General Update
7
After a couple of hours of watching progress bars slowly fill, I now have a Windows 7 Laptop. It's very nice, and boots quickly. It'll take me a while to really dig around and report back on it, but the upgrade went flawlessly.
So far the biggest difference between this and Vista seems to be the fact that I spend far, far less time watching that bloody spinning blue polo and listening to the hard drive chug, and far more time actually interacting with my machine.
Peshka
Peshka is Russian for Pawn, apparently. It's also a great little chess tutorial interface. Peshka itself is free, but you can buy and download tutorial modules for very little (about the same price as a book on the subject). I bought the legendary CT-ART training, which had been converted to run on Peshka, for £17. It's far, far easier to use than ChessBase or the dreaded Fritz interface, but not quite as slick as Chessmaster. It does use the Comic Sans font in places, but oddly I can forgive that since the interface has been designed to be used by kids as well as adult players (which in itself seems a bit odd, but it does give it a refreshingly 'friendly' feel).
Dispatches - Feminism
Whilst waiting for Windows 7 to install, I watched Channel 4's Dispatches, about a young group of London feminists. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what they had to say, though for different reasons (chiefly to do with being male). The soft porn and associated conditioning that pervades our society (Nuts magazine, tabloid papers, Playboy duvets for children) diminishes us all: young men need not only proper male role models, but also a healthy framework upon which to base their sexual development, relationship aspirations and their general view on women. Just as junk food clogs the arteries and causes heart disease, the trash culture that subsumes young folk is just as damaging. The objectification of women is one thing, the 'eternal adolescentisation' of young men is also pretty damned dreadful.
For the avoidance of doubt, I do believe that we should have a right to a healthy, enjoyable and guilt-free sex life should we desire one. To enable this to manifest in our lives though we need to conduct ourselves with maturity and responsibility regarding such matters, but the wall-to-wall Tits'n'Arse we get on the cover of every magazine, in every pop video, in every advert, on every TV programme is hardly conducive to the kind of environment in which such attitudes can thrive.
After a couple of hours of watching progress bars slowly fill, I now have a Windows 7 Laptop. It's very nice, and boots quickly. It'll take me a while to really dig around and report back on it, but the upgrade went flawlessly.
So far the biggest difference between this and Vista seems to be the fact that I spend far, far less time watching that bloody spinning blue polo and listening to the hard drive chug, and far more time actually interacting with my machine.
Peshka
Peshka is Russian for Pawn, apparently. It's also a great little chess tutorial interface. Peshka itself is free, but you can buy and download tutorial modules for very little (about the same price as a book on the subject). I bought the legendary CT-ART training, which had been converted to run on Peshka, for £17. It's far, far easier to use than ChessBase or the dreaded Fritz interface, but not quite as slick as Chessmaster. It does use the Comic Sans font in places, but oddly I can forgive that since the interface has been designed to be used by kids as well as adult players (which in itself seems a bit odd, but it does give it a refreshingly 'friendly' feel).
Dispatches - Feminism
Whilst waiting for Windows 7 to install, I watched Channel 4's Dispatches, about a young group of London feminists. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what they had to say, though for different reasons (chiefly to do with being male). The soft porn and associated conditioning that pervades our society (Nuts magazine, tabloid papers, Playboy duvets for children) diminishes us all: young men need not only proper male role models, but also a healthy framework upon which to base their sexual development, relationship aspirations and their general view on women. Just as junk food clogs the arteries and causes heart disease, the trash culture that subsumes young folk is just as damaging. The objectification of women is one thing, the 'eternal adolescentisation' of young men is also pretty damned dreadful.
For the avoidance of doubt, I do believe that we should have a right to a healthy, enjoyable and guilt-free sex life should we desire one. To enable this to manifest in our lives though we need to conduct ourselves with maturity and responsibility regarding such matters, but the wall-to-wall Tits'n'Arse we get on the cover of every magazine, in every pop video, in every advert, on every TV programme is hardly conducive to the kind of environment in which such attitudes can thrive.