The film opens on an earth strewn with rubbish. Wall-E has been tasked with cleaning it up (along with hundreds of other such models) but alas he is the only one left of his kind. There is precious little “dialogue” in the first twenty minutes as Wall-E explores the rubbish piles and picks out souvenirs which he collects for his home. Shortly afterwards EVE arrives on Earth and Wall-E falls head over heels in love. I’m astounded by how Pixar can infuse their characters with such identifiable traits. The guys there really understand their craft and it’s a joy to see animated characters convey emotion as convincingly as this. As the plot thickens during the film, the pace rarely lets up as you’re introduced to human characters aboard the space ship Axiom. The human characters don’t have the same depth as the robots but I think that’s deliberate considering where the focus needs to be. What we do see of them though is highly entertaining, especially the scene involving them being knocked out of their hover chairs en masse.

I’m at pains not to reveal too much of the plot but I guarantee that you will be laughing and smiling throughout the duration. This is a modern animation classic and I will be seeing it more than once over the course of its cinematic run.

• Blacknight Solutions: My site used to be hosted in the US with Lunarpages cos it was cheaper. Unfortunately they messed me about and the server wasn’t reliable so I decided to move back. Blacknight were very affordable, reliable and I haven’t had one problem with their service. In fact, they go out of their way to help you if they can. I recommend them to anyone for hosting.
• Camera phones: This may seem ridiculous but I’ve honestly taken some cherished photos on my camera phone. It’s the nights you don’t plan that are often the best so having a way to capture it is great. This was one of the things that put me off the iPhone.
• Non-geeky terms: So much of technology is hidden behind acronyms and overly complicated language. It’s like a walled garden and, in most cases, it’s unnecessary. A point made by Sabrina Dent at CreativeCamp highlighted the barrier that a signup Wiki created at previous bar camps.
• WordPress: I’ve been a user since it forked off from b2 and, even though it has its faults, WordPress is still the best blogging platform in my opinion. Now, I’m not blind to the failings or ignorning the fact that some people have had problems getting listened to by the core developers. The fact remains that WordPress is easy for blogging newbies to pick up. I’ve seen it with some of my own mates.
• The movie Swingers: It’s funny, well written, has great performances and is the film which really introduced Vince Vaughan.

I couldn’t finish the post without putting in this clip from Swingers. “Hi Nicky, it’s Mike again”

The 8 & 16Gb models were too small though so with the announcement of the 32Gb model, I was ready to buy my first Apple product. I went the eBay route though and got stuck with a seller who had no intention of sending the item. It’s all worked out though as I had PayPal payment protection and it’s getting refunded. A couple of weeks later and I ordered two 32Gb models (one for my brother) from the Irish store for €460 each. Quite pricey but after having the trouble with eBay, I didn’t wanna mess around.

Setup and Jailbreak:

A week or so later I had my new toy. I’d heard mention of Apple’s amazing packaging before but this was new to me. It was just so clean compared to other tech products, where wires and manuals are protruding from the box as soon as you lift the lid. After connecting it to iTunes I transferred a few albums and videos. I was amazed at how easy iTunes made it to update track/album information and get artwork. Video files must be in MP4 so you may need to convert some using a tool like Videora.

I’d long been hearing about jailbreaking the software to load custom applications. The one that interested me the most was MobileScrobbler. It takes account what you are listening to on the move and then uploads it to your Last.fm profile which, in turn, suggests other artists to listen to. I’d also heard about MXTube over on boards.ie which allows you to download YouTube videos to watch later without a Wifi connection. So on Wednesday, after much research and reading up, I decided to go with the ZiPhone method as a release only a week earlier had claimed to support the 32Gb Touch. I downloaded, installed and ran the program (after restoring to 1.1.4 from 1.1.3) and, much to my delight, it worked great and soon I was able to install apps/SSH into the unit/take screenshots etc.

Blog Admin:
There’s a plugin for WordPress that provides an iPhone/iPod Touch version of the admin backend. All you need to do is install it and it’ll kick in when accessing it from a device.

It allows you to do almost anything you would need to so hopefully I’ll be able to use it out and about. Actually gonna see if I can publish this post with it. Update from the Touch: It works quite well actually.

I had decided to go with a Dell anyway so their January sale provided the opportunity I needed. In saying that, I was seriously stuck in two minds on whether to get the 15″ or, the model I ended up getting in the end, 13″ screen. In the end I’m delighted I went for the latter as it’s very light and the screen (White-LED) is fantastic. Granted, I don’t have as much desktop real estate as I do in work or on my desktop but it’s not a bad trade off. Unfortunately, Dell don’t sell the model I got with Windows XP so I had to re-format and install it with associated drivers etc (excellent m1330 driver resource here).

The specs are in an extended entry for those interested:

• CPU: Intel Core™ 2 Duo processor T7500 (2.20 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 4 MB L2-cache)
• Hard Drive: 250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive
• RAM: 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024]
• Graphics Card: 128MB nVidia GeForce® 8400M GS
• Optical Drive: Fixed 8x DVD+/-RW Slim Slot Load Drive
• Wireless + Bluetooth connectivity
• Battery: 9-cell Lithium-Ion
• Web cam: 0.3 mega pixel
• Colour: Crimson Red

Meanwhile I also found the Wikimedia photos of 2006 which are excellent (via digg). I particularly like this one of San Francisco Airport at night.

Update: Lifehacker does it again by pointing us to a collection of shots by the photographer who did Vista’s wallpaper images.

Along came meebo to assist as it doesn’t require any installation and all you need is an account with any one of the major systems mentioned above. It’s one of the cleaniest web applications I’ve used plus they’ve just added the facility for group chats which shows genuine innovation in the area. You can also sign up to a meebo account so you can log into more than one service (ie. MSN and Yahoo!) at the same time, save preferences and also log conversations if you want. All in all, it’s a quality tool and I’d recommend using it.

When Earl wins the lottery and gets hit by a car he starts thinking that Karma is trying to tell him something, so Earl writes up a list. No ordinary list, a list of all the bad things he’s done to people. There ya have it, a simple premise for a show. No crazy hatches or “others”, just good old fashioned sharp screenwriting and perfect casting. Jason Lee is perfect in the central role of Earl and is accompanied by Ethan Suplee as his hapless brother. There’s also fantastic eye candy in the form of Jaime Pressly as Joy his crazy ex-wife, and Nadine Velazquez as Catalina. Some of the touches are just fantastic including the use of music from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in the last episode. Looking forward to the new season in the Autumn already.