Windows 8. What a mess.

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That’s it. I’ve had it. It has to go.

After for the first time ever being happy with a Microsoft product, the wonderfully stable and useable Windows 7, I chanced it and played early adopter, installing Windows 8. Why do I have PC at all in my house, I can hear you ask? Well, good question, but I do like a spot of gaming, and the prospect of being able to put together a powerful gaming rig with some choice hardware always tickled my fancy. While each of us here in the household have a Mac for the more serious work, the gaming rig in my ‘man’s lair’ was a welcome distraction from the world’s worries, and the regular tinkering with the hardware was pure fun.

So, when Windows 8 came out, I had a go at it in a Microsoft shop in Houston and quite liked the new Metro surface. I installed it without any problems and was even quite surprised by the ease of the whole process, but as soon as was installed the problems began. The first surprise was the fact that the Metro GUI actually did not stay permanently on the desktop: In a multi-monitor setup I envisaged for the start screen to continuously stay on one Monitor, but no such luck. Every time a tile was clicked, the screen would disappear, revealing a bog standard Windows desktop. Apps and tiles would spontaneously disappear and reappear (I still don’t know what happened to the calendar tile), Windows 7’s Aero design was gone, but worse of all where the driver problems. Even on a machine with the latest drivers, the latest Microsoft patches, a normal core temperature and no over clocking in sight, the bloody thing would throw spontaneous blue screens of death (something that never happened on the same hardware with Windows 7). Also half of my peripherals don’t seem to be supported. It has now wrecked my current installation, so I will have to sit again for a day in front of the computer, reinstalling applications, downloading drivers, rescuing data and games from Steam and do all the things that one really shouldn’t spend a weekend on (at least according to the best girlfriend ever).

Sod you, Steve Ballmer. Sod you for luring me into believing that Microsoft products were finally out of beta when released and letting me spend another day of misery with one of your machinations.

Sometimes I wonder….

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…what a typical law abiding American citizen wants with an Assault rifle. Something like this:

 

The Bushmaster M4 can be bought perfectly legal from online stores, shops and gun fairs and than have it stored in your household. I presume you want to keep it under the bed, just in case you are being attacked by the mercenaries of the liberal tyrant running your country, intent of removing the freedoms that those (obviously highly prescient) constitutional forefathers have granted you. Whether the forefathers were mindful of the Bushmaster M4 assault rifle is debatable, but I have always wondered why you wanted to have a weapon at home that can discharge 900 rounds per minute. So if you’re a moderately good shot and there are a few hundred federal agents standing in your living room, ready to take your liberties away, you can dispense them in less time it takes to recite the allegiance to the flag.

On the other hand, if you want to protect your family from a burglar, wouldn’t a baseball bat and a mobile phone not be more appropriate? The bat comes pre-loaded, doesn’t kill the other members of your family and the dog with stray bullets and doesn’t make such a mess. The same goes of course for hunting: if you really want to eat that dear that you have been stalking, riddling it with 300 dum dum shots will not make for a good piece of venison at night. My friend Steve hunts wild boar in New Zealand, and he normally needs one shot and a knife to feed the family for a week.

So, somehow the whole ‘I need my assault rifle for the defense of my rights’ really only applies to paranoid nutters with a phallic deficiency complex who have authority issues.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Hideaway!

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Oh look, a little parcel from Japan. From somebody called Joshi. What might it be?

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Mmh. Might it be…?

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Indeed, it looks like….

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Yes indeed! It’s Matt Bianco’s new album, the mysteriously titled Hideaway. Released in Japan without any announcement to even their most loyal fans (apart from one snippet of a statement after the last gig at Ronny Scotts) back in Europe, it’s a veritable soft launch. From what would the fabled Mark and Mark (Fisher and Reilly, respectively. Or the other way around. The choice is yours.) want to hide away from? The pope? Surely not. Their critics? Naah. The taxman? This is Matt Bianco, not Bono (although they are so much preferable to that Irish git with a Mandela complex), so we are unlikely looking at a quadruple platinum seller in the UK. Single Platinum would of course be nice. Nope, I think they are most likely hiding away from the stressors of modern pop star life, the screaming fans, the limos, the never-ending plates of expensive mushroom dinners, the expensive Italian luxury hotels and, likely, Daleks. So, after years spent slaving away in their secret studio rumoured to be situated under the bunker of a non-descript government building in the capital of a non-descript European country , this top-secret album is now out, in the wild, to be listened to by their devoted fan base and used as beer mats.

So, what is it like?

It’s actually quite good. It’s absofeckinlutely enjoyable  brilliant (editing by best girlfriend ever). After popping it into the CD-player for the first time you might ask yourself what the big fuss is all about and struggle to keep the songs apart, but after the third listen you start humming and after one day you can’t get the bloody songs out of your brain. In my case, ‘Kiss the Bride’ and ‘Medusa’ are currently fighting a pitched battle for supremacy somewhere in my right cortex, with ‘Medusa’ slowly winning. As usual, the quality of the soloists is amazing (Tony Fisher’s flugel horn solo especially noteworthy), the songwriting is solid, and the entertainment value is as usual unsurpassed. ‘Kiss the Bride’, a cover of Nick the Nightfly‘s ode to marriage is beautifully arranged with Mark Reilly almost displaying veritable crooner credentials. There is only one slight ‘WTF’ moment when during ‘Falling’ synth chords more reminiscent of a Nolan Sisters gig in Blackpool in the early eighties zap through the Klipschs, but it’s all in good humour, and you quickly get used to it.

BTW, just in case you don’t know who the Nolan Sisters are:

So, should you buy it?

Of course.

It’s MB’s twelfth album, 45 minutes of music by two great songwriters, and as usual it will make you whistle, sing, dance and from time to time slap your forehead.

Product naming gone scatological

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Last weekend the best girlfriend ever leisurely leafed through one of her interior design magazines, when her lovely brown eyes fell on this:

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Now, I don’t know whether you’re aware of the Germans’ favourite word, but it’s what they called this lamp: ‘Scheisse’. In French ‘merde’, in English ‘shit’, this is not something I would call my lamp. It’s not that ugly, and it really does not deserves this scatological description. Our initial thought was that a German copywriter at this particular magazine had a bit of grudge, but it turns out that ‘Scheisse’ is its proper name. Proudly displayed on its home page.

The only question remains: Should someone tell them?