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I recently got a 23″ Samsung monitor, my first LED-backlit display. I hadn’t noticed there being a big difference before, but my MacBook display now looks dim and hard to read.

Our broadband speed has looked like this for the last ten years. Here’s hoping we get to 50Mbps within the next year or two – and who knows where we’ll be in another ten years.

Here’s where we’re going at the moment:

• BT is saying that 40% of homes will have the ability to have a 100Mbps connection by the 2012 Olympics: GigaOM
• It’s possible to get 50Mbps from Virgin Media at the moment, for £30-£40 per month
• Virgin promise 100Mbps by 2010: TechRadar

My Favourite Windows 7 Feature from Alex Muller on Vimeo.

The taskbar glow is just gorgeous. It takes the most prominent colour in the icon, and makes the entire application bar glow that colour.

I was talking to Michael yesterday, and we decided (I think I got this right) that university was really pretty cool because at times we actually get a say in the way things work. Today, that was verified as I got this reply back from the college administrator:

I was all ready to write this post dripping with praise for the college, and the university and whatever, except I just got another reply explaining that we don’t have Wi-Fi because of the prohibitive cost. Really, "prohibitive cost"?

The pink is where there’s currently Wi-Fi available on campus. The blue is where I asked for it. How is that more expensive to the point where it’s not possible?

Part of me is tempted to try and do something with this (meetings, petitions, voting?) but another part of me thinks it isn’t important enough to waste time on.

Spending a week with people who aren’t completely insane over technology has been refreshing. They don’t mind giving me their laptop to use, whereas I’m crazy to the point that I can hardly leave people alone with my lovely shiny new machine.

The family computer here is a Dell Inspiron which is at least four or five years old, reinforcing (to me at least) something that Leo Laporte mentions on his US radio show, The Tech Guy, relatively often: you don’t need a new machine, you want a new machine because the old one looks clunky. This Inspiron still runs XP (albeit slowly) and Office, and can surf the web fine. To be honest, I’m surprised that some part of it hasn’t given out yet, but I suppose it’s only a matter of time.

And I have to look on the bright side – it means my MacBook looks even prettier than normal.

Photo by robertrazrblog on Flickr (creative commons license)