And then there were two (dogs)  #
Wednesday, 11 Jan 2006 11:01AM
Update: The trip has been cancelled so no multiple doggy love.


We're going to be looking after another dog while some family unexpectedly goes overseas for a couple of months. Good luck guys.

He's a beagle x jack russel. He's round, friendly, usually quiet and very happy. We love him. He gets on very well with (puts up with) Mogwai so they should have a ball.

But like everyone, the best way to destroy a friendship is to live together. Hopefully they'll survive being locked up together in our little backyard for two months.

The yard is just big enough for our little dog... We also know Mogwai's digging, pushing and jumping strengths. The new dog is much bigger and much stronger. Hopefully the fence (which desperately needs a paint) will hold up.

We have the option of leaving him at his own home and visiting to feed and walk him, but that seems cruel.

Expect many photos of two happy dogs ;p


CDr life span  #
Wednesday, 11 Jan 2006 10:28AM
An old topic. Some bizarre comments from IBM storage expert, Kurt Gerecke (via Slashdot):

"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke said in an interview this week. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."

View the whole article.

Personally I have plenty of audio CDs burnt up to 8 years ago that work (play and rip) fine. I recently moved a large load of CDrs to a few DVDs. 2 out of 20 had a single file that wouldn't read.

But I also have data CDs I burnt only a few years ago that have a few files that don't read. I blame the drive I was using for these problems but still...

These days I backup to DVDr and burn two copies. I figure if they degrade and lose a file or two, hopefully they'll lose different files.

I'm also assuming something (like Blue Ray or HD-DVD) will be available and cheap enough in five years time that moving everything to the new format will be feasible.

Remember, the ultimate backup stradegy is to give out copies to other people, be that via email or P2P.

If something is so important that you're obsessively making backups of it that you hope will last for many years, but that data is only for your eyes only... what is the point?


Google Video  #
Wednesday, 11 Jan 2006 09:54AM
From the Google Video help files:
Is Google Video accessible on TV?

Google and some of its services are accessible to users on a variety of platforms, including all web browsers and a number of mobile devices such as cell phones and Palm PDAs. While making Google Video accessible on the TV sounds like a great feature, we don't have any immediate plans to do so. Besides, incorporating Google into your TV might make the other appliances in your home jealous.

Right. How to look really really stupid to an almost customer. This customer spent a month researching the best device to play video on his TV without having a noisy $1000 computer next to his TV. How huge is TIVO in the US? People want to watch internet video on their TV. Give them a real solution not some stupid joke.

And the absolute killer:

We're sorry, but this video is not available in your country.

I had a bunch of nice and not so nice things to say about it but not anymore. If it's not available worldwide it's irrelevant. The DRM is evil, but it's optional, and hopefully market forces will eventually phase it out... but even the DRM is irrelevant if most of the world can't use it.