adventures in geekdom

iPhone OS 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:09:00 +0000

Firstly, apologies, it's been quite a while. There have been birthdays, and my continuing persistence in trying to earn money on oDesk which takes up a lot of time. I've also been watching a lot of TV (3 Seasons of Deadwood, Misfits and the World Cup has just started) and in between that I've discovered the old technology of the paperback. Currently I'm reading the Amber Spyglass from Phillip Pullman and Wild Swans by Jung Chang. You'd be amazed after that, that I just dont seem to have the will to write. This will all clear up soon, with Birthdays past and my love affair with oDesk to end very soon (I'm sick of being paid peanuts) and the World Cup only lasting a month, I should be back and recharged very soon.

Very good news though, my partner K. is some sort of technical genius and managed to update his iPhone on Friday (a 16gb 3G Model) to the IPhone OS 4.0 operating system. He then was able to do it to mine (an 8Gb 3G model). So as of Friday last week I'm now using the iPhone 4.0 OS and there are a few nice changes.

1. The interface: There's a few changes here, the most noticeable initially is the new "Dock" it now looks like the Dock you see in Snow Leopard OS (10.6) and has a very 3D feel to it. Generally the Graphics feel "smoother" for want of a better phrase. When you close applications they app icons fly back to their positions in a nice way. the Calculator's Icon has become more 3D (although no changes to the actual app) and button like. There's a new Game centre, and you can set all of your applications to have folders. Because we use 3G models, we aren't able to change the actual wallpaper on the menu screens.

2. Mail App Unified Inbox: Now in Mail, if you have more than one email account you can view all of your mail through one inbox. Much like you do in the Mail Application on the Mac.

Downsides

1. On update, I lost all my photos from my phone, including my Wallpaper photos. This was most annoying. But I dont use my iPhone Camera much now that I have an equally small camera in my Handbag with me all the time.

2. Most App's aren't compatible with iPhone OS 4.0 as yet, or at least haven't release 4.0 compatible updates, so apps will crash frequently. So far the following apps have crashed on me:

Facebook
Twitterific
The App Store (twice! Yes I'm serious)
Tumblr
eBay
Spend

3. The lack of wallpaper changeability

4. The lack of multi-tasking.

The last one is a killer downfall and almost makes me want to upgrade to a 3GS. Which I'm sure there'll be an abundance of when the new iPhone 4.0 is released mid July in Australia. Aside from these downfalls the new OS is an improvement, and I expect that developers will be beginning to make their apps 4.0 compatible very soon. Once this is done, I think 4.0 will prove to be a stable OS for the iPhone with some much needed improvements.

Steam Client for Mac released / Linux announced

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Wed, 26 May 2010 13:42:00 +0000

Quite old news, but exciting none the less. Two weeks ago Valve released the Steam Client, which has now been available for a couple of years for Windows users, for Mac and Linux.

The release, that was much anticipated, was greeted with jubilation all over the internet from both the Mac Camp and the Linux camp. The Steam client offers a number of advantages to gamers of all persuasions:

Firstly it offers a cost effective way to buy Games, often which in Australia, are priced ludicrously high! Buying a game through Steam, even if you're paying in US dollars, can be substantially cheaper (and better for the environment because you're not going to the shop to buy a physical game in a hardcover case).

Secondly, you are able to view a wide variety of games, most of which you wouldn't normally have been exposed to if you were looking at the shelves at your local Game Dealers or EB store. Many of these games are developed by independent development houses, and this gives them the opportunity to get their wares out to a wider variety of players.

Lastly, you can connect with your friends online and share your progress through your library of games and progress.

Other aspects about the Steam client I love are the ability to add Games already installed on your machine into the client, allowing you to store that title against your name, but also allowing you to track your progress through that game with the steam clients interface and share it among your friends. The interface's sleek black appearance and most importantly the deals available! Case in point, to celebrate the release of the Mac and Linux Client of Steam, Valve gave away Portal free to all Steam users Mac, Linux and Windows! Just this weekend there was a game free to play for the entire weekend, without paying.

So, Cross Platform game playing is more of a reality now than ever. I for one think that it's marvellous.

Friday Funny: Poorly Dressed

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:28:00 +0000

see more

The arbiters of good taste over at Cheezburger Land have sprung up with a new phenomenon. Poorly Dressed, where you can laugh at poor unfortunate souls who managed to look into their closet one day and decided that did have something to wear and went with it before turning to their nearest and dearest and saying 'Honey, what do you think of this outfit?'

Who am I to talk though? One day I did the same and walked out in an all Brown number with Black shirt. K. tried to tell me that it was unwise and that I looked like a chocolate bar but I didn't listen and wondered why people moved away from me all day.

so Happy Friday.

Friday Funny: Dilbert

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:01:00 +0000

I go through spurts of reading Dilbert, at the moment we are on said spurt, due to a project I am working at work which makes the humour particularly apt and amusing.

My favourite this month has been the following strip

courtesy of Dilbert.com

Anyone who has worked for any length of time in an office will know of _someone_ who just refuses to actually read attachments to emails. Even when the whole point of some emails is just as a vehicle for the said attachment. It's extremely frustrating!

So yes, another day late Friday Funny, on Dilbert. My favourite Desk Jockey

Friday Funny: The Sketch Show

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:15:00 +0000

One of my Friends sent me this YouTube Video this afternoon.

I thought it was funny so I'm sharing it.

It's from an English comedy called 'The Sketch Show"

Check more of it out on YouTube if you get a chance.

Warranty: The Finale with @Logitech

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:07:00 +0000

When I last talked about my experiences of customer service with Logitech, I had waited 2 months and received 2 incorrect receivers. They'd sent me to the shop I'd bought it from and the shop I went back to had told me in no uncertain terms that they were not going to take back anything nor replace anything and I was in turn gearing up to call Logitech back and tell them how much they sucked in a long list of dot points.

That initial phone was long, drawn out and painful and resulted in them begrudgingly pushing my case up their ladder "To their supervisor's to decide whether or not to replace my mouse or not", yes, there were no guarantees I would receive a replacement. Another two months went by and I cottoned on to the idea that they might just be playing a game of Mexican standoff with me to see who would give up first. Me, and give in to the fact they would never replace my mouse, or them to relent and give me a new mouse. I called the support line again and enquired as to why it was, that I had been waiting two months with no update as to whether they would be replacing my Mouse and when I could expect to receive it. "It's in the queue" they told me, "We're very sorry you have to wait but there is nothing we can do to hurry this process up". Heaving a big, irritated sigh, I would begrudgingly get off the phone and wait another couple of weeks and call again, "I haven't forgotten," I would say, "when am i going to be told what's going on? You are trying to make me forget about this mouse and I am not going to." The support line would insist that it was in the queue and I would hear presently.

Then one day a month later, (We are now at 5 months) I received a call from their customer support, "We have reviewed your case and have elected to replace your Mouse with the most recent equivalent" the person on the other end of the line told me "It will take another 3 weeks to have your mouse dispatched from the warehouse and then a further 2 weeks to have it delivered". Fine, great even.... about time too! I thought all of the above but said only "Thank-you". Eventually, after another 3 weeks I received yet another phone call from Logitech support "Your mouse has been dispatched from the Warehouse and you can expect it in two weeks" they told me. "Why is this taking so long ?" I asked, because it was coming from America. "Would you like to comment on your customer support experience with Logitech today?" ..... "Why yes I would" and at that point I told the unfortunate man on the other end of the line the whole story from beginning to end of my support experience with Logitech and just what I thought of it. Suffice to say, he was most apologetic.

Finally, two weeks later I received my Anywhere Mouse MX arrived, with a Unifying Receiver. It took a long time in fact, from November to April that's 6 months in total, but I got there in the end, a new mouse to replace my old one. Proving thus, that with a certain amount of persistance you can, indeed, get something like a receiver for a mouse that was stolen replaced under warranty, if you have patience and persistence. It's a pity because I do really like Logitech Products, I have two keyboard mice combinations, two mice and a joystick from Logitech and they have all been good, just warranty seems to be somewhat of a joke to them.

And what of the old receivers and mouse? Well I held a few Auctions on eBay and managed to sell them off, including the old VX Nano Mouse with no receiver. Turns out you can actually sell anything on eBay.

What's on my iPhone: CameraBag

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:45:00 +0000

After my digital camera was stolen in a burglary, I turned to my iPhone to take pictures while waiting to get a new Camera, however, the Camera on the iPhone isn't of particularly great quality. CameraBag gives you about 10 different filters to use on your iPhone to make your photo's look better, and give you the freedom to do more with the iPhone Camera. As many a Photographer will tell you, the best Camera is one that's with you all the time, if you can use the Camera in your Phone and get good results, you can't complain too much.

CameraBag isn't free, it was about $4.00AU when I bought it last year, now the price has dropped to $2.49 AU or $1.99US. Using it is easy, you can either take a photo from inside the application (It will launch the Camera App for you) or you can apply filters to a picture you've already taken, and there are no limits to how many filters you apply on one picture.

image courtesy of App Store

Also, once saved you can email the picture directly from the App, which has become a handy tool for me.

I've been using this App extensively until getting an new Digital Camera (My new Camera is 14.7 megapixel and smaller than my iPhone so it comes everywhere with me too). There are some excellent filters, my favourites being Magazine, Helga and Lolo (which I keep thinking perhaps they mean lomo?), but the Polaroid filter (to the left) is quite cool, as are the Colour Cross (below) and the 1974 filters. To have a look at the different filters, go to Nevercenters website and look at their examples. They also have a gallery of examples taken with CameraBag and there are some really good pics in there.

Image Courtesy of App Store

As I said, CameraBag is not new, but it was recommended by MacWorld Mag and has been voted one of the best Photography Apps in the App store since it's release. It also has a Flickr Group and PhotoBlog showing what can be achieved with it. If you're going to use your iPhone's camera capabilities and want a decent and fun app to experiment with while using it, my vote goes for this app.

You can get to it on the App Store here

Friday Funny: Fail Pie with Marmalade

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:02:00 +0000

My Opa was Hungarian and my Mother always said Hungarian spoken sounds like a lot of Swearing, and one of my Friends told me that Hungarians swear probably more than any other language in the world... but until now I didnt realise just how ingrained it was in the Language....

Bukta in Hungarian is a type of Pie, but also means "To Fail" or as below to "Fuck Up" (Same thing really)

Image Courtesy of Engrish Funny

So next time you ask for Pie in Hungary, just think about what you'd like your Fuck Up with.

Friday Funny: Street Boners

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:23:00 +0000

One of my friend's sent me a link to this site during the week, Street Boners, which is basically critiquing Street Fashion amongst being an ad-block for American Apparel.

Street Boner 1150: Touching your asshole is the new crossing your fingers

Then you get to vote on how "Hot" the pick/look is. It's like a website of picture's you'd expect to see in the back pages of Vice Magazine... minus the tit's. Which is a nice coincidence, as one of the admins of the site was previously working on Vice magazine and has now "Split to do his own thing".

Cant say I'm much of a fan of this site, but this pic was pretty funny.

OmniGraffle Pro 5: A viable Visio alternative?

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:19:00 +0000

OmniGraffle Icon

Visio has corned a market of the Diagram Professional market, because it's a reasonable way to put together a Flowchart or Organisational Chart and because it was picked up by Microsoft and Developed so it becomes another "familiar" Office productivity and then reached saturation point within the Business community.

Unfortunately, like all Microsoft products, it has it's own proprietary format (.vsd) which is near impossible to open in other programs, and getting visio to import anything but .vsd files is also damn near impossible, in that sure, you can open them, but can you easily use them within Visio and format them? Hell no!

Worse, Microsoft actively discriminates against non-windows users by making Visio exclusively available on Windows, much like MS Access. Access databases, vanilla as they are may not be much of a loss, but Visio's loss, is a little irritating.

Why am I interested at all in Visio, why do I want to use it? Because at the moment, I'm working on a project at my work to effectively map the Business Processes for our company in Flowchart format. Flowcharts with Swim Lanes, it's 50% of my work time spent, and I was given a Laptop, which has no wireless connection, and sent to a series of meetings in an offsite location with no Network points. Because Visio is only installed on our Virtualised Central Environment, no network connection means no Visio... I looked at the alternatives for the Windows laptop, Dia, MS Word (I'm never using Word again for that particular purpose, hot oil enemas would be less painful) but none of them allowed you to open directly into Visio cutting down the hours I would have to spend recreating the sodding diagrams after the meetings.

Image from OmniGraffle

I remembered OmniGraffle, which I've used previously on my MacBook Pro, but never to any full extent, I checked out whether it allowed any file transfer between Omni Graffle and Visio. Turns out in the Pro version (US $299... Visio is $499) you can export to .vdx (Visio XML Format)... so I downloaded a trial version and used it for my meetings over the last two days. After completing something like 10 Flowcharts over the past day and then being able to export them easily to .vdx format which was opened without incident in Visio later when on another computer.

I think at this point I can make a fair comment on how viable OmniGraffle is as an alternative for Mac Users. I havent found a viable Windows alternative to Visio yet, Dia isnt bad, but cant export to Visio.
So, whilst using my MacBook Pro at work was a joy, typing was easy, taking it to meetings was painless due to my laptop backpack and the unit's weight, or lack there of, Omni Graffle wasnt perfect... It does have some great positives going for it which are not found in Visio

Dimensions or guidelines which appear when you are placing an item.
Easily found handles on each item
When using connectors, the items "glow" when you're attempting to connect to an item
You can place your line Labels, anywhere you like along a connector, and then move it wherever you like.
The format Painter gives you the ability to choose what formats your painting on to different shapes.
A Rubber stamp tool so you can quickly place many items of the same type in quick succession without having to bother with fills, fonts and line thicknesses.
Easily downloaded templates and a large variety of objects at www.graffletopia.com
The ability to easily add and modify both layers and new canvases in the same file.
A really attractive and user friendly interface.

The only thing I haven 't been that impressed with is the lack of templates and stencils available for Flowcharts with "Swim Lanes". Swim lanes give you the ability to add functional lanes to flow charts and so it's easier to follow where the flow of information is going. I've spent most of this evening looking for an Omnigraffle template or stencil with some functional swim lanes and have been massively let down. But I'm not giving up hope just yet...perhaps someone out there can point me in the right direction.

This aside, the amount of support and use of OmniGraffle seems to be really widespread within the Apple community, and there is no Windows Alternative at present, which will be a big bummer for my colleague, who was admiring the program today whilst on a break. There are an astounding amount of templates for OmniGraffle, everything from iPhone interfaces to Maps of the World Microchips, Electrical Symbols and Web Development symbols.

Unfortunately, for me, until I can solve the issue of the Swimlane Diagram in OmniGraffle, it will not be a realistic and viable alternative to Visio.

PS. Omni have just released OmniGraffle for the iPad.

Friday Funny: Unfortunate T-Shirts to get arrested in.

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:28:00 +0000

Got Meth?: courtesy of Uphaa

I found this site off of Gala Darlings Carousel Post, and it's a timely reminder why wearing an Ironic T-shirt can be a bad idea. All of these people were arrested and had their mugshots taken whilst wearing some pretty unfortunate shirts. This Pic above is my personal favourite.

Below are some other classics that had me Laughing.

Not something you should advertise: from Uphaa

I stand corrected: from Uphaa

Nor should it be an excuse: from Uphaa

Good Luck in your interview!: from Uphaa

There are more, but these are the best of the lot in my opinion. Uphaa has a few other cool articles, like Men who became Women, Unfortunate Hairstyles to be arrested in and 10 Hilarious T-shirt designs.

eBay Auction: 1 Mac Mini

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:22:00 +0000

The Mac mini was a fantastic model of Mac's, small, powerful, and with the ability to jump on to just about any set up of Keyboard and Mouse and Monitor. This particular computer has been fantastic when my original MacBook was stolen in a Burglary last year, it provided an excellent stop gap.

They are also very good when used as a Media Box, as this was being used for before it became my Stop Gap. Plugged into a 22inch Samsung Monitor and playing Episodes of Family Guy and American Dad every night whilst we went to Sleep.

Why am I telling you this? Because the time has come for us to sell our beloved little Mac Mini. Thanks to our Projector Bulb "popping" on Friday night, and our needing to replace it with a real TV, we need to raise some funds to pay down this debt. Sadly the Mac Mini is going to have to go to a new and loving home. Is that home yours? Are you in Australia? Do you want to have a Mac Mini of your very own?

Well come on down to my eBay Auction and place a bid if this seems like you!

Facebook Chat: Integrating it with iChat

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 05:39:00 +0000

Image care of Tricky Ways

Like it or not Facebook's here to stay and the Facebook Chat is probably the only way you'll get most of your friends on an instant messenger client in the one list. Sadly the Facebook chat is a little like Google Chat, it hangs on your window like a little dag and even in the Pop out version it's pretty annoying.

Months Ago, Instant Messenger clients like AIM and Adium and Pidgin started allowing Facebook to be used as another Chat Client, and whilst I didnt pick up on it, this morning I got the feeling I needed to. So I did a google search for it, and turned up the following page from Tricky Ways on setting up Facebook chat in iChat on OSX 10.6

Basically it's as follows:

Open iChat
go to iChat Menu, open preferences.
Add a new account under jabber
make the account login Username@chat.facebook.com where username is your facebook login or the username they asked you to add.... sometimes this is just a U followed by a number...usually the number you will see in the URL bar of you browser when you look at your own facebook page.
Type in your Password
in the Port Box type 5222
Click save.

Then you're done. Easy. Now rest in the knowledge you can use Facebook chat any time you like, you have to open up facebook to be logged in to it.

Friday Funny: Do Not Want!

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 08:12:00 +0000

This morning I was pointed to Know Your Meme, a database of Internet meme's and their Origin's. If you ever wanted to know where Pirates Vs Ninja's came from or any other Meme you've seen around and do not understand it's meaning or Origin's I suggest you high tail it over there and check them out!

However, for me, I didn't quite understand where Do Not Want came from, although I use it all the time. So of course I looked it up.

Turns out it's from a rather shoddy subtitling of Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith from the scene where Darth Vader screams "Noooooooooo!", which apparently can translate to Engrish as "DO NOT WANT".

Image care of MacroChan

This one very pivotal phrase can be seen all over the internet in various guises.... some of my favourites below:

Do Not Want

Sort of Want

So there you go. Friday Funny, a Day Late. Care of Know your Meme and MacroChan

What's on my iPhone: Bejeweled 2

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:15:00 +0000

Bloody hell this game is addictive. I played it through my trip to Vietnam in 2006 on K.'s Palm, and started playing it through Facebook last year for free after downloading the trial game and having the Demo run out on me. I'm absolutely buggered if I'll buy the full copy for Mac at 20 dollars.

So when it was on sale on the App Store for 2 or 3 dollars I bought it, and this started a very, very, very big Bejeweled addiction which met a low point when I was ducking into the office toilets to get away with playing it at work. Sad, very sad.

Strangely though, the iPhone's touch screen format really suits this game as it's much quicker to drag "jewels" together with your finger tip, than it is to try with a mouse whilst on a Computer.

Added to this, the mobility of having it with you All.The.Time, means you can bust out a few rounds of it, without having to be connected to any network when you are anywhere (although I dont recommend it when you're at work, or driving or anywhere you're concentration should not be pointed at your phone.)

I wouldnt be surprised if this were one of the Top paid games on the iPhone, and wouldnt be surprised if this were one of PopCaps' top selling games, after Plants Vs Zombies, which I'm told is very good too. PopCap's games are great for the Casual Gamer, they're also great for bridging the gap from casual gaming to out and out obsession... rather like Tetris.

There's a neat feature in the iPhone app, which lets you post your high scores on Facebook, and for some people, this will be the only thing they post on Facebook.... I do like the quick pace of the Bejeweled Blitz game, although ti's beyond me how some people manage to reach scores in the 300'000's as I can barely get past 175,000. I'm told there are now app's available which let you cheat in Bejeweled. This I believe is rather like cheating in Scrabble, it defeats the purpose of the game, but doesnt stop the more unscrupulous among us from trying it anyway.

I would highly recommend this game for anyone who loves puzzle games or quick games, but be warned, you will become addicted very, very, quickly especially if you like Tetris, there's a certain thrill about getting 5 in a row and getting one of those shiny plasma ball thingies which completely obliterates every jewel of one colour that is satisfying beyond compare.

I dont know what price it is at the moment, but if you want to check it out on the app store click here.

PS Bejeweled is also available for both PC and Mac AND other Smartphones... so if you have a HTC Nexus one, you can get it too.

PPS Wired reported earlier this week that a few sites are in the limelight for charging App manufactures to review their Apps. So you're aware... no one, absolutely no one is paying me to review these Apps.

Friday Funny: Achmed the Dead Terrorist

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:49:00 +0000

It's Comedy Festival time in Melbourne at the moment, and although I dont know if Jeff Dunham and his puppets are in town for it, I thought I'd mark the occasion by posting on of my favourite YouTube Videos, if only because it gives me another excuse to watch it....again.

If you like this video, maybe get one of his DVD's or just watch more for free at YouTube :)

Video Games + Alcohol + A Bar = Mana Bar

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:51:00 +0000

This is a fantastic idea, and only a couple exist in the world, excluding Japan's Game bars of which there are many, anything that gets Gamers and their alcoholic drinks out of the house and into some sort of public social arena that isn't a LAN party gets my vote. Mana Bar in the Valley, Brisbane is one such place which has just opened in Australia and appears to be a rousing success if their twitter stream is anything to go by.

Set up by some of Australia's well known Gaming personalities, Yug from Australian Gamer, Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation fame and Pras, formerly a developer for Sega plus the real experience in Drinking and Entertainment, Shay.

Pras, Shay, Yug & Yahtzee (pic courtesy of Manabar.com)

The venue promises to have many events during planned which are at first glance, pretty standard for a Bar, and yet have an interesting twist to appeal to the gaming audience, ie. Video Game Trivia, hosted by Yahtzee (this would be awesome), Sunday Sessions, Guitar Hero competitions (much better than Karaoke, although I'm sure Singstar isnt far away), Live music plus the ability to buy Video Games from over the bar as well as an astonishing array of themed Cocktails.

It's also backed by the likes of Kotaku, Palgn, Game Arena, GamesSpot and of course AustralianGamer.

From the photos' the Launch party included many other well known faces, including Hex from GoodGame and Junglist formerly of GoodGame, now of Kotaku.

So if you are finding yourself in Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley this bar looks to be worth a visit and lets face it, not many of us find ourselves there, but really, if you're going to go out drinking in Brisbane, you'll probably find yourself in the Valley, in my experience (last time I was there, there was a brush turkey walking across the road...and you wonder how people get these strange ideas that we all ride kangaroos down the street *sigh*) because it seems to be the most lively place in Brisbane. I may find myself there later in the year, if a certain conference decides its going to be held there...if so I'm blowing off the corporate types and paying this place a visit!!!

Friday Funny: Girl Gamers

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:30:00 +0000

Female Gamers: They might enjoy it more if it was plugged into something

Not playing too many games myself, I dont classify myself as a Gamer as such. But whilst playing Tales of Monkey Island last night, very tipsy I did think of this motivational. As I walked around Flotsam island trying to find a non-existent figurine whilst listening to the sound of Bees, Monkeys, Pigs and Birds for about an hour before attempting to cheat and failing at that miserably too.

So... the Friday Funny. Poking the finger at Girl Gamers and saying... get a clue. (Or in my case saying "N00B!")

Friday Funny: In The Loop

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:27:00 +0000

This last week has been all about this Movie 'In The Loop' thanks to a mate showing me a film clip of it on YouTube the other week. I've been watching clips of it almost daily so we finally were able to watch the whole film last night. It is Brilliant!

This is completely NSFW due to the sheer amount of (brilliant) swearing in it and the use of the big C word everyone seems to find so offensive.

See the full movie, especially if you ever loved 'Yes, Minister'.

Whats on my iPhone: RSS Runner

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:34:00 +0000

I'll admit it, I got this App from Golden Apps, because Gizmodo recommended it in their article 'Free iPhone Apps you must download now!'. Many of the programs in that article are not available for the Australian Market and many of them require you to sign up for an account before using the program. This mentality personally shits me right off, I am getting quite sick of having to sign up and submit my email address and personal information just to use an application, all they're generally going to do is send me newsletters every month and bombard me with crap I dont want to read and never will.

Before I go off on a rant-a-thon on that particular subject (I feel one brewing) let me go back to RSS Runner, because it doesnt ask you to make an account! Also, it's free, which is excellent, and it's not cut down in any way either, it's completely free. No one should have to pay for absolutely all of their apps, especially not when there are some perfectly good free ones available. Having said that, it is funded by advertising, which appear at the top of the screen, however you can turn these off.

It's available in English, French and German, and the interface is very clean, straightforward and useable.
When you open the app, you see your feeds there, including an Unread Items area, so its easy just to open it up and read something which has just come available from any number of your feeds.

There's an embedded Browser so you dont need to jump to safari to read the rest of a particular post inside RSS Runner.

You can email things you want to share straight from your phone!

It supports all the major flavours of RSS Feed, with the added bonus you can sync this to your google reader account and have all of your previously collected feeds right at your fingertips. This is actually my favourite part and what really sold it for me, because frankly, although this app has a wondrously friendly interface and is very smooth when it comes to adding new feeds and searching them, this is not something I want to do again and again if i've already done it before!

Also importantly, you dont have to be within reach of a network, or 3G to read your feeds, so if for instance, you have an iPod Touch and not an iPhone, you can use RSS Runner when you're not in range of a Wireless network, so you can read anything you've already downloaded. How Fantastic is that?

It also works marvellously in Landscape mode since the last release of this app when that particular bug was fixed.

New releases of this app are reasonably frequent, and development is still happening on it, (Currently its up to version 0.87) and should continue for the forseeable future, so there's no need to worry about support for it stopping any time soon.

This is in effect, the simplest and most effective RSS Reader that has been released for the iPhone, and if you're a user of Google Reader, you really have no excuse not have this helpful little app with you.

Friday Funny

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:19:00 +0000

A friend of mine sent me this yesterday evening.

A very creative use of Toothpaste. I have no idea what it says in Russian but it's getting my vote for hilarity.

Apple is Sue Happy

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:31:00 +0000

Image Courtesy of Endgadet

Some times being an Apple Fanboi is frankly shitty.

Dont get me wrong, I love my Mac, I love my iPhone and my iPod Nano, and I've loved all my Macs, they've been a thing of beauty and a joy, 85% of the time.

But, Apple, the company is sometimes a bit dodgy at best and downright questionable at worst.

If it wasn't their trying to take over your internet Music experience with iTunes and tie your phone to it, then it's their Environmental record and their Factories being caught out using Child labour in China. Most of that, even the most zealous fan could forgive, but their track record of suing and counter-suing anyone with a vaguely Apple Related name, and more recently every Phone company for overstepping their rather broad patents on technology.

Having read Engadgets reasonably in-depth breakdown of the 20 Patents that Apple claims Google Phone manufacturer HTC has broken I became rather disillusioned, almost broken hearted. While I dont have the hardware related technical knowledge to discuss the patents in any detail whatsoever, I can say that some of these patents date back to 1995, are of incredibly broad spectrum (like patenting a mobile telephonic device through which you can talk to someone not in your immediate vicinity) and appear, frankly opportunistic.

Steve Jobs had this to say (from Engadget Article):

"We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

This business of Intellectual Patents on technology is a little counter-intuitive in my opinion, the iPhone has brought a new generation of Phone's to the fore, however that technology should be a level playing field and be available for every manufacturer to improve upon. Is there really a point to each company reinventing the wheel for every new product? Even then, when they do, being slapped with an IP Suit for following the trends the market is taking and releasing a product which its obvious the public wants. It's surprising that the technology market hasn't stagnated for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit whenever they release something new.

To add further insult to injury, America by and large, do not respect the Intellectual Property patents of any other country, however, if you happen to have a trade agreement with them, it's written into the terms that you MUST respect their IP Patents. Hypocrisy anyone? This leaves it wide open for an opportunist to come in, steal and idea which is already patented and patent it in the US then launch an IP case against the company the idea was stolen from. In fact this very thing happened to Linux in the 90's, the trademark was patented in the US and Linus Torvalds, its Finnish creator was sued for using it for the operating system despite the fact that he made up the term and had been using it as the name of Linux since the early 90's. Months before however, he'd received an email from someone in the US asking him if he'd be interested in how to earn a lot of money from Linux in the US. He kept the email, but wrote it off as spam (Source: 'Just for Fun, the story of Linux'.)

So while we sit and watch this circus play out in the US courts, some could say that I should be rethinking my attitude towards Apple. Some might even say that I should switch and start boycotting their products. However I disagree! I've been using Apple computers since the early 90's and have had to justify why every step of my journey into the world of IT, never moreso than through completing my degree. I'm not going to walk away from that, especially when I still enjoy using the operating system, find the hardware very beautiful in design and love the software for it's user intuitivity, if that's even a word. However, I'm not going to blindly support Apple's business practices or stop criticising them when I think they're going overboard. After all, I'm a cynic, but not a masochist.

What's on my iPhone: Spend

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:18:00 +0000

I thought I might try something different, so, introducing a new series of posts "What's on my iPhone", each week I'll look at an App I'm using on my iPhone, how I use it, what I think of it, and why I've kept it, as we all know, it's easy to download something onto your iPhone from the App store, use it for a couple of days and then think "it's crap/doesn't work/badly executed/has bugs" and then delete it. I know, I do it all the time, well, maybe not all the time. Sure, there are sites dedicated to reviewing iPhone apps as they come out, but that's not what this is about entirely.

When I first got the iPhone I was looking at a bunch of budgetting apps for it initially, and there are plenty ranging in price from Free to 10 dollars. Free apps are fine if you want to try out the application when it comes to this, however, it's difficult to keep a budget going when you're limited in some way by the program. I bought Spend after having a go at a few others and finding them either too restrictive or too gimmicky. I've been using Spend now for almost a year, and I have a nice System down pat with it.

Firstly, with the full version, you can create an unlimited number of budgets depending on how you want to set them up, for each budget you can program in automatic deductions and automatic additions based on weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. Even then, deductions can be changed each time if, for instance, the amount was different, without actually affecting the rest of the series. You can control the dates, times and amounts and names you give different expenses, and then transfer money between budgets easily and control whether you seeing just deposits, just expenses or both deposits and expenses. You can also search for a particular expense, say to see if you entered a particular expense or not.

As I said, your budgets can go on cycles, so if you get paid monthly, as I do, you can set a new month to begin on your pay cycle. Annoyingly you cant always change the date, for example in my case I get paid around the middle of the month, between the 12th and the 14th, it's not the same every month, which means some months I'm on a new budget cycle, but I'm still waiting for the money to land in my account and others I get money earlier so everything up to that point needs to be adjusted accordingly.

The interface is well designed and simple, and it remembers the names you give your expenses which, is especially helpful if you enter the same type of things month in month out. For me, I have a bunch of categories made up and just enter based on those categories, ie Drinks Out, Snacks, Groceries, Cigarettes, Transport etc. You can also easily go back into the history and edit, add or delete expenses, as it gives you the ability to carry over any leftover from the previous cycle into the next cycle or start from zero each cycle. To add to that, you can see a graph tracking, days, weeks, months and years spending, as well as an average for the time period.

Probably the most useful thing about Spend is that you can export all this data you've been entering into it, to a .csv file and email it to a nominated email address, so there it can be opened in OpenOffice, Word or uploaded to MS Office online or Google Docs. This is helpful for getting totals sorted out.

OK, so how do I use it? As I said before, I have categories set up already and each month around pay day it starts a cycle and from there I've got all my bills, rent, subscriptions set up to come out automatically on their due date, so all I need to do is remember to pay them. After buying something I'll pop it in there, or if I'm feeling lazy I'll stuff the receipt into my wallet and then sit down with a beverage, pull out the receipts and enter them in, plus anything else I remember. At the end of each month I email myself the csv file, upload it to Google Docs and add it to a running budget I've got to see how I'm going along in each category. I've got it set to carry over the total each month, so occasionally I see the totals in Spend do not match my bank account so I end up having to play detective and add missing money or take it away. Sure it's not foolproof and from the site, it's not strictly a budget either, more like tracking your expenses.

Pitfalls? The cycling I mentioned is irritating, but this is more the fault of my employer than the program, given the programs just doing what I tell it, so I would say minimal, it doesn't crash really, and the author Adamcode tends to send up updates reasonably regularly. The current is 2.2.6 and was released 26.09.09. Over time there have been definite improvements to the interface (the way dates are entered for one...big improvement) and it has become far more user friendly.

The price? it's probably the cheapest fully featured budget program at $1.19AUD or $0.99USD and all the updates have been free. I've had no beefs with it thus far and helpfully, when I restored my iPhone the data was still inside Spend. If you're looking for an inexpensive but user friendly program for the iPhone to track your expenses, I would recommend Spend definitely.

Problems with installing Related Post code in Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:44:00 +0000

This weekends challenge has been to implement Related Post Code into each blog.

I've implemented a version using Thumbnails on this blog and Cerebral Lacuna using the Tutorial I found at Blogger Widgets.

I Like this version, however it was fiddly to implement due to various XML errors I encountered on saving the template each time. The big minus with this method also is two fold:

1. It doesnt seem to take into account the labels on each post properly
2. You have to have pictures on each post otherwise you end up with a lovely "No Image" banner

The second method for related posts a List below each post before the comments. This has been implemented on Adventures in Sound.

This method was EXTREMELY frustrating to implement, as it relies on all posts appearing on Post Pages before it shows any related posts. Thankfully this can be altered, by removing the condition

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>b:if>

This was very fiddly, and even then I was unimpressed with the result. It seems to take the labels for the post directly above the current post and display related posts for it as well.

Neither method is completely foolproof unless you are using post pages, and if you dont use post pages you're in for hours of headaches and a lacklustre result.

At the moment I'm considering alternatives, ie, moving to Wordpress or Moveable Type as both of those have simple implementations for the Related Post issue.

If you have managed to get either of these methods working successfully in your blog without the dreaded XML Parsing errors I would Love to hear about it either through my email or if you leave a message in the comments.

Friday Funny: Spellcheck Fail

noreply@blogger.com (ras) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:48:00 +0000

This happened today whilst I was about to send an email.

If you cant see it properly due to the picture's size the word being suggested to change was

NOHIST (part of some code)

and the words suggested to replace it with were

Nudist
Moist
No-Hit
Nosiest
Monist
Noise

I thought this was hilarious at the time, and quickly took a screen shot.

Hope you get a laugh out of this one too.