Welcome to Catch
a story of coffee, music and football

not quite numberwang

Mitchell & Webb in the UK ‘get a mac’ ads. It’s a shame my little boxes aren’t as funny

ie7 photo problems

Any problems with viewing photos in ie7 should now be fixed. You really should be using firefox though!

the coffee card experiment

I’ve always liked the idea of the cashless society, where everything can be paid for using smart cards and not using coins and notes. Sadly, like the dreams of men to have flying cars and live in space, there are certain hurdles between having the idea and getting if off the ground. Chief amongst these in this case is the fact that with the current chip and pin or signature systems used with credit and debit cards, it takes far longer to use a card than to search around in your pocket for the right coins to buy anything even moderately expensive. People have tried to create cashless systems in the past, many involving the billing system already in place for mobile phones, yet strangely I’ve never heard of nor seen anyone actually using any of these systems.

So when both Costa and Starbucks introduced the pre-pay coffee card (completely separately obviously) it turned my head. Then I dismissed the idea as silly because I don’t want several different cards each with money on filling up my wallet any more than the coins I already have. Even the idea that I could pay for my coffee quickly and without having to sign anything or remember any numbers wasn’t enough to sell the card to me, because I’d still have to queue just as long to order and just as long while my coffee was made.

Still, when I found myself in the queue to order with the pile of cards just inside my reach, I had a second thought. So I picked one up, took it home and have just now stuck £10 on it (with an additional £2 from the nice people at Costa for registering it). It even comes with the interesting twist that if I should loose my card I can register it as lost and they’ll cancel the original and send me a replacement with the balance transferred across, something which I doubt my phone company will do should I loose my phone.

So, now all I have to do is wait until I’m back in the queue to order and hope that I remember I’ve got the card in my wallet. I’ll let you know how it goes.

big thumbs

Photo gallery thumbnails are now bigger. An improvement?

the sound of 2007

After the traditional Christmas lull in new music, where it’s decided that people would much rather buy best of compilations than something they’ve not heard before, everything has taken off again, and in a change to the last few months of last year, there’s actually a lot of great new stuff around. Let me illustrate:

Klaxons single ‘Golden Skans’ has been stuck in my head on and off for a couple of weeks, not helped by me buying it from iTunes just now. While the sound isn’t anything revolutionary, it’s just the kind of tune you need to wake you up on a cold winter’s morning. Though I do have a feeling that the sound might not be indicative of the whole album.

While last year was the year for new bands, I feel this year is the year for the seasoned artists. I’m looking forward Idlewild’s return to their earlier sound with the new album ‘Make Another World’ (out February 26th). Also worth your attention are new albums from Bloc Party (’A Weekend in the City’, February 5th), Kaiser Chiefs (’Yous Truly, Angry Mob’, February 26th) and Thirteen Senses (’Contact’, April 2nd) and further ahead, from Ash, Doves and Turin Brakes.

2007 also seems to have brought a resurgence of the alternative male solo artist. Freewheel by Duke Special, a string laden masterpiece, is getting played heavily on the radio and I keep hearing about Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, and having listened to both, it all sounds good, quiet but not too quiet, just the kind of stuff I’m into right now.

It’s all shaping up nicely.

when not to touchscreen

With the mountains of buzz about the iPhone starting to get in the way of everything else on the internet, I ended up searching the websites of the major high street phone retailers to see whether any of them were yet stocking my phone, the Sony Ericsson Z550. Feel my surprise to find out that none were currently stocking the phone nor expecting it soon, instead they were expecting an updated model, the z558 (photo inside).

On the face of it, the two phones look almost identical. When you look at the specs, again it’s all pretty much the same. So what’s the difference? The new one has a touchscreen, on the inside screen. Now I’m all for progress and I appreciate that all phones (and probably every other electronics device) in the future will feature a touchscreen, but why on earth should this phone need one, especially in that position? The Sony Ericsson website says the following:

“Enjoy the convenience of writing messages or editing your calendar or contacts with touchscreen handwriting recognition.”

One of the things you notice about people using their mobile phones is how many use only one hand. I can open and close my phone, navigate the menus, make calls and even write texts using only one hand. In fact the only time I use two hands is if I feel the need to write texts in double quick time. When you add a touchscreen to the equation, two hands are needed for everything. You will always need to hold the stylus in one and the phone in the other. Due to the shape of the phone when open, you can’t even place it on a table in an attempt to free up a hand because it turns into a see-saw.

My other gripe is with the idea of handwriting recognition. Sure, the phone might be designed as a testbed for this functionality in smaller phones, but could you see yourself writing texts or even contact names with a stylus, a letter at a time instead of using the keys? Even the slowest of users will surely find it easier to use the keypad to enter text. The only place I could see this being of any use is in the phone’s original market of the far east, where the mixture of english and non english characters might make it easier to write by hand.

So my question is this. Why sell the phone in a country where the key features are going to be a little useless. Why should people shell out money for features that they will probably never need. There are some fantastic new technologies out there, but unless they’re used in the right context, there just isn’t any point.

a response to the ieverything

I’ve have had time to consider my opinion and have formed the following conclusion on the iPhone: it will make a lot of money.

But there’s more to it than that and I for one am a little confused. What is it for? Who is it for? It’s not really a iPod, it’s not really a phone and it’s not really something to surf the internet on. It’s not an iPod because the proper iPods have at least 4 times as much storage. I couldn’t store all my music on even the largest iEverything, let alone have any space for video. Nope, a new iPod featuring this kind of technology will be forthcoming at some point. It’s not a phone either. Phones are designed to make it easy to call and text people. While I would like to think that writing a text on the iEverything is easy I can’t quite see it. Also, my phone is designed to fold in half, this allows it to fit in the multitude of places I store it during the day and ensures that the screen is protected when not in use. I do hope the iEverything comes with a case! Finally it’s not really a mobile internet device. I don’t want people interrupting my surfing by calling me and in this country the only wireless hotspots are at garages (where you’re not meant to use a phone) and coffee shops, where contrary to popular belief not even I spend all my time, so the only place I could use this functionality is at home, where my pc is.

So, who’s going to buy the iEverything? I’m sure that the people who would normally buy a smartphone or pda will climb over each other to buy one (when they eventually get to this country) but beyond that I’m stuck. I can’t see more than a small proportion of people who want a phone getting one because of the cost (and for the very same reasons they haven’t already bought a smartphone). I also can’t see many people buying one to replace their iPod because of the storage space.

I expect an apple product to be designed for a particular purpose and to be bloody good at it, when you start watering this down you get what the rest of the world produces. I look at this and all I see is a number of excellent individual ideas crammed into a single box. Revolutionary, no. World changing, I’ll believe it when I see it. The smartphone/pda done right, that might cover it.

Finally, apple, please sop forgetting about us out here in “the rest of the world”. Sure we can buy the apple tv in February, but considering it’s designed to work with the tv and movies available through iTunes, which only peeps in the US can get, isn’t it just a little pointless?

official chart no more

HMV stop selling the official top 40 singles on cd. Tis the beginning of the end I tell you.

shaking up the charts

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that in recent years the singles chart has become little more than a waste of time. With everyone having access to the internet and downloads of the legal and illegal varieties, the sales of cd singles have declined dramatically. After all why go all the way to a shop and shell out £3 for something you could get for 79p while staying sat at home. The numbers have dropped so much that downloads currently outnumber cd’s 4 to 1. In an attempt to engage the downloading public, the charts have counted download sales alongside cd sales for a while, but only while a cd was available to buy in the shops. Now the rules have changed and all downloads now count towards the charts whether a physical release is available or not. But what will this really mean.

First and foremost it will shake what the chart looks like, taking them away from the record companies control (who were in reality in a position to decided when a song entered and exited the chart) back into the hands of the record buying public. They will now show what people are buying, not what the suits want to sell us.

This means that past singles will make a comeback. This week Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars’ a number 6 from last July re-entered the chart at number 9 from download sales alone. Gary Jules’ version of Mad World (Christmas No 1 in 2003) also re-entered at 58 on the back of being featured in a tv advert. Download only singles will also now count having been previously barred for a lack of physical release and album tracks which would normally not get a single release will also be able to feature.

It will also mean the death of the cd single (and about time) as record companies no longer have any incentive to produce them and will no doubt have an effect on how bands release singles because once an album is out any potential singles will be available with them. In fact a whole lot could be about to change.

So is it good or bad news? Any why hasn’t the music industry taken this opportunity to yet again label the mp3 generation as a bunch of criminals sitting at home downloading illegal songs for their iPods? The answer to both is “I have no idea”. The music industry is such a strange one that I doubt even they know what is around the corner.

my new computer scares me

As electronics companies take it upon themselves to produce new versions of technologies which are completely incompatible with older versions, I’ve had to buy a whole lot of new kit for my new pc even though I could have easily reused the old components.

To this end, I’ve had to buy some new hardware to allow me to carry on reaching the internet wirelessly. So I bought this belkin usb adapter thing, which for reasons of poor signal has to sit on top of the new pc, facing me, the little led on the top flashing at me like a little eye. Not that I mind as it’s a constant reminder that the thing is working.

But when I turn the pc off, things get scary. It continues to flash (although only very occasionally), sometimes throughout the night. All while the rest of the computer is silent, the power supply isn’t running, the fans aren’t turning, but it still flashes. It appears that it’s all part of wake-on-lan a system designed to allow me to turn my pc on remotely, from the other side of the house or if necessary, the other side of the world. Clearly, while some people might find this useful, many (like me) have absolutely no use for this whatsoever. There’s no way I can remotely log in to my pc over the internet and I don’t want to have it turn on to start downloading anything when I can quite happily turn in on myself whenever I’m at home. Still, I’m sure it sounded like a good idea to someone.

What’s even more scary is that I think the wake-on-lan option is turned off!

new year ramblings

Ideas of what to write here come and go. Sometimes when I’ve got lots of things to say, I reject ideas or don’t have the time to commit them all to text and they pass out of memory. This is one of those times and if I don’t spit it all out now I probably never will. Therefore this post will likely lack detail, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First things first, Happy New Year!

Secondly, the reason nothing new has appeared here in the last week. Yes it was Christmas and I had family and the football to attend to, but that’s not the whole story. For a while now, my pc has been making the kind of noise that screams “this is a warning, I’m not going to last much longer”. I was waiting until the end of the month to replace it, hoping to jump feet first onto the wheel of fortune that will be Windows Vista, but then got I impatient and ordered a box of bits which I then crammed into a shiny shuttle case and then tried for the a day or so to get Windows running correctly and another couple of days getting everything back the way I like it. Anybody wishing to undertake the task themselves, a list of the mistakes I made should appear shortly (as soon as I’ve remembered them all). But fear not, it all works now and while the new machine isn’t as quiet as the mac, it’s still a nicer experience than having to endure the dying cries of it’s predecessor.

Thirdly, last week a number of us decided to travel to another country for the day, we chose Portland. The adventure will shortly be published under the title ‘Four nearly get stuck in a quarry’ or ‘Four go looking at rocks and cliffs’. The results of about three and a half hours of walking, one bloody massive hill, two pubs and a pair of aching legs can be seen in this photo gallery.

There, I told you it would be lacking in detail, and as the new pc doesn’t have MS Office, it won’t be spell checked either, happy days!