A month-long hiatus due largely to my recent move into Kennington and the ensuing interlude sans internet. It should finally be sorted by the end of the week and I will be connected once more with the world. Kennington has been remarkably easy to settle into. Partly, one suspects, because I live in the centre and there’s simply not a great deal of it. For anything beyond grocery shopping one hops on the bus/tube up to Oxford Street in a matter of minutes. The closest pub is the inimitable Dog House, though bizarrely I haven’t actually been since I moved. The politicians’ favourite Kennington Tandoori performs take-away duties. Sal is about minute away, and the Clapham gang only a little further. And best of all, the journey to and from work has around half an hour sliced off. All in all an ideal location, even if my hatred of estate agents remains as forceful as ever.
Marching back from the station, slightly stressed in the evening, Cleaver Square often proves to be the calming antidote one needs, being the only place outside of Cambridge where one routinely stumbles past people playing a recreational game of bowls. And, as Anna and I discovered the week after we arrived, it’s where Kennington holds its annual village fête. Yes, in the middle of London. It was a charming affair with all the expected games and trimmings crammed in, coupled excellent food courtesy of the local restaurants.
The biggest news in the last month on which people have been asking my opinion is Google’s announcement of its new operating system, Chrome OS. I will admit to be intrigued, perplexed, and curious as to whether I will ever use it. I am first intrigued by the prospect of a new OS being built from the ground up at this stage, with the potential to be utterly different from its competitors, particularly with its web-based intentions. Yet cursory investigation swiftly reveals Chrome really just runs atop an existing Linux kernel, so quite how much is new below the surface is questionable. I am perplexed by the name choice given firstly that Google already has an OS in the form of Android for phones and its not a wide leap to their target market of netbooks, and secondly that the Chrome web browser from which it takes its name has made no discernible inroads into the browser market at all so is hardly an impressive brand (most people who tried it out were Firefox users who quickly returned for the customisation if offers). Finally I suspect it will be years before it’s ready for my use. The netbook approach seems an ideal fit but the jump to desktops is a sizeable one. A web based application system is fine for basic use but I’m unlikely to switch until (virtually) all the software I currently use is available. Given its Linux roots it’s entirely possible that this could happen if the Google brand encourages Linux support from more software vendors, but that would become an endorsement of Linux in all its guises rather than Chrome specifically. The alternative is web-based versions of all software which may well be the future, but we’re not there yet. If being without internet access for the past few weeks has taught me anything at all, I’m exceedingly glad all my software and data are local so that I can still do everything but surf.
And to fill the procrastination void created by my absence: Web Side Story.
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