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If you, like me, have lost your activation key for your miglia tvmini, you need not despair! You can get a new code from miglia's support people via email (instructions here). Apparently people have trouble finding this (I am apparently the first person to follow their instructions in 3 months).

Miglia really have some nice products. I noticed they have a nice looking iChat (and Skype) compatible cordless phone. Uses a USB dongle and it's own radio communication rather than bluetooth to get better range.

My 10 year, disk-crash free run came to an end the other day when my 6 month old MacBook decided not to reboot and to present me with the old blinking question mark. After a day of fiddling the disk still showed no signs of life. As far as my MacBook is concerned, the disk is not even plugged in. Not a good sign I think. Having pretty much survived data-loss free since I started using computers I've become pretty blase about back-ups. Most of my paid work is checked in to one or another subversion repository but I have some private documents, photos not on flickr and other random old stuff that may be lost. Needless to say I'm now investigating backup strategies, to be implemented when I get home.

I have realised that if you have a drive failure there is really no point in using the Apple warrantee. Apple's customer service continues to go downhill. Phone Apple and (after you spend 15 minutes telling them who you are and giving them your credit-card number) the best offer of assistance you will get is a suggestion to take it to an authorized dealer for repair. Couriering your laptop for repair appears to be a thing of the past. I asked the guy if paid up AppleCare would get me by-post delivery. Apparently it doesn't! Then what on earth is the point in purchasing AppleCare? It's a shame because I know a lot of people who have recently converted to Apple from the more respectable PC manufacturers and I suspect they would pretty amazed at the lack of support should their machine fail. Especially when some of them have bought AppleCare. I asked about getting a new disk sent out for a DIY repair (as advertised on Apple's site). The guy told me that Apple "didn't do that anymore". It's a real shame if Apple are abandoning the DIY repair scheme. It worked nicely for my iMac. I replace a mainboard and an inverter without having to let go of my machine for 2 weeks.

The trouble seems to be that Apple's warrantee and even AppleCare terms are rather non-specific. They state that "repair service may include onsite, carry-in, and direct mail-in; specific availability of each option depends on product type and location of Apple Authorized Service Provider". Finding out what repair option you are entitled to is impossible and probably just depends on who you happen to talk to on the phone.

A guided bus - in Cambridge they will not
look this cool or this yellow.

Cambridgeshire county council have always for a long time obsessed with traffic planning. The thing they're most excited about though, is their planned super-futuristic 'guided' bus system that will link Cambridge and St Ives. During my two years in Cambridge I've never actually heard of anyone going to St Ives but apparently there are lots of people who do indeed go there. The council thought that re-opening the train line that exists between the two was far too dull an idea and decided to go with something a little more exciting! Well, as exciting as a bus on a concrete track can be. Anyway, the reason I was posting is that, after recently talking about the guided bus, a strange coincidence occurred.. Hugo was down on the river the other day and a guy started talking to him. His name was Arthur Henderson and he mentioned that he was an inventor. Turns out he invented the guided bus! Back in 1965! I found a posting he made on a mailing list where he explains where the invention has been used in the past and why he believes the scheme is a "wasteful deployment of a future asset" and a "gross interference with the infrastructure for Cambridge's transport strategy for the future". So not even the inventor thinks it's a good idea.

Oh I found some other examples of guided bus systems around the world on Wikipedia.

It's no secret to people that know me that the thing I want most in the whole wide world is a Christiania bike. This is a Christiania bike:

You can transport a lot of stuff in these things! In Copenhagen you see a lot of these bikes, mostly with kids in the front peering out of plastic covers. Unfortunately, my dream of being the first christiania bike-rider in Cambridge was shattered a couple of days ago when I spotted one on midsummer common. These bikes are expensive, the basic one costs about £1000 and there are only one or two places that you can buy them in the country so there's little chance of finding one second-hand. I think they're gaining popularity though - I've seen a few in London now.

I like their smoothies and I like their festival too! Fruitstock is held every year in Regents Park. This isn't your typical music festival. For a start, there's a lot more knitting and flower arranging involved.

Photos...

24 years young today. Good grief!

This was pretty much an impulse buy from Apple's online store as they were offering a third off the price and I thought that if I have to buy a TV licence, I may as well get all the channels I'm paying for. I'd read a lot of reviews and come to the conclusion that the included mini aerial was unlikely to work here in Cambridge. I plugged the thing in, fired up the configuration assistant, and sure enough, not one channel! I tried two 'amplified' indoor digital aerials from Maplin and neither helped so I took them back. After some fiddling, I actually managed to get the included aerial to tune in 65 channels by pointing it out of the kitchen window. This is obviously not a practical solution so I've ordered a proper exterior aerial, a DAT-45 (seems to be the one to get for weak signal areas). Hopefully we can rig it up in the loft and won't have to put it outside but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I have to say, when I've had it working, this thing is awesome! The software, EyeTV, really is superb. Really well designed and well written. The TVMini appears also to be capable of handling HDTV broadcasts when they arrive. I guess that's true, because the device just passes the MPEG stream straight to software.

...one day later...

With Markus' help I have now installed the DAT-45 in the loft and it works fine! Just requires some fiddling to get it in the right direction for tuning all channels. It's still not quite perfect (on one set of channels/frequency) but it's getting there.

I've also discovered in deinterlace settings in EyeTV. If you really want the movement on screen to look like a real TV you need to choose the 'Progressive scan' type of deinterlacing. Double-buffering/v-synching is then turned on and you get something that looks a lot more like the high refresh rate of a television. Uses a lot more CPU but makes World Cup football look a lot better! It would be great to have the option to make EyeTV always switch to progressive scan in fullscreen mode.

It would also be nice if EyeTV would mute the sound or hide the video window altogether when it is making a scheduled recording. I don't think I've seen an option for that.

So, after living on Parker Street, next to the bus station for 18 months, I've finally moved to my second location in Cambridge. And now I'm experimenting with the concept of suburbia. I'm not rushing into anything too quickly though and I have only moved as far as Radegund Road which is an exact 2.7km cycle ride from the old house and about a kilometer past the station. Bear in mind that I have only been further from the centre of town a handful of times since my arrival in Cambridge. That's why I consider this to indeed be an intrepid move.

Hmm, I suspect it will take me a while to get used to not being in the thick of things. Ever since leaving home, I've never really lived out of a city centre - as a student in Bristol it's a little hard not to.

The new house is really great. A lot of space and a massive garden which will be great once/if the summer finally arrives. A small household (just the three of us) and more espresso than you could ever need :-) mean that hopefully I will get a decent amount of work done while I'm here. At the moment that means work on Departure Lounge (working title), the rails app that we're working on.