Little Storping-in-the-Swuff

Shaun the Sheep gets a repeat from Sunday at 6.00 on the CBBC channel if you missed it first time round.

Shaun first appeared in Wallace and Grommit’s A Close Shave. The Curse of the Were Rabbit didn’t quite live up to my expectations, it was just a bit too long, so I’m pleased to see some Aardman shorts (and these are excellent). Let’s hope that after Dreamworks flushed away the last two pictures of their deal with Aardman there’ll be more shorts to come.

Following the news that Brighton is to get an Apple Store, I’ve just had a card from Cancom announcing that their Brighton store will become a premium reseller on Saturday, despite being 5 minutes walk from the new Apple Store site.

I guess Apple Stores are like buses, then.

So, someone’s already hacked the Apple TV to add Quicktime plugin Perian (an advantage, I suggested, of the Mac Mini). This uses the fact the the aTV runs Quicktime, something contradicted on Rogue Amoeba under surprise #4, but which surely must be the case. Unfortunatly the hack involves some dismantling, and isn’t terribly usable yet.

The iLounge review suggests there’s another limitation: no streaming of photos. Meanwhile, at Gizmodo, someone’s stuck at 120GB drive in their unit.

A while ago, a Little Storping reader told me he’d been told in an Apple shop that an Apple Store would open in Brighton “soon”. Macworld is now reporting that Apple are recruiting staff for a Store in Churchill Square.

Any information on location of the new store or the timing of its opening, please comment here!

With the Apple TV finally shipping, the first review has appeared, and the criticism centre around what the Apple TV won’t do, rather than what it can’t do. That’s to say, the things Apple has prevented it from doing; things it might theoretically be able to do if the claim that it’s running a version of OS X are true.

I expect to see it hacked, pretty soon, and a spate of “Linux on the aTV” articles; but for now you can only use it for what it’s specified for. But you can already buy a Mac Mini, which, albeit for twice the price is upgradable. You can make it do what you want, not just what Apple tell you you want, often simply but adding a Quicktime plugin.

It also comes with a DVD player and a beefier processor, but is it better value? I think it is, unless and until Apple unlock the aTV.

Okay, so not the best eclipse pictures you’ve ever seen, but this is what I’ve been watching through my window (whilst watching Good Night and Good Luck - I mention this because Dianne Reeves was singing “How High The Moon” just as the moon started to go red).




This is where we are as I write, with the moon just a shadow in the sky.