Little Storping-in-the-Swuff

How cool is this? Very cool, that’s how cool. Get directions to any address with Google, directly from your Apple Address Book.

Watching the live commentry.

18:11 Yay! New Mac Mini! I’m having one of them.

18:15 SPDIF audio output. Hook up to television. Front Row with shared iTunes. I’m in heaven.

18:40 iPod HiFi. I can save myself $349 here, I don’t need one of these.

18:47 Wow, that was quick - it’s over. It was brief, but it delivered the goods. Now that’s the way to do it! I’m off to buy a Mac Mini….

My sister is studying in France for a term. She has a tiny room in her hall with no phone line. She has her mobile, but it’s on an English contract so she has to pay a lot for incoming calls. Getting a PAYG SIM out of the French appears to be impossible. Luckily, she’s got WiFi. Unluckily our iChat audio chats all fail… So I put on Skype Skype which I know gets round many firewalls.

With SkypeOut and SkypeIn (allowing her to call out to regular phones and receive calls to a phone number) she now has a regular phone integrated into an IM package. The coolest thing about this is that although people call her on a London number, she can pick up the call wherever she has her iBook and a broadband connection.

Now this got me thinking. I don’t much like the Skype app, especially the fact you are stuck with its software and it is not interoperable with other networks. But I’m tempted by a portable landline, and the accessories that even let you use it with your regular phone. Fortunately Skype isn’t the only VoIP provider - others are comitted to interoperability. Sipgate is one such, and as with Skype you can get hardware into which you can plug in your regular phone. But (with the exception of gizmo) these just replace your phone - they don’t integrate into instant messaging. Don’t get me wrong - it’s still great to be able to use your fixed line wherever you have internet access, but frankly the software for OS X (
x-lite or SJPhone) sucks on the UI front. The hardware is fiddly and still strictly for geeks.

So, I thought, this is where Apple should come in. There’s been all this fuss over the iTunes phone, and the possibility of an iPhone, but this is a crowded market with little room for innovation. But they’ve got everything they need to integrate a cool, easy to use product based around VoIP: software and hardware wise.

- Start with iChat. It may be a bit buggy as far as audio chatting goes, but it’s got the coolest user interface going.

- Now to .mac add the facility to buy a phone number and call credit for calling out, so you can iChat to regular phones, and they can call you.

- Take Airport Express and develop a handset that can plug into it (by adding an RJ11 socket or using the USB). Now you’ve got a complete phone system. Customise it for each member of the family: configure iChat to send calls only to certain Airport Express phones, and have a signature ring, so you know the audio invite is for you (already it’s better than a regular phone!)

- Add voicemail to iChat. And the ability to access it via .mac so you can get your voicemail anywere. Even better - let iChat sync voicemail to your iPod - so you can download your messages and listen to them on the move. Since your iPod has your contacts, you could record voice memos on the move to…and when you get back and sync with your Mac, have them forwarded to your buddy’s voicemail.

Now you’ve got a phone system that gives you a landline network at home, with free internet calls to other Apple/AIM users, integrated instant messaging and you can take it wherever you can take your laptop. Now let’s got back to the iPhone, because if you add a mobile in now you’re extending iChat to whever you are. You can be reached on your landline, on iChat, on the move… Of course, this is more problematic outside the US, where mobile calls generally cost more, but follow the model being used for Skype on 3G (essentially VoIP on your mobile) and your have a model that would allow Apple to revolutionise the way we use the phone.

Andrew Davies’ 1995 adaptation for television was a trail blazer, a popular and critical hit whose influence was reflected in Bridget Jones’ Chardonnay fueled Colin Firth appreciation evenings. It was also pretty good (albeit slightly marred by very off-key performances from Alison Steadman and David Bamber as Mrs Bennett and Mr Collins). Spread across six hours, this version managed to be far more faithful to the book than the 1940 big screen adaptation which had to cram it all into a single feature.

Consequently I assumed the 2005 adaptation for the big screen, just out on DVD, would suffer from this same “two hour traffic” restriction. To my surprise this film equals and exceeds the television version. The casting is superb: Brenda Blethyn does a far more convincing job as Mrs Bennett and having Donald Sutherland as Mr Bennett is inspired. Keira Knightly brings an animated adventurousness to the centered and justice seeking Lizzie. The production is also stuffed full of spies: besides ex-Spook Matthew McFadden as Darcy, there’s Bond ice queen Rosamand Pike as Jane Bennett, Bond spymaster Judi Dench as Lady Catherine, and Cambridge Spy Tom Hollander as Mr Collins (dispelling the memory of David Bamber’s caricatured portrayal).

The pace inevitably means some elements are condensed: the development of Lizzie’s friendship with Mr Wickham for example. But the remarkably economical script manages to preserve all the important characters, scenes and plot strands (or at least all my favourites!) and the film is beautifully shot too, elegantly bookeneded by dazzling sunrises.

So someone has written some malicious code targeting OS X (the Leap-A trojan). I suppose we should be flattered that the OS has finally been considered worthy of attacking. But I find it hard to take it seriously, even as a warning that the idiots who write theses things are targeting us, since to become infected you’d have to deliberately open this file “latestpics.tgz”, and enter an administrators password (unless you’re foolish enough to log in as administrator normally). So I don’t think there’s any serious comparison to be made with the gaping loopholes that make Windows such a nightmare.

However, this useful tip should help ensure that even in the event you accidentally download and run this virus, and enter your password for it, you’re still invulnerable. As someone commented, this will probably be released in a couple of days in a security update.

Just over a week ago I was watching the Mamet scripted but disappointing Ronin, and there was a sequence in which the bandit heroes, led by Robert De Niro and Jean Reno, pursue their quarry through the mountains behind Nice.

Whilst most people, in so far as they might attach any significance to this shot, might be focussing on the back of De Niro’s stunt double’s head, my attention was on the fact that my Mum’s village is just out of shot on the right. Being as how I’ve since come out here for a visit, I got this photo today:

It’s not quite the same shot, but bloody nearly, albeit without De Niro and his bazooka (the crash barriers were replaced with the wooden ones quite recently, in a commendable effort to make the things less ugly).

Of course Ronin isn’t the only film to take advantage of the beautiful scenery round here. The infinitely superior To Catch A Thief saw Cary Grant chased past Gourdon, less that 10km away.

There is another film, a favorite of mine that I have watched several times, in which there is a sequence I believe to have been filmed near here. I shall post when I can confirm it!

There are no murders in Africa. Only regrettable deaths.

I’d given up hope of seeing this film on the big screen, but my local cinema rather wonderfully re-screened The Constant Gardener on Saturday and Sunday and so I finally got to see it.

This heart-breaking film lived up to its promise as the best Le Carre (cinema) adaptation to date. For my money, Le Carre has only been adapted satisfactorily for the small screen, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. There have been worthy efforts, in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and The Tailor of Panama, but even these ultimately failed to deliver.

This was an adaptation Le Carre did not have a hand in, though he has said he is very pleased with it. The story concerns a diplomat in Kenya whose young wife dies in suspicious circumstances. Following her death he takes up her investigation into some dubious testing by a pharmaceutical multinational. Ralph Fiennes is excellent in the title role, and the woderful Rachel Weisz, although she doesn’t quite convince as “twenty four” (why not rewrite her age to something more suitable?) is absolutely devastating as the passionate wife, transplanted to Africa where she finds a cause that leads her to justify questionable means by the absolute rightness of the ends.

As an adaptation the film is faithful to the spirit of the book. The start of the book, in which the grieving widower Quayle is introduced has been abandoned. Quayle’s journey from the comfortable establishment of the British diplomatic service to the front line where AIDS and TB are allowed to rampage for want of money is condensed. But this was inevitable in bringing the story to the screen, and the film still manages to push its powerful message in the uncompromising ending.

Although there are spies in the Constant Gardener, Le Carre is certainly no longer writing spy stories. And there is no subtlety in the message the film is trying to convey. All the same, this is a powerful and moving book (Le Carre’s best since “Our Game”) and it deserves the wonderful adaptation, the first to truly do the man justice on the big screen.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago at the Donmar Warehouse.

The production was beautifully designed. A wonderful set, including the attic home of the bird of the title, was flawlessly lit. But the performances exceeded the technical standard. Ben Daniels, as Gregers, was sympathetic in the genuine affection for Hjalmar which masks his extremist zeal in his pursuit of the “claim of the ideal”. Paul Hilton emphaised the passion and sincerity of the otherwise slightly ridiclous Hjalmar , and Sinead Matthews (who recently was so excellent as Dolly in “You Never Can Tell”) is wondeful as the youthful Hedvig. And the always excellent Nicholas Le Prevost did not fail to disappoint as the drunkard Relling.

Afterwards my friends, better aquainted than I with Ibsen, tried to reconcile the play with Ibsen’s faith in truth is a force for good as expressed in his other works. I’ve only seen “A Doll’s House” (last year, with Tara Fitzgerald) and I can see this. But this production left me feeling entirely unsympathetic to the claim of the ideal. I felt fully persuaded by Relling and his manifesto for the bliss of ignorance…