Had a chat with Henry Melton the other day about writing and Mac things. He has written several books and two are available on Amazon, with excellent reviews. Worth checking out!

Our 4-year old AC unit broke – the condenser needs replacing. It’s a Lennox, and still under warranty. Or so we thought. » Continue reading “Lennox Air Conditioning and their broken warranties”

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSWEN388420080211 and http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSWNAS040320080211

I guess that’s it for HD-DVD. We just need them to stop selling the players.

I wish Netflix would increase their stock of Blu-ray discs though. Most of the ones in my queue are marked “Short”, “Long”, or “Very long” wait. The incredible picture quality is worth the wait however. It beats the pants off AppleTV.

A Playstation 3 makes a very good Blu-ray player. Why O why doesn’t it remember where you left off on a disc? If you turn off the PS3, or play a game then come back to a movie, it’s totally forgotten where you got to. You’d think with that hard drive there’d be a bit of space to store restart-at locations for more than a couple of discs. But no, it’s time to endure all the copyright messages again. Groan. Couldn’t they just show those warnings once, perhaps before the very first disc you play?

Planet Cocoa is requesting that Cocoa bloggers provide a means for giving feedback to the writer. Fair enough, but who wants to be listing their email on a webpage? Daring Fireball uses a good method (as opposed to some online Post-a-Message-to-me page); “enkode” the email. Instead of an email address showing, your site embeds a befuddling piece of JavaScript. A browser can interpret this correctly, but with any luck the spam agents cannot.At A Single Pixel, you can find a contact link over to the right, and of course there’s the forums too.

Figure Starbucks is a safe bet, right? I’m visiting the UK again and Starbucks has been topped for consistency and taste. You won’t guess by whom.

We ordered a grandé “half-caf” from Starbucks this trip. The barista thought this must mean just a single shot rather than the intended one caffeinated shot, the other shot decaf. Bleuch!

Costa Coffee has been bad too often to be able to mention any specific bad experience, and I avoided them this trip.

The most consistent coffee we’ve had for the past couple of years has come from Marks & Spencer! We’ve tried M&S in Devon, Winchester, and Southampton; it’s cheaper than Starbucks and has always been a 9 or 10/10 coffee. I don’t know what their trick is. Their food is yummy and their kids meals are a good deal too. Well done M&S – highly recommended!