"We're gonna need a bigger boat"

Since my first year in University where I discovered MP3s (old school - '95 baby) I realised that we were all going to need more storage.
Jump forward 13 years and that need has grown exponentially.

Right now I have at home (excluding flash drives and SD cards etc.):
1TB in my Main PC
160GB in my laptop
500GB (mirrored) in a NAS box
250GB in my PS3
250GB WD Passport drive (for backups)
320GB WD Passport drive (for general use)

And I think that's still not enough.

I already have all my CDs ripped to MP3/AAC formats and stored on my PC (currently 80GB or so worth) - but my new plan is to do a similar exercise with my DVD collection (around 400 movies).

Estimating around 1.5GB per movie that will result in at least 600GB of required storage.
That's ignoring the fact that I'll undoubtedly want to back them up (I'd hate to spend all that time ripping them to lose them all) - so that's 1.2TB of storage.

I know I'm not alone in attempting such a project either, so I think of the amount of storage that's out there at the moment and the amount that's needed and it's mind blowing (for a geek anyway!)

FInally...Cut'n'Paste

Cut & Paste - It's been one of the most widely used functions in all operating systems since they were first used in anger.
But Apple in all their wisdom (or perhaps lack of it?) decided not to include it when they first released their all singing all dancing (slow jams only baby) iPhone.

However, they've announced today that it will be there in the next major release of the software (3.0) - due some time this summer.
We'll also be getting MMS (well, those with a 3G iPhone will) finally.

For details of the release see here.

1 Billion Seconds...

Yestetday was a momentus occasion (for me). At some point in the day I reached 1 billion seconds on this Earth. My mother can't remember exactly what time I was born (I'm one of 5 so can't really blame her for that) so I had to make some assumptions about the timings. Nevertheless, 1 billion seconds old was I.

For those wanting to calculate their own billion seconds date (it's when you're around 31 years and 8 months old) I'll upload a calculator for it soon.

In the meantime, I'm off to buy some candles.

What a Twit(ter)

Even with Stephen Fry's (poorly worded) declaration of love for 'Twitter' today (see BBC website) I still fail to see it's usefulness as a service.

This may of course seem rather hypocritical when written on a 'blog', but at least I can write in the full English language using more than 160 characters on here.

For me, Twitter appears to be simply a magnification of the Facebook status message. Where everyone wants everyone else to know what they're thinking or doing at any moment.

What concerns me is that we are heading towards a world where privacy (or failure to publish your every thought) will be viewed with suspicion. Failure to tell all and sundry (your 'friends') about what you're currently doing will lead them to suspect you have something to hide. And of course there will be so much 'noise' that people will shout louder (by being more outrageous) to be noticed and the situation will decline even further.

Of course I'm not the first one to have considered this, Ben Elton (as he so often does) has written a very clever and witty novel portraying just such a world (link to follow - damn you iPhone for your lack of cut-n-paste!).

(EDIT: Link as promised: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Faith-Ben-Elton/dp/0593058003)

But in an ever more virtually connected world the temptation to join in with these Web 2.0 trends is getting harder to resist.

Mojo baby yeah!

As a skier and gadget freak I was really impressed to see this advertised in the pamphlets littered around my hotel...

It's the perfect utility for someone as crap at skiing as I am (compared to a lot of people anyway!). However, at £293 a pair, I'm yet to be convinced that it will really make that much difference to my skiing ability.

Perhaps going to the gym before I went might have been a better idea.