exo : blah

Minor fix for new features in Class::DBI. Nothing to be excited about.

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As with everything google related the gmail announcement from google met with a lot of words being sprayed across the interweb. A lot of them were "ah, they will steal our emails and use them against us" but some of them were "oooh, a gig of free email space, how are they going to do that?" and then there were those that just got carried away.

Uh huh. Google's real target is Windows. Yup, they're going to take all that code that helps run a huge cluster of servers and turn it into a desktop OS. That makes a lot of sense. Take a solution to one problem and apply it to a totally different one.

I'm sure there are many applications of google's technology but I imagine almost all of them will involve processing large amounts of information that can be separated into nice discrete chunks. It is after all what it was built to do. That's what they do. Creating a desktop OS is so far away from that it's amazing anyone would see that as a next step.

New job means I'm listening to more music and for various reasons this means I'm listening to a lot more of either The Wedding Present or Cinerama. As such this is just a note that if you've not heard anything by them then you should.

I should also point out that the more music is just that in an office environment I code better with music drowning out the more distracting background noise of conversation. It's not that I have a job involving music.

In new module news the above is available from your local CPAN mirror. It does pretty much the same as lynx --dump only in Perl. Chunks of the code are mine and chunks of the code are from Ian Malpass. If you're interested go read the documentation.

So, Apple have a new iPod out. Hurrah. I'm sure getting it will be just one more excuse for the terrify people scattered throughout this guardian article to praise Steve. Yes, the iPod is a neat wee thing and yes, you can fit an awful lot of songs on it, but it's only a digital music player. It may well be the best one, the easiest to use or the most elegant, that doesn't change what it fundamentally is: a piece of consumer electronics.

Whenever someone says something analogous to "this piece of consumer electronics has changed my life" I'm suspicious. I imagine if they stop and really think about it they'll find it hasn't. It might have made it a little easier, more convenient but changed? Not in any meaningful way. Certainly not in a way that warrants the pseudo religious zeal with which these statements are often accompanied.

The zeal I am fine with. There are more than a few things I'm happy to evangelise to people. It's when it crosses the line from being perhaps a little over excited by a nice piece of industrial design into treating those 'behind the curve' as if they were afflicted:

She recalls a recent meal out with six friends: three of the group had iPods; the other four didn't. "I was sitting opposite someone who had a mini-disc - I felt really sorry for them," she says.

If you'll excuse me coming over all valley girl: Hello, a sense of perspective? They're not dying, their house hasn't burned down, they just happen not to own the same portable music player as you. I think they'll get by.

Don't even get me started on "The iPod is the greatest piece of technology since the motor car".