iTunes update already.

I've been on iTunes 7 for a number of days now. In light of the most recent addition, which is installing as we speak. I thought I'd comment on the differences I've noticed - some good and some bad, which might have been fixed in this most recent update.



The complete interface overhaul is welcome with iTunes being nearly as old as XP and in desperate need of a make over, which has been released before Vista. ha ha ha.

I am not keen on the moving of the "Burn disk button" to the bottom of the play. I always quite liked the twee little rad haz sign that indicated a CD burn was imminent.

I have, as blogged about previously, a smart playlist for all my podcasts I haven't completely played yet. I have noticed under iTunes 7 that tracks a slower to register their complete play after they have finished - taking several seconds.

I much prefer to newly organised library, although just as the capitalisation was beginning to annoy me I found this tip

Coverflow is quite nice. It's hardly essential, and it has missed some of my tracks and even dl'd dodgey looking images. Quality not porn. It has however helped me find a track I'd forgotten I'd bought so props for that - it runs nice and fast hasn't apparently caused a slow down.

Well I'm off to launch the new version, I'll probably post about it later.

Bob Cringley and his Orwellian vision for iTV

So I was down in front of Cringely's pulpit, here it was I suppose his version of coverage of the last few big Apple announcements. Bob not content with just covering the facts of the matter, hell he's columnist after all, decides to offer over his wisdom.

The iTV is intended to connect primarily to high definition televisions. Yet these were never mentioned in the product announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. In fact, the term HDTV was never used despite Jobs declaration that 2005 had been the "Year of HD."

Now whilst he is quite proper and correct, Steve doesn't mention the term HDTV - instead offering

We've got an HDMI connector, this is the new connector that all new big screen flat TVs have.

I personally don't think this is Job's being coy about Apple's secret clandestine plans for an HDTV, lets face it - they've got Cinema displays, it's hardly a leap to push a few more inches out of them - and adding a bit of 1080p.

Job's lack of terminology is typical "Jobsian newspeak". He has this thing about making technology invisible. Whilst earlier in his speech he uses USB2 - as a rule he doesn't throw around terms that people don't need. If they are going to pitch this device at my father, who has gone to Walmart and had the school kid explain what these terms mean he's fine hear HDMI and thinking "Yes that's good my TV has that. It'll link up to my HDTV" Jobs didn't need to spell out the HDTV reference.



Whilst we're on that USB port which to quote Bob again

Jobs rushed right past the USB port.

Bob predicts that it's for an iSight and some Orwellian nightmare. I have a couple of issues with that claim. The iSigh to my knowledge, has never been USB only firewire - pumping across that superb quality video at the time of launch would have massacred USB. So that's out.

Why would they bother switching it to USB anyway. It isn't to far to put iSights, of the sort found in iMacs and Mac Books into the new HDTV Cinema displays bezel.

Isn't that all kind of horribly Orwellian again - giant screens with small imperceptible cameras, watching you - maybe that "deal with google" isn't about google video at all, no it's about that research published recently that says google could identify marketing via the ambient noise in your house.

I was at dinner recently, where the husband of the host's opening gambet, on seeing my Apple laptop, was to inform me "I Don't like Apple, everyone paints Microsoft as this evil empire - I think it's Apple and they're so much more insidious with it" it was a starting pistol for our discussion mainly, but now given Cringley's insight it doesn't seem that crazy.

How long before not just google, doing no evil honest, but government spooks are tapping in, listening - checking your calls to Iran visually not just audibly - all thanks to Apple.

OK I'm going overboard on the paranoia, once I've taken some Xanax and calmed down a bit, I realize it's not all dystopia. Think about Granma appearing on the TV to see the grandkids, take in some tom and jerry with them (OK Some Disney derivative) maybe look at the latest school project. Lovely isn't it.

I like Bob - I do, I read Accidental empires when I was a young whipper snapper, and again a few years later when I had a chance to understand it. He just seems a bit to wired in this latest piece.

I always loved the idea of writing about new tech stuff, not as much as making the stuff others are writing about - but it comes in decent second. I suppose that's the reason for this blog - a secret desire for an Arts major and a cushy number playing with all the latest toys and telling others about them.

An example of how easy blogger is

This is a very quick post to demonstrate how simple blogger is to use for a colleague who teaches.

This is definately new. It was definately needed. I'm glad it's there, I had certianly missed it in the past. Firefox has had this feature for a while. I've not noticed this recently, so I assume it is a result of my upgrades on Saturday morning ?

I will probably be told in the comments now, I'm a blond fool who needs a white stick when using Safari or more importantly the add on Saft. I certainly reckon it's not a Saft Add on - and if it is, why havn't I noticed it before ?

Answers on a post card please: New feature of Safari or old Saft Add-on ?

Microsoft Office

This was captured by a Canadian TV viewer. They have not yet appeared on the Apple.com website. Previous copied have been removed from youTube.com there is a second new advert where both the PC and Mac are in counciling - this has been reported previously that someone saw the councilling episode running in an Apple retail store.

I posted this version because I know how fond MPT is of Justin and he looks all spiffy in a suit in this one.

Virgin kneejerk reaction to Laptops, less... jerky

Whilst this comes too late for me, given the several e-mails I sent before I went to conference and during my trip, since I was flying Transatlantic for the Wedding - I'd like to think the alterations of their policy is a bit to do with me. It's still going in my complaint letter.

It is still annoying, you know how I hate turning my machine off - uptime like a badge of honor and all that, this way I could have soaked up some of the 10 hour flight by doing some work, I had planned to practice Ruby on Rails on that flight. Although in a recent dl.tv they did an interesting report on fitting a 17" in a cattle class seat situation. On the way back the c**k infront did have that seat back for most of the journey.

Hitachi lunch 2.0

I found this video linked on Hitachi's lunch 2.0 website. I'm not in it but I was there.




and this photo set on flickr.

Google earth and the Palace of Fine Arts

Google earth needed updating so I went to pick up Beta 4 - what do they offer as a screen shot. Yes San Francisco and the Palace of Fine Arts, recent host to the Future of Web Apps conference organised by Carson Systems.

iTunes update

There it is... it is interesting to note the icon doesn't change until you run the new version. Then you are asked to elect to get album arts automatically or not ?



I went for a yes, hey it might be pretty - and shallow good looking lack of substance is what us mac users are derided for.

The library has become much neater. There is the much hailed yet widely predicted Movies category.

The podcasts link automatically shows the number of new podcasts. I bet though this can't be tweaked so as it shows those that haven't been played, so I'll still need my "New Pods" smart play list.

The new Downloads link under Store shows what is current being downloaded a feature much missed in previous version one used to have to click through the list in the main display, in the same location as the old graphic equalizer.

This version also gives a decent collection of information regarding remaining time for download and size information. This is a basic tenet for the movie download model - you've gotta let people know how long is left - it is claimed you can also start watching dl'd movies after only a few minutes downloading. I still don't think 640x480 is enough to get me to download movies. I don't have an iPod and that is not good enough to be displayed on my 42" HDTV - it has to be DVD quality and have a price point that matches the cheap $5 DVDs at Wallmart. Or for brand new movies a discount based on the idea that there is no hard copy, now box and no inlay information.

I think an entire section devoted to Shared music is, I think, overkill. When I was in the Hotel in San Francisco I discovered two other shared play lists neither of which I could get music from.


When first run iTunes go through all the music you've got determining any gapless playback information. Again something classic music and pink floyd fans have been dying for. This I believe is the only player, and I know Pepperpot has derided the Sony offering she uses for this very problem.

During this process iTunes also gathers the album art if you selected that option on start up.


Here is a quick pic of cover flow - I'm a bit disappointed that it's prett slow to get the picture. Despite several of the albums in this shot being from the ITMS - is that now the ITS ? I've also read about some weirdness regarding the storage of these album covers. Inside an extra folde rather being embedded in the ID3 tags of the music itself. Which is where old art that I chose manually is stored, and indeed is the purpose of the Album Art tag. Taking a standard and meddling with it so it breaks it on other platforms, sounds like a job for Microsoft to me, office XML anyone ?

What is good, is when you seperate the sections using the music link in the library it divests the list of podcasts. Except those that have delivered mis tagged mp3 files - Inside Mac Radio, is one such sinner.

I did like the new movie controls that appear bezel like on the player. This enables easy navigation through the media and the simple full screening from the movie. Previously you had to go seraching around iTunes to full screen a video podcast.

Software update

I pretty much knew this would happen. Using Vista at the moment a release candidate - inside Parallels recent upgrade, another release candidate. Which lists an experimental Vista environment. I pretty much knew putting the laptop into Hibernate was a risky business last night. Hence my reaction wasn't one of surprise when I opened my laptop to hear the familiar Apple chime.

I thought since I had a reboot anyway and my uptime was trashes I'd use it as an opportunity to run software update and get the new iTunes. Despite the apparent bugs in the new version - they mainly effect windows users.

Also listed are a QuickTime update. A fairly old ExpressCard update. The Airport Update, which Grubber posts a quick commentary of. Then the Front Row and iTunes update.

Blue iTunes icon here I come. Oh year and cover flow... apparently it does something to do with movies ?

Vista on my Mac book pro - dirty dirty...

After taking a backup last night. I picked up the Vista RC 5600 build image I created a stack of space on my disk by moving a load of stuff to an external USB enclosure.

Using good old parallels, which needed to be upgraded to run Vista, I then did this....

Amazon live countdown for delivery

I was on amazon trying to convince the Maltese peasant trader to seriously consider a backup drive to clone her iBook. When I noticed that when viewing an item it gave a time until you could still get next day delivery... then I noticed the time changed live.

Now I know it's just a piece of still javascript - doesn't mean I didn't think it was rather twee. I personally would have put it flashing red at the top, as some will testify.

Trying new software... Parallels, Microsoft Max, iTunes 7 OR an Aiport update (yes you read that right)

OK I was debating whether to try Microsoft Max or iTunes 7 or Windows Vista on my mac.

Before updating parallels I decided to check for any update on the mac front.... and I spy this...


OK I'm not saying it is x or y - but lots of people were like if there is a bug lets see if Apple fix it. I've not updated yet - I love that uptime which is being pretty decent recently. If someone has let me know - I'll wait for it to be decomposed by the masses.

ITV Safari on a PC

While reporting on the risks of myspace, a site I've been writing an essay about since they introdcued "child protection" rules. With 100 million members there is obvious child abuse issues - that no doubt the internet will get wholly blamed for. Child pornography didn't exist before the Web and the Internet was invented... apparently.

During the report a blurry screen capture of a browser is displayed on a computer crt monitor. The weird things were:

It was a Mac program, three colours dots on the top left.

It was Safari google search bar on the right and simplistic toolbars.

On a windows PC as there was a start bar at the bottom.

Very interesting.

Apple refurb store

I hadn't noticed this previosuly. I decided to check out various refurb stores to see the effect on prices since the new line last week.

The refurb store has moved to the main page with a link there for everyone to see. Once you're in you find that they've catagorised the store, to macs, ipods, clearence etc.

Sureal China town experience... Happy New Year

It might be me and I've completely not noticed that it is Chinese new year or something ? I'm sure we've had that and we're actually in my year of the dog... so there.

I was kicking about San Francisco and decided to take in China town which has the largest official China town in the World outside China. I enter through some traditional gates, of which I know I've seen bigger. I'm ambling along and I hear a snatch of a tune wafting through the air. It takes a few bars but then I realize it is Auld Lang Syne. No it can't be I think... it is. It is most definitely Auld Lang Syne.

I listen some more and look towards the sounds, I spy this Chinese gentleman quite elderly sat down playing what I assume is a traditional Chinese instrument - I could look it up and name it... alright it was a erhu - didn't take long... (googled for chinese string instruments, third link (about.com) and then googled for each one in turn on the image search)

Seriously this elderly dude was banging out Auld Lang Syne on his Erhu... check it. So I asked him if I could take a picture... he nodded so I did and gave him a buck for his playing. Couldn't get the damn tune out of my head for the evening though so I've a good mind to ask for a refund.



Original video here because it's pretty bad copy and YouTube could kill it and make it really bad...

I went for dinner in China town, a lovely couple from Virginia recommended the Four Seasons on Grant Ave. It was nice, (but it came very quickly and whilst hot when it arrived it didn't hold it's heat, suggesting it was a pre cooked and reheated dish) reasonable price - and I got a fortune cookie...(Which are not Chinese at all but actually invented right here in San Francisco, must be true because my guide book says so.)

The fortune inside is below:


All those who agree comment below.

So i am crossing the bay...

This British chap who sold me his spare ticket finds out I am in IT so asks what he should buy, Mac or PC ? So for the twenty minute crossing I give him the benefit of my wisdom. So today after Alcatraz he's heading over to the Union Square Apple Store. He is gonna buy a mac book pro which I think is too much he should go for a mac book but he says he might play some games. on person at a time, That's what I say.

Amazing flickr talk by Cal Henderson at the Future of Web Apps SF06

I wish my battery on my DV hadn't run out this morning. I would love to get hold of a video off his talk. He was lucid, he was witty - he was British so sarcasm's like breathing for those people.

I and a small contingent at Work are trying to divest ourselves and all the corporate presentations of damned clip art. It is evil and tortures small kittens.

We have made some progress removing it from a couple of talks prepped for our senior management team recently.

Cal Henderson just gave a presentation about "Taking flickr from Beta to Gamma" apparently that is an internal flickr joke. His presentation was very interesting, even so far as saying "Beautiful code isn't important" which supprised me, I have a fetish for making my code nice and neat. I don't always achieve it but then I stress about not doing it. His tip is, it is simple not important. Get your product working and get on with the next small step.

He suggests that all the increments should be small. He sited many reasons for this, less likely to bust something, less likely to go in the wrong direction because your client feedback will be swift.

However aside from the great talk, so good I'm blogging it rather than eating food, one of the best lectures over the past two days. His visuals did all the stuff Presentation Zen tells you to. They supported his dialog, with only a couple of words on each slide, bar one.

Behind each word / phrase which was surrounded by actually a lurid Yahoo! purple box. Each slide was adorned with a picture (obviosuly from flickr) that correlated to his slide. Except two.

On those two he couldn't think of an acceptable picture that displayed what he was getting at, then he used a picture of a kitten. A quirkyness.

AOL Notebook, cookies and Rose

Quite a few freebies... including this one.


Had a Chinese meal the other evening I opened my fortune cookie and got this.



Also this speaker was pretty cool... Kevin Rose

One more thing...

So I pull up in the car at Hitachi yesterday - more on that later, and who is sat in the next car to me... Mr. Robert Scoble.



He was sat in his car, on his laptop listening in to the latest Apple announcements special events.

Steve Jobs announced new nano, 8 gig no surprise but nice design changes. I'm not a fan of colours but I can see why some people are. It harks back to the mini era. I know Maltese goat girl has lost her MP£ player so she's in the market for a new one.

Shuffle - WOW it's tiny, there are a few that are that small, but combined with iTunes functionality looks like an extremely nice package.

Only Jobs could get an applause for a clip though... come on guys don't give it to him on a plate. I'm still bitter about one more thing at the developers conference... or lack.

Movies, no surprises either - cheers Lionsgate... no mention of them yesterday though.

iTunes 7 looks nice, flipping through album covers - where we seen recently... Media Player anyone.

The wow factor was the set top box. A much rumored device that has materialized. Looked neat. I'm supprised it's not based more around the mini, could have offered a bigger device with more features - e-mail, the web etc.

That however would have blurred the lines, I've said it before people buy Apple because it does the one job they want / need it to do.

OK I'm off to have breakfast with a large internet company, hush hush you know...

"See you all again soon" - bless.

Oh yeah extra adverts, very nice - hardly worth of "One more thing" but have you heard him... amazing. Actually it was pretty fitting to have all this media stuff rounded off by a nice set.

quintessential american

OK Update coming... for know be happy I'm chillin out kicking back relaxing my stressed out head and catching a game... I'll tell you something for nothing, it is not cricket... much less couth.

However I do know, "Out of the other games that played tonight, the other two that were important good things happened and now the Giants move up in the standards"

The dodgers lost and Cincinnati won.

For those of you not familiar I would refer you to both:

Who is on first text

Who's on first mp3

How jealous are you

I think i might pass out

Train station sign

I will catch up, although the past 4 days, will end up just be a retrospective + pictures.

This file has been sat in my todo folder since I took it so I wanted to get it up there quickly. Taken at a London Underground station, the tube basically. Someone had defaced a poster about the yellow pages.

San francisco baby

Very nice clean even though passport control made me feel like a criminal and my bag is bust

sanity restoring break

I should probably cover in more detail what I'm currently upto and why randomly large photos have been appearing on my blog.

I'm taking an excruciatingly long over due sanity restoring break.

I needed some away from work time, despite having just had a different working environment for some weeks, working in education that summer recess is a god send, I get tonnes done. However designing systems based around teaching whilst I'm damn productive it is harder to get feedback on some designs.

So I wanted to go to the "Future of Web Apps" conference but I needed a catalyst to spur me to book it. Especially as when I looked at flying either side of the conference dates flights were thousands and thousands... well 1500.

That came in a two pronged attack from fate, or coincidence or whatever you call it.

Firstly I had an invite to a wedding of two of my old college friends. This is in London some days before the conference, so I thought since I'm going to be flying about I might as well head on over to San Francisco International and get to see some amazing people discussing the future of my industry, well part if it.


I doubt if Mr. Rose or Hardt will be getting into the large scale production of FPGAs and their impact on security with added processing power in small packages.

dick hardt is currently one of my favourite presenters, along with so many others, Guy Kawasaki included - "What you gonna do - not invite me back ?" With great influences from Lawrence Lessig I enjoy watching and re watching their lectures, each time spotting a new technique.

Whilst all this seemed appealing I still needed a kick up the butt to get me going...

Secondly I happened to be chatting online with another college buddy that I was considering it, he works for a major international airline. When I looked at flying days before and having a week in SF I found costs dropped by a third. It was still a bit more that I wanted to pay. We worked out though, I could fly in to London for Wedding, kick around the English Capital for a day or two then Fly to SF from their using a UK carrier, Virgin Atlantic. Stay in SF for a week do conference stuff, and take in some of the sights, the prison (as a visitor), the bridge - that famous movie set rolling hill, the trams.


So after exploring some options we found an even cheaper set of flights, to London then to San Francisco and back all for about $400 including taxes. Fantastic, this meant I could even afford a gift. However I'm flying on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 - people say I'm brave for doing it - however I reckon statistically those flights will be the safest most guarded in the skies that day. In fact if I can order 4 or more sky marshals for my flight I'd like that arranged please - in fact why hold back, feel free to put one on each row.

Boom I booked, the conference, the flights and set about looking for accommodation in both London and SF. Had my boss sign a leave form, I think the personal lady who takes care of holidays had forgotten I still worked for the company, since I go and see her so infrequently. I had a fairly tight schedule. You see I wanted to fly into London the day before the wedding, however we had a project didn't finish until the Friday afternoon. I explained I'd make a judgement call and dependant on how smoothly stages 1-3 of the project went would decide if I needed to be there for stage 4, my boss seemed OK with this. He was surprised that I considered "having to go off and do computer stuff" a holiday.

When I told several of our VPs, who had all been concerned that I hadn't had a break in such a long time, two of them nearly fell clean over that I was planning on deserting the ship for any length of time. One of them very kindly brought in for me a tourism book of SF a place he seems quite fond of.


Once it was all booked my inner geek started getting extremely excited about SF. I sat for an entire evening browsing website with links to "Future of Web Apps". I struck gold when I found lunch 2.0. This is an event hosted by Hitachi, a lunch actually. I began looking at the maps and worked out that whilst it was a bit of a slog to get from central SF near the Golden Gate bridge all the way down to Santa Clara for Hitachi, however then I spotted other big names in the valley that I could visit. The train to Santa Clara goes through Palo Alto... home of Xerox PARC. After lunch I'd be round the corner from this little fruit company I'm fond of. So it was set, free lunch and geek sight seeing.


Hence my hectic and tight schedule is thus...
Arrive London Heathrow - Friday 08.09.2006
Wedding - Saturday 09.09.2006
Visit college friend near Londonshire - Sunday 10.09.06
Fly to SFO - Monday 11.09.06
Visit geek sites - Tuesday 12.09.06
Conference Day 1 - Wednesday 13.09.06
Conference Day 2 - Thursday 14.09.06
Alcatraz - Friday 15.09.06
.
Suggestions....
.
Come home - Monday 18.09.06


Oh yeah and the photographs... well my phone is just that good. Check it out, blogger.com integration... almost makes it worth staying at blogger.com

Security and faith

I've just been heavily vetted by security to fly. Whilst queuing up I considered why everyone was being subjected to such screening, such inconvenience. This isn't a post about security and unlike the woman behind me I fully appriciate the reasons why I was checked for a bomb as such she didn't she obviosuly felt the urge to argue the toss about the bottle of water I'd just bought and was being asked to surrender.


I've been having a crisis of faith recently, my faith is something pretty personal, I don't evangalise to other people - I don't even talk about it much with others. However I'm part way through a podcast by Sam Harris - The Future of Ideas. I'm only a few minutes in but he is describing how there are hundreds of religious books, and how because some people interpret them we are currently in what has been descirbed by some as a religious war. Christian versus Muslim versus Jew.

Coupled with that I am reading a book on innumeracy and another one called the "pale blue dot" which has spent some time describing in detail quite how small and insignificant we are and how that leads to the possibility that in the entire expanse of the universe we're not that special and therefore why would a God bother with us if one exists.

So all these ideas are set up against religion and it has been causing me to question mine. However, I recently attended a wedding of two friends. Both have an amazingly strong faith, they met at our University's christian union. That entire group had such a faith I had never encountered before, even though I attended three faith schools, two catholic institutions. I always played the "cult" card when refering to that group of my friends. However secretly I was very jealous. How they could have such inspiring unfaltering faith in Jesus Christ. The closest I'd ever gotten before was a friend of mine who is not training to become a priest himself - that was a doctorinal faith.

There were numerous mentions of Christ, God, Jesus etc. at the wedding and in the various speeches. This encouraged me, whilst I won't ever be a bible carrying catholic who's every decision is correctly led by the teachings of the "good book" it did make me consider that for all the alleged harm that religion and faith has done around the world, at the same time it is so inspirational and strengthening for these two people and many of their friends. If Christ's teachings can do that for them, surely the prophet mohamed and the teachings of David must have the same effect on some Muslims and Jews - does that offsets all the bad stuff ?

Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Shoe

Pretty trees

Before dinner we stood here

Wedding tie

Pink matches my shirt

Mini food

Egg sandwich man i love plane food

Old Skool BBC

Here we have the bastion of many a school in the education system circa 1980.



This entry on wikipedia gives an outline of its history and specification. I wanted to post my own pictures of this computing legend. An old machine in amazing condition was found at work and before it was sent to the big computer scrap heap in the sky, I got my hands on it.



As you can see the marvelous expandability options offered by these serial ROM cartridge slots on the right of this case allowed for easy and quick loading of third party applications, much faster than the cassette. Although programs distributed on tapes were cheaper they were less reliable, all before even the 5.25" disk drives.



This shot offers a view of the 1 MHz expandable bus for users to add their own peripherals. One could hook up an external hard disk for astounding data transfer, from a disk that will probably never need upgrading with enough room for all your data and programs. (The kind of disk that probably wouldn't even hold the OS X logo now)

Yes that is correct, the original USB interface was designed on the BBC, you can see the original design for the port connector in this picture...



Above the fabulous connectivity options on the Beeb machine, room for cassettes input, composite inputs, the lightening fast econet port lets you harness the power of sharing computational prowess - the proprietary econet port easily and quickly will let you work with your BBC not on it.

Here you can see the famed "Designed by Acorn" label much aped by a later popular computer company, Apple who had "Designed in California" on all their own products and apparel.



Finally an original box, still the epitome of design chic 20 years after conception. The Clear proportionally spaced font, the reassuring "British Broadcasting Corporation"

I was caressing the sleek lines, of one of the earliest consumer computers for the mass market. Whilst the BBC wasn't my first computer, I had Commodore 64. I always loved the keyboard, coding on that in BBC Basic was a labor of love. The sweet reward was the gorgeous clunk of the micro switch keyboard. The old keyboard that ever came close to that precision tactile feedback was a Dell Laptop keyboard I had the pleasure of using some years back.

I dared to depress one of the delicious mechanisms and was rewarded even now by that click and the warm feeling inside that I was once again sat on a hard plastic chair in elementary School writing a story or in my own break making the computer do exactly as I wanted, be that programatically painting a picture, making a balloon float on the screen or simply display my name over and over... simpler times.

Relive a glimpse of your own youth with this video I took and have posted to the famed YouTube...



10 Print "I am a great programmer and will go on to great things"
20 GOTO 10

Run

Although with a sentence that long you'd get some horrid line break I bet.

You know you've had a stress filled day at work when...

You get home and sit in the car for four more minutes just "rethinking things"

You get to the Gym and can't remember how you got there, but know you should have said x not y to your boss earlier to make him understand that everyone else is against you

You do 30 minutes on the cross trainer and don't know where the time went, and in that 30 minutes your heart rate was above 170 for the whole time and for 12 consecutive minutes above 180

Whilst doing ab crunches on that silly ball you consider if you could re factor of 5 similar searches to make the code more efficient then worry if your boss would actually understand this an achievement

You get home from work eat dinner and then fall asleep comatose on the couch for 13 hours, wake up and head right back to work.

When a friend e-mails you this you want to cry because it is just the right thing and exactly the correct time

I LOVE MY JOB, no really I do - you can tell from the haiku like e-mails I write when I'm there, plus all that stuff above is about you not me

Character Pallette won't GO AWAY!

OK The mini has been relegated after a year of trusty service, yes that is correct a year - it has been a year since I first tried mac. Once you try mac you never go back... ask my colleague I am now.

Anyway, the mini has been up and running, serving network media, getting podcasts, serving some internal website and record TV for 109 days and it's fine.


It plays media for hours each day from one of three USB external hard disks and everything is tickity boo... show me one of these Windoos based shuttles that'll do that. Yes I know XP is very stable, oi mac fan boy stop sniggering it is.



However just recently, say the last 7 days I've noticed this weird bug - yes OS X has them. The character pallette won't stay away. I close it and boom a few minutes later it's back.


Turns out this isn't an uncommon bug... in fact Apple has a knowledge base article about it... http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25641

However the mini is on 10.4 - so it is still puzzling.

How Web 2.0 are you ?

From here I scored, well a number that is far too low to be admitted given that I think I'm fairly web 2.0 savy.

A mildly amusing demonstration of the power of the DOM.

Sony Laptop Batteries....

I'm so not the only person to have thought this myself... see... It isn't just me who is jaded and cynical.

Update on firefox beta

I thought FF had a crash helper... guess what I was correct...


Points to Firefox for getting this correct, it did work and it did recover the tabs I had running.

Previously I had blogged about Firefox being a bit of a memory liability in previous betas on my mac. Well it seems to have sorted this out, in the past when you hit about a douzen tabs, which I usually have by about 0913 on a Monday - it would slow to a crawl and the entire system could take a bit of a hit... seems to be better behaved in this respect now.

Crossover for Mac from Codeweavers

What with all the hullabaloo about cross over for mac using some smart alec implementation of Wine that is supposed to allow for native execution of Windows™ applications on an Intel™ based Mac™ with the need of a full blown Windows installation / execution as per my current Parallels Desktop™ and many others' Boot Camp setups.

I decided to give it the most cursory of glances, given that I have already shelled out for and enjoy running windows in a parallel box.

I Downloaded it. Ran it, it does quite a good instructional job on its opening screen. Insert a Windows Application Setup CD or point it at a windows installer .exe file.

My first test was to attempt the installation and setup of what would be the main stumbling block if my father were ever to switch over. He has, must be approaching 10 years worth of financial data in a Quicken file. His current version is 2002, so I dig out the desired install CD and insert it.

Good it spots the disk and offers to install it. From a little drop down it has a list of pre setup scenarios, one of which is Quicken. "Great" I think - this could be a winner.

Off it goes faking various win32 hooks and pretending to reboot and set up what I believe it calls a "bottle" - whatever.


It's proceeding along and then it gets to the end of some process or another and informs me that it's failed. I don't panic too much at this point, it is after all a new piece of software it probably expected an up to date version of Quicken. I start it again asking it to install an "Unknown" program.


The install appears to be getting further, but at the end no Cigar. Not a good prospect, I still contain my annoyance with the appeasement of, well it probably is a bit of a niche piece of software. Despite knowing full well all Quicken is, is a tarted up bit of spreadsheet kit with some metadata tags stuck on the end.


Not one to try one thing then decry and throw the baby out with the bath water. I press on. Everyone on Adium keeps trying to use their posh MSN clients to send me weird and wonderful winks, nudges and graphics. Whilst not wanting to encourage such purile behavior it'd be nice to be able to receive the rubbish before scolding my friends for wasting my time.

So I try, albeit it's doomed to fail given the current MS tendency to kludge lots of bits together and make some bastardised applications akin to IE in the late 90s.

I did like the fact that cross over gave the .exe I downloaded from MSN a twee little cross over icon.


This didn't help however and another failed installation later I do give up and turn to the section in the online faq "How do I completely remove your software?" which it is good that they supply.


I might investigate further in the future I've got an Office 2007 disk here which I fancy trying without messing up my current cushy parallels setup. One of their screen shots does seem to show Visio on the desktop. (the site also claims to support Quicken, pah)


Although this could just be another stella way to piss my boss off by sending him more documents he can't open.

The verdict ?

I realise that the concept is amazing. That they can trick any applications in to thinking they are sat on a Windows machine sans a bloated Windows™ install.

This is a pre β release. Whilst I won't be dropping my Parallels install into the trash just yet, I will be keeping an eye on the Codeweavers website.

Firefox β

OK So 2 Beta is rolling out. One of the prime updates I've seen is the inline spell checking. Whilst when I suggested this as a boon to a colleague he correctly observed that auto spelling checking in all online fields is pretty pointless, usernames, addresses, passwords and zip codes. He's correct and the wondrous people at the Mozilla foundation are aware of this, hence spell checking is only turned on in text fields.


One of the most requested functions in the web app I designed recently is a spelling checker. Now whilst I could research server side spell checking, with all the involved overhead - surely nothing is going to match the inline Word'esque red under lining. Along with right click suggestions, I've already started using it when writing these posts instead of the Blogger.com spell checker which I forgot most of the time anyway, as I'm sure you've noticed.

As you can also see I'm a big fan of the BugMenot site, I have also installed the FF extension, or "add-on" as they have been renamed in FF 2.0


bugmenot.com is a great resource for getting free logins to the kind of sites that want you details to access, free but member content. You simply enter the url of the site you want access to and it suggests a user name and pass word to try, it is great for check train times, of hooking up with an old NYT article. The extension allows you to right click on a page that requires logins and it will attempt to populate the fields from its database.

I, whilst being a mac user, do love Firefox. It is great for developing, ColorZilla and the FF dom inspector is second to none. Whilst one is offered in Safari, it pales in comparison to Firefox. The point and click highlighting is amazingly useful for tracking down an extraneous div living in a layout.

For those of you who live off your extensions, there is new extension add on, see what I did there ?, It basically lies to your old extensions to disguise the fact that you are using a newer beta version. Whether this will fool everything I don't know, I do not live off my extensions - I have few development tools and that's pretty much it. I've not seen it in action yet, but I've read there is a crash recovery system now for restoring all those old tabs, built in, bout time!

They have diddled with the RSS support. Still backing their idea of live book marks. A mechanism that I preferred until I was persuaded to try Safari properly. Firefox still supports the use of external feed readers, google reader, yahoo, bloglines etc.. I was recently gonna try NewsHutch after hearing an interview with the developers on the "Web 2.0 show."

What I don't like is how they've moved the close tab buttons. I read about this change on their blog prior to seeing it inaction. I have posted previously, at length, about why putting this interface component in that location (on each tab, previously the single close was at the end of the row of tabs) is a BAD thing. I think the model to most users (IE Windows people), the close button is on the right hand side of a window, and in a Multiple Document Interface you would still have the close button on the top right.

Putting a close on each tab is one of the prime reasons that I find myself closing tabs instead of activating them. Bad Firefox.

"That's why we are so gay!" - International Business Machines

This is a very quick post to congratulat a colleague of mine who recently secured a position with Internation business machines current stock price... $84.40


I know how much they hate this, we once did some work for them, we wanted to include their logo in a single presentation expounding the partnership and it had to be checked by their legal team... that took too long so we dropped the logo from the slide... completely pointless.

I would like to draw everyone attention to this webpage, a meme I first discovered via, Bob Cringely in the televised "Triumph of the Nerds" , I then read the book.


Bit of old skool IBM.

On that I would like to remind my troll friend of this fantastic quote from this sacred reference... sung to Jingle Bells....

IBM, Happy men, smiling all the way. Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day. IBM, Watson men, partners of T. J. In his service to mankind -- that's why we are so gay!

Well speak for yourself! ....and oh yeah good luck.

Future of Web Apps.

I've had to carry over LOTS of holiday time at work, it involved me writing a letter to the CEO and explaining why I hadn't gotten round to using any leave yet, and why I should be eligible to carry it over..."making elegant and life enriching systems this past year - I've been so busy I've forgotten what the word holiday meant."

This request was very graciously granted, yet still I dragged me heals about actually sorting something out... doesn't help when trying to coax a friend, who is afraid of flying, that a lovely transatlantic flight would be very cool - we get a damn security alert because of some crazy fundamentalist folks decide to scare the heck out of everyone.

So after seeing this conference online, and then dragging my feet some more, being told to stop "dicking around" by my colleague, I booked it. I am so looking forward to it - I'm going here...



An at, 1157982600, I should land at San Francisco international. Then on Wednesday I will be attending the
I will attending "Two-day conference focusing on the development technology you'll be using tomorrow"

Attending are some of the leaders of this new industry 2.0 that we're currently forging into. If you are attending, I look forward to meeting you. This will be my first conference and I've decided to fly around the planet and attend on my own. If you see me humbled in a corner looking lost and afraid, come over say hello.

I will be posting a couple more times before I go and will cover some of my thoughts prior to attending. One of the great things about this conference is the single train of talks - you don't have to choose between x or y talk. You get to see them all, fab.

I haven't booked accommodation yet, I am still researching. If anyone can suggest a great hotel, preferably with breakfast wi-fi that is reasonably close to the Palace of Fine Arts Theater I'd love to hear from you. One of the lovely conference people offered to help but I didn't know what to say when she asked what I wanted to pay... this being my first time I don't know what I can get for my money in SF.

fight, fight fight... gruber gruber gruber

This could quite possibly kick off. I like Mr. Gruber, his recent post about his little boy made me feel all warm inside, broody almost. I have on order one of his tee shirts, soon to be worn to piss off our Systems people at work, again. He has made some interesting posts in response to the Mac Hack in 60 seconds nonesense, didn't we all.


However this is the boldest of all. OK So it was finally admitted that the crackers were full of BS on the Macintosh front, there was no "leaning" from apple. No similar exploit in ALL wi-fi devices. Indeed their claims that the demo on a mac was only to thumb their nose at mac security arrogance: "Mac user base aura of smugness on security." well it just made us all the more bullish didn't it.

UPDATE: I've suggestd that if he loses we should all contribute to help him recoup some of his cash... 1) As penance for being those arrogant mac users 2) Since it'll be as grubber says, worth it to see what the other guy is holding

Rock plants

We have some rocks at the end of a flower bed. They were not meant to stay there, however our garden remodeling is taking longer than planned, so in this time nature has taken its course. Light has won over darkness and these little plants have burst through to the life giving sun above.