Monthly Archives: June 2003

GIF Patent Expired

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I forgot to mention in all the Harry Potter related excitement this wonderful piece of news:

“On Friday, 20th June 2003, the death knell sounds for US patent number 4,558,302. Having benefitted its owner, the Unisys Corporation for 20 years, the contents of the patent are entered into the Public Domain and may be used absolutely freely by anyone.
Officially titled “High speed data compression and decompression apparatus and method”, it is more commonly known as the LZW patent or Unisys’s GIF tax.”

This quote from a great summary and timeline by Stuart Caie over at Kuro5hin
It’s not quite all over yet:

“One down, seven to go:
So the US patent has expired. What does this leave?
* The European patent EP0,129,439 covers Germany, France, Britain and Italy and expires on the 18th June 2004.
* The Canadian patent CA1,223,965 expires on the 6th June 2004.
* The Japanese patents 2,123,602 and 2,610,084 expire on the 20th June 2004. “

But nearly…

Sunday

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I went swimming again with Jamie, Megan, and Steve this morning. For some reason they decided to throw in all the novelty floats today which livened things up a lot in the pool.
Things were quiet again this afternoon, Jamie and I watched My Fair Lady, while Jan was still reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The good news is that she has now finished it and I get my turn. So, I’m off to bed now to get a good start on the book!

Quiet Day

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It’s been a quiet day today! We dropped Jamie off at her stage school this morning. We got up late because of last nights adventure, so she was a little grumpy. Then back home, where Jan rushed through the jobs she had to do. Then she was off reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I picked Jamie up from stage school and dropped her back at home. She was even more grumpy than this morning!
I then left both of them with their Harry Potter books and went to do some jobs for my mum. I chained together her flower pots that she has at the front of the house, and then fastened the chain to the wall. She has been worried about them since some drunk tried to wander off with one of them one night. THis chain is more of a deterrent than anything else. I also fixed her new hose pipe for her and watered the plants for her. I should be easier for her now, a lot lighter than carrying and lifting a watering can.
When I got back home, the girls were still on the bed reading!
Oh yeah, it was the longest day today — the Summer Solstice, not that we got to see too much of it. It’s been dull and cloudy on and off today, we even had some light rain in the late afternoon. The great British Summer!

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

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We are all quite excited in our house. We are eagerly awaiting the release of the new Harry Potter book. Our local Borders are opening over midnight in order to sell copies of the book at one minute past midnight. They are suppposed to be putting on some entertainemnt.
We will be going down as a special treat for Jamie. I think we will only buy two copies, one each for Jamie and Jan. I have said I am willing to wait until one of them has finished before I read it. I guess with luck that means I will be able to start it on Monday!
Whilst I’m on the subject, we watched a very good interview of author JK Rowling by Jeremy Paxman tonight. It was the best interview I have seen her give. Very informative. The full transcript is available.

Which Would You Choose Your Hearing Or Sight?

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My ear problems led on to a brief conversation with Jan this afternoon in which I mentioned that if I had to choose, I would rather lose my sight than my hearing. Jan felt very strongly the opposite, she got a little distressed at the thought of losing her sight. My opinion is that though I would miss my sight a lot, my two biggest ‘uses’ of it, reading and computing, could be replaced or at least achieved without sight. But if I lost my hearing there is no way to replace music. I would be really, really upset to know that I could never hear music again. I have probably listened on average to three or four albums a day every day for at least the last four or five years. I currently have around 400 – 500 CDs (counting doubles and triples as individual CDs) in a huge range of styles from classical to punk, jazz to country, easy listening to nu metal, rap to trance, and everything in between. In fact to give you an idea of my musical taste, I have dumped my local CDDB database to this page. There are 480 CDs in that list and it is not complete, but does include CDs I don’t own. As you can see I really would miss music if I had to lose my hearing.
What do you think? Given one of those hypothetical dilemmas; you must choose to keep either your hearing or your sight, which would you keep, and why?

More Of The Ear Saga

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I forgot to mention, I went to see my doctor yesterday morning, and he prescribed some oral antibiotics and stronger painkillers. I decided not go into the office, but did some work from home.
For the rest of Wednesday, my ear wasn’t too painful, though I could tell when the painkillers started to run out. But it was very swollen most of the day and my hearing was affected all day. Quite disconcerting.
That led on to a conversation with Jan which I will discuss in my next post…