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Listening to an interview on the today program with Jack Straw. He's intelligent, he has a certain lack of arrogance, and he would certainly make an interesting candidate for the leadership. Speaking wise, he has a voice that keeps me engaged but doesn't force his way in. It may be the fact that he does sound a little timid when speaking. I don't think he'd be a good prime minister, he hasn't proven his charisma or leadership abilities but he would certainly be an interesting challenger for Mr Brown.

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I had the strangest thought watching "The evolution of the daleks", that while they were not true timelords, or even true gallifreyians, but in some way they were the "Children of Gallifrey".

The Face of Boe talked about not being alone, and if anyone could bring the timelords back it would be the Doctor. Maybe the Face of Boe has seen what the Doctor will do...

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Okay i'm taking a small issue with doctor who at the moment, but i have to say i'm getting interested in Mr Saxon, I already got the "Harold" reference to the last saxon king, but thats a little too obvious i think. However since in the previous 2 seasons the doctor has had a hand in the creation of the Bad Wolf, and Torchwood, it follows that Mr Saxon may have been brought into existance, or is reacting to the Doctor in the past. My personal feeling is that he might be in some way related to the children of galifrey but then its all a tenuous link. We'll see what happens.

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As predicted by half the internet, new slightly shinier Macbooks have been released today by apple. No huge changes beyond the move to Core 2 Duo processors and slightly shinier starting specs. Sadlty no sign of a decent graphics card, which is the main thing that would stop me from buying one. I would consider a slightly smaller laptop if it had that feature. But more on that another time.

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According to wired, the EPA has decided to rework milleage ratings, and very surprisingly there has been huge change on the hybrids, and far less on the conventional cars. This has been reasoned on the "Idling" part of the tests that were "excessively" long. I know i happen to have lived in 2 of the most congested cities in the western hemisphere, but isn't what cars do in cities mostly idling? My understanding was that one of the selling points of a hybrid car is that when you aren't moving, an electric motor keeps the engine going but no petrol is wasted... Now i don't doubt that mileage ratings are always going to be slightly dodgy, but this seems to be a deliberatly lobbied attempt to attack hybrid cars. Admitedly the manufacturers should be dropping the prices more, and working towards improving the technology. There were reports a couple of years back that by suplimenting the battery capacity of the Prius, you could be approaching 80-90 mpg fuel efficency, but that was probably in part due to the correct driving technique of the owner who did the modifications. Hybrid cars aren't the answer, but they are a step in the right direction, the EPA has done nobody but the conventional car industry a favour. I may be being cynical here, but why develop a test that appears targetted to damage the performance of Hybrid cars...

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Microsoft going off about patents should be taken a bit more seriously than it has been. SCO for all its failings was onto a clever strategy, however given that they were

• Wrong
• Broke
• Not taking advantage of the doubt in linux

It wasn't a well implemented or backed up strategy, however while Microsoft is almost certainly wrong, they are not broke, and are well placed to take advantage of any doubt about Linux. Thankfully this didn't happen 5 years ago, because now its just possible Linux has as much legal clout as Microsoft. People are quick to dismiss the threat of MS, but just remeber the doubt SCO managed to generate in the buisness comunity. Microsoft is bigger, more powerful, and for all their failings devious as a fox who taught cunning at Cambridge.

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I've been thinking about where apple is going wrong, particually in light of the MacBook refresh. Admitedly i've got my eye on a MacBook pro but i've definatly been tempted by the small form factor of the Macbook. However the Macbook is still too big to be small in my eyes. Looking at people who have the Powerbook 12", its a small, but beautiful form. It shouldn't be used as a desktop replacement, but i have no qualms using an external monitor and keyboard (although i do prefer my trackpad these days), when doing long stints at my desk. There are other implications of the 12" form factor, beyond the size, a smaller screen does result in better battery life, as was established with the 12 " powerbook versus the 15" powerbook. Sadly for whatever reason, the small and powerful seems to be lacking from apple, its an oversight because i know of many mac users who swear by their 12" powerbooks and ibooks, (if i had the money i'd buy a 12" ibook to have as a rough and ready machine if i wanted to travel). Assuming its not Apple missing the mark, it must be some form of ulterior motive, either its a design issue (unlikely since there are smaller than 12" windows laptops", or more likely they have something in the wings they are preparing to bring out of the wings at the right time (after a few more tweaks). Speculating i do wonder if they are looking at fuel cell based mini macs, although the tech is still a little bit infant stages, but an ultraportable with days of battery life with a decent OS would be a definate apple coup... Anyway, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears and 4 noses peeled, and if i hear anything, this blog will be the 3rd place to hear about it from me...

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For those of you who haven't heard of trac, its an extensible, and for the most part very sophisticated project management and bug tracking tool written in python and released to the comunity. Each company has its own requirements, and this can result in the need to modify trac for your own requirements, and trac has a very capable plugin system, however in keeping with many brilliant open source projects, it has poor documentation. You could flame me about the documentation issue, but i will admit that there is some very well documented open source documentation, however Trac has a very poor standard of documentation, when compared with the stellar product that it is. Accidentally when looking at building egg files, i came across the tutorial that explained how the entire framework for plugins was developed, i had reverse engineered most of what i had needed, but it was still lacking the real understanding. Egg Cooking Tutorial - A good introduction to writing plugins, it should be included on the tracdev documentation

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I know i'm an outspoken critic of the cliffhanger and the end of the season, but unless its done very well, its utterly frustrating. There are few cliffhangers that just work, and don't feel forced. But this is the smallville cliffhanger, so lets check the checklist

• Lex in trouble, caused by his own actions - Check
• Clark loosing battle to kryptonian oo-nasty - Check
• Chloe dead - Check
• Extraordinary forced revealation - Check
• Father figure in critical condition - Check
• Future love interest in mortal peril - Check
• Lex or other character missing the fact of Clark - Check
• Clark ignoring everyone's advice and going off on one - Check
• Lana dead/or in big trouble - Check (okay technically she escaped in the mail van, but according to the information the characters are using, she's dead)

I have to admit, i was expecting either something to go wrong with Ares (which kinda did), or Lex to go big bad, neither which really happened. A kryptonian big bad wasn't what i was expecting, rather that Clark would finally get off his arse, find the phantoms and others, before joining up with the JLA to take on lex, but thats too much to rush in a season really. However this is where what praise i give, ends, because while annoying, Bizarro has been more of a joke character from what i've seen, deadly yes, powerful yes, actual apocalyptic threat... no. Admitedly the fact that he has anything to do with kryptonite suggests something different about him. When i heard the words "kryptonian experiment" i thought maybe Doomsday, who would be scary beyond all reason... but still would have probably been a fairly weak character. Maybe its expecting too much, but with good planning, you give people a storyline over a season, you run them ragged with plot, give them some kind of closure, and then you give them a taster for the next season. Angel was good with this, the second and fourth season finales were good like this, and both times i felt glad of the break, but looking forward to the next season. Maybe people tell them its good marketting, but when you have to wait a whole 6 months to find out what happened, i just feel annoyed and a bit let down.

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Apparently, we aren't going to just have to avoid cameras on the street, but above the street, in the sky. again military technology is being used against us. I was totally panicked by the thought that higher up the chain of command is needed for access and abuse of this information, because guess who's up at the top, some pillar of moral authority, or the second biggest criminal on the planet? Sadly given the general inability of the British people to actually have an opinion about something important... Not to worry, soon you'll have Eric's nightmare to contend with, me I'm heading to a country where at least on paper privacy is an essential right!

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When the Mac Mini came out, i thought it was one of Apple's best moves, present to the world a cheap, very stylish, reliable replacement for whatever Windows PC they are currently using. Using semi-decent components, and a decent graphics card, i would have been tempted, if it were not for the fact that i had my shiny powerbook, and i was a student without funds. I realise that Apple, in somewhat crippling the Mac Mini line, they were trying to prevent the gouging of the Mac Pro, and iMac markets, but these are different markets entirely. The MacPro is a professional workhorse machine, current configurations have 8 core environments, which would give most desktop apps a run for their money. Unless you have more money than sense, you buy a MacPro because you need something that powerful for your work. The iMac is for those who want a problem free, stylish, one piece desktop computer, its a computer for home offices, dorm rooms, and other places where space, and lack of cables are at a premium. These obviously aren't the only uses for Macs, but they are the core targetted segments. The Mac mini was developed to go after 2 new markets, the first, intentional one was that of Windows Switchers. The switching market is good, but perhaps not as well marketted as some other Apple products. This is in part why i suspect it has not been as successful as it was hoped. However in building a cheap, small, moderately powerful mac, a new market was created, and that is of the person who wants a mac for a specific function, rather than the general purpose macs of the past. The obvious one is that of a media centre mac, which while clever, the AppleTV is not. However applications as very small server, cheap desktop to suppliment a laptop, or even, when installed with Bootcamp and Windows, makes a small moderatly powerful, very portable lan party system. However by crippling the Mac Mini, this market is reduced, if not lost, and the thing is in each of these uses, these are not functions that would be filled by any of the other desktop models. Although my thought train has just realised Apple might do a refresh with Leopard and go "Here is Leopard in a box" which would be a good contrast as people realise again how horrific ...

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