Windows XP 64-bit has been on the market for some time and both Intel and AMD’s current processors are 64-bit. Even cheap office Dell boxes are coming equipped with the 64-bit Core 2 Duo. (This is the x64/x86-64/EM64T/AMD64 architecture which comprises of 64-bit extensions on top of the existing x86 32-bit architecture and not to be confused with Intel’s IA64 Itanium stuff or DEC’s Alpha 64)

You can run 32-bit Windows XP on these processors but if you want to use more than 2-3GB of RAM then you’ll need to switch to Windows XP 64-bit edition (or Vista 64-bit if you’re really brave).

I’ve known for a little while now I wasn’t going to bother with the PS3 unless some truly unique titles come up and the price subsequently drops so buying one at launch was a no-no for me but once I found out only two of my friends were getting them (and I have a lot of geeky friends) I knew Sony were in trouble.

A quick browse shows Amazon.co.uk still have some available, Play have them left, hell even my local HMV here on the tiny island of Guernsey had over 100 unallocated at lunch today and had canceled their midnight launch event – albeit for ‘technical’ reasons.

Olivier wonders about Apple’s next enclosure material and that got me pondering. Jobs has already utilized:

The current Intel machines reused the existing PowerPC enclosure designs – at least superficially – for the iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro machines. Only the MacBook got to knock the older iBook design away.

I’ve been a user of Google Apps for your domain for some time – primarily to let me use the great Gmail interface for my own mail domains (thanks to the domain alias feature they introduced last month).

Logging into my mailbox this morning I was surprised to find that my account is now considered a Standard Edition but that a Premier Edition is available too.

I just got back from an advanced screening of Hot Fuzz – the new cop buddy comedy from the same trio behind Shaun of the Dead and three-quarters of Spaced.

Simon Pegg plays Nicholas Angel – one of the Metropolitan Police’s finest. The problem is he’s so good he’s making the rest of the forceforce service look bad in comparison so he is quickly dispatched to the idyllic village of Sandford out in the countryside.

We interrupt this blog of technical snippets and personal commentary to bring you an interesting look (courtesy of the BBC) at what happens to the various bottles, cans and plastics that are sent for recycling – at least in the UK. (Hit the "In pictures" link next to each person).

It is interesting that the companies involved highlight a few items that are troublesome to recycle – this information needs to make it back to consumers so that we know they’re not going to be part of the recycling process and choose to adjust our buying habits.

AnkhSVN 1.0 has been released!

If you use Visual Studio 2003 or 2005 and are currently either using the TortoiseSVN shell extension (or Subversion command line) then you would do well to see just how much more productive having source-control available from within the IDE can be.

If like me you have a couple of machines, a few virtual machines and secondary installations such as Express editions (for XNA of course) you can easily loose track of which have been patched with service pack 1. Especially if you also messed around with the SP1 beta.

Help > AboutHelp > About from Visual Studio 2005 can tell us – cryptically…

While Visual Studio is quite a capable IDE it isn’t perfect – here is my personal top 10 list of things I hate about it. I’ve kept the gripes to the IDE itself – the issues I have with .NET Framework deserve a post of their own some time.

Sometimes your solution has to be a mixed language one – you know the odd VB.NET class library that nobody wants to rewrite in C#.

I’ve just finished reading Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start and I must say I’m quite impressed.

For the last two years I’ve been working for at a start-up on an interesting product. We’ve got the core of our ‘magic sauce’ working just great but now I’m relying on business people to make it happen and I should probably have some idea of what that involves and how I can help.