Numbers and Pages

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

Josh has tried Numbers, the new spreadsheet app from Apple, and finds it pretty but unusable for anything vaguely serious. This mirrors my experience with Pages, their word processing/DTP app. It’s lovely, the controls are almost always exactly where you expect and work how you expect, and it’s just a joy to use. Until you get past about four pages, when it bogs down so horribly that a third of my time is spent watching a beach ball spin. For reference I’m working on a 16 page document with a couple of embedded graphics, using a MacBook Core Duo 1.83GHz and 2G of RAM, and haven’t experienced such lag since using my 286 in 1990.

Bathroom

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Paul — 1 Comment ↓

We’re about to redo our bathroom, and I’m wondering if I could get some colour-change tiles past the missus.

(HT: Neatorama)

Episode 3

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Paul — No Comments ↓

I watched the final (or third of six, depending on how you’re counting) Star Wars movie last night. I hope it was the final one, anyway, because I couldn’t not watch any follow-up, and if it’s as woeful as that was…

I now want to say “on the upside”, but I can’t think of one. Oh wait, I thought General Grievous was good, and made Jar Jar Binks look like Jar Jar Binks. But aside from that it was abysmally scripted, badly played (though quite what more could be expected from the actors I don’t know), and even the effects didn’t work; they were technically impressive, but they didn’t convince me that anything was real (except for the aforementioned General, who seemed to have some real weight.

Fortunately I have a remedy lined up, in the form of the original trilogy that my kids need introducing to. Now I just need to decide on regular or special edition.

Contempt

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Paul — 1 Comment ↓

Check out the second clip on this page, where the excellent Aasif Manvi explains about our latest crisis of resources.

Marcus Brigstocke

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Paul — 1 Comment ↓

This was broadcast on Radio 4 (national radio station for older people) last week. If you’re religious you might not like it – even I was discomforted at the time, though only by the occasional stunned silence from the audience; the content is pretty much spot on. Somehow I don’t see this making it on US radio, even on NPR.

(HT: Pharyngula for the video)