Have you ever said "I can't take this a second longer"? If so, I hope you had a good 2005, because you're having an extra second of it whether you like it or not...
Update: Someone has written an interesting article about how the leap second propogated through the NTP network (via DrunkenBlog).
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Independence at a price
The BBC is reporting that the launch of the first of the Galileo constellation of satellites, Giove-A, has been successful and telemetry from the satellite indicate that all systems are performing correctly.
The actual launch at 5:19 GMT on the 28th December
The 600 kg satellite was launched from Baikonur on Wednesday, and is the first of thirty satellites that will give Europe its own version of the US GPS and Russian GLONASS positioning systems.
However, as being able to work independently Galileo will be interoperable with both of the existing systems, users of the system will be able to take a position with the same receiver from any of the three satellite positioning systems in any combination.
As a result we've bought independence for Europe's military, and as a consequence it's civilian population, of the almost ubiquitous GPS system over which the US military retains control, reserving the right to limit usage, or switch it off entirely, without any notice.
Of course we paid a price for our independence, costing an estimate of €3.8 billion, the new system is hardly going to be cheap, however the launch this week draws a firm line in the sand. It indicates that global positioning has become so deeply embedded into our the fabric of life that we're no longer willing to risk someone else having control over it, even if that someone else is theoretically a friendly power.
The second test satellite, Giove-B, is due to launch in spring next year.
Update: More from New Scientist...
Update: The BBC is reporting that the first navigational signals have been successfully received from Giove-A.
 |
| CREDIT: Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) |
The 600 kg satellite was launched from Baikonur on Wednesday, and is the first of thirty satellites that will give Europe its own version of the US GPS and Russian GLONASS positioning systems.
However, as being able to work independently Galileo will be interoperable with both of the existing systems, users of the system will be able to take a position with the same receiver from any of the three satellite positioning systems in any combination.
As a result we've bought independence for Europe's military, and as a consequence it's civilian population, of the almost ubiquitous GPS system over which the US military retains control, reserving the right to limit usage, or switch it off entirely, without any notice.
Of course we paid a price for our independence, costing an estimate of €3.8 billion, the new system is hardly going to be cheap, however the launch this week draws a firm line in the sand. It indicates that global positioning has become so deeply embedded into our the fabric of life that we're no longer willing to risk someone else having control over it, even if that someone else is theoretically a friendly power.
The second test satellite, Giove-B, is due to launch in spring next year.
Update: More from New Scientist...
Update: The BBC is reporting that the first navigational signals have been successfully received from Giove-A.
Looking back over 2005
Otherwise known as "How to get a cheap blog post in over the Christmas vacation". My top ten most popular posts this year, measured by click throughs from my RSS feed, were:
However, typically, the posts I consider to be 'good' rarely get as many hits as the typical piece churning over the latest Apple rumours. Although I have noticed that they get heavier traffic directly on the site than via the RSS feed. I'm still trying to figure out what that mean demographics wise...
Of course that isn't the most annoying thing, want to know the most clicked through, heaviest traffic, post on the site? It's my post on GMail invites. Go figure...
- Behind the scenes at Google
- Hell freezes over
- Disassembling the Mac mini
- Disassembling the iPod shuffle
- The iPod shuffle
- Perl 6: End-game
- Mobile Python under Mac OS X
- Google & satellite maps
- Bluetooth hacked
- Queues at the pumps (via my Flickr feed)
- Making license plates
- The human condition
- The London bombings
- RSS is evil
- Ubiquitous computing and agents
- The 'setting' Sun
However, typically, the posts I consider to be 'good' rarely get as many hits as the typical piece churning over the latest Apple rumours. Although I have noticed that they get heavier traffic directly on the site than via the RSS feed. I'm still trying to figure out what that mean demographics wise...
Of course that isn't the most annoying thing, want to know the most clicked through, heaviest traffic, post on the site? It's my post on GMail invites. Go figure...
On the way to Web 3.0?
We haven't even decided what Web 2.0 means, and some people are already starting to talk about what to expect from Web 3.0. However I'm not sure I agree with Phil Wainewright when he talks about what Web 3.0 means, I agree that the "four pillars" are important: Publishing, Discovery, Fulfilment and Conversation. But isn't he just taking about Web 2.0 concepts? I mean, what's new there? What's the difference between what he's talking about, and Tim O'Reilly's meme map of Web 2.0?
I think there is one difference, Web 2.0 has been driven from the ground up. You only have to look at sites like Flickr to see that Web 2.0 is about nifty technology, interaction and user communities. Or as Paul Graham put it, "AJAX, democracy and users"...
Phil's vision of Web 3.0 is top down, men in suits are trying to decide what we want and impose the frameworks we're going to have to work with online. I think he, and the men in suits, are going to be surprised. The arrival of the Web changed the Internet for good, or perhaps for evil, from an interactive to a "download only" medium.
However as Tim Berners-Lee recently argued in his own blog it was never meant to be that way, and the rise of the blog, along with the prevailance of RSS feeds, mashups and wikis is, at least in my opinion, the reaction by the the people on the ground to what the Web did to the Internet.
So I think his prediction of the death of RSS, or at least the death of a stand alone feed reader, is quite off the wall. He might not be looking at his RSS feeds anymore, and he might not be the only one, but I, along with a lot of other publishers are seeing a growth in feed subscriptions and a corresponding drop in page views.
More people are reading the feed than coming to the web site, and that means big changes are coming. It also means an arms race amongst the feed readers is heading our way, the race between intrusive adverts and the ad-blocking software is going to be run all over again, this time in your feed reader.
Because after all, where else are you going to get the information you now get in your feed reader, we orginally got it via Usenet, then from a variety of websites, and then bundled back in one place again via RSS. How abstracted from the original content can we get? You can only go so far and retain the semantic content of the original information.
While Phil argues that feed readers are dead, he doesn't suggest anything to replace them, he doesn't tell me how I'm supposed to get the information flow I'm used to, and still need, to get on with what I do day to day. Is he arguing that we should just stop reading feeds and return to the sites? If so, is he afraid of falling advertising revenue? Perhaps so, I'd argue that it's going to be easier to win the warn against intrusive advertising in feeds than it has been in the browser, especially if the feed reader is under the user's control, on their desktop. Which, suspiciously to my mind, he's arguing against...
However Phil's other argument that search has become a commodity has, perhaps, some merit, although it isn't news to anyone paying attention. Everyone has already figured out that the continuing stream of new and interesting web applications from Google are simply a way to keep fresh eyeballs in front of their advertising. So does "search as a commodity" challenge the Google model? Maybe, but not if Google can innovate fast enough and keep people interested in their products. The introduction of advertising to Google Earth shouldn't have surprised anyone...
So where am I heading? Beats me, maybe I should steer clear of ZD Net in future if it's going to raise my blood pressure like this...
I think there is one difference, Web 2.0 has been driven from the ground up. You only have to look at sites like Flickr to see that Web 2.0 is about nifty technology, interaction and user communities. Or as Paul Graham put it, "AJAX, democracy and users"...
Phil's vision of Web 3.0 is top down, men in suits are trying to decide what we want and impose the frameworks we're going to have to work with online. I think he, and the men in suits, are going to be surprised. The arrival of the Web changed the Internet for good, or perhaps for evil, from an interactive to a "download only" medium.
However as Tim Berners-Lee recently argued in his own blog it was never meant to be that way, and the rise of the blog, along with the prevailance of RSS feeds, mashups and wikis is, at least in my opinion, the reaction by the the people on the ground to what the Web did to the Internet.
So I think his prediction of the death of RSS, or at least the death of a stand alone feed reader, is quite off the wall. He might not be looking at his RSS feeds anymore, and he might not be the only one, but I, along with a lot of other publishers are seeing a growth in feed subscriptions and a corresponding drop in page views.
More people are reading the feed than coming to the web site, and that means big changes are coming. It also means an arms race amongst the feed readers is heading our way, the race between intrusive adverts and the ad-blocking software is going to be run all over again, this time in your feed reader.
Because after all, where else are you going to get the information you now get in your feed reader, we orginally got it via Usenet, then from a variety of websites, and then bundled back in one place again via RSS. How abstracted from the original content can we get? You can only go so far and retain the semantic content of the original information.
While Phil argues that feed readers are dead, he doesn't suggest anything to replace them, he doesn't tell me how I'm supposed to get the information flow I'm used to, and still need, to get on with what I do day to day. Is he arguing that we should just stop reading feeds and return to the sites? If so, is he afraid of falling advertising revenue? Perhaps so, I'd argue that it's going to be easier to win the warn against intrusive advertising in feeds than it has been in the browser, especially if the feed reader is under the user's control, on their desktop. Which, suspiciously to my mind, he's arguing against...
However Phil's other argument that search has become a commodity has, perhaps, some merit, although it isn't news to anyone paying attention. Everyone has already figured out that the continuing stream of new and interesting web applications from Google are simply a way to keep fresh eyeballs in front of their advertising. So does "search as a commodity" challenge the Google model? Maybe, but not if Google can innovate fast enough and keep people interested in their products. The introduction of advertising to Google Earth shouldn't have surprised anyone...
So where am I heading? Beats me, maybe I should steer clear of ZD Net in future if it's going to raise my blood pressure like this...
How to ship anything
After their recent foray into the world of documentary making, Joel Spolsky's company Frog Creek Software has had to get into shipping actual boxes rather than software and it looks like it hasn't been an easy ride.
Automated shipping...
Joel's post on how to ship anything talks about how Frog Creek solved their shipping problems, and shows you how a geek obsessed with automation and ergonomics goes about solving problems with, more or less, off the shelf components. It's an interesting read for anyone thinking about shipping things, and perhaps also for anyone trying to automate repetitive tasks as Joel talks about what computers can do, but also what they can't...
 |
| CREDIT: Frog Creek Software |
Joel's post on how to ship anything talks about how Frog Creek solved their shipping problems, and shows you how a geek obsessed with automation and ergonomics goes about solving problems with, more or less, off the shelf components. It's an interesting read for anyone thinking about shipping things, and perhaps also for anyone trying to automate repetitive tasks as Joel talks about what computers can do, but also what they can't...
| Joel on Software: And on Diverse and... by Joel Spolsky, ISBN 1590593898, 362 pages, £11.77 | |
The publishers write, "This is a selection of essays from the author's Web site. Joel Spolsky started the web log in March 2000 in order to offer his insights, based on years of experience, on how to improve the world of programming. His extraordinary writing skills, technical knowledge, and caustic wit have made him a programming guru. This log has become infamous among the programming world, and is linked to more than 600 other websites and translated into 30+ languages! This book covers every imaginable aspect of software programming, from the best way to write code to the best way to design an office in which to write code. The book will relate to all software programmers (Microsoft and Open Source), anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of programming, or anyone trying to manage a programmer." |  |
What he said...
As you can probably tell from my blog's sidebar, I'm a heavy user of both Flickr and del.icio.us. But I'm not a big fan of Yahoo, as their bloat laden front page epitomises, at least to me, everything bad about the portal concept. As most people working with me in the VO probably have figured out by now, I'm also not a big fan of portals in general...
So the acquisition of Flickr by Yahoo didn't seem like good news. However, unlike a lot of their other offerings, they didn't immediately set about breaking it. Perhaps they were afraid to meddle with something obvious so sucessful, and rightly so...
So their recent purchase of del.icio.us doesn't frighten me as much as it might, although unlike Flickr I more easily see how it would fit into the Yahoo portal, in other words I can see how they might want to break it. I'm still holding out some hope, but I sort of have to agree with Rui Carmo's comments on the acquisition. You have to wonder how long bother Flickr, and now del.icio.us, will hold out against the Yahoo corporate culture.
So the acquisition of Flickr by Yahoo didn't seem like good news. However, unlike a lot of their other offerings, they didn't immediately set about breaking it. Perhaps they were afraid to meddle with something obvious so sucessful, and rightly so...
So their recent purchase of del.icio.us doesn't frighten me as much as it might, although unlike Flickr I more easily see how it would fit into the Yahoo portal, in other words I can see how they might want to break it. I'm still holding out some hope, but I sort of have to agree with Rui Carmo's comments on the acquisition. You have to wonder how long bother Flickr, and now del.icio.us, will hold out against the Yahoo corporate culture.
Stardust due home
The BBC is reporting on the return of the Stardust spacecraft, which will attempt to make a soft landing in the Utah desert on the 15th of January. The velocity of the sample return capsule, as it enters the Earth's atmosphere at 28,860 mph, will be the fastest of any human-made object on record.
However after the crash landing of the Genesis probe last year due to the failure of its parachute deployment system, and despite the results of the review board, there must be some concerns at NASA about the landing, as Stardust shares the same design for its deployment system.
Stardust was launched in February 1999 with a 5 year mission to investigate the makeup of the comet Wild 2 and its coma, and after passing the asteroid 5535 Annefrank in 2002, Stardust reached its mission target in January 2004. During its flyby of the comet it took detailed pictures of the nucleus, and collected dust samples from the comet's coma which will be returned to Earth in the sample-return capsule in January.
Update: A safe landing for Stardust...
However after the crash landing of the Genesis probe last year due to the failure of its parachute deployment system, and despite the results of the review board, there must be some concerns at NASA about the landing, as Stardust shares the same design for its deployment system.
 | |
| CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech | |
| The comet Wild 2, which NASA's Stardust spacecraft flew by on Jan. 2, 2004. This image is the closest short exposure of the comet, taken at an 11.4-degree phase angle, the angle between the camera, comet and the Sun. |
Stardust was launched in February 1999 with a 5 year mission to investigate the makeup of the comet Wild 2 and its coma, and after passing the asteroid 5535 Annefrank in 2002, Stardust reached its mission target in January 2004. During its flyby of the comet it took detailed pictures of the nucleus, and collected dust samples from the comet's coma which will be returned to Earth in the sample-return capsule in January.
Update: A safe landing for Stardust...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Beagle 2 spotted on Mars?
The BBC is reporting that the crash site of the ill-fated Beagle 2 probe may have been identified by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.
The possible Beagle 2 crash site
Personally I don't find the images entirely convincing. Although you have to wonder, after two years, does it really matter what happened?
Update: I guess most people seem to think [1, 2, 3, 4 & 5] it does...
 |
| CREDIT: Beagle 2/MSS via BBC News |
Personally I don't find the images entirely convincing. Although you have to wonder, after two years, does it really matter what happened?
Update: I guess most people seem to think [1, 2, 3, 4 & 5] it does...
Friday, December 16, 2005
The Apple rumour mill
In the lead up to Macworld in January the Apple rumour mill is running at full speed. From a line of iPod accessories to widescreen iBooks, or even no new hardware at all, the rumour mill is spinning almost as fast as it did in the aftermath of the infamous "One More Thing" press release, which heralded the launch of the new iMac and the video iPod.
Me? I haven't a clue what's going on, nobody tells me anything. In the past I've guessed right, but I've also guessed wrong. But I'd still like my 3G enabled Powerbook or my Bluetooth iPod, or even a Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse.
I also still like the conspiracy theory gone mad idea suggested by the Unoffical Apple Weblog, although it is a but far fetched.
What ever the truth of things, the announcement of a live satellite broadcast of Steve Jobs' keynote address is sure fuel the mill...
Update: ...and of course you have to wonder whether the almost ubiquitous Intel Inside™ co-branding will kick in, chime, or no chime?
Update: Looks like the rumours that the iPod shuffle might be due for an update during Macworld in January might have some evidence backing them up...
Update: Blogging the keynote live...
Me? I haven't a clue what's going on, nobody tells me anything. In the past I've guessed right, but I've also guessed wrong. But I'd still like my 3G enabled Powerbook or my Bluetooth iPod, or even a Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse.
I also still like the conspiracy theory gone mad idea suggested by the Unoffical Apple Weblog, although it is a but far fetched.
What ever the truth of things, the announcement of a live satellite broadcast of Steve Jobs' keynote address is sure fuel the mill...
Update: ...and of course you have to wonder whether the almost ubiquitous Intel Inside™ co-branding will kick in, chime, or no chime?
Update: Looks like the rumours that the iPod shuffle might be due for an update during Macworld in January might have some evidence backing them up...
Update: Blogging the keynote live...
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Google Earth for OS X (10.4?)
While Google has always claimed that an OS X version of Google Earth was coming soon, there has been very little to indicate that it was a real project. However close on the heels of the initial rumours that a pre-release version of Google Earth for Mac OS X has been in limited distribution, verisons of the Mac OS X build started to leak onto the Internet.
While there have been several reviews of the leaked version, from my own experiments it appears that the leaked build is for Mac OS X 10.4 only.
Update: For the record, it runs on my 10.4 box...
Google Earth running under Mac OS X
Update: A month to the day later we have an official release of Google Earth for Macintosh at Macworld in San Francisco.
While there have been several reviews of the leaked version, from my own experiments it appears that the leaked build is for Mac OS X 10.4 only.
Date/Time: 2005-12-10 20:48:40 +0000It looks like the leaked build requires the updated Quartz.framework which as far as I know is only available for Tiger. However the leaked application circulating is a "not intended for public release" version so this might be solved when the official beta turns up. Hopefully there will be a Panther version for us trailing edge people...
OS Version: 10.3.9 (Build 7W98)
Report Version: 2
Command: Google Earth
Path: Google Earth.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Earth
Version: ??? (???)
PID: 544
Thread: Unknown
Link (dyld) error:
dyld: Earth.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Earth can't open library: /System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Quartz (No such file or directory, errno = 2)
Update: For the record, it runs on my 10.4 box...
Google Earth running under Mac OS X
Update: A month to the day later we have an official release of Google Earth for Macintosh at Macworld in San Francisco.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Back in transit
I'm sitting in the departure lounge of Tucson International which amazingly turns out to have free WiFi access throughout the terminal. Who'd have thought? Anyway, I'm on a United Express flight to LAX out of Tucson in a half an hour or so, and then I've managed to bag an exit row on my trans-atlantic hop back into LHR. Not as good a free business class upgrade, but you can't complain...
Update: Made it as far as LAX. However the Red Carpet Club at LAX doesn't have free WiFi, or even a paid T-Mobile hotspot. Instead we've got intermittent access to a Boingo hotspot, although I'm guessing that this is actually spill over from a hotspot in the terminal concourse itself, rather than one in the lounge. At least if the signal strength and the number of connection drops I'm getting is anything to go by...
Update: Tired, jet lagged, but now back home in Exeter...
Update: Made it as far as LAX. However the Red Carpet Club at LAX doesn't have free WiFi, or even a paid T-Mobile hotspot. Instead we've got intermittent access to a Boingo hotspot, although I'm guessing that this is actually spill over from a hotspot in the terminal concourse itself, rather than one in the lounge. At least if the signal strength and the number of connection drops I'm getting is anything to go by...
Update: Tired, jet lagged, but now back home in Exeter...
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
VOEvent Workshop II
The first day of the second VOEvent workshop in Tucson kicked off with a Roy Williams and Rob Seaman talking about where we've got to, and where we're going...
The NOAO main conference room
After the introductions I was the first to talk. This was both a blessing and a curse, it was a blessing because I got to thump the table and tell people what I was concerned about, and it was a curse because I sort of felt I had to go through everything. I talked for some time, I'm sure everyone else thought it was a curse at that point...
We actually got a lot done in this meeting, and we're walking away with a provisional protocol and transport standard for event messaging, which is more than I thought I'd get out of the meeting. So I'm a happy man, at least I will be if we finally sort the ongoing STC issues that are still plaguing the standard.
If you want to see what we were doing during the meeting, I've dropped some photographs into my Flickr feed...
The NOAO main conference room
After the introductions I was the first to talk. This was both a blessing and a curse, it was a blessing because I got to thump the table and tell people what I was concerned about, and it was a curse because I sort of felt I had to go through everything. I talked for some time, I'm sure everyone else thought it was a curse at that point...
We actually got a lot done in this meeting, and we're walking away with a provisional protocol and transport standard for event messaging, which is more than I thought I'd get out of the meeting. So I'm a happy man, at least I will be if we finally sort the ongoing STC issues that are still plaguing the standard.
If you want to see what we were doing during the meeting, I've dropped some photographs into my Flickr feed...
Friday, December 02, 2005
In transit
I'm currently in transit to the second VOEvent Workshop, which is being held the at the NOAO in Tucson, Arizona, next week. Another day, another airport, another hotel...
Update: After six hours stuck in SFO I arrived into Tucson later than I would have liked, the hotel was a welcome sight at that point. I've even got a good view from my balcony...
The Moon and Venus over Tucson at sunset
Update: After six hours stuck in SFO I arrived into Tucson later than I would have liked, the hotel was a welcome sight at that point. I've even got a good view from my balcony...
The Moon and Venus over Tucson at sunset
Monday, November 28, 2005
London Perl Workshop '05
Not exactly "in transit", more a round trip. On Saturday morning I got up at 4.30am and made my way to Exeter St. Davids to get the first train of the day out of the South West to London so that I could got to the second annual London Perl Workshop run by the London.pm crowd. Almost predictably the train was delayed by an hour, so I arrived harried, rushed, and late, into City University and slipped into the back of the first talk of the day.
Found the building...
I get the impression that the organisers might have been short of talks to put on the Advanced track. Maybe I should have done my bit and submitted a talk abstract after all? I actually came up with a couple of ideas on the train up to London, although it was a bit late at that point I suppose...
The workshop had a different feeling about it than last year. Unlike last year the Learning and Advanced Perl tracks weren't scheduled so that the talks started and ended at the same time, and this meant that there was a lot less movement of people between the two tracks. There were several talks on the Learning Perl track that I would have quite liked to see, but I couldn't drop out of the Advanced track because of the schedule mismatch. I think it gave the workshop a much less friendly feel.
Abigail talking about
The Advanced track in the morning may as well have been re-named the Abigail track, and to be honest I found his delivery fairly dry, although perhaps it was simply his choice of material which would have been fairly heavy going for the best of speakers. I arrived about half way through his talk on
Jonathon Worthington talking about Parrot
I was looking forward to Jos Boumans' talk on "Barely Legal XXX Perl", diversions into Perl sickness, but Jos didn't turn up having phoned in sick, claiming flu, despite having been in the pub the night before till one in the morning. Which left the highlight of the morning, at least for me, as Jonathon Worthington's talk on the state of the Parrot virtual machine, and it is to Jonathon that the quote of the day award has to go, for,
Jonathon Chin talking about OpenGL
However the workshop picked up dramatically for me after lunch, with Jonathon Chin talking about using the OpenGL API from Perl, and his
Leon and Leo talking about mighTyV.com
Following Jonathon's talk I decided to switch tracks, catching the last few minutes of Dave Cross' talk on database access with Perl, before Leon Brocard and Leo Lapworth's talk on mighTyV.com, their award winning site, which shows exactly what you can do with Perl, Catalyst and, of course, CPAN, in a fairly short stretch of time.
Mark-Jason Dominus talking about, well, Perl...
The closing talk of the day was by Mark-Jason Dominus on Perl red flags. It turned out that I'd heard a good deal of the material before at OSCON, so I was a bit disappointed, I was hoping he would talk about some of the topics covered in his new book "Higher Order Perl", but I guess I understand that the organisers wanted material that would appeal to everyone.
In the end Mark-Jason over ran by about half and hour, so I had to sneak out of this talk just before six so I could make my way across London and catch the last train of the day back to Exeter. Which was easier said than done with the Circle Line closed...
Overall it was a good day, although a very long one for me since I didn't make it back into Exeter till well past 11.00pm. However I didn't enjoy the workshop as much as I did last years, which I think was a combination of both the material persented and the venue. That said, I'll be at the front of the line to sign up for next years workshop if they run another, and I'll even offer to speak next year, promise...
Update: So more on this years London Perl Workshop from Dominic Mitchell and Ben Metcalfe...
Update: Leo and Leon have just released the source code for Braga, the platform behind mighTyV.com, how cool is that?
Update: Most of the slides from the talks have now been posted onto the workshop site...
Found the building...
I get the impression that the organisers might have been short of talks to put on the Advanced track. Maybe I should have done my bit and submitted a talk abstract after all? I actually came up with a couple of ideas on the train up to London, although it was a bit late at that point I suppose...
The workshop had a different feeling about it than last year. Unlike last year the Learning and Advanced Perl tracks weren't scheduled so that the talks started and ended at the same time, and this meant that there was a lot less movement of people between the two tracks. There were several talks on the Learning Perl track that I would have quite liked to see, but I couldn't drop out of the Advanced track because of the schedule mismatch. I think it gave the workshop a much less friendly feel.
Abigail talking about
Regexp::CommonThe Advanced track in the morning may as well have been re-named the Abigail track, and to be honest I found his delivery fairly dry, although perhaps it was simply his choice of material which would have been fairly heavy going for the best of speakers. I arrived about half way through his talk on
Rgexp::Common, which didn't hold much interest for me, although his talk later on on Lexical Attributes was more intriguing. Admittedly I disagree with a lot of what he said about the Perl object model, but that's neither here nor there...Jonathon Worthington talking about Parrot
I was looking forward to Jos Boumans' talk on "Barely Legal XXX Perl", diversions into Perl sickness, but Jos didn't turn up having phoned in sick, claiming flu, despite having been in the pub the night before till one in the morning. Which left the highlight of the morning, at least for me, as Jonathon Worthington's talk on the state of the Parrot virtual machine, and it is to Jonathon that the quote of the day award has to go, for,
JIT, stands for "Just In Time" compilation, a lot like the organisation of this conference...to which Simon Wistow replied,
Harsh, but essentially fair...Facilities at the new venue weren't a patch on last year, which was held in the Imperial College Union, and lunch turned out to be a fairly dismal affair where I was charged £6.00 for a sandwich and a fairly small "large" cup of coffee.
Jonathon Chin talking about OpenGL
However the workshop picked up dramatically for me after lunch, with Jonathon Chin talking about using the OpenGL API from Perl, and his
OpenGL::Simple module, which was a lively introduction into 3d graphics in Perl which has moved on a lot since last time I dipped my toes into it...Leon and Leo talking about mighTyV.com
Following Jonathon's talk I decided to switch tracks, catching the last few minutes of Dave Cross' talk on database access with Perl, before Leon Brocard and Leo Lapworth's talk on mighTyV.com, their award winning site, which shows exactly what you can do with Perl, Catalyst and, of course, CPAN, in a fairly short stretch of time.
Mark-Jason Dominus talking about, well, Perl...
The closing talk of the day was by Mark-Jason Dominus on Perl red flags. It turned out that I'd heard a good deal of the material before at OSCON, so I was a bit disappointed, I was hoping he would talk about some of the topics covered in his new book "Higher Order Perl", but I guess I understand that the organisers wanted material that would appeal to everyone.
In the end Mark-Jason over ran by about half and hour, so I had to sneak out of this talk just before six so I could make my way across London and catch the last train of the day back to Exeter. Which was easier said than done with the Circle Line closed...
Overall it was a good day, although a very long one for me since I didn't make it back into Exeter till well past 11.00pm. However I didn't enjoy the workshop as much as I did last years, which I think was a combination of both the material persented and the venue. That said, I'll be at the front of the line to sign up for next years workshop if they run another, and I'll even offer to speak next year, promise...
Update: So more on this years London Perl Workshop from Dominic Mitchell and Ben Metcalfe...
Update: Leo and Leon have just released the source code for Braga, the platform behind mighTyV.com, how cool is that?
Update: Most of the slides from the talks have now been posted onto the workshop site...
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
No hard drive, means instant on...
Apple's latest latest deal with Samsung has led to the comany being investigated by the Korean government. However it has also started the rumour mill going at full tilt that the next generation of Intel iMacs won't have a hard disk at all and we're looking at zero boot time computers.
But personally I'm with Fabienne Serriere, and I'm hoping for a updated Newton-like palmtop. I'll settle for a zero boot time iMac though...
Update: More from Macslash...
But personally I'm with Fabienne Serriere, and I'm hoping for a updated Newton-like palmtop. I'll settle for a zero boot time iMac though...
Update: More from Macslash...
5p off a litre?
Fancy 5p off a litre of unleaded? That'd be 35 cents a US gallon for my American readers, although for once you're not included in things...Following the recent petrol protests here in the UK, the price of petrol has fallen from a peak of over £1 per litre (around US$7.00 per US gallon) to a bit more reasonable 86.9p per litre (around US$6.00 per US gallon)
However Ben Scammell, a veteran campaigner for cheaper fuel, isn't alone in thinking that this is still a bit on the high side. However, unlike the rest of us he's actually set out to do something about the problem. His idea is that car drivers should club together and negotiate a bulk-buying discount from petrol stations in a similar way to the bigger companies. He has established a website and says he has used his contacts in the industry to negotiate an "in principle" deal with a national fuel retailer.
He says the petrol company, which he won't as yet name, has promised to provide a discount of between 5p and 10p per litre of fuel to everyone who signs up to the website provided the number of registrations reaches a certain level.
Worth a try perhaps?
Monday, November 21, 2005
The iBone
Stephen Taylor has written a How To (via TUAW) which shows you how to hack together a bluetooth headset, a mobile phone and an iPod so that the audio from the iPod runs through the headset. Now, when a call comes through, he pauses the iPod and begins talking. An excellent hack, with intriguing possibilities...
The iBone
Oh, and for the Yanks in audience, the name presumably comes from the phrase "the dog and bone" which is Cockney rhyming slang for telephone...
 |
| CREDIT: Stephen Taylor (slarti@tpg.com.au) |
Oh, and for the Yanks in audience, the name presumably comes from the phrase "the dog and bone" which is Cockney rhyming slang for telephone...
AJAX, democracy and users
Paul Graham's latest essay is on the Web 2.0 meme, and despite a rocky start...
However Richard MacManus responds arguing that this is the point rest of us have been making for while, which you have to admit is a fair point, although it's good to see someone with Paul's profile getting on the band wagon with us little guys...
Following up a different thread, Ajaxian.com picks on the Paul's arguements about rapid devlepment,
Does "Web 2.0" mean anything? Till recently I thought it didn't, but the truth turns out to be more complicated. Originally, yes, it was meaningless. Now it seems to have acquired a meaning. And yet those who dislike the term are probably right, because if it means what I think it does, we don't need it. -- Paul Graham...in the end Paul decides that Web 2.0 is all about; Ajax, democracy, and not maltreating users. But what do these things have in common?
I didn't realize they had anything in common till recently, which is one of the reasons I disliked the term "Web 2.0" so much... Web 2.0 means using the web the way it's meant to be used. The "trends" we're seeing now are simply the inherent nature of the web emerging from under the broken models that got imposed on it during the Bubble. -- Paul GrahamWhich makes sense. The top down model, imposed almost overnight onto the web by the dot-com boom was an antithesis to anything that had gone before, and I've complained before about the evilness of this...
However Richard MacManus responds arguing that this is the point rest of us have been making for while, which you have to admit is a fair point, although it's good to see someone with Paul's profile getting on the band wagon with us little guys...
Following up a different thread, Ajaxian.com picks on the Paul's arguements about rapid devlepment,
...the new generation of software is being written way too fast for Microsoft even to channel it, let alone write their own in house. Their only hope now is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does. -- Paul Grahamand this is something that I definitely can sympathise with, it's doubful that Microsoft can control the emerging Web 2.0 phenomenon due to the rapid pace of development. It's almost sad seeing them trying, because they just don't seem to get it...
Tags: Web 2.0 Paul Graham
The search engine experiment
The Search Engine Experiment (via Ajaxian.com) is an interesting idea, it does parallel searches on the three major engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) and presents the top results to you as brands X, Y and Z. You then get to vote to say which of the anonymous brands actually returned the most relevant result. Without, of course, knowing which results belong to which engine...
The current results (updated every 15 minutes)
Update: More from Inside Google...
The current results (updated every 15 minutes)
Update: More from Inside Google...
Friday, November 18, 2005
Front Row update broken?
Apple has just released an update for FrontRow, the media software which ships with the new iMac G5. But the update seems slightly picky about which iMacs it's going to let itself be installed onto. Despite owning a nice shiny new iMac, the update doesn't show up in Software Update for me, and when I downloaded it manually it won't install.
I don't think so...
I'm running Mac OS X Server 10.4.3 on my iMac, and I'm wondering whether it's the revision number, or the fact that I'm running Server, that means that I can't install the update. Anyone got any ideas?
I don't think so...
I'm running Mac OS X Server 10.4.3 on my iMac, and I'm wondering whether it's the revision number, or the fact that I'm running Server, that means that I can't install the update. Anyone got any ideas?
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Building mobile AJAX with OS X
I didn't realise what the Opera Platform SDK was really all about until I read Russell Beattie's post on the release. I immediately dived into the documentation, and so long as you know a smattering of AJAX, Javascript, CSS, XHTML and XML this looks like the easiest way yet of developing high level mobile applications I've yet come across. Yes, although the bindings to the underlying mobile infrastructure aren't as mature, it's even easier to use that Python for Series 60, at least for applications with graphical interfaces...
The demo application included with the SDK shows exactly what can be done with these new technologies, and it looks impressive.
The Opera Mobile Platform in action...
Of course, being me, the first thing I tried to figure out how to develop under Mac OS X. It looks like the only tool from the Symbian SDK you need is the
...and since Opera provide a copy of their Platform-enabled browser for Mac OS X, so you can test your applications on your desktop machine before using bluetooth to deploy them onto your mobile device, it looks like cross-platform development under Mac OS X is pretty well supported.
Update: Opera are hosting a forum for discussion of their mobile platform. Not much content there yet, but it does look like a couple of people from the development team are reading it, so it could turn into a good resource.
Update: A lightning update for the Application Framework...
Update: More from Ajaxian.com on AJAX on a Pocket PC...
The demo application included with the SDK shows exactly what can be done with these new technologies, and it looks impressive.
The Opera Mobile Platform in action...
Of course, being me, the first thing I tried to figure out how to develop under Mac OS X. It looks like the only tool from the Symbian SDK you need is the
makesis application, which compiles just fine under Mac OS X, wget http://symbianos.org/~andreh/makesis-2.0.0.tar.gz
tar -xvzf makesis-2.0.0.tar.gz
cd makesis-2.0.0
make
make regtest...and since Opera provide a copy of their Platform-enabled browser for Mac OS X, so you can test your applications on your desktop machine before using bluetooth to deploy them onto your mobile device, it looks like cross-platform development under Mac OS X is pretty well supported.
Update: Opera are hosting a forum for discussion of their mobile platform. Not much content there yet, but it does look like a couple of people from the development team are reading it, so it could turn into a good resource.
Update: A lightning update for the Application Framework...
Update: More from Ajaxian.com on AJAX on a Pocket PC...
Apple shipping universal binaries
It looks like Apple may indeed be ramping up for a January rollout of Intel based hardware after all, as yesterdays release of J2SE 5.0 appears to be a Universal Binary package (via the Apple Blog). Interestingly, there doesn't appear to be any indication in the release notes this is the case, which I'm sure will fuel the rumour mill...
Update: Blogging the keynote live, looks like we're going to get our Intel Macs...
Update: Blogging the keynote live, looks like we're going to get our Intel Macs...
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Google Analytics
I'm usually more up to speed with this stuff, but I've been distracted lately, so I missed the launch of Google's new toy, Google Analytics, until Brad pointed it out to me...
I currently use StatCounter and MyBlogLog for tracking traffic, both on this site and on others I manage for work, along with FeedBurner to provide my RSS feed and the tracking statistics for the feed. It a good solution, and it works well for me, and the amount of information i have about you guys reading this is fairly scary...
But Analytics is supposed to be better [1, 2], although fairly resource heavy, downloading a 17k JavaScript with every page. Amongst others, Tim Bray is doing a limited rollout, and like many is having a few problems. I'm also experimenting with Analytics, and as you'd expect I'm experiencing a few teething problems with the service. We'll see how it goes...
Of course it's fairly simple to avoid being tracked (via Digg) by services like Analytics so for the truly paranoid out there, the message sort of has to be, "Don't Panic".
I currently use StatCounter and MyBlogLog for tracking traffic, both on this site and on others I manage for work, along with FeedBurner to provide my RSS feed and the tracking statistics for the feed. It a good solution, and it works well for me, and the amount of information i have about you guys reading this is fairly scary...
But Analytics is supposed to be better [1, 2], although fairly resource heavy, downloading a 17k JavaScript with every page. Amongst others, Tim Bray is doing a limited rollout, and like many is having a few problems. I'm also experimenting with Analytics, and as you'd expect I'm experiencing a few teething problems with the service. We'll see how it goes...
Of course it's fairly simple to avoid being tracked (via Digg) by services like Analytics so for the truly paranoid out there, the message sort of has to be, "Don't Panic".
Talk schedule for LPW 2005
Following up on the CFP, the provisional talk schedule for the London Perl Workshop 2005 has just been published. In the end I decided not to give a talk, mainly because I was too lazy to think of a really good idea, so it's okay, it's safe to sign up if you haven't already done so...
Update: All over now, and a good time was had by all!
Update: All over now, and a good time was had by all!
Mactel by Christmas?
Well, almost...
Apple Insider is confidently predicting new Intel Macs at Macworld in January. Other people are more sceptical, the Unofficial Apple Weblog is even holding a reader poll. Presumably because they're being honest about that fact that they, along with everyone else, haven't a clue what's going on, despite the rumours spreading almost out of control over the blogosphere. So, new Intel Macs by Christmas? Nope.. by January? Maybe, but I wouldn't lay money on it...
That said, Apple is on a marketing roll right now, and they probably don't want to rock the boat too much. Everyone is expecting a a big hardware rollout. I mean, it's Macworld, in San Francisco, with Steve Jobs giving a keynote. They have to give the press something. Right?
Update: Now the rumours are not only of Intel based Macs, but that and a price cut on top...
Update: The Unofficial Apple Weblog have an interesting angle on the rumours, they're arguing that the rumours of Intel based Macs are actually being spread by Apple themselves in an attempt to overcome the Osbourne Effect. It actually makes a twisted sort of logical sense in a conspiracy theory gone mad sort of way...
Update: Blogging the keynote live, looks like we're going to get our Intel Macs after all...
Apple Insider is confidently predicting new Intel Macs at Macworld in January. Other people are more sceptical, the Unofficial Apple Weblog is even holding a reader poll. Presumably because they're being honest about that fact that they, along with everyone else, haven't a clue what's going on, despite the rumours spreading almost out of control over the blogosphere. So, new Intel Macs by Christmas? Nope.. by January? Maybe, but I wouldn't lay money on it...
That said, Apple is on a marketing roll right now, and they probably don't want to rock the boat too much. Everyone is expecting a a big hardware rollout. I mean, it's Macworld, in San Francisco, with Steve Jobs giving a keynote. They have to give the press something. Right?
Update: Now the rumours are not only of Intel based Macs, but that and a price cut on top...
Update: The Unofficial Apple Weblog have an interesting angle on the rumours, they're arguing that the rumours of Intel based Macs are actually being spread by Apple themselves in an attempt to overcome the Osbourne Effect. It actually makes a twisted sort of logical sense in a conspiracy theory gone mad sort of way...
Update: Blogging the keynote live, looks like we're going to get our Intel Macs after all...
What is Web 2.0?
The guys at del.icio.us have used the power of Web 2.0 to find that Web 2.0 is actually all about aruging about what Web 2.0 means. Well, I for one am glad we sorted all that out...
Making license plates
I have half a dozen bad ideas a day, but every once in a while I get a good idea. An idea that could probably make me a bunch of money if I'd actually sat down and wrote some software. But when it comes down to it, I'm pretty lazy...
But some of the ideas are pretty fun, and I usually write some tinkertoy examples that proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that if I put in a whole bunch of effort I could probably make it all work, but as I mentioned before, I'm pretty lazy. I'm bad at making license plates,
However over the last couple of years Paul has started to think about start ups and venture capital. This almost certainly has nothing to do with making license plates, and everything to do with the fact that he'll now see lots of cool tinkertoy level ideas from smart people before anyone else. The fact that he might be able to persuade some people to make enough license plates so they can stop worrying about money as well is probably incidental. Paul is more interested in hackers than license plates,
What's the solution to this problem? I think they're usually called graduate students, although depressingly the further you progress as an academic, the less cool stuff you get to do, and the more administration and teaching ends up on your plate. The real problem with academia is that the system forces the smart people, the great hackers, to make license plates. That isn't really a good idea.
Fortunately for me, I'm still working on fun stuff [1, 2]. Although this means I probably haven't progressed very far in the academic food chain, it does mean I'm having a good time. So what happens when I stop having fun? I'll probably have to sit down and make enough license plates so I don't have to worry about that stuff again...
Update: Russell Beattie's thoughts [1, 2] on startups...
Update: Paul Graham on how to fund a startup. If you're thinking about going the startup route and you haven't read this article, then I think your're an idiot...
But some of the ideas are pretty fun, and I usually write some tinkertoy examples that proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that if I put in a whole bunch of effort I could probably make it all work, but as I mentioned before, I'm pretty lazy. I'm bad at making license plates,
With any job, there's some creative work that needs to be done - new technology to be developed or whatever. Everything else - ninety-nine percent of it - is making deals, raising capital, going to meetings, marketing and sales. We call that stuff making license plates... -- Neal Stephenson, in CryptonomiconAfter hearing him speak at OSCON 2004, Paul Graham became one of may favourite dispensors of wisdom. Paul is pretty good at making license plates, at least he's good enough that he made a bunch of money doing it, although it's interesting to see that like a lot of people who aren't really business men, once he made enough license plates to not have to worry about money every again, he stopped doing it. That probably tells me all I need to know, if I didn't already know enough, about making license plates...
However over the last couple of years Paul has started to think about start ups and venture capital. This almost certainly has nothing to do with making license plates, and everything to do with the fact that he'll now see lots of cool tinkertoy level ideas from smart people before anyone else. The fact that he might be able to persuade some people to make enough license plates so they can stop worrying about money as well is probably incidental. Paul is more interested in hackers than license plates,
If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects... -- Paul Graham, in Great HackersThe boring bit about being an academic is writing things up. After all, you've already done the research and proved whatever it was you wanted to figure out. In programming terms, you've scratched the itch already, but unlike programming the thing you did to scratch the itch isn't usually releasable as is, this is painful and usually leads to making license plates to justify your existence.
What's the solution to this problem? I think they're usually called graduate students, although depressingly the further you progress as an academic, the less cool stuff you get to do, and the more administration and teaching ends up on your plate. The real problem with academia is that the system forces the smart people, the great hackers, to make license plates. That isn't really a good idea.
Fortunately for me, I'm still working on fun stuff [1, 2]. Although this means I probably haven't progressed very far in the academic food chain, it does mean I'm having a good time. So what happens when I stop having fun? I'll probably have to sit down and make enough license plates so I don't have to worry about that stuff again...
Update: Russell Beattie's thoughts [1, 2] on startups...
Update: Paul Graham on how to fund a startup. If you're thinking about going the startup route and you haven't read this article, then I think your're an idiot...
g95, actually quite cool...
A colleague of mine has been porting some code from Linux on Intel to Mac OS X on Power PC and he ran into endian problems. The solution to this normally involves writing a whole bunch of tedious byte swapping code, but it appears that one of the things that the new(ish) g95 Fortran compiler does is allow you to configure endianness at runtime using an environment variable,
% setenv G95_ENDIAN bigThursday, November 10, 2005
Is Google Print fair use?
With Google Print finally live the debate about whether the service is fair use or actually infringes international copyright law has begun again in earnest...
Google Print goes live amidst controversy...
Forbes calls the initiative "Google's Stumble" (via the Unofficial Google Weblog), while the Motley Fool has an even more stark warning for Google's executives, claiming that the new Amazon Pages programme, where you pay-per-page will be the winning business model. Now that's a scary thought...
Update: So is Google Print really all about Google's book rental business?
Google Print goes live amidst controversy...
Forbes calls the initiative "Google's Stumble" (via the Unofficial Google Weblog), while the Motley Fool has an even more stark warning for Google's executives, claiming that the new Amazon Pages programme, where you pay-per-page will be the winning business model. Now that's a scary thought...
Update: So is Google Print really all about Google's book rental business?
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Slashdot loosing it?
Is Digg going to be the Web 2.0 replacement for Slashdot? Every geek has a special place in their heart for Slashdot, but despite this we all moan about how it has been going down hill over the last few years, and the moaning has grown quite stringent over the last few months.
But looking at the Alexa traffic rankings for digg.com vs. slashdot.org (via Waxy) in just under a year Digg has reached near-Slashdot traffic levels.
What's the difference? With Digg, users submit stories for review just like Slashdot, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do, and maybe that's all that was needed...
Update: I sort of agree with one of the remarks that turned up in the Digg comments on this story,
Update: Of course Digg is sitting in a precarious position at the moment, Slashdot is beloved, if aging. If someone esle, perhaps Newsvine, comes along with a better site and a better concept, they'll get marginalised. Whatever the outcome however, I think the battle for the Web 2.0 era Slashdot replacement is turely begun...
Update: Russell Beattie has his own opinion on Newsvine and Web 2.0. Russell started off as a mainstream journalist, so he has an interesting take on things...
Update: There is an interesing interview in Information Week with Jeff Bate, who co-founded Slashdot with Rob Malda. Ironically perhaps, I found the interview via Digg...
Update: Some really interesting numbers and graphs from Jason Kottke comparing the effect of a Digg link to one from Slashdot for a recent post to his blog.
But looking at the Alexa traffic rankings for digg.com vs. slashdot.org (via Waxy) in just under a year Digg has reached near-Slashdot traffic levels.
What's the difference? With Digg, users submit stories for review just like Slashdot, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do, and maybe that's all that was needed...
Update: I sort of agree with one of the remarks that turned up in the Digg comments on this story,
... I still prefer reading Slashdot's comments to Digg's comments on the same story - Digg may have the stories first, but Slashdot is where people intelligently discuss it.although the quality of the comments on Slashdot is more than variable, this guy has a point...
Update: Of course Digg is sitting in a precarious position at the moment, Slashdot is beloved, if aging. If someone esle, perhaps Newsvine, comes along with a better site and a better concept, they'll get marginalised. Whatever the outcome however, I think the battle for the Web 2.0 era Slashdot replacement is turely begun...
Update: Russell Beattie has his own opinion on Newsvine and Web 2.0. Russell started off as a mainstream journalist, so he has an interesting take on things...
Update: There is an interesing interview in Information Week with Jeff Bate, who co-founded Slashdot with Rob Malda. Ironically perhaps, I found the interview via Digg...
Update: Some really interesting numbers and graphs from Jason Kottke comparing the effect of a Digg link to one from Slashdot for a recent post to his blog.
Lift-off for Venus Express
Amongst others, both the BBC an MSNBC are reporting on the successful launch of ESA's Venus Express spacecraft from Baikonur at 03:33 UT this morning.
Unlike the American space programme the Russians seem to accept that failure is something that is sometimes going to happen when you launch spacecraft, the Americans almost seem to take it as a personal insult, and assume it has to be someone's fault. However there has been a string of launch failures for the Russian programme recently, not least the loss of Cosmos-1 and Cryosat, so it's good to see things going right for them again...
Update: Slashdot and The Register have more...
Update: The Venus Express post-launch summary from ESA.
 |
| CREDIT: ESA/Starsem |
| The launch of the Soyuz-Fregat rocket carrying Venus Express. |
Unlike the American space programme the Russians seem to accept that failure is something that is sometimes going to happen when you launch spacecraft, the Americans almost seem to take it as a personal insult, and assume it has to be someone's fault. However there has been a string of launch failures for the Russian programme recently, not least the loss of Cosmos-1 and Cryosat, so it's good to see things going right for them again...
Update: Slashdot and The Register have more...
Update: The Venus Express post-launch summary from ESA.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Ubiquitous bluetooth
Nerd Vittles (via Engadget) is currently running a "How To" series (Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3) on automatic call transfer by implementing proximity detection using Bluetooth and Asterisk, the open source PBX. Next up they're going to show us how to tie the system into the home automation server they built earlier using a Mac mini and the Indigo home control software. This is great stuff, and it's shocking how little money these guys are spending to achieve it...
Apple rumours
Apple rumours in the lead up to Macworld in January are two a penny, ranging from the merely unlikely to truly bizarre. Amidst the tumult Apple Matters asks, "What do you want out of Intel based Mac laptops?". It's a good question, even if asked in a tongue and cheek manner...
What would I like to see? A wide-screen, slim line, light weight, version of the 12" Powerbook with a multiple mouse button trackpad, since they've already done that with the Mighty Mouse.
More interestingly perhaps, since the Powerbooks already come with WiFi and Bluetooth. Why not GSM, or better yet, 3G connectivity as well? They could sell it as having a "connection everywhere", and it'd blow most current smart handsets out of the water. Apple could even think of it as a practice run for building a proper iPhone, rather than the horror of the Motorola ROKR.
Of course, we're all still waiting for our Bluetooth or WiFi enabled iPods, and a Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse, amongst other things...
Update: Blogging the January Macworld keynote live...
What would I like to see? A wide-screen, slim line, light weight, version of the 12" Powerbook with a multiple mouse button trackpad, since they've already done that with the Mighty Mouse.
More interestingly perhaps, since the Powerbooks already come with WiFi and Bluetooth. Why not GSM, or better yet, 3G connectivity as well? They could sell it as having a "connection everywhere", and it'd blow most current smart handsets out of the water. Apple could even think of it as a practice run for building a proper iPhone, rather than the horror of the Motorola ROKR.
Of course, we're all still waiting for our Bluetooth or WiFi enabled iPods, and a Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse, amongst other things...
Update: Blogging the January Macworld keynote live...
No more science?
Aardvark'd
For those of you following Project Aardvark (aka Frog Creek Copilot), Joel Spolsky talks about the documentary made about the project by Lerone Wilson. There aren't that many geek orientated documentaries, so I'm actually sort of looking forward to seeing this one...
From the trailer for "Aardvark'd: 12 weeks with geeks"...
Update: Marc Hedlund has posted a, fairly critical, review of the movie on the O'Reilly Radar site...
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Update: Marc Hedlund has posted a, fairly critical, review of the movie on the O'Reilly Radar site...
International man of mystery?
The Times is reporting on the unusual case of the man who has lived for 22 years as the Earl of Buckingham, a title which became extinct in 1687. In 1983 the man, whose real name is still not known, assumed the false identity of Christopher Edward, Earl of Buckingham. Curiously, despite his elaborate charade, he seems to have led an unremarkable life working as a IT security consultant for a Swiss insurance firm since 2001. The man faces jail today for fraudulently obtaining a passport, but still refuses to reveal his true identity.
Update: He was sent down for 21 months...
Update: He was sent down for 21 months...
My folder of shame
Matt Jones seems to have been the first to ask, "What's in your folder of shame?" Which may prompt you to ask, what's a folder of shame?
The things where you've just thought of the title, but written nothing to back it up? The momentary points of self-deluded genius that in the cold light of day you thought better of?This is one of those runaway memes that seem to have hit a nerve with many bloggers [1, 2, 3]. I guess it's because we all have a bunch of half completed posts sitting around, almost ready, if only we could find a spark of inspiration to finish them, or in a lot of cases, the time. So, what's currently in my drafts folder?
- Front Row first impressions
- Search as a commodity?
- Google Local goes mobile
- Long awaited laptop upgrades
- Counting Heads
- Those that don't know history
- Is the U.S. anti-science?
- Google, beyond evil?
- Broken feeds?
- Intelligent photo tagging
- Beattie on startups...
- In search of a better laptop
Tags: Blogging Folder of Shame
Browseback
I've just come across the first application which meant that I wished I was running Tiger on my Powerbook rather than Panther, it might finally be time to upgrade...
Browseback running on my iMac server
Browseback (via TUAW), which looks like it'll prove to be a lot more useful than Dashboard for day to day use, visually displays your browser history and is pretty much a killer application for someone who spends as much time tied into a browser as I do...
This sort of thing, along with exposé for tabbed browsing, is what Apple themselves should be doing with Safari. These are the sort of usability features that blow the socks off other browers, so why doesn't Safari have them?
Browseback running on my iMac server
Browseback (via TUAW), which looks like it'll prove to be a lot more useful than Dashboard for day to day use, visually displays your browser history and is pretty much a killer application for someone who spends as much time tied into a browser as I do...
This sort of thing, along with exposé for tabbed browsing, is what Apple themselves should be doing with Safari. These are the sort of usability features that blow the socks off other browers, so why doesn't Safari have them?
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Announcing, OSCON 2006...
It looks like O'Reilly have just announced the dates for OSCON 2006, which will be held in Portland in Oregon again next year. Leave a hole in your diary folks...
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