There is hopefully a special part of hell reserved for those that inflict stupidly bad design decisions upon us. Take, for example, the decision by the makers of the machines that allow one to top up their oyster card to require the process to be terminated by the user presenting their card to the machine one final time. This doesn’t sound particularly onerous, but clearly some users had difficultly understanding the request so the screen features a very large red arrow pointing down towards the card reading widget which is to the right of the screen. What a pity the “Cancel” button, of the same colour as the arrow, is to be found in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, just a few millimetres from the tip of the arrow…

On the subject of TfL ticket machines, the exorbitant new cash fare structure means the ticket machines that only accept coins are now practically unused: few people carry sufficient coins for even the £3 single fare. Correspondingly, the small number of more useful tickets machines that accept cards and notes and allow one to charge an oyster card always seem to have very large queues….

The January Sales are a wonderful thing: yesterday I picked up a Ferguson R116D DAB digital radio for half price at Dixons.

I’ve been considering a digital radio for a some time. Some people claim the quality is lower than FM and punters would be better off listening via the Internet, or using a Freeview digital television box, but since a good portion of the stations to which I listen regularly (e.g. Virgin and Radio 5) are broadcast on AM-only, it seemed to make sense. I also really like good old-fashioned radio — I can operate it even before I’ve had coffee in the morning, and without the distractions associated with turning on my computer!

So far, I am really pleased with it. There are a lot of digital stations available, even in our basement, and overall the quality of the stations we like is pretty good but bizarrely many of the rubbishy commercial ones do seem to broadcast in 96kbps mono — come on people, this is the 21st century!!!

While audiophiles criticise DAB for the poor audio quality of many stations, for me this is pretty moot since this is a cheap set with only two 1 watt speakers (but it does have line-out which is missing from many cheaper sets and therefore one of the reasons I chose this one). However, I do think DAB has a number of advantages over FM, namely tuning into stations is considerably easier, and the digital display gives all sorts of extra information such as the currently playing song.

Another advantage of this model over many others in its class is that it allows up to 10 DAB and 10 FM stations to be stored as presets. While tuning is easier than FM, having only 4 presets for each of DAB and FM would have quickly led to an argument in this household!

Not a major problem, but after a few weeks of usage I’ve decided the lack of visual feedback on the volume control is rather annoying.

I love holidays. Today I finally found sometime to cook up a new way of putting a fun quote after my name in all of my emails. This regular feature of my electronic correspondence sadly disappeared when I upgraded to a new version of OS X; the new version of Apple Mail no longer seems to support the technical hook I was previously using to insert the random quote. Fortunately the new version does have the ability to randomly select a signature from a pre-defined list, I just had to find a way to import my 40-odd existing quotes into this list.

Our flaming Christmas pudding proved a good opportunity to play with my new camera — I’ve finally gone digital!

Wow – it’s been nearly a month since I have blogged! Sadly, moving house, city and job in one go, plus all the usual Christmas excitement, has kept me quite busy these last few weeks… However, I do have some posts in the pipeline, and with the Christmas holidays now upon us, hopefully I will even have some time to write them up!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Just to let everyone know, I’ve made it to London! Rosie and I moved into our new flat today — we’ve already discovered our “local” is The Royal Oak!

We’ll be visiting Cambridge on Sunday (4th Dec) so we would love to see everyone who is in the area for brunch in the Bun Shop from 12:30ish. We’ll probably be there for most of the afternoon, so feel free to drop in, or give me a call. Unfortunately we’re busy in the evening, but I’m really looking forward to catching up with as many people as possible!

I can now enjoy my large number of cups per day guilt-free!
Wired News: Java Joy in Coffee Study

A lazy Sunday evening hiding in my air-conditioned apartment from the humidity and rain meant I finally got time to finish Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. (Potential spoilers below!)

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My first week at work was fairly quiet — we had some fun breaking computers (and then fixing them again) but there was some dull admin to fill the evenings too. My fellow trainees and I have explored a couple of bars near work — they’re not bad, if a little expensive (and we haven’t been paid yet!) but we found a good one with happy hour on Friday! Later in the evening most of the trainees went en masse to a club called “Mission” near SoHo as apparently a friend of a friend of one of the other trainees was organising a party there so we got free entry (I’m still hanging onto my student ways… ) With so many of the training class there it was a fun night, but I can’t say I’d go back as the music wasn’t brilliant and it was so jammed it took forever to get served at the bar, etc.

After a busy week it was really nice to just chill out on Saturday, but Sunday I woke fairly early and was keen to get out and explore the city a little, especially since thunderstorms were again forecast. Once again, I found there was something unexpected around almost every corner, for example there was a market selling lots of tasty looking fruit smoothies and other yummy foods on Sixth Avenue, and that the normally very busy Fifth Ave becomes a posh-looking, leafy residential area just north of Greenwich Village.

Sort-of by accident I found myself in Downtown where I was reminded just how amazing the buildings are here: there is the Italian-style City hall, the beautiful Woolworth Tower and a whole host of others along and around Wall St. I also visited St. Paul’s chapel, just across from the site of the WTC, miraculously unharmed in the September 11th attacks, and now a moving memorial to the rescue workers who worked day and night in the aftermath of the attack. As well as being a beautiful chapel, it is steeped in history, also being the chapel George Washington attended directly after his inauguration as the First US President.

I think I’ve realised that one of the problems with NY is that there is so much to do and see, I’m really not sure where to start! I might try to be a little more organised next weekend and perhaps “do” something rather than just do more meandering (as enjoyable as that is!). I’ve been checking out places to play Ultimate too as I really need some more exercise than just walking to work, and although the prospect of running around in blazing 30 degree sunshine isn’t that appealing I think I shall just have to put the sun block on and get out and do it!

A quick post to confirm my aliveness, and location as being currently New York, NY, USA. The appartment is lovely (it has a coffee machine and broadband Internet)[1] and the location is fantastic. Although my Australasian adventure is over, I hope I am just setting off on a whole new one so I shall endeavour to continue to keep this blog up to date with details of what I’m up to in NY — so don’t go away!!

[1] And the ‘supermarket’/grocery store across the street is even a ‘gourmet/organic’ one. I only note this as Rosie recently informed me that eating non-organic food gives one brain cancer. Unfortunately, given the amount I eat, I can’t afford organic food in the quantities I need to live, so I guess my fate is sealed…

Some photos of the appartment, taken using my phone (so very poor quality sorry): lounge, kitchen, bedroom.