In far more light hearted news. Nitendo and Apple team up

In a wonderful bit of fantasy by Daniel, a blog I haven't read well enough in a while, I bring you this breaking news... here

And they're off..... bringing up the outside field is an 8 core thoroughbred

With MacWorld just over a week away, and me being GREEN WITH Envy that a friend of mine is actually going to be working the Keynote. He's getting it as a reward to Steve's retail channel. This means he actually gets to go to the rehearsal - When he told me I nearly fell over.

Anyway with Steve's Keynote being just over a week away, here, is the latest rumour is that we'll seen 8 cores launched for the Mac Pro line.

Other predictions include revamped cinema displays with the inbuilt iSight technology. The ubiquitous iPhone. A full video iPod.

Already a flash game...

The way the geeks usually cope with this kind of thing...

The first picture of Saddam Hanging were link from digg.com here

What I did find interesting from digg.com was a link to youTube clip with time lapse of the London bombings Wikipedia page.

It amazes me that the foresight exists to do something like this. When Saddam was hanged, I was watching the major news sites and digg.com I tried t submit a story but didn't want to duplicate. I even thought of how cool the swarm would look but didn't have the foresight to capture it.


Somewhere inside that bubble is me, all caught up in the new media and not really paying attention to anything other than ancillary data, not information, data.

Not in whose name ?

Update: Is it me or do those Balaclavas actually look familiar... it is like the end of Animal farm.

For whom the bell tolls

It tolls for thee, Wikipedia is already updated and when I tried to submit a story to digg.com,



three other stories beat me to it. Well we will have to see what tomorrow brings. It is just after dawn Iraq time, at the beginning of Eed - May God see peace upon this land ?

Part of me is a bit disappointed, I don't know why. It's not like a leader being executed whilst in power. He lost control such a long time ago. Do the majority even care ? Or as ZeFrank puts it in reference to Somalia, do they just want someone to take out the trash ?

Imminent

Personally I think it's already happened. The top story on digg.com right now links to an article quoting an official saying the handover will only happen minutes before the execution, combined with reports earlier quoting he was already in Iraqi custody... it has happened and they are readying the media circus.

Napster to be cancelled

I have been mulling this over for a while. It was the realization that I haven't loaded Napster for most of this month and then the further realization that I haven't even got it installed on my Vista machine. Meaning from whenever I copied XP to an external disk I haven't used my $14.95 subscription.

I deem this unacceptable and whilst I'm sure the Napster library is larger than the e-music collection. I hear that e-music has decent enough stock in the classical and jazz genres. Hence come this January I will open an account there. Hopefully either dl.tv or classicfm.com will still be offering 50 free to keep downloads.

Before offing Napster to the great heap of old software in the sky, I did install it on Vista RTM, just to see how it performed. Vista spotted Napster trying to get on the web, and whilst some people would consider the DRM an infestation, I chose to allow it to contact the mother ship just one last time.

Jack Johnson struggled a bit buffering every now and then. What had bugged me most last time I used Napster was that several of the tracks in play lists I had had become 30 seconds only unless downloaded. That you see was why the subscription model paid for me, I never downloaded, I knew as long as I had internet access it'd be OK. Well the imposition of further restrictions meant the position had become untenable.

What I'd noticed whilst using Vista under the newest Parallels build was that when you launch a new application, even not using "Coherence" mode. New apps launch also in the OS X dock.


This seems to corispond to a bunch of new objects in a "Windows Applications" folder.


Whilst I'd like to demonstrate this, Vista however has other ideas. I had previously pinned this problem down to installing the Cisco VPN client on Vista. Apparently not, because in the current setup I haven't put the Cisco client on.


Aside from needing another install of Vista. I noticed

Is execution valid ?

I simply do not know. It is fast approaching that time when an announcement will come that Sadam is no more. Here I am still undecided whether this might just be beginning of the end for the Iraqi state as we know it. Maybe better to split it into three and have done with it. Create a mass movement of peoples and see if that will end the chaos ? Although given the shining beacon of peace and collaboration Korea became after a divide maybe it's not such a great idea and who can forget the lasting peace forged from the India & Pakistan accords.

I believe the call will come quickly, the wires will light up with "Sadam executed" and then we will all wait, for the next car bomb, the next road side IED. Clearly the administration is hoping that slotting him now might help draw a line under 2006 and his regime and begin Eed in a post Saddam Iraq. I often wonder whether I was right to argue for action in Iraq. Whether now when I insist in discussions that I will not weaver, that it was right. It is a good thing that of the three main reasons for war his removal was valid and supportable.

Whomever you believe about the numbers killed post conflict, the back scatter from the war, 38,000 or 380,000. Whilst this is terrible, whilst my usual calls of "In war people die" it is a great many people. Still no way near the possible million plus that, died in his conflicts, his wars, his executions at the hands of his regime by solider following his orders. The self declared Iraqi foundation, here have a quick account of the best part of 1*10^6 persons.

On the one hand you have an evil despicable man ruling in the most abhorrent manner. However in the same vein as the likes of Tito, this man kept order. Much like the African warlords in those dusty little countries it wasn't a fair order, but it was none the less an order. Offing him will please, overall, the majority of the population, if you take that all his supporters are nearly definitely Sunni, the minority populous. Next to the Marsh Arabs, the Kurds and the Shiites. Maybe his end could bring about the ability for those majority ruling parties to work together to bring Iraq back from the brink of a long and bloody civil conflict that could easily through the numbers of dead definitely in Sadam's bloody favour. If the worst happens, could end up being that he killed less after all.

Some argue a better punishment for his crimes would to have him rebuild Iraq. Chain gang style. Ignoring the ridiculous security implications, he wasn't on trial for the destruction of Iraq. He wasn't on trial for wasting the allowed Oil for Food money on palces and gold and gum ball machines. He was on trials for 148 reasons. That being the execution and murder in retaliation to an attempted assassination attempt. These charges with a guilty sentence don't allow for him to get extended community service by building a school or water pump. They mandate death. I don't think you can invade a sovereign nation to restore its freedoms then overrule it, when you think you have a better idea.

For now we wait.

Learning how to use new gifts 2

I've also spent a day or so on this site. Learning about the exposure triangle. ISO rates, shutter speeds / exposure time and aperture. The IXUS 65 is a mid range point and shoot. It gives me control over two points on the triangle. ISO and exposure time.

I quickly found a tri-pod was essential, the camera shake warning won't give up otherwise.


After reading for a while it was time to have a go. Since bits are cheap I shot a large number of images, changing setting between each one, trying to predict what would happen to the image each settings produced.

Two series of shots are here and here. One is some lights on our front lawn, and another I was trying to capture the moon, not in detail I don't have a lens that good. Maybe next year.

I might have to take some more tonight and record, maybe in my moleskine, in order what all the settings were. iPhoto can tell me the shutter speed and aperture but not the ISO of each shot.

I'm luck so far, I haven't had to refer to the interwebs to find out how to use my new Gap jumper or Hugo Boss shirt from my brother. Saying that I was bought some ties by an Aunty which will probably need instructions.

Learning how to use my new gifts

It is with some amusement I find that I have turned to the internet to learn how to use two of my gifts this year. Whilst I know how to use near enough any point and shoot camera you care the throw my way. Notebooks neither are the most complicated item to use.

However I have found this year the need to use the internet to "tell" me how to best utilise my new items.

Here I found a writing template for my new Moleskine notebook. The blank pages actually make be feel nervous. I believe this offer quite the frightening insight into my psyche. Almost as if starting with nothing unnerves me. I can see this sometimes when I approach a new project, whereas some revel in the blank canvas waiting to be filled, I am unsure and uncertain of how to make that first stroke. Sometimes a crippling fear, similar to that feeling in exams whereby you think the moment you write something it can't be undone - it is indelible linked to you and will forever be used to show you incompetent.

Maybe this stems from this quote by Lincoln: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"

A Christmas Miracle

http://iytywnm.blogspot.com/2006/12/christmas-miracle.html

Fantastic Blog post as always...

Saving Space

Definitely awake now...I'd been getting messages regarding space on my Startup disk with increasing frequency, so I ran my old friend WhatSize.

This as their website states

WhatSize is a simple tool that allows the user to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it.

It does, no graphs just a simple ordered list. I pretty much knew what the culprit was - my rather bloated music collection, to be exact it's not music, but the spoken word. The shear number of podcasts was bringing my laptop to it's knees. About 20 gigs of space used on podcasts. I'm a horder I know. I can't afford to hord like that regarding podcasts. Sure I might go back several episodes in dl.tv to try and find the mouse mat they recommended. I might like to enjoy again Kevin Rose referring to his "masturbatory" obsession with Tiki Bar TV star Lala. As the collection grows my memories for these Gems diminishes. If you clicked the last link, you've proved that nothing on the internet is lost forever...

By removing some old episodes of the big players, my video podcasts. dl.tv, diggnation, commandN and Geek Brief TV. I instantly reclaimed over seven gigs of space.



I had a years worth of "This Day in Apple History" I'm never going to listen to them again, out they went. It got harder as I went along though, since with some subscriptions I'm so far behind...


Anyway, with my photo library set to grow I had better get on top of this space issue I have. Burning archives to DVD is probably best since I still reckon that's far more stable than an external hard disk even if I power it down. When archiving stuff off the computer you should take stock and really work out what the likelyhood is of needing something again. Do I really need to keep all the older versions of Parallels desktop - no one is ever gonna ask me to prove how committed I am to the parallels cause, I need the current version I'm using and maybe the last stable release.

Some things it good to keep hold of just in case. iShowYou is some lovely screen capture software. Since it went out of beta it became chargeable. I don't use it enough for me to warrant paying for it, so I keep the Beta on standby. I know I know it's not in the spirit of the game, but seriously I haven't used it in months, so if I paid for it it would be a dead weight, now if it comes up in some mac heist like bundle - it might draw me in, until then - no go.

E-Mails I keep. I've got every e-mail I have received since owning macs, the last 18 months. E-mails going back 5/6 years on my old PC. I will probably never ever read them. That probably made my switch harder as I wanted to take them with me, but couldn't be arsed putting the time in. Now my colleague who recently switch (Yep I got another one) deletes all her e-mails as she is going along well done her, however she's using a web based client so wouldn't have had to do anything, same with my dad. To be honest the mail move isn't a switcher diffculty, I've always had a hard time moving mail accross, such a ball ache.

The mail might go but the account settings and mail rules don't. For someone who has maybe 12 accounts and countless tens of rules this is a pain in the ass. That's why despite some reports on the web I love Apple's migration assistant, worked perfectly for me when I switched to the MBP off the mini.

I know this has reverted back to my old skool rambling blog post style, sorry... you can tell I need more sleep.

Ford RIP

Gerald Ford one of the eldest living Presidents has died, aged 93. He had been of ill health through this year.

What I found profound was the edit time on the WikiPedia entry on Ford was edited before any of the major News Agencies or even the Associated Press got the word out.



Whilst this isn't the time for politics it is however an interesting insight that the, whilst unedited, user generated content can report faster than "old media" but obviously you haven't got the controls that ensure quality, however that isn't really the guarantee many believe. Here.

IXUS 65

Can't sleep now, here is some information about my new toy. So like any man with a new toy at Christmas I've just been playing with my new IXUS 65. Snapping everything and everyone, annoyingly so. I finally started to read some reviews and feature guides for the camera. Basic point and shoot is good. Excellent. Cannon have pretty much stayed out of the mega pixel race but still producing awsome cameras buy sticking decent lenses in their offerings. The IXUS 65 is no exception.

Noticeably slimmer than it's predecessor and with a much larger and brighter screen. I can make these claim by the way not because I've read them on CNET but because my newly engaged brother and his wife to be visited, and she has the older IXUS. Father has an older Cannon Power shot, which when purchased lagged behind in mega pixels but had a large aperture and lets tonnes of light into the sensor.

My 65 also wins out in the speed stakes. You press the shutter release and it's already taken a picture and as long as no post processing is required it is read for the next one. If post processing has been requested this can vary depending on what you've asked it todo and obviously how long the shutter was staying open for.

The neatest feature I've found also has some synchronicity with digg recently. An article on colorizations, which I can't find now (No it wasn't cool enough to receive a digg from me) but there are two similar articles here and here.

Whilst those tutorial can bring an area under a brush back to colour, the IXUS 65 can do it on board, whilst purists, even me will denounce this method, preferring to take as much data as possible over to the computer and edit there the fact that we now have cameras capable of doing this on board at a high resolution demonstrates how manufactures are competing outside of the mega pixel domain.

The results of my IXUS 65 keeping Orange hues in the shot and de-saturating everything else can be seen below.



Original for comparison

Mac heist final check list

It all finally came through, I've only installed a couple of them so far, annoyingly the one I was looking forward to NewsFire I have barely touched.

A Baby was born in Bethlehem

Taken on my brand spanking new, digital camera one Canon IXUS 65 - fantastic. I've finally dragged myself into the digital era. And with my mac and iLife, I'm good to go what ever I shoot. I'll review the camera later, probably tomorrow.

In other news, we received some fantastic information here at musingsonamac central at about 1200, my older brother, the middle one of mothers brood, got a great Christmas present, a fiancée. Yes the sailor life isn't for him, we'd had him down as a life long bachelor well being in the Navy and all the gay is just built right in. Nah, congratulations to him and his new Bride to be. Details are still coming in, apparently he proposed after a Christmas Morning walk, in Richmond Park in London.

Merry Christmas

My tree this Christmas

Christmas Present Wrapping

Maybe it's a bit late now for a present wrapping guide, it should have been posted at the beginning of the present buying season. None the less for those of you who are still frantically trying to pick up the perfect gift, a novelty bottle holder perhaps - or a Hemingway esque notebook. Here is a very quick guide to present wrapping.

First tip, if you're buying presents this late keep it simple, simple means a box of some form a 3D rectangle with 90 degree angles at the end of all vertices. Those are the easiest to wrap. If the gift isn't suplied in one, find a box. Retail outlets can help, as can your local Pizza Hut, go in buy a Pizza and ask for the box the dough packs came in. No of course it's not freshly baked.



However, I've seen some pretty ghastly wrapped boxes. So here is the quick and dirty guide to boxes...

Select your paper.
Then to stop the seams appearing on the top of the gift, wrap the box upside down. Attempt to place the largest face on the principal portion of the pattern. That is if the word Santa appears on the paper try to ensure "Santa" is seen on the top.

This is harder on the smaller boxes, in which the best presents come.

Leaving the narrow end of the present hooded with enough paper top and bottom to cover half of the present each.
Then when folding these ends in they should meet with a slight overlap allowing a small piece of tape to hold firm.



That's just child's play though, boxes are pretty mundane objects to wrap, it is very similar to books in that sense. Paper backs are easiest as all the sides match. Hard backs have that slight lip, I would suggest ignoring the dip and simply papering over it.

Moving on I have a slight trick for CDs, simple enough to wrap you can save much time buying CD sleeves and popping the CD inside them. So as not to look like a complete incompetent though, I would suggest adding your own deft touches.



Here you can see several of the tricks I have in my arsenal an added baubles, ribbon - curled and a bow.

Other tricks I've employed this year, given that my finances have been a bit strapped have included making the wrapping entertaining. I wrapped a collection of toiletries but then contained these in a bottle box but added to each one a post-it.



Another gift I wrapped but forgot to photograph on the way through was a bowel with some bags of potpourri in for my brother and his girlfriend, the bowl and smelly was for her and in the bowl was a shower gel, not some average Walmart shower gel, some designer stuff he'd had trouble getting hold of.

On the respective gifts I printed out some post-its with "his" and "her's" on them. The bowl provided quite difficult to wrap, again starting upside down, the extra gifts inside secured with some tissue paper and ribbon.

Bring over one seam and tape.
Quick Way
Gather all the paper ensuring none of the white reverse is visible taping as you go.
Hard Way
Cut into the remaining paper so that the remaining hood folds down on the dome.

If you have really awkward presents then the quickest way to cover it is by using a small gift bag, again adorned with extras.

The tools of the trade for this last minute hooray...

Yes it is indeed an extremely large carving knife... you don't cut the paper with scissors, you crease in a straight line then you slice the paper...


Almost forgot to mention, a DVD with current bestest TV program on is a must... I got through an entire series of family guy when wrapping my gifts this year.

ZeFrank's continuing threat of a one year conversation

Yep, check out the "Only three months togo" - he recently had a weird piece about the nature of our conversation together.

OK WTF Happened to the digg interface

In a bit of a pre Christmas surprise, I just logged onto digg.com and was caught somewhat off guard to find this...


Not really had much of a look around, seems nice. I don't know how keen I am on the green though. For those who go all weak at the knees for the DiggMeister you can hear his commentary on the updates here

Update: I've just been playing with the podcast features on the beta digg site. Obviously all Kev's current faves are right up their including TWiT, tikibar tV etc. I did a quick search for one of my favorite daily hits, Ze Frank and someone had already dugg his show. So I did too. I'm still trying to work out the weird 2D digg mechanism for podcasts.

About time, mac heist

After much to'ing and fro'ing an e-mail license finally arrived...



Yes my Delicious library can finally be filled to the brim with my entire book shelf. For those of you who don't know. With delicious library using the in built iSight you can scan the barcode on CDs, Books, DVD and games and have DL store them for you in a virtual library. I say this a while back and was very impressed. DL was one of the clinchers for that I bought the mac heist bundle.

 

You can manage borrowers too, no not that small people who STEAL things. When friends and colleagues borrow books it allows you to chase them for them back, so nearly like thieves.

Joel Spolsky wrote an interesting problem definition recently that featured DL, but it wasn't quite right. Read more here

All of the above at Mac Heist

despite me still not receiving any of my license codes, I checked back today and found this


Yes that's right over $100,000 has been raised for charity and as such the $49 TextMate license has been unlocked, for anyone who hasn't got that program it makes the cost of the bundle off the bat. For me I'm looking to offload my second text mate license now... any takers ?

Bad Mac heist

I bought a charity Christmas calendar at work today, made me feel all warm inside. That's two pieces of charity in the past week. Might be a karma thing a few amazing things have fallen into place recently.

My other piece of charity was buying into this mac heist idea, OK so that isn't exactly totally altruistic, I get a big whopping pile of goodies too, which is great because one of the ones I was after has just gotten unlocked and included in the bundle... thank you mac heist and here I come NetNewsFire, gorgeous app to.



Saying that having not received any of my codes yet, it does feel like I just handed over $50 and so far got bog all. I'm still bumming around these horrid trial periods, like some kind of pauper...

I've gotten no feed back on this yet either, come one come all.

Pictures not working in imagewell and .mac

I've had to uninstall imagewell and back track to an older beta release. When you dragged a picture in to resize, nothing would display and the width and height would display as 0.

I'd show you a screen shot, but I can't because my .mac idisk is playing up. I hope we're not making a return to the problem riddled summer of '06

Reach for the sky mac heist

Is it difficult to shake the image of Justin Long be held an gun point and begging for his disheveled unshaved life.... just a dream I had. No Peasant girl he wasn't naked.

I started off on one of the heists here but got bored, and decided I'd just wait it out and then bought the bundle for $10 more than those who put some effort in.



The catch is two of the pieces of software are locked until a set amount is raised for charity, certainly a laudable aim. It acutally made the decision easier for me since one of the locked pieces of kit I already have, yes textmate is my bitch.

Since it's all for a good cause, get your greenback out and do your bit and get some of the most scrummy pieces of software out there. My design skills are in need of a refresh, scrub that I don't have any design skills. With about 40 seconds in RapidWeaver, I'd made this beauty... here

Then I could do this....

Uptime is a bitch of a mistress

I know I post about this way to often, but this time I'm kinda proud.



Yeah, that was until some slight confusion at the end of today which upset my mbp, 1 Kernel panic later and



At least now I can do the updates the mbp has been bugging me for for ages. On a side note I have eaten something bad recently and my stomach is clearly like the Kernel level operating system on my laptop - shall we say despite the 5 degrees outside it was best to keep my window open in the office today. So when I went out for dinner tonight I had to eat something pretty sensible, still tasty though.

I only hope that whatever is bothering me is unrelated to the random nose bleeds I keep waking up with.

torture of a mac geek

For the past week, I've had a thing of beauty so close but yet so far. A 24" iMac boxed and untouchable, boxed because it's brand new and untouchable because it's not mine.



Yes my family made the switch. With only consumer uses for a PC, and sick of the constant fear of browsing the web and receiving e-mails from that chap in Niger who wants to get some gold from his dead fathers account. My constant and ceaseless nagging got to much and he shelled out some green for a mac. Days after the purchase, he did nother more than go off for a few days abroad with the matriarch leaving me with a desire to rip open that Designed in California white box of goodness and slobber all over the white plastic goodness.

Resisting rather better than I thought I would. Upon his return I persuaded him to open up.



The iMac was very welcoming to new people...

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

Yes I picked up the Christmas Tree application from an old man. It's goofy, it's stupid it has tonnes of options...



As you can see more options than you can shake a Serbian Spruce at, you could easily have a different looking tree every day on the run up to Christmas.

Old article, cocoa conundrum

Here

An interesting article on the mish mash of layouts / windows and interfaces that are currently employed across the Apple platform. This struck a a cord after my own recent ruminations regarding the interface styles and the possible introduction of ANOTHER one when Leopard comes along and gets everyone into time machine.

Good ole idiot test