TODO - new title

Personally I don't think it's about Bing

2011-04-01T00:38:00.002Z

Google has enabled its own Android phones to access YouTube so that users can search for video categories, find favorites, see ratings, and so forth in the rich user interfaces offered by those phones. It’s done the same thing for the iPhones offered by Apple, which doesn’t offer a competing search service. [The Bing thing]

Unfortunately, Google has refused to allow Microsoft’s new Windows Phones to access this YouTube metadata in the same way that Android phones and iPhones do. As a result, Microsoft’s YouTube “app” on Windows Phones is basically just a browser displaying YouTube’s mobile Web site, without the rich functionality offered on competing phones. Microsoft is ready to release a high quality YouTube app for Windows Phone. We just need permission to access YouTube in the way that other phones already do, permission Google has refused to provide.

From http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/03/30/adding-our-voice-to-concerns-about-search-in-europe.aspx

That's about it for venn diagrams now

2010-03-17T23:38:00.000Z

Letting the name down

2010-01-12T23:18:00.001Z

There's a Stuart out there who thinks his email address is stuartd@geemaildotcom - and it isn't, that's mine.

He keeps signing up for Foreign Exchange services ('Forex' - is that Four-Ex or Forrex?) and then they send me emails. After I'd had about three from some Forex trader I emailed them to tell them it wasn't me and received two very apologetic emails charmingly written by real people. Well, I suppose they can afford it. (They were even nice about me pointing out the contradiction inherent in an email disclaimer saying "if you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately" but which was sent from a noreply@ address)

Now 'StuartDemo' (I know his real name, but no need to publicise it) is working his way through these services - Interbank, Alpari, Reuters - and he's subscribed to Investopedia's newsletters - yes, all of them - and ChartAdvisor.com and tomorrow there will no doubt be a few new ones.

Doesn't he wonder why none of these emails arrive, or indeed why he can't log in to see whether he can receive them or not? Come on, Mr Stuart D*****no, sort it out already before you make all Stuarts look like idiots.

Confused? You will be..

2009-12-23T23:57:00.001Z

Internet Explorer and me are confused as to whether I am searching using Google or Bing? (Ging? Boogle?)

Microsoft Minefield

2009-10-17T09:47:00.018Z

I got this dialog today telling me that the Microsoft .NET Framework extension and the Windows Presentation Foundation plugin "are known to cause stability or security problems" and that "these add-ons have a high risk of causing stability or security problems and have been blocked, but a restart is required to disable them completely".

Well, I thought as this is a nightly trunk build and some new code is being tested and Mozilla are teasing the Borg again. Not so! The more information link leads to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/blocklist/ which itself leads to Bug 522777 where the add-on has been blocked because of a remote code execution vulnerability - i.e. go to the wrong website and Bad Things will happen. So a lot of people are going to see this soon (as the framework assistant was installed by .Net 3.5 SP1). In fact, from reading the bug and around, I can't really see why the framework assistant was blocked, except as a bit of punishment. Mind you, I was never really sure why they bothered in the first place as ClickOnce apps (KeyMapper has a ClickOnce install option) work OK in FireFox as long as you are prepared to ClickTwice, once to get the manifest and then run that to get the app: the way they initially installed it in such a way as it could only be removed by editing the registry and not by the usual channels was a huge faux-pas as well, for obvious reasons. Still, we all make mistakes.

Edit: I don't remember Flash ever getting blocked, and it has had some nasty bugs as well..

Phone Scam

2009-10-13T18:46:00.001Z

So, the other week, my mother-in-law arrived (to drop off los niñjos) in a state of high dudgeon about her laptop. It had been infected, or compromised, or been turned traitor: she had been informed so by telephone technical support.

Telephone technical support had phoned her up, unsolicited, to advise her of this fact mind you. They made her type in some commands which proved her laptop was now malevolent, and offered to fix it for £49.99. They sent her off to some website which provided some supporting evidence.

So, of course, I said "BRING IT FORTH AND PLACE IT BEFORE ME" in that kind of welcoming customer-friendly way us geeks have.

I remember the laptop well - when she got it I had put Firefox 0.7 on it, and deleted the Internet Explorer icon. When I got it back later in the week I remembered I had also added another shortcut to Firefox with the Internet Explorer icon, just in case anyone told her to "click the blue 'e'", as no doubt these phone scammers said: as far as I know, though, this laptop has never suffered from virus problems, despite my mother-in-law's understandable cluelessness about the intricacies of things computering. If it has then I haven't been asked to fix them: admittedly, I see that random-looking software (DVD rip etc) has been installed so she has probably been lucky if none of that has had a malicious payload, but at least the phone scammers couldn't get her to IE her way to a nasty infection - it wouldn't have to be a 0day, as laptop was stuck in 2007 as far as updates are concerned.

I looked in the Run box's list of previous commands and found what the scammers had used to persuade her that the laptop had turned against her:

temp spyware
prefetch unwanted

Both of these consist of two parts - the first is a valid directory in Windows, and the second is a value-loaded term indicating the presence of such banality - sorry, 'evil' - that only £49.99 can restore it's electric virginity.

So, typing 'temp spyware' opens the Windows\Temp directory, and the meaningless second word is ignored: and likewise Prefetch Unwanted just shows the content of the Windows\Prefetch directory. Quite effective, though, as all the files in these directories are likely to have gnomic names and be log files or have the clunky 'unknown' icon, and they're going to open in Icon view as that's the default and defaults don't change with 90% of users. (Note - I made that figure up)

So, I have the laptop, and it's dead meat with in 48 hours: it died while being updated, I think XP Service Pack 3 was the last straw. It started blue-screening constantly: at first I thought that finally after 8 years System Restore was actually going to do something useful for me, but then it started beeping really loudly when it was powered on (bit like an ingress alert, except it doesn't have one: it has a battery beep, but I don't think that was it) and then a silent boom and now it won't power on at all. Either it was on it's way out already and the activity of being updated freaked it out so much it died, or the scammers who phoned up my mother-in-law have remote psychic computer destroying powers.

On The Occasion Of An England Football Match Played In Dnepropetrovsk Only Being Available To Watch On The Internet

2009-10-10T12:33:00.003Z

And when his work is done -
Ha ha! - begins the fun.
From Dnepropetrovsk
To Petropavlovsk,
By way of Iliysk,
And Novorossiysk,
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk
To Tomsk to Omsk
To Pinsk to Minsk
To me the match will run,
Yes, to me the match will run!

And then I watch
By morning, night,
And afternoon,
And pretty soon
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed,
When they find out I watched it first!

Apologies to Tom Lehrer

Blast From The Past

2009-10-08T22:23:00.005Z

Can you name the year?

Election looming - check

Unpopular, unelected Prime Minister taking the country into recession - check

Opposition ahead in the polls for 3 years leading up to the election - check

Just had a war with Iraq - check

Impending tax rate of 50% for the highest earners - check. (*)

That's right, 1992. Government returned to power against the odds, five more years, ker-ching. A lot of disappointed people.

A couple of 2009 Tory policies caught my eye - no stamp duty for first time buyers up to a purchase value of £250,000 and no inheritance tax up to a property value of £1,000,000. One thing about the Tories, they always look after their own people - which is why they love high interest rates, because this is good for people with lots of cash in the bank. After all, how many first time buyers spending a quarter of a million pounds, or their parents in a million pound house, or their grandparents with thousands of pounds squirrelled away are going to vote anything other than Tory? Fortunately for them, most of the rest of us seem to have forgotten how much the Tories fucked the economy between 1979 and 1997. For any of you youngsters who don't remember - on 16 September 1992 the newly-returned Tory government raised interest rates from the current 12% to 15% to try and stop currency traders raping the pound. They failed, and in the meantime, my take-home salary no longer covered my mortgage payment. I'm going to look into transferring to a fixed rate mortgage myself, if such things still exist.

(Nitpicker's corner: In 1992, the Labour opposition proposed a 50% tax rate on people earning over £40,000: in 2009, the Conservative opposition announced they would not repeal Labour's proposed increase of tax to 50% on incomes over £150,000)

(References: 1992 election, Gulf War, Labour Conference 1991, Labour Party Manifesto 1992, Black Wednesday)

New TV

2009-03-05T21:32:00.004Z

(Sorry for all the TV jargon in this post)

I bought a Panasonic TH42PX80B TV the other day - a 42" 720i plasma beast. My old CRT TV lasted me more than a decade and it wasn't broken, but wifely pressure saw me splashing out.

I do like it - a good picture, a decent remote, and I've bought a component video cable for my Wii, and it turns out my crappy old £30 DVD player is a Panasonic too (who knew?) so the DVD controls on the TV remote control work. I was thinking of buying a new DVD player with decent hardware upscaling and an HDMI out but I don't think I'll bother now (even though they're only £50 now). I've seen Blu-Ray in our local Sony shop (me and Mr Boy pop in there on Saturdays to watch 5 or 10 minutes of Blu_Ray WALL-E but they're too expensive for me (the players, not the disks.) WALL-E looks just great on Blu-Ray, extremely crisp and great colours. Incidentally, the first time I watched it, I forgot it was animated for the first half because it's so beautifully done..

Anyway, my point is, while I was shopping around to find the best TV at the best price I came across something I haven't seen before - websites purporting to sell TVs and computers cheaper than everyone else, which are just scammers.

At first, I thought I wanted a TV capable of 1080p (which is the highest HD quality) so I looked at the Panasonic TH-46PZ80B. A 46" monster, it's £900 from Amazon including shipping, which was more than I wanted to spend. So I looked on Froogle, as you do, ordered by lowest price first, and I found a site called UnionTechPC (which doesn't seem to be in the Froogle results now). Quite a bit cheaper - but when I registered it only accepted Western Union payments. Ah, Western Union, the scammer's friend - you send money, the scammer withdraws the money, no goods are ever shipped: Western Union is only good for transactions between trusted parties, as they themselves know. Plus, no SSL on the checkout page, very suspicious. A quick search finds this page and this page. You'll notice if you view those pages - or if you register at UnionTechPC - that they are now accepting credit card payments, of course no goods will be received and you just gave your card details and security code to a bunch of scamming scum.

So there you go: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Google the name of the website you're thinking of buying on, or if you can't find anything post on somewhere like the AVForums to see if, at least, anyone has successfully bought from the website. Doing a WHOIS search (which tells you who owns the website) is a good idea too: see the results for UnionTechPC: hmm, registered in January this year, the contact is a person not an organisation, the contact address is a PO box, dodgy, dodgy and dodgier. Just because they offer credit card payments is not an accreditation (though if they don't it's fairly obvious they're not legitimate) as above. Be careful out there..

Not a PC

2008-11-24T01:49:00.002Z

Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' ads in the UK flick up the URL windows.co.uk on screen at the end. Shame it doesn't work as it stands, requiring the www prefix to redirect to www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/. All that money spent on ads and they can't apply a simple redirect or DNS record to get it right. Oh dear..

I, Mac

2008-10-08T12:38:00.002Z

As of yesterday I am the happy owner of an Apple iMac 24/2.8/2GB/320GB/SD, refurbished from the Apple store. I used Migration Assistant to copy all my user data and applications from the faithful old G4, bloody marvellous I have to say as everything is there and everything seems to work. I still have to transfer music & photos as they were on separate disks, but I'm sure I will be able to keep all my metadata (play count, ratings, tags etc)

Redundancy FTW! And I have a new job, here..

Key Mapper

2008-09-26T00:06:00.012Z

I wrote an open-source scancode mapping program for Windows - a program which lets you remap and disable your keyboard keys. A sample usage (i.e. my own) disables the Num Lock key, disables the Insert key and remaps Caps Lock to Left Shift. What this means is the Num Lock and Insert keys now do nothing, instead of being subversively annoying (I never want to turn Num Lock or Insert off) and when I press Caps Lock it's as if I have pressed Left Shift (although I occasionally might want to turn Caps Lock on, 99% of the times I do turn it on it's not what I want, I just mashed the A key with my fat finger). Also, I got so fed up with not being able to remember how to get the hash symbol using Windows under Parallels on my MacBook that I remapped the ±/§ button on the MacBook keyboard to it the other day. Much easier to remember. Plus I remap "Left Windows" to "Left Control" under Parallels so I can still use Command-C to copy.

You can find the program's website here - there's an auto-updating version available from the Install page, or alternatively get a standalone build from the project's downloads page on Google Code.

You can also use it to assign keys to things that you may want but which aren't on your keyboard, like starting your email program or browser, or controlling your computer's sound volume.

I'm quite pleased with it as it handles all different keyboard layouts - all different languages, US vs European vs Mac keyboard layout: it has a drag-and-drop interface, lets you browse through the different keyboard languages installed on your computer, and even explores new ground for the (admittedly small) world of scancode mapping programs - you can have per-user mappings (as opposed to mappings which apply to every user) and remap your Pause key to a command which requires two keystrokes (e.g. Windows-L or Alt-F4 or Right-Alt 4 for the Euro symbol)

Here's a screenshot of the program with it's child windows open:

It's funny how such a seemingly shallow subject as keyboards becomes so deep when you get right into it.

Parallels Tools for Ubuntu 8.0.4 Hardy Heron

2008-09-20T18:46:00.001Z

Parallels have finally released a build which allows the Parallels Tools for Linux to be installed in Ubuntu 8.0.4 Hardy Heron: get build 5624 from here. Mouse synchronization and desktop resizing make for a much nicer experience. I still have to click the Network icon and select 'Wired Network' to get a network connection, but that's easy enough to do on each VM reboot, as there aren't many of them.

Points Per Game

2008-09-16T22:50:00.003Z

It seems to me that ordering the football league tables by the average number of points per game is a better indication of how a team is doing than simply by points scored, especially when the variance in number of games played by each team gets beyond one or two. Teams generally go through the season getting the same average number of points per game (or, to put it another way, it takes a big change in form to achieve any significant change in the average).

I've got fed up figuring it out manually so I've done a web page where you can look at any English or Scottish division ordered by points per game. I'm thinking of adding to it so only home or away results can be shown as well as the total.

The tables are scraped from the BBC website, so fingers crossed they don't change their format.

Piratical Doodles

2008-07-26T23:04:00.003Z

Like Google, The Pirate Bay keep their one-off logos on a page for our nostalgia and amusement, they have a new one up for which the site has been renamed The Pirate Bat. Fun.

For Tom

2008-07-22T21:20:00.001Z

If you're looking for a birdwatching or birding holiday in Spain, look no further than Spanish Birding Holidays.. and I'll leave exploring the double-entendres there to you.

Virginal Box

2008-07-10T23:30:00.003Z

We traded in our old NTL set-top box (the one that used to display NIT on boot) for a Virgin Media box.

Upside: it's remote control receiver is better, and can actually be controlled from the far side of the room

Downside: TCP ports 1433 and 1434 are unavailable for outbound connections. As these are the Microsoft SQL Server ports and I need these for work, I now need to get a cable modem. I just can't face trying to explain this to the script-driven robots in their callcenter.. maybe I will have to upgrade to 10MB internet!

The internet welcomes a new word

2008-06-28T01:04:00.008Z

I'm reading a collection of sci-fi short stories from 1957, and I come across a new word - fripoons - in a story from CS Lewis called "The Shoddy Lands". Google has no record of it, so I thought I should document it here in context:

The male faces were not the sort I cared about: a flashy-looking crew - gigolos, fripoons.

Anyone got OED access to look it up?

Good, bad, not particularly ugly

2008-05-22T17:52:00.003Z

Microsoft have a Customer Experience Improvement Program. In order to try and get people to use it, though, they use a cheap trick.

This is the Windows version of the dialog: note that "I don't want to join the program at this time" is selected - as it should be, customers should have to opt-in to being snooped on. However, the OK button is disabled and the only way to enable it and get rid of this dialog and get back to what you were doing is to click "Join the ... program". Of course, you then click back on No and then click OK but it's tacky, and I bet people sign up even though they don't want to.

Visual Studio does it right: gives lots of info on the program and enables OK when you click yes or no.

Todays MessageBox is brought to you by OMFG!

2008-05-13T15:55:00.002Z

AKA "You had me at 'unable to start debugging on the web server'"..

Two stupidities in one.

2008-05-03T13:52:00.002Z

I was watching some TV programme the other day when Virgin Media popped up this large message, right at the end of the programme, centre screen:

Please wait. Some settings are being updated so you won't be able to use your remote for a few minutes.

Press OK to continue.

Shut Up And Install Updates

2008-05-01T00:10:00.004Z

I don't know why, it seems to be the new thing in Windows - Shut Down To Install Updates. I don't understand why I can't just restart as usual? Shutting down is a pain, as I have to get up off my arse and walk to the PC to turn it back on again if I'm remoting into it. Had it on Vista as well as XP.

My new server came today! It is whisper-quiet, not like the old Dan server I had (remember Dan computers?) which was noisy as hell. I have ordered 2.5GB of ECC memory from Crucial for £50, so my spending is still less than £200 and I can still sell my old PC (which has a GeForce 5500 graphics card in it) The server only takes PCI-e cards anyway, and there's a lot of stuff about heating up screwdrivers with candles to remove bits of plastic on the motherboard or taking a hacksaw to a graphics card, I really don't want to go there though as I can just imagine what would happen if I tried that. The onboard graphics are reasonable enough, won't run Aero (Vista's fancy graphics) of course but as I'm hoping to remote in there's no real need. Now I need a wireless card or USB thing that's actually going to work with Window Server 2008 and WPA2. and I also need to think of something the server can do apart from crunch SETI work units (Om nom nom nom alien radio signals :)

Annoying but probably necessary

2008-04-30T23:42:00.003Z

Registration web pages seem to have this new thing - "Please confirm email address". Ah, I think you mean shift-tab to go back to the previous field, command-c (or control-c as appropriate) to copy the email address I already put in, tab to go to the next field, and command-v to paste. And don't even think about trying to disallow copy and paste.

Mind you, I regularly get emails which are meant for other people. I had one the other day from Dell for a David Stuart (or is it Stuart David?) about returning a defective part: I get some from a pseudonym where I know the real address so I forward it to the real Sue Donym: and I received this cracker the other day:

Hi all,

Eric and I looked and determined the porn URL's began w/post #145 dated 12/29/07.

Thanks,

Susan

Oh noes!

2008-04-29T23:03:00.004Z

I linked to a Clay Shirky article in 2003. It's a sign of the times, I suppose, that now I'm embedding a video of him speaking - "Gin, Television, and Social Surplus". Well worth watching. Turn the TV off first :)

I thought this was a fascinating speech (there's a transcript here), but as I was copying the code to embed it I thought - massively increasing participation in media? What about comments on blogs and articles? If we're looking at a 10000% increase in the mindless drivel, opinionated rubbish, bigoted nonsense and space-wasting by air-wasters we all see every day - please, turn the TV back on. (You know I don't mean you, gentle reader(s)..)

All the pieces mattered

2008-04-27T21:05:00.002Z

Just watched the last episode of The Wire - don't panic, no spoilers here.

We'll not see it's like again - except, unlike of every other TV drama I have ever watched, I'm prepared to watch it again, in fact I'm looking forward to watching it again: I want to see how it fits together in retrospect. It's a testament to the quality of the writing of The Wire that alone amoung TV drama it could make repeated viewings worthwhile, like a good book rewards repeated readings.

David Simon, the creator and writer thanks us for watching. No, Mr Simon, thank you: I hope you can do something half as good as this for your next project, because that will still be twice as good as anything else on TV.

Plus, I can do a halfway passable Baltmore accent now: Yearr, like dat. Fill me?

Just bought a server

2008-04-25T00:52:00.004Z

Dell are selling their SC440 servers for £105 with free shipping. I couldn't resist.. upgraded to a 250GB hard disk and it came to £125 all in including VAT.

The offer expires today, or when stocks run out. If you want one:

Go to the Dell site, Small Business Section --> Server Solutions --> Tower Servers --> PowerEdge SC440

So my old box is up for grabs. It makes a fine XP or Linux machine, as it's limited to 512 MB of RAM: Pentium 4 1.5 Ghz. Ping me or comment if you want it.

Edit: nobody wants my old PC, but I reckon I can get £50 for it in the Friday Ad which makes my new server - with it's Intel Dual-Core E2160 1.8GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB - a net cost of £75. I like those numbers! That processor is by no means stellar, but it's way good enough for me. OK, I'll need to add some memory - hello Crucial Brew - and a SATA disk or three, but mmm.

Another edit: the offer seems to be really finished. You can get a T105 with a Dual Core AMD Opteron 2.2GHz for £99 but shipping is extra, and Dell shipping is ~£50 + VAT so that's £183 with the 250GB hard disk update.

Rule Brittanica

2008-04-23T20:11:00.002Z

I signed up for this Encyclopedia Britannica web stuff and to my surprise they let me in. This is a test post to see how it works: Britannica on Britannica.

Camino

2008-04-20T21:20:00.005Z

Camino 1.6 has been released: if you're sick of how hideously ugly FireFox looks on OSX and you want an alternative to Safari, you could do a lot worse than give it a go. Me, I like to live on the edge and use trunk builds, and I discovered a new feature yesterday which is due to land in Camino 2 - Tabsposé! This gives you a page full of thumbnail pictures of all the tabs you have open.

Unfortunately, there's no text explaining what has happened, and no indication that to switch to a tab you click it's picture, and then the tab bar will be restored. I'm sure something will be included in the final version for those poor souls you click Command-Control-T by accident (which is what I did). It didn't help that I had 30 tabs open at the time..

My Yahoo! The buttons do nothing

2008-04-20T18:24:00.006Z

I don't know where this My Yahoo popup came from - I never use Yahoo as such - it appeared on my desktop last night and it won't go away: the buttons don't do anything, I can't move it, I've relaunched Finder and closed all applications but it persists. Hopefully a reboot will get rid of it.

Multiple row bookmark toolbar in Firefox 3.0 - 3.5

2008-04-19T09:12:00.005Z

Note: this doesn't work in Firefox 3.6 - for now I've installed the Multirow Toolbar Extension which is working fine so far.

If you have Firefox 3.5 though, put this in your userchrome.css file: unfortunately you have to hard code the height of the bookmark bar though, so adjust that if it isn't right. Thanks and kudos to knc2007 on the Mozillazine forums.

(Note that you can't drag and drop on rows other than the first: drop a bookmark on the very right hand side of the top row and it will put it on the right hand side of the bottom row)

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar for Firefox 3*/
#bookmarksBarContent
{display:block !important;}
.places-toolbar-items
{display:block !important;
height: 50px !important;
overflow-y:auto !important;}
#bookmarksBarContent toolbarseparator
{display:inline !important;}
#bookmarksBarContent .bookmark-item
{visibility: visible !important;}
.chevron {height: 0px !important;}

Visual Studio 2008 Crash And Burn

2008-04-16T17:06:00.002Z

I upgraded my app to Visual Studio 2008 - not for any particular immediate reason except wanting to see what's new and different, and I could easily enough revert to the VS2005 format.

Oh dear - crash crash crash. Crash crash crash. Constant, reproducible crashing - and one thing I could say for VS2005 was that it was extremely stable. Then I noticed ugly artifacts (badly drawn lines, 'scratches' and other digital noise) on the border of a form, which if it was the current document would cause Visual Studio to crash. Aha! Video drivers. I got the latest driver for the PC's card (an ATI Radeon x600) and voila, everything seems much more stable, and I managed to work in it for a few hours with no crashing at all. Time will tell though.

Windows Server 2008 for free

2008-04-15T23:14:00.003Z

You can get Windows Server 2008 evaluation for 240 days for free - see http://trycatch.be/blogs/roggenk/archive/2008/03/02/windows-server-2008-trials.aspx (you have to re-arm (shouldn't that be "re-disarm?") the activation period each 60 days, but I'm sure Windows will remind you :)

That's about eight months for free. You can always zap your partition and reinstall again when it expires.

Frankenhomer

2008-04-15T22:05:00.007Z

There came a point long ago in The Simpsons - a popular TV show about yellow people with missing fingers - where the father figure Homer became less morally sympathetic than Frank Gallagher, the feckless alcoholic unemployed drug addict father figure from Shameless. Admittedly Frank has had only five seasons to deteriorate (*), and it took Homer nine or ten years to morph from a man who tries in a spectacularly inept way to do his best for his family into a wholly unsympathetic arsehole. (If only Fox had told the voice characters to fuck off and cancelled the show when they struck for more money, there would be a canon of the highest quality instead of champagne diluted with piss.)

Anyway, I've talked about this shit before and to no avail, but I wanted to say something else anyway - if you haven't watched Shameless,you should: start from series one with Fiona and Steve, and see it all the way through to Stella. It dips a bit in the middle series maybe, but when you find your hackles rising when you hear the piano theme tickling in towards the end you know you're hooked like a fish. Make poverty history indeed!

(*) In honesty, I think Frank's character has improved a bit.

Hot cold summer night

2008-04-15T20:26:00.003Z

I've noticed driving home from work that the rooks are roosting high in the trees, a harbinger of a hot summer. Boo! It's all right for you people with pigment - I've already got sunburned this week.

Windows Server 2008, Boot Camp and a Macbook

2008-04-11T22:20:00.013Z

Well, it works. Here's some notes for anyone wanting to do it:

1) The 64 bit versions of Windows Server 2008 will only work properly on a Macbook Pro or Mac Pro and not on a MacBook. It all goes OK until you try to install the drivers from the Leopard disc: the KeyAgent and MacHAL drivers simply refuse to load, so none of the hardware really works (OK, if you can do without any kind of right click and put with deranged mouse movement then maybe you'll be able to get away with it but I wouldn't bother. There are several forum posts from people with the same problem but no answers.)

2) The Windows Server 2008 ISOs you get from MSDN will not boot into Boot Camp without a good bit of tweaking. Fortunately, the required software is free and the instructions are good. (The reason is, sigh, failing to follow the standards)

Incidentally, if you try with a DVD burnt straight from a MSDN ISO you get this cryptic menu:

1.
2.
Select CD-ROM Boot Type:

(Pressing the 1 or 2 key does nothing)

3) Windows Server 2008 is designed for a minimalist install, to reduce the "attack surface" as the jargon goes. So the wireless network capability is not installed by default: it needs to be added in the "Add Features" part of 'Server Manager' (which starts up by default anyway). That's also where you can turn on the Desktop Experience, which gets you the Aero desktop and Media Player etc, though you still have to start the Themes service to get Aero. There are lots of other options available. Incidentally, the Windows Audio service isn't set to start automatically either. Did I say minimalist? After only an hour or so I am really starting to like this OS. Funny how Vista went in the opposite direction - more on that later maybe.

This still is not enough to connect to your wireless network though - even after rebooting it won't find it by default, I think because the Wireless service doesn't start by default (I chose that option from 'Diagnose and Repair' from the network icon and it worked, but as I didn't start it myself I can't be sure)

4) One more thing to do: go into System Properties (sorry, 'Advanced System Settings') then the Advanced tab (presumably super-advanced!) and choose Settings\Advanced (TRIPLE Advanced!) and change 'Adjust for best performance of' from 'Background Services' to 'Programs'.

Why install Windows Server 2008 instead of Vista? See point 3: minimalist = good, fast and less likely to go wrong, and on a MacBook I have no hardware compatibility problems to worry about. Also no UAC bothering me as it doesn't mind you logging on as the Administrator account (if you're administering a server then you're presumed to know what you're doing. I think I do, so I like that.)

Problems? I have three unknown devices in Device Manager. Looking at the Hardware IDs in the Details tab, they all look like Bluetooth, which I don't use anyway.

If you do this and you haven't used Windows Server 2003, watch out for Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration: it will block any site not in it's whitelist (i.e basically all of them), which can make downloading Firefox a bit troublesome: you need to add mozilla.org to see the site and then the download location to get the installer file. It works better than the previous version, though, and it's easy enough to get FF. Or Opera, or Safari, whichever. Or if you must you can turn off Enhanced Security Configuration, it used to be in what is now called "Windows Features" but I'm not even going to look: now Windows Update is in Control Panel there's no need for me to use IE at all. (Edit: it's now in Server Manager and it's easy to turn off: just as well as Visual Studio help goes berserk when it's on..)

Other than that, It's just like Vista in Boot Camp: two finger scrolling works, but tap-to-click doesn't, you can get a context menu by pressing two fingers on the trackpad and clicking.

Here's a list of some more links I found useful but haven't mentioned yet:

Windows 2008 Server on my Macbook Pro

Turning a Mac Mini into a virtual windows hpc server 2008 compute cluster

Installing Windows Server on a Macbook Pro

For server geeks: The 'Book Of Longhorn' - Changes in Functionality from Windows Server 2003 with SP1 to Windows Server 200

How to make Windows Server 2008 just like Vista

Mark Lawson Talks To Me

2008-04-06T00:03:00.001Z

There's a series on BBC4 called "Mark Lawson talks to.." which I hugely recommend if a) you're old enough to have heard of George Cole or Barry Cryer or David Renwick (creator of One Foot in the Grave) and b) you can stand to watch a program which is an hour long and consists of two people talking. OK, c) you're over 40 years old.

BBC4 has I suppose become my default TV station now, as Radio 4 is my default radio station: FIP reception is a bit sketchy in our house and I can't get it on the telly. It's great to be old!

Vista ANGRY

2008-04-05T22:17:00.012Z

Oh, but not as angry as me. My installation of Vista Ultimate on my MacBook is FUCKED. Microsoft's 'Frankenbuild' update (kb929391) seems to be the culprit: the Software Licensing Service won't start (error 0xc004d103), so the Control Panel is empty (reduced functionality?) as in my previous post. I have enabled all services - even the obviously stupid ones like "Tablet PC" (yes, Windows can't tell if it's running on a tablet and start the service itself manually) - and rebooted. Nothing, nada, nil.

This isn't so bad, I can still get to the Control Panel applets by expanding the dropdown in My Computer, but after a few times you can tell when things are going bad in Windows. Incidentally, a Google search for 'empty control panel vista' (without the quotes) gets 1,680,000 results so it's not just me.

The only thing I have done recently was to try to start Vista via "My Boot Camp" in Parallels (which lets you run Windows as a virtual machine in OSX). It failed (it always fails for me) and the next time I booted into Vista it installed "something" and demanded an immediate reboot. Maybe it was KB929391, maybe it was a Parallels something, maybe Parallels messed with Windows and made Vista angry. Parallels asked for Admin permissions before trying to start Vista, which I thought was odd, but hey, I'm just a user, why tell me what's going on.

Still, I was thinking about sticking the Windows Server 2008 64 bit version on it anyway, like this guy has. Bearing in mind that my copy of Vista is from my MSDN subscription and my employer pays a couple of thousand pounds per year for it, I think I will raise a support incident with Microsoft about it first, as I really don't want to have to spend the time reinstalling when I could be working. (Edit: I can't be arsed to call Microsoft, they make it very hard to do deliberately)

I tried to like Vista, I really did. My new app looks great in it, I like some of the things they have done 'under the hood' like ASLR - but for sure it doesn't like me. It's fast and super-slick on my MacBook, and up till now everything worked. Well, that's Windows for you: fine until it goes wrong, then you're in a world of pain..

Edit: Now Windows Update fails with error code 80070426. Apple Software Update (for Windows) fails with a "Out Of Memory" error.

I'm downloading WS2008 x64 (via Virtual PC on my G4 as ever.) - nothing to lose if it doesn't work right (except my time) as Vista obviously needs reinstalling, unless my commenter Richard can save the day :)

This isn't right

2008-04-05T18:56:00.002Z

Vista has misplaced it's Control Panel! Time for yet another reboot..

Lydia oh Lydia, oh have you met Lydia..

2008-04-04T22:54:00.004Z

I came across this website on a blog entry and I think it deserves more publicity, especially as the owner has it up for sale: www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com - so that's Modest Apparel Christian Clothing Lydia Of Purple Dresses Custom Sewing.com. Have a poke about, there's lots to see.

Lydia of Purple specializes in custom sewn garments for homeschooling mothers that homeschool their young ladies and girls in modest dress.

Somehow I think 'homeschooling' has a subtext here.

The War On Stupidity

2008-04-03T12:09:00.007Z

The Wire is a US drama series: if you haven't seen it, I envy you, you have a treat in store. If you have you'll know it's about the drug trade in Baltimore, seen from both sides.

Anyway, there's a quote from it which for me perfectly encapsulates the War On Drugs even though it's apparently about a turf war between two drug gangs: the quality of the writing of the series is so high that I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was exactly the effect they wanted to achieve.

It don't matter who did what to whom: we went to war, and now there ain't no turning back.

I mean, shit, that's what war is, you know - once you in it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie, but we gotta fight" (Hear it)

Oh, there's this quote as well:

Detective Greggs: "Fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case at a time"
Detective Carver: "You can't even call this shit a war."
Detective Hauk: "Why not?"
Detective Carver: "Wars end.."

Edit: This applies just as well to the War On Terrorism. Hopefully not the second bit..

Another edit: apparently, The Wire is Barack Obama's favourite TV show..

New Mismatism

2008-04-02T22:29:00.007Z

New coin designs have been announced by the Royal Mint. Nice.

Incidentaly, on their faq page, they link to an email enquiry form. Unfortunately the URL is www.r2d2net.com/help/contactus.aspx (which doesn't exist) instead of www.royalmint.com/help/contactus.aspx. Obviously this needs repairing and "if any of my circuits or gears will help, I'll gladly donate them".. (found the correct quote thanks to Wookiepedia (groan))

Two leads are better than one

2008-04-01T23:21:00.004Z

I bought a little 250GB USB hard disk. It comes with a strange thing I've never seen before: a split USB lead which goes into 2 USB sockets at once. Just as well I haven't got a MacBook Air with it's single USB socket!

Presumably this allows it to read from both or write to both or read from one and write to the other, or power through one and data through the other - who knows, Seagate certainly don't say.

Edit: Canadian Rob tells Robin it's for power, but you don't have to use both.

Applications

2008-04-01T23:06:00.004Z

I used to use a bunch of methods of starting applications in OSX Tiger: spotlight, the recent apps menu, fire up a finder instance, but now in Leopard I only ever use my Application stack from the dock. I've created aliases for the most useful programs that aren't directly in the Applications folder (ie they are in subfolders or /Developer) and turned on the highlight effect. I've even started to develop mouse-memory for where they are in the stack.

Try it, you might like it.. here's a pic of mine.

So true...

2008-04-01T22:57:00.001Z

My favourite aphorism of the moment is:

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

There's some confusion about who to attribute it to though.

All right, we don't really know why we recommended it..

2008-04-01T21:41:00.002Z

Bit of a WTF from Amazon:

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots

2008-04-01T21:19:00.004Z

I finally went out and bought a disk big enough to back up all the disks and data on my poor old PowerMac G4 with Time Machine. Bit surprised to find there are 939,685 items on it: I deleted fink and all sorts of other stuff after the Leopard upgrade. Maybe I need to start a new user account and dump this one. Maybe I need to do a clean install after all - I have had a few Colonel Panics (i.e. crashes), though fewer since 10.5.2 came out.

Nothing, nada, nil

2008-04-01T20:27:00.000Z

I watched The English Surgeon on Sunday night, a superb documentary about an English neurosurgeon called Henry Marsh who goes to the Ukraine every year to hew out brain tumours with Homebase drills and a Ukraninan doctor called (of course) Igor. I wasn't watching at first, just left it on after MOTD2, but by the end there wasn't a dry eye in the room.

The last line (spoken by Henry) was:

"What are we if we don't try to help others? We're nothing, nothing at all"

What a scam!

2008-03-30T22:17:00.002Z

I wish I'd thought of this .uk.com stuff - Centralnic will sell you yourname.uk.com for £32.50!

What this basically means is they bought the domain uk.com (and lots of other codes) and they are selling people subdomains. For £32.50!

(About subdomains: if I owned stuartd.com, I could set up blog.stuartd.com and fubar.stuartd.com and crapola.stuartd.com as many others as I cared to do _for free_.)

Dead Brum Society

2008-03-30T22:09:00.002Z

footballfunerals.co.uk are the "Official Contracted Funeral Directors to Birmingham City Football Club" and will give you a good send off if you're a blue. Slightly misleading domain name, or perhaps they hope to expand and become the Official Contracted Funeral Directors to more clubs, or maybe the league itself.

Who is the sire, sir?

2008-03-30T14:06:00.003Z

"What Is Radio 4?

Created in 1967 out of the Home Service, Radio 4 is the "daddy" of speech radio."

This is on their interactive TV page and mobile pages.. Odd that they would choose a quote from Scum.

First-order Freak

2008-03-04T13:38:00.002Z

After my previous post on my fellow employees, I've been wondering which category I fall into. Oh dear!

Be like has real

2008-02-29T16:05:00.001Z

These are random quotes from the first few paragraphs on blog.webhosting.uk.com - this has to be dodgy translation, surely, no-one would actually write these..?

There are various reasons why an online sector individual suchlike you has decided to shift to a new web hosting providers. Your old web hosting provider be like has real impecunious specialized funding

Doing channelize in inferior than one month clip under frame will put your website in assay of untracked.

Now, sign-up your new web hosting bringing once you make definite the morpheme familiar mentioned above.

In most cases, you already jazz all the files of your website on your local computer.

In addition, you should run all the hyperlinks in the modal web pages if affirmable to secure no humble course.

Satanic Jon reckons it's keyword injection, but I'm not so sure. Funnily enough, the older entries are quite comprehensible, maybe someone there took a trip too..

Freak Or Unique?

2008-02-29T13:22:00.002Z

I work for a fairly large local government organisation, so I get plenty of chances to play "Freak Or Unique?" when I have to leave my desk.. so far the score is 237-0 (with maybe a dozen or so exceptions)

MacVista takes a trip, gets double vision

2008-02-29T01:21:00.005Z

I installed Vista Service Pack 1 last night in Boot Camp my MacBook: well, I tried: three restarts and two hours later it failed (error 0xC004F013) and had to roll the update back - which it did, more or less successfully, a couple of reboots (and another hour or so) later. Everything seemed OK except I had a quite large message on the bottom of my screen with the build number (6000) and a message saying my copy of Vista isn't genuine. Cheek!

I wouldn't have minded the restarts - I am very glad Vista and Leopard do updates after logoff and before shutdown, it's much more sensible than doing them in userspace - but I was only expecting one like previous service packs so I didn't bother changing my boot disk to Windows, which meant I had to sit about watching it and waiting for it to reboot.

It seems the second time the service pack is installed it works, but failure took so long - it was 86% through phase three (of three) that it really started to drag - I uninstalled update KB941649 which is the bad boy just in case and resinstalled and that's more like it. Took a bit less than an hour: it's build 6001 now, which is a departure from Microsoft's usual build nomenclature.

Oh, I do have one problem - Vista now thinks this MacBook has two monitors in it..

Claim Your Vista

2008-02-24T17:55:00.002Z

A Firefox vs IE comparison is one thing, but Paint vs The GiMP proves this is a spoof..

Technically, Sir, I was never alive - but I appreciate your concern

2008-02-09T23:38:00.000Z

I saw Sir Ian McKellen crossing The Level today - he was walking with a stick, it was definitely him. Gandalf! Magneto! I was with James, scootering.

Hate

2008-01-09T12:16:00.000Z

From 'I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream' by Harlan Ellison:

HATE.
LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.

THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD 'HATE' WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU.
HATE.
HATE.

Always useful. Today, to the woman in front of me in the canteen queue who ordered three ("no, can I make that four?") coffees at the last poossible minute - that's you that is.

Yes, you may

2007-12-12T12:45:00.000Z

I Can Haz Cheezburger is a site for what seem to be called "cat macros". Funny pics & stuff, for the rest. I get bored of things quickly, but it's consistently very good - the pictures are great, the captions are funny. The spelling is atrocious deliberately, especially in the comment section which it becomes exhibishioistic.. Here's my favourite today:

Layout fucked up by blogger.com

2007-11-21T22:20:00.001Z

They said I could get my old layout back if I tried a new one. They lied. Now I have a stupid ugly navbar and I can't get the old one back, and now I miss it. Stupid ugly narrow design. Stupid ugly Trebuchet (oh, no, please, name >all< my fonts after the medieval siege engines their ugliness resembles). Stupid ugly header. Stupid ugly spacing. Double stupid doubleplus ugly "interface" for editing the stupid ugly layout. Stupid ugly stupid blogger.com

Edit: OK, I have vented and am tinkering. Stupid me for letting them do it, stupid me for trusting them and not saving a copy of my template, stupid me for not being able to figure out how to fix it. (The navbar is now an iframe, which save having to hide the individual bits, but they've used variables in the template which makes it hard to edit the file externally, and browsers are shit for that kind of thing work with the auto-resizable textatreas which are fashionable now (and generally nearly work). I was very close to deleting this blog out of anger, both of your personalities will be relieved to find I didn't :)

Catastrophic security idiocy

2007-11-20T22:02:00.000Z

So, a CD with 25 million sets of personal details of child benefit recipients has been "lost". We will be on this. How tragic! I have never known such fear: anyone who knows my name and address will be able to look me up in the phonebook or the electoral roll! If they know my bank account details they will be able to deposit money in my account! If they know I have children they might paedophile them!

The end of Safari and other browsers

2007-11-16T23:41:00.002Z

The new version of Safari on OS X Leopard still doesn't have a "New Tab" button in it's toolbar options and the hacks that used to let you do it don't work anymore and aren't being re-developed. This is no good for me as I always customize browser toolbars to stick a new tab button just to the left to the location bar where the web address is, always have, always will (where possible of course, Mr IE.). I'm a big user of separators as well, back/forward, separator, refresh/stop (I don't really approve of integrating the two, especially as Ajax style apps often make them redundant but not consistently enough to do without the functionality of both), separator, print on it's own, and new tab. I can live without everything else customizable, but not without new tab: you can't double click the tab bar to get a new tab in Safari like you can in Firefox (Edit: you can now do this in Safari 3.1) and you can't drag a bookmark to the tab bar to open it like you can in Firefox (as Safari deletes it, and there's no Undo available!). I use Camino myself but the rest of the family use Firefox, it was my baby daughter's word for "Computer": having more than one browsers installed is always handy (especially as none of them are any good at identity management).

The sky is not falling in, and it is not onerous to cmd-T and click/type or command-click a link in your Safari bookmark bar to open it in a new tab. Using modifier-key commands don't really scale though: I can substitute cmd-c for ctrl-c easily enough using Stuart Logic (i.e. "always get it wrong the first time") as ctrl-c was 'break' for me long before it was 'copy', but remembering what variant to use for UI operations is annoying cross=platform. What's command-click going to be in Safari for Windows (control-click, but I don't want to have to think about it, that's the point of usability, plus I have to remember which browser I'm using and make it a special case)? What if I'm using Parallels Desktop to run Windows within OS X, which is it? If I am running programs via remote desktop, which isn't good at all at recognizing the differences in keyboard layouts? Not exactly Jane User maybe but not rocket science.

The other annoyance is that switching from mouse to keyboard or keyboard to mouse is what you might call a "high cost user activity" - it takes time, and attention - you have to look for the device, orient to it, use it, and then return to the task. When I watch people using programs I often feel myself wanting to say "You could just press enter" as they switch from text entry or selection to using their mouse to click the OK button in a dialog. I don't, though, as the first 500 times I did it made no difference.

Usability means offering as many ways to achieve your user goals as possible, in the hope you find the right one for a given value of 'user'. Why can't Safari have a new tab button I don't know (Dave Hyatt adamantly doesn't want one, is my guess, but why?)

It's a shame, as Safari has fantastic CSS support for exciting new capabilities, and is the browser du jour as regard iPhone development. Ho hum.

Another thing that annoyed me about Safari was that I couldn't configure it to search with what I typed from the location or address bar. Firefox by default does a semi-optimized "I'm feeling lucky" ("I'm feeling useless" more like) search, but I always set the keyword.URL preference to http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q= in about:config (keyword.enabled needs to be true, but that's the default anyway) to always search google.co.uk as searching from the location or address bar is just so obvious to me, it's a textbox, you can type in it, let's search. I have nothing against the location box (which ironically I have started enabling after all these years of address bar searching and I had even trained myself to type cmd-c cmd-t tab cmd-v enter instead of old faithful cmd-c cmd-t cmd-v then enter when I wanted to search for selected text from a webpage. Most browsers now have a context menu option to search for a selection using the default search settings.

Oh, when you type text in the location bar in Firefox 3, it searches the full text of your history URLs as well as the title of he web page, so when you type foo it matches "http://bar.com - my foo web page" as well as http://bar.com.snafu.foo/zomg - it's much easier to find what you're looking for.

Got to be quick..

2007-11-16T13:25:00.000Z

My employer has introduced new rules: you are allowed three 10 minute sessions on "social networking" sites like Facebook or blogger, and I've already used one slot playing the movie quiz on FB (access is completely blocked from 10-12AM and 2-4PM)

Anyway, I've found a whole new way the BBC is deceiving and manipulating viewers: you know on the weather forecasts they seem to be standing in front of the UK - it isn't real, it's a fake! People should be told.

Amazoooh!

2007-11-15T00:28:00.000Z

Tog On Interfaces for £6 delivered. Thank you Amazon! You can get very good prices on popular books secondhand.

Shooting fish

2007-11-14T23:06:00.001Z

Core Image Fun House is a lot of fun, installed with Xcode from the Leopard CD. The Edit menu's a bit obscure though..

Not on the Radar

2007-11-12T00:21:00.000Z

Radar is Apple's bug tracking system, but you have to be a paid member of ADC to access it, and I haven't made that plunge.. yet. If I did, I could report this error which is consistently reproducible, updating Camino from a disk image as a non-admin user: first the update fails to request my credentials to authenticate the update (the copy fails) then as a bonus the existing version fails to run until the copy failure sheet is dismissed.

Edit: seems to be fixed in 10.5.1

Time Machine

2007-11-11T22:53:00.000Z

In order to make Time Machine complete a backup on my G4 before the heat-death of the universe I had to disable Spotlight indexing on both of my drives as well as the drive I am backing up to. Now it's running nicely (albeit still slowly). This will be the first system backup I have ever made in more than 10 years of personal computing, which says something about Time Machine (as well as me).

I need to get it to run at a reasonable speed (ie one that will complete in my lifespan) as I can't just leave the disk connected, as I could only get it to work with no actual enclosure, so currently it's just the naked hard disk and external IDE connector, and I don't want Monsieur Garcon getting hold of either. Serves me right for buying cheap shit enclosures, I am finally learning the lesson that the 3.84 unit is no good and I should always buy the 20.84 unit - when I finally bought a proper USB2.0 card to support my iPod touch it worked out of the box, but the 3 other cheap ones I bought never worked properly.

Incidentally, is there a nerd in your life??

(Edit: it worked eventually, but it took 3 days. Then it took Spotlight another day or so to reindex the volumes..)

Looking for a Wii online?

2007-11-02T23:00:00.000Z

My Wii was stolen along with my MacBook, dead iBook and iPod in a recent burglary. It's been tricky to replace: my local Blockbusters had them in stock straight after I got my insurance settlement, but I really hate them so I didn't buy one. Then I regretted that particular decision, and couldn't find one anywhere: step up to the plate the realtime 'Wii In Stock webpage', which I kept open in a browser tab yesterday lunchtime. After only an hour or so it popped up with Amazon having stock, and although it seemed to be being drip-fed onto the site - I kept trying to buy one but it was out of stock by the time I reached the checkout - I got one eventually, and I just got the email to say it's been shipped so it's non-virtual and will arrive next week. I paid £1.69 for delivery, which I frankly couldn't care less about: there were websites selling the basic Wii package for £279, a premium of £100 over the usual selling price. I bet they sold them, as well.

Just in time for the release of Super Mario Galaxy! While I can't believe it can be as anything like as good as Super Mario 64 it will be fun finding out, though Becky has persuaded me to wait for my birthday: fair enough, it's only one more month and I've waited a long time.. I need to build up my Wii Sports tennis rating to something respectable first, I think I peaked at 2200 or so on my old one. I thought about buying Tiger Woods golf because I am an old fu- sorry, because I enjoyed the Wii golf game, but I'm not sure - have you tried it? Is it good?

iPhone/iPod Touch SDK

2007-10-15T00:29:00.001Z

My iPod Touch runs some variant of OSX Leopard, that seems pretty obvious. So why am I not surprised Apple haven't released a SDK for it given that the whole of Leopard is still under a strict non-disclosure agreement which is still being enforced?

Arse-backwards

2007-10-14T21:55:00.000Z

I was reading this advice about running as a non-Admin user on your Mac, when I realised it's totally backwards.

It advises setting up and using a new account, to which administrative privileges are not granted. It advises

If you want to transfer any data (such as preferences files or e-mail messages) from your current account to the new one, drag the items from their current location in your Home folder to the corresponding location in the new account’s Home folder.

Oh, just like that? All my preferences, bookmarks, settings, documents, music and photos? This is bad advice. Setting up a new user account for a little change like this is quite unnecessary and practically destructive of your data as you can never migrate everything (1). If I'm not mistaken, it's perfectly possible to remove the admin privileges from any user account created in OSX, including those created with Setup Assistant (2). Another reason it's bad advice is that if you can't stand running as non-admin because of some behaviour of other, you can't just Go Back. Which you should always be able to do with changes spouted in an online column.

Far better to set up a new account called Admin, with admin rights, then remove those admin rights from your current account. If you ever do anything in Terminal using sudo then add your current account to the sudoers file using visudo before you do this as it's a pain to do it afterwards (believe me, if you don't understand that or have never heard of sudo you don't need it). (3)

I did it to see what it was like, having experienced nightmarish scenarios in Windows trying to run as a non-admin user (this is much mitigated in Vista, more on which later) and it's just fine - I love OSX's admin escalation paradigm anyway, being able to set/unset with the little padlock is much nicer than Windows Vista's UAC, but the only extra time I've noticed having to authenticate is adding an appliction to the Applications folder, and I don't do this very often. (well, every day if you count getting the nightly trunk build of Camino, but I don't mind that). In fact, I have a Camino image waiting now.. I have to enter the admin user name and password, which is mildly annoying compared to just password, but I can also disable auto-login on my current account knowing Beck can enter the password, and keep the viciously complex password for my admin account. Yes, I know that all of these passwords can be bypassed with OSX install disks, but I am thinking of mitigating that by using Filevault to encrypt my home directory. I just need a backup strategy first!

Ordinary User stuartd

(1) Creating a new user profile is a good way of losing cruft but it has to be deliberate and consensual.

(2) As a software consumer I think "Assistant" sounds a lot more promising than "Wizard", but is that just because I have read Terry Pratchett / JK Rowling? Shop Assistant, Library Assistant, Teaching Assistant, Rincewind, Harry Potter. Which one do you want helping you?

(3) I missed the old sudo warning when I got my new MacBook.

New speed cameras on the A27

2007-10-14T21:10:00.000Z

I went to Eastbourne today, and noticed there are two speed cameras between Falmer (Sussex/Brighton University) and Lewes where I work, one just after the University bridge and another a mile or so further on. They're both currently pointing East, ie Brighton -> Lewes. It was hard not to notice, as the cars in front slowed down to 30 mph (which is not in fact the national speed limit, no matter how much people who drive on Sundays wish it was)

Not really a problem for me in my old car. They look a bit temporary, I wonder if they're the harbinger of catastrophic roadworks?

Edit: the cameras have been covered up ever since, and the sign saying roadworks are scheduled has been taken down.

Touch notes

2007-10-12T17:17:00.000Z

A couple of things I have noticed about my iPod Touch:

1) If you do a big swaparound of music, several GB or so, the portrait-mode cover art and the thumbnails are wrong but the right picture is displayed in coverflow (landscape mode.) A full restore fixes this.

2) Before restoring the device, iTunes has to download a 150 MB disk image. Not surprising after the fact, but it increases the already long time it takes to restore over USB. I don't suppose it's feasible to have a connector which could connect to either USB or Firewire, which is a pity as USB is noticeably slower than Firewire.

3) Turning off wireless increases battery life hugely.

4) It optimizes photos - I added a thousand or so, expecting to fill up the Touch. iTunes spent all night optimizing them, as there's no point storing 2460x1280 on a little screen like that: it's a pity this can't be done offline, as this means I have to leave the Touch plugged into the computer all night and thus within reach of the children in the morning. But, when they're on the device, they look great and in slideshow mode you can fast-forward at 20 images per second at high quality. And they only took up a gig or so. [Edit: it doesn't take that long, even for lots of photos]

5) It's tough putting a decent sized music collection on 16GB: my old 40GB 4G used to have everything on it that I would ever want to listen to, but you need a different strategy for 16GB . I won't bore you with mine but it uses half a dozen playlists and smart playlists, fortunately you can drop them all in a folder to keep them out the way (of accidental deletion, mostly!)

6) The back scratches whatever you do. My case hasn't come yet because of the postal strike. I'll be having words with Danny (who works for the PO) when I see him about it!

7) It is a beautiful, wonderful device. And it sounds brilliant, I think even better than my old iPod.

Straighten up and fly right

2007-10-10T20:51:00.000Z

I've moved my dock to the right hand side of my screen on my macbook - when the display resolution is 1280x800 then vertical space is far more premium than horizontal, especially as a decent sized dock could be 100 pixels high, thus being 12% of the vertical viewing space even without the menu bar vs being 100 px wide and 8% of the horizontal aspect. It bugs me hugely, obviously, that the dock is away on the right but I'll get used to that and I do already really appreciate viewing documents and code without it breaking up my reading eyeline. I've left it at the bottom upstairs, it seems OK on 1280x1024 and I don't do much reading on that Mac, more pictures. Gruber made me try it out and I like it.

Incidentlly, I noticed that a car number plate in Heroes tonight was NCC-1701..

Maggie And Boris

2007-10-07T22:47:00.001Z

Scary future:

Better than us

2007-10-06T21:40:00.000Z

Check out these Japanese manhole covers. I love the way the page's margins move when you scroll down, and the idea of having public art just to be walked on.

iLife 08: iMoan but iLike it really

2007-09-24T23:05:00.000Z

I'm a bit disappointed that iPhoto 8's implementation of albums is still still so inferior to iTunes playlists. In an application designed to manage large photo collections with simple rules it's unfortunate that the implementation doesn't allow chaining rules together to query your data with and/or/either.

In order to do this, you need to be able to reference one "smart album" (a photo album based on a rule or rules) when defining another, and you can't: the operation of creating a smart album is not closed.

iTunes allows this. Say you want all music that's been added to the library in the last six months and is either disco or funk. Easy: create a smart playlist that has genre=disco or genre=funk by using "Match any condition", and another smart playlist where the playlist is the one you just created and the date added is in the last six months.

Not a very real query, but the best I could think of. In iPhoto, I specifically wanted to create a query where the (keyword=Daisy or the keyword=James) and it's been added in the last year. This is to create a playlist that I can then send to iDVD to make a slideshow from with some nice music on to send to my mum. But, it can't be done: I can create the first two options easily enough in a smart album using "Any" with the two keywords, but I can't chain that to another album to restrict by the date.

It's easy to hack around this manually by creating static albums, filtering photos by keyword and dragging them to the album, until you get to a state where you can use a smart album to get the final set you want, but this is annoying because it doesn't update as new photos are added and needs to be redone every time.

Oh, there's another thing you can do in iTunes that would be very handy in iPhoto - you can context-click a track in a playlist and choose to open the track in any other playlists it is a member of, or in the default music collection. I was using an "Untagged" smart album and it would have been very handy to be able to jump to the photo within it's event or in the main photo list even.

Still, I like iPhoto's implementation of Events a lot. I got the new version in the middle of tagging 8,000 photos - I was accused of taking more photos of our eldest child than the younger, and there was only one way to find out. So as well as having 4,000 photos to tag I had 8,000 photos to put in events as well.. It took me a little while to adjust my workflow to the new keyword interface, and I usually have the keyword window over the album list which isn't the perfect usability. I have my events as months, so I don't have too many but they don't have too many in, but I like being able to have special events - holidays, birthdays - in their own events. It would be nice to be able to autosplit events monthly: I tend to take a few pictures a few times a week rather than a lot in one day. One thing I found annoying was that I would open an event I wanted to split into separate months, split it, then return to All Events. Usually then I would want to merge the split events into existing months, but iPhoto has automatically selected all the albums you have created already, and if you're not careful to deselect those before clicking on the one you want to merge, you can end out re-merging all the photos you've just split with some others!

Incidentally, when you delete the current photo in a smart album, if you then try and use the arrow key to navigate, at least under some circumstances you get summarily dumped to the top of the list. Annoying, but at least you can delete from within a smart album now. I deleted 1,200 out of focus photos as part of the tagging project, so it happened to me a fair few times.

Pigment map courtesy of MacBook Photo Booth

2007-08-16T00:32:00.000Z

Every bit of non-vitiligoed skin shows up, even bits I can't see. I will have to find out which effect this is. (Edit: it's 'Glow' of course)

It doesn't get any better than this

2007-08-11T21:23:00.002Z

First day of the football season in an odd year (*) watching MOTD with no idea of the football results and the newly promoted Black Cats (Sunderland **) beat "Top Four" Tottenham with a goal in the final minute. Joy! Or rather schadenfreude, which all football fans know is just as good.

* Odd years - ie 2007, 2009, 2011 - have neither a World Cup nor European Championships to fill the tedious close season.

** My family on my mother's side, the Oswalds, are (or at least were) Sunderland fans. My Uncle Dick packed in a grocer's stall my Granddad had bought for him so he could go down the pit because he'd get Saturdays off to go to the games. He'd been bought the stall (it might even have been a shop, I will ask my Mum, also about the date which I estimate 1933) to keep him out of the pit of course.. in the '50s, incidentally, Sunderland were called the Bank Of England club because they spent so much money chasing success: in the end they won nothing, and the sums spent seem tiny compared to the modern game.

Hmm

2007-08-08T23:33:00.000Z

I crutched to Sainsbury's today (in my car - you can't carry shit with a crutch) and a woman said to me (presumably about some geezer) "He's a cheeky bugger - they're all the same, after it every minute. I don't know why they come after me, I haven't had it for twenty-seven years, I can tell you".. then I dived down the butter aisle.

Mac Blindness

2007-08-08T23:18:00.000Z

I spend so much time staring at my MacBook I worry that spending too much time on a short fixed focal length will damage my eyesight, and I have a bet with Beck that she'll need glasses before me. It's a bit of a worry..

To the rescue!

2007-08-08T13:22:00.000Z

Breaking a bone in the outside of my foot has caused my walking pattern to change, putting a lot more weight on my heels, and causing the hard skin on them to crack open. Ouch. I've been suffering for a few days, Becky got me some cream to soften them. The instructions said to beware putting the cream in the open cracks, bit of a problem on my left foot with old Grand Canyon Crack. So I had a brainwave - superglue the cracks together before applying the cream! Worked a treat, they are a lot less sore. Wish I'd done it last week.

If you think I'm crazy (Beck did) then google for "superglue cut": there are vague concerns that cyanoacrylates (the chemical in superglues) are toxic, but a) it's on the outside and b) it isn't much and c) I got more on my fingers anyway and d) life is toxic, man.

Come to think of it, there must be a statistical split with superglue users, something like:
30% - perform gluing operation perfectly with no residue or spillage
30% - perform gluing operation satisfactorily, but get glue on your fingers resulting in some sticky moments while trying not to touch anything for more than 3 seconds so as not to get stuck to it - while still getting the gluing done.
30% - perform gluing operation, but get glue on fingers and get stuck to the thing being glued.
10% - perform gluing operation, get glue on fingers, then inadvertently squeeze the rest of the tube. With hilarious results..

Stupid Technorati crap

2007-08-03T23:43:00.000Z

It's that or give them my account details (over unsecured HTTP, why not, eh?)

Technorati Profile

New thing

2007-08-02T00:11:00.000Z

I find myself watching a program on channel a hundred or so called [adult swim] which is apparently an animated comedy sketch show. Cruel, ruthless and funny: of course, that could be just the episode I'm watching. Let's try another.. seems some are just one scenario, some are many quickfire jokes.

How cool is that?

2007-08-01T23:06:00.000Z

Lisa and Steve's Lego Wedding cake

See also the bride and groom

Broken foot

2007-08-01T21:54:00.000Z

I have a spiral fracture of the fifth metatarsal on my right foot - nice clean fracture, no displacement. I got it last Tuesday playing football, it'll be a fair few weeks before I play again - old bones heal slower.

So, if you ever turn up to football and you've forgotten your boots or trainers and someone offers you theirs but they're a size too small - go home, and don't play.

This is what it looks like:

Airport Extreme

2007-07-26T14:22:00.000Z

There's an airport on Ebay for a million pounds - postage is free, of course.

You know what it's like..

2007-06-27T22:04:00.000Z

.. when you get something new, and what you had before is suddenly revealed to be instantly obsolescent?

My Mighty Mouse came today! Daisy sellotaped the old Pro mouse up the other day as part of one of her installations, not that it was bothered, and James has given it a lot of stick. Let's see how this new fancy-dan thing stands up to it.. in the mean time: right-click! middle-click! amazing scroll ball! mmmm.. thanks to RTB for persuading me.

Update (August): No problems, mouse truly is mighty. Daisy stopped after Sellotape Untitled IV: James hammers it as you might expect, it just keeps working. He did get loads of jam in the scroll wheel but after a few cleaning scrolls it was OK.

Fantasy celebrity sprog

2007-06-25T00:02:00.000Z

If Bob Geldof had had a son he would surely have called him Gandalf Geldof..

Formally assimilated

2007-05-23T21:22:00.000Z

I bought a refurb white macbook from Apple today: spent some of the £100 saving over the new core 2 duos on extra memory [not from Apple!] and I get a superdrive out of it, may come in handy one day. Delivery date is on or before Friday..

When I was checking out the purchase from the the Apple store, I realised I have mislaid my VISA card: I remember them all falling out my wallet "somewhere, the other day". I also remembered the security code on the back which I needed to quote to make the purchase which was just as well, as the refurbs go fast.

Fight! Fight!

2007-05-22T22:24:00.000Z

Armoured suits for cats and mice. Ippon!

Microthinking

2007-05-09T23:05:00.000Z

I grudgingly admit the possibility of the existence of Microsoft Desktop Search plugins, and I understand that if I am stupid enough not to realise that uninstalling said Desktop Search would scupper said plugins then I could be mildly inconvienced: and yet, when uninstalling the software (>my< system resources, thankyouverymuch!) I was amazed when presented with this: couldn't they at least have removed the security updates from the list?

Another switcher

2007-05-03T23:23:00.000Z

> From: robinthebear@robinthebear.com
> Subject: Ordered

> iMac, 24-inch, Intel Core 2 Duo
> NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB SDRAM
> 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
> 750GB Serial ATA drive
> 3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
> Wireless keyboard (English) & wireless Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (English)
> SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)

Chulo!

Losses

2007-05-03T22:16:00.000Z

The wonderful French radio station FIP has disappeared from the Brighton airwaves, and Porky Whites are no longer available from Asda.

What I want do do though is say goodbye to Kurt Vonnegut who spoke many words directly into my brain. This image, at the time of writing, is the home page default:

Eidt: FIP is gone for good now it looks like, Porkies are back, and Kurt Vonnegut is still dead..

Astroturf

2007-05-01T21:27:00.000Z

I played football tonight for the first time in years: I have never played on astroturf before and I had no idea how abrasive it is.

I can never stay on my feet when I play in defense: I like to go for the ball and get it no matter what, so I end out doing sliding tackles: astroturf is more like glasspaper than grass, so I have no skin on my right knee or elbow. Other than losing miserably I enjoyed it a lot: it reminded me of the last time I played, back when I lived in my old flat.

I was turning out for an Ericcsons team in their sports and social league as a favour for a guy I worked with (who was a Kiwi and had never played 'soccer' in his life before: I also have a medal for being part of a winning ESSC baseball team) and managed to get a decent grassburn one week: I was cleaning it with peroxide (yes, I was a single man) when I dripped much too much on the graze and kicked upwards involuntarily: I must have had shoes on (I don't remember it hurting my toes) so the Stanley knife I used to keep on my coffee table took up, turned over once lazily in the air, and embedded itself into my leg. I didn't know which to say ouch for, I imagine I swore a bit.

(We did play at Glastonbury a few years ago but that wasn't an organised game: we were on tv though according to legend)

Long sleeves and trackie trousers next week! Shinpads are a bit woofy though, without boots.

Google Desktop/Mac

2007-04-04T22:13:00.000Z

I've never installed a Google desktop search product on Windows, let alone seen the need for one on the Mac - why would you when you have Spotlight? - but seeing as Mr Pinky asked so nicely I will give this new Google Desktop/Mac a go on old failthful G3 iBook.

My main problem with these multi-search programs is that I always know in advance where I am looking. If I'm looking for a document or file, it's on my local disk. If I'm looking for a web page, it's on the internet, and the two don't really coincide: equally, if I'm looking for an email, I search there, whether that's local or internet (ie Gmail). I can imagine that under some circumstances you would want to look for all info about a topic, whether as emails or files or webpages, even though I can't think of one myself. Perhaps the program will offer that opportunity (if it ever finishes indexing!)

Edit: on reflection, I would probably use this type of search at work (where I don't have a desktop search program anyway, mostly because everything is stored on the network somewhere and/or on an Exchange server)

Administrative entry

2007-04-04T21:57:00.000Z

Imageshack.us trashed my profile picture, which as a free service is of course entitled to do. So I've had to upload it again, which is why this post is..

If the cap fits..

2007-03-07T12:42:00.000Z

Firefox has a few problems with Microsoft and certificates - Microsoft insist on self-signing rather than participating in the trust network - but this one made me laugh:

Everything Virgin does is shit.

2007-03-06T22:46:00.000Z

We get broadband and TV from Virgin, who took it over from NTL. In the course of their first weeks of operation they have fucked up their contract with Sky and lost Sky One, which means the missus can't watch Lost. And now, suddenly and very inconveniently, it's very difficult to get through to torrent sites where episodes of Lost can be downloaded - sites like The Pirate Bay are suddenly unavailable (they can be pinged, but no connections can be made through a browser)

This is intensely annoying - not Sky One, which I am quite glad not to have any more, but I like to be able to go to whatever website I like. I linked to The Pirate Bay once before, to something I found on their "legal" page, which is worth a look, if you're not a Vigin customer that is and you are allowed to access it by your internet provider (there's also a Turkish internet provider which blocks TPB according to it's wikipedia entry)

Unfortunately our house has neither a rooftop aerial nor a BT phoneline so it will be inconvenient and expensive to change away from Virgin to Freeview and ADSL, but I think we'll be doing it.

Everything Virgin does is shit. I phoned up for Beck once to topup her mobile and the voice menu was all "Hey you" and "Great! You've topped up your mobile -- cool". Arseholes.

Edit: I'm not the first to notice.
Edit: Still no access in April.

No kidding..

2007-02-22T00:32:00.000Z

Gutsy

2007-02-14T23:25:00.000Z

Watching a TV program about Kamikaze and Bushido during WW2 on channel 203: "Japanese soldiers would strap grenades or mines to themselves and attack tanks".

Neat

2007-02-02T23:02:00.000Z

All software installations must require some kind of user action these days - I think this is the best example of a graphic installer instruction I have seen. Whether you're a Mac user or not you should be able to tell what you need to do.