Lets go Live

Technorati Tags: Live Writer , Live Mail , Microsoft

I've been using Windows Live Messenger for a while now, along with Live OneCare as my security software. I have to say it is pretty good stuff, amazingly Microsoft have come up with good products! Today I tried 2 more offerings. Namely Live Mail and Live Writer.

Live Mail is simply an Outlook Express replacement. I say simply but it isn't wonderfully simple. It is not bad to set up but the interface is not wonderful.

That said it is quite clean, it does work and it is fast. My one major grouch is that message rules are complicated to setup. Well not complicated just a little long winded. Also there is no calendar included which is a big problem for me (as I use the one in Outlook quite a bit).

An 8/10 for the effort would be fair. At least it beats OE into the ground :)

Live Writer on the other hand is another matter. Quite simply a stunning piece of software. I'm using it to write this blog at the moment and it's working well. Writer is a blogger program that connects to just about any blog you can imagine and lets you post to them in a WYSIWYG way. sweet.

My only annoyance with it is that it keeps putting <p> tags in every time I hit enter and a few other html annoyances. Not a huge problem but it could be cleaner.

But it has a spell checker, it has the ability to insert media (although the attempt above inserting from Screencast didn't go so well) and it has lots of features. One useful one is the ability to live preview your post as if it were published. If nothing else it might make me make a few more posts :P

So 9 or even 10 out of 10 for writer.

So a couple of highly recommended programs there - give them a go. Microsoft's Live Network seems to be working out ok!!

Of Beowulf

We are just sorting out our 3rd year degree projects at the moment. Somehow I think I've managed to convince them to let me loose on the departments 80 CPU Beowulf cluster (basically a load of fast PC's networked together into a BEAST!! :P).

The main focus of the project will be to create a parallel calculations algorithm to convert some slow serial calculations into fast parallel ones (or something like that).,

I'm well excited, mostly because it means I get to play with a powerful cluster (under supervision sadly :P) as well as do some cool research into an area I'm enthusiastic about. I'm finally excited about the course again!

I'll keep posting updates with how it's going :)

The Beach

The Beach is one of my fav films - not least because of DiCaprio, who is a great actor - but I have never read the book... until now!

About halfway through and it's yet again one of those cases where the book is so much better even than the film. The Beach film was good, gritty and cool - the book goes a step[ beyond and makes you find something in yourself. It's style is so easy to read too and you really relate the main character (well I do).
Definitely recommended!

And at the same time I have been listening to the "Revelations" album by Audioslave. Very very good. I've never been into them before but they have an edginess that is fresh and nice. "The Curse" from the "Out of Exile" album is especially good :)

OpenSource capitalism

I was in WHSmiths today and saw a £7.50 magazine called "OpenOffice.org" (a one off - like you get now and again).

It had a cover disk with OO on it as well as tutorials and several plugins. And then it had about 25-30 pages of info about OO plus 15 ish pages of advertising / other stuff.

At first I was a bit annoyed that people are milking an open source project for their own gains (quickly replaced with disgruntlement that I hadn't thought of it first!!). Ok so they are writing the tutorials and compiling the disk but that cant cost much (I could write similar content in a couple of days and so could most of us here I should think!). The publishers must be making quite a packet out of it - and it's not as if the info isn't available (probably better written and more concise) online!

But then I thought a bit more and I realised that although it was blatant capitalism it could have a good effect. The mag was aimed at mid level computer users - or active learners - and so was massively raising the profile of OO. This has got to be a good thing right? I mean it basically means an open source piece of software is now marketable / commercial - aka mainstream.

There were 5 mags in the store I was in. Which means Smiths expected to sell at least that many. I've no idea how many WHSmiths stores there are or even if they rolled the mag to all of them (lets assume they did) but there must be a good 10,000 copies potentially to be sold... and that's not accounting for other shops either (well maybe it is! I'm just plucking numbers out of nowhere). Whatever the figures they amount to quite a large number of (potential converts).

Regardless it is a very high profile position to be in (what would happen if a FireFox mag was done??).

Any thoughts? Is it good having free software in a high profile position? Or will it have no real promotion effect and is it just a blatant rip-off money making scheme?

Unpacking is NOT FUN

I've been unpacking for 2 1/2 days now and it is crap :( I do about half an hrs worth then get bored and do something else!

I need organisation - if anyone has any please email it to me....

There will be some techie postings soon - just as soon as I get settled into the flat again :)

Why am I not psychic (and other rants!)

Since Saturday this week has NOT gone well.
1) Apparently the ability to read minds is required nowadays :( which is not good as it is something I'm never any good at! Yes the ability to telepathically know what someone wants / thinks is essential to surviving in our modern and oh so lovely world (sarcasm.... beautiful). I have a couple of perfect examples where my uselessness in this field recently stood out (and which I am blatantly not gonna share on so public a blog - find my private ones for that ;)). SO as a short plea for anyone sending silent messages to me - I CANT HEAR YOU. Nothing beats dropping me a line you know ;)

2) In other news my legs are falling off - or at least it feels the fuck like it. Apparently -playing American football after 3 months of no exercise is a BAD idea :(

3) And to cap it all I am missing most of freshers week stuck at home :( - although I managed to weasel out of flying to canada with a friend I still cant get back to Leeds till Wednesday.

Maybe next week will be better! :)

Xcitement - ish.....

I was planning to be in LA for the advanced screening of this next week! Will Swarm Atheist Action guy) organised a debate and then a protest outside.. I was hoping to get into the debate (he offered me a stage seat) and try and dissuade people from demonstrating. It's not exactly fair really.

People seem to be clashing over these issues more and more recently and that's not a good thing. Lets just get on with being ourselves right!?

Ok so the film is horrific (trust me you will be sick when you see the propaganda in it) and simply just trying to make money from a sensitive and easily railroaded issue, but that's obvious to anyone that watches it so hopefully it shouldn't "make it big".

Why people do this sort of thing is beyond me (and I am sure even religious supporters will agree the whole film is just a waste of time).

Sadly though I probably won't be there :( getting flights is proving impossible at the moment and I cant face a third round trip in as many weeks. I'm hoping a simple email to Will will (haha) suffice instead.

I doubt anyone would have listened to me - atheists just love a good fight :( :(

(My already low opinion of Stein has plummeted too - he should stick to trying to be funny.)

How not to go get a tan on a beach

It's easy to do. My measly tan from a day on an Italian beach is already fading! On the positive side Italy is great (and now my second favorite country!) - best of all was the food mmmmmm.

The most crazy thing though was the traveling - we spent well over 30hrs traveling there and back in total. Which is pretty insane. I pretty much never want to see a coach / plane / train seat ever again (catching a train home on Sunday will be FUN :()

One other good thing that came out of the trip though was a crazy plan to do a road trip around the US next year..... It's a nice idea but I'm not 100% sure about it yet. I really do have my sites set on some other places I want to visit (Tibet, Japan, Sout Africa, New Zealand, Chile....). As it stands it looks like those or the US :( tough choice.

God vs Dawkins

Today I started work on my new book "Dawkins vs God" subline: "The greatest battle of all: Religion and free Science". Despite the title I hope it is going to be an objective book as possible - although I feel the ultimate conclusions will be drawn in favor of Dawkins I hope it will be without his passion (which tends to cloud his points) and with a fresh "2 sides of the coin" approach.

The way I am going to present the book is to deal with the arguments against Dawkins' book "The God delusion" (of which there are many) and try and objectively weight them against Dawkins' own ideas.

Heres an excerpt from the opening:

"Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion caused a massive stir in many social (and political) circles. Not least in those of the atheists (who finally have a banner to which they can rally) and religious believers (who attacked his ideas with similar vociferation and vigor). The book caused open debate and controversy across the world as it addressed one of our final modern taboos: that of Religion as a concept rather than truth.

Where Dawkins strength lies (and ultimately his weakness) is in the passion with which he writes, his firm beliefs are flooded into the pages of The God delusion with incredible conviction. Sadly, whilst this moves many people, it flies in the face of the very concepts and beliefs he would have people follow - that of objective scientific reason. Certainly there is much of this reason in his books, but, unlike such tomes as "The Blind Watchmaker", Dawkins' latest effort instead attempts to beat religion at it's own game - in moving hearts and minds. Whilst this approach will appeal to many (and rightly so) to some it seems less likable. In this book I hope I can address (albeit more briefly) the same themes as Dawkins in a more objective and staunchly scientific way.

The main focus of the book will be on debunkers of The God Delusion. Those people who have taken Dawkins ideas and reasoned why they are wrong (often as passionately as Dawkins first puts them). Even now at the start I believe my (hopefully) objective conclusion will be in favor of Dawkins but do not let that fact put you off as a reader. Instead consider the hard facts and evidence I lay out here - I will endeavor not to present wild assertions, passionate speech or rude put downs - and form your own conclusions.

I am not deeply learned in the specific teachings of religion and their scriptures - in that sense I will hope to steer away from specifically dealing with text and scriptures which I may misinterpret. Instead I will try and look at ideas that people have drawn in The God Delusion and in the answering (pro-religious) texts and present it as fairly as possible.

I look on this as a laymans book - not steeped in learned teachings, throwing out deeply meaningful quotes or dealing with complex religious and scientific ideas. Instead it is a book that presents common and layman interpretations of all those 3 things (widely debated by more learned men than you or me) in a way that will hopefully bode well for weighing them against one another."

I hope that is a good start and I hope I can complete it in a meaningful timescale! The research for the first chapter alone has already taken up a huge amount of time!!