OK, so Google are getting really good at this. I wanted the number of the Thai takeaway in Kilbirnie so, rather optimistically, I typed "thai kilbirnie" into google and got....

It's real name, a map, their phone number and opening times all in the first hit. That's it, we're living in the future, it's official.

As per the title, Pete from Pete's Acoustic Guitars is a god who walks amongst us. I bought Zuni a guitar about 3-4 months back along with a pickup so we could record her aural awesomeness. However, I could never get it to work right with any of the three interfaces I tried and finally decided there must be a pre-amp problem of some description in there.

Along I go. We change the strings on two guitars and plug the pickup into his "desk" amp, it sounds fine. We plug it into my AudioFire, it sounds like arse. He fetches an active pickup and hooks it in, retunes the guitar, we spin up the interface and try again. No problem. Some slight debate over what I should pay and a number is proposed that I'm, actually, really happy with - especially considering I've tied the poor guy up for half the afternoon.

After sales service to die for. Nice one, Pete.

We are living in the dark ages.

So today, a week or two after deciding that maintaining an entire JVM just for the mac was too much like hard work - which it is and I'm staggered that they were doing it - Apple and Oracle have had a kinda kiss and make up thing and Oracle are basically taking Apple's JVM and running things from here on out. Ahhhh, lovely - so an old, clunky language whose main application is in making clunky but reliable things for banks can continue to be developed on macs. Or something. Not that I want this to be taken as a Java rant - I actually think that for what it does it's pretty damn good. But then I don't have to use it.

Trademe is down because their hosting provider can't run a UPS. For god's sake.

And the mac press are all getting excited over an IMAP client that looks like a twitter one.

Meanwhile the Japanese are doing this:



And suddenly it looks like the western IT industry is full of people who have patented the act of weaving yarn so that those evil bastards making factories have no legal right to put their cottage industry out of work; that some of us work in windmills; that I tend a cart and horse ... and that 20,000 Japanese go to a holographic pop concert before teleporting home.

What is WRONG with us? HOW has such a brave industry become so bloody boring? Does nobody have any belief in anything any more? It's just madness.

It seems digi/avid/whatever have come down to earth (with a bump) and you can now buy ProTools that works on any hardware. $600, a hundred more than logic studio. They must be hurting over there...

Oh look, it's Section 92A wearing a wig and fake moustache. And we get proper, international, several million hits per day level of coverage for having retarded laws, too.

For those sitting in MED - happily eating your muffins and having very jolly meetings - I would like to propose a legal principle: how about we have the burden of proof be on the accuser, hmmm?