Scargill

Having lost Maureen’s favourite cat Rosie – here’s a quick photo tribute – the cute ginger one is Ollie who is sitting draped over my arm as I write this – he’s the only one we kept.

This is a video of Craig Venter back in 2007 discussing the progress they were making with artificial life – and how this might be adapted to various uses – i.e. ultimately replacing the petrochemical industries and other gob-smackingly outstanding ideas….   towards the end I was amused when he referred to the 18 months they took out for ethical policy studies… in which they delayed their studies in 1999, in which he says…"every major religion participated in this… it was a very strange study because the various religious leaders were using their scriptures as law books and they couldn’t find anything in them prohibiting making life… so it must be ok"….

Weird – on the one hand you have a guy talking matter-of-fact about stuff that anyone who’s NOT watched him most likely thinks is distant future sci-fi… and on the other hand what kind of crazy state is science in where it has (at least in the US, I hope to Betsy not in the UK) to go talking to religious leaders  for their approval – I thought they only did that in the dark ages!!

Anyway, thankfully none of this has stopped progress and they’re now so far advanced, you can’t help thinking that any day soon we’re going to hear something major – like an alternative to oil, cures for major diseases… it might be just Venter’s style but listening to what they’ve already achieved makes one proud to be around in the early 21st century. WELL impressed….. and his latest video wherein they’ve put together the first artificial working life complete with embedded website address in the DNA – well….mind-blowing…

Here are both videos – I suggest if you’re interested watching them in order…. the TED videos are just SO much better than watching pap on TV as they don’t have to cater for the lowest-common denominator – yet still usually manage to keep the talks surprisingly understandable to the lay-person.

So you think giving kids your personal views on religion is harmless? Stopping them seeing too much TV a good thing? Think again.  Perhaps after watching this – some parents may re-think what and how they teach kids. If the Taliban can convince ordinary kids to blow themselves to bits voluntarily AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY based on a clearly ridiculous premise of a an afterlife with virgins on tap, that pretty much shows how delicate and easily manipulated young brains are and what a CRIME it is to abuse that knowledge. The sooner our armies eradicate these evil men the better.  The best thing you can do for your kids is avoid religion OR give ALL major religions AND atheism equal coverage without bias…  and make sure they get subjected to as wide a range of international TV and publications so they are fully informed without being brainwashed, for adult life.

THIS is frightening! Watch how easy it is to program kids into robots.

Incidentally, TED is BRILLIANT – there are some fabulous interviews up there. See Craig Venter’s video on creating life – or the various arguments about nuclear versus other renewable resources – excellent stuff and usually thought provoking.

Sadly it looks as if Rosie our cat managed to get run over by truck or similar in Wark. So if you’re looking in and remember running over a long-haired ginger cat recently – here’s a wish for a lifelong and painful curse upon you and all your relatives!

Rosie was still under a year old and carrying kittens… thankfully they were her second attempt and from the first lot we have young Ollie who’s turned out to be a winner.

A lot hot air is circulating about the iPad, often by folks who have never laid eyes on the machine never mind made extensive hand-on use of them. I’ve seen reviews talking about reliability, about it being unsuitable for business… the list goes on – and mostly from those lacking any experience of the product.

Why listen to me? well firstly you need to know I would not touch a MAC with a bargepole so don’t peg me as an anti-Microsoft type. When the iPAD was released in the USA I had one shipped across almost immediately, despite lack of iTunes support in the UK. It looked ideal for reading agendas and other company paperwork, being the first supposedly long-life battery, thin almost A4 pad on the market… and I wasn’t prepared to take the word of others… I wanted to see for myself if this was going to be useful to see if there was a future for reducing or eliminating paperwork.  So, here it is, based on daily use of the iPad since its launch in the USA (and by that I mean used almost every day since then, sometimes all day), here is some information which may be of use to those of you thinking of using the iPad in a business environment.

Firstly the issue of WIFI. The only issue I am aware of is that the iPad occasionally forgets the login password and does not seem to track the best signal if you move from signal area to signal area within a building. It is a minor issue, does not really cause me any problems and the assurance is that this will be fixed. I can see no reason to doubt this as it’s little sister the iPhone does not suffer the same issue. 

Secondly business use – you hear “It’s all games” – no it isn’t – though some of the games are excellent – no doubt about it but with 200,000 apps you’d expect a lot of games.  I have asked our head office who normally send me reams and reams of paper to simply stop – and all my papers now go onto the company extranet  (Sharepoint).  I receive automatic email notification of the availability of documents and as long as I’m within range of a WIFI signal I can download using the likes of the GoodReader program (a bargain at 59p) and store the docs locally on the iPad. The largest document I’ve had the pleasure of using was 95 megabytes comprising over 400 pages of scanned documents – just about the worse combination…. No problem. I also use another package which cost peanuts to let me scribble on PDFs and open multiple documents at once.

Thirdly multitasking – after extensive use I have to say I do not miss the ability to do umpteen jobs at once – the ONE thing I’d like is to run SKYPE constantly in the background – and that of course will come in the autumn update. Most programs start up where they left off so they may as well be multitasking – but without the overhead.

“They say” iPad is not compatible with Microsoft… rubbish – I regularly open the latest DOCX files from Office 2007 as well as spread-sheets and other documents. At least one program can SAVE in these formats.

Specifically for use in meetings, the (realistically achieved) 10 hour battery life (including watching video) makes it possible to do an all-day meeting without a cable in sight. Those who lug around heavy bags full of laptops, power supplies and endless paperwork look on with envy. Armed with properly bookmarked PDF files I can view and search through large documents more quickly than with paper.

What about FLASH – well, I’d MUCH prefer if the iPad could handle flash, but not at any price and Flash does tend to be jerky on mobiles… considering that YouTube, Blip and others now offer iPad compatibility and even the BBC iPlayer is now iPad compatible, it hopefully won’t be long before that issue goes out of the window. You can watch a good number of the freeview channels including BBC News 24, for free on the iPad given a free program to do so, not to mention most radio stations.

When in Spain, as they say… I have a (small) place in Spain and last week I was other there. The iPad can’t handle dongles but I have a 3G dongle and I simply put the Sim into a phone which has WIFI and using a cheap program made the phone look like a WIFI access point – others may prefer to get the 3G version of the iPad itself  – as I already have a phone I didn’t fancy 2 subscriptions and annoying Apple won’t let you tether an iPhone to an iPad.   Skype and GotoMeeting work well – saving a fortune in calls when overseas as long as there is WIFI available. Emails using Microsoft Exchange, Google mail and others work absolutely fine as indeed do Exchange calendars and contacts. For streaming podcasts, I generally keep them on my PC and use STREAMTOME to listen to them on the iPAD (saves filling it up with audio and video).

Do I have any issues with the product? Of course I do – why on EARTH didn’t Apple put a forward-facing camera in for Skype etc. But them the iPhone 4 has that… Also being able to read memory sticks would have been nice but why not go the whole hog and put in Windows? Erm, no! The fact is that Apple have a great niche product on their hands which is, if you believe the hype selling very well thank you. Almost everyone I know who I’ve shown it to in business and otherwise wants one – I should have been a salesman but I’m NOT.

Of course, if something else comes along that’s better and cheaper I‘m a ruthless consumer with no brand loyalty… but from what I’ve seen, hands on reviews of what would appear to be alternatives have fallen apart due to poor video or other issues. For now, Apple are onto a winner – their shares don’t look too bad either (I don’t have any of those either).

I gave this entry such a bad title because that’s about all I can say about today… Maureen’s dad has taken ill and so she had to cut short our holiday in Spain to go and visit him. We had guests with us so I stopped over in Spain with them – we had a nice time visiting Granada but not quite the same when you know you’re father in law is in trouble and your wife is over there worried stiff!! We’ve quite a bit of damp and roof damage to sort after a particularly bad winter over there – meanwhile back in England things are not much better, our cat Rosie is still missing (probably for good now) and the weather is AWFUL. After a week of clear skies at 30-40 degrees in Galera, it’s damp and wet in Wark – it’s amazing what a difference the weather makes. What on EARTH made our ancestors stay here when there are so many sunny countries in this world is beyond me.. anyway, I’m here and taking the opportunity to update my blogs and get everything ready for various business trips. I’ve discovered free books on the iPAD – countless thousands of them in various forms and the iPAD is the ideal tool for reading this stuff, though I’ve decided I need to hunt Ebay for a case that will prop up the device when reading it. About the only really good thing about the day was watching the pen-ultimate episode of 24 on the Sky recorder – and what a CRACKING episode that was.

The photo on the right shows some solar lighting I picked up from B&Q and fitted in Spain – the picture doesn’t really do them justice, a set of what look almost like normal light bulbs but which are colour-changing solar with a separate solar cell. Here they’d be ok, but in Spain they get enough sun to keep them going all night long. Great for sitting having a quiet drink under the Pergola at night.  Back to the present, there is nothing nice I can say about today except that now I’m back after a week’s absence, our youngest cat is treating me as his best friend.  There’s no food in the house and I’ve lots of work to do in this house and on the rental property in between endless meetings coming up – too much to do, too little time.  Marvelous.

Here it is – latest update on the iPad, launched today in the UK

You’ll be aware of the UK launch of the Apple iPAD TODAY, no doubt if you saw the news last night you’ll have heard that the unit is available from today and that they’ve sold a million in the states.

Poor old Beeb, that’s ancient news and a quick look on the web will add at least 50% to that figure! Also they won’t have enough units to keep up with demand so expect delays! If you’re planning a trip to the Apple store I’d ring first! There are 6 models broken into two sets, the first set of 16gig, 32 gig and 64 gig have WIFI and motion sensing only, the second similar set add 3g and GPS into the mix – and of course the cost rises accordingly. Prices will start at £429 (including VAT) for the perfectly capable 16Gig WIFI model.

Meanwhile the iTunes store is up and running, I have had the American version of the iPad since it’s launch over there and everything’s working a treat. If you want to keep up with the latest apps I suggest you take a look at AppShopper, a nicely laid out website that’s easy to use. It has both iPhone and iPad apps and you can select both or just iPad apps.

Apple’s PAGES Word Processor is now available (as of a few days ago) and you’ll be needing that if you want to do any word-processing on the unit.

If you’re thinking of taking the plunge, remember, this isn’t a laptop, it won’t run Microsoft software! It runs only what you can get in the iTunes App store – but as they have countless thousands of Apps in there, some free, some a few pounds, you should find just about anything you need.

Some pros and cons for those of you looking at this miraculous unit for the first time:

The iPad+ Apps CAN:

• View pictures, videos and play tunes
• Read Word, Excel, PDF and many more document formats.
• Read and write Emails.
• Play games (but only the countless games in the App Store).
• Talk to Bluetooth headsets and keyboards out-of-the-box.
• View YouTube video
• View the BBC iPlayer (new and VERY good quality !!)
• Handle TV (tvcatchup) and radio (tunein radio)
• Run Skype
• Provide weather reports (the weather channel)
• Search maps (google maps)
• Control your Sky+ box (Sky+)
• Share 3g/WIFI with many phones (Joikuspot on phone)
• Record audio
• Handle social networks (many Apps)
• Run for up to 10 hours without mains power
• Emulate iPod

The iPad CAN’T:

• Let you access all it’s memory like a disk. Memory is split up into application spaces and of course the place you store your videos, pictures and music. I’ve found no way to “see” this as a single disk drive.
• Run Microsoft software. It is not a laptop.
• Handle USB disks and cameras directly.
• Run FLASH video (though YouTube and iPhone are supported – see CAN).
• Run WiFi super-reliably (sure it runs WIFI but it breaks occasionally – soon to be fixed)
• Share WIFI with your iPhone (deliberate and stupid move)
• Take pictures or video (no camera)

I hope this information helps you make a decision. Am I happy I bought an iPad?  Most definitely YES. Would I pay the extra for the 3G version? No. Am I happy with 32Gig? Can’t even start to fill it up so the base model will do for many people. Music and video lovers with massive collections may opt for the larger models.

Peter Scargill

To order these units online I BELIEVE you go here http://store.apple.com/uk

p.s. If you want to know more about using the iPad, for example with a 3G dongle – see my other articles….

Comparing Android and the iPhone/iPad operating system

Using the iPad with a separate 3G source like an iPhone, MS Smartphone or dongle SIM

Most people by now will be aware of the somewhat subdued British press reaction to J. Craig Venter’s team’s creation of the first self-replicating cell designed by computer. The BBC made some silly references to the hand of god and otherwise really didn’t do the subject justice.

Is this some mad-scientist tinkering or the real thing? Well most folk will never know as any in-depth conversation on the subject is too dry for public consumption and so your average Sun reader will no doubt continue to think that Venter sits there with a vial of chemicals doctoring cells.

All I can offer is the suggestion that you take a look at the TED video on this subject… this is FAR from mad-scientist stuff. Venter’s team understand so much at this point that rather than making a simple modification, their computer-designed DNA actually contains not only enough information to affect the design of the cell, but while allowing the cell to be viable, they’ve managed to ensure that the DNA of each replicated cell not only contained coded information on the names of the design team but they also have three QUOTES in there!!! Talk about proving the point!!!

Those of you who watched BLADE RUNNER will remember the artificial snake who’s skin sample contained a manufacturing number. Well, Venter and his team are FAR, FAR away from doing anything like that in terms of a snake – but on the other hand the information they’ve implanted in the DNA is WAY ahead of a simple manufacturing number.

If you can stomach the technical babble this is well worth watching.