Chris Saul's Blog

Monday June 30, 2008

Can't speak French - and whose fault is it?

Despite not generally being up on what's what in the world of popular beat combos, it recently came to my attention that Girls Aloud, a troupe of singing ladies, have released a disc called 'I can't speak French'.

The message is quite clear. As they can't speak French, they are obliged to let the funky music do the talking instead.

This is a sorry state of affairs. Whilst letting funky music do the talking is sometimes a wise choice, we really should ask ourselves -

a) Why the members of Girls Aloud can't speak French?

b) Why the Gallic gentlemen they are attempting to converse with cannot speak English?

c) Whether there exists an alternative lingua franca that the group could use?

In answer to a -

Given the average age of Girls Aloud, I would expect them to have been obliged to take a language up until the age of 16 whilst they were at school. Sadly, these days, the Labour Government doesn't oblige people to take a language after the age of 14. I expect a similar song in a few years called 'I ain't never learnt no French, or even English for that matter, innit'.

Having established that Girls Aloud would have been obliged to continue with a language up until school leaving age, I feel it is safe to surmise that the language they studied would have been French. Does their lack of ability reflect poor teaching or a lack of application on their behalves? I suspect a combination of the two.

In answer to b -

I find it far more mystifying that the French gentlemen involved are unable to speak to Girls Aloud in English. Whilst the English are famous for their lack of linguistic prowess, our native tongue is the language of business, technology and popular culture. Not being able to speak English is far more of a handicap than not being able to speak French.

I can only assume that these gentlemen were either let down by their own school system, or were simply unable to understand Girls Aloud's accents. I believe they hail from Liverpool.

Given Girls Aloud's general appearance, it is odd that apparently no effort was made at all to speak at least some English. Surely they could have dredged up a sonnet or two from the depths of their memories in order to woo these fine British ladies. Or maybe they simply weren't interested and Cheryl Tweedy and team were not only misunderstanding spoken language, but body language as well.

In answer to c -

It is possible the Girls Aloud chose classics over French and would have been able to converse in Latin or Ancient Greek, given the opportunity. I find this scenario highly unlikely however.

It seems that these complex questions may never be fully answered, but such is life.

Whilst we ponder further, here are Girls Aloud not speaking French.

Saturday June 21, 2008

Old cars banned

The UAE will no longer allow cars over 20 years old on the roads, with cars over 15 being disallowed shortly, according to this article.

The article says that classic cars will still be allowed, providing they meet safety and pollution standards. I wonder how the process of deeming a car 'classic' will work. One man's classic is another man's junk.

I can understand the desire to want to reduce pollution and ensure safety standards are met, but I need to educate myself to understand how those things are related simply to the age of a car. If a car meets the necessary standards, I would have thought its age would be irrelevant.

I wonder too how this will affect car prices. My Jeep is 7 years old and definitely has another few good years ahead of it. If I can't re-register it when it's 15 years old it'll have to be sold - doubtless at way below its true market price - to a dealer who'll ship it off somewhere where it can still be used. Equally, if I were to sell it now, I'd expect the price to be less than it would have been prior to this announcement. Any buyer knows that the car's lifetime has been severely curtailed.

It'll be interesting to see how this new initiative proceeds.

Thursday June 19, 2008

Some Pakistan snaps

Not the best quality - the best my mobile phone could manage during my last two trips.

The edge of the 'Red Mosque' - now no longer red. This was the scene of some major troubles earlier this year. The building next to one of our customer's datacentres was torched and the datacentre itself went down when power was cut to the area. The datacentre's been moved...

Eagles, or at leat that's what I think they were, circle the roof of the partner's offices. They fly right up to the building and you get to see them up close.

Kabul number plate, Russian made, now living in Islamabad. How old? 40 years? 20 years? It was built in 2002...

This makes me think of rows of young children having pedicures and sipping on wheatgrass juice. Spotted in Karachi airport.

Coals to Newcastle

Spotted in Spinneys.

Next up, ice to be exported from Dubai to Alaska in exchange for camels.

Snapped selection

A selection of mobile phone snaps...

His critics speak. Spotted in the rubbish disposal area of our building.

Spotted in Romania, a vending machine for chips. Doubtless very popular with drunks around 2am onwards. But is it as fun having a fight around one of these, as opposed to in the chip shop itself?

Chav bed. Spotted in Dubai.

Mac love in begins

Thanks to everyone who chipped in with tips on how to get to grips with my Mac.

I'm now starting to enjoy using it, although I still miss one button for page up and down and a proper delete key! Decent suspend and resume, as well as ease of use when in cramped conditions with the laptop on my knee are particularly welcome.

NeoOffice is working fine and I'm getting used to some of the hot keys. The heat issue doesn't seem to be much of an issue any more, even in Islamabad airport, where the AC was really struggling. Or maybe I was just boling hot myself anyway.

There are a couple of small things to work out, which I'm sure I'll manage by asking Mr Google (Google Desktop not indexing Thunderbird mails for example).

I'm sure the transition would have been easier if I hadn't been travelling that week and stuck with generally poor internet connections. It was still pretty painful though - Apple should really include a printed sheet with some common 'switching' tips.

Let's see how things progress. I'm particularly interested to see if it's as reliable as my old Tosh over the long term.

So far I have resisted the temptation to clean the thing down with wet wipes or encapsulate it in soft furnishings, like other colleagues whose names I will not mention.

Classic war symbols - the AK47 and...

...the Toyota Land Cruiser pickup?

See the picture at the top of this BBC article.

Tuesday June 17, 2008

The only two languages anyone needs to speak

I enjoyed the comment made by the MD of one of our partners today.

'There are only two languages anyone needs to speak.'

'Which are they?'

'Arabic and Pashto'.

'Why's that?'

'They speak Arabic in heaven and Pashto in hell - you're going to end up in one of those places so you'd better prepare!'

UAE terror threat raised

I was surprised to read this morning that the Foreign Office has raised its terror alert leve for the UAE - I wonder what's up...

One of the things I love about Dubai is the total lack of security anywhere. You just breeze in and breeze out of anywhere. Quite different from the hotel I'm in in Islamabad today where each floor has an armed guard sitting by the lift.

Saturday June 14, 2008

Phwoar, not a scorcher

It should be time for my annual 'it's hot' blog post, but June this year has been pretty variable. Apart from a couple of days with high humidity, it's frankly not that bad. Still fine to sit by the pool, walk happily from supermarket to car laden with shopping.

Not nice weather, but far from the usual humid scorchers that we'd normally be experiencing in Dubai in June.

This makes life easier, but doesn't look like a good sign. Regardless of whether you believe in what some people say is causing climate change, it's clear that something odd's going on...

Tuesday June 10, 2008

Mac progress

I'm quite looking forward to using my Mac tomorrow at a proper desk with a decent internet connection. That'll allow me to get mail synched properly, make sure all my helper apps are installed and really see whether it works for me when sitting at a properly positioned desk with a decent chair.

Current irritations are hot keys being needed to right click, sharp edges cutting into wrists when using it in cramped conditions, lack of status lights on the ethernet port and OpenOffice continually crashing. Page down hotkey doesn't work in Firefox and OpenOffice either, which is infuriating.

The lack of page down functionality is a killer, even if it sounds petty. It's something I use all the time when scanning large docs or online documentation.

After a few days in a normal office I'll have a better idea of whether it's right for me or not. Tomorrow I'll put Windows XP on it as well. If OS X is still not for me, I'll give it a go with XP for a bit. If things are still annoying the hell out of me, I'll see if I can swap it with someone in the office who has a Toshiba Portege...

Rest your stomach on me

Back off to Dubai from Islamabad this evening.

I will be sure to position my bag directly behind me in the queue today. Some people here tend to queue up rather close behind you. On the way here the genrleman behind me actually had his stomach resting on the small of my back. Lovely.

Monday June 09, 2008

Apparently settling down with my new Mac

Getting to grips with my Mac a bit better this evening.

Some gripes still -

I don't like all these keyboard shortcuts I have to use and the position of the Apple key and not being able to use ctrl instead. It doesn't suit my hands, which are used to doing things differently as opposed to thinking different.

The mouse seems to slow down when moving over links. I also find highlighting things frustrating.

Still hating the lack of a del key - fn delete doesn't cut it. Same goes with the page up and down keys and shortcuts.

It doesn't really seem much faster than my four year old Toshiba, which surprises me considering it has a processor that's so much quicker. Maybe the tasks I'm doing are more disk bound than anything else - launching apps for example. That said, it does seem slower when multiple apps are open and I'm switching from one app to the next, something which has nothing to do with disk speed.

Doubtless I'll switch my old laptop on over the weekend to make sure I've copied everything across and find myself railing at the slow old thing and irritating XP it runs.

More Mac irritations

More Mac whinges.

Earlier this evening I installed Thunderbird and Firefox and used them both happily. Now their icons have disappeared from the dock and I can't find them.

Safari doesn't work with my bank's online password entry system.

The left side of the Mac is extremely warm and the right hand side is cool after being left on for four hours. This makes typing feel horrible - my left palm is sweaty and my right palm is fine. Yuck.

It's a lot hotter than my Toshiba ever got underneath as well - my suit trousers will lose their crease if I need to adjust my presentation on my knees moments before a critical presentation :) Maybe newer laptops are just like this, but I thought the new Centrinos were meant to be more power efficient. There seems to be no fan going on to cool the thing down. I'd prefer even temperatured hands if it meant a bit of fan noise.

Where's the 'del' key?

Sunday June 08, 2008

The Mac is here

Well, I ended up getting a MacBook, now that my reliable Toshiba Tecra S1's screen has finally died.

I'm trying to remain objective, but the fact is that this isn't the device I would really have chosen, given a choice. If there had been a nice small Windows laptop on offer, I would have gone for it. That said, lots of colleagues who now have Macs are very happy with them, so I'll persevere for now. This is a business tool though - something to help me work and be productive, not a toy that I want to ogle at for hours on end because of its sheer widget bouncing beauty.

So, first impressions of a slightly grumpy user who feels he's ended up with the best of a bad bunch and is peeved that, at the local Sun office at least, a properly portable Toshiba wasn't on offer...

It came with a European plug. Granted, this is something that happens with most of the electronics you buy in Dubai, but it's still irritating. A British three pin is the standard across the Gulf, not Euro toothpicks. Now I need a UK to Euro converter and a Euro to UK converter in my bag.

I keep hitting the '\' key rather than return. That's something my fingers will probably get used to, as well as the fact that the 'fn' and control keys are reversed compared to my Windows laptops.

The keyboard feels plasticky.

It came with a US keyboard. That's not Apple's fault, of course, but I preferred my UK keyboard on the Toshiba, which had a nice pound sign. This keyboard doesn't even have a Euro symbol.

It's not clear how replaceable the keyboard is. The keyboard was replaced twice on my Toshiba for various reasons - how long will this one last?

There are only two usb ports and you can't keep the mouse plugged in and use a usb stick at the same time, as the ports are too close together. Yes, I got a wireless mouse with it, but I don't want to have to carry a large mouse with a battery in it around with me. A small, retractable usb mouse is much more convenient. The usb slots are also on the left of the laptop, meaning the mouse cable has to stretch around to the right. I'd have preferred three usb ports - one for the mouse and two for an external hard drive, but that's not something that's a Mac only gripe - a small Tosh would have been the same, I expect.

The 'm' key looks like an upside down 'w'. I know, this is only a minor whinge, but it looks odd and I'm feeling picky, so there.

I can't work out how to hide the toolbar at the bottom, but will doubtless find the setting somewhere.

It's heavier than I thought. My old Tosh was 6.2lbs with a lovely 1400x1050 screen. This is 5lbs with only a 1280x1024 screen. I'd expected it to weigh less. It is much smaller though and fits nicely in my bag and on my lap.

I can't run the software I need to synch and backup my Palm Pilot. Nor can I run the software needed to synch and backup my Sony phone. Even charging the Sony phone via usb won't work well as Sony insist on having drivers installed on the laptop the phone's attached to for it to charge properly. I will also need to run VMware's client soon and that won't install either.

Looking back at the issues above, these are all minor gripes, common when anyone goes from one machine to another. Let's see how the Mac measures up over the coming weeks. If I get fed up with it, I'll just put Windows XP on it, go back to the classic theme and choose non anti-aliased fonts. It'll look old and dull, but I'll know where everything is and won't spend time fiddling, which, quite frankly, is all I care about.