Well, it seems to be a Babble tradition that has carried on into RV:Blog so I might as well join in. I’m in the Apple store in Brent Cross and everything’s white and funky and glowing. Oooh I want to walk around and play with Appley things now 
Next to me a sales person seems to be doing well. “We’re not leaving without buying one of these!” He’s demonstrating Spotlight. Microsoft really needs to hurry up with Vista!
Edit – Big screens. Big screens!
Heya blog! I’m back! Yes – came back from the Big Apple on Friday morning and managed to avoid the effects of jet lag by staying up like normal. Before we get to the most-requested photos it’s time for some observations about New York! Firstly – it’s not America! OK, maybe it is, but it’s very Londony too. I’m talking about the public transport, the lack of fat people walking around (sorry – stereotype but hey 
) and all sorts of little touches that reminded me of home.
There are differences, of course. In London you sometimes wander into the road, decide you won’t make it and go back to the pavement. In New York, oh no you don’t! By the time you’re in the middle of the gigantic crossings you’re a million miles from the sidewalk so you might as well plough on and avoiding getting run over by the ubiquitous yellow taxis.
American TV is also… shit. Don’t get me wrong, they make some great programmes, but it’s still unwatchable due to the constant adverts. Fox News also stuck me as not only horrible, but really unprofessional too. And they have no idea how to interview without you hearing both people talking at once.
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Manhattan Skyline
It is a school thing, but it’s going to be so much fun. I’ve got my shipment of dollars right here (it feels like Monopoly money! hehe!) ready to spend in the city that never sleeps. I don’t really know many people who are going, but it’s a small group (under twenty people) and they all seem very nice so I’m sure we’ll get along. And if not, we’re in New York! Who cares?!
Oh and Alex, I’m sure I’ll run into you. There are only, what, 19 million people? Watch out for me
Incidentally, teachers wishing to send me homework should use the contact form here. Yes, I’ve already had people saying they’ll do that. But don’t expect I’ll get anything done on the plane!
Right right… I’ve got to Americanise myself. We’ve already been warned that they take tipping rather more seriously than us, and that people on the subway don’t have the same London instinct to stay quiet and stare at the middle distance right between other passengers when travelling. Oh – and that in New York, you have to be 21 to drink and that yes, they do enforce that and yes, you will get in trouble if you break it. Apparently.
We get back on Friday morning. Not sure if they’ll be blogs in the meantime, but have a lovely week anyway
Incidentally – when is the visa waiver form going to stop asking if I was a Nazi? 
Grabbed the latest IE 7 Beta from Microsoft today to try out the long-awaited version of the ubiquitous browser. And it’s good. Confused me at first because for some reason it turned ClearType on, but after I found the setting, I played about with the new IE.
The obvious change is the user interface. I’m getting used to it surprisingly quickly, despite it being rough around the edges (as you’d expect) and markedly different from IE 6. I use Firefox for browsing and while this doesn’t manage to overtake its rival, Microsoft do make a valiant attempt to catch up – at last! Printing is fixed, tabbed browsing is here at last, and the nastiest CSS bugs are gone. The new phishing filter also looks promising although I’m sure they’ll be some users who won’t use it on the privacy principle.
One small improvement that I do really like is the ease at which you can enable, disable and remove ActiveX controls. Many of the little things in Firefox that I couldn’t live without, like spell checking, are actually done via extensions which I’m a lot happier installing in Firefox than I am loading a plugin in IE. This might change that and make it easier for Internet Explorer to acquire some of this extra functionality safely. (In fact – ieSpell seems quite promising for spell checking in particular!)
So – anyone willing to try it out too? 
Woot! 
I just got a place on the scheme which means I’ll get to visit Cambridge University from the 16th to 18th of February and follow round a student there, which is going to be so great! I hope everyone who applied from my school got in too. Anyway – more details here.
Incredibly busy weekend too – had lunch with my great-uncle, then onto my cousin Alix’s 20th birthday celebrations (happy birthday!) before Joshua’s party tonight. Then tomorrow I’m off again to see grandparents… apparently their computer is exploding. Or something. We’ll see!
Oh and finally – I managed to burn a small patch of carpet after a lamp fell on it. It seemed to turn to astroturf. And this was minutes after I had been teasing Josie about setting fire to things, which made me feel bad. Karma!
Update: OK, maybe not 
I’ve suddenly lost all my things to do for the rest of the weekend! How odd. Oh well
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
