Robot Apple Monkey Blog

Christmas 2010

Computer Monkey — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 07:10:41 +0000

So, Christmas this year was a slightly different affair. For the first time in … ever, my mum’s extended family wasn’t gathering on Christmas Eve, meaning that for once I didn’t have a clash between my family’s plans and the in-laws’ plans. And so the planning was done… Finish “work” around midday and shoot off to the in-laws, have a big lunch, decorate and arrange the tree, have a big dinner, then the next morning head out with the in-laws to my parents’ place in St Albans for an afternoon of lazing and/or playing with trail bikes, followed by a big dinner. Get up just in time for the first ball of the Boxing Day test.

Well, not quite.

On the 9th of December, my dad was diagnosed with bowel cancer. That weekend I just kinda shut down, played games and plugged my fingers in my ears. Early the next week we worked out the timeline, and found out that was most likely going to go in for surgery on Christmas Eve, so we scrambled some plans to have a mini family gathering the weekend before.

Then came the battery of tests to see if/where the cancer had spread. One test showed a strange lump in dad’s oesophagus, so another probe/scrape/biopsy was scheduled. Thankfully it was benign, something to maybe be cut out in no particular hurry. So we had our pre-Christmas gathering with the best possible diagnosis, just one small tumour that would be removed with surgery, no further treatment likely, and definitely no radiotherapy.

The week before Christmas was almost relaxed, considering. I had the week off, and my brother was up in Sydney, so plenty of distractions, and shopping and other things to keep my mind busy.

Christmas Eve was … different. Dad went in to theatre at 8am, for an estimated 4-5 hours. A pretty anxious wait, but filled with wrapping presents and trying to get ready to head to the in-laws for lunch, and making plans to head to St Vincent’s once dad was out of recovery. So we had a big, delicious and quite anxious lunch, waiting to hear from the hospital. 1pm – nothing. 2pm – nothing. 3pm – mum talked to the surgeon, he was out and in recovery, everything went fine. So we arranged to go see him at 5.

Dad was pretty out of it, but seemed grateful for the company for a couple of hours. I made it back for a late Christmas Eve dinner with the in-laws, then a champagne breakfast, and then back to the hospital for presents with dad.

And now in my parents’ apartment in Dee Why. The turkey and potato salad, done by mum this year. The mince pies, a group effort this year. Not quite St Albans, and not quite the full family, but still Christmas.

So Merry Happy to all, and make sure that whatever you do this time of year, enjoy the time you have with family and friends.

Going (occasionally) Flash-Free on OS X

Computer Monkey — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 06:49:25 +0000

I was inspired by John Gruber’s post on disabling Flash system wide, but while I did take his advice on “cheating” with Google Chrome, I am still not entirely convinced by Chrome, so it wasn’t an ideal “cheat” for me.

Also, there are times when I know I’m going to be having a few flash-based sites around in background tabs (look, I play bejeweled on facebook okay), so I wanted to be able to “toggle” flash a little bit less manually than moving plugins.

Enter BASH.

#!/bin/bash

EXPECTED_ARGS=1
E_BADARGS=65
if [ $# -ne $EXPECTED_ARGS ]
then
  echo "Usage: `basename $0` on|off"
  echo "Flash is "`defaults read com.robotapple.flashstatus FlashStatus`
  exit $E_BADARGS
fi

DISPATH='/Library/Internet Plug-Ins (disabled)'
ENPATH='/Library/Internet Plug-Ins'

if [[ ! -d "$DISPATH" ]]
then
  mkdir "$DISPATH"
fi

if [[ $1 == "on" ]]
then
  mv "$DISPATH/Flash Player.plugin/" "$ENPATH/"
  mv "$DISPATH/NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave" "$ENPATH/"
  mv "$DISPATH/flashplayer.xpt" "$ENPATH/"
  defaults write com.robotapple.flashstatus FlashStatus "on"
  echo "Flash is on"
fi

if [[ $1 == "off" ]]
then
  mv "$ENPATH/Flash Player.plugin/" "$DISPATH/"
  mv "$ENPATH/NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave" "$DISPATH/"
  mv "$ENPATH/flashplayer.xpt" "$DISPATH/"
  defaults write com.robotapple.flashstatus FlashStatus "off"
  echo "Flash is off"
fi

It’s not very graceful, but it does what I want it to do. Feel free to steal, modify, judge me on my lack of BASH skills, or just save into an executable file and “flash on” or “flash off” on the command line.

Astros!

Computer Monkey — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:00:02 +0000

So recently I was talked into spending yet more money on headphones. This time it was primarily for my Xbox. I opted for the Astro A-40 Audio System, replete with Penny-Arcade Cardboard Tube Samurai tags. I also decided to get custom tags made up, with my “Cowboy” logo from my Halo 3 team.

In use they are pretty amazing. They sound great, and the simple ability to have in-game sound and Xbox Live chat through the same headset is such a benefit. While I haven’t really put the “Dolby Surround” part of the system through a serious test, the audio quality coming through is very, very nice and very detailed. Unfortunately it doesn’t make me a better Halo player, just means I get a little more auditory warning before dying like a chump.

The biggest downside: cable spaghetti. Mini USB and TOSLINK optical from the back of my Xbox to the Mixamp. That I can deal with. But then I have a wire from the Mixamp to my headset (understandable, and plenty long enough) and a wire from the Mixamp to my Xbox controller for the chat integration. This is the single most frustrating thing of the entire system. Every cable that Astro supplies is ridiculously long, except the Mixamp-controller link, which is so frustrating. Because of this one cable, I have to basically take the Mixamp from next to the Xbox and have it on the floor/table within arms reach. Most annoying. But this was something I knew about before I bought it, and seemed a better alternative after reading some of the reviews of the wireless solutions.

In short, fairly expensive and, sure, maybe a little overpriced-stuff-white-gamers-like … but I like them. A lot.

No, Really, Every Vote Counts

Admin Monkey — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:48:26 +0000

It seems to me that this election, more than any other, is generating a lot of “screw 'em both” noise. It's possible that this is just thanks to the miracle of the Internet, giving every opinion air (oh hai!), but it does seem like more and more people are disillusioned with the state of our two party system.

Ultimately, however, this election is a two horse race. When you get down to the electorate level, you end up with a mix of one and two horse races, with a very rare few seats where there are more than two candidates with any chance of winning. To many, this state of affairs seems to incite depression, especially since voting for a minor party is often seen as futile. The standard reply, which I wholeheartedly support, is that every vote counts. You only need to see the solid group of seats with a 2PP margin of <0.5% to see how crucial a small number of votes can be, and there's no reason to think that can't apply to minor parties as well. Thanks to full preferential voting, the outcome of a seat could change drastically based on the battle between second and third.

Take an imaginary seat that could well exist in inner city Sydney or Melbourne. This seat is typically Labor, by a comfortable margin over the Liberals, but has a high Green vote and sentiment.

Disillusioned ALP voter votes Green as a protest, but puts ALP second and LIB last.
Green voter goes Green, and picks the lesser of two “evils” by putting ALP 2, LIB 3
Liberal voter puts LIB 1 and then GRN 2, ALP 3 to minimise Labor's chances of keeping the seats they need for Government.

Now, if the first preference counts knock the Greens out of the running, we have our “standard” situation where it is ALP vs LIB and the bulk of Green votes have ALP second and the 2PP takes its standard shape.

But consider for a minute that enough “protest votes” are cast to put the ALP and the Greens in the top two, and knock the Libs down to third. Such a circumstance would likely involve the ALP primary taking a large hit, potentially bringing it to the point where any Liberal voters that preferences the Greens above Labor could see the Greens take the seat.

Every election, at some point towards the end of the campaign, the major parties trot out the line “Don't risk a protest vote”, for this exact reason. Given the high voter dissatisfaction with the two major parties, this election seems to be the perfect time to “risk it”.

Yes, the “risk” is that there will not be a clear majority government, and this means that there might have to be some compromise, and some moderation of some of the crazy “policies” that have come out of this campaign. If you don't think the current two-party system is working, this is one way to shake it up a bit (if seats actually change hands).

This is a fairly specific and, at this election, rare scenario, however. If we step back and take a more cynical view towards the effect of protest votes, there's still a few handy benefits to voting for a minor party.

Firstly, there's the money. Each candidate who polls over 4% of the primary vote gets some coin for each vote they receive. Money is a necessity of campaigning and indeed running a political party (or any organisation), so “more” is often better.

Secondly, gradual change is generally easier to accept and sustain in the long term. In the seat of Sydney, for example, the Greens would require a swing of over 6% towards them to take second place over the Libs and have any chance at winning the seat. While it's possible, it would likely be seen as an aberration, and there would be a lot of pressure on the Greens to “perform” in order for them to keep those numbers at the next election. But a swing of 2-3% would not register as abnormal, but would serve to increase the credibility of the Greens at the next election. When trying to change the mindset of a large population, be it the almost 100,000 in an electorate or the over 20 million in the nation, the easiest way is to do it slowly. Even if your minor party vote doesn't help your chosen party win a seat this election, that party has now increased their legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate.

So if you're one of the many people disillusioned by the two major parties, and you see a glimmer of promise in a minor party, put them at the top of your list on Saturday.

p.s. On a slightly different note, remember that although you have to give a preference to every name on the ballot paper, your vote will never, ever get to whoever you put last – that is your one and only guaranteed “anti-vote”.

Posted via email from Computer Monkey

Directly Elected…

Admin Monkey — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:44:10 +0000

So Australia has a new Prime Minister today in Julia Gillard. Much
like the NSW State Government, the process went something like this:

Bad poll > panic > factional warlords organise spill > new leader.

Just like in NSW, this situation is closely followed by cries of “We
didn’t elect this Prime Minister”. Julia Gillard even referenced this
herself in her press conference after her caucus installation.

This was then followed by the more politically educated talking about
the Westminster system, and how we vote for our local member / party
representative, and that the majority party chooses their leader, and
thus the PM, in their own fashion.

The problem with this argument is that it’s only technically true.
This is how the system is designed and how, on occasions like this, it
works. But it is NOT how election campaigns are fought, and it’s not
how the general public perceives the political system. It is a
lamentable lack of civic education, but like it or not, until the
political parties behave otherwise, or the general political education
level of voters is increased, it is how the system will be interpreted
in the mainstream.

Aiming to expand knowledge is an honourable cause. Informing people of
how the system is designed and (on paper) works, is a noble fight. But
throwing ones hands up in exasperation at all “we didn’t elect Julia”,
or berating Gillard for her up-front disarming of the issue, only
serves to vent and does little to change perceptions.

So next time someone complains about not having “elected our PM”,
inform them of the actual system, but don’t berate them for simply
learning by the example of the major parties.

Posted via email from Computer Monkey

“Fixing” iOS4 Auto-Correct

Admin Monkey — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:50:03 +0000

Just a couple of quick things for (finally) getting the iPhone to recognise some of the more colourful words in the English language:

Settings > Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New keyboard… > English (UK). Doesn't appear to change the layout at all, but stops the autocorrect from trying to put a 'z' in where an 's' should be.
Settings > Keyboards > International Keyboards > Add New keyboard… > Chinese – Simplified (Pinyin). Once you've put this, or certain other keyboards (appears to be ones that use different characters), you will then see a new option under Settings > Keyboards called … wait for it … Edit User Dictionary…

Finally, my iPhone can realise the glory of a correctly spelled fuck.

Props to user modular747 on the Apple Support forums for the (crazy) steps required for Edit User Dictionary.

Posted via email from Computer Monkey

Blast from the past …

Admin Monkey — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:24:34 +0000

I really should be throwing out old rubbish, but I find myself occasionally picking something up and looking at it.

Like this excerpt from a diary entry dated 5th of July, 2000:

My new computer is giving me the shits. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. The fact that the printer port isn’t working shits me because I can’t get my Zip drive to work, which means I can’t get stuff off zip disks onto my new computer. This would be fine if I could get the null modem connection between my new and old computers to work, but that isn’t working either, so at present the only thing that I can do to transfer documents is HyperTerminal, which is incredibly slow and dodge.

Zip disks? Null modem? HyperTerminal? Holy shit!

Posted via web from Computer Monkey

iPhone 4 Summary

Computer Monkey — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:20:40 +0000

Okay, so the WWDC keynote was this morning … I briefly considered a 3am wake up to follow the liveblogs, but sanity prevailed and I settled for waking up a bit early and reviewing the blogs. The keynote didn’t really cover anything that hadn’t made it out into the world already. The new iPhone, simply “iPhone 4″, was announced. The iPhone OS has been renamed iOS (I wonder what Cisco thinks about that). Guitar Hero and Farmville now available on the iPhone (wut?). I got a little too excited about a fairly simple change to an iPad app … iBooks will have PDF support, including annotations. Okay, I know it’s sad, let’s move on to the only real announcement.

iPhone 4 – quick stats

Same storage options – 16/32GB
Front facing camera (video calls iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only, and WiFi only until Apple works with carriers)
Hi-res display, 960×640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi
5MP camera, LED flash and 720p video recording
Gyroscope for more motion control
Quad-band 3G (includes 900MHz band, which will help Optus!)
802.11n wireless
Steel band around the side is the antenna
MicroSIM format (saw that coming)

Really, from a consumer standpoint, there’s really not a huge amount here that isn’t coming to the 3GS once iOS4 is released. The new backgrounds and apps (iBooks for iPhone) will be available for the 3GS, the app folders and multitasking will also be brought down to 3GS.

Some of the technology in this is pretty cool though. I really wanna see the screen. The idea of a pixel density so high you can’t actually distinguish pixels appeals to me.

The ability to record 720p video is a very nice addition, as is the 5MP bump on the camera, but it doesn’t really mean much if the sensors don’t improve at low light. The 3GS takes perfectly acceptable photos … in bright light. But in dim or low light, like trying to photograph bonfire day, the camera doesn’t hold up. So I don’t really care about the megapixels as much as I want the sensor to improve.

The most interesting thing is the antenna structure. The case for iPhone 4 is front and back plates, with a steel band running around the sides. The left side and part of the top band is the Bluetooth/WiFi/GPS antenna, and the rest is the GSM/UMTS antenna. Very cool.

The rest is just eye candy which, while impressive, is not having the same effect on me that it might normally given the money I just spent on another Apple product.

Lastly – release date. June 21 for iOS4 on iPhone/iPod touch. June 25 for iPhone 4 in the US/UK/France/Germany/Japan. “July” for Australia/NZ and 16 other countries.

How to Recycle Angels

Admin Monkey — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:45:48 +0000

http://www.howtodestroyangels.com

So apparently Trent got married and made a “new” band with his wife and producer. The sound is more than a little familiar, but Mariqueen Maandig has a good singing voice on her.

Posted via email from Computer Monkey

So I bought an iPad

Computer Monkey — Mon, 31 May 2010 05:36:25 +0000

Okay, so I bought an iPad. I know I wrote previously on taking a “wait and see” approach, but in my defence I was kinda assuming an Australian release would be fairly close after the US release. Instead, after two months of reading reviews, thoughts, listening to pundits, etc, it became obvious that it was going to work for me, so I pre-ordered as soon as I could, and on Friday had a delicious 64GB iPad (WiFi + 3G) delivered to my office.

TL;DR version: I like it a lot, it’s not perfect and there are a few apps that need updating before I consider my iPad experience “complete”.

Just so we’re clear: It doesn’t multi-task (yet), it doesn’t have Flash support (neither does my Safari + Flashblock or my Firefox + NoScript) and it doesn’t have a USB port. It’s amazing how much that hasn’t affected my life. I’ve already mentioned the difference between “Doesn’t do what I want” and “is useless” a few times, so we’ll just move right along.

First thing I did was fire up the App Store and start hunting around. I had a few things that were already iPad compatible, so over they came. The first application I bought was Flight Control HD … well worth it, and has had a fair bit of play over the weekend. Stuff like Dropbox, 1Password Pro, Instapaper Pro and the IMDb app all came across straight away and instantly impressed with their iPad interfaces. I still miss the CMD+\ shortcut for 1Password, but at least it’s fairly quick to switch to the app, unlock, grab the password and flick back to Safari.

Two apps missing from the iPhone that are sorely missed: Calculator and, more importantly, Clock. What the fuck Apple? I can honestly think of no reason why these apps wouldn’t be included on the iPad. Perhaps the Calculator interface didn’t scale up well and they didn’t put any time into redesigning it? At least that void is filled very well by PCalc. I really cannot fathom why nobody at Apple thought that the Clock app would be useful. A world clock app is definitely now on my shopping list for my iPad.

But moving along… The screen is amazing. I threw my last 12 months of iPhoto events over to the iPad and it is very, very impressive to look at. The speed of app launches and the like is impressive, although doesn’t really seem to be noticeably different from the iPhone 3GS. The disappointing side of the speed equation though is Safari. Web pages still take a noticeable time to render, especially more complex sites on the “real internet” such as Sydney Morning Herald. The caching of tabs is also not really improved from the iPhone, meaning that my standard desktop model of going to a blog/news site and then opening articles in new tabs is largely useless, since more often than not I have to reload the original tab when I switch back to it anyway. This is particularly annoying when trying to use the iPad for mobile access to my work helpdesk, since individual jobs open in new tabs, but returning to the queue usually results in a reload, and thus having to log in again. Combined with the much-slower-than-desktop rendering speed, it means Safari-based consumption of lots of news/blogs or even my primary work is occasionally frustrating. Apps such as NYT Editors’ Choice and the BBC News app are much more pleasant experiences for going through lots of articles.

Another web-related issue with the iPad is the crapshoot of site versions. Some sites will offer up the “full” version over their iPhone version (SMH), but others will give you the mobile version (Youtube, Google). In some cases it’s a custom iPad specific version (Gmail is beautiful), but in others it’s a bit jarring (Google Reader, Docs).

Back to apps, in this case iPhone apps, running on the iPad. The short version: Don’t. Some apps there is just no viable alternative for, so I’ve installed the iPhone versions, but really, they are not a good option at all. They either sit in the middle of the screen, with so much wasted space, or are blown up to pixellated garbage. Perhaps the most annoying though is that any text-entry in these applications brings up the iPhone-style keyboard. Understandable, but painful to use.

Which leads into typing on the iPad on screen keyboard. I’m assuming that, like the iPhone keyboard, experience will make me faster. Just like the iPhone I have issues with hitting the shift key instead of ‘a’, and also hitting v/b/n instead of space, but I think that over time I’ll lose that. On the whole I like the landscape keyboard, and have not had any lag issues or anything with it, but it’s definitely no substitute for a physical keyboard. Now if only my bluetooth keyboard would work (alas, not iPad related).

Lastly, for now, video. Have I said the screen is awesome yet? The screen is AWESOME. But the screen is also 1024×768 … a ratio that is kinda on the way out, at least as far as video is concerned. As long as you like letterboxing, you’re fine! One of the things I was dreading was making my library of, ahem, backed up DivX files iPad compatible. I don’t know why I never looked into this before, but wow, Air Video. Install a small server on my desktop, and stream to my heart’s content. So between that, a few H.264 encoded / purchased videos and my home-made stand (two pieces of cardboard from a case of beer), video on the iPad is a letterboxed winner!

Okay … I think I’m done rambling around the iPad for a while. At some point I will go through apps and my choices. For now, here’s a few apps that are definitely worth installing:

Simplenote
Air Video
Dropbox
Instapaper Pro
PCalc (the lite version is more than sufficient in most cases)
Flight Control HD
Articles (wikipedia app extraordinaire)
Reuters Galleries (beautiful photography)

Overall, I’m very happy with it. At the moment I am largely treating it as a big iPhone without phone calls, and that suits me just fine. I’m sure that my usage will adapt over time, and I know it will replace my laptop on a lot of the overnighters and small trips I take. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, the OS is obviously very familiar and easy to jump in to, and the niggles are, so far, not show stoppers, and are mostly just either waiting for the right app to be released, or a small learning curve or tweak in my own processes to shift from an iPhone.