Recession?

Sure, so the only thing you can do is dive into the booze, drugs and vice (stocks).

Julie thinks Lindsay got out of Wallstrip with perfect timing

Moblogic is the next big thing

Well, I hope so anyway. Following on from her stratospheric rise to fame in the last few years (backed up with years of no fame but lots of hard work), Lindsay is moving on from Wallstrip, and beginning her latest adventure Moblogic. Apparently, she (and some of the other team members from Wallstrip) are going to give news a try. I can't wait 8-)

Kevin and Dennis - a Wise choice?

It looks like Mike Ashley is bolstering his Newcastle board with the appointment of Dennis Wise as "Director of Football".

Not sure how I feel about this - it never seems to quite work out as planned when clubs appoint people in this position, but only time will tell I guess. I do think it's a good thing that the owner is putting a decent amount of money into the infrastructure and support roles at the club though, so fingers crossed this gives Keegan the time and freedom to get the team playing to their full potential.

Catch Up

So I've got half an hour before the official first game in the return of Kevin Keegan to Newcastle, and I have to say I'm pretty excited. Of course, it could all end up horribly wrong, but at least now we know we'll go down fighting, the crowd will be behind the team, and we might actually play some football on the ground for a change. I was a little hesitant (and shocked) when the announcement was first made, but having received more txts and calls in the last 4 days from Newcastle than I have at pretty much anytime since I got out here, I can tell the town is buzzing once again. It should be a good night for a couple of beers on the Quayside (or taking in the UFC fight that's happening over there).

On whether or not Shearer should join KK as a no 2 or coach or whatever, to be honest, I don't think I care. I heard on the grapevine the two of them don't really get on, but no idea if that's true or not. I think it would probably be better if Shearer waited for a bit, enjoyed his time on Match of the Day, finished all his coaching badges and then had another look in 2 years or so. But, they're both their own men, and pretty determined, so I'm sure they'll sort it out amongst themselves, and ultimately do what is best for the club.

So, lots of stuff going on the last couple of weeks, and I've struggled to keep up with a pretty hectic work schedule, so I thought I'd try and get a whole list of stuff off the backlog in one easy post.

Mac fever reaches the living room

My next chair

HD fights back with $129 player and 7 free disks

Some car websites lost a lot of visitors last year

The GT-R race car looks a little special, even in orange

The new M3 is going to cost less than $60k

And there's pics of the M3 Convertible floating around

The worst gadgets from CES

If you need some cooking guidance from the web

Hugh Laurie makes the top 10 of favorite US personalities !?

Geotag your photos on the cheap(ish)

Movies with the most F-words (I want to know who sat through and counted...)

And finally for now, eggs any way you like them....

Best Internet Ad Ever?

I think so - might only be there for today though, so if you click through and don't see a Mac ad, sorry.

NY Times

Keegan Returns

Bit of a shocker, and just breaking, but Keegan is back in management at Newcastle. BBC has the news here - this will definitely improve the amount of attacking the team does, but will we win anything this time around?

One of his more famous moments at Newcastle was following the away game at Leeds (which I happened to have gone down to, coz those were the days when I actually lived in England), when he got pissed off with what Ferguson was saying and went ballistic on Sky (see the video below for what I'm talking about). That was one of two classic post match listening to Five Live moments on the BBC (both times I was actually with Pete, who now gets to spend all his time on football) - the second being when Cantona karate kicked his way into the crowd when Man U were playing Crystal Palace.

Telltale signs you picked a psycho

After many a wrong choice growing up, I finally made a good one and snagged the wife forever and ever. I won't go into details or list out the crazy ones (you know who you are), but lets just say that one was named (by both my friends and family I might add) as Scottish Nutter.....

Anyway, past experience made this list of telltale signs all the more entertaining. Enjoy....

Movie Studio Does Something Sensible?

Finally, it looks like one movie studio (Fox) has actually been listening to it's customers and is about to start including an iTunes (and iPod, AppleTV etc etc) copy of the movie on the DVD itself. This will save me hours of time instead of going through the usual Mac The Ripper to Handbrake to importing process that currently occupies my computers processors for large periods of their life.

Here's hoping the other movie studios do the same thing, and quickly. The amount of electricity this will save is going to be so big, we can all feel we're doing our bit for the environment and saving the world, without actually doing much at all (just like those light bulb replacements we put around the house).

MacWorld unleashes Air to the world.....

So the Keynote finally happened, and the result was the thinnest notebook in the world. It's actually so thin I think I might be scared to snap it if I owned one, but given the case is all aluminium, it's probably a lot sturdier than it looks. So, highlights are all wireless, touchscreen, backlit keyboard, LED screen, the usual fast Intel processor and the option of a solid state hard drive (which is way too expensive for most people to tick, but no doubt it's already ticked on Mr Batty's order sheet). Videos and many more pics and details can be found here.

Also on the list today was the update to the iPhone software that had been leaked a few weeks ago, as well as a similar update for the iPod Touch (but will cost you an extra 20 bucks on the none phone version). Mail on the Touch now seems like a pretty cool idea if you ask me.

Two things that are probably most likely on my list (well one I get for free anyway) was an update to AppleTV, and the new Time Capsule

The Apple TV gets a few much needed updates to take away the need for a computer to run it, along with buying from the box itself (the new rentals and actual purchases) along with HD Movies (something I was waiting for before I did any more movie purchases from iTunes. They also brought the price down by 70 bucks, which is always nice.

Time Capsule looks the most likely to be on my purchase list - I was contemplating buying a 1TB drive to plug into the new desktop at home (and stop me from filling up the hard drive with all my movie backups), and upgrading your wireless networking performance is always a good thing. Time Capsule combines both - a wireless N base station, with a 500GB or 1TB hard drive stuffed in the bottom. This also allows wireless backup using Time Machine, which solves the laptop problem of keep having to plug in a hard drive every time you wanted to do a backup. I guess technically you could get a 1TB network storage drive, and then a wireless N router and plug them together and save a couple of bucks, but looking at the prices recently, I don't think you'll save that much, plus it'll never look that pretty.

So, that was pretty much it - I'm still hoping for one day version 3 of AppleTV which is actually a Mac Mini with a Blue Ray (or HD if that ended up winning the "war") disk, combined with Tivo on there - that would really make me happy. And why doesn't Steve do his "One More Thing" anymore - is that just occasionally? My heart always sinks when they roll in the singer....

Update - here's a video - turns out the gestures are on the trackpad, not the screen like I orginally thought, but they still look cool...

MacWorld Keynote Tomorrow

And as a public service, here's a quick (and by no means exhaustive) list of a couple of live blogs if you're not actually out there watching Steve (possibly) change the world.

Engadget

Gizmodo

MacRumors

CrunchGear

Time will be 9 Pacific, 12 Eastern, and most importantly for me, 10 Mountain. That means 5 in the UK 8-)

I do like how this show always is kind enough to time itself a month before my (sometimes non-existent) bonus check arrives. It gives me hope for balance in the world. Or something like that.

Big Sam is Gone

In a move that is slightly surprising (but not really given it's Newcastle), their manager Sam Allardyce left the club yesterday by "mutual consent" (meaning he got fired, but took the payoff to go quietly).

Performances and results haven't really been the best since he took over the job, but given this was meant to be the long term appointment we needed to stabilize the ship, the fact that he only got 8 months in the job is a little disconcerting. I guess the main factor may have been that the Chairman hadn't appointed him - he was brought in just before the takeover.

Anyway, we enter the usual manager merry-go-round again, and wait to see who will take on the most unstable job in the Premiership. The Great One might be good (although some of his signings for Chelsea seemed a little on the dodgy side), but the fact that Harry Redknapp is being mentioned is a little worrying. Shearer as usual has distanced himself from speculation he's taking over (in both words and distance, supposedly talking to people back in Newcastle from the comfort of a beach resort in Barbados). You'd hope that Mike Ashley had someone already lined up (or at least a candidate or two in mind), but only the coming days or weeks will tell us that.

When is a TV too big?

Never, obviously ;-) But in trying to work out how this will fit into my living room, I realized it would probably involve a sledge hammer, followed my a little building, and the room next to the living room magically becoming smaller (or building a new extension out onto the deck).

Still, I can dream (which is a good job, coz reality is never going to get this big boy into my house, no matter how cheap plasma's ever become).

CES and Cars

Gadgets and cars at the same event? Sounds like heaven to me, but having seen a couple of the pics from the show, it looks a little like overkill in certain demo cars.

Take the car to the left for example - are you even going to get past level 1 or 2 on the volume meter before your ears start to bleed? And do you have to be a midget to watch the screen?

Anyway, more pics of various cars and their LCD screens here (and this one wasn't even a finalist for the worst placed screen placement).

Macworld is going to be BIG (maybe..)

So this week is CES, where all the technology companies around the world, apart from Apple, release their latest and greatest on the world. Next week, at MacWorld, there's going to be one of Steve's famous Keynote speeches, which everyone is in full speculation about as no-one really has any idea about what will be announced.

However, with the release of updated Pro and Server machines this week, Gizmodo is speculating that next week must be pretty big - if they can release upgrades the week before their "official" release date, they must have something pretty big lined up for next week.

Here's hoping for the mini laptop with touchscreen, cheap enough price for me to go and buy, and a 32 GB (or more) iTouch. Or something like that anyway.

Trash Compactor

One house we rented in Breck when my (youngest) brother was across here had what is apparently known as a trash compactor. A machine mystical in its operation, that means you can keep stuffing the big bags full of rubbish long after it should be full.

We needed one over Christmas when we were back in England - lots of takeaways, gift wrapping and random boxes, combined with the bin men enforcing the one bin only rule per house meant we were struggling for space long before it was time for the wagon to come around. Enter the Newcastle version of the trash compactor - much more manual in its approach to solution, but a lot more fun.....