Richard Giles Blog

I took my PowerBook into the shop today.

A couple of months ago one of my cats knocked it off the sofa. Ever since the display has been loose, creaks when it opens, and the latch won’t easily lock. I took it to NextByte who ordered in replacement hinges. They arrived last night and I whipped in at lunch time.

While I was waiting I noticed a familiar face. Could have sworn it was someone I worked with about 15 years ago. Then I realised that the rain coat and british accent belonged to Ben Elton. Would’ve liked to have chatted to him about how he uses his Mac, but he was busy with one of the staff. Thinking about it, he should start a blog.

The PowerBook took a couple of hours to repair, which wasn’t an easy separation. My iPod also ran out of charge just as I arrived, so I felt liked I’d regressed back a few years, laptopless and unable to listen to Podcasts.

Unfortunately, doing their repair work they’ve left a couple of scars, which isn’t that impressive. It appears as though they jimmied the case apart just above the SuperDrive slot, probably the weakest section of the case. Notice the nibbles in the plastic, and the way the SuperDrive slot bows just below them.

“Produced by Jupiter Research the analysis of the portable media player market found only 13% of Europeans want to watch video while out and about”. Which makes sense, I totally agree. I’d rather have a large screen to view video, and stick to audio content on the move. Steve Jobs has being saying this for some time.

Consumers ’snub portable video’.

Impressively, the Blogosphere gets its own section in CNN’s coverage of the U.S. Election.

This’ll be interesting to watch over the next few hours. Technorati has provided a feature for bloggers around the world to vote for or against Bush or Kerry. Given that the blogosphere seems to be firmly skewed toward being Democrat, I think we’ll see Kerry win this poll easily. However, what will be more interesting is to see how aligned we are to the citizens of the U.S.

Given I can’t say which has the better policy, as I haven’t followed it that closely, I’ll vote against Bush. He, as the Republican leader, just doesn’t seem to be all there. However, if he does win, it’ll be fun listening to some more Bushisms.

Given that a good deal of people have just started writing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). “Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30″.

Given that great characters are part of a great story, I thought it might be a good idea to help out by giving us your favourate fictional character. It might inspire the courageous NaNoWriMo writers.

Currently, I’d have to say that James Spader is brilliant as Alan Shore in The Practice. He’s the extreme lawyer, not on the edge, but right of the cliff. He says exactly what no one would expect him to. Brilliantly funny. People should try that at least once in their novels.

Pass it on. Let’s here what your favourate fictional character is.

Tama, our local expert on Blogs and Universities, has started testing Podcasting. I’m keeping an eye on it so when he goes beyond Homer Simpson quotes I’ll be ready.

Tama, when you’re close, let us know your hardware/software run down. Should be interesting.