GPS

I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to know that my new GPS is working perfectly. It found me a shortcut yesterday. Shorter AND better. Well, I'm thrilled at least.

But Tomtom's strategy of selling map update services borders on the indecent. The first thing I did when I bought the thing was to update the maps. There's a "latest map" guarantee, see, meaning that within 30 days of purchase, I'm entitled to map updates. So today I logged on to Tomtom and it hinted that my map was old (God forbid) and that for only €XX, I could have the latest.

If I hadn't read the manual I would have thought that there was actually an update available, and that it would cost me money. As things stand, I do have the latest map and this was simply a sales pitch, appearing to be a map update. It looked like the update thing I'd seen earlier, so I thought I would have to pay for this one. Made me angry and disappointed, and very weary of anything they say.

I very much dislike software with built-in sales pitches. I don't mind buying services when I need them, but I do think that I shouldn't be fooled into buying them.

TomTom 730T and Linux

Bought a TomTom 730T GPS device today. Very cool. Lots of well-considered features, great design, just what I wanted. I'm really looking forward to driving around for a bit tomorrow.

But then, I tried to install the TomTom Home 2 software on my Debian (Sid) Linux box, using wine. Didn't work. I spent an hour trying to get around the error message (a rather crypic message involving some file from Visual C++) but couldn't make it work.

Yes, TomTom, I do use a Windows box, too, at work, but I was hoping for you to return the favour (I bought your product, after all, didn't I?) by supplying me with software for the operating system of my choice. It shouldn't be that hard to do; after all, you did come around to recompile your software for the Mac.

Aren't more people using Linux these days than Mac?

Dolby CP100

I got hold of a Dolby CP100 cinema sound processor. It's Dolby's oldest Dolby cinema processor, introduced nearly 33 years ago. I don't expect to actually use it a lot, but I'm very tempted to install it in the sound rack at the cinema, just to freak out visiting filmmakers.

In any case, I think it's the most beautiful-looking processor Dolby has ever made. ::sigh::

Do You Still Believe MMR Vaccines Cause Autism?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece

Looks like Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who claimed MMR vaccines were to blame for the so-called "autism epidemy" manipulated his research data in order to get the results he wanted.

Not that I believe for one second that the MMR scare is now history, with nutters like watsername married to Jim Carrey running around crying wolf, but it still feels like a victory to me.

XML Prague

I will present my whitepaper, Practical Reuse in XML, at XML Prague on March 21 (in Prague, Czech Republic, in case you didn't guess that). XML Prague is a small conference but the speaker list is very impressive: Norman Walsh, Ken Holman, and Jeni Tennison will attend, among many others. I'm really looking forward to this one.