Tried the Remote Play abilities of the PS3 + PSP last night, what an anti-climax. It turns out after a shufti at Wikipedia that there are only about 12 games you can play in this manner (play on PS3, display and controls on PSP), none of which I’ve heard of. Nor can you play Blu-Rays or DRM-ed content. What cack. If you’re going to dangle such a carrot Sony, make it worth our while.

Meanwhile, the revolt to the “Baby + Bath Water” project gathers momentum (the Microsoft rip and replace at work). No-one yet that I’ve spoken to thinks it’s a good idea and thinks we should fight dirty. At this stage, I’m not sure I can be bothered.

And so it has come to pass, after eight or so years of fruitful (not to mention award winning) endeavours, my erstwhile employer has decided to tear out the fully functioning and well integrated Novell heartbeat of our network in favour of it’s Microsoft bastard cousin. Like most decisions of this type, there has been little or no consultation, no chats with the people who’ve made it all tick. There has been no chance for Novell to state it’s case. There has been no working party as such, no dialogue. One man has chosen this path, is sticking rigidly to it and we all have to put a square peg into a round hole.

To say I don’t agree is a violent understatement. This is on many levels, none of which I can be bothered to annunciate. However, we all have bills to pay and food to buy, so for now, I’ll suck it up. Needless to say, if you’re a Novell house in need of a good honest, time served and battled hardened pro – give me a call – chris at chrisbeckett dot org dot uk.

Finally, in today’s news – “Head on beach was migrant worker“. “That’s OK, then” say locals.

Back home after my BrainShare week. Boring flights, but had great fun circling Wigan in the plane whilst Manchester cleared the runway of snow. Jeez, never realised how closely they stack planes in a holding pattern – made me nervous, to be honest. Dog tired now, feel a bit woozy. What day is it? It’s daytime already, need a sleep =-(

Interesting trip so far. My luggage did arrive last night, after stupidly walking past the transfer area (like last year, I appear to have a blind spot here) at Chicago. The shuttle then arrived for the hotel after about 15 minutes, so I had a quick shower and then a couple of liveners at the Port O Call. By the time I retired to bed, I had no idea what day it was, let alone what time it was. I kept waking up in the night and seeing it was dark, so went back to sleep.

Went to the IMAX to see “Adrenaline Rush”, the first of many anticipated freebies this week. Very good, met up with Robin and David from Novell UK, had a bit of a chat about the state of the GUG and how we can get more people to meetings. Also met Sylvain and Marc for the first time, indirectly from the NGWList. Nice guys, hope they didn’t think I was ignorant when we went our seperate ways, but they obviously had a lot in common and I thought it best to leave them to it.

Now fully registered, after haggling over my free Novell jacket. They seem to have me registered twice, once as a paying guest and once as a speaker. I’ll milk my paid status for a couple of days and then get it revoked. I also picked up my speaker attire, much nicer than last year’s horrid slate grey effort. Nice blue shirt – that’s the spirit!

Off to the welcome reception later, hopefully get a few snaps for the album. I’ve time to kill, so may even wander down towards Trolley Square and see if it’s any good.

Decided to move away from Blogger – I never truly felt at home there for the couple of years I blogged on it, so I decided to move to WP. I feel a little closer to God as it were, as it’s more Open Source than those code bandits at Google.

Well then, odd Christmas. Broke both arms falling out of a bin (yes, really. no, wasn’t pissed), only just recovered. In fact, today was my first day back at work for five weeks. Felt strange at first, and then before I knew it, it was like I’d never been away. Machine gunned with things to do.

BrainShare is a little over a month away. The Manchester 10K is a little further away than that. Each present challenges in their own different and interesting ways. Must now figure out a way to port my old blog stuff to an archive. Chances are I can’t.

For your viewing pleasure today, “How To Speed Up Vista” from Microsoft. My first thought was “upgrade to Linux”, but they go all no-shit-Sherlock on us and tell us the following :-

• Delete programs you never use
• Limit how many programs load at startup
• Defragment your hard drive
• Clean up your hard disk
• Run fewer programs at the same time
• Turn off visual effects
• Restart regularly
• Add more memory
• Check for viruses and spyware
• Disable services you don’t need

Wow, what great insight. Head on over to The Register for the full deal.

finally see a reaction from people who want to express their common sense and value the right for free speech and above anything else, having a laugh. Shame on you, Radio 1 for deciding to censor a 20 year old song with a harmless remark in it.

Peter Tatchell, you’re a miserable, moaning, pathetic sad sack. You’re an insufferably pompous ass who serves only to antagonise people. What a waste of space you are. Be gay, no-one cares, but stop making a career of it. The UK is one of the best places for gay people to live.

we lost Lou today, sometime around 1pm. We love you and miss you, sleep well.