But there’s a potential bug for some users. The download manager uses Adobe Air, and on some combinations of computer/browswer/OS, it can refuse to load properly. After a bit of online searching, I found the strangest of fixes – but it works. Just download the Firefox web browser (if not already installed) and then have Firefox open and running before you attempt to open the B&W Download Manager. For some dumb-ass reason, this will allow Adobe Air to run properly. I don’t know why either.

Someone posted this as a fix for an Abode Air hang-up (thank you!) as it worked for them and it worked for me too, so if you’re having a similar problem, it’s worth a try (a quick Google search shows a lot of user issues with Adobe Air, so I suspect this solution may help more than those stuck with the B&W download manager)

And yes, I checked for an app too. Nothing showing. Given Adobe have announced an end to Flash, you’d think Rolex might want to have a few well chosen words with their web people. I read recently that web searches are up 700% on tablets, and that was pre-Christmas. Talk about a missed opportunity….

The salesman rolled his eyes. Long story short, no you can’t, and he confirmed the tweeter is a “kid magnet” with the ones in-store frequently being grabbed by children coming in with their parents. They are readily damaged and as a result, after a recent product refresh, the store contacted B&W to order replacement tweeters to repair their demo stock – but there was a three month delay as stores all over the world were doing the same.

Sadly, this is a knock-out for me. Your circumstances may vary of course, but its something to consider for sure. A shame the grill can’t somehow be locked on as an option, as these speakers are great value, the technology is impressive, and they sound absolutely beautiful.

But, weariness aside, under the questions from Geraldine Doogue, Gehry offered some amazing insights into his life, and his pursuit of perfect design.  It was interesting to listen to the points he made in respect to creativity – to consider how these observations could apply to other arts such as photography, music, and so on.

Some observations from his comments:

• Creative projects work. The Bilbao building paid for itself in eight months.
• Simple things require more precision than the complex
• There is beauty and energy in collisions of spaces and design
• Always be yourself – and then you will be the expert in your work.  Your signature is your own, no one else does it like that – so do that in your work and don’t think about it.
• Every new project is a challenge.
• The constraint of the budget is a welcome challenge
• Be childlike, playful, and free of constraints as you design
• Encourage push-back from the client, it helps him find the edge
• Too many colleagues don’t challenge the clients early optimism on costs. You need to do that at the outset
• Get out of the project if the client is not engaged.

A word that Gehry used repeatedly was “engage.”  The work has to engage the client, it has to engage the users, it has to engage the community. It has to engage him as the architect.  He kept coming back to this word – and it surely applies in all creative pursuits.

When asked what he wants his legacy to be, he responded, “Well since I’m not going to be here, I don’t care.”  I think he meant it – he simply designs and creates without worrying what the naysayers and critics care to focus on.  That to me, is a sure sign of a great mind at work.

A model of architect Frank Gehry's Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, dubbed The Treehouse. (Gehry Partners)

Lemme see now, 3+ grand for 10 MB back then, or $95 today for 1TB from Officeworks. Gob-smacking, that’s what it is. (Some of our email attachments exceed 10MB today!)

The Miniwatt sounded like a sweet way to power some desktop speakers for the office – after all, I thought, a tube amp would add some warmth to the slightly cool feel of digital audio, so that might even things out nicely.

In swapping emails with the good people at Miniwatt in Hong Kong, I learned of the N3, a slightly bigger and better spec’d model which, at the time, was about to be launched.

Cut to two weeks later and the N3 is on my desk.  Sporting three tubes instead of the S1’s four, up from 2 watts per channel to 3.5, and with options for 4, 6 or 8-ohm speakers (the S1 is confined to 8 ohm), this single input amp is quite something.

The S1 is billed as, “the worlds smallest 4-tube integrated amp”, and looking at the slightly larger N3, it might be that this is “the world’s smallest 3-tube integrated amp”?  Honestly this thing is small.

While waiting for the amp to arrive I got some Kimber 8TC speaker cable

for my AudioEngine P4 speakers…

…and a DevilSound USB DAC – figuring my computer soundcard wasn’t going to do justice to the rest of the set-up.

My N3 was shipped from Hong Kong to Australia via UPS in two days. It was well packed in high-density foam and was quickly unboxed.  There is no manual, but frankly adding a manual would be as redundant as when the airline shows you how to fasten your seat belt.

I connected the DAC to a USB port on my computer, added the speakers and then plugged the N3 in to the mains (you need to supply your own power cord, and like the S1, the N3 can handle universal voltage).  I switched on, waited a short while to let it warm up and then played a familiar CD to see what I thought.

Well the first song was less than a minute in when two colleagues came into my office to see what was going on.  I had hardly turned the volume up so it was not very loud at all, but they could tell something was up. “Are these new speakers?” (Yes), “Is that little thing the amp?” (Yes), “How come it sounds so good?” (Don’t know), “Where did you get it?” (Online), “How much was the amp?” ($378), “Wow!”

I let the disc play on, and gradually raised the volume some more. Oh yes, this was sounding good.  Very good…  I remembered reading some old marketing material from LINN, and their advice was to ignore the spec.  Simply, if it sounds better to you, then it is better. Wise words that came back to me as the CD played on.

The MiniWatt runs quite warm, but this is considered normal so I wasn’t alarmed, I did feel a little sad as I turned it off later in the day though.

The next day I did some more critical listening.  I am no audiophile so don’t worry I’m not going to rave on with some specialist vocabulary, and besides there are several elements at play here – from the source to the speakers – and a proper evaluation would swap out the MiniWatt  amp for “something else” if I were to try and isolate it’s contribution.  But here’s my point – the whole set up sounds fantastic.  3.5 watts is plenty loud enough for the office, and all up I’ve likely spent the same or a bit less than some of the “main street” audio gear that just isn’t going to come close to this for listening pleasure.

I’ve been amazed at the clarity of the music, there’s no obvious noise (no doubt some, but not hearing it in my office environment), and there seems to be a wide dynamic range – the little speakers are obviously going to be modest when it comes to bass, but even here I was not disappointed – everything just seems, well, balanced I guess.

I have been wondering about a cost effective power cable, something up from the spare computer one I am using now, but I am wary of these – are they snake oil, or do they help? (Comments welcome!)

The Miniwatt is the star player for me in all this though; it was cheaper than the speaker cables but fractionally more than the speakers and DAC.  Those with more knowledge may criticize my seemingly random choice of components, but the whole lot plays nicely together, it sounds awesome to me.  I thank Miniwatt for putting so much quality into a small, low-cost, no BS package.  Talk about putting a capital “V” on Value. That’s heroic.

You can buy your MiniWatt N3 (or limited stocks of the S1) from MiniWatt in Hong Kong, or in the US from ALO Audio

The DevilSound DAC (which I hardly touched on, but clearly adds to the sound chain in a positive way) is detailed here

A review of the AudioEngine P4 speakers is here and you can learn more about Kimber cable here

I will add to this review as I become more familiar with the set-up.

Specifications of the Miniwatt N3
Tubes: TungSol 12AX7 + 2 x Sovtek Matched Pair EL84
Input: RCA
Input Impedance: 50Kohm
Output: Banana Jacks
Output Impedance: 8/6/4 ohms (Japan Z11-EI48*24 Output Transformers)
Output Power: 3.5W + 3.5W
Frequency Response: 30-25Khz (+-1db)
Residual Noise < 0.8mVac
AC Input: 100-250Vac
AC Socket: Standard IEC Jack with Fuse protection (2A Fuse)
Dimensions: 130 (W) x 130mm (D) x 130mm (H)

The original S1 and newer N3 side by side

Kudos to the little company that could. Remember The Milk is a truly impressive way to manage your tasks.

Having tried many “Getting-Things-Done” (GTD) applications, RTM was something of a revelation – it works so well that I use it several times a day.  In fact “use” is the wrong word, I totally rely on it.

Less is more. Simple is best. What I really like about RTM is;

1.  I can access it via any web browser on any computer.

2. It syncs to the matching iPhone app over the air (and vice versa of course)

3. Recurring tasks are easy to set up – and you can use almost any wording you like. For example, “repeat every third Tuesday”, “repeat every 4th day” and so on.

4. Tagging allows you to triage your tasks by topic (e.g. shopping, Christmas, holiday plans), day, event, location  – whatever you want really.

5. The RTM plug-in for iGoogle is fantastic – I use this as my primary access gateway to RTM

6. The one-click “Postpone” feature rolls the task over a day – this is incredibly handy

7. Yes there are priority’s, due dates etc – all the usual stuff.

8. RTM is free, but the iPhone app is an annual sub (and well worth it too)

9. You can get email reminders, work offline, interface to Google calendar, share tasks and more.  Despite the simplicity, there is enough for power users too.

10. It works well with GTD principles. For example I have a tag called “someday” and I add this to undated tasks. Later I can see all my “someday” tasks grouped together – moving some to active dates as required.

Remember the Milk say that their app is “The best way to manage your tasks.” No argument from me.  Two thumbs up.

Visit them here. Even if you only find RTM half as useful as I do,  you’ll still be well impressed.

After you’ve watched that, you have to wonder if publishers will “burn the presses” as Marc Andreessen argues here on TechCrunch. It’s a great read – as thought provoking as the above video.

Been using Macs for 5-plus years, still have to use a PC for some apps at work – so I am still current on a PC – but today was a kind of shock to me.

I helped a friend set up a new Toshiba Net-book, and the whole experience felt like one of those kids games where you hit the gremlin each time he appears out of his hole. There were pop-up windows for something called the Toshiba Message Board, warning messages for all kinds of crap, and a desktop littered with icons and “Recommended” shortcuts and URL’s. Naturally a Net-book has a small screen, but much of the available browser space was given to oversize icons, multiple tool bars and the likes. I spent a while trashing this mess finally getting clarity from chaos. Surprise Windows messages, tips and hints continued to annoy me – but one by one I think I nuked them all.

I know that stuff is well intended, but it really underlined for me the simplicity and beauty of the Apple experience. It was Leonardo da Vinci who said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Making something simple is hard work and takes a lot of testing – but it’s something Apple clearly frets about, whereas the Windows family seems to get close – but never quite there, and never with any sense of sophistication. The result for me today was chaos and frustration.

The good thing is, my work is done and I got to hand the Net-book back. Happily.

A recent Twitter post summed things up when the writer said, “Apple Aperture is like your dead-beat dad who shows up late on Christmas day. But he has EVERY present you ever wanted.”

There’s some truth in this because Apple are kind of slow at releasing updates – and they struggle to keep up with RAW formats for new cameras – much to the frustration of many a new camera owner.

I had decided that failing anything new from Apple, I would switch to Lightroom 3 when it come out of Beta in April. Aperture 3 therefore surprised with it’s “200 new features” so Apple delivered, and big time. This is really quite an impressive upgrade.

Sadly actual upgrade process was incredibly painful – there is some suspicion on web forums that there’s a memory leak – and as a result there are many posts about the amount of time it takes to complete an upgrade (and the fact that computer resources are so heavily drawn on that the computer is useless for many hours). Hopefully a fix will come soon, but if you persevere with the upgrade and cycle through a series of re-starts, things seem to come right. And that’s when all is forgiven (new users probably won’t have this upgrade hurdle of importing and converting their old files)

It’s clear that Apple have been listening – and while this is still not quite the DAM manager I’d like it to be, it’s much improved on many fronts.

While Aperture was down for me, I used Lightroom 2 to finish a project I was working on. Granted it is a while since I used LR, but it proved to me just how much more I prefer Aperture. Lightroom’s “module” based approach is frustrating – chopping and changing my workflow to suit the software is not how I want things to work. Also, the cluttered interface was annoying – urgh, you have to click so many things to get the panels out of the way. By contrast, Apertures F key (for full-screen) is sweet, and now on A3 you simply hold the shift key while making your Adjustment and 99% of the HUD vanishes (it just keeps the slider you are using). This is very cool.

There are many great new features in Aperture 3 – thanks Apple (and perhaps thanks to Adobe too, as some of the new ideas appear to have been inspired by Lightroom). It’s a pity the upgrade path is so onerous, and that updates to the RAW engine seem to take so long to be released, but all in all this is an outstanding application.

UPDATE

Hmm maybe I spoke to soon. Things slowed down again – had to crash out of an export session that A2 would have done easily (seemed the CPU creep thing was happening again). And brushes, woah those things are slow and clunky on me.

Oh well, I await a fix – am sure they’re working on it at Apple land. Just hope it’s soon as this is frustrating (and damaging for them too)

UPDATE 2

Well it is a week later as I write this and I have just had A3 crash three or four times in a row as I try to work on a clients shoot. I guess the fine print says I can’t sue for lost income and time, but professional quality this is not. C’mon, where’s some info on patch/fix please???

UPDATE 3

A major patch came out today (taking Version 3 to 3.0.1), about two weeks after my problems started. I think this is a good fast response from Apple – hopefully it addresses the issues, I’ll give it a good workout over coming days…

UPDATE 4

MUCH improved in many area (thanks!), but Faces is frozen and won’t re-start (after initially working for about 10 minutes), brushes still too clunky to be of any use, random crashes continue – and there are other “issues.” As twitter message said, “Aperture 3 was Alpha and 3.0.1 was Beta” – so hopefully we get a release candidate soon…

UPDATE 5

Another patch duly applied – this time to Apple Pro Apps (to address a “memory leakage”) so hopefully the cumulative effect of these fixes is helping. I still find the bushes too slow to be useful, and faces has given up on me – but the main features I relied on with Aperture 2 seem to be going OK. So far anyway.

UPDATE 6

A patch that upgrades Aperture to 3.0.2 came out today.  According to Apple’s release notes it appears to address quite a list of bugs – and even adds a new feature (iPad support).  So, kudos to Apple for continuing to address their screw-up’s – they’re making an effort to get this right and I imagine there will be more of these yet.  Shame it wasn’t right when it shipped – but they’ll learn from it and someone will be updating their resume I guess.  Meantime, I’m running Faces again overnight to see how it performs this time around…

Later: Well after two nights and all-day in between, Aperture picked six more faces out. As a result, I’ve once again disabled this feature…

UPDATE 7

After downloading an OS (non-Aperture) update I decided to re-activate Faces.  Woah, looks like all that processing the other night did something.  It seems to have located most faces, and correctly named a decent chunk too.  OK, so this is progress.   The only footnote to add is that I am testing this feature on a small library – hate to think how long it might have taken on my main Aperture library, but hey Faces is finally starting to make me smile.