As Martha dislikes the performance of her laptop that’s running Vista, and as Emma needs a new laptop, we’re wondering what the options are.

My obvious answer is “switch to Apple”, but the prices are now seriously higher than Dell laptops, for example. A big enough gap to even make me pause …

So, time for an experiment with Windows 7. I downloaded the (free) Release Candidate before it disappeared and have now installed on the laptop as an alternative to Vista. Even as an Apple fan, I’m pleased to say it’s a vastly better experience than Vista. And that’s got to be good for everyone over time, as it will have to keep Apple innovating.

Installing Win7 itself was easy, though it failed to find the in-built memory stick reader. But the real test is in installing the additional applications that make it a useful system. And this is now very quick and easy, with no need for reboots. Even the infamous security nag screens are painless now. I hate to say it: if anything it’s a slightly quicker and easier process than on a Mac.

The interface seems slightly more straightforward, and the whole experience feels much snappier. So, I can see Emma being happy with it, and maybe Martha too. Unless she’d be OK with a smallish 13″ screen on the more affordable MacBook laptops.

None of this will stop me from upgrading my MacBook to run the new version of its operating system (Snow Leopard) released yesterday. This will save space, make it run faster, and also brings lots of small improvements throughout. I can’t see myself switching to Win7, but with it Microsoft could well slow down the large recent drift to Mac.

Last weekend I went to Cardiff to see U2 live for the first time. It was a great show, showing off the new ‘Claw’ staging, with 360 degree runway and video display system. Wouldn’t I like one of those to play with?!

The music mostly came from the most recent “No Line on the Horizon” album, but with some older material such as Sunday, Bloody Sunday and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Of the new material, No Line on the Horizon and Unknown Caller stood out for me.

There was hardly any ‘preaching’ from Bono, mostly leaving it to a short video segment from Arhbishop Desmond Tutu, who noted what had been achieved against the MDGs (etc) by help from ordinary people. And urging us to support the ONE campaign. The political note was to support Ang Sung Syu Chi in Burma.

The Edge looked like he was having the most fun, though Larry liked getting freed from the drum kit for a song to wander around playing djembe. Adam looked serious throughout, and Bono managed to be both rock-band-lead-singer energetic plus brooding, all at the same time.

Overall, a fine birthday treat — thanks, Martha!

(Note to self: either the signposting to the main Park and Ride for the Millennium Stadium is bad, or the P&R itself is woefully inadequate. We landed up parking on a verge near County Hall. Not a great choice, as itt took over an an hour to get back to the car this way. There is free on-street parking in central Cardiff only 15 mind walk away, said my neighbour in the stadium.)

Total Recall — now appearing in real life, not just movie theatres.

Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell from Microsoft are exploring storing the totality of Gordon’s life experience digitally. All phone calls, emails, documents, receipts, and even pictures taken of each person he meets. It goes by the name MyLifeBits, and a book is coming out soon on Gordon’s experiences at totalrecallbook.com.

It was covered on a tech podcast recently, and Gordon says the best thing is that means he doesn’t have to rely on fallible “biomemory” any more; he can leave it all to the more trustworthy “eMemory”. You just need to make sure that you’ve got good tools to bring it all together and make it searchable … and that’s really the focus of the research work.

But one surprise was just how little storage this has taken. Gordon’s been 100% digital since 2002 and that has only needed 250GB of storage. OK, this doesn’t include video, but that doesn’t seem very high …

One to keep an eye on, if I don’t forget …

Adobe’s Flash technology is great for creating interactive websites, and sharing videos. But for the same reasons, it’s also used for particularly distracting adverts that are harder to block.

From Bruce Schneier’s blog I now learn that they have privacy issues, as they leave ‘cookies’ that browsers currently don’t know about or control. (You are blocking third-party cookies on your browsers, aren’t you?)

For Apple Mac users, there’s a utility called Flush that quickly deletes them. I expect there’s something similar for Windows by now.

A month or two back I landed up having to get a Facebook account so I could see some friends’ pictures. Until then I’d shied away from it.

Having signed up — like a fifth of the total internet population — and now linked up with 50 or so friends and colleagues, I now ‘get it’. It can act as a glue for people who don’t spend huge amounts of time together (and even those who do at work). Particularly with friends who can phrase things well, there’s normally something to smile at each time I visit, as well as feeling I’m keeping up with (bits of) their real lives.

Wired mag have an interesting piece on Facebook and Google, but not about the techy side of it. Instead it looks at how Facebook want to dominate the internet in a different but still competing way to Google, and the Big G is clearly somewhat nervous about it. The full article is available, but here’s my quick summary.

Google takes well over half of all internet advertising spend, through adds on their various services. Some of these can target individual interests quite well — certainly better than broadcast TV. But Facebook now have something priceless to advertisers: people’s real names, associated with their own descriptions of what they do, what they’re interested in, and their photos. Like other search engines, Google can see very little of this, as it all goes through Facebook’s servers. When Facebook work out how to bring advertising into their site without alienating too many of their users, Google will both be blind to this personal information, and poorer too.

A battle is on: not just for the advertising revenue, but for the type of internet we see. Facebook’s vision of a friendlier, personal, internet clearly is catching on …

The best session at New Wine 09 for me this year was led by Dan Browne. No, not the author Dan Brown, but a mid-30s guy who’s been leading humanitarian work in Afghanistan for the last 8 years. He’s deliberately bringing a Christian presence into a land where 99.9% are Muslims — so praying is more obviously necessary than here in the UK.

It’s also a land in conflict, and stuffed with soldiers and militants. So he was intrigued to find that “the Psalms are full of warrior language”. He also found that many great Christians through the centuries have written books on praying the Psalms. The one he particularly recommended is Answering God: the psalms as tools for prayer, by Eugene Petersen. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, there are 5 Psalms listed each day in the daily office.

Here are some of the comments that struck me:

Prayer is a battlefield walkie-talkie

Out of conflict heroes arise

In 2 Sam 23, Eleazer’s sword “became one with” his hand – should be like us and the Bible

War and trouble turn people to pray

Prayer is primarily about relationship
What matters is not whatever we want to pray, but what God wants us to pray. (Bonhoeffer from The Psalms: the Bible’s Prayerbook) So go look at the Psalms.

Jesus quoted Psalm 22, 31 as part of his last words

So often Complaint from the psalmist turns to Praise: it’s OK for us to do the same

Psalm 95 effectively starts with “God get away from me” – God knows how we think and react, and is big enough to deal with it

The nasty Psalms (eg 137?) are best viewed in the life of Jesus.

In Psalm 42, 63 King David feeling God is far off, and searches for Him.

Our prayers have as their final destination praise

Learn to meditate – this is what Psalm 1 is about

Couple ACTS (Adoration-Confession-Thanksgiving-Supplication) to a Psalm

Psalm 5.1 “consider my sighing” – don’t need intelligible words

He also recommended Derek Kidner as the best 2 volume commentary on the Psalms.

It has definitely been financially sensible to take the second car off the road whilst Emma was overseas. Now that she’s back, it’s time to un-SORNStatutory Off-Road Notification it and get it going again.

As usual, there’s more to this than meets the eye:

• Re-Taxing the car: the normal relicensing process is well handled online with the DVLA, as was the SORN process, but there’s no obvious un-SORN option. I soon figured it’s the same as a normal re-licensing, but you have to get the vehicle insured first, but you have to pay for all the month you’re wanting insurance for (in this case half of August unnecessarily).
• Insurance: using comparethemarket.com I landed up with Admiral Insurance again. I still don’t understand why there can be such huge differences in the quotes (more than 100% in this case) from different companies … how do they all stay in business?
• Taxing again: despite Admiral’s claims, it took much more than 24 hours for the confirmation of insurance to make it through to DVLA’s computers, so that added another 3 days before the car could be used.
• Breakdown cover: very speedy and efficient with Britannia Rescue.

So, at last we’re ready to go. Or so I thought. In retrospect leaving the battery to drain for 4 months wasn’t a great idea. A jump start from the bigger car got it going pretty quickly (though the instructions with the Halfords Jump Leads didn’t mention revving the good engine which would have helped), and Martha did a 45 minute trip up and down the motorway to put a good charge in it. But the next morning it was dead again. Ouch.

I spend a while on Halford’s website looking at various options for battery chargers, trickle chargers, new batteries, and power packs. Wasn’t clear what to do, so I land up giving my old boss a ring. He knows way more about cars and their mechanics than most mortals, and more than once I’ve been in an unfortunate pincer in the pub with him and another petrol-head. So now he could make amends by giving some advice, and the loan of a charger. If in a few hours the car is still dead, then it’s almost certainly time for a new battery, probably from Groves Batteries.

(I came across this in an article, and I thought I’d jot the main points down here, so I can find them again later.)

• There are 30 million incomes in Britain
• the top 10% (3m people) earn on average £105k before tax (so that’s me out then)
• the top 1% earn on average £253k
• the top 0.1% (30,000 “super-rich”) earn more than £500k a year, with an average of £1.1m

The combined income of this 30,000 is £33bn – or 4% of all personal income in Britain. Slightly obscene? I think so …

Source: David Goodhart, Prospect, Aug 2007.