Homer Goes To Hollywood

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday November 27, 2006

David Flynn

David Flynn prepares for the Simpsons blockbuster, shudders at the Podfather and cools his Mac.

Video

Has The Simpsons really been around for almost 20 years? It's true: it started as crude animations on The Tracey Ullman Show in April 1987, before winning a weekly half-hour program in 1989. Now there's a big-screen adventure on the way - quite honestly, we're surprised it took this long. In July The Simpsons Movie brings Homer to Hollywood. We doubt Hollywood will survive the experience. You can find the trailer for the film (and pretty much everything else to do with the yellow four-fingered nuclear fallout family) at www.simpsonschannel.com.

Podcast

The Ricky Gervais Show (from the star and co-creator of The Office - that's the original UK show, not the unfunny US version) has long been a favourite among podcast fans. Now Gervais and partners Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington are back with a new series called The Podfather. Taking its cue from The Godfather, the series will be released in three parts. The first episode is The Podfather Part I: Halloween, and is now available at Apple's iTunes Store (www.apple.com/au/itunes).

Office

And speaking of The Office, stand by for the PR blitz and the promises of enhanced productivity with Microsoft about to release its Office 2007 suite. The first wave breaks on November 30, when business users will have access to the software. The rest of us have to wait until January 30. Among its many dazzling features, the super-suite contains one significant change that's bound to affect almost everyone. Office 2007 introduces a new XML file format for Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. The new files will be smaller, easier to manage and more reliable. But there's a catch: any version of Office before the new 2007 release won't be able to open or read any document in this new format unless you download a special Office Compatibility Pack from Microsoft. It's free from office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101686761033.aspx - best install it in case friends and workmates who've upgraded send you files you can't open.

Mac

Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks are hot machines but perhaps too much so when they're sitting on your lap. Many users find they get uncomfortably warm in even a short period. Here are two programs that can help. Fan Control (www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl) monitors the temperature of the notebooks' powerful Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors and lets you adjust manually the temperature at which the cooling fan will start. CoolBook ($10 from www.coolbook.se/CoolBook.html) goes even further, by allowing you to adjust the frequency and voltage of the CPU, which in turn affects how warm the chip gets. There's an additional benefit: these traits also determine the speed of the notebook and the rate at which it drains the battery. If your machine doesn't really need to be running at full throttle, you can use CoolBook to wind back the wick to get a cooler laptop experience and longer battery life. This is especially useful on the earlier Core Duo notebooks, as they tend to run warmer and drain more power than the later Core 2 Duo chips. The program's author reports that his MacBook operating temperature decreased by as much as 14 degrees just by dropping the voltage from Apple's default of 1.2125 volts to the minimum possible setting of 0.95 volts.