I’ve still got a few more things to do, including changing the actual design element of it, and I will be adding things like reverse animations, AJAX refreshes combined with reverse transitions, and a lot better WP integration. But I’m hungry and tired at the moment, so it will have to wait. So, stay tuned!

People who know me know that I am an advocate of new standards, and use HTML5 and CSS3 on too many things, to the extent that I used to end up losing at least 95% of the browser market in the process. However, recently, that has become less of an attractive option, because the intended audience isn’t just a bunch of likeminded people, who also use WebKit (namely Safari/MobileSafari, as even Chrome gets left behind) to browse the website.

The problem is that CSS3, for example, has only increased my workload when designing. I know that someone will probably try the argument that the standards will, in time, mean that the browsers will all support the specification, and the need for vendor prefixes, fallbacks for compatibility and otherwise spending time debugging for differences between browser implementation will soon disappear. However, with talk of no final spec being introduced until 2020, this is becoming less like it’s a problem that is going to be solved in any time in the near future.

If the current draft specification was also implemented universally across newer browsers, then there would be no worry for me, when using CSS3. However, the problems arise in the way that each individual browser (and I mean browser, because, as with the differences between WebKit engine versions implemented within Chrome and Safari) render the separate sprites. This is especially true in the use of transitions in CSS3, with some properties being animated, others not. Of course, jQuery is always on-hand with $.animate() to help out. On the other hand, iOS, which is increasingly becoming a platform that you cannot simply ignore (and this extends to the entire mobile internet), does not use hardware acceleration on jQuery animations, so the way that it animates the sprites mean that the UX is of a drastically lower quality than on the equivalent desktop. On top of that, what’s logical on one browser and logical to the human being is then unable to be translated across the browsers, because the way that certain important parts of logic are interpreted differently.

My point is that, whilst I understand that it is important to have vendor prefixes for draft specifications, and I am not, in any way, pushing for the removal of these, it is important that vendors understand the need for universal implementations of certain properties, that are going to emerge in newer parts of the internet. Animation needs to move away from proprietary platforms. The only way to do this, is by implementing universal solutions, and move towards a standards based web. I suppose that’s what HTML5 and CSS3 are trying to achieve but the roadmap for implementing these is much too slow. I suppose these differences will always be there. However, with the differences that were there before (certain taboo events (*cough*window.onresize()*cough) and quirks), this is simply increasing our workload. It’s becoming counter-intuitive.

©Steve Bell

The turnaround in the UK economy, from Q2 growth of 1.2% to 0.5% contraction in Q4 for the UK’s GDP, is serving Labour with vital ammunition and the Conservatives have to complain that they inherited the mess, as their options are thinning after the release of every statistic. However, is it fair to suggest that this was any sort of unexpected outcome, considering the counter-intuitive measures that have been put in place?

I say – no. There has been talk of a double-dip recession for months now, and it seems more co-incidental, rather than causal, that the first quarter of decline comes after the end of the spell of Winter weather. Therefore, when the ONS suggest that GDP growth would have been flat, even if the Winter weather did not affect the figure, the idea of a double-dip recession is made even more likely. Not only are people facing less disposable every day, due to higher taxes, and higher inflation (which Mervyn King suggested was due to higher import and energy prices, as well as higher prices) that could rise as high as 5% in the next few months, but the recent VAT rise only helps to weaken the already ‘choppy’ recovery.

It is important that we do, however, control the debt, but the debt reduction plan that the current coalition government has implemented is on the road to simply tipping the country back into recession. Let’s look at this another way. If the debt reduction plan proposed by Labour had been used, growth for 2011 could have exceeded 3%. This, I agree, would maybe had been unsustainable in the long term, but the inevitable spending cuts would have been over a longer period of time, and later, so that the recovery was not hindered. However, because the debt reduction plan the current government has implemented seems better fitting for a country with healthy growth and what should have been implemented by Labour and Gordon Brown during the boom years, the country’s growth forecast was reduced to just 1.9%.

If you look at this figure with the knowledge that the cuts are only going to get worse, as well as the student fees rise and the removal of EMA for students, it is true to say that people in this country are getting short changed, by a government that is short-sighted and out of touch. With Ed Balls in the position of shadow chancellor, at least we can look forward to continued pressure from Labour, that simply wasn’t available when Alan Johnson was in the shadow cabinet. If anything basic economic knowledge may finally enter the centre of the House of Commons, which seems to have retreated to the sidelines last Summer. In the meantime, do enjoy Steve Bell’s work, which is, as always, excellent.

On the other hand, you could argue that a lot of the really important stuff, relevant to me, has happened in the last couple of weeks or so. EMA was ‘replaced’ (a by-word, it seems, for ‘abolished’) by what is proving to be an extremely out-of-touch coalition government, in this country. Of course, there were the resignations of both Alan Johnson, who resigned yesterday, for personal reasons, and Andy Coulson, who resigned today amidst the slightly less-recent allegations of phone hacking, whilst he was editor at the News of the World.

However, what I’d like to talk about is EMA, and how that actually will affect us. Alas, there is not enough time, since it is 1:14 in the morning, as I write this sentence, and I have a concert tomorrow. At least it will give me something to do during the break. So this is a ‘teaser’ post, if you will, of what is to come, and whilst it isn’t quite as sexy as the average stuff you find on the internet, it’s still something I hold to be important to me. If even one person hears my view, I suppose it makes the post worth it. If anything, this post is just to say that I haven’t abandoned you… yet.

I have to say that I absolutely love the WNDR3700 from Netgear. I’ve never had an easier-to-hack router in my life, and it’s especially useful when it’s someone else’s, so there are no repercussions. Whilst I’m never going to divulge why that’s important, except to the few who already know, I’m going to say this – if you using phishing to get someone’s logins and passwords for a certain service don’t do the following:

You can infer from that what you will, but put the title, the preceding block of text and hints, and you should arrive to a pretty solid conclusion, that I have problems if that’s the kind of thing that happens at 2AM, when you’re with me. And, by the way, if you do know who this is referring to, then let’s not advertise that fact. If you’re the referee, however, I challenge you to post anything to the contrary of what is written above, since I am happy to provide a wealth of logs emanating from your router as I write. One in particular is funny, where you seem to send your web history periodically to AFCAS.

It’s cold, no longer snowy (although it is in Scotland, although all they seem to do is moan perpetually) and I have to leave the country for university. Today, if you live in the UK, you will have seen the Tories follow through on their election pledge to ‘ruin our lives’ and the Liberal Democrats to show yet another reason why they should never, ever be allowed into power again, since they crippled spinelessly by allowing the tuition fees to be increased, from anywhere between £6000-£9000. Maybe the idea that Liberal Democrats can put anything in their election manifesto because they never get elected should be reconsidered. As Ed Miliband put it, it is better to under-promise and over-perform, rather than to over-promise and not be able to follow through on those pledges. I think the 21 vote majority, which is a quarter-majority of what it should have been, due to some Liberal Democrats abstaining and voting against the bill (I applaud you for upholding your duty to the country and your constituents), was announced with apt reaction from the Labour opposition, who shouted “Shame on you”. To be quite honest, the cartoon from Steve Bell pretty much sums up the situation here.

Since I have no time for an essay at the moment, I won’t bore you with trying to argue my case, as if it wasn’t already very, very obvious. All I can try to convey is just how sad-a-day this is for Britain and the trust that we give the politicians. They say that the vote will be the end of it and that, come election time, everyone will have forgotten about it. Somehow, I have profound doubts that that will be the case.

It’s snowing! Woooo! Time for (weirdly) coloured jumpers, lovely scarves, 40 deg. C houses and hot chocolate; yes folks, it’s time for Winter!

That, above, is a quote from a girl who is probably a little too happy that it’s Winter. I would have agreed, had it not been that every other bit of the country seemed to get 20-40cm of snow, whereas we struggled to get more than 2cm. Still, if it hadn’t been clear today, I might not have got my latest delivery. Thank you, by the way, UPS man.

It’s been a whole month (and a bit) since I last posted, but I do have good reason. A ton of things have happened since I last posted, so I will give a quick rundown, because I’ve got to get back to the reason why I wasn’t posting and finish it.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a few ideas and a couple of websites. Of course, they were nothing too major, but the people I’ve been working with are really not people that I want to be letting down, so I’ve had to put all my resources and time that I had available (ok, not all) into making the solutions as perfect as possible. It’s a huge shame that I can’t share any code snippets with you, or the websites themselves, because they’re not due to go online for another year. On the other hand, I hear funding is quite weak, so I’m inclined to suggest that there may just be a turn around in whether or not I can share anything. I’ve been working collaboratively, so don’t worry: the works are not of a skinny (now) 16 year old sitting behind his desk, coding away on his slightly yellow-tinged keyboard.

As anyone who knows me well enough will have noticed, I am now 16. So I can have sex legally, although I can’t watch porn (?) and I can drink in some convoluted way, which involves my parents. Now, I don’t drink but that rule is only there to annoy 16 year old drunkards-to-be since what parents are going to allow their child to drink at 16? Either way, I digress. For my birthday, I got what I had made sure I ‘hinted’ (annoyed them so much, they had to buy it to shut me up) to them I wanted. Of course, this was a new MacBook Pro 15″, with an i7. I didn’t really need a desktop replacement (I already have a laptop (17″) and a few desktops, so I didn’t need anything remarkably powerful).

The reason, however, that I’ve been REALLY busy has been a new CMS system I’m creating with a friend, as well as the hunt for the ultimate rapid compression system (herein RCS) for use on a website. If you’re delivering fonts, for example, the page load times are pretty much exponentially increased. However, if you deliver them, then execute a decompression mechanism, the load times are massively decreased, since most processors can handle a few kilobytes of decompression fairly easily and quickly. This is why the RCS doesn’t necessarily have to be the best compression mechanism, in terms of size ratio, but MUST have the fastest mechanism to decompress client side. This, however, is proving harder than I thought, since the best course of action seems to be for me to write my own. I’m pretty limited in what I can use, however, so it’s not gonna be something quick.

The other thing I’ve been up to is readying my (former) former design studio for a relaunch. You’ve probably never heard of it and, trust me, that’s a good thing. But we did have a brief stint of success a couple of years ago, but I gave it up in pursuit of ‘the perfect sleep’. Having found the said sleep, I have again begun to work as part of the studio, and I’m working with a few close friends to rebrand it. The page at the moment (which is here) just says ‘Coming soon – December 2010′ but, trust me, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. I’m putting an ETA at around 24/12/10, but don’t rely on that, because the project we’re doing is pretty much a no-profit motive, but does mean that we’ll be helping a huge number of individuals and businesses get on the internet, with good, standards-based, future ready websites, for pretty much nothing, except around £2 a year, which they pay directly to a domain host of their own choosing. So if you’re a smallish business or individual who would be interested, don’t hesitate to contact me on here, via Twitter, or the contact form, which should be up in a couple of days. I should add, that website is no indication of what’s to come for the design studio. And, in case you’re wondering, those are embedded fonts and use the @font-face property to work properly, although they take a long time to load for obvious purposes. Not the best example of load-time optimisation, in my opinion, but I didn’t design it.

I’ll just finish by saying that, because I’m busy with the work mentioned before, and, of course, the tests that go with being any normal 16 year old, as well as Christmas vacation, which is supposed to be to Singapore this year (weather permitting), don’t expect too much for a while. The next time you see it, it will probably be implemented as part of the wider theming of the studio. On the other hand, the entire website is literally a blank canvas for me, so I will be sure to consider every option, including leaving my blog on here. It’s also worth mentioning that you should keep a keen eye on PixelFrag, who is coming up with some really, really fantastic stuff. He is one of the cleverer people on the internet, even though he will feverently deny it. He’s going to release his remote administration tool soon, I would think, but make sure you keep a look out for the tutorials he’s pushing, like the one he wrote recently. If anyone is going to do something worth buying, it will be him.

Essentially, this week has been quite an important week for Microsoft, in one main way – PDC10. This, of course, is the Professional Developers Conference 2010. The main focus of the sessions this year were on Windows Phone 7, as you can imagine, as this is the market which Microsoft really hope to (need to) make proper headway in, where both Google and Apple have been able to own the market. In terms of devices, I’m pretty sure they’ve cracked the problems of fragmentation, by providing stringent hardware requirements and a much more closed base OS, in that third-party crapware is stopped from causing harm to the performance of the OS. Steve Ballmer has finally realised, unlike many mobile phone manufacturers, that lag really, really sucks.

The other main thing unveiled at PDC was the focus on Windows Azure. Windows Azure, in case you didn’t already know (how could you not?!) is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and is really a fantastic piece of work. I’ve used it for a while now, and the new features unveiled make it easier and cheaper for migrate to cloud computing. New features include VM features, which mean that Windows Server 2008 R2 instances will run in the cloud, so, coupled with RDP instances to Windows Azure, developers will not have to rewrite apps to run in the cloud. The new VM features are called Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role and Server Application Virtualisation. Another feature is the Windows Azure Marketplace, which is simply a market place for developers to sell apps to run in the cloud. The previously code-named ‘Dallas’ makes an appearance as the data market place, now called ‘DataMarket’. The final feature is smaller pricing, which really eases the financial risk of trying a migration to the cloud out. Microsoft are to offer the Extra Small Windows Azure Instance, which is 5 cents per hour.

I’m sorry for the very small post, but the hackathon is around 10 hours long, and I’m 3 hours into it. For all intensive purposes, to you and my Twitter account, this is good night, since I really need to get back and code. At the moment, I’m exploiting my own code, which is proving difficult since it’s badly written. I’ll go ahead and say that’s a security feature, instead of my habits.

I think the idea of topical posts has been lost entirely in my blogging, which most will argue is a serious failure on my behalf. On the other hand, the little digressions and the meld of topics can be seen as a quick brief on everything that has been going on, coupled with little anecdotes of unnecessary information. And, yes; that is my (weak) justification for such posts.

Still, the reasons are generally due to the vast (at least in terms of the topics I choose to talk about) differences in time I leave between my posts, and this post is no exception (as you may have guessed) to either of the aforementioned trends. I’m sorry for not posting for so long, but it has been a hectic couple of weeks. I’ve had tests (again) and I’ve been thoroughly exhausted by that and other social gatherings.

On top of that, spurred by the fantastic nature of a good friend’s work (who still refuses to accept that he is essentially a genius) and some recent delving into the adventures of Robert Langdon in Dan Brown’s books (it’s a re-read, don’t worry), as well as some very interesting lectures about intrusion detection systems (IDS), if ever there were any, I’ve decided to do some read-ups on cryptography. It’s been a long time since I’ve really explored this topic, and there was a time when I had a passion for being able to break certain cryptosystems, due to the way that I had explored computers in the firstly place. In recent years, however, I’ve focused more on hardcore reverse engineering of programs, as opposed to specifically breaking cryptosystems. As such, my abilities have wavered somewhat and I don’t think that I’m even up to the standard of understanding what I knew 2 years ago. In a week’s time, I shall:

• Know everything I knew 2 years ago about cryptography
• Set a new life goal, no doubt, of creating my own cryptosystem.

I think you’ll agree when I say that the above goals are modest but fair, and achievable within the week ahead.

Of course, if this post was simply one topic, it wouldn’t be a trademark post. As such, I feel the need to digress from the subject above, and talk about the happenings since I last posted. Or most of them, anyway. Firstly, and most notably, when I post this, the Iraq WikiLeaks story is developing. Wikileaks yesterday leaked the largest number of US documents ever. 391,832 reports:

At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports (‘The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout. The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 ‘civilians’; 23,984 ‘enemy’ (those labelled as insurgents); 15,196 ‘host nation’ (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 ‘friendly’ (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths. That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the ‘Afghan War Diaries’, previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.

The above is taken from this site. Hillary Clinton, as expected, did criticise the leaks:

I do have a strong opinion that we should condemn in the most clear terms the disclosure of any classified information by individuals and or organisations which puts the lives of United States and partner service members and civilians at risk.

I mean, did she really have any other choice? But, coupled with the 90,000 documents leaked regarding the Afghan war, from earlier this year, WikiLeaks will have to navigate through some rough waters, so grab a look at them whilst you can. As said in the quotes, there are some really revealing pieces of information, and the torture leaks only add to the problems. The real political problems will come if any of the leaks are of torture problems or civilian deaths from over the last year, when Obama was in power. He pledged an end to that sort of violence, so this could really stir up the political storm that the Democrats really do not want, especially with the mid term elections looming. It would also explain why Hilary Clinton was harbouring fear that these really were an issue for national security.

The next main story is about the release of Windows Phone 7. The first devices began to ship, as did the HP Slate 500, on a totally different note. However, the prototype demonstrations of the Slate were disappointing to say the least, and seriously weren’t competitors to anything like the iPad. Maybe that could change if UICentric’s push to include the Metro UI is actually accepted, since that did seem much more user-friendly. Windows 7 is not made for tablets, however, especially if you get used to something like the iPad. Windows Phone 7, on the other hand, is a very, very serious mobile phone OS. Microsoft have had a string of failures in the mobile industry, especially when you look at things like Kin and, even earlier, the Windows Mobile Series. The reasons for this were many, including the way in which the operating system worked with conventional desktop-orientated design, as well as another important factor, fragmentation, which is where devices have differing hardware capabilities and specifications, so the operating system’s experience is, by no means, at all universal.

Whilst Apple’s closed hardware system has both its advantages and disadvantages, the fact that Apple are able to control it means that the quality is also controlled. Apple ultimately set the quality of their product, and the components in their products. They have a standard and keep to it. As a result, a reputation for this quality is kept up and that’s why they can afford to have lapses in quality (antennagate) and yet still manage to keep selling so much. It also enhances the experience as a whole, because there’s nothing quite so unappealing if you have a super expensive new phone, and the OS runs sluggishly on it.

Microsoft have begun to add some quality control. They have added minimum standards and specifications that manufacturers must meet, before they can actually be distributed and installed with the Windows Phone 7 ROM. Additionally, the 3rd party crapware is going to be limited to not messing with the OS itself, so the experience is not hampered by over-eager, egotistical OEMs. I don’t really need to mention that the UI has been fixed, because you have to have been living in a cave not to have seen it. It’s beautiful and useable, and it takes a typographic interface, as opposed to a normal, graphics complemented by text interface. It’s a new way of thinking, but it does work. Do check them out, and I will be sure to get my hands on a HTC HD7 at some point, because that is definitely one phone I am looking to get. They also followed a less successful trend of leaving basic necessities out of the OS, like copy and paste, for example, and syncing with Mac OS X and iTunes. However, the latter problem has been solved partly, and a beta of Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac is due on October 24th. So I’m 1 day off.

This all came, of course, on the same(ish) time period that Windows 7 was given its first birthday, along with the truly fantastic news that around 93% of new PCs ship with Windows 7, and also that 240 million licences have been sold since the launch a year ago.

The final yet lengthy segment that I’ll talk about is the ‘Back to the Mac’ event Apple held on Wednesday. The idea of this event was literally take us back to the Mac. After a brief introduction from Steve Jobs, he handed over to Tim Cook to go over the state of the Mac, in terms of finances and market development. Here’s a rundown of the main stats:

• The Mac made up 33% of Apple’s revenue last year, which equalled $22bn.
• Here’s an anecdote; if there was a company called ‘The Mac Company’, as a standalone company, it would be #110 on the Fortune 500.
• That’s due to 50m users of Macs worldwide, and that’s a 3-fold increase on what they were achieving 5 years ago, partly due to the 13.7m Macs sold in 2010.
• The Mac grew 2.5x last quarter, and has outgrown the market for 18 quarters in a row!
• The Mac share in retail was 20.7%.
• And, to cater for those users, there are 600,000 registered Mac Developers, and this is increasing by 30,000 each month.
• Big names, such as Valve and Microsoft are taking these opportunities to develop too.
• Apple stores saw 75m people walk through their doors, and 2.5m Macs were sold here. 50% of those were new to the Mac, which proves the quality of Apple’s sales team and Apple PR.

After Tim Cook left, Steve Jobs then introduced the next segment – iLife ’11 which included a huge number of improvements; They started with iPhoto, which Phil Schiller demonstrated:

• New full screen modes, which resemble the wooden shelf that we see on the iPad, as well as including a full screen map for places.
• There are some new slideshow themes.
• Albums like the iPad, and there is also Flickr integration for albums.
• Easier emailing of photos, due to iPhoto handling multiple selected photos and sorting them for you, all within iPhoto.
• Facebook integration, to quickly share photos and albums, as well as see any responses to them in iPhoto.
• Brand new letterpressed cards and massive improvements in the quality of books.

When Phil got going, iMovie ’11 was next in line:

• Audio editing is now easier than ever, and one-click effects are available for both the video and audio.
• The face/people recognition technology from iPhoto has been used in iMovie.
• FANTASTIC movie trailers, which are really easy to make, using recognition technology, with a symphony orchestra to accompany you.
• Brand new themes for movies.

The next aspect of iLife that was explored was GarageBand ’11.

• Flex Time, which allows people to edit the length of certain sounds and ‘flex’ the music they play.
• Groove matching, which allows a user to set a base beat (groove) and GarageBand will then match the other tracks to it – an epic addition for newbie bands.
• Brand new effects and amps.
• Piano and guitar lessons, with ‘How did I play?’ feedback. This will, no doubt, be the beginning of Guitar/Piano hero on Mac.

iLife ’11 will be free with every new Mac, or a $49 upgrade for existing owners.

The next topic that was covered was FaceTime. In short, they added support for FaceTime on the Mac, so that people can use it to FaceTime with iPhone 4/iPod touch owners, since 19 million FaceTime devices have been sold in the first 4 months of their production. There’s a beta available on their website http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/. However, the entrée of the event was introduced here – Mac OS X Lion.

This highlighted the dynamic of the event, as the idea of Lion was to take many of the things that Apple had learnt from their development of iOS, from the iPad especially, and bring those good elements back to the Mac. As such, the following were highlighted:

• Multi-touch gestures
• App store
• App home screens
• Full screen apps
• Auto save
• Apps resume when launched.

I should also mention that Steve Jobs was very specific that he would be against a vertical design for a touch screen, and that the only way to go was either with the iPad, or use the Magic Mouse and Trackpad to control gestures. They demonstrated this very well, with many of the gestures we have become accustomed to on iOS being displayed, and the fairly short set of gestures available for the mouse at the moment seemed to be replaced with an extensive set of gestures capable of controlling the OS well.

Apple also unveiled a new Mac App Store, which will open in 90 days, for Snow Leopard users, but which has the same stringent guidelines as iOS. The difference, of course, will be that third party apps will still be available. The actual guidelines are worth a read, but you’ll need to Google them to find them. They do pose restrictions that around 99% of current apps seem to break.

The home screens will be included as part of Launchpad, which will be iOS style icons for apps, across the screen, and gesture-controllable screens of apps. These then go away when an app is selected.

In addition to the above list, Mission Control was also introduced, which is a brand new way of unifying Exposé, Spaces, Dashboard and Full Screen Apps. So, using mission control, this is achieved, and gestures are utilized here too.

At the end, Apple said that Lion would be available in Summer 2011, and Steve Jobs believed that they were making good progress to meet this target.

Then, as we thought it was all over, they unveiled the familiar ‘One more thing…’ slide and introduced the super sexy new MacBook Air, by Steve Jobs going back to the ‘Back to the Mac’ diagram, and saying that they had learnt a thing or to about hardware as well. He then proceeded to say that Apple had asked themselves ‘what would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up?’.

The massive thing that you have to emphasise about this is its incredible size. It wasn’t exactly chubby in the first place, but now it tapers down to just 0.11″. The specs are really good, and it features  brand new LED display, and two display sizes, 13.3″ or 11.6″, a good resolution and higher pixel density, a full size keyboard and the glass multi-touch trackpad and also a FaceTime camera. All of this is now done with flash – there is only an SSD option, no optical drive and thus has faster, more reliable operation, as well as being smaller and lighter. The hardware innovation from the iPad really had an input on this. Additionally, it means it can have instant-on.  A brand new battery means 7 hours of usage can be gotten from it, under Apple’s new, more stringent battery tests (or 5 hours with the 11.6″ model) and an immense 30 days of standby time - the same as an iPad, on both models. Prices start from $999 for the 11.6″ or $1299 for the 13.3″ model, so it is affordable.

Please do check out more details on Apple’s website. In the meantime, I’d like to apologise profusely for boring the crap out of you for the last 2200 or so words, and I’d like to commend you for actually taking the time to read this far, as well as thank you for actually caring enough. It means a lot to me. Anyway, I’m going to go to sleep after this megapost, and catch up on any Iraq developments in the morning, since it’s around 2:15am when I post this, and I do need sleep this week and I’ve still got work to do. Before I go, however, I’d like to say that I posted, a while ago, that the coalition UK government were going to repeal the Digital Economy Act, which was passed under questionable conditions, to say the least. However, they have chosen to further extend it, by asking ISPs to log every piece of activity we do on the internet for a year, so that there is a set of databases available, so that the government can further spy on us. I think this is yet another failing on the part of the government and, coupled with its serious misjudgement in relation to the spending review, I honestly think Ed Miliband will end up being our next prime minister, come the next general election.

This was fairly silly, but it’s always good to find some Easter eggs. However, since I’m no ‘l33t h4x0r’, who still finds every imaginable avenue to open up command prompt, I did what I’m good at and looked into some reverse engineering, which actually was sourced because of a fantastically huge vulnerability in the way that TCP streams are handled when you’re using Windows Server. It may be to do with a specific configuration of GP, but I’m willing to level that it applies to more than just my school, since my group policy on Windows Servers is pretty rigid at home, yet the exploit which my friend stumbled upon, through normal usage, still works. Anyway, I dumped the payload, and I will give credit to the guy by name if he wants (just let me know). However, for now, he will be known simply as 7pixels. If this works, however, it’s a privilege escalation exploit, in essence, that we’re looking at, so we’ll see where it leads us. For now, it’s simply trying to recreate it as much as possible, and seeing exactly how this thing works, and the very code where it lies (yes, that means that I spend my weekend reverse engineering and sitting here watching a debugger, on what some of my family describe as the most pointless thing in the world, my iMac. To those people, you’re dead wrong).

Another reason why my brain essentially got blown, which is why the title is simple and to the point (I believe it encapsulates very fully what the essence of this post is), is because I saw, at school, at a gathering of physicists (called ‘Physbuzz’ (!)) a little presentation on quantum computing. It was interesting, to say the least, partly because the idea that we can have 2 values for one bit (0 and 1) at the same time seems absolutely weird to me. I don’t see how you can write software which manages to have what can only be described as multi-dimensional variables and can actually manipulate them, without physically discerning the value of the bit, but using deduction through the states of other bits, due to quantum entanglement. Seriously, it’s confusing, but I have, from this day onward, made it my life-long goal to go into quantum computing, because it is an area that I believe will cause revolution in the way that we think of computers today, although I suppose I’m in no place to make a prediction. Just making sure that we can, however, actually harness the technology properly, and make sure that the quantum computer does not accidentally become a digital computer (which could be a HUGE bottleneck in daily processes) could mean that we have a commercially viable quantum computer available. If anything, it will be useful for the guys at CERN and, as it downscales (physically) we could see general computing revolutionised. Combine that with silicon photonics, which, thankfully, is a concept that I do thoroughly understand, and we could see a new age of faster computing on our hands. One thing that did bug me, though, about this little discussion was that people were talking about how we could see our relatively simplistic methods of encryption cracked very quickly, and become obsolete very quickly, due to quantum computing data transfers. However, the important thing to remember here is that we are likely to have new technologies in place. So all these problems about encryption going and the end of the world being near as everyone’s PIN code is brute forced by a supermassive quantum computer is baloney. Seriously, we’re more likely to have Arsenal actually win the Premiership this year. Additionally, if we embrace quantum encryption, which uses entanglement and superposition to encrypt the data, we’ve already got a viable solution in place. Ok, so it may not be entirely viable yet, but it’s as viable as the technology which it comes as a part of, so I don’t see what all the fuss is about. As we get quantum computers in what will be, I believe, the near future, we will see huge advances, possible redesigns and new ways of thinking in encryption. So don’t worry – yet.

The final thing that absolutely managed put the cherry on the slightly bulging brain was that I finally got the new Twitter. I’ll tell you something, I love it. I love the iPad interface for the Twitter app, regardless of what anyone else says, and it takes a lot from there to design the web app. Personally, I think this is the way that the internet is focussing more on mobile designs and mobile app ideas in order to design what are desktop-orienteered websites. Either way, that’s a digression and is another discussion, another day. But the golden ratio is evident on smaller screens, and it has been implemented well, to say the least. Not much more to say I suppose.

I know this has been an exceptionally long post, but the stuff about quantum computing really is something that we will see come forward. This decade is likely to be the decade of the internet, social media and the cloud. The next few decades could see the emergence of new things, namely quantum computing, as we finally see a practically useable quantum computer being used for research purposes at least. I think the most advanced quantum computer today is 16qubits, as I have been explained it, although I didn’t buy the story that it doesn’t quite work since all the ‘qubits aren’t used’. Unlikely. I’m willing to accept defeat on this issue, but I want an explanation. If we see higher bits, and better ways of handling superposition, we could see huge advances in this area. That’s why my mind was blown. Don’t take it as a prediction though, since this is the first real exposure I’ve had to the topic, so I’m bound to change my opinion as I learn more. Oh, and by the way, I haven’t totally forgotten that the shadow cabinet was announced today, but I honestly didn’t think that some of Ed Miliband’s choices were right. I mean, come on. Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor? What the hell happened to Yvette Cooper? It would be helped him a lot. Still, at least I can tag this post Politechnical now =).