Technical Thaumaturgy

Calm Baby Confident Mum

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:26:33 +1100

This book is invaluable for the new mum / dad. The print edition is still available at http://www.calmbabyconfidentmum.com/ for $25, and the Kindle edition is only $9.99

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: The Apple Logo

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:13:23 +1000

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: The Apple Logo:

An interesting post about the origin of the Apple logo. Those looking for deep meaning within the famous brand should follow the links to find out the true story.

mrgan:

The logo of Apple Inc. is among the best-known and best-designed in the world. It has lasted thirty-four years, and we have little reason to think it’ll be replaced any time soon.

It wasn’t designed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Paul Rand, or Jonathan Ive. It was designed by an advertising…

Apple Grows Up

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:51:08 +1000

Well it’s all over the news. Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple.

“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come,”

No doubt Steve’s health has played a huge role in the decision, but I think also that this is an indication that he now feels he can let go. Stories from the early years of Apple clearly show his control freak personality. It is a big deal for him to let go of his baby.

And that’s the point. Apple is now “grown up”. And just like a child leaving home, the father of Apple hasn’t completely ended the relationship. He’s still around to give advice and direction. He’s just not making the day to day decisions.

Sounds a lot like successful parenting to me.

Maybe you should get your kids into IT after all

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:36:00 +1000

Maybe you should get your kids into IT after all:

Why software is eating the world

Parsing iTunes XML files in Ruby

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:28:39 +1000

Parsing iTunes XML files in Ruby

Parsing iTunes XML files in php

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:30:07 +1000

Parsing iTunes XML files in php

Vindicated... Again! Microsoft guilty... Again!

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:08:46 +1000

Vindicated... Again! Microsoft guilty... Again!:

I was sure I’d read this story only a couple of years ago, and I was right. After appeal, Micro$oft has been found guilty again, but it’s not over yet. Having already appealed the 2009 result and lost again, they are are going to drag it all back through the courts again.

The army of lawyers getting rich off this must be cheaper than the (revised) damages that have been ordered against them. Of course no one should be surprised. Micro$oft have significant form. The long list of convictions against them for software piracy, patent infringement and of course anti-trust, shows the true character of the corporation.

Multiuser Lion with virtual screen sharing

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:49:00 +1000

I discovered last week that Apple have updated their screen sharing in Lion. Now when going to share a screen, it asks for permission.

Even more interesting, you can opt for a virtual display and log in to your account while another user is on the machine. I haven’t checked to see how many virtual displays are supported at one time, but it’s great to see this finally available.

Internet Explorer users have lower IQ says study

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:22:22 +1000

Internet Explorer users have lower IQ says study:

We always knew it. Of course by extension, since IE only ships on Windows…

Lamenting is Worship - Michael Card A great exegesis and...

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:16:00 +1000

Lamenting is Worship - Michael Card

A great exegesis and exposition of the lament literature in the Bible, particularly the Psalms. Anyone truly interested in the nature of Worship should watch this. This is part one of seven, about an hour of video all up, but well worth it.

Now to ponder the application.

A confident secularist society would tolerate school religion

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:16:30 +1000

A confident secularist society would tolerate school religion:

A very interesting read by an atheist who thinks we should leave school scripture (“special religious education”) alone, and get over ourselves.

I do have to agree with some of the sentiment. Especially since the only socially acceptable intolerance at the moment appears to be intolerance of Christianity actually expressed, in word or deed.

iPad 2 Warranty repair

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:20:36 +1000

I have just taken my iPad 2 in to an Apple Service Centre for Warranty replacement. What’s wrong? The SIM tray won’t eject. So a whole new device to replace one that is working perfectly except that I can’t get the SIM tray out.

If I didn’t want the engraving, it could be replaced as soon as tomorrow. With the engraving, 7-10 days :-(

A very interesting tidbit I found out is that they didn’t need to fill in the engraving I wanted as it is “in the serial number”. I assume that means that it is associated with my serial number rather than somehow encoded in the string of characters, however, I won’t rule out that completely. (The serial “number” is a 12 character string of uppercase letters and digits representing a 4.73838134 × 10¹⁸ address space.)

The most annoying thing though is that I have to replace my Telstra SIM. So I have to wait for the iPad to arrive AND the new SIM card.

How to Migrate Your Facebook Account and Data to Google+

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 06:44:15 +1000

How to Migrate Your Facebook Account and Data to Google+:

When Google+ came out, it’s success was very much up in the air (remember Google Buzz?). However, it seems a lot of people have already thrown themselves into Google+ full force—Facebook may have 750 million users, but Google+ has already crossed the 20 million user milestone in only 30 days.

Recovering A Corrupt OpenLDAP Database On OSX Server

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:53:00 +1000

Recovering A Corrupt OpenLDAP Database On OSX Server:

Just as a reminder for dealing with slapd / open directory issues on OS X server.

Safari 5 (Lion) supports MathML

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:46:29 +1000

Safari 5 (Lion) supports MathML

Apple effectively deprecates the Quit command

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:04:00 +1000

Lion is far more than just new user interface features. Apple have fundamentally rethought the human computer interaction at a much deeper level. There are radical changes to the nearly thirty year old document model and quite fundamental changes to the human interaction with the process model.

Applications without processes. Processes without applications. Did Lion just blow your mind?

These are very impressive, significant shifts.

If you haven’t read the Ars Technica in depth review of Lion, and you are interested in the geeky underpinnings of the changes, you owe it to yourself to read all 19 pages. John Siracusa has again written the best review out there of a new OS X release.

How great is Lion Resume!? (system state autosave)

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:38:00 +1000

Lion Resume (system state autosave) just completely surprised me and surpassed my expectations.

My 2006 Mac Book Pro has a battery that has seen better days. It still holds a charge for a reasonable amount of time, but despite trying to recalibrate the System Management Controller, it will suddenly power off, rather than gracefully go to sleep while it thinks it still has some run time.

I had several apps open, including TextWrangler with never saved “Untitled” windows full of text. The laptop just turned off - no warning. Plugged in, rebooted and Lion began opening all the apps I had open and to my surprise, put all the unsaved text in my unsaved documents in TextWrangler.

And no, it wasn’t a built for Lion version. It’s version 3.5.3 from 10 Jan 2011.

Lion multitouch and older intel Macs

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:09:00 +1000

I can confirm that Macs without the newer multi-touch trackpads (or an appropriate mouse) only have limited gesture support on Lion. I have a late 2006 Mac Book Pro with an early multitouch trackpad. It basically supports two finger touch but not three, so a lot of the Lion gestures are out.

I must say I’m still getting used to “natural”(!) scrolling. Great on an iPad, feels weird on a trackpad. Perhaps it’s just and adjustment period.

Disable spotlight indexing

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:51:29 +1000

Booting into OS X Lion for the first time after install means spotlight reindexing all volumes. Opening Mail also triggers a full email migration to a new mail database format. This made my MacBook Pro pretty unresponsive for a while. Activity Monitor showed very little CPU utilisation, and a reasonable amount of free memory. Disk activity was clearly the culprit.

Time to disable spotlight for a while.

sudo mdutil -a -i off

To turn spotlight back on

sudo mdutil -a -i on

UI Guidelines for Skeuomorphic Multi-Touch Interfaces

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:06:04 +1000

UI Guidelines for Skeuomorphic Multi-Touch Interfaces