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Tuesday proved to be a very wet evening but that didn’t stop me from heading out to Camden’s Electric Ballroom to watch American Indie band, Spoon. They’ve got plenty of albums and although they never really hit the mainstream, they certainly had enough fans to fill out the Electric Ballroom. When listening to some of their albums, I recognised a few of their songs, although by far probably the most popular is, The Way We Get By off their Kill The Moonlight album.

They were supported by New York band, White Rabbits who also put on a really amazing set. I noticed that they had their own gig at the ICA next week, so I’d definitely recommend checking them out if you happen to be free.

Spoon were here promoting their new album, Transference, which definitely takes a much more experimental take on their style of music, full of songs lacking choruses. Still pretty decent performance. A great night out and a perfect way to beat the poor weather.

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It’s been at least two weeks since I’ve had the Samsung N210, so I thought I’d continue with the review that I previously wrote. I’ve been using this as my primary commuting device – as it’s both lighter and smaller. On the upside, the weight has relieved the strain on my back, particularly useful if you’re wearing a courier-like side satchel. The smaller size has a number of advantages as well, such as being able to comfortably use in in a commuter train without being in the more spacious four person seat. I can comfortably prop this up on the bag and then type away whilst sitting on one of the smaller two-person seats on an East Coast Rail Train, and still be able to see the screen at a comfortable distance without craning my neck.

I’ve continued to tweak with most of the system settings, expunging as much of the start up services as I think I can get away with. The biggest contributor (it seems) so far was to disable the microsoft indexing/searching service as it seemed to cause typing to be jittery whenever running. I also managed to play some other video formats using VLC player (MP4) and the machine seems to be able to handle it fine.

I also did my first backup of the system, using the in built Samsung Recovery Manager. I figured this would be quite important seeing as I don’t have a reinstaller CD for it. Using a little portable hard drive, it took about an hour to backup the 20GB of installed programs so far.

I haven’t had any problems browsing the internet or using it for normal writing use, however I want to see what it’s like with upgraded RAM, so I’ve ordered a 2GB stick off crucial. I’m hoping programs load a bit faster if I have other things running. I think installers will probably run faster but seeing as they are a once-off affair, it’s not really going to bother me in the long term. I can’t really complain about the startup/shutdown speed. It’s plenty faster than I remember on my last PC box.

The keyboard has been the biggest win so far. I’m a touch typist, absolutely hate using the mouse if I don’t have to, and the chiclet keyboard has been a lifesaver as I don’t feel like I am modifying the way that I type to type normally. When I do use the mouse, I do appreciate the gestures they’ve built in – something that my work laptop (a Mac) has been training me in use and would be frustrating to return to without it working. I’m pleased that it continues to work although I’m happy for that right click button.

Not everything has been perfectly plain sailing though. In use, I’ve found the opening latch, that plays dual role of power switch) a bit fiddly. As a right hander, I want to use my right hand to flick the switch, but the “stickiness” of the lid means that I have to use both hands to carefully open the laptop. I can’t honestly say I’ve gotten used to it but definitely not a show stopper.

I’ve also noticed that the default setting lets you switch resolution modes (from its default 1028 x 600 to a pixelated/stretched 1028 x 768) that I triggered by pressing SHIFT+FN+LEFT or SHIFT+FN+RIGHT keys. Being a touch typist, it took me a while to work out which combination of keys triggered this (you can use their Easy Resolution Manager application to change this just as you can use their Easy Resolution Manager Options application to disable this shortcut).

The only other thing that has been slightly annoying is the mouse buttons that you have to depress slightly forcefully – something that isn’t really a problem if you prefer the keyboard, but I could see potentially affecting those who like the mouse. On the flipside, you would probably bring a travel mouse or something like that.

Given that the issues I’ve had are very minor, everything else has been true to form. The screen is lovely and bright, and the battery life seems to work very well.

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This weekend saw the return of Kinetica Art Fair, an exhibition dedicated to Kinetic Art. Put simply, it is art involving some sort of motion or movement. It moved to a different location this year, to P3 a cool, underground exhibition space, although very inaccessible due to the number of staircases involved.

The art fair really surprised me with amazing interpretations of kinetic art. The idea of movement can be the art itself, or through the person watching it, or through a combination of both makes for a wide variety of visually stunning art. Combined with simple mechanics, modern lighting technology and sometimes more complex computing displays, much of the art ended up being interactive, and therefore, much more exciting to be around.

This display above was a simple spinning loop, yet combined with mixtures of lights ends up as a fascinating display looking for repeating patterns and occurrences. They even had performance art scheduled throughout the day, although you need to pay additional for that and I didn’t hang around long enough to see any of them.

The great thing about something like this is that the exhibit puts the creators completely accessible to you at each of the display. This means if you’re interested to know more about what they do, or how they put the exhibit together and what inspired them and what message they’re trying to convey you get a first hand view – something you don’t tend to get in any of the museum around London. It was definitely worth the £8 entrance fee and I can’t wait to see what they have for next year.

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One of my favourite beers whilst in Chicago were the Goose Island brewskies, particularly the Summertime beers. I’ve been searching for a place that sold them for sometime in London, with my first encounter at Fulham’s White Horse pub.

Fortunately Borough Market helped me find another source of these wonderful beers. I stopped by the beer stall nearest to Brindisa and The Ginger Pig, which had a huge selection of beers from around the world. As I walked up to the counter to ask the assistant about Goose Island beers, the wide assortment of six packs sitting under the counter caught my eyes. Success! They only sell it here on weekends although it’s always available in their pub, The Rake just minutes away. The six packs vary between £10-£12.

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I’ve been researching netbooks for about a month and now that I booked a flight to return to Australian in April/May, I was thinking of buying one pretty soon. I had been considering either one of the Acer, Asus or Samsung netbooks since they seemed to have the best value and the best reviews. I even took a trip to Tottenham Court Road (electronics road) so that I had a chance to test run them. I realised that trying the keyboard and trying to type was going to be one of the biggest influencing factors, with most of the hardware specifications pretty close.

Since I wanted something that I felt could last one of the long airplane legs on the way to Australia, I decided up the N140 with its 5900mAh battery apparently lasting for up to 9 hours (of course I imagine realistically it to be a couple of hours less).

I then stumbled across this, announcing the Samsung N210 upgraded model. I also noticed UK Amazon had some in stock. I debated buying it thinking about all the different dimensions I wanted. It qualified for my budget (sub £300) at £297.05 and I figured the extra hard drive space, and the latest processor meant that its 5900mAh battery life would be somewhat extended (purportedly 11-12 hours) as a result. I made the plunge Wednesday night (almost midnight in fact) and it surprisingly arrived before the weekend just by standard delivery. Brilliant. Thanks Amazon.

As you can see in the picture below, the box itself isn’t very large. Amazon sent it in another box and although they didn’t really use a lot of scrunched up paper to cushion it, it still arrived intact though you could feel this box inside the Amazon one moving if you shook it. Its initial size looked really promising (remembering I haven’t had a netbook before). There’s basically two parts inside the box, the laptop sitting in padded cushions on top of another small box containing the packaged cables and manuals.

Here are all the accessories that come along with the netbook. When I first picked up the netbook, I was particularly surprised at how light it felt. Admittedly it didn’t have the battery attached, but even with that now, I haven’t had any trouble carrying it around town in a shoulder-sling bag. I’d even consider carrying the charger around as it, too, is fairly light.

Samsung thought ahead and included a Samsung-branded neoprene laptop sleeve as part of the package. It’s a great thought though it’s a shame it’s so cheap because I now plan on replacing it with a much stronger, tougher-feeling sleeve. I would have kept it, even with its branding, had it been a quality make. I’ll probably find a Crumpler Gimp that will fit it. Having said that, it’s still a great thought and I’ll definitely use it until I can replace it (hopefully it won’t be too soon).

I’d mentioned before it’s important to test the keyboard, and from most of the various reviews, Samsung keyboards all tend to be pretty well respected. I like the fact the keys are full sized. I read about horror stories of netbooks with tiny keys, making it impossible to type properly. I’d also read about the keyboard on a similarly new N150 that failed to impress with its keyboard. Fortunately, the chiclet-style keyboard, works like a charm for typing normally. Just like any netbook, you need to get used to the placement of much less used keys but it’s bearable. You can also see the tiny trackpad visible in this shot. I haven’t had too many problems with it, although you need to press the mouse buttons with some force as they need to really recess into the body to activate. I think you get used to this after a while. I’m not really a trackpad sort of person, preferring the pointing stick style, but it does the job reasonably well. The trackpad’s not large but then you’d expect that of a netbook.

Here’s a picture of the back (before the battery clips on). Note that you need a screwdriver to replaces its harddrive or memory.

The external ports for this machine should be unsurprising for a netbook. On this side, you can see two USB ports, a VGA out and a place to hook a security line.

On this side, you can see the power outlet, a 100/10 network port and a “chargeable” USB port including headphone/microphone outlets. The great thing about the “chargeable” USB port is that you can have the laptop off, and with the right setting configured, charge any USB powered devices without having the entire machine on. A nice touch.

So I’ve had it over the weekend and what do I think? Setting it up was fairly easy with pretty much automated prompts taking me through installation of everything. It has Windows 7 starter, and it’s less of a Samsung thing than it is a Microsoft thing but it still took about four or five various restarts to install itself properly. A whole lot of Samsung software gets installed automatically. I doubt I’m going to use a lot of it although there are a few nice pieces for configuring some system settings.

Once charged (I noticed it took between an hour and two hours to fully charge), I detached it and had it connected to my local wi-fi, downloading various freeware components to install. I wasn’t too bothered it took a long time to install various bits and pieces, after all it is a netbook optimised for lightweight applications, not for processing intensive pieces of software. It all ran rather smoothly.

I think I’ve managed to run it for about eight or so hours downloading, installing and tweaking various components over the course of this weekend and it still didn’t yet need a charge. An impressive feat indeed. I haven’t tried getting it to play back video although I’m guessing it will probably struggle with only 1GB of RAM. I’ll see how I use it before considering the upgrade. Here’s all the software that I set up:

• Launchy – Kick start applciations, and add various macros for doing simple things. I’m not yet used to the Windows 7 interface so this helps me be productive without it. It’s also great without needing too much screen real estate.
• IrfanView – I use this all the time for quick viewing all files. The netbook suffers a bit trying to load up high quality/size pictures from my digital SLR (4MB each).
• Paint.Net – A great photoshop substitute thats freeware.
• Firefox – Who wants to really use IE8?
• Chrome – It’s great to have another alternative than IE8.
• Notepad++ – A much better file editor than the one built into windows.
• Skype – For making calls over the internet.
• Freemind – A mind mapping tool
• TweetDeck – Twitter client
• AVG – Free antivirus
• Spybot Search and Destory – As it says on the tin
• Open Office – Office suite equivalent
• VLC – Multimedia player
• 7-Zip – Lightweight archiving/unarchiving software

The Samsung N210 has impressed, doing all it says on the tin. I’m interested to see how long the battery life lasts as long as it does, but the comfortable full-sized keyboard and its battery performance will be useful if you just want to do notetaking/writing as much as I tend to do. I can imagine disabling the bluetooth & wi-fi you might even be able to push it even further. I’ll also be looking for ways that makes Windows 7 run faster so if you have tips let me know. I’ve already pruned the startup list of services (both in services.msc and msconfig) and turned the theming optimised for performance instead of presentation.

Read the review of the N210 two weeks later

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Over the weekend, I managed to see the movie, Up in the Air. I remember this getting some really positive comments at the BFI Film Festival last year, and thought some of it would be quite appropriate, doing a lot of travelling as a consultant. It stars George Clooney, and Vera Farmiga, who looked stunningly different from her role in the thriller movie, Orphan and a very talented Anna Kendrick.

The movie focuses in the travelling lifestyle of Ryan Bingham (Clooney) who works for a firm that is brought in specifically to fire people. It reminds me of a scene out of Officespace or some movie like that. However his preferred lifestyle of not being attached to anything comes under threat when firm newbie, Natalie Keener (Kendrick) comes up with the idea of replacing this face-to-face lifestyle with video conferencing software.

There’s many great parts to the movie, including where Bingham teaches Keener some of the finer arts to travelling light. I can definitely relate to this, thinking of the many hours I spent last summer travelling to and from Copenhagen. Perhaps more typically represented is the life of the US-based travelling consultant where it’s all about racking up miles, status points and credit points. Overall the movie started off really well but then it started to drag its feet, pursuing too many different story lines to properly address in a single movie. This left the conclusion rushed and it felt like arriving at a banquet only to be told the kitchen was closed when dessert arrived. I’m puzzled as to why it’s had big screen success, as I think it’s place is definitely in a bit more of a niche crowd.

TheKua.com Rating: 6.5 out of 10

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Last year, when I caught up with Gerrod and Kristy at Sitaaray, I promised to invite them around for dinner sometime this year. Last night was the first night that worked out for all of us, so they trooped to the other side of town to join a friend, Darci, and my flatmate, Tom, in our digs in Clerkenwell. Not surprisingly, everyone got tripped up by normal weekend tube maintenance work but everyone made it eventually. Here’s some of what I managed to get around to serving:

Some nibbles in the form of Baked Zucchini Chips

Accompanied by some home made kaiser rolls and butter

I never got a chance to take a picture of our appetiser, which was a truffle, mushroom and sundried tomato orzo with rocket. This was then followed up by the main course, a duo of pies – a Steak and ale for the omnivores and a mushroom and stilton pie for the vegetarians followed up with all the trimmings.

We finished the evening off with a Seasonal Pear Crumble served with a homemade Pear and Honey Sorbet with a matching dessert wine.

It’s always great catching up with everyone and preparing a filling meal to be enjoyed by all.

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It’s that time of year to look back and see what’s been going on for 2009. It seems like it’s been a quieter year than most before and despite not wanting to do a lot of travel, it still seems like I ended up doing a fair amount.

Travel
The year started off in the US where I spent the day getting back from Boston before celebrating the New Year in New York. Since I was travelling to Marlow for work during the week, I didn’t end up going anywhere until March where I met the rest of the family in Japan.

Rather than hitting Tokyo, we met them in Osaka where we headed out to places like Kobe, Nara, Himeji and then spent the rest of the time visiting the temples and shrines of nearby Kyoto. April saw me head up north to visit my old flatmate, now living in York. The start of May then saw me head to Chicago for the first time, for a wedding and catching up with lots of people I knew living there.

I also took advantage of the great weather to head to Brighton for the first time. The end of may, I headed out to Sardinia for a conference where we ended up pretty much isolated from anyone else for the entire week. Great times yet I still remember the water being particularly cold.

It was around this time that I also started doing the weekly commute to Copenhagen for several months. I think I ended up staying over on the weekend twice – once to see what life in Denmark was really like, and then another to head over to Malmo (Sweden) on a very convenient and modern train.

August then saw me returning to Chicago for another conference before finishing off the year with a trip to Edinburgh in November and then Finland for a pre-Christmas holiday. I’d also mention travelling to Cambridge daily since returning from Copenhagen but other than eating out and resting, I don’t really get to see much of Cambridge.

Music
I don’t think I got to see as many bands this year seeing Aussie bands Eskimo Joe and The Living End in April, followed by amazing musician and talented whistler, Andrew Bird in May. I then saw John Butler outshine the Union Chapel in July. October then saw a flurry of activity including The Cribs, Franz Ferdinand and then Scottish musician, Calvin Harris play a sweat inducing performance at The Forum. The year finished off with a performance by Japanese musician, Ryuichi Sakomoto.

Food
I think this was definitely the year of the Michelin-starred restaurants for me. I was very thankful managing to find the only booking open in a three month window for the world’s 3rd best restaurant, Noma. What an unbelievable experience the tasting menu here was.

Amazingly local food accompanied by great service. I still remember the evening sun setting at just before midnight casting an amazing warmth into the converted warehouse when we sat down to eat.

We had just as an amazing meal at Restaurant Paustian v. Bo Bech before leaving Copenhagen. When visiting Chicago for the second time, I made sure to head out to Moto to enjoy the delights of clever cooking techniques and dining dazzlery. I can still picture the sparkling bombs that explode in the mouth for dessert. I also took my sister out to Rhodes 24 for her birthday (admittedly quite late in the year) and also ended up having a lunch at (overrated) Gordon Ramsey’s Maze restaurant. There was plenty of other amazing food places eaten ate but I woulnd’t be able to list them all.

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