end of the battle.  The format has been on it’s way out for a while now, as studios have been pursuaded to change sides towards Sony’s Blu-Ray format - which had the major advantage of being supplied “built in” to the Playstation 3 games console - effectively pushing blu-ray players into homes who wouldn’t necessarily pay for a standalone machine.

Now the war is over, people who’ve been holding off buying a HD player to wait and see which format wins - and who don’t want to be lumbered with the Betamax of the new millennium - can now safely buy a Blu-Ray player or PS3.  Until of course the whole “profiles” problem rears it’s head, with a next-generation of blu-ray disc possibly being incompatible with current players - unless the players are updated.  Of course, this is entirely dependent on the manufacturer.

In my opinion, a sensible choice of player at the moment is actually the aformentioned Playstation 3 - as it’s blu-ray decoder is software based, it should be upgradable via a download (which given that the PS3 has both wired and wireless network capability should not be a problem) - plus it’s only a little more money than a standalone blu-ray player, with the bonus of also being a high quality games machine.

Alright, it’s a fairly predictable QUOFDA today, and one which has an entire category on this blog… Valentines / Singles Awareness Day.

I’ve not got anything much to add to what’s already been said on that subject, so can we now please forget today exists and move on.

Thanks.

I wasn’t going to do a v-day post this year, but then I saw this on XKCD a few days ago and could resist…

Due to ever increasing amounts of contact form spam (notably from a website called “ebuzzing.co.uk” who I won’t link to for obvious reasons) I’m reluctantly considering the removal of the contact form on the website.  It will be replaced by a page explaining how to contact me directly.

A surprisingly difficult question to answer, do I mention my PC, my broadband, my mobile phone…

No, I’ll mention something that was revolutionary in it’s time, and still surpasses pretty much anything else in it’s area in the UK.

TiVo.

For those not in the know, it’s a hard-drive video recorder (in fact, it was one of the first disc recorders in the UK) with some very clever software, which surpasses anything that Sky+, Humax or anyone else has done.

It also has an extensive community of enthusiasts developing additional  features, including the ability to use much larger hard drives, providing a web-server for remote admin and some predictive recording abilities.

Unfortunately, despite ongoing development in the US, there have been no new TiVo’s in the UK in many years, and unfortunately the chances of us ever getting a new generation, high-definition capable machine are remote indeed.

For more information on Tivo - see the Tivo Community Forums - to buy one, check out Pacelink, or eBay.