Electronics was one area where prices in Malta were sky high compared to abroad. Gadgets, gizmos and orgasmatrons all had a huge price difference compared to abroad. Economies of scale one wondered…? The cost of importation perhaps? Taxes and levies…? yeah the all contributed. But these should have been done away with with our acesnsion into the promised land.. that Eden that were 2were promised to be the EU. What’s more.. things seemed to improve! The price difference when buying a Mac in Malta and the US was no longer the price of the trip to New York itself! Prices are still higher but just like the prices of cars, there has been a noticeable improvement!

Until I came across these cunts -

My first reaction was “finally.. it’s here.. ah wait it’s prolly an unoficial import…” Then I saw the price and something didn’t sit well so I immediately went to apple.com to check out the prices abroad. For comparison purposes… I chose not to go to the US store cos that would have been a bit unfair. I proceeded to the UK, Eire and Italian online stores…

The uk price roughly translates to €730, whereas the standard EU price point is jsut shy of €700. Forestal’s price… €898.99 or a whopping €199.99 difference! On a hunch I thought some other bright sparks might be importing it. Indeed so.. scanmalta.com have the 64GB +3g version for €935.

So this is Scan’s price for the 64GB wifi + 3G version :

Overseas pricing -

Not as awful as forestal’s mark up but it’s still quite an impressive €136! But somehow I expected it from Forestals who have been ripping of the Maltese playstation user for more than a decade… Scan well they’ve gone down the drain in both service and price.

So I decided to finally check out clicktoflash. Click to flash is a plugin that purports to stop loading flash items on a page till required. It hasn’t been updated in time to say its compatible with Safari 5 but it seemed to work fine for me.

Safari isn’t renowned for its extensibility and that’s probably due to its lack of a plugin api system such as the one used by firefox for example. Therefore 3rd parties have had to rely on less than straightforward means to extend safari such as developing their own plugin architectures such as simbl. This, however though useful, tends to break when apple updates the browser.

So Click to Flash’s installation was a doddle. Once installed and active, the plugin greys out the area that would’ve been occupied by the flash movie. A little widge appears on each instance which allows you to select from a few options including allowing the individual flash movie to load or all those on the page. Very quick and useful.

It also has some cool features that show it’s a mature product - namely a managed whitelist for sites you wish to allow flash (useful for those of us who have to check out “cool” flash website for a living). I’ve already reaped the benefits as it has cured those flash pointer probs. Another benefit I found - Click to Flash seems to have disabled those really annoying ads that move the whole content of a page down rather than the ad popping above the content (I’m looking at you italian sports paper websites!).

Other benefits include the option to force youtube to play its videoclips through h.264 rather than flash. Most if not all of the vids on youtube have been converted by google so as to be viewed on iOS devices. Unfortunately this was a feature that never made to desktops. From what I can tell, the flash player on the Mac is a major resource hog and one of the biggest causes for system slow down. I’m guessing the h.264 codec and the quicktime plugin will ease the burden.

I won’t go into the pros and cons of flash cos well I’ve made a living thanks to flash and it can be put to great use - I’ll leave it to the Steve Jobs and the Adobes of this world to duke it out but one thing is for sure, since the arrival of technologies such as the scriptaculous javascript libraries and other javascript frameworks, a lot of the cool stuff we were forced to use flash for can be executed without. Whereas before I’d propose a hybrid html / flash site, I’d not propose a pure html site because I know I now have the tools available that would let clients still get excited… Should apple integrate this functionality into Safari? Not sure but it would be nice to have as an option.

Anyways if you wish to claw back the web for yourself rather than be forced to get out of bed at 1 am because of a flash ad deciding to play loud music by itself… download click to flash now (ps. it’s donationware so you can download and use for free).

Firstly is a finder that allows me to properly filter files by any meta data I should choose. On a PC I can list the files in list mode and sort them in many, many ways even for example by pixel size. The mac version of this feature is more limited.

Another thing that Vista has is UPNP DLNA support built in. What’s that? Short answer, it lets you turn your computer into an industry standard media streaming server which allows other devices to stream from it. For example, I like to play my content from my mac on my big screen TV using my PS3. To add this functionality I used a 3rd party piece of software called EyeConnect. there are others available such as Twonky media or Playback. Windows (or some versions) come with this functionality built in. Besides being able to stream from Windows Media player (from my understanding), DLNA shares on the network show up in the networks places area in Windows.

Apple’s solution is all based on their iTunes software and ecosystem. Since there isn’t an iTunes media store here then that’s a no go. Besides which there are other limitations. Apple would like you to by an Apple TV to play their media on the big screen. This has not proven to be very successful… Apple should know better than to release a single function device these days (what worked for the iPod once does not hold true today with consumers’ expectations of multifunction devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. I expect the Apple TV to develop into a fully web enabled games console one day… but I digress.

This year seems to be the year of things needing to get fixed - my car’s door needs attention aherm. So does my guitar - the neck pickup’s connection to the pickup selector switch appears loose though the whole pickup has always sat loosely compared to the other two.. Unfortunately I have no idea about wiring sound or guitars… Still pretty happy with the guitar though - The middle pickup gets the most work.. must resist the temptation to buy a new guitar this year.

On the computer front I’ve been fixing my dad’s mac mini. First he had a log in loop basically after logging in it fails to loads the desktop and throws you back to the login screen. For the first time ever I had to use single user mode to delete some caches. That seemed to do the trick the following weekend he turns up with the machine refusing to boot into the os. Seems he disconnected the mac whilst it was doing some updates. Ouch. I tried several solutions but nothing worked this time not even single user mode nor disk warrior. Ironically the bootcamp partition worked flawlessly. I managed to connect the mac mini to my macbook using a firewire cable and putting the mac mini in target mode. That’s a genius system, which allows one mac to become another’s bitch external hard drive. I managed to salvage a lot of files though the copying was timing out leading to my fear that though I solved the problem with a reinstall, the problem might reoccur as it seems to be a hard drive hardware issue. We will see.

The referee continued with some inverted decisions, but at least had the guts to card Becks. Then it got surreal. Sneijder got his knickers in a twist when he found the ref in his way and basically disrupted a build up action towards goal. It did not even appear that the ref apologised. A few minutes later Lucio broke out of defence and was tackled by Ambrosini. I can’t tell if there was contact or not but Lucio doesn’t dive for nothing - the very nature of Ambrosini’s tackled was dangerous and deserved to be whistled. Lucio even got up to continue his prgression. the referee instead gave the foul to Milan, carded Lucio and made Sneijder lose it completely.

The little dutch boy clapped at the referee and though I think that Sneijder was clapping the ref for a job well done, the ref decided to send him off. Oh well. A yellow card wouldn’t have done? Let’s spoil a pretty nice game. Let’s see what happens in the second half.

Unison, for the uninitiated is a newsgroup reader and manager. Newsgroup as in Usenet newsgroups - an area of the internet that is forgotten by most and can be quite scary compared to the safe confines of the web. It’s vast and has a huge collection of groups where people post discussions and most importantly, files. Any sort of file you might look for can be found there but the trouble more often than not is finding it. Unison, is the software with which you can connect to a usenet server and trawl the newsgroups in search of that elusive piece of info or file you were looking for. I tend to use a website that already takes out the tedium of searching through the newsgroups. Unison’s new interface is perhaps its greatest improvement.

Unison is now perhaps the most polished mac app out there and just shows what can be done with a well thought approach. One of the best new features is that Unison takes care of post download processing of files. As more often than not, downloading files from usenet means downloading 100’s of smaller files which need to be stitched back together again. Before you’d have to download all the files then run them through a separate array of apps. Now Unison handles it all internally once all downloads are complete. Even the most simple new feature like the grouped downloads is very welcome. And very importantly for me, it shows you the total speed at which the software is downloading.

A thoroughly recommended update.

23 or so years later and finally I have my Dirge. I already had Starscream and ramjet Classics figures which are amongst the best updates to the original toys (my only gripes being the shite undercarriage and Starscream’s oversized guns) so when hasbro then Takara release the two remaining cone-heads I was a bit annoyed by the prices. hasbro, in a very short sighted move made theirs’ botcon exclusives and Takara’s are over priced (averaging about $70usd for a deluxe is unacceptable).

So when I saw hasbro releasing a completely new ROTF called Dirge my interest piqued. He is a delightful little bastard of a figure. His jet mode is very cool and very sleek - a futuristic VTOL harrier like jet. His transformation is completely new and thogh his nose cone turns into his arm, hasbro have made sure to include enough throwbacks to the original seekers to make him a proper homage. for example he has a little transparent chest panel that harks back to the original conehead’s cockpit for a chest, has little shoulder pads and of course the conehead. He does look a bit aquatic in his robot mode - and his different arms make him seem a tad unbalanced at times but hey he is a decepticon unbalanced is a prerequisite for joining their ranks.

Figure rating - 7.5/10

Thrust is a repaint of the ROTF breakaway figure. That figure was interesting mainly as a playable character in the ROTF game. His original beige and brown colour scheme was not the most attractive. The maroon red and black redeco suits the mode better and looks better as an evil character - Breakaway looked a bit comical at times Thrust looks a bit better. He doesn’t have the amount of throwbacks that the Dirge figure, in fact other than the fact they transform into planes and are red there’s little else to make a connection. There is a lot not to like in this figure from the top heaviness, the amount of kibble and the rather small head, however whole is greater than the sum of its parts and the figure isn’t that bad - just not excellent and not a must have. However, he does make an interesting inclusion in my classics line up. There are way too many autobots anyways.

I’ll give this one a passing grade of 6/10.

Bludgeon, also has partly rubber tank treads! Never have I come across a tank transformer with rubber treads before! So let’s see what’s bad about the figure? The sword is a rubbery plastic that can bend out of shape easily. His robot mode lacks fire power which might be apt for this samurai themed bot. My Main grievance lies with his tank mode where the turret has no elevation, nor do his secondary weapons. I would have like to see the turret or his rocket launchers get redeployed in his robot mode too. The rocket launchers could’ve been hinged to rotate up as should mounted turrets.

This is the figure Universe/Classics Galvatron should’ve been! I don’t know if they can remold or repaint him easily into other characters but considering the mount of work takara/hasbro have put into this I’m sure they’ll try and milk it a bit. Any candidates?

I’ll give this a 9/10 - a must have figure for anyone into either the ROTF line or those who like me, will add it to their Universe/Classics collection.

So I’ve had to console myself with a couple of new toys. Namely: Bludgeon, Dirge, thrust and Optimus Prime. The latter was a special edition version of the universe classics deluxe version. I did not want that one dammit. I wanted the voyager version (ie larger version). T’was my mistake - a clear sign of senility I guess. I also picked up the total film magazine instead of the empire because I mistook one for the other. Again, aging. At work I sent the wrong artwork to the wrong person.. Also bought a new iMac. All these will be reviewed in separate posts.