I have a long-standing hatred of band-waggoning. I'm of the very pushy opinion that the current recession is only as bad as it is because of scare-mongering tactics among the media which gave the whole thing a sense of a self-fulfilling prophecy (not unlike the bank run on Northern Rock). I'm hedging my bets here.
This morning, Microsoft announced a decline in profit since the first time since Windows 3.1. All day, I've been reading blog and newspaper posts about it, most of them spelling doom. This is quite unfortunate. I'm waiting for a drop in share price, because I'm worried it'll follow the same pattern as the recent Nintendo debacle, which I'll summarise as follows: The Wii market in Japan is nearing saturation, and given a thousand different factors, the entire console market in Japan has had a slowdown in sales recently. Nintendo published its figures last week showing that they were ahead in the sales race with the Wii and DS at the top two sales slots, but it was less than last year, and as such, doom and gloom abounding just now, their share price took a nosedive.
Jenny is not pleased.
I'm all for the introduction of new technology, and I simply adore how things make their way to the masses (One day I'll write a post and try to describe the expression I made the first time I saw Google Earth), but at times like this, that niggling voice at the back of my head wonders if there should be a test before you're allowed all this information. That test is rather simple; if you read the Daily Mail, you should be treated like a dangerous criminal and not allowed on the webernet - quite simply, we don't want you clogging up the tubes.
Friday 24 April 2009
Wednesday 22 April 2009
Software design - ur doin it rite
I do the Twitter thing. In fact, I would say I'm a complete Twitter-head. Like most, I too dismissed it initially as 'Facebook statuses' but it has become increasingly relevant, now to the point that the only thing I log into Facebook for is to see if anyone has commented on my status (updated via Twitter), upload photos (done via iPhoto) and play Know-It-All. Guess which one I do most.
Obviously, I don't do actual logging into the website - that's just SO oldschool - so I have tried a number of clients. First, there was TweetDeck - but, as @serafinowicz says, it does feel like being an air traffic controller. It's ENORMOUS. Oh, I tell a lie! First was actually the Dashboard widget, Twidget, which I have never let go of, because it's simply wonderful for just having a quick check on the last two or three updates. It's simple, it's basic, I'll always have it (I am a complete Dashboard freak, I'll post about that another time!).
So then, after noticing that @VoteWoz made a post from twhirl, I gave it a try. It's very, very nice, and clean, far simpler than TweetDeck, so I consigned TweetDeck to the hills. I used twhirl for a long time (at LEAST two weeks), but I did have a few niggles - number one being how tiny the buttons on it were (although I am running at an insanely high resolution on a laptop, so...), and number two that because it's cross-platform, it has a button for Prefs. Which, as I am a Mac user, means no cmd+, TweetDeck had this problem too.
Then, yesterday, I was turned onto Tweetie. Now, as iPhone users know, Tweetie has been around for the iPhone forever, but they've just released a Mac version, and, well, I am a complete convert. FINALLY, the app that I was waiting for. If Apple themselves designed a Twitter client, it would look like this, it's brilliant. Cmd+, for Prefs! Hooray! Also it doesn't auto-scroll when new Tweets come in, so you pick up where you left off and see things in order! It integrates with TwitPic to just load the picture in its own window. And it has a really neat menubar icon that simply goes blue when there are unread Tweets. No popups, no blinging. It's just marvellous.
All this is lovely, but it is what happened after I went for Tweetie that the real excitement for yesterday happened - I discovered Scribbles. Scribbles is atebits' (the makers of Tweetie) little drawing program, and it's just lovely, and fun. Its layering is simple and intuitive. The way it scales in and out is fab. However, the best thing EVER about it is found via a poke around on the website - it has a one-button Publish to the online Scribbles gallery - click on the link.
Go on, click on it. I'll wait here.
Amazing, isn't it? It's just a dead simple drawing program - almost as if MacPaint got very, very drunk and had an affair with Photoshop 7 - but it's clearly capable of epic drawing wins.
And Windows peeps wonder why it is that I choose a Mac. Because nothing this clever, simple and elegant could ever be dreamt up by a Windows developer (I would ADORE to be proven wrong about this because really, it would make the world a better place).
Obviously, I don't do actual logging into the website - that's just SO oldschool - so I have tried a number of clients. First, there was TweetDeck - but, as @serafinowicz says, it does feel like being an air traffic controller. It's ENORMOUS. Oh, I tell a lie! First was actually the Dashboard widget, Twidget, which I have never let go of, because it's simply wonderful for just having a quick check on the last two or three updates. It's simple, it's basic, I'll always have it (I am a complete Dashboard freak, I'll post about that another time!).
So then, after noticing that @VoteWoz made a post from twhirl, I gave it a try. It's very, very nice, and clean, far simpler than TweetDeck, so I consigned TweetDeck to the hills. I used twhirl for a long time (at LEAST two weeks), but I did have a few niggles - number one being how tiny the buttons on it were (although I am running at an insanely high resolution on a laptop, so...), and number two that because it's cross-platform, it has a button for Prefs. Which, as I am a Mac user, means no cmd+, TweetDeck had this problem too.
Then, yesterday, I was turned onto Tweetie. Now, as iPhone users know, Tweetie has been around for the iPhone forever, but they've just released a Mac version, and, well, I am a complete convert. FINALLY, the app that I was waiting for. If Apple themselves designed a Twitter client, it would look like this, it's brilliant. Cmd+, for Prefs! Hooray! Also it doesn't auto-scroll when new Tweets come in, so you pick up where you left off and see things in order! It integrates with TwitPic to just load the picture in its own window. And it has a really neat menubar icon that simply goes blue when there are unread Tweets. No popups, no blinging. It's just marvellous.
All this is lovely, but it is what happened after I went for Tweetie that the real excitement for yesterday happened - I discovered Scribbles. Scribbles is atebits' (the makers of Tweetie) little drawing program, and it's just lovely, and fun. Its layering is simple and intuitive. The way it scales in and out is fab. However, the best thing EVER about it is found via a poke around on the website - it has a one-button Publish to the online Scribbles gallery - click on the link.
Go on, click on it. I'll wait here.
Amazing, isn't it? It's just a dead simple drawing program - almost as if MacPaint got very, very drunk and had an affair with Photoshop 7 - but it's clearly capable of epic drawing wins.
And Windows peeps wonder why it is that I choose a Mac. Because nothing this clever, simple and elegant could ever be dreamt up by a Windows developer (I would ADORE to be proven wrong about this because really, it would make the world a better place).
I am le cursed.
I'll be honest - I liked the trackpad. Then it stopped working.
It's a bit weird, to be honest, I don't know how to explain it. Because 99.999999% of the time, it's ok. But then I wake my computer up from sleep that ONE time... and for some reason, it won't click. So I've had to turn on Tap to Click, which is odd because I haven't used it in so long (and it's terrible for dragging and selecting).
Apparently I'm not alone. Which should be comforting. But it isn't, because it means it's a known issue. Sigh.
(although I think mine got this way by me crying into it, oops!)
Hmmm. I wrote this a few days ago but never uploaded it. I've since discovered HOW to drag and select. It's good, but not great. Must take to Apple Store next time I'm nearby. Hmmmmm.
It's a bit weird, to be honest, I don't know how to explain it. Because 99.999999% of the time, it's ok. But then I wake my computer up from sleep that ONE time... and for some reason, it won't click. So I've had to turn on Tap to Click, which is odd because I haven't used it in so long (and it's terrible for dragging and selecting).
Apparently I'm not alone. Which should be comforting. But it isn't, because it means it's a known issue. Sigh.
(although I think mine got this way by me crying into it, oops!)
Hmmm. I wrote this a few days ago but never uploaded it. I've since discovered HOW to drag and select. It's good, but not great. Must take to Apple Store next time I'm nearby. Hmmmmm.
Friday 3 April 2009
On Technology in our Lives
Less than 24 hours later, and ssh-ing each others computer to make it talk has become part of household life. 'Come downstairs lunch is ready' 'turn the music down I'm on the phone' 'where are you, you and your laptop have vanished!' echo round the house in Alex's dulcet tones. Although he can't pronounce Alicia properly, coming out with Aleesha. Ugh.
The recent furor over Google's Street View here in the UK has given me the opportunity to think technological impacts through, so I'm going to blab about them in a seemingly random, stream-of-consciousness kinda way. It may be a little haggard because I'm going through some VERY serious chocolate withdrawal and as such can't make it to the shop, and my normally-helpful partner won't go for me because he's a big fat EVE online-playing meanie :( *sob*
So, first I'm going to make a statement, which everyone already knows in some form or another: every new wave of technology is proceeded by a wave of fear - however, this fear is not of technology itself, but of each other, and by extension, the unknown.
Yes, sounds a bit silly. I'll prove it. Let's go WAY back.
Sputnik was awesome. I mean, truly awesome. They managed to get a big round ball with sticky-outy pins to float around the earth and go beep. How awesome? Suddenly, we weren't looking at the stars, we were so close to reaching out and touching them. However! What was the general feeling of the populace? Was it one of achievement, excitement, discovery? Oh no. It was fear. Outright, abject fear (this is fairly famous, but in case you don't believe me, go read Sputnik Crisis), not of the shiny metal ball in space, but of what could be done with it that we didn't know. Apparently, in the US especially, the tension could be cut with a knife as people waited for Judgement Day to begin... which of course it didn't. The Cold War stayed, well, pretty darn cold. But it highlighted the fear - the fear of the unknown and what someone else, someone strange, could do with it. The US was terrified of what this new technology they had so abysmally failed to develop could do to them.
Fast forward nearly 50 years, and we have Google Street View - nowhere near as technologically important, but, you know, WAY cooler. Of course. What is it? If you're a nerd, they're just geotagged photos hashed together. This is fairly trifling to those in the GIS industry, as it has been going on for decades, but in the last few years it has been encroaching on the general population, and Street View has really set the nation on fire! Now, of course, there are two amusing things about this, firstly, Street View has been in the US for aaaaages, so if anyone has been hiding under a rock and didn't know it was on its way, well, tough tits, and secondly, the UK has nearly 4.5 million CCTV cameras which monitor us every single day of our lives, so having a one-off picture the front of your house (and not even every house - Street View doesn't do cul-de-sacs) is hardly terrifying.
But oh no! Reports this morning in the Guardian told us that people were willing to form a human barrier and risk looking like complete idiots over fear of what someone might do with something they don't understand. Paul Jacobs, the panic-monger responsible for this laughable act of idiocy, was quoted as saying, "If our houses are plastered all over Google, it's an invitation for more criminals to strike.".
Yes. Like the fact that any potential thief living or travelling near the village wouldn't already know that this village is the very definition of upper middle class (the houses have tennis courts and pools in the back garden). Jacobs also mentioned, as part of his argument for his stupidity, that there had been three burglaries in the last six weeks. Where? In his living room? Or in the whole village? In case you haven't noticed, Mr Jacobs, there is a recession going on - lots of people getting a bit shirty and a bit desperate. PLEASE try to recognise that you might buy your land, but it still belongs to this earth, as does the rest of humanity, to which you in turn belong. Stop whining because someone might possibly see that your door could do with a lick of paint and you hadn't bothered to polish your Porsche Boxter this week, or even, gadzooks, that you hire a gardner to landscape instead of doing it yourself (labour is the new hired help).
Sigh. I realise I drifted into a 'we are the world' argument just there, but seriously, come on. If you have that kind of 'invasion of privacy' things about someone taking a photograph and putting it up online, then go live in a bunker, because *I* for one, want to be nosy and see what people's hanging baskets are looking like (or were looking like, last year!).
Hugs,
Jen
The recent furor over Google's Street View here in the UK has given me the opportunity to think technological impacts through, so I'm going to blab about them in a seemingly random, stream-of-consciousness kinda way. It may be a little haggard because I'm going through some VERY serious chocolate withdrawal and as such can't make it to the shop, and my normally-helpful partner won't go for me because he's a big fat EVE online-playing meanie :( *sob*
So, first I'm going to make a statement, which everyone already knows in some form or another: every new wave of technology is proceeded by a wave of fear - however, this fear is not of technology itself, but of each other, and by extension, the unknown.
Yes, sounds a bit silly. I'll prove it. Let's go WAY back.
Sputnik was awesome. I mean, truly awesome. They managed to get a big round ball with sticky-outy pins to float around the earth and go beep. How awesome? Suddenly, we weren't looking at the stars, we were so close to reaching out and touching them. However! What was the general feeling of the populace? Was it one of achievement, excitement, discovery? Oh no. It was fear. Outright, abject fear (this is fairly famous, but in case you don't believe me, go read Sputnik Crisis), not of the shiny metal ball in space, but of what could be done with it that we didn't know. Apparently, in the US especially, the tension could be cut with a knife as people waited for Judgement Day to begin... which of course it didn't. The Cold War stayed, well, pretty darn cold. But it highlighted the fear - the fear of the unknown and what someone else, someone strange, could do with it. The US was terrified of what this new technology they had so abysmally failed to develop could do to them.
Fast forward nearly 50 years, and we have Google Street View - nowhere near as technologically important, but, you know, WAY cooler. Of course. What is it? If you're a nerd, they're just geotagged photos hashed together. This is fairly trifling to those in the GIS industry, as it has been going on for decades, but in the last few years it has been encroaching on the general population, and Street View has really set the nation on fire! Now, of course, there are two amusing things about this, firstly, Street View has been in the US for aaaaages, so if anyone has been hiding under a rock and didn't know it was on its way, well, tough tits, and secondly, the UK has nearly 4.5 million CCTV cameras which monitor us every single day of our lives, so having a one-off picture the front of your house (and not even every house - Street View doesn't do cul-de-sacs) is hardly terrifying.
But oh no! Reports this morning in the Guardian told us that people were willing to form a human barrier and risk looking like complete idiots over fear of what someone might do with something they don't understand. Paul Jacobs, the panic-monger responsible for this laughable act of idiocy, was quoted as saying, "If our houses are plastered all over Google, it's an invitation for more criminals to strike.".
Yes. Like the fact that any potential thief living or travelling near the village wouldn't already know that this village is the very definition of upper middle class (the houses have tennis courts and pools in the back garden). Jacobs also mentioned, as part of his argument for his stupidity, that there had been three burglaries in the last six weeks. Where? In his living room? Or in the whole village? In case you haven't noticed, Mr Jacobs, there is a recession going on - lots of people getting a bit shirty and a bit desperate. PLEASE try to recognise that you might buy your land, but it still belongs to this earth, as does the rest of humanity, to which you in turn belong. Stop whining because someone might possibly see that your door could do with a lick of paint and you hadn't bothered to polish your Porsche Boxter this week, or even, gadzooks, that you hire a gardner to landscape instead of doing it yourself (labour is the new hired help).
Sigh. I realise I drifted into a 'we are the world' argument just there, but seriously, come on. If you have that kind of 'invasion of privacy' things about someone taking a photograph and putting it up online, then go live in a bunker, because *I* for one, want to be nosy and see what people's hanging baskets are looking like (or were looking like, last year!).
Hugs,
Jen
Thursday 2 April 2009
WOOOOO
I just did the coolest thing I've ever done on a Mac - well, two of them, and they both involved Terminal.
Number 1: I played Tetris via Terminal. It was cool. emacs>escape>x>tetris. All good.
Number 2: I ssh'd Crispin's computer downstairs to tell him to come to bed. This was more difficult than it looked. Although the command when you're on the same network is a piece of piss!! ssh username, simple as that. I went for the remote version first (getting ahead of myself), with ssh -l compaddress ipaddress. It didn't work (while idly wondering how it was supposed to know which machine on the network it was, I forgot that it should have been username@machine, and ommitted the @machine). I figured he'd switched off remote login, so I went downstairs, made him minimise EVE online and turned it on (he hadn't, but I noticed the @machine bit helpfully displayed on the menu, and went 'oh crap'), thus defeating the principle, but anyway - I was on a mission.
I went back upstairs then and did ssh -l username@machine ipaddress, wherein Terminal helpfully added this to my list of trusted peeps. Then it told me bash didn't know what the command for my ipaddress was - so I figured it didn't need it. So, I forgot about the -l bit, and did ssh username@machine, and it worked.
So clearly, I then did the following.
say "it is late, come to bed please". I had the bedroom door open, so I could hear the faint sound of amusement coming from downstairs - but it was nothing next to the smile on my face. Sure, it's a tiny achievement to long-haul command line peeps. But it was a big deal to me. :D
Thanks, MacLife :P
Number 1: I played Tetris via Terminal. It was cool. emacs>escape>x>tetris. All good.
Number 2: I ssh'd Crispin's computer downstairs to tell him to come to bed. This was more difficult than it looked. Although the command when you're on the same network is a piece of piss!! ssh username, simple as that. I went for the remote version first (getting ahead of myself), with ssh -l compaddress ipaddress. It didn't work (while idly wondering how it was supposed to know which machine on the network it was, I forgot that it should have been username@machine, and ommitted the @machine). I figured he'd switched off remote login, so I went downstairs, made him minimise EVE online and turned it on (he hadn't, but I noticed the @machine bit helpfully displayed on the menu, and went 'oh crap'), thus defeating the principle, but anyway - I was on a mission.
I went back upstairs then and did ssh -l username@machine ipaddress, wherein Terminal helpfully added this to my list of trusted peeps. Then it told me bash didn't know what the command for my ipaddress was - so I figured it didn't need it. So, I forgot about the -l bit, and did ssh username@machine, and it worked.
So clearly, I then did the following.
say "it is late, come to bed please". I had the bedroom door open, so I could hear the faint sound of amusement coming from downstairs - but it was nothing next to the smile on my face. Sure, it's a tiny achievement to long-haul command line peeps. But it was a big deal to me. :D
Thanks, MacLife :P
Wednesday 1 April 2009
How My MBP is configured
Ok, so this is just sad, I realise, but I'm sat here with the thing happily on my lap while Crispy plays Blue Dragon, so I figure I might as well get my typing fingers on, innit.
My MBP is an early 2009 model 17" MacBook Pro, with 4GB of memory and a 320GB 7200 RPM. I didn't get the SSD option, and slightly regret it. I cancelled the anti-glare option and am so glad I did as Engadget can go suck eggs whining about the 'glare' option, it looks WAY better. I also didn't pay the £800 to get the 8GB of memory I'll never use :P
My MBP is an early 2009 model 17" MacBook Pro, with 4GB of memory and a 320GB 7200 RPM. I didn't get the SSD option, and slightly regret it. I cancelled the anti-glare option and am so glad I did as Engadget can go suck eggs whining about the 'glare' option, it looks WAY better. I also didn't pay the £800 to get the 8GB of memory I'll never use :P
- I have iLife '09 and iWork '09 installed (more on that later)
- Bootcamp partition to run Serif (for work, I hate the thing), maybe FFXI Online
- VMWare to virtualise Bootcamp Partition. Haven't gotten around to installing Ubuntu, might not bother as wouldn't ever use, only for posing. Lol.
- Candybar to make my Dock look like WALL-E/Dangermouse
- WoW just because. I don't love it, but you have to have an MMO, and it's so easy to get hold of and pay for.
- Handbrake for converting my MPEG-2 files from my Handycam to MPEG-4's that my Mac can view.
- Skype for work :(
- Spotify for its total awesomeness. EVERYONE should have Spotify.
- twhirl for Twitter. I did use TweetDeck, but twhirl is just SO much simpler and shinier.
- Wikipedia
- Weather (so handy!)
- Twidget (for those quick updates)
- Wallsaver (to pose - don't actually use it, is too distracting)
- iStatPro (useful!!)
- Calculator (handy)
- Dice Roller (lol, easy for rolling damage dice while roleplaying, as there are no D5s in real life, and dividing a d10 by two is too time consuming when you're in a sweat up against an Orc with your life on the line!)
- Sticky with my home IP address so I can afp to my home iMac if needs be.
Giving Advice
Today, I realised I was a Mac person. I mean, I knew this already, but I'd always thought of myself as a bit of a wannabe - but to be fair, the other people I knew who were Mac heads are my partner Crispin, whose Mac knowledge goes back decades (literally, DECADES), and of course, Chad, Andrew, Jocke and Yegor, all of whom are so scarily elite that it doesn't actually bear thinking about. I admire all 5 for their complete geekdom, and as I could barely find the Terminal window, let alone ssh anything (I was confused when Crispin me to 'just chmod it' recently, which is a pretty basic command, for shame!), I'd always just assume I'm a basic user.
Which is complete bollox, of course. You don't have to be able to compile stuff to know what you're talking about, and today, when a friend of mine finally got around to setting up the old Powerbook G4 he'd bought for £300 off a friend, he started asking me questions ('How do I delete stuff off the Dock', 'How do I change the name of my hard drive', and of course, 'what Twitter app do you use?'), and then he came back with 'I just asked three Mac people the same question...' He included me in his list of Mac people, despite the fact that I never even USED one properly before just over a year ago (technically a lie - we only had Macs when I was in secondary school, so I've used OS 9 with Cubase, teh awsumz).
Just a silly small thing, but it made me proud.
Which is complete bollox, of course. You don't have to be able to compile stuff to know what you're talking about, and today, when a friend of mine finally got around to setting up the old Powerbook G4 he'd bought for £300 off a friend, he started asking me questions ('How do I delete stuff off the Dock', 'How do I change the name of my hard drive', and of course, 'what Twitter app do you use?'), and then he came back with 'I just asked three Mac people the same question...' He included me in his list of Mac people, despite the fact that I never even USED one properly before just over a year ago (technically a lie - we only had Macs when I was in secondary school, so I've used OS 9 with Cubase, teh awsumz).
Just a silly small thing, but it made me proud.
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