Les Tourelles de Longueville 2006

Not an expert review by any stretch of the imagination, not even an amateur.

I opened a bottle of this on Friday evening as I felt (after spending the day fighting off a cold and looking after my three little monsters) that I deserved it.

Of course the cold screwed my taste buds, not that it made such a difference. It was however bloody lovely.

Warm, welcoming, rich, smooth, with no sharp edges - a lovely, lovely wine. Just made to be savoured on an autumn evening while the world passes by. Nice tannins, not overly fruity (the 60+% merlot notwithstanding) an example of subtle winemaking.

A few bottles of these definitely needed

Who invented the iPod then?

'Twas not Steve Jobs, it was Tony Fadell.

He took the whole concept from MP3 Player, iTunes etc. to Apple who bought it lock stock and barrel. Jobs clearly had a massive influence on the design and UX, but he wasn't the commercial brain behind it.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2004/07/64286?currentPage=all

His greatness was picking it up and making it a success.

Has Ubuntu lost it? Updated

The worst thing I have done recently is upgrade my Ubuntu desktop to 11.04, it is seriously flawed/unusable.

I've been using Ubuntu on my main work PC since Hoary Hedgehog, and have loved it. It has the perfect combination of ease of use and power, is secure, fast and just works. That was until they chose Unity over Gnome. And even that was OK until they went and broke Gnome.

My productivity has dropped off a cliff. Transitioning from window to window, app to app has turned into a massively annoying andvtimewasting activity as I end up alt-tabbing like a loony. This is nonsense, I am perfectly capable of clicking on a menu bar ffs.

And it seems that I am not alone, the is a great writeup that describes almost exactly my experience (a colleague wondered if it was actually me) by Jem Matzan, at www.jemmatzan.com.

I am now going to have to wipe my machine and start again. Maybe back to an earlier version, maybe th, maybe something else. Not what I want to do right now.

Sigh, Linux on the desktop self destructs.

The Register does a good piece on the community reaction to this issue http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/08/ubuntu_on_trial

Steve Jobs greatest feat was...

...selling technology to non-technologists.

Getting mp3 players into the hands of people who had no idea what an mp3 anything was. Turning the iPod into a device that your girlfriend wanted, even though you had spent ages trying to persuade her to get an mp3 player. "I don't want an mp3 player, I want an iPod".

And the iPhone, to be fair not a great phone when launched, but all if a sudden all the non-techies wanted one. No-one (except the geeks) was interested in email on their phone, then all of a sudden everyone wanted it.

Ultimately I think that his legacy will be turning technology into consumer electronics, the last great change before computers enter the ubiquitous phase, where they are routinely built into everything.

(cue post on the Internet of things, coming soon)