You should have a look at the two new pieces of Apple kit.
the MacBook Pro
and the Intel iMac.
Both contain dual core (”Intel Core Duo”) processors and will be available in the next month or so, sooner for the iMac i believe.
I might just have to treat myself to a new MacBook Pro!
-Richard
Yes its true, im no longer a Vodafone customer, they have been good to me over the years however i felt like it was time for a change.
So today i switched to one of Three’s new offerings, a $29 a month capped plan that allows me to use around 100mins of talk time to any landline or mobile in australia (or overseas) + another 70mins to any other Three subscribers. Quite good value if you ask me.
Anyway the best bit is that along with the new plan i received a new phone, capable of accessing “Three’s” 3g Network content and making and receiving video calls.
So i am now the proud owner of a new Sony Ericsson K608i. see photo.
PS: Dont worry my mobile number is still the same, i ported it over from Vodafone, which only took 3 bloody hours. ( Sure it might not seem all that long for what they must actually have to do to get it to work behind the scenes, however when the woman in the store says it would be 20 minutes maximum it would be nice it it was true.
anyway, goodnight for now.
-Richard.
Some of the more astute readers may have noticed that the index page found at http://phoenixonline.co.uk/ has in the last week or two been changed to a simpler, less confusing and more visually appealing listing of the contents of this site of mine.
The photo was taken by myself some time in November, after an evening exam while i was waiting to get a train home. I really like the way the blue and the black work together to give a fast moving image a good bit of life. the photo is in no way boring.
laterz, Richie
What I really want at the moment is an option in iPhoto for it to read back data from the XML file it generates. This file’s name is AlbumData.xml and its found in your iPhoto Library.
At the moment if you take this file, change some info in it, ie search and replace for certain strings in all the comments and then re-open iPhoto it just writes over the XML with the old data that it gets from its Binary .db file ignoring any changes you made to the file.
This is rather annoying if you ask me, however i will explain a few good reasons why you might want it to read data from the file back in in a moment.
You may find that a friend that you had a few hundred photo’s of in your library with there name in every photo’s comment decided to change there name. You try changing all of the individual comments from within iPhoto, it would take you forever and a day! What you could do on the other hand is load up the xml file in TextWrangler / an xml parser and use search and replace to change all of the names in only a few seconds. Much easier than doing it manually.
Now if your wondering why there is this XML file in the Library that is updated but never read in the first place, well there is a good reason for it, Legacy Support.
Older versions of iPhoto used to use it to store all there info about each photo in it, however over time people started to complain about large libraries having slow load/access speeds so around versions 4 or 5 Apple decided to move to a proprietary binary format for all the data storage which allows for faster reading and writing, which in turn speeds up the application.
Now when they did make the change they originally just removed the XML file, however people all over the place complained like crazy because they had scripts and that sort of thing that read the old xml file to get comments and dates and things like that for there Online Web Galleries, so it appears that Apple’s developers resurrected the XML file for these people, whereby it is written out to, however never read back into iPhoto.
What i really want is the ability to load the xml data back into iPhoto so that it can be once again used to update comments and the like within iPhoto.
SO I Say Please Please Please……. Give us this functionality back. Either by allowing us to load it in via the repair database menu, or alternatively have a cmd line option or a tick box in the Preferences, under advanced options that says something like:
BTW: to get to the Repair Database menu that I mentioned before you need to hold down Cmd(Apple) + Option(Alt) keys while launching iPhoto. (Version 4 instead uses the Shift + Option Keys)
-End Rant! - Richie.
(PS: Yes i have started to use iPhoto. Version 5 is really quite snappy and responsive, plus I was getting sick of trying to keep a folder full of images organised manually.)
Like the new iTunes 5 look?
Well one guy didnt!
-Richie
I was getting annoyed with .DS_Store files cropping up everywhere on remote drives, eg via samba when accessing them from Mac OSX so i set out to find a solution. Just enter this command in Terminal.app to stop the creation of the files on remote servers by the finder.
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
To undo it just change true to false in the above command.
More info here.
-Richard
Hi Guy’s.
I’ve been hanging out for a Netspace Usage Widget for a while now, and well there didn’t seem to be all that much activity regarding making one, so I set out to make one myself!
Hope you find it useful, and please please email me with suggestions and the like!
http://phoenixonline.co.uk/widgets/netspaceusage/
Downloaded : Check. Times.
-Richie
Gotta love the UPS.
Im posting this atm from home, where the power has been off for the last 20mins. Its really quite a good feeling knowing that the system that i have in place atm works for such long lengths of time. Anywho its really quite boring and apparently its not expected on again till this-afternoon 4:30-5pm.
Id better post this now, not sure how much longer the internet will be up! Longest its gone b4 now was 45mins.
-Richie
Steve Jobs today announced that they were dumping IBM as there Micro-Processor supplier after any number of production and milestone delays. (Can anyone say 3Ghz.)
They will instead be using Intel microprocessors and by this time next year, will have there first Intel powered machines to market. Apple previewed a version of Tiger, running on an Intel-based Mac to the over 3,800 developers in the keynote and confirmed rumours of a division that had been maintaining mac OSX for x86 architecture for the last 5 years in parallel to the official ppc release.
“Mac OS X has been living a secret double life for the past five years” (Marklar).
The design for Mac OS X has always been processor independent and cross-platform capable by design. The technology to let existing PowerPC applications run on Intel is named Rosetta and performs dynamic translation transparent to users.
Interesting times ahead for the Mac or so it would seem!
Trust me its good fun!
My current highest score: 68m
This is a killer Mac/Safari add-on.
Basically it allows for you to use the search box in Safari to search more than just Google!. gives you a drop down menu, and can be fully customised for personal sites!. Take a look if you have a Mac and use Safari.
I had a full week at work this week… it’s been exhausting but i’m home now, and the weekend is looking like a nice time to relax!.
I submitted my timetable for RMIT on Thursday and, although it totally sucking balls, is not that bad in the general scheme of things!. No class before 10:30.
The annoying thing is that I was angling to have Tuesday’s and Fridays off…. and managed to sort the TT so that I did have that… at-least I did before I found that I had to do a maths that had 4 1-hour lectures a week, on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So there goes the Friday off, spoiled by one pesky, one hour lecture.
Then as the final card in the draw it turns out that I also have a 1 hour lecture in the middle of Tuesday, for Computer Systems 1. SAY hello to a full 5 days a week travel gig!.
Anyway found this cool page today while at work! its by Google to so that must be good!!
Google Technology
-Richie
Well I ended up picking up that Pioneer Head-Unit for the Forrester. Its a Pioneer DEH-P4650MP that Sounds rather good.. (in the USA its known as the DEH-P4600MP, because of the different FM Tuning Set.)
After they had arrived (Both Hannah’s and my-own), the next hurdle that we had to overcome was their installation! Now it is seriously easier in some car’s than in other’s but we decided to steam on ahead anyway.
Friday afternoon was my first attempt trying to get to the cavity in my Subaru. It looks hard, and let me tell you it took a little while to work out exactly how you are supost to remove certain panels, however i eventualy succeeded in removing enough trim for me to gain access to the screws holding the DIN Cage in place.
On the Internet there is little to no information on how to actually go about removing panels to get to the head unit, but now that i know how to do it, it would be a simple process to do it again.
The next hurdle after getting the old unit out is what to do with the existing wireing. Basicly every car manefacturer has their own plug that only works with their headunits. There are basicly 2 main options that you have.
1. Cut of the manufacturer’s plug and solder or crimp on a new connector for the head unit, in this case the one suplied by Pioneer for their deck.
or
2. Go down to an auto store like autobarn and ask in the store for a Wireing Harness. Basicly its an adaptor that converts from the Car Manufacturer’s connector to the ISO Standard Plug. and then a second one that converts from this ISO Standred connector to the Head-Unit manufacturer’s Unit.
By the By, Option 2 is the easier option, and its the one that I took! The connectors I eventualy picked up were made by AerPro, specificly model numbers APP090 and APP8PIO.
After all that, it was just a matter of screwing the unit into the cage and re-assembling the dash of the 1998 Forrester, somthing made quite easy by Subaru’s use of snap-click metal pop in tabs.
The next day and it was onto the 1998 Peugeot 306 which, after we worked out how to get old unit out of the dash was quite an easy install. Once again purchasing an AerPro adapter, this time however only having to get an APP8PIO because Peugeot, in their wisdom use the ISO Standard plug config in their cars! (Nice move Guys.) We did also however have to buy an aerial adapter, to convert from the European aerial plug to the USA/Japanese plug.
Once we had the conectors it was just a matter of sliding in the metal suround and then sloting in the actual head-unit. Much easier to install that in the Subaru, however an easy install also means that its easier for a theif to remove, not something that I really want to happen, but we all know does happen all to often.
Well thats all from me atm. Catch.
Well after spending at-least an hour on the phone to Canon Australia it would appear that our new Canon Pixma MP780 is DOA, with the print head not moving and it issuing an error code ##356…
So it would appear that it has to go back to CCW, from where it will pass back to Canon for replacement!
Extremely Frustrating if you ask me!!!!
TECH-SUPPORT what really happens when you call!
For more of the same see here.
For more funny and entertaining stuff’s see these other provocative links!
1) http://www.bulwer-lytton.com
2) http://grouphug.us
3) http://www.whiteninjacomics.com
Hmmm… Super interesting!!!…. How It Works…The Computer A Ladybird Book : 1971 & 1979!
This interesting read shows jsut how complex and alien computers where to the general population back in the 70’s. The advancement of technology is quite amazing!
Well it has come to that time in my life that your fax machine dies. Therefore a replacment is in order!
Enter the Canon PIXMA MP780.
Everything ‘&’ the kitchen sink!
Two really nice features are the duplex ability, printing on both sides of the page, and the duel paper paths, that allow you to have 2 different types of paper in the printer at once, selecting which tray to print to from the computer or machine itself!.
Then there’s the Ultimate. Inbuilt support for direct CD label printing! Where instead of printing onto paper it prints onto the top of your cd.
I should be picking it up after my last exam (Chemistry) tomorrow morning from addo.
Rather impressive if you ask me!