Ippoippo

Gaggghhh, talk about over-sensationalisation!

Whilst it’s interesting to see some proper science stuff being reported in the mainstream media, the way it’s been done is just plain daft.

I mean all this talk of today being ‘Big Bang Day’. Then you have the reports about a the chances of the experiment going wrong and sucking up the earth in a black hole.
Well, that was never going to happen today anyway!! All they bloody did was turn the machine on, fire off some protons at (relatively) slow speed in one direction… then do it again in the other direction. There was never any intention of doing any proton beam collisions until October (if I recall correctly).

Of course, ‘LHC turned on’ isn’t exactly an attention grabbing headline is it

Mind you, this over reaction and fear-mongering has gone and had a rather negative effort with the report of a 16 year old in India committing suicide.

Meanwhile, the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ discussion has been invaded by the God Squad

10 Types of Republicans…

Have to admit, the choice of Palin as Vice-Presidential candidate seems somewhat mad… but if it means McCain not becoming president, then it get’s a thumbs up from me.

… and the weather has been just as crap!! In fact, as I type this, its pissing down outside.

Doesn’t seem to have harmed the veggies though, and we’ve managed to crow some courgettes which were very tasty. Next year, once the big green house is assembled, hopefully our attempt at Japanese pumpkins will go a lot better.
Our home cabbages seem to have grown more, and one of them proved to be rather good when we had some お好み焼き (Okonomiyaki).

Anyway, the news…

Just who is running Japan at the moment

Well, nobody it seems, or all the bods in the back, smoke filled rooms. After the relative stability of the Koizumi years, it seems like Japan is back to normal with yet another PM resigning in short succession.
Taro Aso looks like a favourite to take over, and indeed he may well have been waiting patiently for his chance thinking he wouldn’t have lasted long if he’d been the immediate successor after Koizumi. Who knows.

Chrome

Hmm, a rather interesting development in the internet browser space… with Google launching Chrome. HTML content is rendered using WebKit, which is same as Safari (the web browser that comes with Mac OS X, and can be installed on Windows too (I personally don’t like it running on Windows, I normally use Firefox on that platform).
At the moment, Chrome only runs on Windows, but it will be built for Linux and Mac OS X as well.

There’s a set of cartoons (Very ‘Heroes’ style if you ask me), going into some of the techy details.

It’s an interesting move, and has already caused a lot of chat and speculation on various message boards and websites I read.
Initial thoughts are that it is VERY quick at rendering content and running ‘Web 2.0′ type sites. Some people report that running Chrome using VMWare Fusion or Parallels, as Windows Virtual Machines inside Mac OS X, still results in a faster web browser than the native Safari!
Other people though are getting concerned about Google turning in the next ‘big brother’, and displacing Microsoft as the next big nasty corporation. Some people have pointed out this particular clause in the End User License Agreement when you install…

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”

One thing though, the Chrome project is open source, which means any really dodgy looking code, attempting to do anything sinister would be pretty much spotted by plenty of geeks who would then rant about it pretty damn quickly.

Google Update

Well, it looks like Google has changed it’s EULA now. Good!
Links here, here and here.

… yeah, this post is a week late, but there you go.

The Italian Job

Last Sunday, we got back from Italy having spent a week there.
On the previous weekend, we travelled up to London on Saturday night, crashing over there before taking the Eurostar (our second time using it, but first time from St. Pancras) to Paris. We then caught the Sleeper train in Paris to take us onto Florence (arriving on Monday morning). The sleeper train was pretty good. The conductor in our carriage was a very friendly Italian chap, who made us Cappucino in the morning to wake us before our arrival in Florence.

Monday was spent pretty much wandering around Florence. The market was pretty good, though it was very strange to be in a conversation with some of the stall holders using Japanese! Turns out a lot of Japanese ladies (who have married Italians) live there, and a lot of them help out on some of the stalls selling local produce. Any stall with a Japanese person on it has a real advantage when it comes to visiting Japanese tourists!

Talking of tourists, Florence is a very tourist-y place The place we ate at (despite being recommended in my guide book) certainly had a tourist orientated feel to it (atmosphere was spoilt by a very large and loud tour group all chomping on a set meal which looked rubbish!).
On Tuesday, we headed off for a wine tour down in San Gimignano region (a white wine area in Tuscany) and then onto Chianti region itself.
The tour was a different style to the wine tour we did in Australia (which was very casual). This tour, whilst not being in your face formal, still had a more ‘lets learn about traditional wine’ feel to it. It was pretty interesting though.
Tuesday evening was then spent in a wine bar on the other side of the river Arno (on the south side away from the main city). Much better. Less touristy feel, though the staff could still speak a reasonable level of English to help out with my poor Italian.

On Wednesday, we took the train for the our journey up to Bologna. I’ve stayed in Bologna before, as a base for when myself and two friends went to the San Marino Grand Prix down in Imola.
It was less busy than Florence, with not many tourists it site. Hurrahh!
Yuko really loved the streets and architecture, and on of the main shopping streets (Via Indipendenza). The one disappointment was where we ate on Wednesday night, at Pizzaria Nicolas in Piazza San Martino. We ate there twice when I was in Bologna back in 2001. Huge pizzas, and great food! This time, the pizza’s were still big, but the didn’t taste as good.
On Thursday we spent the morning in Modena and Maranello, having lunch at Ristorant Cavallino opposite the Ferrari factory.
Thursday evening was great though. Deciding not to bother with the guide book, or my previous experience of Bologna, we decided to find a random place to eat.
So we stumbled across Trattoria dal Biassanot (Via Piella). What a great place!!!! The staff were really, really nice (spoke English a fair bit, though we used as much Italian as we could with them). Food was great though. The best thing was trying ice cream with proper 10 year old Modenese Balsamic Vinegar on it (which is very syrupy). My god!!!! It’s wierd how adding a little drop of that vinegar almost adds like a lemon-ish taste to the rather creamy ice-cream they had.

Friday was our last day in Bologna, so we spent it shopping. Getting ham, tortellini, and balsamic vinegar to take home. Our sleeper train back to France wasn’t until 10 that night. So, we ate again at Trattoria dal Biassanot.

The sleeper home wasn’t so fun. They people next to us were loud, and the conductor this time was a miserable sod. Ahh well.

New Toys

On arrival back in the UK on Saturday afternoon (we got back to Paris in the morning) we headed straight to the Apple Store near Oxford Circus….. and got both myself and Yuko are iPhone 3G. Woohooo. Yuko has the 16Gb White, and I’ve got the 16Gb Black. It did take about 1 hour of queuing though!! Yuko loves the phone because it works in Japanese, and we have unlimited data access, so she can use her phone in exactly the same way as she would use one in Japan (i.e., use Email rather than SMS). Having said that, SMS still works in Japanese too.