Long time no blog...onto Leopard

Well blogger tells me I've got 559 entries and my last entry was October the 3rd. However that was just a picture from my phone. In between Stag Weekends in Poland, Weddings in Henley, local politics, having a social life, this little thing I like to call a job which has recently involved marketing, strategy and application maintenance - and having sinusitis for about two weeks, which pales into insignificance compared to some of my loved ones but nonetheless I've been crazy busy.

So I've been woefully remiss opining on all things technology and specifically mac. What a busy time it's been too with more details about the impending iPhone's UK launch and the latest big cat release from Apple being the two most significant bits of news from Cupertino.

I will post more details about my European adventures, my trip to London for tea and Diggnation, in some retrospective posts. My main reason for this post is after the successful install of Leopard on a couple of machines I don't use it's time to take the plunge myself on a machine I do use. My trusty workhorse the Macbook Pro. I realise that with the greatness that is supposed to be Safari 3 comes the lack of Input managers like Saft. I know the Saft dude is furiously rewriting to make saft work with the latest Safari, for now I only used it for session restore when I had the unfortunate and rare chore of rebooting.

Session restore is now built into Safari, not as well as Saft but well enough, I'm told. Incidentally I was going to watch Job's introduction of Safari whilst I wrote this but weirdly, youtube is broken. Update: During the writing of this, youtube came back.


I've recently sworn off (again) firefox. It was running my mac so hot, such memory usage. I'll admit I was somewhat complicit in this with my ridiculous 51+ open tabs, I had a picture but I've been cleaning the disc up, by burning, so I've got enough space for Leopard. My other main source of space reclamation other than deleting a whole host of unwatched video netcasts was to turn down the amount of space I'd allocated to my iDisk from the 10gig Apple give you. Mac OS X creates an image of this space on your local hard disk... even if 5.6 gigs of the 6 gigs is empty.

The purpose of this post for me was to list all the open tabs I have, because I assume once I upgrade to Leopard they won't open for me on my return. Here goes, I might list an opinion next to link if I can be bothered / can remember what I thought when I kept the tab open - a evil habit I have for things I genuinely intend to read later... honest...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10317 - The actual Cisco .dmg is here for download, I assume accidentally, making it far easier than my normal hunt for the latest version. This one is reportedly compatible with Leopard. However our current network manager has finally contacted Cisco themselves to confirm our eligibility to get the new versions in a legit fashion, well done him.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/mac/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=18880 - This was, as you can see, shockingly old but interesting at the time. Source being mac world puts a bit of a spin on it.

http://digg.com/apple/Apple_s_Mac_Sales_Are_Surging - A digg article of the same ilk.

http://daringfireball.net/2007/08/clipboard_and_arrows - Given my own um'ings and arrr'ings about buying an iPhone this was interesting. Actually this evening, Channel 5, http://gadgetshow.five.tv/index.htm offered a Super Phone challenge pitting the N95 and the Jesus phone against each other. The challenge was mainly about features, and like the iPod before it the iPhone is feature lacking but beautiful. I'll post my vitriol about the iPhone in another post... it involves the ASA.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6938796.stm - From my many other posts you can tell I have a deep distrust of the governments ability to rise to any kind of technical challenge, and I know the consultants they employ - who concur with me.
Whilst this article does cite a survey whereby the fear of crime is always higher than the actual probability of crime, analogue or digital - the government is displaying supreme incompetence on e-crime.

http://daringfireball.net/2007/10/un_in_unsupported - Another Gruber special. I disagree, I think with some of his arguments here, although good - I don't think Apple needed to "brick" iPhones an act I believe they did deliberately, no if I break open my washing machine to fit a Rolls Royce turbine I can't then go to Indesit to fix it if I break it. By the same measure I don't expect an indesit engineer to come to my house and cut off the plug because they don't support Rolls Royce engines. No my analogy is also full of holes, but that's the story I'm sticking to.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1665119,00.html?imw=Y - Recently I have been visiting many high schools, one of which was my own Secondary modern. Near the canteen I spotted these new fangled machines. I asked an old pal who now teaches there -
"What's the finger print id for ? Registers ?"
"No - canteen payments"
Sure enough there was a coin receptacle for feeding the machine, the idea being similar to the one in the article I've linked to. I asked if this was to stop bullying, "NO" came the immediate reply as the school grows it is an attempt at crowd control and efficiency in the canteen. No some privacy advocates are screaming blue murder right now... but really I doubt even the policy could wonder in and on a whip pick up this data. 1) It'll be stored in some proprietary database, 2) They'd still need a court order in the UK.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7017660.stm - The original warnings about "bricking" of the iPhones. Boooo

http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/08/10/a-realistic-back-to-school-guide-for-college-students/ - I really enjoyed this article about back to school, but given we're fast approaching November it's a bit moot now. I was going to write a version for older students not studying as undergrads - sure their needs are different but I havn't had time. Have I mentioned I've been crazy busy ?

http://www.phpvideotutorials.com/lesson10/ - Ok this was a resource I found when trying to sell someone the idea of learning to program in PHP. Which given the great new releases and dev seeds is on the verge of making me believes it's real programming. Don't get me wrong I use PHP daily I just always feel like I'm not really programming - unless I'm using objects and pointers I don't feel challenged. Hence with true OO support in PHP5 I'm tempted to re-write a few things just for sport. These video lessons are a great intro and even I picked up the odd tid bit. Also props for the Australian accent.

http://mashable.com/2007/09/26/php-toolbox/ - Somehow another PHP programming resource.

http://anngarner.blogspot.com/ - The blog of a colleague I read every now and again, especially recently what with Ming giving up the old Yellow Zimmer frame. Now to be honest I liked Ming, he could easily have been PM (If he'd have been in a proper party) the age thing was a cruel concoction of the media that was quite unnecessary. Was quite spectacular watching the Limp Dems decapitate, I mean have another leader resign. I quite liked Charlie boy as well though.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/should-we-use-any-notes-in-presentation.html - Being heavily involved in presentation authoring and delivery recently I've rekindled my reading about this amazing skill. I've also incorporated improving this skill into my social life too... more on that in another post. I've been going to Toastmasters for the past two months too.

http://lifehacker.com/software/screenshot-tour/menu-bar-show-and-tell-306871.php - I am a big fan of menu meters so I read with interest what others with a this special fetish have in their menu bar. Also Menu meters Leopard news is here

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_create_a_web_app.php - Some nice writing on how to run your startup with a lot of lessons that could apply to normal project management... just gotta get my boss to read it.

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/? - I'm having to redesign a few sites at the moment, and I refreshing some legacy work with CSS so I found this was a great refresher for my own skills in CSS.

http://www.futureofwebapps.com/index.html - I had this open so I could find my way to the Excel centre in London for Diggnation Live in London, which was completely off the hook.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=diggnation%20london&w=all&s=int - My search post diggnation filming. Unfortunately because of my schedule me and the goat trader couldn't stay for the after party and had to train it back home arriving only a 0130 and having to be in work a mere 7 hours later.

http://www.johntaber.com/?p=60 - Amusing in it's irony. It already runs bloody unix. Yes I know hose words are not completely interchangeable... don't teach me to suck eggs.

http://www.totaljobs.com/JobSearch/JobDetails.aspx?JobId=33588769&Keywords=&AndOr=0<xt=GU22%2c+Woking&Radius=5&LIds1=CkT,Uk,Uz,VK,VW&LIds6=D5i,K,V,c,EW,Ef&From=%2fJobSearch%2fLocationJobSearch.aspx - Someone suggested I apply for this. See my earlier comments about real manly programming... grrrr.

http://www.nexdot.net/blog/2007/04/20/updating-facebook-status-using-php/ - This is outrageous. I'd had this idea before I found this mechanism. Before I could play facebook had banned it... boooo.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/6944026.stm - Well done girl... feed the addiction early and often. No wait that's software updates. Meh.

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/09/18/iphone_hits_uk_on_november_9.html#more - More exciting 9th November news.

http://www.bombaydigital.com/arenared/2005/10/27/1 - I will do this someday. Honest, it'd be good for me, it'd be good for work. It is hard to explain why this would be beneficial to my boss who doesn't understand it, and thus struggles to give me some time to set this up.

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/The-Sharon-System.aspx - I enjoy worsetanfailure every so often, it becomes a guilty pleasure - much like xkcd.com

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/07/06/for-the-record-adobe-kuler-vs-colourlovers/ - More design pages. I am crap at choosing colour schemes. I'm lucky that many of my themes... are already blue. With a bit of scandal about Adobe and Kuler in the mean time.

http://www.andyrutledge.com/quiet-structure.php - An interesting discussion about layout using case studies of CNN and other news sites as compare and contrast exercise.

http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/info/vi_tutorial.shtml - More proper programming stuff, using as an old man is fond of calling... A Proper editor. Maybe one day I'll use Vi, the same day I being my PhD thesis in LaTeX

http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/11/ipod-touch-now-running-mail-and-more/ - Hacking galore, with hacked iPod Touch et al. Apple won't be happy.

http://www.metatitan.com/cssbuilder.php - I've not had a chance to properly try this CSS constructor but it was from Digg.com there were mixed comments on digg.com... What a surprise. First.

http://www.zeldman.com/2007/09/27/something-new-at-apple-store/ - nice post about the new Apple Online store and their embracing of web-standards.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2907607.stm - this was an old story I looked up in response to the next link...
a mere four years later...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6982499.stm - turns our giving schools more money helps them improve... who knew.

http://notes.thinksecret.com/secretnotes/0709byebyebhifi.shtml - Yeah always was a rubbish idea.. might have sounded beautiful... but man was it expensive.

http://homepage.mac.com/lesposen/blogwavestudio/LH20070403124024/index.html - More presentation stuff and also a tangential link with Psychology for a colleague.

http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/workingsmart/2005/01/mac_envy.html - An amusing article about mac envy, it's pretty old now.

http://homepage.mac.com/lesposen/blogwavestudio/LH20070403124024/LHA20050131090728/index.html - Yeah i'd agree whilst export to Power Point it pretty good, and pdf views are completely good for a solid set of slides. Sometimes you're suing the animations as part of the showmanship of presenting.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9760910-1.html - A decent stand off of the main players in Windows on a Mac fodder. As a close close friend said to me the other day when I was extolling the virtues of my agnostic approach on my mac. "It's time you weaned yourself off these silly legacy systems" - he meant windows.

http://www2.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/showpreparation.asp?id=2479 - Told you I'd been really ill. I had a prescription and pills and everything.

http://www.diggableresources.com/ibm/ - A bit gimmicky but a nice idea. I used an IBM resource to first dip my tow in the AJAX pool.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119326655774870521-_1guKieddydNBOHhvRYV4F1ZCe4_20081024.html - And now onto more and more Leopard links. Uncle Walt in the WSJ - overall the press lapped up the Leopard. Some genuine bit and bobs that need even more polish but overall I was impressed enough to try it myself. Some of the so called marque features arn't turning me on at all and some of the quieter ones are really getting me excited. Data detectors in mail anyone ? Quick look is also a god send and so fast, no launching of Word under Rosetta just to peak at a file... w00t.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/2 - Ars review.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/898000428831 - Finder is better.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1195757 - Although they've completely broken AD integration and I can confirm this. 2-3 minutes for a logon... don't be ridiculous. Well we're not rolling that out to our suites of macs.

http://hinkle.wordpress.com/2007/10/27/leopard-problems-active-directory-integration/ - More Leopard AD woes. As I recall I blogged about me fears from the re-writing of the AD components some time ago after a developer release, seems your oracle was correct.

So there we have it some 40+ Safari tabs collated for your perusal. I won't list my 51 Firefox tabs, I'm hope they'll all come back post my Leopard install. Why do you ask am I still taking the plunge after the bad AD links just above... well my laptop ain't on the AD so I don't care. The only thing I'm concerned about is SMB Read only a bit weird.

My main fear seemed unfounded, parallels worked like a charm on my father's machine so unfortunately he can still use Quicken from back in 2000. Although 7 years of financial records is quite a feat.

I'm sure once it's on and I've felt my way around there'll be no looking back....