Christmas Presents and DRM

You want to know what I got for Christmas? I'd say you've got 3 guesses, but we'd be here all day, so I'm going to let you off this time. I got an iPod Nano! Cute, huh? And RED!

While I think it's well known I'm no Apple fanboi, I'm going to go right ahead and tell you that Apple have the design on this little piece just right. It's TINY! I think it's a sliver larger than a Shuffle, and since it's all aluminium, it feels really nice. It's got a total of 3 buttons on it, because it's a touch screen device, which control the volume and lock the screen. What I like about the way the lock works is that I don't have to unlock it to turn up the volume - I think you'd have to really be trying to "accidentally" knock either of the volume buttons for this to be a problem! Another thing I like about it is that I've got 16Gb storage on it - and since my own music collection is a grand total of 10.6Gb, I can get it all on there! Well, that's 10.6Gb of actual ripped music. I've got quite a lot of CD's as yet unripped. This does, however, include my entire collection of purchased-online-and-subsequently-downloaded music, too.

And now we get to the point. Music downloads. Last century Andrew worked for a company called The Sale People, who's function was to provide music CDs for people wanting to have a Sale. Yep - the "overstocks" prevalent at this time of year are actually provided by other companies who store up everyone else's overstocks and hawk them out round various better known companies when needed. It's almost like learning Sandy Claws doesn't really exist! The point is that one of the directors of the company, a nice, if slightly weird bloke called David, had a vision. He was convinced that music sales would go online - people would stop going to record stores, and they'd buy it all from the interwebz. You've got to remember that this was mid 90's, when the interwebz was a shadow of it's current incarnation. I did what any music-loving person would do, and protested (vigorously, if I remember rightly)  that I'd NEVER be buying my music from a faceless entity. I wanted to experience that joys of flicking through the racks of CDs in a shop!

We all know exactly how right I was! I did resist, but Amazon and Play taught me the error of my ways, and for years now, I've barely looked in the windows of HMV as I go past. I have, as you know, taken quite some time to get into buying and downloading my tunes. I suspect this is, in part, due to the amount of scare-mongering going on about DRM, and how difficult it is to get it to play on any equipment apart from the first device for which you purchased it. You can all imagine how tricky that would be, not least because I haven't the first clue where my first MP3 player may have ended up. It's possible it's still in the house, but there's an equal likelihood that it's been thrown in the bin by now.

I know people still go on about how the music companies are total bastards, but gradually, glacially it seems, they have at least been getting the music on the internet so that it can actually be purchased should anyone want so to do. Yes, it's been bloody slow, although when you think about how long it takes any government to respond to ANYTHING happening on the internet, in an appropriate manner, it's actually pretty swift! The point is that I can go online and get music for my new device. I've been quite enchanted by the ability to purchase an album and have it immediately! I don't know if there have been any artificial "regional" differences - if there are, they've not come to my attention. Oh, yes, I've found it tricky to get hold of Japanese tracks. Largely, though, I've found little I can't get as either a download or on an actual CD.

So what of video? Well isn't that a bloody mess? Not long ago you could get onto Youtube and watch a chunk of video. There's even a section where you can watch, for free, and legitimately, as far as I can work out, some very old, and rather pants, films. All the way through. Nowadays it's impossible to get a hunk of video which isn't banned in one country or another. Here we are, the world shrinking faster than any government can cope with, people communicating with other people all over the globe (and often without the first clue as to where the person may be). Then one person will say, "Hey, take a look at this vid!", and the site you link to will tell you that because you're in another country, you can't watch that video. It's well time that video was able to be available to all - and I don't mean free of charge. I have no beef with paying for content - I just need to be able to GET it. The USA has Netflix, a service which allows for the watching of various series of programs, some for payment, some for free. The only problem is that, due, apparently, to "licensing" issues, you can't sign up for this if you don't have a North American address (apparently you CAN get it if you're in Canada) for your credit card.

And let's not get me started on ebooks! I find it absolutely perplexing, in this day and age, when publishing relies on having an electronic copy of whatever you're publishing in order to get it printed, that I am unable to get hold of an ebook copy of EVERYTHING available as a book. And again, I'm not suggesting that it be available for free. I'm convinced, as should you all be, that an ebook should NEVER, however, cost more than a printed copy.

You know, I worry about the future of the internet. I don't worry about people wanting to charge for stuff - I worry that there are a number of people who are trying to make the world stop shrinking and keep us from sharing, with our Worldwide cousins, those links which usefully illustrate our point.

Nothing Like the Queen's Speech!

You know, I have these plans. These grandiose dreams. I dream a better world, a world in which I'll actually start my Christmas letter in reasonable time, and you'll get a chance to look at it before the festivities start in earnest. Until that utopian day arrives, you'll all be reading this over New Year Celebrations, and I'll be scrabbling round to write it the week before Christmas.

Of course that does mean that the latest possible news can be yours! Imagine if I'd started this at the end of November, as was the plan. You'd all be missing out on the most exciting of news of all! Allow me to explain.

You know I can never actually remember what's gone on in the year. So I usually tell you all about my holidays with the girls – and let's face it, that's the most exciting part of the year. It sticks in the mind. This year, however, was a little different. I got a boyfriend! Now it's not that I've not been trying to get a boyfriend or anything like that. I'm a woman, I have needs! I need someone to help with certain DIY tasks round the house... Well, just before the summer holidays, I managed to acquire a boyfriend. So that's a pretty big part of the year!

Another big part, although not good, was that my Dad died in June. Exactly, Charlotte pointed out to me, a year to the day after Michael Jackson died. We had a fantastic funeral at the crematorium in Aldershot, to which loads of people came. Then there was a rather good do back at Mums place.

And just before the holiday (I will bore you with that, just wait a bit), I decided that it was probably time to move on, and find a place of my own to live in. After all, the big house is a pig to heat, and it's way too much for me on my own with the girls. I started looking at houses locally, thinking to get the big house on the market after the holiday and see what we could get. I got a couple of valuations, and chose the one which seemed the most realistic, and it went on the market. We had a reasonable offer within 2 weeks, and I started looking in earnest for something for myself. And found it! Compromises, always compromises! I found a gorgeous little Victorian semi – in Peabody road. Not as far from the abattoir as I'd like, but with its own off road parking, and a really nice garden. And the best part? All three of us liked it. We'd been to see 3 places the evening before, and each one had been liked by one of us, but not the other two. By the time we left the place in Peabody, the girls were begging me to buy it for them! It does have one bedroom in the basement, which may be a bit of an issue, but Lizzy was enchanted, and bagsied it for herself!

“So why aren't you there?” I hear you cry!! Well, we ended up losing our buyer just a week after they'd bugged us to move early. I'd agreed to move out at the end of October – not an arbitrary date, you understand, but half term, in which much could be accomplished! But they lost their buyers, so we ended up back on the market, our sellers also – the whole chain collapsed like a house of cards in a gentle breeze! Obviously we went back onto the market, and we had loads of people come to see the place. I even got a call from the agents telling me that one couple liked the place so much they'd put their place on the market! Oh the charming naïveté! In the end, we had 3 couples wanting to buy our house – as soon as they'd managed to sell their own. I confess – I did get a little depressed by this, and after languishing on the market for quite some time, I decided that I'd take the house off the market and try again in January. After all, it was getting close to Christmas, and I was bored trying to accommodate all the carpet treaders. And that's the big news. On Friday, after a week of being pestered, I accepted an offer on the house. So there you go – any kind of organisational skills would have robbed you of that nugget of news, and you'd all be sobbing bitter tears into your Champagne, wracked with sadness at my plight, unaware that I'm not entirely unhappy!

So all this house stuff has somewhat occupied my mind since August, leaving less vivid memories of the holiday. We did, as usual, go camping. We went back over to the West coast of France, camping at Le Truc Vert, which, as you know from previous years, is scant 300 yards from the beach. We actually got our electricity this year, although our cable wasn't quite long enough to stretch from the electricity point into the tent. Luckily I'd taken with us a VERY long 4-gang trailing socket, so I plugged that into the cable and wrapped it up in a plastic bag. And hoped for no rain! Sadly that hope didn't come true, and we had what has to have been the coldest, wettest trip to that campsite. Good job I said “campsite”, not “ever”, because I suddenly remembered the trip up to the mountains 3 years before, where the temperatures got down to 1 degree in the campsite overnight! Despite the cold and the wet (and the shameful 3 trips to McDonalds) we had a brilliant time. There was still enough warmth to allow a certain amount of depastification of legs on the beach!

It was even better than usual, because we took Emma's friend Neisha, who's a lovely girl. She is, however, afflicted with a somewhat dangerous allergy – nuts! So we had a rather scary afternoon one day, having bought a bunch of food from the Vietnamese vendor at the market, only to find that the chicken wings (you were expecting me to say chicken feet, admit it!) had something on them from the proscribed list (nuts/sesame/whatever), and the poor girl started swelling up like a balloon! A panicky rummage ensued, during which Emma managed to find and half unpack the epi pen, ready to stab poor Neisha, only to be told that all we need to do was locate the anti-allergy pills. It was a subdued bunch of girls who found their way down to the acceuil to find out where the nearest hospital was, just in case! Thankfully there were no other incidents of that kind!

I met, and made friends with a couple of Germans – Sina and Roman. They invited us to play Kniffle (the German version of Yahtzee) with them, and taught me how to play. The older girls, Neisha and Emma, would go to the beach in the evenings with the rest of the young folks, where fires are lit and much multi-lingual chatting ensues. In fact, we all decided we'd go to the beach on the last evening, and roast marshmallows. We invited Sina and Roman, and told Roman that as a man, we were sort of expecting him to help out with the fire. We collected a very large bag of pine cones (there's a surprising amount of natural fire starter in the campsite!) and set off to the beach, having been assured by Roman that he had the lighting of our proposed fire well in hand! Oh boy, did he have it in hand. He'd brought a jar of petrol with him! Still, no trouble getting the fire to light.

I was sad that we hadn't been able to persuade Zoe and Christoph to join us at the site, because they're such good company. However, I was really pleased when Zoe contacted me by email at the end of Summer to say that they weren't sure what they were going to do with their October holiday! Well, I couldn't resist the opportunity to have them stay with me – after all, when we move out of the big house it's going to be way more difficult to squeeze in an extra 5 people. As it happens, you can get 8 people into the big house with delightful ease! I figured that I didn't have to move out until the end of October, and so I'd use Zoe and Christoph to help me pack/discard junk. As you know that all fell through, so we ended up just having a really good week with the family instead. One of the days I sent them off down to Portsmouth to the Historic Dockyard, on a trip of education and history, only to have them arrive home telling me off for not mentioning that there's a brilliant shopping centre RIGHT NEXT TO the dockyard!! We had a lovely day in Farnham, where Zoe and I must have visited every single charity shop in town! We had a really nice lunch in a pub which actively encouraged us to bring Emily-the-dog in with us. And then we walked up to the top of town and visited the Castle! I can't believe I've lived in this area for the last 40 years and that's the first time I've been to the castle in Farnham.

I was sort of sorry that our holiday took us out of Farnborough for the air show week. I know I actually like to be not-here for that time usually, but the Vulcan bomber was in the skies during the show, and I was thrilled to have managed to catch sight of it on one of the practice days before we left. In fact, on mentioning to Roman that I'd seen this plane, he opened up a lot, telling me that he was really into flying and planes, and had just started learning to fly. I was surprised that he knew nothing of Farnborough Air Show!

So, allow me to take this opportunity to hope that you had a fabulous Christmas, and wish you the very best of New Years! Who knows, maybe next year you’ll get your letter before Christmas!

Love - Sian and the Girls!

Can One Install Windows 7 from a USB stick?

I wanted to make a rambling post about how I'd done this, but I'm actually trying to provide some instruction here, so I'll just go into what I did.

I googled it. The first thing I did when I realised how difficult it was going to be to get my netbook booting from an external DVD drive was to shove "install windows 7 from usb" into google search, and I got back a handful of useful sites. In fact, the first 4 links are incredible. But complicated. Needlessly so, I worked out.

There's a neat little tool to download, the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool, which would be great, except that it refused to accept my Win7 ISO as a proper ISO. Of course I'm not longer able to download a copy of the Beta file, either, so I gave up on that route.

Many of the links were talking about using diskpart, but this doesn't work on XP, which doesn't list as real hard drives the USB sticks you have in the machine.

So, with many thanks to the results I was able to find, here's what I actually did.

You will need:

1. USB stick - at least 4Gb has been recommended, so I went with that

2. Windows 7 disk / ISO / whatever. You'll need to extract the ISO, if that's what you have.

3. A pc running whatever version of windows with which you feel comfortable, which also has a DVD drive.

You need to:

1. Format the USB stick. Open up my computer, right-click on the USB stick (and make a note of the drive letter), and choose format. It didn't matter that I chose to quick format. I just wanted to make sure it was clear before I started.

2. You need to convert this USB stick to NTFS format. Start, Run, CMD. When you have a command prompt, you can use the command

convert e: /FS:NTFS

I've assumed that your USB stick is the E: drive. This was successful for me, so I continued. Don't exit the command prompt just yet.

3. Put the Windows 7 DVD into the drive, but don't let it run. Since you're still at the command prompt, navigate to the DVD. I'm assuming your DVD is in the D: drive. At the command prompt, type

d:

then type

cd boot

bootsect /nt60 e:

replacing e: with the drive letter of your USB stick.

At this point you can exit the command prompt and finish off in XP. Open up an explorer window, and copy the contents of the DVD to the USB stick.

Voila! Ready to boot USB stick with Windows 7 on it.

I wonder if this works with XP.