The Story Goes ... - Craig David

I am reviewing the album The Story Goes ... by Craig David which is an excellent album. I want to mention there's an excellent piece on him at wikipedia which I read for help doing this post. Craig was born in Southampton, England in 1981 and came to prominence when he was featured on the single Re-Re-Rewind by Artful Dodger in 1999. Several No 1 singles followed in Britain. Probably his biggest hit is Seven Days. He has worked with a lot of people including Sting & Tinchy Strider. The Story Goes ... was his 3rd album released in 2006 and he had a Top 3 single with All The Way. He has been nominated for 12 Brits & 2 Grammy's. His dad was in a reggae band and his parents separated whilst he was very young and he was brought up by his mother. All the tracks are pretty good on the album which is a gentle kind of pop.

Digital and Multimedia Forensic Evidence

The book I read to research this post was Handbook of Digital and Multimedia Forensic Evidence by John J Barbara which is an excellent book. This book is a collection of essays on digital forensics edited by John. There is often confusion over the meaning of certification and accredition. Certification is when a worker gains a qualification to help him do his job. Accredition is when a laboratory passes an inspection that allows it to do its work. It's often assessed on things like the workers qualifications, their practises and their equipment. Nowadays devices are getting smaller and the amount of storage is ever increasing. Things like micro SD cards are easy to conceal and easy to miss in a search. There is a constant battle between the technology of prosecuting villians and the various technologies of concealment. The forensic investigator needs to be abreast of both types of technology. Criminals often use things like smartphones and tablets. They also often use encryption. These technologies are also spawning a whole host of new crimes from phishing to downloading child porn. The latter is a multi million dollar industry. Many peer 2 peer sites like the now defunct limeware have child porn but there are also dedicated sites that charge large fees. Much of this can be traced back to organised crime often in foreign countries. In america the standard punishment if you download it is 5-10 years in prison and if you manufacture it is 15 years upwards.

Forensic Uses of Digital Imaging

The book I read to research this post was Forensic Uses of Digital Imaging by John C Russ which is an excellent book. Digital imaging is often used in films and what many people don't realise is often building a set is impractical & too expensive so the actors perform in front of blue screens and the background is added digitally. Also when you see a weatherperson on television they're standing in front of a blue screen and things like the map and weater symbols are added digitally. Some people think you can add a background to a photo in something like photoshop and nobody can tell the difference and you can maybe falsely incriminate someone in this way. In reality it maybe possible but would be very difficult and would require a very skilled person to do it. If you changed the background in a photo there would almost certainly be clues to indicate this had happened. A program like 3d studio max might be able to do this job but it would take someone with great skill to pull it off. Digital imaging is used in gathering evidence at the scene of a crime. One issue is do you compress photos to send them by email and almost if they were relied on in court they would be thrown out. Another issue is guaranteeing the photos haven't been tampered with and one method is to copy them onto film and another is to store them on cdr along with a serial number. Basically both of them are a write once media. Another issue is taking a poor quality photo and extracting details from it. The enhanced picture can look very different to the original and it can be very difficult to prove its accuracy. The technique often involves blurring some parts with a gaussian blur and enhancing other parts which is probably best left to a professional.

Simply Deep - Kelly Rowland

I am reviewing the album Simply Deep by Kelly Rowland which is very good. The 2 best tracks are Stole which made No 2 in the british charts & Dilemma which was a duet with Nelly & was a No 1. Kelly used to be in Destiny's Child & at one time looked like she was going to have quite a successful solo career. Beyonce also was in the same group. Of late she's been quiet hit wise which does seem a shame. The style of music is probably soul with a little bit of rap & dance for good measure. All the tracks on this album are fairly good & she has either cowritten or written all the songs.

Bargains on Amazon.co.uk

I have become a new seller on Amazon.co.uk & am selling stuff under the name David Roberts Technology. I haven't any ratings from satisfied customers yet but I am the cheapest on the site for these items.
A light chaser controls disco lights & this item is sold in Maplin for £25.00
Light Chaser CT4003M £16.00 + p+p £4.39 this item is new.
Book secondhand A History of Kidderminster by Nigel Gilbert £8.00 + p+p £2.80
 Book secondhand  Windows Server 2008 Networking & Network Access Protection £12.00 + p+p £2.80
Training DVD/ROM Total Training Dreamweaver 8 £15.00 + p+p £4.07 - secondhand dvd/rom
Secondhand book Digital Home Technology Integrator All in One Exam Guide 2nd edition £14.00 + p+p £2.80
Secondhand blu ray Kylie Minogue - Kylie X 2008 region free £4.00 + p+p £1.26
Secondhand blu ray Shakira - Oral Fixation Tour blu ray + cd region free £3.00 + p+p £1.26
Secondhand book British Airways, Its Aircraft, History & Liveries £8.00 + p+p £2.80
Secondhand DVDs Swedish Series with subtitles Wallander films 8-13 £18.00 + £1.26
Secondhand DVDs Exile BBC series £5.10 + £1.26
Incidently I am only posting in the UK. As I sell more stuff I'll list it on this blog.

About A Boy - Badly Drawn Boy

I am reviewing the soundtrack About A Boy by Badly Drawn Boy which is very good. You can see the review for their first album which is also on this site just search for Badly Drawn Boy. Their music is best described as ambient & About A Boy based on the best selling novel was one of the biggest british movies of its year. It starred Hugh Grant, Toni Colette & Rachel Weiz & an upcoming star Nicholas Hoult. He would eventually find fame in the tv series Skins. Much of the film is about the relationship between Grant & Hoult. It's a comedy. It's the kind of album that's ideal to listen to while you're working. It reminds me a little bit of the french group Air of which I am also a big fan.

British Airways

The book I read to research this post was British Airways by Keith Gaskell which is an excellent book which I bought from a carboot sale. This book was written around 2000 so hasn't got the latest information ie it doesn't mention anything about the legal situation and battle between Virgin Atlantic & BA & Lord Kings subsequent departure. It is however a good history record upto that point. British Airways was a nationalised company that was made up from the merger of British European Airways & British Overseas Air Corporation which were both already nationalised. British Caledonian Airways was formed to give BA some competition which was considered essential. The british airlines had been among the first to have jet airliners in the form of the DeHavilland Comet & later BA would lead the way by having Concorde & I have done a post on Concorde on this site. A lot of the BA fleet would consist of various forms of Boeings who led the world in passenger aircraft construction. At the time of the merger much of the fleet was british aircraft which had been purchased patriotically but was now unecomical, also much of it was aged. In particularly 747s were used on the atlantic routes where more passengers could be ferried more economically than before. Also on routes to America that weren't so popular Tristars were used. At one point some of less popular flights from London to Los Angeles required a smaller plane than a 747 but the Tristar didn't have the range so they did a deal with Air New Zealand to cover these flights with DC10s. A lot of British Airways has consisted of using partners & sometimes they have had to form subsidiaries for flights such as those from Penzance to the Scilly Isles. At one point they used Chinook helicopters on that route but they were expensive and gas gusslers so were retired a few years later.

Unorthodox Jukebox - Bruno Mars

I am reviewing the album Unorthodox Jukebox by Bruno Mars which is very good. The best track is Locked Out Of Heaven. It's a kind of mix of pop & dance music. I know in Britain Bruno is very popular & he has had several No 1 singles & this album is currently No 1. I think maybe he thinks his music is a little unusual hence the name of the album & the cover of a gorilla playing with a jukebox although there is a track called Gorilla. He has cowritten all the tracks on the album. It's the kind of album you would play at a party & all the tracks are pretty good.

Industrial Network Security

The book I read to research this post was Industrial Network Security by Eric D Knapp which is an excellent book. If you have a job connected with computer security this is definitely the sort of book you should be reading. This book explains the various options connected with hardening your network and focuses mainly on windows. If you have any vulnerabilities on your network you should either generally download a patch if available, or remove the service or isolate the computer. You should make a list of what you are protecting and include what the result of damage might be. Nuclear Power Stations in America and this books takes an american viewpoint, have 5 layers of protection typically. This means you have to enter 5 strong passwords, all different. Each layer offers a slightly different type of protection and combined they conform to the rules governing Nuclear Power Stations. They will also have a whitelist listing who can use which server and any software on there. A Nuclear Power Station is an extreme example but you must consider what needs the most protection & you must also make sure it's affordable. Another thing is you shouldn't have people going in sensitive areas with smartphones or flashdrives. It's amazing how lax many companies in Britain are on that line. You should either block or remove any unused USB ports. A lot of espionage is done by disgruntled employees and you should limit what they have access to, to what is essential for them to do their job.

The Beatles - The Beatles

I am reviewing the album The Beatles - The Second Album by The Beatles which is excellent. It contains the No 1 single She Loves You & many classic tracks like Mr Postman & Roll Over Beethoven. Mr Postman was covered by The Carpenters & was a huge hit for them. I think the Beatles reached their peak around 1967 and I think were trying to establish themselves with this album. It's not as good as some of their later stuff but probably more commercial. Apparently John Lennon claimed he smoked cannabis in the toilets at Buckingham Palace when he when he went there to receive an award from the Queen. I saw a documentary in which they interviewed Paul MacCartney & he said it's untrue and they were terrified of doing anything wrong whilst there. Also The Beatles have had more No 1 albums in Britain than any other pop act.

Bright Idea - Orson

I am reviewing the album Bright Idea by Orson which is very good. The title track and No Tomorrow are fantastic and the latter was a No 1 single in Britain. All the tracks are quite good. There music has a complicated arrangement and a polished feel. They remind me of groups like Semisonic. I think this is the kind of music you would play whilst getting ready to go clubbing. I don't think they had many hits at least in Britain but I think they're quite underrated.

Google Adwords

The book I read to research this post was Winning Results With Google Adwords by Andrew Goodman which is an excellent book which I bought from a secondhand bookshop. The name of the company Google started as a bit of a joke and comes from the word Googol which is a number that consists of a one followed by 100 noughts. In keeping with this the Google headquarters is called the Googleplex & a Googolplex is a number that consists of a one followed by a googol noughts & is widely regarded as the biggest number in existence. One thing Google exemplify is they work hard and play hard. Sergey Brin often plays street hockey and he is one of the owners of Google. Employees at Google frequently play sport together. Adwords has been quite a success story. Overture had a head start on Google but by late 2004 Google were way ahead in terms of businesses signed. The idea that you have a search engine that does your search but has a reserved space where companies can advertise and either pay per click or impression upto an agreed amount is a simple one but Google thought of it first. One problem in any search engine is what do you do with businesses that don't sign up. Google still displays them but pride of place goes to paying customers. Companies have to bid for the slots on Google Adwords and in addition Google has a network of sites they can advertise on like Blogger. Before using Google Adwords you should know how much you are paying per customer ie if you run an advert for $420 and you get 10 customers you are getting 1 customer per $42 dollars spent. Don't forget not everyone who clicks on your advert will necessarily buy it for a variety of reasons ie they might be a competitors. You can however analyse your data and can report any inconsistencies to Google. Google has purchased Ouverture which made a high end web analytics platform so it looks like they'll incorporate that into Google Web Analytics. A final mention is Google often launch betas of products you can try at http://labs.google.com This is called Google Labs and is worth checking out.

Blue Lines - Massive Attack

I am reviewing the album Blue Lines by Massive Attack which is an excellent album. I remember in a magazine called mixmag they did a chart of the best dance albums, it was a long time ago but this album was No 1 just beating one of Public Enemy's albums. If you're wondering why it's called Blue Lines it's because the album cover featured a dangerous chemical warning sign which in the one corner says blue lines. When this album came out they called themselves Massive because they thought Massive Attack was inapropriate due to the Falklands that was going on at that time. They are from Bristol & the original line up featured Tricky & Shara Nelson who would go on to have successful solo careers. Tricky was nominated for the Mercury for his first solo album & was one of the favourites to win it. The album is very much club music and was ahead of its time & the best track and probably the best they ever did was Unfinished Sympathy which was also a Top 10 single.

OK Computer - Radiohead

I am reviewing the album OK Computer by Radiohead which is excellent. This album is without doubt their masterpiece. It's mainly about the shallowness of modern life. The best track which is the best track they ever did was Karma Police and is about how bad things you do have a habit of haunting you & causing problems in the future. Another excellent track is Fitter Happier which is about how people start things like health regimes thinking they will make them more happy & that isn't always the result. Actually talking about how shallow the digital age is a friend said to me that the next trend in social networking will be people getting fed up with it and taking up hobbies instead. I must admit I find things like facebook and twitter a bit tedious. I think their biggest hit was Street Spirit which made No 5 in Britain. They have also been nominated numerous times for Best Group at the Brits but never won. There music is both rock and alternative music and is quite experimental.

Permission to Land - The Darkness

I am reviewing the album Permission to Land by The Darkness which is an excellent album. I think they are from somewhere in the Anglia area & they're a rock group. One rare achievement they did was winning a load of awards at the Brits. The only other rock group I can think of who won the Brit for Best Group was Dire Straits who won it twice. Normally the awards tend to go to either dance music or alternative music acts. The best track on the album is I Believe in a Thing Called Love which is a bit of an anthem. Also they did a wonderful xmas song the title of which I can't remember and sadly that's not on this album but it's the best song they ever did.

Achtung Baby - U2

I am reviewing the album Achtung Baby by U2 which is an excellent album. In case you are wondering they are named after the U2 spyplane. The album came out at the time the Berlin Wall was coming down hence the use of the german word achtung which means be careful. This album features their first british No 1 The Fly & most peoples favourite U2 track One which was only a top 10 hit in britain. For much of the 80's & 90's they were the biggest group in the world & were huge in America. This album made No 1 briefly in Britain but was kept off the No 1 much of the time by Queen's Greatest Hits pt 2 in the wake of Freddie Mercury's premature death from AIDS. This is one of U2's finest albums nonetheless. The style of music is defintely rock. Also an interesting fact is Bono's biggest influence is Radiohead even though U2 were around long before them. Bono also has a fantastic voice.

Dance Again - Jennifer Lopez

I am reviewing Dance Again the greatest hits album by Jennifer Lopez which is very good. The best track is My love don't cost a thing which was No 1 in Britain. Most of the songs are quite good. I remember Jenny won the FHM award for most beautiful woman probably about 15 years ago and she still looks nice. I also saw an interview where she said she would have to do something creative if she wasn't a singer and actress and would maybe be a fashion designer if she did another career. There was some controversy over whether she hung around with street gangs which the song Jenny From the Block implied. Apparently she's from a middle class background but the song has got a nice tune. The music on the album is mostly a mixture of dance and pop with a little bit of rap. She has also got a really nice voice.

Right Place Right Time - Olly Murs

I am reviewing the album Right Place Right Time by Olly Murs which is an excellent album. A lot of you might be unfamiliar with Olly because he won a talent show in Britain so obviously he's big in the UK but I don't know about in other countries. Last week this album displaced Rihanna from the No 1 spot on the album chart. I think it deserved to get to No 1, all the tracks are good and the best one is Army of Two. He has cowritten most of the songs on this album & I must admit it's better than his last album. The music is a mixture of dance music and pop music. Flo Rida features on the one track and there all quite catchy.

Unapologetic - Rihanna

I am reviewing the album Unapologetic by Rihanna which is excellent. This is her 7th album in 7 years and was No 1 a couple of weeks ago although only for 1 week. The best tracks are the No 1 single Diamonds & a track called What Now which I'm sure is a potential No 1. All the tracks are pretty good. I am sure the title is connected to the controversy about her staying in touch with Chris Brown despite there being physical abuse in what was their relationship. I'm not going to comment on that. I think the best song she ever did was Under My Umbrella which is one of the best songs I have ever heard. Finally she's very pretty and has a fantastic voice.

Drama - Jamelia

I am reviewing the album Drama by Jamelia which is very good. The album is a mixture of R & B, soul & rap. I think Jamelia is from Birmingham which is where I live. All the tracks are pretty good and the best track is Money which I think was quite a big hit in Britain. I think her best song ever was Superstar which I think got to No 2 in the british singles chart. I think this is the kind of album to play at a party or maybe if you invited a few friends around your house.

Using Linux With AWS

The book I read to research this post was AWS Computing Basics With Linux which is a very good book which was a free download from kindle. Linux is open source and is available in many versions, most of which are free. It has a couple of drawbacks however which are it isn't as user friendly as Windows & also there aren't that many people who are highly trained in Linux. The latter can result in a huge repair bill if something goes wrong on a Linux server. Amazon simplify things by letting you use their web services. Only certain versions of Linux are compatible with AWS. If you're running a website you may need Apache which is a webserver. If you are using a database MySQL is the standard one to work with Linux. If you are designing a website the most popular open source options are Woodpress, Joomla & Drupal. Before buying any software to supplement your network on AWS it's worth checking what services AWS offer. This book is only intended as an introduction & although it tells you how to set everything up I think you need to supplement your information finding from other sources. There is quite a big store of free ebooks on AWS which are free to download from kindle.

Nokia Lumia 800

I bought a Nokia Lumia 800 with windows phone 8 today & I read the manual & thought I'd do a post on it. It has only just been released & what influenced my buying decision is they say windows phone is easier to use than other smartphone operating system. It's a touch phone & to turn it on you tap the screen and hold your finger down for a moment. To select something you tap the screen. It contains a virtual screen that you must scroll around by dragging you finger across the screen to access off screen stuff. You pinch or unpjnch your fingers across the screen to zoom in or out. It has what they call the metro which replaces the start button and is the main reason they say this the biggest upgrade to windows 8 since windows 95.

Using AWS With Windows

The book I read to research this post was AWS Computing Basics for Microsoft Windows. When you consider the cost of buying a server and the other paraphenalia you need for a network what amazon are offering in terms of having a cloud server and paying a subscription is good value. Currently services like EC2 or elastic compute cloud require Windows Server 2008 and of course the other software you intend to run. A lot of the other amazon cloud services can be used instead of some of the other software though. A lot of people use the amazon cloud to run a website. I think linux is a more viable alternative although then you need employees qualified in linux. If you are running a website you may use IIS or internet information server which is free and does the same job as apache. If you are running several servers you can run several machine instances and can configure rules for when a new machine instance is opened. A lot of this book is tutorials for when you set up windows server with AWS. A lot of people nowadays use a free open source CMS or content management system to create a website. Dotnetnuke or wordpress is a good choice. Wordpress has only fairly recently come in a windows version.

Please Please Me - The Beatles

I am reviewing the album Please Please Me by The Beatles which is an excellent album. The 2 best tracks are probably the title track & the cover version of Baby it's You which is much better than the original. I also really like I Saw Her Standing There which was covered by Tiffany. Not many people realise that Love Me Do only made No 16 in the british singles charts. The title track then made No 2 & then they had a string of number ones. This was their first album. Acker Bilk with Stranger on a Shore was the first british artist to have a No 1 in America but the Beatles paved the way for an english invasion of the US pop charts.

Singles - The Smiths

I am reviewing the greatest hits album Singles by The Smiths which is one of the best albums I have ever heard. Their music is alternative music & they were very popular in the 80's in Britain. Morissey their lead singer writes pessimistic lyrics with lashings of black humour. The best track on this album is Sheila Take A Bow which was a top 10 single in Britain although my favourite track ever by Morissey is Suedehead. A friend told me Morissey suffers with depression which probably accounts for his lyrics. He had a successful solo career and moved to Los Angeles and was apparently popular with the Latin Community. Johnny Marr who cowrote many of The Smiths later joined the supergroup Electronics which included both Pet Shop Boys and other celebrities.

Touch - Amerie

I am reviewing the album Touch by Amerie which is very good. It's dance music and the songs are quite uptempo. The best tracks are 1 Thing & Touch. 1 Thing was quite a big hit single. This album came out in 2005. It's the kind of album you could play at a party & there is a good alternate version of 1 Thing featuring Eve.

Let's Talk About Love - Celine Dion

I am reviewing the album Let's Talk About Love by Celine Dion which is an excellent album. The best tracks are the title track & a cover version of When I Need You the Leo Sayer song. All the tracks are very good. Celine also has a great voice. I think the best track she ever did was Think Twice which was No 1 for 7 weeks in Britain. An interesting fact is she won the eurovision song contest a long time ago representing Switzerland. Also she sung the title track to the Disney film Beauty & the Beast. She's french canadian & I think she's married to her manager. She has released several french language albums.

A Hard Days Night - The Beatles

I am reviewing the album A Hard Days Night by The Beatles which is an excellent album. I think The Beatles are the best pop act of all time. This album came out at a time when they were establishing themselves as a pop act & isn't as good as some of their later. Nonetheless every track on this album has finely crafted lyrics. I saw an interview with Paul Macartney in which he said it was untrue that there was rivalry between The Beatles & The Rolling Stones & they made sure they didn't release their singles at the same time so that each of them had a chance of getting to No1. The best track on this album is the title track. I also really like Tell Me Why & Any Time At All. It also contains the huge hit Can't Buy Me Love which was one of the most successful singles ever in Britain.

Take Me Home - One Direction

I am reviewing the album Take Me Home by One Direction which is a very good album. I think One Direction are a british boy band & they are very popular in the UK. The cover has them climbing over a red telephone box which I think must be in a studio. If they did that for real they'd probably get arrested. All the tracks on the album are pretty good & most are quite uptempo. There's also a couple of gentle ballads.

Demon Days - Gorillaz

I am reviewing the album Demon Days by Gorillaz which is an excellent album. Gorillaz is comprised of Damon Albarn & a couple of others from Blur & a couple of other members & they often have a guest vocalist. On Dare the guest vocalist is Sean Ryder of the Happy Mondays. I saw an interview with Damon in which he said the vocalist he would most like to work with would be Liam Gallagher of Oasis. In the 90's there was a lot of rivalry between Oasis & Blur. They even both released a single in the same week. I think Dare which was a No1 single in Britain is the best track on the album. Gorillaz is a virtual band in the sense they are represented by manga animations in their pop videos. I did hear them described as the biggest virtual band in the world some years ago. Feel Good Inc was also a top 10 hit single.

Republic - New Order

I am reviewing the album Republic by New Order which is an excellent album. It was a No1 on the album chart in Britain & features the Top 10 single Regret which just happens to be the best track. There best track ever has to be Blue Monday which was the best selling 12 inch single of all time in the UK. Apparently it had a fancy sleeve which cost more to produce than what the set price for 12 inch singles so the record company lost a lot of money. There biggest single ever was the No1 World in Motion which was a soccer world cup song. There music is alternative but I think americans would class it as rock. They started out as Joy Division but their lead singer died tragically so they reformed as New Order. This album came out in 1993 when New Order were at there peak and is probably their finest hour.

Moseley Shoals - Ocean Colour Scene

I am reviewing the album Moseley Shoals by Ocean Colour Scene which is an excellent album. The best track is The Day We Caught The Train which was a top 10 single in Britain but all the tracks are good. This was their first album and it showed a lot of promise and although their later albums were good they failed to surpass this album. I have a friend who used to say to me that a groups first album is their most important one and normally their best. OCS came from Moseley in Birmingham & I think the album name came from the swarms of people on shopping days in Birmingham & also at their concerts. I think this album would be alternative music in Britain although there is a definite 60's influence & rock in America. With the success of this album they were briefly one of the biggest groups in Britain.

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing

The book I read to research this post was AWS Elastic Load Balancing Developer Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded from kindle for free. Elastic Load Balancing or ELB works with EC2 & S3 to allow you to configure how many instances need to be open in response to various situations. It's also compatible with SQS. For complicated procedures you can any of a variety of software development kits or SDK's which include java and ruby among others. The default destination server farm is North Virginia but you can specify any & it's a good idea to use two in case one goes offline. You use the command line in the console for most of your work & the book contains useful sample code. Finally a lot of people like there cloud site to have a proper domain name & this can be done using Route 52 or alternatively you can visit http://icann.org for a list of official vendors.

1977 - Ash

I am reviewing the album 1977 by Ash which is an excellent album. Apparently this was the first No1 album by a group from Northern Ireland & I think it was helped by the fact that if you bought this album on tape or record they charged 1977 prices which was just £3.99. The cd was full price and 1977 was the year of Ashes birth and perhaps more significantly was the year Star Wars was released which was Ashes favourite film. Ash was sitting his A levels at the time this album was released. Tim Wheeler wrote most of the songs. The best track is Goldfinger although every track is pretty good. I think in Britain this album would be classed as alternative music & in America it would be rock or maybe punk although they don't die there hair.

Loose - Nelly Furtardo

I am reviewing the album Loose by Nelly Furtardo which is my favourite album of all time. The best track is Maneater which was a No1 single in Britain but every track is great. It's dance music & produced by Timbaland I think before he made the big time. Of course he became a pop star in his own right and had several No1 singles in Britain. I noticed Chris Martin who I assume is the lead vocalist in Coldplay has co written several songs on this album. Since doing this album Nelly has done an excellent spanish language album called Mi Plan & recently released another album which I haven't heard.

21 - Adele

I am reviewing the album 21 by Adele which is one of the best albums I have ever heard. The best tracks are Set Fire to the Rain & Someone Like You but every track is great. She had several No1 singles in Britain from this album. Also the album was No1 on the album for 10 weeks making it the most successful album by a female soloist ever. It also won practically every award possible. The newspapers in america called the grammy awards the adele awards such was her success that year. The music is a mix of dance or pop and ballads. Set Fire to the Rain is my favourite song ever.

Change - Sugababes

I am reviewing the album Change by the Sugababes which is an excellent album. I think the music is part dance music & pop. Cathy Dennis who used to be a pop star in her own right has written several of the tracks. The best track is About You Now which did well on the singles chart in Britain. Various members have come and gone with the Sugababes over the years & I don't think it contains any of the original members. They have had quite a few big hits over the years. I bought this album from a car boot sale & it was only £1 & was brand new & still sealed up in its packaging.

Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline - Gomez

I am reviewing Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline by Gomez which is a very good album. I am sure the butler in the Adams Family was called Gomez & they must be named after him. On the back of the album is a photo of a sign with the album title & a phone number which must have inspired the album title. I think a lot of this album is about how western society has decayed. The music is alternative music which would probably be called rock or maybe grunge in America. They're not the most tunefull band but there songs are catchy in a funny sort of way. The best track on the album is Buena Vista & there is a good cover of The Beatles, Getting Better. There first album won the Mercury Award & I think this album is almost as good. That album incidently is Bring It On & is worth a listen.

3 - The Script

The album I'm reviewing is #3 by the Script which is excellent. The best track is Good Ol Days but all the tracks are good. It has a polished sound and has quite complex musical arrangements. It reminds me of an australian group called Semisonic who had quite a few hits in Britain. The best album by The Script was Science & Faith but this album is almost as good. I think technically this music is alternative music but it is so gentle it could almost be pop. I think in America it would be classed as pop. I'm surprised this album isn't a much bigger hit on the album at least in Britain. Science & Faith got to No1 on the British Album Chart.

Myths of the Near Future - The Klaxons

I am reviewing the excellent album Myths of the Near Future by The Klaxons. It's alternative music but most of the music is quite gentle. I think the theme that runs through the album is these scaremongers who make out the world is ending & how we should take it with a pinch of salt. I think this is quite relevant as some people claim the world will end this december. The best tracks are Two Receivers & Golden Skans. All the tracks are pretty good though. Also this album won the Mercury Prize for best british album.

Christina Aguilera - Christina Aguilera

I am reviewing the album Christina Aguilera by of course Christina which is a very good album and all the tracks are pretty good. The best tracks are Genie in a bottle & What a girl needs. Apparently one of the cowriters of Genie was a backing vocalist for the Pet Shop Boys and she was always writing songs. If you wonder how people get good at songwriting the answer is practise. This album is pop & I think Christina's best song is Beautiful which was a No1 single in the UK & is on her second album. Genie was a UK No1 too. 

A Little Deeper - Ms Dynamite

I am reviewing the fantastic A Little Deeper the debut album by Ms Dynamite. It quite deservedly won the Mercury Music Prize. It's a mixture of rap and hip hop. It contains the beautiful ballad Brother. The best track however is It Takes Time which I think was a popular single. It has good lyrics. There is a saying that if Sgt Pepper was released nowadays it would be a dance album & I think such is the quality of this album it could be that album. Ms Dynamite is well known for doing a duet with George Michael at the Brit Awards where they took one of Georges songs and changed the lyrics to highlight poverty. All the tracks on this album are pretty good.

The Truth About Love - Pink

I am reviewing the album The Truth About Love by Pink which is an excellent album. There is a couple of ballads on here, the best is Beam Me Up. Most of the album is uptempo and she does write snazzy lyrics. This would be the kind of album to play at a party or at the very least invite some friends around & have some drinks whilst listening to. The best track is How Come You're Not Here although all the tracks are good. Apparently there is a warning on it saying it isn't suitable for young children. I think her best song ever was So What which was also a No1 single in Britain. Also it has a terrific pop video. As an album I'd say this maybe her best.

Ceremonials - Florence and the Machine

I am reviewing the album Ceremonials by Florence and the Machine which is an excellent album. I think they have probably been reading books on wicca or maybe tribal religions for the inspiration to this album. It's got that kind of feel although I don't think there's anything like spells chanted like you might find on a heavy metal album. What I mean is it's quite atmospheric & I think even better than there last album. The best tracks on it are Seven Devils & Spectrum although all the tracks are good. I think in Britain this music would be classed as alternative & in America it probably borders on rock. One group it reminds me of is the Cure. Definitely worth checking out.

AWS Account Billing

The book I read to research this post was About AWS Account Billing which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. This book merely tells you about the different types of billing & account and doesn't contain the specific charges. I typed AWS free tier into google and that took me to a web site that contained information on free tier usage. There are 2 types of billing which are consolidated where everything is consolidated into one bill and programmatical where you pay for each service individually. Consolidated makes you ineligible for the free tier service. The free tier service is only available on certain products & only lasts for 12 months. You are allowed upto 15 Gb of usage on free tier but may be charged if you open more than one instance in elastic compute cloud. Also you are generally charged per hour so it might only be a small charge per hour but it adds up over a month. I think if you are tempted to go with Amazon Web Service you need to read about it very carefully & make sure you know roughly what they are going to charge you to avoid any nasty surprises. When you sign up you must give credit card information so they can bill you. Finally I noticed there is a database which is free called Mongo DB and there is other downloadable software some of which is free on the AWS Products & Services website.

This is My Life - Shirley Bassey

I am reviewing the album This is My Life by Shirley Bassey which is an excellent album. This album contains cover versions & some of Shirley's singles and they have reworked the music on them. When I bought this album my expectations weren't that great but I was pleasantly surprised. The best track is her version of Get This Party Going which was originally by Republica. Shirley did that track for an advert & it was a hit single for her. I also really liked her version of version of Slave to the Rhythmn originally done by Grace Jones. Of course Shirley is most famous for her bond themes & there is several of them on here. There is also what I think is a new track which is the title track & that is very good. Finally she has got a fantastic voice.

The Brain

The book I read to research this post was The Brain A Very Short Introduction by Michael O'Shea which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Even in primitive times people knew that the brain was the human control centre. We can see this by the number of attempted operations like drilling the skull to let demons out when in fact someone was maybe mentally ill. Interestingly people often survived this kind of operation. Leonardo da Vinci studied the human brain and often dissected them. He knew the eye had a kind of onion type structure, He also made wax mouldings of different parts of the brain. The brain is the most complex structure known to man & typically has 100 trillion connections between the brain cells. In 1963 someone won a nobel prize for discovering that the brain uses potassium & sodium ions to conduct electricity. The axons themselves are very poor conductors.

Talk Dat Talk - Rihanna

I am reviewing the album Talk Dat Talk by Rihanna which is excellent. My favourite tracks are Cockiness (love it) & Watch And Learn & there is also a great ballad called Farewell. My favourite Rihanna track of all time is Under My Umbrella which was No1 for 10 weeks in the UK. I also love Only Girl In The World. I think Rihanna has done a lot of good stuff & this album definitely ranks as one of her best. It has quite a poppish kind of sound which borders on dance. I notice a couple of the tracks are written by Calvin Harris who is a famous popstar in his own right. All the tracks on this album are pretty good.

Amazon Cloudformation

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Cloudformation User Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. Cloudformation is a service that integrates the other services that Amazon into one almost seamless service. You might have a website hosted by Amazon & integrate it with things like storage of your work and one of the database options. Alot of people use the wordpress open source software to build their site and this works fine & there are instructions in the book on how to do this. It also integrates with simple notification service & simple queque service to send you updates on various issues. Most of your work is done in elastic compute cloud although you can also use simple storage service for archiving.

Dance Classics Volume 8

I am reviewing Dance Classics Volume 8 which is an excellent album. I don't know if this album is available outside Britain. It contains lots of disco classics from the era of Saturday Night Fever which would be late 70's & early 80's. The best tracks are probably Just an Illusion by Imagination & Reach Out I'll be There by Gloria Gaynor. Gloria of course was called the Queen of Disco. There is lots of other great stuff like Instant Replay by Dan Hartman & Love Pains by Yvonne Ellimann. I must say this album really took me back to a time when I was a teenager.

Under My Skin - Avril Lavigne

I am reviewing the rock album Under My Skin by Avril Lavigne which came out in 2004 & is something of a classic. Every track is pretty good. The best track is My Happy Ending which was a Top 10 hit on the British Singles Chart. Avril became successful at an early age & this was a follow up to an album that was hugely successful. She looks every bit a rock chick. This album was just £2 and it was brand new.

Glassheart - Leona Lewis

I am reviewing Glassheart by Leona Lewis which is a very good album & is currently still in the Top 30 of the UK album chart. Leona won the X factor a british talent show a few years ago. Since then she's even enjoyed some success in the USA. The best track on the album is the big hit Trouble. The title track & Shake you up are also pretty good. Actually all the tracks are quite good. I think her best track to date is the cover version of Oasis's Stop dragging my heart around which was on her last album prior to this one. She also has a great voice and is very pretty.

Halcyon - Ellie Goulding

The album I am reviewing is Halcyon by Ellie Goulding which is a very good album. The music is mainstream pop but the last track called I need your love which she did with Calvin Harris is more of a dance number. That's also the best track on the album. All the tracks are pretty good. There's a nice soft ballad called I know you care. There's some pretty pictures of her in the booklet. She also has a great voice. This album has been out a while but is still in the lower part of the album chart in Britain.

Station to Station - David Bowie

I am going to start doing album reviews for both new & classic albums in addition to the other blogs. The first one I'm doing is Station to Station by David Bowie. This album came out in 1976 & was a kind of soundtrack for the film The Man Who Fell to Earth which also starred Bowie & was directed by Nicholas Roeg who also made Performance starring Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. It has been said that Bowie who played an alien who visited Earth was taking so many drugs he really did think he was an alien & wasn't acting. He does give a good performance in the film. The title track which is also the opening track is one of the best tracks Bowie ever did. In fact every track on this album is good. Golden Years which made No2 on the british singles was one of his biggest hits upto that time. Other singles which were Wild is the Wind & TVC15 were only minor but are pretty good.  On the whole this is an excellent album.

Amazon Simple Notification Service

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Simple Notification Service User Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. Amazon SNS is a service where you can specify a topic which I think should be called parameters and if the messages matches that it is sent to you. You have to sign up for a SNS account separately to an AWS account. It's compatible with Cloudwatch & Simple Queque Service. If you want notifications in conjunction with an Amazon service you have to specify that in the SNS console. In addition you must specify where you want the endpoints of various notifications to be. An intermediate point will often be your mail server.

Amazon ElastiCache

The book I read to research this post was Amazon ElastiCache User Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. ElastiCache is online memory cache and is useful if you have a network server which does memory intensive jobs. It's obviously a lot faster than hard drive memory storage and works with Simple Notification Service to keep you informed of what is going on. They handle things like the patching as far as the cloud service is concerned. If for example you need 20 Gb of cache you might elect to have 3 lots of 7.1 GB which more or less equates to the same thing. It also works with several computer languages among them ruby, java & .net. In this way you can automate processes you want. Also you can specify when you want Amazon to do their maintenance, this will generally be 1 hour per week and will ideally be when usage is low. If you don't specify a time Amazon will choose a random time. Finally you can use a command line and dashboard to operate this service.

Announcement

I have done a post on Google+ at http://scratbagroberts.livejournal.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

Parallel Worlds

The book I read to research this post was Do Parallel Worlds Really Exist? by Shan Gao which is a good book but a bit complex and which I bought from kindle. This book contains many complex equations, but the gihist of the book is that there must be an infinite number of parallel worlds which means there is an infinite number of you and me's. This also means there is an infinite number of dimensions and types of matter. We already know of matter and antimatter. There is a story that if someone jumped in a time machine and went in time to when his grandfather was a boy and shot him dead. You might wonder how that could happen and for many years almost everyone thought time travel must be impossible for that very reason. Nowadays they think time travel will eventually be acheived but that you will travel into a parallel world. Also it would be impossible to travel to a time prior to the date the time machine was built. Which is why we don't see too many time travellers in the 21st century. I'll also tell you a theory that a psychic called Bernard had which was that when a star has a nova or supernova, that the pressure and heat are so great that a new universe is formed in another dimension. I think he's probably right. When you think of it time is influenced by gravity and the velocity of something. It's worth thinking about.

Announcement

I have done a post on Online Advertising at http://scratbagroberts.blog.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

Announcement

I have done a post on The London Underground & some of the problems it faces at http://melissaball86.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

The 80/20 Principle

The book I read to research this post was The 80/20 Principal by Richard Koch which is an excellent book which I bought from amazon. Even though this book has been out for a while I noticed it was no1 on the Business & Finance Book Chart on Kindle a couple of weeks ago. What this book is about is that if you are a business typically 80% of what you sell will be bought by 20% of your customers. Sometimes it will be closer to a 70/30 principal but we see it over and over again in statistics. This is called Pareto's Principle and was first discovered in Mussolini's Italy where in the wake of the war it was forgotten. Then in the 50's an american rediscovered it but no one in american industry was interested. He then found a receptive audience in Japan and he spent a long time there doing lectures. When everyone was starting to ask why was Japanese industry doing so well he finally found a receptive audience in the west.
Basically what this means for business is you should make sure you please the 20% who buy most of your product. You should try and identify this 20% and maybe send them special offers to try and entice them to buy more. A lot of companies use a loyalty scheme where maybe they credit your account with points when you buy something and let you redeem that at a later stage. You should also tailor new products and services to and make sure they satisfy this 20%. Also a good idea is to check they are happy with your company. Something a lot of companies is why aren't the majority of customers buying more and then work on this. This is certainly an interesting book.

Amazon Storage Gateway

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Storage Gateway User Guide which is an excellent book which I downloaded for free from kindle. Storage Gateway has 2 main uses, one is if your server is down you can use it as a virtual server and run your applications from it, the other is as an archive for putting your business data on. It works in conjunction with Simple Storage Service S3 & Elastic Compute Cloud EC2. You need either Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Red Hat Linux 5 on your network computers. In addition you need VMware ESXi Hypervisor on your server and vSphere client on each workstation. You need a fast online connection & normally your servers will need iSCSI storage. A lot of companies use storage to tape like travan cartridge in addition to storage on the cloud. Normally you will use one of the software development kit in a language like java to make Storage Gateway do what you want. This book has loads of explanations of things like the error messages you may encounter. Far too many to write about here. If you have a 100GB of data but only 10GB changes that is all that is uploaded which makes things quite efficient. I have done posts on Amazon Simple Storage Service & Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud at http://scratbag.me 

Announcement

I have done a post on Amazon Virtual Private Cloud at http://scratbagroberts.net
You're all welcome to have a look.

Rail 300

The book I read to research this post was Rail 300 by Murray Hughes which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book was written in 1988 so is a bit dated but quite interesting. It is about the fastest train in the world race and how trains have reached 300 kph. The City of Truro was the first train to reach 100 mph in 1904 and at that time they thought trains wouldn't get any faster. The fastest steam train was of course the Mallard which was restored in 1986. For a long time Britain led the world in high speed trains, there was of course Deltics introduced in 1962. That changed when Japan introduced the Bullet Train in 1964. The cost was so huge they needed help from the IMF to cover the cost. It instantly set a new standard for train travel. They built 5 railway lines initially including the Tokyo - Osaka & Tokyo - Sapporo. This was the first railway to introduce double decker carriages. The TGV in France is even faster  and much of Germany, Switzerland and other places are connected by this service. In Italy Fiat has developed Pendolino trains which are used on the InterCity routes in Britain among other things. In Britain the InterCity 125 is the fastest diesel train in the world. In Spain their high speed train tilts allowing it to go faster around corners. In Australia their high speed train looks just like the APT & is called the XTR. In America the amtrak isn't as fast as some of its rivals.

iMacs

The book I read to research this post was iMacs: Portable Genius 3rd edition by Guy Hart-Davis which is a very good book which I borrowed from the library. This book mostly looks at OSX Lion the operating system for iMacs. Apparently the latest ones sport a 27 inch monitor. Apple has its own proprietary system for external hard drives called thunderbolt which typically runs at 1.5 GB/Sec. It's also compatible with firewire and USB 2.0 although they are slower. The operating system features a display of a desk onto which are icons of various apps or mini programs. Extra apps can be downloaded from the internet especially itunes. You can have a dual booting imac with Microsoft Windows as well. No one has found a way of making OSX work with a PC. Intel make the processors for imacs and most PCs. If you run an imac with windows it's much more resistant to viruses. Most viruses are specifically designed to infect a PC running windows because that's the most common type of computer. You can make video calls with facetime to things like iphones and ipads and mail is used for email. Many people set up accounts with mobileme and icloud which are free. If you use itunes one account is limited to 5 computers but a way around it if you have a bigger network is to make one of them computers a server which you can access from any computer on your network. Like windows you can have individual accounts for members of your family and if you download things like ebooks and music you can import them into each account so everyone has access.

Announcement

I have done a post on Amazon Elastic MapReduce at http://scratbagroberts.xanga.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

Amazon Cloudwatch

The book I read to research this post was Cloudwatch A Getting Started Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. To use Cloudwatch you need an Amazon Web Services account which you can get at http://aws.amazon.com and you have to fill in your details and then you get an automated phone call which gives you a pin number which you must enter on your phone. You have to install the java plugin, at least v1.5 which you can get at http://java.com
You have to install a program which lets you use Cloudwatch on your workstation and the procedure varies according on whether you run windows or linux. If you need to do that I recommend that you read this guide as it's quite complicated. Cloudwatch basically works with Elastic Compute Cloud which will be your virtual server, and Simple Notification Service, if you choose to be notified by email. It also works with Auto Scaling in that you can define what you want it to do under circumstances. For example say if the processor reaches 90% output, you might tell it to open another instance of EC2 & notify you via SNS. Don't forget if you're using EC2 you need to supply an operating system. I saw a windows server 2008 dvdrom for £23.99 on http://amazon.co.uk which I thought is quite cheap.

Announcement

I have done a post on The Elements - A Short Introduction by Phillip Ball at http://scratbagroberts.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

Rapid Transit Railways

The book I read to research this post was The Rapid Transit Railways of the World by Henry F Howson which is an excellent book which I bought from a secondhand bookshop. This book was written in 1971 so maybe rather out of date but I like the fact that it examines this type of railway on a city by city basis. This type of railway is typically underground and electric although in many cities they have some routes that are either overground or cuttings made into the rock. London had the first underground railway which happened to be steam in 1863. The first electric underground railway was also built in London in 1890. Having an electric system didn't require extensive ventilation and also enabled them to build it deeper under the ground. The London system was also the first to be predominantly underground. It's interesting to note most of the London Underground was built by 1906. They would need an eleven lane highway to bring in the amount of people per hour into London on 1 route assuming there's an average of 2 per car that the Underground Train brings in on 1 route per hour. Toronto had the first Underground Railway in America. I think New York has the most extensive Underground Network in the world although much of it isn't underground. China of course is rapidly catching up & Tokyo has a very extensive network. An interesting fact is when Berlin was divided both parts had an underground system but in East Berlin many of the stations were disused and the trains wouldn't stop at them. That's probably been remedied since it was unified.

Announcement

I have done a brand new post on Windows 8 at http://scratbag.me
You're all welcome to have a look.

Announcement

I've only just noticed the last blog I did should have been Auto Scaling not MapReduce the rest of it's accurate though. I apologize about that.

Amazon MapReduce

The book I read to research this post was Amazon MapReduce Developer Guide which is an excellent guide and which was a free download from kindle. The idea behind this service from Amazon is it works primarily with Elastic Compute Cloud and say if you run a website and it gets a lot of traffic at the weekend you can configure how many instances and other things like total memory are used. Say if you are a company you might have instances open that you aren't using ie a database at weekends and you can set rules for how this is managed. Often if it has to shut down instances it will either shut down the ones that have been open the longest or ones that haven't been configured within MapReduce. A frequent setting is to set that when the processor reaches 90% output a new instances is opened. Another frequent setting is it will try and keep your total down by trying not to have any extra instances open for more than an hour. You can use it with Cloudwatch and/or SNS or Simple Notification Service that let you know what is happening. Also if you are repairing it and don't want instances going off continously you can suspend it. You have to install java before you can use it which has to be at least version 5 which you can get from http://sun.com
Alternatively you can use the Amazon Java Development Kit. You will often use a command line and there is an API command line tool you can install on your computer. Also don't forget if you are using Elastic Compute Cloud you need to provide a Windows Server 2008 operating system.

Announcement

I have done a post on Business Intelligence at http://scratbagroberts.livejournal.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

Bad Pharma

The book I read to research this post was Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Ben is a doctor in England so a lot of this book is from an english perspective. This book is about that when a new drug is approved it often has no advantages over existing drugs and many have horrendous side effects the logic of the powers that be being that they should give doctors plenty of choice. Many of these so called drug trials are suppressed if they give bad results for a drug. Many drug trial results are never published and if they give bad results and are published the data is often skewed. An example of this is maybe a drug is ineffective but found a good result for chinese people between 55-75 years old even though it's ridiculous. It may be there was only a small number in the group that match that criteria but all the same it's published. Interestingly the drug companies spend more money advertising drugs than they do on research. Many doctors were trained 20 years ago when the medical treatment system was completely different and they turn to journals often owned by the drug companies for the latest information. Also if they receive training it's often provided by the drug companies by people who promote their products. Most people in the medication industry mean well but it does need policing more stringently. Drug companies often test drugs on homeless people who are desperate for the payment or people in third world countries who often aren't informed they are guinea pigs. Some doctors take payments off the drug companies and in Britain they don't need to declare it to anyone. As you can probably see there is a lack of impartial drug data. This book is a pretty interesting read.

Announcement

I have done a post on Flying High which is a biography of David Neeleman the founder of JetBlue at http://scratbagroberts.blog.com
You're all welcome to have a look.

Announcement

I have done a post on Online Marketing at http://scratbagroberts.net
You're all welcome to have a look.

The Blog Business

The book I read to research this post was The Blog Business Book by Tom Corson-Knowles which is one of the best books I have read about blogging and which I downloaded for free from kindle. I think anyone with a blog should download this book. Tom uses wordpress on his own server for his blogging platform but there's so much information about promoting your blog. First of all you should get the alexa plugin for your browser which gives you a ranking for any site you visit. If you want to monetize your blog try http://cj.com or http://clickbank.com or http://glam.com
He recommends that you do guest blogging on other sites to promote your blog and also advertise on craigslist for some guest bloggers but only pay them $10 per 500-1,000 words. You should get a product page on facebook, and pages on twitter & pinterest. Assuming you are running wordpress you should get the facebook comments plugin which allows people on their to comment on your blog. Get the shareaholic plugin which works with social bookmarking sites. You should sign up to tweetadder which simplifies doing tweets  on twitter. You should post at least 3 updates per day on facebook and 20 on twitter. Get the pinterest plugin. Get the all in one seo pack for wordpress which helps search engines find your site. You need the facebook plugin. You need the fast secure contact form which enables people to contact you. You need the akismet plugin. You need google xml sitemaps which helps google index your site. You need jetpack lite which gives you site statistics. You need post layout which is a HTML editor for wordpress. You need bookmark share which works with social bookmarking sites. You need tweet meme retweet which retweets your posts. You need aweber which lets people sign up to an email list and finally if you intend doing video you need easy webinar plugin. Finally you also need to update your blog on a regular basis.

Technology

I read the latest edition of New Scientist magazine because I'm going to do a post on some of the articles in it. Incidently it's a great magazine. First of all there's much mineral mining going on in the arctic and potentially there could be a lot more. Both the arctic and antarctic are mineral rich. At kiruna in arctic sweden is the worlds largest underground iron ore mine. Much of this town has had to be relocated nearer the mine disrupting wildlife even more. Svalbard & Cambridge Bay are now tourist attractions. In fact now the arctic ice has diminished to such an extent which is partly due to a major storm breaking up some of the ice and not just global warming, but now they are doing cruises around the arctic and not just with an icebreaker leading the way like in the olden days. As the earth has warmed up there has been a noticeable migration of many fish northwards and no one has jurisdiction over these seas so they're liable to be fished to death. In the far north of canada they are mining gold, diamonds, platinum & lithium. In fact a lot of governments think the arctic is the answer to our prayers as far as natural gas & crude oil are concerned. Another issue is the british government is cutting funding to research in antarctica so obviously if a large ice sheet breaks off and melts, thus causing a rise in the sea level, we won't know until it's too late.
Apparently there's a form of salmonella that can be spread from person to person. Salmonella isn't much of a problem for people who are normally healthy but in africa which is where this type of salmonella is spreading, many people have AIDS and are dying from this. Apparently more logging is going on than official figures state and much of it is connected to organised crime. The amount of logging worldwide is increasing not decreasing. NASA are experimenting with technology with microbes that can produce things like plastics and fuel. These microbes could be carried quite easily by a spaceship maybe to mars and would save having to carry a load of fuel. Scientists are trying to synthesize a pain killer from black mamba venom which would be stronger than morphine but not be addictive or cause trouble breathing. Finally scientists in new zealand are developing a cow that can produce milk that is suitable for infants who are allergic to milk. Health and safety protocols prevent them from tasting it at this stage. Apparently the cow has no tail and no one understands why.

Adobe Muse

The book I read to research this post was Brilliant Muse by Ted LoCascio which I borrowed from the library and is an excellent book. Believe me these Brilliant books are pretty good they just show you the steps you need to perform a task and they show you lots of screenshots. As you probably know Adobe do Dreamweaver which is the best web page creation software bar none even if it was originally Macromedia who first created it. To use Dreamweaver requires quite a bit of knowledge of HTML which is somewhat complex and if somebody is primarily a designer they might care much for that. With Muse it is less dependent on HTML and so you can do your site with a few button clicks and visually. I haven't checked the Adobe.com site to check the pricing but in this book it is $14.95 a month if you have it on a yearly basis or $49.95 if you have it on a month by month basis. In addition I think you can try it out for a month free to see if you like it. It's cloud computing but you download and they keep updating it. I think it works out better value than Dreamweaver which I think works out at about £350.00 . I'm going to write a little bit about how you install it. You go to Adobe.com, click buy under the relevant article, you select whether you are buying it on a monthly or yearly basis, click Add to cart, then click checkout twice followed by sign in then fill in the fields, click review order and finally place order. That sets up a Muse subscription. Then you want to install Muse, you click download, click join the creative cloud, click start for free, which gives you a free month to see if you like it. You enter a password and ID, click sign in, accept, Muse, download, click ok to download the Adobe Application Manager, click save file, double click the file icon, double click the installer. Enter your ID & password, click sign in, accept and then click the Adobe Muse Install button. It should then install it on your system and then to start it simply click on the relevant program on the program menu of your computer.

Amazon Glacier

The book I read to research this post was Amazon Glacier Service Developer Guide which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. Glacier is an Amazon cloud service that lets you store large amounts of data that you rarely use cheaply. As a result the download and upload process is slow. This type of storage is called cold storage. If you require frequent or fast access use S3 or Simple Storage Service. You store the data in 4gb parts and there can be upto 10,000 of these per account. You have a choice of which server farm you wish to use. The default is Virginia, USA. You can use the visual studio, .net or java software data kits with it and if you are storing anything like photos will have to do some programming to make it work. A job or uploading 4gb of data will typically take 4 hours. The blocks of files are called vaults and you can delete a vault. If someone tries to access a vault that is in the process of being deleted as long as their request is processed before the vault is deleted they will be able to use it. There is a console in Glacier but a lot of your work is done in Request API. Glacier will typically be used with Simple Notification Service ie it will tell you when an upload is complete, and Simple Queque Service  which will queque the upload or download up with what other people are doing. 

Technology

I have just been looking at New Scientist magazine trying to find something to do a blog on. Apparently on british television they're doing an experiment where people are given MDMA and their brains are scanned. They know all about the long term effects of MDMA use but this experiment has never been done before. Some of the participants will be celebrities who will be interviewed about their experiences. There will be commercial rocket launches from Virginia to the International Space Station soon presumably delivering cargo and supplies. The launchpad is trying to get NASA verification & have developed a rocket called Antares & will be the first commercial one in the world. It has been proven that the least efficient shape to pack in a square box is a 3d sphere. No other shape is less efficient. The police probably in a few years will be able to construct a photo-fit from a persons DNA. This technology is still in its infancy but looks promising. In Switzerland scientists have photographed atomic bonds using an atomic force microscope that was modified. They photographed carbon molecules. A comet went through the suns corona and amazingly passed through it but 2 hours later had melted in the extreme heat. At the Technical University of Munich they have been developing a biometric application that can recognise someone by how they walk or their gait. They have achieved 80% accuracy. In 20-30 years there may be floating offshore cities far out at sea. The first ones will probably just be converted passenger liners. They think the optimal population at which they can become self sustaining is 20,000-100,000. The first ones may be built off brazil, west africa and the galapagos. 

Deleting Personal Information About You On The Internet

The book I read to research this post was Deleting Personal Information About You On The Internet by Jim McNab which is an excellent book which I think I downloaded for free from kindle. Jim has worked as a private investigator and knows a heck of a lot about tracing people online. This book is intended to help you protect your privacy on the internet and also avoid misinformation being spread about you. There is a free site called zanosearch where you can check things like someones current & previous addresses. They make their money from advertising. Several civil liberties groups are trying to have it shut down but that could take years. You can opt out of their searches by clicking privacy at the bottom of their page but you also have to prove who you are, which means scanning documents and sending them a copy. A company called intelious will do a detailed search for $39.95 which will even tell you the area of their dwelling in square metres. Their is probably a lot of information about you on social networks and it's quite likely your friends have given mentions about you. Obviously if you no longer use a social network you should delete your account. You should try googling your name and any variations of your name. Try putting your name in speech marks, use the add symbol and also put your location in speech marks and do a search. A trick among criminals who change their identity is to pick a common name so as to make the investigators job more difficult. You can also search for any email addresses you have in google. Another option is google alerts which alerts you about a specified subject each time anything appears on the web about it. The specified subject can be your name or email address.

Organisation's Don't Tweet People Do

The book I read to research this post was Organisations don't Tweet People do by Euan Semple which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. I'll tell you a story a friend of mine works for the Health Service in Britain and his job is mainly taking handicapped people shopping, if their house or flat needs cleaning he does it or if they need to see a doctor he takes them. His job title is community support worker. Anyway every morning he has to see his boss at their head office 8 miles from where he lives and then he has to see his patients. The politically correct term is clients. That visit takes up a lot of his time and of course sometimes he has to visit his head office during the day which takes up even more of his time. He has a mobile phone supplied with his job but any detailed discussion has to be done face to face. Now another problem is he doesn't like technology so he wouldn't be keen on having to learn new software although he does have to enter notes into a computer at their head office. I suggested to him that his organisation ought to subscribe to salesforce.com which is contact management software and they ought to each have their own blog on wordpress obviously password protected but which each member of staff could access. They could have wordpress on their own server and give each employee a laptop and smartphone. I reckon they'd be much more efficient and save time not to mention fuel. His reply was it's a good idea and I can see where you're coming from but if it's not broke I ain't fixing it. Obviously he's got concerns about having to learn wordpress and salesforce.com but I think it's a shame. I thought I'd share that with you. Of course if he was in a business they'd have to stay competitive.
Now we'll get back to the book this is about social media in a general way with little about the intricacies of technology. A lot of it is about how businesses are benefiting from social networking. Euan worked for the BBC and while he was there they started a forum which was a similiar kind of thing to google groups. They were one of the early forerunners of this technology and at the beginning the features were a bit limited. This forum grew to 25,000 members. In his job at the BBC it was important to cultivate lots of contacts. They encountered lots of problems in his work and because he was heavily involved in social media he always knew someone who could solve a problem or someone who knew someone who knew someone who could solve the problem. He gives the example of they were trying to use a television camera they were unfamiliar and he did a tweet to his 5,000 followers for help, within half an hour they had 3 replies that told them what settings they needed. Also especially with social networking that lets you stay in touch with friends and family, it increases your quality of life. Many jobs have an uncertain future. Many trades become obsolete every year. I know someone who was telling he did an apprenticeship in creating carpet dyes. Nowadays the carpet fiber is sent to the carpet manufacturer already dyed. So the job he trained for is obsolete and he had to train for another career. 

Announcement

I have done a post on Good to Great by Jim Collins which is a book on proactive employees and companies. It's at http://scratbagroberts.xanga.com

Laptop History

The book I read to research this post was Laptops for Dummies by Dan Gookin which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. I thought I'd do a little bit on the history of laptops. The first computer that could be considered in any way portable although calling it portable is a bit of a joke is the Osbourne 1 which would just about go under an airplane seat. It weighed 24 pounds and had a miniscule screen. It also had to run off the mains so you couldn't use it whilst travelling. It came out in 1980 and was priced at around $1,800 but did sell quite well. It showed that people were prepared to buy a portable computer. A little while later came the Compaq 1 which had a bigger screen but still weighed in at 20 pounds. It still only worked off the mains. Then came the Radio Shack 100 which only had a small screen but was the first truly portable computer. The first portable computer that was IBM/PC compatible and had a 286 processor was the Compaq SLT. Of course with many portable computers the battery weighs half as much again as the computer. Many manufacturers when giving the weight of a laptop don't include the battery. Also in the near future people will use fuel cells with their laptops rather than batteries. These are too large at present but technology is making them smaller and smaller. These will also require topping up with fuel but you know how people have to conserve power on their laptops, that may become a thing of the past.

Bebo

I visited the Wikipedia article on Bebo to research this post. If you type Bebo into google the link appears near the top of the search results. I highly recommend reading it. Bebo was started by a Californian couple in 2005 and they came up with the name first and the slogan - Blog early blog often - afterwards. Bebo at one stage had more members than myspace in the UK and was the most visited site in Ireland. Over a million irish people were members. They sold it to AOL for over $500 million but it had trouble competing with Facebook and it was one of the dot com casualties. There was work that needed doing on platform it ran on. AOL in turn sold it to a venture capital company for less than $10 million. As a result of these deals the CEO of AOL lost his job. After this the software Bebo ran on got an overhaul. At one stage it was possible to write apps for Bebo but this was controversial because it was possible to write an app that contacted all Bebo's members. Now it's no longer possible to write apps. There's a fully functional mobile site and there should be various apps for the various smartphone platforms to allow them to do things like post a blog on Bebo. 

Google vs Apple vs Microsoft

I just read the september issue of Stuff magazine and there was a feature comparing these 3 companies so I thought I'd do a shortened version of it. First of all there's phones. The Samsung Galaxy S3 runs google android and has a quad core 1.4 ghz chip and 1080p high definition display. Currently it's the hottest phone you can buy. The iPhone 5 has had a bit of a mixed reception although don't forget usually when a new version of windows comes out you get a few complaints but as people get used to it they find they like it. Certainly iPhone 5 is a radical upgrade. I still use a iPhone 4 S at least for the time being. The Nokia Lumia 900 only has Windows phone 7 so you might be better off waiting for version 8.
The Google Nexus 7 is the best value for money tablet but only has a 7 inch screen. Actually the idea of a small screen is gaining in popularity. The iPad has the most features and the most apps. There's a Microsoft Surface due to be released which has a touch keyboard and will run a streamlined version of Windows 8.
Android 4.1 Jellybean is optimized for both tablets and phones and includes the chrome browser. Apples iOS6 includes Siri and you can even ask it how far it is to the office. Siri is a voice activated assistant. Windows 8 RT includes a full version of office.
In cloud computing storage Microsofts Skydrive offers the most free space at 7gb. Google Drive will save your Google Docs & Picasa files. iCloud only works with Apple products.
Google Chrome Operating System integrates with google products like Docs. Windows 8 has done away with the start button and got a multi button feature called a metro. Apple Mac OSX Mountain Lion is only available for Macs.
In terms of streaming products look out for the Google Nexus Q which has lots of features but may be quite expensive. The Xbox 360 of course is also a games console. The Apple TV only works with iTunes but is cheap.
Sony are building the NSZ-GS7 a google box which will be compatible with things like Google TV. Again Microsoft have the XBox 360 which will stream films and music. There are rumours Apple are developing a console although there's always the iPad.
Finally Google has plans to build a space elevator which will make it easier to get into orbit. They'll probably build it in the next few years.

Starting an Online Business

The book I read to research this post was Starting and Running an Online Business for Dummies 2nd & UK edition by Kim Gilmour et al which is a very good book which I borrowed from the library. Britain has more online businesses per capita than any other country in the world. Generally the things you need like a computer and scanner you already possess. You need a good accountant to help you set up the limited company and do things like the VAT returns. You also need knowledge of local laws ie in Britain if an item is faulty the company has to pay the return postage. You need to join some business forums and also the small business advisor at your local bank is good for business advice. I know someone who invested a load of money in equipment for making handmade & bought a website. One thing she didn't do was any market research. Had she done that she'd have known selling a small box of 4 chocolates for £5 is too much. So far she hasn't sold a single box of chocolates. When people go on the internet they expect a bargain. The only possible is when the item is unique in some way. When you set up your website it's a good idea to buy all the similiar sounding domain names especially ones like .biz & .net. Microsoft had to pay $20 million to someone who had the website lindows.com because it sounded like windows. 

Announcement

I have done a post on http://scratbagroberts.livejournal.com which is about livejournal. Everyone's welcome.

Announcement

I have done a post on webnode exclusively to my site at http://scratbagroberts.net which is a webnode site.

Building Assets

The book I read to research this post was The Digital Writers Guide to Building Assets which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. Many people think the only times they should write are at times like if they have to write for their boss or when they are in a class at college. Actually writing is useful because it helps you focus your thoughts. This book has got me rather excited. Did you know ebooks on kindle outsell the books on its companion website which is amazon by 3 to 2. That was in 2011 so the disparity now might be even greater. Another thing I've noticed is there is plenty of books and ebooks on mainstream software like word 2010 and websites like facebook. What about software like autodesk sketchbook pro or xanga.com surely there is a market. The digital writer writes one book a week. Every tuesday the digital writer releases one book you pay for and one book which was previously on sale for free. If doing a cover is a bit difficult you can go to http://fiverr.com and at that website you can pay someone $5 to do it. You pay the website in advance but that money isn't released to the worker until you are satisfied with the job. At that is all manner of little jobs and each one pays $5. Another website http://e-junkie.com lets you do an ebook using their cloud service for $5 per month. Many publishers on kindle are selling thousands of ebooks per month. I think it's got potential.