An oft-noted observation people like myself make when they spend time in the USA is the myopic nature of the news on TV. A 30 minute news show will typically have about 12 minutes of national news from around the US, 5 minutes of local news, 2 minutes of weather, 47 minutes of adverts and 13 seconds of ‘world’ news detailing the world outside the US borders. Okay, those numbers don’t quite add up but you get my point – very little of ‘interest’ happens outside the US. You can watch BBC World instead but that seems to show you world news for everywhere except the UK.

However the current economic crisis affecting the UK (and rest of the world of course) is completely taking over the news coverage, particularly of the BBC, and it’s non-stop and as though there’s nothing else happening in the world. Or at least that’s how it feels.

They’re tracking every single layoff in every geographic region of the UK, tracking companies that might be laying people off soon, interviewing people about how worried they are about their jobs, how they’re coping with being laid off, how getting laid off was the worst thing to happen to them, how getting laid off was the best thing to happen to them, how the banks are in trouble, how the shops in the high street are going under, how the pound is incredibly weak, how car manufacturing is in trouble, how us tax payers are bailing out the banks, and on and on and on. I’m getting recession overload and if another Labour politician comes on and starts deflecting questions about how it’s not their fault and that it’s a “global problem” I think I’ll scream. But personally I take everything I see on the news with a pinch of salt now.

You see, I heard a very interesting interview on the radio with an American economist who was asked the simple question: “Why is the pound so weak against the dollar?”. His answer surprised the presenters to such an extent that they were lost for words.

He said that investing in UK government bonds is considered just as risky as investing in the Royal Bank of Scotland – a bank that was in such a bad state that it had to be bailed out by the government in December. UK government bonds are supposed to be rock-solid, safe investments that you can depend upon. To compare them to a British bank run into the ground by greedy men in suits doesn’t say a lot for the opinion of the outside world on the UK government. He also went on to say that outside the UK there’s a real belief that the UK government itself could go bankrupt. Since our current Prime Minister was the Chancellor for 10 years and used to exclaim that “the days of boom and bust are over”, it’s particularly ironic that he was in fact setting himself up for a fall. Instead of saving in the good times, the government appears to have spent like billionaire bankers and left the economy in such a fragile state that the credit crunch could well finish us. And yet until then I’d never heard this point of view – a point of view originating outside the UK – mentioned.

I know that “no news is good news” and ultimately they’re trying to get as high ratings as possible, but the 24 hour news culture and US-style approach to sensationalist, on-demand, instant-coverage, soundbite-based reporting just makes me want to switch off. Whatever happened to one or two news shows a night where there was actual analysis of what was happening instead of a constant drone of uninformed, knee-jerk, twitter-style noise? All noise does is confuse people and if you need people to act sensibly and behave in a way that might help a country out of recession the last thing you need is more confusion. Individually people are pretty smart but collectively they tend to act like sheep, and sheep confuse easily. Baaaaa!

I read with interest that the next version of Windows will, at long last, feature a built in background switcher – called a “desktop slideshow”. You might think that since I wrote a pretty decent background switcher that I’d be gutted and cursing the name Microsoft but quite the opposite is the case. The reason I wrote John’s Background Switcher in the first place was that I wanted to be able to change the background on my computer periodically and every time a new version of Windows has come out I’ve been looking out for two things:

• Better (i.e. some) multiple monitor support.
• An automatic desktop background changer built in.

Finally with the release of a Windows 7 beta, at least one of those two features has been implemented (and it’s the latter). I’ve been half-hoping Microsoft would do this for a while now even if it meant the end of JBS. This isn’t from laziness but much though I love developing it and the community of users that’s built up around it, I have lots of other ideas and only limited free time to work on them. Currently most of that free time is taken up with JBS to the detriment of anything else I could be working on. Having said that I’d be hard pushed to produce anything as successful as JBS (except the planned Mac version perhaps) so if I can keep it alive I’m not exactly going to complain!

I downloaded the first beta of Windows 7 to take a look at this potential JBS-killing feature and having played around with it it’s pretty clear that it doesn’t actually replace JBS at all, but instead nicely complements it. Windows 7 expands the dialog that lets you set your background so that instead of choosing one picture you can choose a selection of them and how frequently you’d like the background to be changed, you then leave it to it:

I saw on some pre-beta screenshots that there was an option to use RSS feeds as a photo source (just like JBS does) but see that feature missing from the current beta. If they do ship with RSS support then that would be extremely cool (and lessen the appeal of JBS slightly) but if not then that’s fine with me. So if you want to change your background periodically using specific pictures on your computer then the built-in Windows 7 desktop slideshow is for you – there’s no point installing JBS. However before I stop developing JBS and resolve all the outstanding tasks as “will never implement” I can see several reasons why I’ll keep working on JBS.

First is multiple monitor support. When I started developing JBS very few people used multiple monitors but today a surprisingly large percentage of users do. The Windows 7 desktop slideshow doesn’t appear to let you do things like have different pictures on different monitors or span one across all. That may change when they ship but considering Microsoft’s complete lack of useful multiple monitor support in the past it wouldn’t surprise me if things remain as they are. JBS lets you have different pictures on different monitors or stretch across all and in the next version I’m planning some even better multiple monitor options.

Next is tight integration with web-based sites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Phanfare and others. Even if Windows 7 supports RSS feeds it’ll still be a bit tricky to choose from all your friends photos on Flickr (including private ones), or the most interesting pictures over the last 7 days, or your private photos on Picasas web albums and so forth. So for avid users of these photo sites (like myself), JBS will still do a better job than the built in desktop slideshow.

Next is choice and variation. The current version of JBS and to a far greater extent the next version can let you choose background pictures from multiple sources – some local folders, some sets from several photo sites, some RSS feeds and search results. If you like randomness or have a bunch of accounts on different sites you want to pull photos from then reverting to the built-in switcher will lose you that flexibility. Also, if you want to use pictures from a folder on your machine then with the built-in desktop slideshow you’ll have to keep telling it about new ones you add to that folder before they’ll turn up on your desktop – JBS on the other hand can just monitor folders for you and work things out itself.

And last but not least the montages and post-processing effects JBS has to offer appear not to have a place in the Windows 7 switcher. Being able to create a snapshot scrapbook or mosaic of photos across multiple monitors is pretty cool and one of the better ideas I had for JBS:

All in all I’m really glad to see that a background switcher will be built into the next version of Windows 7 – it’s something long overdue. And I’m also glad to see that there’s plenty of scope for me to keep building functionality into JBS and improving it without feeling like I’m wasting my time – there’s clearly still a place for JBS. Heck, there may even be a way to hook the cool functionality JBS has directly into the built-in desktop slideshow so that Windows 7 users can have the best of both worlds.

The Windows 7 desktop slideshow is, like a lot of the new functionality Microsoft has added, a straight clone of what’s available on the Mac. And despite the fact that Macs have had automatic background switching built in for years it hasn’t stopped a lot of people requesting I write a Mac version of JBS (a request I’ll finally be fulfilling soon) so I don’t expect people wanting to run JBS on Windows when they upgrade to 7 to stop either.

Typically for me I missed the hype of the BBC series Life On Mars a few years back but managed to acquire the first series on DVD last Christmas (that’s not the Christmas just passed, it’s the one a year ago). I have a pile of books to read as long as your arm and a pile of as-yet unwatched DVDs as long as your leg so I finally got around to watching Life On Mars this Christmas and wow, it’s brilliant!

For those like me who are several years out of date with everything (for example generally I wait until a band has broken up or died before I become a fan, not by choice, it’s just the way it seems to pan out) then the premise is that a police officer from the modern day – Sam Tyler – is involved in a car accident and wakes up in 1973 somewhat confused and still a copper. He’s not sure if he’s in a coma imagining the whole thing or has travelled back in time and his boss – DCI Gene Hunt – is a classic 70’s Sweeney-style copper who’s happy to fit someone up or beat a confession out of them just to get a result – quite contrary the current 21st century methodical approach to policing.

What made the show such a success was the way it approached the problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, police corruption and other issues of the day and showed how they came to be and why life was like that back then. By having a politically correct 21st century metrosexual thrown into that world he was a fish out of water feeling like he was on another planet and the contrasts between the attitudes in our world and that of the 70’s made me feel like I’d stick out a mile then. However what was even more clever was the way it demonstrated how nowadays crime is out of control, the police are caught up in red tape and politics, any sense of community is lost, and for all our freedoms, high technology and enlightened thinking, the world of the 70’s has its merits. By the end of the second and final season he’s become more at home in the world of the 70’s than the 21st century (I’ll leave it at that and not spoil the ending). The acting was excellent, the story-lines compelling, the music the pick of the 70’s (most of which reminded me of my early childhood) and Gene Hunt was a fantastic character with classic exchanges like this:

SAM TYLER: You’re an overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding.

GENE HUNT: You say that like it’s a bad thing!

We watched season one over a couple days (having stayed up until 2.30am the first night) and immediately ordered season two which we consumed with similar gusto. It was entertaining, sad, thought-provoking and in a way made me long for the world I grew up in where a hoodie was a type of jumper, not a teenage, uneducated hooligan with no work ethic and a fondness of drinking and violence. A world where you could go out without locking your door and you knew all your neighbours. Having said that the 70’s had more than its fair share of problems like football hooliganism, women treated as second class citizens and a host of other social ills. But it’s sad that while in a lot of ways we’ve become more tolerant, understanding, technologically advanced and supposedly civilised, when I look around and read the news I can’t help but feel that in my lifetime society has never been more fractured, terrified, lawless, selfish and politically correct to the point of madness.

I often wonder what would happen if I went back in time to the early 70’s, met my father and told him what life was going to be like by the time I was his age. What would he think? Would he believe me? And would I want to go back to it? I’m not sure I would. If nothing else with my fondness for flowery shirts I’d fit right in!

I’m not much of a gamer. I’ve had a Playstation 2 for years but about the only games I’ve actually played on it are Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and the sequel, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (both of which I loved, particularly for the music and humour). But aside from those two the only time I play any games are when I fire up Word Mole on my BlackBerry (and only when I’m really bored).

So this Christmas we “borrowed” my good lady’s nephew’s Nintendo Wii. I’d heard from several friends that they’re really good fun and have a broad appeal for gamers and non-gamers alike, and that they’re even more fun when you’re drunk. And on both counts they’re absolutely right! The Wii – as anybody who’s ever used one knows – doesn’t bother trying to keep up with high-performance consoles like the Playstation 3 or XBOX 360 with cutting edge, realistic graphics and sticks to simpler, more cartoonish games. And the wireless remote controls use accelerometers so you can swing them around the room rather than just pressing buttons were revolutionary and I expect will be much copied in time (hey, it’s good enough for the iPhone and iPod touch games).

So I started – as I’m sure many people do – by just about throwing my shoulder out of its socket playing hours of Wii tennis continuously. While not exactly like the real thing it’s realistic enough to get you to swing your arm across the room trying to power-drive the ball down the line! But this was as nothing to how addicted I’ve become to Mariokart.

Back when I was a student I used to spend many a happy hour playing Mariokart on one of my friend’s N64. We’d have battles, races and the cool thing about it was that it captured all the fun and excitement of the original Mariokart that I’d played years before on the SNES (the vintage Super Nintendo Entertainment System) while taking it to new levels. The fact that you were trying to win a race but the worst you did the better the power ups you’d get, and the better you were doing the worse the power ups made it fun even if you’re rubbish at it – it just about levelled out. Unlike some driving games that are purely skill based, Mariokart managed to make it instantly playable for the expert and novice alike.

I was delighted to find that the Wii version of Mariokart stays true to the heart of the original and again brings it on another level. The fact that the controller is a wheel that you can turn in mid-air along with the extra power ups, good combination of new and old tracks along with the ability to play on-line against people who are actually very good at the game (the best I’ve finished in a race is 4th so far) makes it lots of fun. And the cute graphics, sound effects and multi-player options rock. I was also delighted to see the infamous track “Rainbow Road” there and brought into the 21st century (historical note / urban legend: apparently Rainbow Road on the SNES could cause epileptic fits – no idea if that’s true or not). Anyway, it’s the perfect antidote to a hard day’s work and I’ll be in no hurry to give the Wii back to its original owner!

Now, all that remains is to see how it plays when I’m drunk…