Morgan gets some teeth...


Morgan's had about 7 teeth all arrive in the space of two weeks, so he's now biting through Farley's Rusks like there's no tomorrow! Both Morgan and Tuesday have their first pre-Winter colds in full effect, so not a lot of sleep in the household right now, but lots of variants of Calpol and Vicks vapour rub being applied.

The incredibly sad story of Baby P


[no images for this post].

So I made the mistake of actually reading the BBC News article about Baby P's injuries and I've been trying to shake off the feeling of nausea, upset and disgust ever since.

Being father to two beautiful young children this terrible tragedy has really hit home and I'm totally shocked [like most people here in the UK] that anyone could do this to a baby.

Being that we're now living in a society where nobody takes any responsibility for anything anymore I can't say I'm surprised that nobody has resigned over this but it's a pretty sad fucking state of affairs when Russell Brand proves to have more honour and integrity than any of the useless idiots at Harringey council who allowed this to continue in the first place.

The BBC article is titled 'A Short Life of Misery and Pain' which in itself is perhaps the most poinient remark one could make about what happened.

It's not [as those in charge would like to call it] an affair, a debacle, a tragic mistake... it's simply people people allowing a baby to be repeatedly tortured and eventually killed.

Are we living in a country where a radio presenter [who simply makes a joke that's perhaps too contentious for broadcast] will fall on their sword but those all across the chain of command who allowed a small child to suffer this much simply do nothing?

Daily Mail readers, where the fuck are you now?*

I normally don't swear in these posts but I think this one kind of deserves it.

[* I can't believe I just wrote that].

Thank God for That

No posts of late since I've had my eyes lasered [more on that later]. But great news that Obama's in across the pond and guess what? He's a Mac user!

Going to be an interesting week...

So the next week or so will be interesting for a number of reasons:

• Elections in USA
• Having my eyes lasered
• The Killers @ Royal Albert Hall
• Lewis Hamilton as F1 champion
• Big, big news from Filter Worldwide

Been working on a few key projects, hence no recent updates. Went to Chicago and back, will post here and on FaceBook tomorrow. Got most of my Mac predictions right [!] and yet have failed to buy a new one [yet].

Whether you're a US citizen and voting, or someone else viewing from the outside, ain't it great that this time around it looks like a lot of people are actually going to vote!

More tomorrow. and a big shout out to Martin @ Sega who spotted me escaping from the Old Street post office today!

UPDATE

Forgot to mention that I think including BluRay is a no-no. Possibly for the new desktops in January as a build-to-order option, but for laptops this goes completely in the wrong direction. Apple is trying to sell digital content via iTunes, not to enable consumers to buy plastic discs from Best Buy.

Also need to add that if they drop FireWire on lower-end MacBook models we can all expect hell to break out from the millions of consumers who've got FireWire drives and camcorders. Reminds me of when the iMac came out with no floppy.

Lastly, my personal wish is that they have WiMAX as an option.

New computers from Apple Inc. today

So the Interwebs are a-buzzing with the imminent release of new portables from Apple today. This is good, since I have a trusty PowerBook G4 which is in serious need of updating. It's done me proud for over 3 years but runs slower than the lowest-end consumer-focussed MacBook and suffers from terrible battery life [even with new batteries].

So, with less than 12 hours to go before Steve Jobs takes to the stage and wows us all with some lovely new shiny boxes, what are my predictions?

Definite
New MacBooks for consumers and new MacBook Pros for professionals. MacBook Air sees update of processor and storage but keeps the same form-factor.

Possible
Apple drops the 'pro' so there's just a single line of MacBooks with the lower-end being consumer focussed and the high-end being for power users, plus MacBook Air for us hipsters.

Of Course Not
I seriously don't think there'll be the classic Steve '... one more thing ...' this time around. So that means no networked HDTV, no multi-touch screens on laptops, no 'ultraportable' model [er... that's the MacBook Air already], no 'tablet' form factors [iPod Touch may get bigger screen and not be called 'iPod' anymore, but not this time around], no updates of AppleTV with DVR functionality...

The press invite talks about portables. So that's what this presentation will be about. The really 'new' stuff will be saved for MacWorld - presumably updated desktops, displays and gadgets. This is all about portables for the following consumers:

[a] cheap MacBooks for PC users with iPhone/iPod
[b] new form-factors for existing MacBook owners
[c] new architectures for existing MacBook Pro owners

Alasdair's key predictions
Amongst all the noise, here's the key things that will happen:

[1] Higher-end laptops get clever new architecture providing very powerful graphics co-processing with SnowLeopard [come 2009] along with bigger storage and batteries.

[2] Entire range goes Aluminium to look good to tree-huggers and provide more 'solid' product with decreased size and weight

[3] Multi-Touch expanded incrementally [most likely just for top-end units].

[4] 17" systems are end-of-lifed, as is FireWire on low-end units.

The problem with these events is that everyone expects Steve Jobs to pull some rabbit out of a hat right at the end. There won't be one. What will happen is a highly co-ordinated lineup of portable computers with aggressive price/performance points which will sell like hotcakes.

Back here in 10 hours to be proved horribly wrong...

Bailing out those bankers...


Interesting report on Radio 4 this morning saying that the day after AIG took around $27 billion in interim bail-out funds from the US government they held a meeting fro top execs in a luxury California hotel with rooms at $1250 per night.

Now that the UK government is nationalising and/or buying big into the high street banks this makes me a shareholder. And as a shareholder I want some blood on the boardroom table.

We take over London streets [with 39,996 other cyclists!]


It was the FreeWheel London 2008 event on Sunday when they close off lots of Central London and we took Tuesday and Morgan in their bike trailer from Victoria Park to Buckingham Palace and back again. Miriam towed them all the way [good effort!] and we were both pretty tired when we got back!

Tuesday and Morgan got lots of admiring looks from the 40,000 other cyclists! Sky Sports were sponsoring the event and we were all encouraged to wear their free hi-viz jackets, so it was a sea of yellow all the way down Embankment. Looked pretty cool.