Steve's Rants 'n' Raves

Steve's Essential Mac OS X Software List

2009-05-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

So I'm three months into (nearly) full-time Mac ownership. What applications have I found essential and worth downloading? For my own memory (should I ever need to re-grab everything after a re-install or on a new Mac, and to help others) here's a brief rundown:

Nokia Multimedia Transfer - essential for integrating a Nokia smartphone into a Mac
Seashore - somewhat basic but useful image cropper/manipulator
KompoZer - not supported anymore and 1% buggy, but a terrific visual HTML/WYSIWYG editor
Cyberduck - the best FTP client for the Mac
Copernicus - small screen video grabber, useful for odd extractions from web animations
Audacity - the famous audio editor
Open Office - the equally famous full Office suite
Burn - additional disc burning functions beyond the built-in bits of Mac OS - still not sure if I need this, but it's got a great reputation
Audio Hijack Pro - ditto. Not found an actual use yet, but it seems like something I'll find just the job in hurry in the future
Disk Inventory X - super for finding where all my hard disk space has gone
OnyX - the Apple-recommended semi-official hard disk verification and clean-up utility - hasn't found a problem yet on my Mac, but you never know....
Smultron - a text editor that copes well with the huge text files used in my Trivopaedia
Syncplicity - a somewhat erratic but potentially life-saving 'back up everything as you go along' online utility
Wimpy FLV Player - as it sounds.... there's no native FLV playback in Mac OS X

A somewhat shockingly long list, I'd thought that Mac OS X would do most everything I needed (what with the superb iLife 09 suite etc), but it turns out that, just as under Windows, there were a whole raft of little addons I needed in order to get everything done!

I do hope this list helps someonem anyway.

Credit Crunch Ideas

2009-05-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

A.k.a. Things for you and your family to do that don't cost a lot of money!

A new idea for a mini-site, over at my 3-Lib server. I was fed up with the way weekends and school holidays were just turning into huge money-drains - hence the suggestions. I estimate that it costs roughly £1000 to get one child through the summer holidays in the UK, living by the world's 'rules'. Add 50% for two kids, double that for 3 children.

I aim to halve those numbers (at least). What do you think of the ideas and do you have any other suggestions?

The joy of evenings

2009-04-30T02:11:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the nicer weather and longer days (light-wise). Or maybe it's the fact that I've cut down on my evening commitments recently (including leaving Shed Music - though I wish them well for the future). Or maybe it's that my daughter is now old enough not to need constant attention all the time.

Either way, I seem to have evenings back. You know, that time of day when your main work is done and you can genuinely potter around in the garden, watch a little TV and generally relax.

As someone who is self-employed, it's sooo tempting to fill some of this time with trying to work (or looking for work) - memo to self: must try to stay away where possible. As a wise cousin once said "I work to live, not live to work".

$500 for the Apple logo?

2009-04-16T04:44:00.001-07:00

Microsoft's crazy-as-can-be CEO Steve Ballmer has been dissing Macs again, this time saying: "Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment—same piece of hardware—paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be"

As a recent Mac owner and long term (8 of them) PC veteran, I feel quite well qualified to be objective here. Having first borrowed a Macbook and then bought a Mac Mini, I've been staggered at the difference in build quality between the PCs I've owned (cheap plastic or badly finished metal) and the Apple hardware (rounded corners, terrific material choices, a feeling of real permanence). Take a £400 Windows laptop and a £800 Macbook and they're patently not the "same piece of hardware".

Of course, the question is: is the better hardware worth a virtual doubling in price? Possibly not, but then there's another factor to consider here, besides the logo(!) Obviously, one device runs Windows Vista and one runs Mac OS Leopard. If it was just down to the bare operating systems then there wouldn't be that much in it, but Leopard comes with iLife 09, including the best video editor in the world, plus the also-staggeringly-easy iWeb, iPhoto and Garage Band, a semi-pro audio studio. Look for similar apps for Windows and you're looking at a few hundred pounds extra, potentially. (And they still wouldn't be as good)

I reckon that add the extra build quality to the extra media software and you get the price difference. Factor in a more robust OS that's not (anywhere near as) prey to viruses and exploits and the buying decision isn't as clear cut as Steve Ballmer say it is.

Online backup might be the way forward, but it's not there yet

2009-04-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

Whether, as part of my job, messing around with Files on Ovi, or using Syncplicity to backup parts of my Mac, or listening to TWiT and hearing of their new sponsor, Carbonite, I keep running into the notion that the best way to back up your computer is online. The concept's not that new and these are only three of over a dozen possibilities, but I'd like to sound a note of caution and sanity.

You see, most of us are on asynchronous broadband links. ASDL, to use the full acronym. What this means is that home broadband is great for downloading stuff and not brilliant and uploading it. Upload speeds from the average connected home are or the order of 128kbps. This is just about OK for uploading short video clips to YouTube and fine for syncing documents up a web server, but it's utterly inadequate for being the basis of an all-in online backup solution.

The likes of Carbonite (and I'm not just picking on them, I've heard the same idea from others and from several should-know-better bloggers) say that you can just select folders of favourite pics, music and videos and they'll be spirited seamlessly up into the cloud, fully backed up.

Oh no, they won't. What'll happen is that you'll tag the aforementioned folders and they'll start uploading. And, three days later, they'll still be uploading. And in the meantime the saturation of all your upstream bandwidth has meant that everyone in your family has been just about locked out of doing anything at all online.

Don't be taken in by the hype unless you really do have a lightning fast non-ASDL connection - by all means back up your document folders and anything really important online, but stay clear of your media - that 80GB of JPGs, MP3s and MP4s is far, far, better backed up locally - to another (plug-in, removeable?) hard disk or similar.

Trust me.

Air Traffic wonder

2009-03-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

Ever imagined what the human race looks like from space? This is in that vein, it's an animation based on real data, showing all the commercial air flights in the world over a 24 hour period. Wow. Had you ever realised how many people were up in the air at the same time?

Peering inside the mind of a million phone geeks like me

2009-03-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

Gulp.

Of nudists, prudes and an attitude that's a century old

2009-02-27T01:45:00.000-08:00

Coverage of the story that German nude hikers were being arrested in Switzerland got me thinking. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not all for widespread nudity across the world - for three reasons:

99.9% of people look far better with their clothes on
Many people would get too cold for most of the year
All sorts of socially embarrassing situations would routinely crop up (to say the least!)

However, what sort of society are we when we're so opposed to the sight (shock horror) of the standard, imperfect but biologically whole human body that we're ready to seek and arrest those who choose to occasionally disrobe away from towns and other centres of population? The argument is usually given that children should be protected from the 'sight' - in my experience (giggling apart), children are usually a lot less offended by the sight of others' bodies than prudish adults.

I've never been to a nudist beach or resort and don't really want to - maybe the UK's just too cold! But I can't see anything offensive whatsoever in the fact that some people rather like shedding their inhibitions and clothes and simply enjoying their bodies as God intended.

Now THIS is what I want to fly

2009-01-23T12:23:00.000-08:00

The best TV theme tune EVER. The best replica radio controlled aircraft EVER. And possibly flown by the best R/C pilot EVER.

Quite superb and lovingly done. I'm in awe....

Despairing of the current generation

2009-01-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

Despite having 'green' issues thrust at them from all angles at school and at home, I have observed over and over again that the current generation of children simply don't seem to be aware of putting what they're taught into practice.

My own daughter's not too bad at turning off lights when leaving a room, turning off the TV, keeping outside doors closed, etc - but some of her friends are appalling. But some of her contemporaries get all of the above 'wrong'. On a small scale, the energy savings are trivial, of course, and I'm certainly not picking on any specific individual.

But multiply this up by 100s of millions of children across the Western world and then multiply this again by a decade or two of energy neglect and it's clear that, however bad an energy hole we're currently in, things are going to get a whole lot worse unless the current generation of children and teenagers start acting more reponsibly towards finite resources.

Of course, once the power starts getting cut off to their Playstations and TVs and once they hit adulthood and have to start actually paying their own heating bills...

Christmas on a Thursday really hits hard

2009-01-05T06:22:00.000-08:00

I was going to put in a much longer blog post about this, but Ewan Spence has beaten me to it.... See his version.

With Christmas on a Thursday, you've then got Boxing Day and the weekend and - crucially - New Year's Day also on a Thursday. Chances are that very little work gets done on the 29th, 30th and 31st Dec in any offices, assuming they're still open at all. And then it's Jan 1st and people recovering from their celebrations on Jan 2nd still and then it's the weekend.....

As Ewan points out, the country just lost almost 3 weeks of potential up-time through these compulsory celebrations.... BAH HUMBUG! 8-)

Celebrating Christmas Early - Pros and Cons!

2008-12-22T23:53:00.000-08:00

For personal reasons, we've ended up having our Christmas Day today, the 23rd December. Just for a change. Interestingly, it turns out that there are some pros and cons with this arrangement:

Pros:
1) The supermarkets are all OPEN all day, should anything be needed!
2) No deciding 'do we open presents before, or AFTER church'!
3) If a present is wrong, it can be opened, taken back and exchanged before the actual official Christmas Day...
4) It's less time for impatient offspring to wait between end of term and present-giving day!

Cons:
1) Bit of a sense of anti-climax on the 25th.
2) Have to rewrite most of the carols: "On the 23rd, the 23rd, .... etc."
3) Others might expect me to work....

OK, I got X Factor wrong last year. But here's my pick for this year!

2008-11-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I always go for the singers who can pull off the 'chill down your spine' big notes.... and they never win. But here goes...

I really hope Ruth Lorenzo wins X-Factor this year (2008), she is 'all woman' (as observed by Simon Cowel et al) and has a fabulously mature and powerful voice when she really lets rip.

Last year I was tipping Rhydian - who fell at the final hurdle. This time it's Ruth. See for yourself, here she is in action from last week's show:

Gaming - an alien and unappealing world

2008-11-03T23:20:00.001-08:00

Am I so unusual? I see the people of the world spending tens of hours each week and significant proportions of their income on console and desktop games, locking themselves into virtual worlds and out of the real world.

What, exactly, is the point of gaming? To become more unfit? To waste time that you could spend with family or work? To waste money that could be spent on reducing your household debt and avoiding the 'credit crunch'? To let your social skills wane? Compelling, it ain't.

Now, to be fair, I'm not talking about kids or even teenagers. They have time to spare. And probably pocket money as well. I'm talking here about grown-up adults who should know better. Life is short enough as it is without wasting it locked away in a darkened living room fighting virtual opponents.

Halo? World of Warcraft? From a grown-up's point of view, what a complete waste of time, energy, money and space.

Switch off those consoles and get out in the fresh air, get a job, talk to your family, get a hobby.... at the end of your life, will you really look back and think 'Gah, if only I'd spent more time on that game, I could have broken into the world top 1000!'....?

Nope, thought not.

Bus driving sadists

2008-10-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

So I get on a bus and sit down. At the next stop, a little old lady gets on, complete with doddery legs and zimme-style shopping trolley. She pays and starts to totter down the bus's aisle.

Does the driver stop and wait for her to find a seat before accelerating away? Of course not, he mashes the accelerator and the little old lady is literally thrown five feet horizontally, slamming her - fortunately - into a waiting seat.

We checked and she was OK, but I bet she was shaken. The company involved was Reading Buses and I've seen similar near-injuries almost every time I travel with them. RB, if you're reading this, please train your drivers better.

Or maybe next time, you'll be defending them in court...

The great HTML misconception

2008-10-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

As someone writing in a version of SGML back in 1988, I instantly recognised HTML when it appeared in the early 1990s and was able to be quite productive. The essential idea, that of separating content from formatting, was much the same. You wrote text, added structure in the form of headings, lists and tables and then it was up to whatever you sent it to, to render it in appropriate fonts, typefaces and so on. All very neat.

But bit by bit the language became corrupted, with Netscape starting the rot, as I recall. From the earliest 'font' tags to later table madness and then finally HTML being bastardised into a page layout tool by people who had spectacularly missed the point of a 'Mark up Language' in the first place.

The end result is HTML which is nigh on unreadable to the naked eye. And a job for a computer to render reliably, which is partly why web sites look different in different browsers, even now in 2008.

Thankfully, the common sense that is CSS came along to partially save the day, although most web pages are still uncomfortable hybrids of old HTML, new CSS and bodged DIV and table layout. In short, it's a royal mess.

Hopefully, CSS will win out in the end and pages will get purer again? Hopefully. In the meantime, I continue to hand-code my main web page (3-Lib) in raw HTML and the code loads like lightning on most desktop and mobile devices... Not that anyone appreciates it these days...

Why Linux was a consumer disaster ten years ago and why it's still a disaster

2008-10-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm bound to annoy a few Linux fans with this, but hey, I need to vent. After having numerous frustrations with Windows Vista (perhaps exacerbated by a failing hard disk, admittedly) and a frustrating lack of speed, I borrowed an Apple MacBook for a while. Very pretty, fabulous hardware and terrific for most ordinary people. Except that I'm not ordinary, wanting to manage lots of files in lots of projects, use FTP and advanced image editing and much more. I found ways to do everything on the MacBook but it wasn't all plain sailing. And Apple's hardware costs a fortune.

So I turned, out of curiosity, to the Asus Eee PC, picking a 701 up from eBay. Great little toy, I thought. Except that with Firefox, Skype and OpenOffice pre-installed, it was quite a bit more than a toy. Maybe Linux really can start to get more into people's homes, I thought....

The trouble is that as soon as something goes wrong, in my case a 'broken' pre-installed game and needing to install a FTP client, neither of which seemed too outrageous to need to get working, you're required to leave the cosy 'Easy desktop' and get down and dirty with the most obtuse and terse command lines I've ever used.

Bear in mind that I've used DOS, VAX/VMS, HP1000 and more computers that you've had hot dinners. So I don't mind the odd vaguely intuitive command line. But being told, on an obscure forum post that you need to type:

# dd if=all.img of=/dev/sdx
(modify sdx to suit)
# sudo apt-get -jvdg tel.deb

is just plain silly. At least DOS and VAX/VMS had proper English commands - you could abbreviate them if you wanted, but when explaining something you usually put in the full version, e.g. $print job1/exclude=contents/route_printer=LN04 - that sort of thing. You could see (and remember) what you were doing.

So Linux requiring users to occasionally dip into a command line interface (terminal) is not in itself a showstopper - but the sheer inaccessibility of the language/commands used certainly is.

I consider myself a bit of a geek and can muddle through on almost any computer. But the Eee game still doesn't run and I still haven't got FTP working on the Eee 701.

If I can't do it, the man in the High Street doesn't stand a chance. The Eee has sold well and my daughter loves it, for example. But there's no way in hell that a Linux-based device like this can replace a Windows PC or Mac for most households.

'Unknown error'?? But, but...

2008-10-03T02:11:00.000-07:00

Just got this in Apple's iTunes. How can the error be 'unknown' if the software knows to put the error dialog up and knows the error code? Can't it just look up what this code MEANS?

It's idiocies like this that make me despair of the computer world sometimes.....

Nope, McDonalds are actually shining lights....

2008-09-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

Well, it's all relative, anyway. Never mind corporate business practices, at least the big M deserve a bouquet for the way in which they treat children's food. Here's the current menu, snapped at my local restaurant:

Note the way grapes and cucumber sticks are now promoted as alternatives to chips (yuck) and note even more impressively the way the healthy fruit juices, smoothies and water are promoted far more heavily than the incredibly unhealthy 'small soft drinks'.

Good on you, McDonalds, you've deserved the custom of my family at least for the next year!

Hands of love

2008-09-02T07:00:00.001-07:00

Assuming you're following me, my family and my rants, if you have a spare minute this week, perhaps you could cast a vote for my video entry for Nokia's 'Hands' competition? Click on either link to go through, sign up to be able to vote (only takes a few seconds) and then vote for any videos you like hint, hint]...

Hands of love

Turning off security - utterly insane

2008-08-07T04:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a rant that should strike a few chords with regular geeks out there. The number of PC and Mac applications which state in their installation instructions: "Make sure you do the following before you install the software:
Turn off any virus-protection and security software that you may have installed on your computer." - This is from installing Final Cut Express on a MacBook by the way but I've seen plenty of other examples on a PC.

I can understand why the developers state this: it's because anti-virus and firewall software might possibly get in the way of the bludgeoning installer that the developer has bodged together. Look, let's get one thing straight: you should NEVER turn off your firewall or anti-virus, unless you REALLY know what you're doing. For example, my router has a built-in firewall and I know it's turned on, but most users wouldn't know this and it's a really bad idea telling them to 'make sure' to turn off their security just to install an application. An unprotected Windows desktop will be filled with malware worms within a minute or two of being online.

The right solution is for the developer to test their installers on systems with various security solutions installed and then work round any problems. Risking the safety of users is just lazy, lazy, lazy.

"We took the wrong step years ago"

2008-08-06T07:48:00.000-07:00

Or so sang Hawkwind in the 70s, along with plenty of others in the 'hippy' music business. And yes, I know it's wonderful to have hindsight and we're now almost 40 years down the line, but I do believe that it's not too late to save the environment, to (literally) save planet Earth.

There's no point in a long rant here, since you'll see appeals and reports from 'green' organisations almost every day in mainstream media. But I felt I wanted to comment on the latest little freebie from Nokia: we:offset, a Carbon footprint calculator, along with a facility to donate an appropriate amount to projects that aim to balance your footprint out. It's a worthy release, don't get me wrong, every little helps, and full credit to Nokia for good intentions.

But the trouble is that it is just that - little - and way too late in the grand scheme of things. We're talking here mainly about transport, i.e. the energy expended and Carbon footprint incurred by getting people from point A to point B. Am I alone in the world in reckoning that if we could just cut down on the amount people travel then the footprints would be smaller all round and we wouldn't need to feel guilty and then donate money to green projects.

I'm constantly appalled by how much time and energy is wasted by people travelling to work - yes, we can't all work from home [like I do], but imagine if home working was increased across the board by 10% or 20%? An awful lot of people sit in traffic jams for an hour to get to work, just to sit in front of a computer all day, or stand around chatting. Then back into the jams again to get home. Please, someone, anyone, tell me why these people couldn't do this from home on most days, armed with a PC or Mac and broadband?

And then when they finally get a holiday, do they stay at home? Nope. They sit in longer traffic jams to get to an airport and then they incur an even bigger Carbon footprint by flying - completely unnecessarily - to some Godforsaken part of the globe!

I'm all for the global village - but we can make it happen using modern communications. Let's cut down on use of planes and cars and feel good about ourselves and the planet at the same time.

iPhone/iPod Magic

2008-07-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

I have to confess that I'm not often amazed by something electronic - this is my line of work, after all. But I turned on my new Apple iPod Touch and idly started up Google Maps. The bottom left-icon looked like a 'My location' icon, but, knowing that this was an iPod Touch and thus had no telephony and no GPS, was actually quite surprised when it defaulted to a map of the UK. Heh. At least I didn't have to spin a globe to find my country.

I tapped the icon, expecting to be taken to the centre of London, or similar (it's our capital city etc). I was GOBSMACKED when I was zoomed in to the right spot on the right road, EXACTLY where I lived.

Magic. Had to be. How the ******** did the iPod Touch know where I lived? Had it somehow absorbed the information from iTunes, which in turn had somehow cribbed it from something else on my PC? I took the Touch outdoors and went for a walk. The My location crosshairs FOLLOWED ME. Arghh... HOW?

As far as I can tell, the Touch's (and the iPhone's) My location feature is not only tied to cell ID and (in the 3G version) GPS, but is ALSO (and, in the case of the Touch, the ONLY method) derived from a global database of home Wi-Fi networks, run by Skyhook - here's a 'How it works' page. Apparently it's self-healing, in that errors and additions are automatically handled by the system and the database updated.

So, by working out which Wi-Fi networks I was nearest and by triangulating from their signals, the Skyhook system was able to get me to within about 5 metres. Really impressive.

Of course, Skyhook's system falls down completely when out of suburbia, but still, it had me puzzled and bemused for half an hour and all credit to the creators and integrators.

You've just got to be wary once you see a '90 day' warranty...

2008-07-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I have been eyeing up a Pleo robotic dinosaur for ages - but our last purchase (the GUPI electronic guinea pig) went a bit wrong in that the 'pets' are quite unreliable and prone to sulking.

Now I read that the warranty on new Pleos is only 90 days! Given that most electronic equipment is warrantied for a year, a figure of 90 days (with a character reincarnation program!) surely points to the fact that the manufacturers themselves recognise that the device is so fragile and has so many moving parts that something's going to break and sooner rather than later.

I'd rather read of products where there's a 'lifetime warranty' (e.g. the stuff that Proporta produce/sell) - indicating a real confidence in the reliability of their product.

Yes, I know Pleo is incredibly intricate and complex - but still - 90 DAYS??

Why I hate... part 215: Anglian

2008-06-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

Oh yes. I made the mistake of ordering new roof fascias a few years ago from Anglian, a windows, doors and roofs company in the UK. The fascias were fine, and I didn't take any nonsense from the sales person, who turned out to also be a Christian and to have an ounce of integrity.

Unlike the current Anglian sales team. I've been getting call after call, sometimes 2 or 3 a week, trying to sell me things. On the last call I virtually screamed down the line "Stop calling me - if you call again, I'm going to complain to BT and report harrassment".

No doubt their installers are hard working people. But stay away, stay well away from Anglian's sales teams. Another Anglian anecdote from six months ago, before the current call spate - I'd been looking for companies to give me a quote for a front door. Anglian got someone to call me and he kept going on about he didn't want to come and visit when it was just me in the house - he insisted my wife was present. Obviously, because he didn't want me saying 'I'll see what my wife thinks and get back to you'. But I said that the decision to buy was 100% mine and that I had full confidence from my wife. Did it make any difference? Nope. He just kept on insisting that my wife had to be there and after several heated calls I'd had enough and cancelled the quote visit. And this was all before he'd even got to my house!

Bah. Anglian.