Just bought an iPhone. It was a breeze.

I phoned up a few O2 stores to check availability and all had sold out, except for the Dewsbury store. The sales assistant said that they had some in stock but that their computer system was down.  He said he’d call me when it was back up.   To my surprise, he did indeed call me back and I drove down to Dewsbury.  It took about 15 minutes to complete the purchase.  There was no queue, I was the only customer in the store.  

Where To Watch For Live WWDC ‘07 Updates

Flickr and its stupid annoying message

Flickr used to be great.  I used it regularly to share my photos with my family and friends.  Then Flickr was bought by Yahoo! and I had a feeling that things would take a turn for the worst.  They did.

1. They made users merge their Yahoo accounts with their Flickr accounts.  I don’t use Yahoo services, I don’t like Yahoo services.  There is zero benefit to me in merging my Flickr account with Yahoo!.  

2. At some point in the past I uploaded more than 200 pictures.  At some point in the past and limit was imposed on the number of pictures that you could share.  This limit seems to be set at 200 pictures.  Now when I login to Flickr I see a message that takes up half the size of my screen telling me that I’ve passed the 200 picture limit and that some of my pictures are hidden.  There does not seem to be anyway to turn off this message.

 The result of these 2 issues is that I no longer have any inclination to use Flickr.  It was once a great service but has now rendered itself an annoyance that I can live  without.

I currently use Picasa for most of my picture sharing.  Not for any particular reason other than it just works and doesn’t (yet) have any annoying messages that I can’t turn off. 

The BBC and Scientology

I watched last night’s documentary and I thought it was complete rubbish and lacked any objectivity what so ever. The reporter seemed to want to call Scientology a cult but failed to provide us with any real arguments. In fact, he quoted someone from the Church of England to back his pre-conceived idea. For me the volcanos, thetans, etc.. etc.. are no more or less crazy than burning bushes, walking on water, great floods, etc etc…

I don’t believe any of what the Scientologists preach is true, but to go round the world to harass them is a bit much.  If I want to dress up as a pirate and believe in the flying spaghetti monster, then I should be allowed to carry out my belief without being harassed.

Unless they are breaking the law, then I don’t see why they shouldn’t be left alone. It would more worthwhile to chase after the Roman Catholic church and question why so many of their members are pedophiles.

Child worship syndrome: I'm sick of it

Below is a quote from Bill Hicks that perfectly sums up my felling with regards to the UK’s current top news story.

“We gotta come to some new ideas about life folks ok? I’m not being blase about abortion, it might be a real issue, it might not, doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that if you believe in the sanctity of life then you believe it for life of all ages. That’s what I hate about this child-worship syndrome going on. “Save the children! They’re killing children! How many children were at Waco? They’re killing children!” What does that mean? They reach a certain age and they’re off your fucking love-list? Fuck your children, if that’s the way you think then fuck you too. You either love all people of all ages or you shut the fuck up.”
— Bill Hicks