New PC: Sony, Vista, Whoo!

On Sunday we bought a new laptop. A rather shiny and sexy Sony Vaio. It's rather lovely, and a bargain at under £800.

It has some very good things:

• Looks fab, lovely shiny silveryness
• The screen is awesome. It's a Sony XBlack HD (1080) screen, and it looks really really nice
• Built in webcam
• HDMI output so we can plug it into the TV and (hopefully) get some decent quality output
• Very quick (dual core centrino and 2gig RAM)
• SD card slot (and Sony Memory stick pro slot, but who actually uses those?)

But there are a couple of disappointing things:

• No audio optical out
• Only three USB ports (lucky I have a portable hub)
• Ridiculous amounts of crap software preinstalled (more on that later)
• No OS CD/DVD, have to create your own
• Vista Home Premium "security" (more on that later)

But all in all, it's all good. I've spent the last few days trying to get the new 'puter to be like the old one in all the good ways (things laid out how I like them) while avoiding the bad things (10 minutes to boot up, 20 minutes to shut down).

So first impressions on Vista are very positive. It looks great, maybe that's because of the rather spanky screen, and the transparency thing, while being a bit of a gimmick, gives it quite a futuristic feel. However, I am quite computer literate. I am a web developer by profession, and I know how to administer computers. So I don't necessarily like all the gumpf getting between me and the stuff I want to change. For example:

The machine came with a 10 day trial of Norton 360. Whatever the hell that is. It wanted to go online and update itself, and do something or other. It got to the second screen of the sign up process: "Sign into existing Norton account or Create a new one". With no "back" or "cancel" option. They had disabled the close button! You can't do that! I'm not going to buy this software, I'm not giving you my name, address, email and phone number for a ten day trial! Let me close the damn window! Luckily I know the ctrl-shift-escape key combo to open the task manager. That got me cross.

So I uninstalled the Norton trial. And the side bar disappeared. So I tried to turn it back on. "The sidebar is controlled by your system administrator". Umm, I am the system administrator. Aren't I? I went through all the normal routes, it looks like I'm an admin user, but I can't turn the damn thing back on. I search on Google; apparently the group policy might have it turned off, and this is controlled by my network adminstrator. Umm, I am the administrator, and I'm not on a domain. And I can't open the group policy management console cos it's not installed. Hmmm.

I can't see the old XP style Users and Groups thing in the console. Apparently you don't get that in Home Premium edition. So I can't check I'm an administrator.

Eventually I find the registry hack to renable it when the policy has it turned off, and I can't edit the policies. And we have a sidebar! Whoo! A transparent clock, calendar and CPU meter. Now to get started on some personal time development, and write a (better) BBC news feed, and a blog spot uploader!

The other thing that's annoying is the sheer volume of software which comes pre installed, with no option to install it or leave it. While I appreciate Sony giving me Intervideo WinDVD, Skype and Acrobat Writer and some Vaio media stuff (DVD writers, music player, etc), I don't really want Big Fish Games (whatever they are), ArcSoft Magic-I, Adope Photoshop Elements, Premier Elements and the Norton stuff. And I really don't want the Google Toolbar and Desktop search pre installed (although Picasa and Google Earth was a nice touch)

I guess buying a laptop from someone like John Lewis means that you don't get machines ready for computer-savvy people, they are aimed at people who don't want to fiddle, they just want a working PC.

But anyway, now we're rolling. Office is installed, IE bookmarks copied over from old machine, ITunes installed and the portable drive is moved over. Just need to get rid of the old PC and rearrange the living room now!

Next time I'm gonna have some exciting news about our IT AGM, at which I am presenting a workshop!

Driving Day at Long Marsden

.Yesterday Dad and I went on the Super Car Experience at Long Marsden in Worcestershire bought through BuyAGift, supplied by Drivers' Dream Days. We drove a Lotus Elise, a Subaru Impreza Turbo, a Porsche 911 Carrera 2 and a Ferrari 355. It was very enjoyable. I surprised myself be being quite good, but that might have just been the instructors being kind :)

First up was the Porsche 911 Carrera 2. Everyone on our "team" was disappointed with this car, but I thought it was pretty good. We drove it first, and it might have been nice to have another go at the end, after learning the track a bit better. The engine sounds so mechanical and engineered, and I thought it felt very fast (but nowhere near as quick as the Ferrari). And it was quite comfy :) At this point I was still a bit nervous of spinning of the track and ending the day early (that would have been a rather expensive mistake) so was taking it easy.

Then the Lotus Elise. Powered by the 1.8 K Series, with a measly sounding 120bhp. It may not sound much, but in the tiny lightweight car it is plenty. I thought it awesome to drive, the grip was great and it was lots of fun just chucking it into the corners. I managed to overtake an Aston Vanquish and a Ferrari in this :) The instructor in this car was an ex F1 driver. He said I was doing well! It felt a bit like a large go kart, but with infitely more grip and oomph. This is definitely a car I could see myself buying next year (once we have a garage to keep it in) as a weekend car. I think I'd like the one with carpets though...

Then the Ferrari 355. It was a bit awe inspiring, and phenominally quick. The power from way down the rev range was just staggering, and the balance through the corners was quite disconcerting. Unfortunately, I'd say it was the least involving to drive, partially because of the constant feeling that the engine wanted to blast through from behind and take you on a spin. The main problem with this car is the reputation that a Ferrari brings with it. I wanted to floor the accelerator coming out of the corner, get the back kicking out and powerslide my way to glory round the corner. But I don't how to do that, and I didn't want to crash. It was still very quick - on one of the small straights in the Porsche there was time to come off the corner, accelerate to the next cone, then brake and turn. In the Ferrari, the speed coming off the first corner was so much greater you were at the end of the small straight and having to brake and turn before getting a chance to accelerate again. Still slightly disappoiting though.

And finally the Subaru Impreza Turbo. Wow. Sliding it through a chicane at 65mph, then flooring it again before gentle braking then powering *through* a hairpin (only in this and the Lotus did I feel able to accelerate through the sharp hairpin corner - maybe this was the confidence boost from the Ex-F1 and Rally driver instructors, maybe it was the confidence in the fantastic cars) before undertaking the Aston (again) and then floating through the other chicane at 65mph again. Endless grip, great feedback from the controls, awesome power... and a decent boot, backseats, air con and a CD player. Is this the ultimate car? Maybe.

Here are some photos:

Subaru Impreza Turbo. Shame it's red.

Dad in the Ferrari 355. It was a bit old, and a bit scruffy. Nothing wrong with the engine though.

Lotus Elise. Raw.

Me in the Porsche.

The Porsche 911 Carrera 2. Orange Lambo in the background, whcih sounded awesome, but instilled even more fear in the drivers than the Ferrari

Thank the Lord that week is over

So that's the end of that week. Phew. It was shaping up to be a very good week. Mrs G's birthday, an afternoon out of the office go-karting, a free night out on the company, and a very exciting driving day planned for tomorrow, but work has been... stressful, and it's good that it is now Friday night and I have a glass of wine and no work for two whole days.

Driving home this evening I thought of some things I could talk about. But I'll spread them out over a few posts so as to keep things on one topic. But so that I remember, here are things which I might (or might not) discuss in the coming few weeks:

Fast cars (driving day tomorrow!), how I love them, but how ultimately pointless they are
R.E.M. being great, especially live
Annoyingly slow computers (and incosistent)
Work Stress - good thing, up to a point, then very very frustrating
XHTML 1.1 and CSS. These are Very Good Things

But now I'm off to finish my wine, play on the wii, and get an early night. Did I mention I'm going to a race track to drive a Ferrari, Porsche, Subaru and Lotus tomorrow?

Happy Birthday, Mrs G!

So today is Mrs G's birthday. She had the day off work, and mooched around Reading. I had to go to work, and had another somewhat unproductive and slightly disillusioning day.

But this evening we went out for to the Jasmine Peking in Marlow, and had a rather tasty Chinese. We were sat next to a bit of an annoying family, who spent the first twenty minutes of the meal discussing loudly how great their new Mini Cooper is. Mneh, I could have had one of those, but I chose not to :)

I will get round to posting some photos soon, and try to justify the "picturesmith" part of the title. It won't be tomorrow though, as tomorrow we are having a departmental day/evening out, as a prize for being ace. The majority of the great work the team did was done before I joined the company, and all day long all I hear is how sh*te the current code base is, but for some reason we still won the prize for Best Team in this year's Staff Conference thing. So we're having the afternoon off and we're going Go-Karting, then out for a meal and drinks in a hotel. Nice.

Then at the weekend I'm going on a father/son bonding driving day. Ferraris, Porsches, Subarus and Lotuses (Loti?). That' s my kind of family bonding. Will check back at the weekend with some of my photos, and news of the various events.

Wow this is an exciting blog so far. I wonder if anyone is reading? Soon I might add some geeky .NET and Design Pattern ponderings, and see if that makes me popular.

Ooh. This is new.

Well here I am. After two years of thinking that I should have a blog, here it is. Finally.

Events that have happened in the last 2 years which I would have been great topics for blogging:

• Got engaged
• Planned a wedding
• My sister had a baby
• Got married
• Crashed my car
• Changed jobs

But I missed all those events, so here's hoping for some more interesting things to happen in the next few months...

I hope to use this blog to get some of my photos on the web, post some comments about them, and to make some interesting observations and comments about life in general, married life, life in the IT department of a large multinational company, and life behind a camera.