* Posts by Paul Naylor

104 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007

Shut up, Spock! How Battlestar Galactica beat Trek babble

Paul Naylor
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Excellent article

Thanks for a very good read. I like my scf-fi but hate anything Star Trek for exactly the reasons outlined here. There seems to be this smugness amongst the characters that they know they are much cleverer than the viewer and spout all kinds of technobullshit that the Fanbois take as literal. A friend of mine, a big fan, heard that when Stephen Hawking was given a tour of the set he was heard to say "yes, I'm working on that!" when he saw the Warp Drive. He seems to think that Star Trek 'invented' many of the things we use today, communicators became mobile phones, etc.

This is why I'm a BSG. The technology isn't stuffed in your face and so the story can concentrate on real character development. Characters have weaknesses and faults set against the wider arena of political machinations. I'm a fan of Babylon 5 for the same reasons, which, whilst a bit cheesy in parts, does have some incredible dialog. I want dialog, I don't want a show with a load of bollocks about how a hypermegaplasmeriser works or seeing the characters dicking around in a hologram suite...

Boffin-botherer's LHC doomsday case thrown out on appeal

Paul Naylor
Pint

Thank you Reg!

For giving two fantastic phrases that I will endeavour to weave into every day conversation: Boffin Botherer and "leaky as a Swiss cheese rowing boat".

Facebook death lists spook Colombian town

Paul Naylor
Boffin

Who remembers?

Who remembers the halcyon days when the interwebs only appealed to us geeks? When there were probably only about four sites in existence, you could have a proper conversation in a chatroom and none of this Web 2.0 malarky? Who's great idea was it to open it up to easily led Great Unwashed??

Sigh.

BBC adopts El Reg units

Paul Naylor
Alert

What?

The BBC nicking someone's idea and passing it off as their own? Never!

</sarcasm>

Group Test: smartphone satnav apps

Paul Naylor
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Agreed

I use CoPilot for iPhone and my Android chums use it too. Not had chance to take it out on the motorways yet, but for the country roads around Yorkshire, it's never failed me. I'm very impressed with how quickly it recalculates the route if you decide to take a detour.

Woman's voice is calming and places pronounced accurately but, like you, I find that the 'Just ahead' instructions does become a pain after a while. Still, you cannot beat this application for the money.

I even bought the US version when they offered it for a tenner. Never going to drive over there but a tenner's a tenner!

Apple iOS 4 update frustrates iPhone 3G owners

Paul Naylor
Alert

Bit of a pain in the arse

The download was fine on my 3G but the "Backing up your iPhone" was glacial. I kept quitting it and restarting, thinking it had bombed, but no change. Checked out the Apple discussion forums and other people were having the same problems. In the end I just stopped fiddling about and left it to it. Had I done that in the first place then I reckon an hour or so in total for backup, installation and restoration wouldn't have been far off the mark. The whole experience though did piss me off a bit (for the first time in 20 years as an Apple user) but I'd had a crap day anyway!

No problems running iOS 4, no apparent slow downs and no hangs yet.

Apple store flakes after iPhone 4 price reveal

Paul Naylor
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Well said sah!

I found some common sense at last!

Far East fanboi dresses iPad as Mac (Classic)

Paul Naylor
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My Inner Geek loves this!

Makes me think back to the early 90s when I got my first Mac, a second or third hand SE, with a massive 20Mb hard disk, 2Mb memory and a black and white 320x240 screen resolution! Today's cash points probably have better screens than that old thing did! Still, in the three years I had it, it was on pretty much 24 hours a day and I did really cool stuff with Hypercard. Happy days!

iPad queues worldwide

Paul Naylor
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Phew!

Had me going there, you cheeky scamp you!

Sam Mendes to helm new Jesus Phone ads

Paul Naylor
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I applaud you sir!

Could not have put it better myself and the best comeback I've heard on here fr'ages!

Next-gen iPhone rumored for April

Paul Naylor

Dang

True, you can't do it for message alerts, which I thought was a bit of a bummer (on my previous SE my message alert was "Bad Robot", from the end of Lost. I know, I'm a geek...) but wasn't a deal breaker for me getting the iPhone. It would be cool to have it though as several of us in the office have iPhones and whenever an email arrives we all simulataneously reach for our phones to see if it's us.

Paul Naylor
Jobs Halo

Ringtones

iPhone Ring Tone Maker. I use the Mac version but I think there is a Windows version available too. Import and crop any sound and it uploads it to Ringtones in iTunes, ready to sync to your iPhone!

MS store staff in spontaneous electric boogie

Paul Naylor
Jobs Halo

What Rogue LJ said

I made 20 seconds. And my PC doesn't even have a sound card...

Helpdesk Heroes or unappreciated geeks?

Paul Naylor

Here's one

Thankfully, I got out of support a long time ago but because I "know about computers" (I'm a designer/developer) I usually get asked support questions when our IT manager is not around. My favourite was a woman in accounts: "Is the network down? My keyboard isn't working." Yes love, we plug keyboards straight into the server... She'd kicked the cable out, which I told her when I ran upstairs and plugged it back in. She denied it of course: USB cables just drop out of the hole.

Having worked on support I always try to be nice with support staff. Be nice to them and they'll help you. Rant at them, they won't.

Keep up the good work guys!

Noel Edmonds brings Cosmic Order to the iPhone

Paul Naylor
FAIL

Eeeep!

Noel Edmonds on my iPhone! My eyes! My beautiful eyes!!

'Norfolk Broads Idiot' nailed on YouTube

Paul Naylor
FAIL

What a cock

'Nuff said

Reg reader captures Perseid meteor

Paul Naylor
Boffin

EXIF data?

Need to know what his exposure settings were!

(Lovely pic BTW!)

Blade Runner tops sci-fi movie poll

Paul Naylor
Grenade

No Dune?

Am I the only person on the planet that loved David Lynch's interpretation of Dune??

Still, nice to see Blade Runner in the number one slot but I have to agree with those who lament Silent Running missing from the Top Ten. I wept buckets when I was a kid and Huey (or was it Dewie?) got hit by Bruce Derne. Got it on DVD and I must really sit down and watch again...

Star Wars quite deservedly as I saw as an 8 year old and the opening scene blew me away. It still does.

iPhone 3GS turns yellower shade of white

Paul Naylor
Jobs Halo

@ ThomH

Agreed. One would think that 'El Reg' had an anti-Apple bias?? Shirley not...

(Got a 3G, love it, keeping it 'til next year)

Don't call me Ishmael

Paul Naylor

Macs

Many moons ago, a mate of mine had a Mac II, which he called Malcolm. I had an SE, which I called Desmond. Beige names for beige boxes.

When we started putting a small network together a few years ago, my boss thought it would be a larff to call it Frodo, as I was a bit of a LOTR nut. Another server was added not long after called Gandalf. It was a bit silly. Now we have a proper IT bloke that has named all our Blades after planets, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Neptune, etc.

My car, a Clio, is called Chloe.

iPhone 'photo lawyer' app to take the stand

Paul Naylor

Actually, not a bad idea!

I think that's a pretty good idea for an app, especially when some obviously guilty scrote gets away with something because of lack of evidence.

My girlfriend, who currently lives and works in the US, got 'fender bendered' a couple of weeks after she arrived there. The guy that ran into her refused to give details and drove off

TomTom maps route onto iPhone 3G S

Paul Naylor

@ Chris Morrison

I was under the impression that TomTom was going to be compatible with the current 3G phone too, as long as the v3.0 firmware update was installed? Please say this is the case!! I've been geeking out big time all day about the prospect of having SatNav on my iPhone without having to buy a dedicated device!

Can anyone clear up this issue once and for all? Will TomTom be supporting the current 3G iPhones??

Ta.

iPhone 3G S in the UK: what you need to know

Paul Naylor
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Nice, but not enough to upgrade

I bought my 16Gb iPhone in January this year with the £35 tariff and I have no complaints with it whatsoever. I don't make a huge amount of phone calls and so the free minutes and texts is ideal for me. I do access the web and check email on the move a lot though (despite there being no decent 3G 'oop North) so the unlimited data is a massive bonus.

Although I would like a better camera, with video recording, and 32Gb of storage, I don't think I'll be upgrading to a 3GS until my contract renewal is up. I'm an amateur photographer and I use a Canon EOS for photography; I've never been a huge fan of phone cameras. Everything else I need my mobile device to be is accommodated by the App Store.

I am very excited though at the prospect of having TomTom working on my iPhone with the v3.0 update. I've been considering buying a SatNav for some time but have been holding out for it being available for my iPhone. This now looks like a reality and I see no reason to get rid of something that is fast becoming a perfect all-in-one mobile device.

And yes, I'm an Apple 'fanboi'; so what.

Excess of cola floors Oz ostrich farmer

Paul Naylor
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On a serious note

I know that this story started off as one of those 'mad Aussie' pieces but it did make for interesting reading. My girlfriend drinks nothing but diet Coke all day, with the odd small bottle of water thrown in. She won't drink tea or coffee and any protestations on my part won't convince her that drinking that much of the sugary stuff is bad for her health. I've sent her this link.

Actually, she has been nagging me for years to stop smoking, saying that being addicted to the Evil Weed is no where near as bad. Now I've quit I can finally get my own back! Cheers Reg!

Russian mag teases with netbook MacBook specs

Paul Naylor
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Here's hoping...

Okay, so I'm a Mac 'Fanboi' but I've have never had the desire to have a notebook, Mac or otherwise, being quite happy with my Mac Pro desktop. But if this rumour is true then I could definitely change my opinion.

I have an iPhone (yes, again I'm a 'fanboi'), which is cool for mobile internet but I can't help thinking I'd like a bigger display ta v much. All I'd like is to watch the occasional video when I'm travelling, perhaps do a bit of word processing and internet browsing. This could be exactly what I need. I really want this to be true!

Asus lights up 1TB SSD Lamborghini laptop

Paul Naylor
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Nice

I'm a dye in the wool Apple man but I rather like this, especially the 1Tb storage. Nice!

Etailer flogs signed Jade Goody biog for £1,000

Paul Naylor
Alien

Hello kettle! I'm pot!

Of course, The Sun and all the other tabloids won't be making ANY money from reporting this feeding frenzy circus of a story will they? And I wonder how much cash they'll be donating to the cancer charities? In fact, I wonder if Goody will actually be donating any cash herself? Oh no, but she's raising awareness. Good job too; I'd never heard of cancer until she came along.

(A Canadian friend of mine reckons that it's one big conspiracy anyway. He reckons that she will miraculously recover from death's door and become some saint or something. Why? Well, most people in the late stages of cancer lose a lot of weight. She hasn't. Also, why would her results be announced on television, instead of between the doctor and the patient, in private? I'm not a conspiracy theory fan but ... bugger, I can hear the Black Helicoptors...)

Universal thaws out The Thing

Paul Naylor

Re: how many

Good point Martin. I'd love to see some of the Asimov books done properly, instead of the shower of excrement that was I, Robot. But I don't think hoi poloi would 'get' Asimov's subtlety.

And is the Rama series ever going to make it to the big screen? I'd heard that Rendezvous With Rama was in the works but the rumour seems to have died a death...

As for a remake of The Thing, I think it's a case of 'don't mess with the classics'. The John Carpenter version scared the crap out of me when I was a kid and is still shocking to me as an adult. It's the dogs at the beginning. Where aliendog is put into the compound and just stares ahead and the other dogdogs look a bit nervous. Scary.

Doner kebabs: Death wrapped in pitta bread

Paul Naylor
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Right.....

So they've banned smoking from pubs, they're telling us not to drink because it's bad for us. You can't eat kebabs and if you have sex you get arse cancer. Is there anything fun left to do on a Friday night??

Coming up next: research to suggest that talking bollocks with your mates in the pub causes Altzheimers. Or something...

Profs: Eating Belgian truffles will make you buy a Mac

Paul Naylor
Jobs Halo

I use a Mac Pro...

... and favour Hotel Chocolat choccies. Though I did sit down and eat half a tube of Pringles and a near full bag of Maltesers the other day...

MIT boffins crack fusion plasma snag

Paul Naylor
Coat

So...

... I should get my Mr Fusion within the next ten years? Cool!

BBC clarifies location of England

Paul Naylor

How stupid to they think we are?

Well, when the BBC news in the morning seems determined to fill up as much air time as possible with the latest news from Strictly Come Wanking (or "Strictly" as they trendily call it) and are becoming more like GMTV every day, I think such cartographical explanations need to be given to an audience that get their world news from TV talent shows and Heat magazine.

I find that in the morning that I am increasingly turning over to BBC News 24. At least the news there is provided for people with a IQ higher than a boiled potato.

Crazy Frog won't croak again

Paul Naylor

My ring tone...

... is still 'Leftbank': the Vision On gallery theme!

I too developed murderous tendencies when the great unwashed played the fupping Crazy Frog ring tone all the fupping time. A particularly amusing and inventive B2Tan did a piss-take of the Jamster ads. I might have it somewhere...

Phishers adapt old scams to exploit bank turmoil

Paul Naylor
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HSBC

I'm getting at least two or three emails a day asking for security updates and these are "from" HSBC. Pain in the arse. Sometimes, for a larff, I go to these URLs and enter junk in the fields (usually stuff along the lines of f**ck of you phishing wank*r), but it's just unfortunate that some still for it.

Dick Smith pr0n mobe heads for eBay

Paul Naylor
Coat

@ Rob

Ah yes, I hadn't thought of that!

Paul Naylor

Whinging Ozzies

I don't know how copyright law words down under but aren't the photos copyrighted? Presumably the little princess that's flogging the phone has the permission of the 'participants' in the photos and has model release forms all sorted out? Thought not...

I'd sue for copyright infringment. That'd be a larff!

4GB fourth-gen iPod Nano confirmed

Paul Naylor

@tardigrade

I bought my girlfriend a 3rd gen Nano last Christmas. Now she's hankering for a 4th gen Nano, which I've pretty much resigned myself to getting for her. At least I'll get some of the "good lovin'"!

I'm a 5th gen video iPod man myself...

Today is not Hadron Collider Day

Paul Naylor
Boffin

Lovely!

I love the fact that, here in Blighty at least, the media hype over the LHC turning-onage is aimed at the sort of people who get their science from Heat magazine or GMTV. They can't explain particle physics or the Higgs Boson properly so why not frighten the plebs shitless with something very scary sounding, like Black Holes? And 'jokingly' announce the end of the world from their comfy sofas. Even BBC News, which is the best of a bad bunch, had that silly cow on it going on about how we probably shouldn't go into work today, or have a fry-up instead of musli. It was actually bloke doing the weather that tried to introduce some rationality to the proceedings!

Like the author said, it's not been cranked up to 12 yet and we won't see the results for a few years, whilst in the mean time, the great unwashed will have forgotten about it by the weekend.

I'm not a physics whizz but I read about the subject (can't pretend to understand a lot of it!) and am fascinated by the subject. Here's hoping the Reg keeps us up to date with developments at the LHC, in all its lovely geekery goodness!

Bury council carries can over spycam binmen

Paul Naylor
Thumb Up

@ Steve Kay

Love the C.S. Lewis quote! Not heard it before.

Hadron boffins: Our meddling will not destroy universe

Paul Naylor
Alien

re: Now what's the question again...

Or when it's all switched on a big neon sign lights up in the sky saying "Level 1 completed . . . Level 2, go..!"

Thus passes to C&W

Paul Naylor
Jobs Halo

@ Nick

Ditto Nick. I've been a Demon customer fr'ages (and, yes, I am part of the aged population; 40 next year) and they've been a great provider. I too hope that C&W don't bollox things up...

The IT Crowd goes west

Paul Naylor
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Flip off!

Being a huge Father Ted fan I was really looking forward to the IT Crowd when it first premiered but was sorely disappointed with it first time round. Then it was repeated on E4 and I loved it so went out and bought the DVDs. I definitely think it gets better with subsequent viewings.

The Haunting of Bill Crouse and Aunt Irma Visits are firm favourites ("and in Munich, a group of IT Consultants shouted at a dog"). And Jen is hot!

As for decoration of the 'Bat Cave', doesn't Roy wear shirts from 'Think Geek' anyway? I have one; it reads "I never finish anyth..."

Sharp pitches 'world's largest' LCD screen

Paul Naylor
Thumb Up

WANT ONE!!

The only problem is that this beatie is probably bigger than the largest wall in my front room! S'pose I'll have to make do with a LOTR extended edition marathon on my pitiful 28" Sony...

Dead wife contacts Lancs man via SMS

Paul Naylor
Coat

What was in the message?

Jones says his family has since received strange SMS messages which they believe to be from Sadie. He concluded: "She always had a mobile with her. We buried her with her phone

What did the messages say? "LET ME OUT, I CAN'T BREATHE IN HERE!!!"

Mine's the one with the holy water, crucifx and copy of the the Exorcist in the pockets...

Botanist sues to stop CERN hurling Earth into parallel universe

Paul Naylor
Coat

We all know...

... that this geezer is as mad as a wardrobe but if this ever gets out then the GMTV watching plebs, who get their science from Heat magazine will be panicking about being sucked into Black Hole.

I only have a layman's knowledge of particle physics but isn't it true that the LHC *might* create only atom sized black holes? And, according to Prof. Hawking, don't black holes ultimately go "pop" because of quantum leakage just outside the the event horizon? I would imagine that it won't take an atom-sized black hole long to wink out of existence...

And assuming that there is other sentiant intelligence out there and assuming that they're more intelligent than us, can't we assume they've been knocking about with the same things that the LHC is doing? And, oops, the Universe is still here!

BBC Micro creators meet to TRACE machine's legacy

Paul Naylor
Boffin

Ah!

I remember those days, during the early 80s, when instead of hanging around street corners and being rowdy I would spend my Friday evenings round at a friend's house playing Elite* all night. He had a Model B with the standard cassette drive and it would take about fifteen or twenty minutes for the game to load.

Because of the frankly weird place to put the Break key, our alloted 1 hour at a time play would be forfeited if we accidentally hit it, as the game would have be loaded again. Then my friend got a disk drive and we marvelled at the ultra short load times of about 10 seconds!

I never had my own "Beeb" but would still spend hours making Repton 3 maps on bits of graph paper before taking them round and "programming" them.

Last I heard, the friend's Beeb was still going strong up until a few years ago, when someone spilt red wine over it.

A very very great computer!

(*I never made it to "Elite", only "Deadly", though I did do the Constrictor mission!)

Sweet, sweet smell of comments in code?

Paul Naylor

I have to comment...

... it satisfies the ISO9000 woman whose eyes glaze over when I tell her that I'm not printing out every single script I publish for a project job bag.

Interestingly though, I was in a training course a couple of years ago by a qualified Adobe Flash trainer who said that I should pretty much comment everything. And if I change a lump of code, I comment it out, along with reasons why it's been deleted. I thought that was going a bit too far.

Personally, I use a lot of comments, particularly at the beginning of a function (or method) because I use a lot of array structures and my memory is so bad I can't remember my own code a couple of months later...

IT industry needs more women

Paul Naylor
Coat

IT Crowd

Would that be a ... lady? Of the female genre?

Spirit discovers life on Mars

Paul Naylor

Trick of the light

It's obviously a shadow or some weird rock formation. The funniest reaction has to be the Daily Mail's precis of the photo. The headlines next week will be something along the lines of "House prices soar as priority housing given to Martians".

And the Express will be "Madeleine McCann in Martian kidnapper / Princess Diana link"...

If I'm wrong then, of course, I welcome our Martian Overlords...

Fasthosts customers blindsided by emergency password reset

Paul Naylor
Thumb Down

Similar story

Mine is a similar story to many already commented upon here. We have price list data on a Fasthosts MySQL server that is used by a number of our sites and this morning those sites were throwing up permission denied errors. So I reset the passwords before I ended up getting the email.

Funny thing was, we reset the passwords of the same databases straight after the initial scare a few weeks ago, to something far more obscure and yet Fasthosts still reset them, claiming we hadn't changed them...

We're now looking to host our data internally...