One day we will tell our grandchildren how difficult it was to look up information in a library when we were kids.

We will tell them about card catalogues and the Dewey decimal system.  We’ll tell them how we would look up a word in the dictionary and it would tell us to “see” another word.

BBC started airing a very good documentary about the internet a few weeks ago called The Virtual Revolution.  I finally watched the first episode just the other night.  It’s amazing how much has happened in such a small time.

Google was incorporated in 1998 (went public in 2004).  Youtube started in 2005.  Twitter in 2006.  The World Wide Web was created in 1990 with the first web server being created by Tim Berners-Lee in that year.

It was a fantastic documentary and it really makes you think. 

We are still very much in the beginning of all of this.  There are still things to be done that no one has thought of yet.  We still haven’t reaped much of the benefits that the improvements in communication channels will have lent to science and medicine and as much as the internet has changed all of our lives, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what’s to come.

I routinely chat with people in China and India (and back home in the States) while visiting offices here in the UK. In high school, these places all seemed so far away.

This twenty years of the internet will one-day seem like just a blip to us.  One day years in the future, people will talk about how the newspapers and music industries cried foul before they found their own way.  We will talk about the quaint days of waiting for our favourite TV programs to be aired.  Soon, we will look back on Twitter and Facebook the same way we look back on the old newsgroups (it was all so crude!).

The other day I found myself falling into the trap of thinking that everything had been invented already.  Surely, there are no new opportunities out there because they’ve all been invented.  Or, someone is already working on them.  But the truth is that we’ve hardly scratched the surface. 

There are still things that aren’t quite right in technology.  Still loads to do.  For example, as much as webcam chat is fantastic and a nice novelty, it’s still too complicated to get “ordinary” people to use it. 

As much as things change, we still think in old terms.  Artists still come out with Albums, even though we can buy and download only the tracks we want.  Why do we need the album grouping?  We still have business people who think they need to fly thousands of miles to have a meeting in another office, because we haven’t found a method of communication that is better an 8 hour flight.  Too many of us still get up in the morning and drive or take a train to an office building to do work that could easily be done at home.  When we get to grips with some of these new realities, we will start thinking differently and even more innovation will come.

I was reading the xkcd comic strip (if you haven’t read it, you’re missing out—http://xkcd.com), and saw this this strip:

2003 wasn’t that long ago. Or maybe my age is just catching up with me.

I’m not big on the viral email images that go around, but this one is pretty funny.  It was emailed to me, so I can’t take any credit for it (and it seems to be all over the web).

If you can’t find the book you want you’re probably shopping

at the ……………….

So, this morning I get called downstairs because the kid’s computer is filled with viruses.  I’ve heard this before, so I wasn’t panicked.  We have up-to-date virus definitions and the kids know to be careful about what they download or sites they visit, so unless it is a threat that is really new, it should be okay.  I accept that it is still possible to get a virus on one of our pcs, but we try to be pretty vigilant.

But, when I looked at the computer, I nearly panicked.  Here’s what it looked like:

It filled the entire window.  My first impulse was to shut he pc down as quickly as possible in case it spread (I realise this may not be the most techie response).  The red “7 Viruses found” label was blinking.  How can you ignore the blinking text?

Then I looked closer.  I realised it was a web page disguised to look like Windows Explorer.  Our pc has more than one drive and the image only had a c drive.  I saw the URL in the browser address bar.  If I tried to right click on the image to view the source, it tried to download an executable.  When I viewed the page source using the menu items, the entire page was dynamically written with javascript.  It’s scary to think that things like this are out there.  I was able to figure out that it was just a browser popup with an animated image, but not everyone would be able to see it so quickly.

I showed the kids why it was fake and how to spot it if it happened again.  Someone had downloaded the exe before I got there, but the real Anti-virus picked it up and removed it. 

I suspect that it would install a new anti-virus on your pc and then tell you it expired so you could renew it.  I’m not sure how it works or if there is a legit company behind it, but it is very sneaky and under-handed.

I like to listen to music while coding.  I always have.  Sometimes I’ve worked at jobs where they allow this (media companies like BBC never mind developers with headphones) and some that don’t (investment banks never allow this).  So it’s nice when I get to do some coding at home on my own pc with my own set-up (Visual Studio 2008, twin monitors, etc) and my own music.  So when I’m at the desktop PC, I usually have iTunes open in another window.

So I have a pretty big music collection—not tied to a specific genre.  I’m hardly a connoisseur of music and would be out of place in any conversation about music, but I know what I like.

Yesterday I heard about Spotify from a friend who raved about it.  I downloaded the app and gave it a try.  I think I found my new background-music application for writing code.

Spotify is a desktop application which streams music to the desktop. You can chose any song they have in their library (I have found most that I’ve looked for) and listen to whole albums, etc.  When I heard about it, I thought is sounded a lot like Last.fm, which is an okay personalised-radio station service application.  But Spotify seems to have no lag or buffering.  It seems to download the tracks as needed in one go, without streaming.  Not sure how the technology works underneath, but by watching the network usage on task manager, I see the network usage spikes only when a new track starts to play.

My only concerned with listening to music on the internet is that Orange broadband is already complaining about how much bandwidth I’m using in the evenings (since I spend a lot of time watching mlb.com, iplayer, and youtube videos).

I’ve found some articles online that refer to Spotify as an iTunes-killer.  I hardly think that’s the case.  If I was tied to this desk and never listened to music on my iPod in the car or while running, that would be the case, but you don’t keep the music, you just listen.  You can listen to albums or tracks and set up playlists.

Spotify is also being referred to as a legal alternative to piracy.  I can see that.

I’ve only started using it a few days ago, but am very pleased with it.  I’m using the free account (ad-supported), but they have pro accounts for £10 a month.  There are some adds inserted between the tracks, but I’ve listed by about 5 hours now and have only heard one.

It’s a nice service available in the UK now if you have a chance to take it out.

Some members of my family are dairy intolerant.  This is usually fine when cooking at home (there are plenty of substitutes for milk products), but very difficult when going out.  During the Summer, I take my kids out on day trips around England and it is not always possible to prepare food in advance.  And, I love the junk food.  So, we’ll go to a fast food place.

photo credit: MonsieurLui

The problem with dairy intolerance is that so many foods have milk (lactose, whey, or just “milk proteins”) in their ingredients.  Common sense doesn’t work when trying identify what has milk in it.  Most types of hot dogs, for example, include milk protein (but not all of them).  The tomato sauce on Pizza Hut pizzas include milk.  The BBQ ribs at TGI Fridays contain milk.  It has taken me a while to learn what to look out for.

If you have children that have (or you yourself has) an intolerance or allergy, you know how difficult this can be.  Last week, for instance, I stopped into a Subway and asked the store manager if their rib sandwich contained any dairy products.  He looked annoyed and told me that he had to read the ingredients on the box back in the freezer.  I asked him if he could do that.  He disappeared for a minute and returned with a giant white box which he read the side of.  “No, no milk,” he said.  But I couldn’t be sure if he was looking for the term “lactose” or “whey” or anything else which might include it.

Most fast-food chains make nutritional literature available online (although never usually available in the store).  I’ve printed out the documents for all the major chains which exists in the UK and pasted them all together.   I’ve found that printing all of the documents out (two pages to a sheet–double sided) and highlighting all the milk products makes going out for fast food a bit easier.  It’s easy to keep this print-out in the car so we have it if we need it.

Here is a set of links of the big chains ingredient documents.  These are all American chains, but the links are to the UK sites (not sure if they vary in the UK).  If you have children with food intolerance, I hope you find this useful.

McDonalds

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/static/pdf/food/OurFood-Booklet.pdf (pages 8-27 have ingredients listed)

Burger King

http://www.burgerking.co.uk/files/documents/ingredients.pdf

KFC

http://www.kfc.com/nutrition/pdf/kfc_allergens_april09.pdf

Pizza Hut

http://www.pizzahut.co.uk/media/77466/ingredients_list_starters_&_sides-0609.pdf

Dominos

http://www.takeafreshlook.co.uk/downloads/PizzaBasesToppingsIngredients.pdf