Everyone needs a laugh now and then.
The good folks at Coding Robots have a website that could add some humour to your day.
Called iwl.me (I Write Like) it purports to tell you who your “write like”, for exmaple, apparently:
It could be worse - I could write like Dan Brown.
Give it a go - it’s free, it’s a bit of fun, it’ll distract you from your Twitter feed.
]]>
First up, Craig Hockenberry (he of Iconfactory fame) has released a book about iPhone OS development. At this point you're probably saying "Another book about developing for the iPhone? Really we don't have enough?" The thing is that apart from the constant updating of the OS Apple does which always makes new books and new editions interesting, Hockenberry takes you through the whole development/submission/approval process to getting your app into Apples App Store. Of course there's lots of Xcode/Cocoa goodness as well but so far it's reading more like the business of app development - which is a win for me and I'm sure many other.
The best way to get it, IMHO, is via the O'Reilly's bundle which gets you the hard copy and the e-book. Just watch out for O'Reilly's discount mechanisms otherwise you could end up pay more than you need or want to.
]]> O'Reilly has become one of those publishers that have embraced the ebook experience and even made early attempts with the Safari Books Online offering, in which you subscribe to get access. Unfortunately they have a confusing array of options for buying books and if you're not careful you can end up paying more than you have to.For example if you want to get Hockenberry's "iPhone App Development: The Missing Manual" you have a range of choices. You can get the print version, the ebook version or a bundle with both the print and ebook versions (you can also get it through Safari Books Online but that's another issue).
Naturally if you get either the print or the ebook version by them selves you're paying US$39.99 and US$31.99 respectively, with a paltry $8.00 discount on the ebook ( vs. cutting down a tree and processing it into paper, shipping the paper, printing it, shipping the books to O'Reilly then shipping them to you ). If you get the bundle though, it's only $4 more than buying just the print version... hardly makes sense but that's their model.
So the bundle is only $43.99 and for the cost of a cup of coffee I get to read it on my iPad while the print version sits in my office library for others to refer to if they need to. Great I'll get that option. At this point like me you may have not paid much attention to the "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" promotional button.
Anyway if you head off to the checkout they give you a much bigger hint that you should take advantage of this offer. Directly under the shopping cart you get the big reminder that you could be saving more money!
So, being human, I give in to the impulse, and justify it by reminding myself of another iPhone OS centric book that I've been tracking called "iPhone 3D Programming - Developing Graphical Applications with OpenGL ES" by a fellow called Philip Rideout. Not surprisingly this book includes a bundle that gives you the ebook for only $4 as well (there's the doughnut to go with that coffee).
Having already made a bundle decision, you like me, would probably do it again. Here's where the problem starts - if you checkout now and use the recommended coupon code you will actually pay more than if you just brought the two bundles. That's right - don't use the promotion code OPC10 in this situation, instead just leave the code as BUNDLE which is automatically filled in for you.
Using the "OPC10" code actually ended up increasing the bundle prices, here's the comparison between BUNDLE and OPC10 for you to compare:
"BUNDLE" Order Summary: You saved $55.98 on this order
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"OPC10" Order Summary: You saved $36.00 on this order, the equivalent of 1 free item!
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So, if you decide to get 4 books (2 print + 2 ebook versions) use the "BUNDLE" code.
If you do manage to show some restraint and just get one extra book, don't use "BUNDLE" code. Wait what?
Yes sadly, for the situation where you have 3 books (a print + ebook bundle and 1 other), use the "OPC10" code to get the best pricing
"BUNDLE" Order Summary: You saved $27.99 on this order, the equivalent of 1 free item!
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"OPC10" Order Summary: You saved $34.65 on this order, the equivalent of 1 free item!
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While the $6.66 saving is not as dramatic as the $19.98 (nor is it a sign of Lucifer) it's gets me my coffee and doughnut back! For people that live a little closer to O'Reilly's wharehouse it could be the cost of shipping! Yay - free shipping, well kind of.
]]>
I’m a keyboard person, that is I prefer to use the keyboard as much as possible. It’s doesn’t matter that there are good metrics to show how much slower using a keyboard is, it’s just the way I’m wired.
So iTunes is a particular pain for me - as it doesn’t let me change the rating of a song from the keyboard - at least not fresh out of the box.
We’re going to change that.
]]> Step 1
First up we need to think about what keyboard shortcuts you want to assign to each of the commands in the ratings menu (shown to the right). You don’t wan’t to conflict with any shortcuts that already exist in the application and you want them to be easy to remember and finally you don’t want some difficult to execute combination.
From looking at iTunes, I can see that video size uses ⌘0 - ⌘3 but for me that’s not an issue as I tend to watch iTunes video on a TV or iPhone not my Mac. (If it really worries you, you can use ⇧⌘0 - ⇧⌘5 to change the rating - where ⇧ is the Shift key.)
For this exercise I’m going to use the following keyboard shortcuts -
I’ll also setup a keyboard shortcut for increasing and decreasing the current rating of a song, for that I’ll use:
At this point the observant will have noted that there is no menu item to increase/decrease rating - we’ll fix this with a few very simple AppleScripts.
Most people tend to forget (or just don’t realise) that Mac OS X allows you to set “Keyboard Shortcuts” for any menu item through the Keyboard System Preferences panel. All you need are the application name (iTunes), the menu item names (shown above) and what shortcut you want to assign to each menu item.
Find and open the Keyboard preferences and lets get straight into it.
Under the Keyboard tab, make sure the “Show Keyboard & Character Viewer in menu bar” preference is ticked, like the screenshot below.
Once you’ve done that you’ll want to click on the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab and then in the source list you will need to click on the last entry “Application Shortcuts”
Click the “+” button to add a new keyboard shortcut. This will bring up a panel that allows you to select the application, enter a menu title and specify the keyboard shortcut you want to assign. First step select iTunes from the application list - if you don’t the Shortcut will be applied to all applications.
The first iTunes shortcut we’ll set up is for “None” and we’ll use the easy to remember shortcut ⌘0
Type “None” into the menu title field, making sure it’s exactly the same as the entry in your iTunes menu, then advance to the keyboard shortcut field and set the shortcut by typing ⌘0 on your keyboard.
Finally click the Add button, and you’ve done the first shortcut.
This process seems easy doesn’t it, and it is, as long as you can type the correct menu name into the interface. Setting shortcuts for rating 1 to 5 stars is not so easy, for starters most of us don’t have a ★ key on our keyboards. This is where the Character Viewer comes in very handy, in your menu bar, on the right-hand side you will find the Character menu (it looks like a little box with an * inside it. Click on that to reveal the menu, like this one:
Select the Character Viewer to get a window that floats above everything and looks like this:
If your Character Viewer doesn’t look like this you may have to select “Roman” from the View menu in the top left corner of the Characters window. Once you’ve got the “Roman” view select the ★ Stars/Asterisks entry in the source list on the left (as shown in the screenshot). The very first star you see should be the “BLACK STAR” and it should be already selected.
Now to create the shortcuts for ratings 1 to 5. It’s really quite simple, as with Step 4 we click the “+” button to add a new keyboard shortcut. If you’ve done each step correctly so far iTunes will still be the selected application, so all we have to do is enter the name and set the key combination.
With your Character Viewer window still open click in the text box for the menu title and then double click on the ★ glyph. This will insert the glyph into the menu title. Next set the keyboard shortcut field to ⌘1 as shown in the screenshot. Then click the Add button.
Repeat Step 6 increasing the number of ★ glyphs and setting the appropriate shortcut keys, until you’ve created the shortcut for a 5 ★ rating, as shown below.
The final two keyboard shortcuts require a bit of AppleScript, - don’t panic it’s easy. As mentioned previously iTunes doesn’t have menu items to increase or decrease a rating, rather you directly set the value you want.
We’re going to create two simple scripts and make them appear in the iTunes script menu (it’s the one to the left of the Help menu that looks like a scroll.)
The scripts that I’m using below are pretty simple, first up they get the current selection from iTunes. In iTunes the current selection is not necessarily the currently playing/paused track.
If the selection isn’t empty, we store the selected tracks in sel and then work through each item in the selection. Depending on the script we either add or subtract 20 from the rating value. Why 20? Well iTunes actually uses a 0 to 100 range for ratings and each star is 20 points on the scale. (For bonus fun see what happens with increments of 10). NB. this script works on the selection, so if you have multiple items selected it will adjust all of them.
Open Script Editor and paste in this:
tell application "iTunes"
if selection is not {} then
set sel to selection
repeat with tTrack in sel
set orig_Rating to the rating of tTrack
set tName to the name of tTrack
set new_Rating to orig_Rating - 20
if new_Rating < 0 then
set new_Rating to 0
end if
set rating of tTrack to new_Rating
end repeat
end if
end tell
Save the script into
/Users/yourname/Library/iTunes/Scripts/with a suitable name - I used "Rating Decrease by 1" and for the next I used "Rating Increase by 1". See what I did there? Using the same word "Rating" at the beginning of each script means that it will sort them adjacent to each other in the Script menu.
tell application "iTunes"
if selection is not {} then
set sel to selection
repeat with tTrack in sel
set orig_Rating to the rating of tTrack
set tName to the name of tTrack
set new_Rating to orig_Rating + 20
if new_Rating > 100 then
set new_Rating to 100
end if
set rating of tTrack to new_Rating
end repeat
end if
end tell
Repeat those steps for Script #2 saving it as “Rating Increase by 1” into the same folder. Once you’ve done that if you check your Script menu in iTunes it will look something like this:
Of course, you will be missing the keyboard shortcuts.
Go back to the Keyboard Shortcut preferences tab and add two more entries that should look like this:
If you need to refer back to Step 4.
That’s it you’re done.
Open iTunes and enjoy the keyboard goodness.
]]>If you’re a fan of photography and cars may I suggest for your viewing “Curves of Steel”
That’s all.
]]>
Like millions of other people around the world I plugged in my iPhone toady and noticed that several apps were updated, and like millions of other I clicked on the “Update All” button. Amongst these was Stanza probably one of the better eBook readers for the iPhone, at least for pure ePub reading; I’m told the Kindle app is too bad either but I like my book DRM free - who knows what I’ll be reading on next year or next month for that matter.
As a creature of habit I read the update notes as the apps are downloading and syncing to my iPhone - unfortunately today’s update for Stanza was to remove a feature at the request of dear old Apple… which I read after it had downloaded and synced to my iPhone.
]]> Really?
Yes really, click on the thumbnail above to see the release notes for Stanza 2.1 - apparently Apple has requested that sharing of ebooks by USB be removed.
Why? Is this feature going to be a problem in the iPad enabled future where apps can access a shared or common document sandbox? Does it mean something about Apples forthcoming iBook app for the iPad? Or is it all about Apple’s Valentines Day promotions?
Who knows… I’m sure the speculation will run wild.
Meanwhile not one newspaper publisher has come up with an iPad/iPhone offering that I’d be willing to pay for.
]]>
It’s Sunday night Australian time and still the world rages and swirls with the crys of “tech pundits”, “tech personalities” and “tech investment analysts” praising or bemoaning the iPad.
No surprise, but very few of them seem to get it, Gruber is obviously in the get it camp and he’s tracking the who get’s it crowd and who doesn’t (probably for future “Claim Chowder”). Somewhat sadder though, is the debate over the iPad’s lack of support for the already in decline Flash, the best two articles to date on this are Scobel and Gruber.
All of that doesn’t really matter though. Not to my Mum (or Brent Simmons “Mom”); nor to my clients that stopped installing Flash 2 years ago, nor to the 99.98% of the world that doesn’t want to hack every gadget they use.
I don’t think everyone sees what I see either.
]]> Step back and look…Pull back for a second and forget that it’s an Apple product (that you immediately want/hate). Have a look at it from the point of view of the mother with a flat-out family life, or the working stiff that wants desperately to keep up with friends and family without fighting with his computer or maybe read up on something that affects his working life.
How about that family member that keeps calling you for tech support? The lady that runs that small business on the corner and just wants to place a stock order online or do some online banking or approve an advertising brochure that’s been emailed to her.
Honestly, in the 21st Century why should you have to fire up a full blown computer to do this? Sure, I can hear the voices saying “I do this on my iPhone already” - but seriously that big screen is just going to be easier on the eyes (and the eye strain).
Without a doubt a highly usable, intuitive, portable computing device that lets you consume and create content.
One of the big shocks was the starting price, at the low end US$399 only US$10 more than a mono-chrome ebook reader of the same size (although cheaper second hand Kindle’s are now turning up).
The nice thing about the iPad is that lets users share files amongst apps and storage locations (like your desktop). So, why not your Dropbox account or even better all that unused disk space you have on MobileMe - and you know all of that stuff is nicely backed up.
The basic tools for working are a word processing/page layout program, a spreadsheet and for the exhibitionists amongst us a presentation program. They create files, which with the 3.2 OS you can now share back and forth with your desktop versions of iWork.
Of course it’s much easier with a keyboard, that’s probably why you can use one with the iPad.
Have you seen how easy and intuitive and just plain fun the iWorks apps are on an iPad? Why not? Go watch the video.
As the better half said, “Can you imagine, people will get paid to use the iPad for work!”
Of course being able to create, save and backup your work is great. Add a little cloud based sharing for collaborative work and you’ve addressed a big chunk of the work environment that most people use. iWork.com of course adds that collaborative feature - and like any good cloud based service it’s in “Beta” for a long time.
Of course, everyone has different interests and has different applications they need to use. With your iPhone many people have gotten used to the concept of downloading from the App Store and syncing to their iTunes account. Gone are the disks and shelves of boxes, gone is the need to hunt around for the application CD’s to re-install, in fact you don’t even need a Mac with iTunes unless you want to erase or restore you iPhone.
The iPad will have all of these benefits.
One important thing the iPad should be able to do that the iPhone 3.1 Apps can’t currently do is store data in a common user space and that should be possible to automatically backup to could services.
MobileMe is one of those polarising services that Apple offers, some people hate it, some love it. We fall into the later category, it works for us. Our Mail, Contacts and Calendars are all synched from our iPhones to MobileMe, and from our Mac’s to MobileMe. Notice it’s not iPhone -> Mac -> MobileMe.
Other handy features of MobileMe? Web Slideshows, Find My iPhone, File Sharing, Calendar Sharing.
Can you believe it will be any different for the iPad?
An interesting and discussed aspect of the iPad, is that it allows you to load your photos directly from the memory card or camera on to the iPad’s storage. It’s only a short step from there to cloud storage on MobileMe or Dropbox or any similar service for your photo’s and eventually videos.
That leaves your music and video library - wouldn’t it be great if you could buy you music/movies/TV shows from iTunes and keep them in the iTunes cloud until you wanted to play them? Sure, bandwidth isn’t up to the job everywhere you go, you’d need a good streaming technology too, something like the Lala service.
Sure, there are a few connections/features not explicitly laid out by Apple yet, but if Apple don’t do it someone will, maybe even the champion of all things cloud - Google - will do it. Google have practically done it already with their web based services, imagine if they made nice swipey, touchy versions that ran on the iPad and gave them away for free?
Ok, that maybe a stretch to far but then I use Google Earth, SketchUp and Gmail and lots of other free Google services even some very nice iPhone apps. I’m told people love Picasso as well so how big a stretch is it?
Apple’s iPad and ecosystem have the potential to do away with the traditional computer, to bring the cloud into everyday use for Joe & Josephine Normal. Imagine not having to worry about your normal (non-technical, non-geeky) family members data, mail services and back-ups? Imagine not worrying about them loosing all their honeymoon photo’s or music collection?
Imagine not having to worry about your non-technical staff’s data? Imagine having a locked down computing platform that your staff like using and don’t have to fight with.
Sounds good to me, lets hope shall we?
]]>I should know. now Nothing infuriates an agnostic/atheist than a person that denies the facts of the world while sitting there praising the wonders of their new Tom Tom software for their iPhone. (An aside Tom Tom is nice software and its Aussie version has been nicely updated). It’s like there’s a disconnect between their belief system and the fact that the same science that makes their gadgets work, what, oh yea back to the Apps for Agnostics & Atheist thing.
]]> Creationist Claims Index
Most people get annoyed by the creationist in our midst, you know the sort, the ones that date the age of the earth by the generations of people discussed in the Bible. Sure most mainstream religions don’t think the planet is only 6000 years old (after all, the RC’s even think alien life is possible), but there still those literalist out there and the CCI is a good resource. The problem until now has been the fact that you had either jump on the web to get you come backs or carry around a printed tomb - not anymore - now your loved Agnostic/Atheist can whip out their iPhone and rapid fire some answers back at that annoying creationist. (You don’t know how many times I’ve had to correct the Freudian typing of cretin rather than creationist.)
Do yourself a favour and spend that $0.99, if nothing else the peace and quite you get while your significant other browses through it will be worth it.
Molecules is one of those surprising FREE tools that let you see in interactive 3D, right on your iPhone the structure of some amazing molecular structures. Best of all, it’s an open ended source of amazement as you can download new models from the RCSB Protein Data Bank and they’re adding stuff all the time!
Why have I put this in the list? Well because an amazing amount of people just have no idea how much we know about the world on a molecular level and a picture is worth at least a thousand words and because it’s just cool, OK?
Another free app, Google Mobile gets a look in here because it’s just the quickest way to do a search for a fact, and we all know how your favourite Agnostic/Atheist likes to get his facts out. Yes - you can Google from Safari but I like the 1 tap to open, hold it up to my head and speak approach. The best bit is the accuracy of the voice recognition, since it was first launched it’s improved dramatically.
If your Agnostic/Atheist is not the speak their search out loud type, then the quick access to the dynamic search box is still faster than opening Safari.
Rate Them!
Don’t forget people if you like something, spend a few seconds on the iTunes App Store and rate them - this way they rise up the rankings and benefit the developer and maybe it’ll be enough for them to put more effort into the next version.
]]>
For the organised (or unorganised) packrat, Yojimbo is just one of those tools that you have and 99% of the time it’s in the background, ie. I just throw stuff into it and know it’s there safely in the background where I may need it, one day, like say, tax time.
Sometime ago I was working on a project that required me to store PDF’s in a backend database, but, during the import I needed to extract some key meta data from the file and present it in a sidebar info panel about the document being worked on.
Anyway things went well - we used a variety of sample PDF’s in our testing, everything from client provided Windows MS Office PDFs, Acrobat PDFs and a few from Mac OS X’s “Print PDF” function. Of course on day 1 of the update going on trial we got a user report that the system has thrown up an error and wouldn’t import a PDF.
Well Yojimbo just did the same thing to me, and it turned out to be the same sort of problem.
]]> Long and the short of it was the client provided file (which they hadn’t provided previously) that was encoded by a web library and it was different from every other PDF we’d encountered. After a few days fiddling around we’d made a work around for the differences raised by different encoders (ClibPDF Library in that case). Don’t get me wrong, the library wasn’t the issue it was simply that we hadn’t allowed for the variations different encoders could present us.Back to Yojimbo, Where possible we get our bills by email PDF and I’ve been throwing them into Yojimbo. Unfortunately one the providers has recently changed their encoding library and now Yojimbo throws up this error dialog:
Opening the file in Preview, didn’t give any errors and a “Get Info” shows the encoder is “[ClibPDF Library 2.02-r1-2] 220e Solaris SunCC”. Doing a quick “Save As…” solves the problem for Yojimbo. A nice extra is that meta data like Title:, Author:, Description: and Keywords: are preserved by Preview.
So if Yojimbo, throws up the same/similar error try opening the file in something you know works, like Preview, and do a simple “Save As…”
Hope this saves you some time!
]]>In our default mode, we look at the world as if it’s always going to turn out the way we expect and some of us believe everything we hear. Then we act surprised when it doesn’t meet our expectations. After all, how many of you constantly vote for the same politically party time and time again even when they don’t meet your expectations?
]]> When we build a new service or a piece of software for public consumption I have this rule of not talking about it. Generally I try to not talk about anything people could perceive as a promise. Believe it or not, as a business or manager, anything you say that vaguely resembles a commitment to do something can and probably will be taken as a promise by someone.For example, if you’re running out of office space and things are getting crowded - the first response most Managers and Directors I’ve dealt with will have is start talking about “when we move to the new office” like it’s a done deal.
Similarly whether it’s new office space or a new software version or a completely new product they start describing it in vague, wonderful sounding terms. Like “miles of room”, “more comprehensive” or “feature rich”. It’s strange, but these spruikers of all things wonderful don’t seem to understand that their staff or clients see the comments they make as commitments to deliver.
It’s possible that these people in authority simply don’t understand that to a staff member their position in the organisation adds weight to everything they say. Let me say that another way - if you are “in charge” of a company you are in charge of the livelihood of all your staff and everything you say is filtered through that perception.
Going back to our “new office space” example this means that even though you’re talking about a vague and undefined point in the future about something you’re sort of thinking about doing, what your staff are hearing is quite different. They are hearing their boss talk about a future event that he’s doing the planning on and is actively working on, to solve the problem of the crowded office space.
This will at first make your staff feel better and complaints will drop off in the short term, after a while though you will notice things like key staff moving on to new companies or worse staff issues that affect the whole business operation.
In previous lives I worked with 2 different public companies, in one the major shareholder/Managing Director over the space of the 3 years I was there addressed any complaints by saying they would be “fixed in the new workshop”. Shortly prior to my leaving he asked me to look at facility space in the area, which was a great surprise to me as like most of the staff I was under the impression the business already owned the location of the new workshop.
The other company was the largest in it’s area at the time in Australia, after being with them for a few months the Chairman came into the office one day and said that he’d been looking at properties for a new facility and asked us if we’d be interested in working on the fit-out project. A week later he swung by and dropped off the keys to the massive new building he’d brought and told us to get to work.
Granted this wasn’t an ideal approach either (it would have been nice to have some heads up etc) as we hard some hard and fast deadlines to get the fit-out done by - due to expiring property leases. The net affect though was positive and many good people worked very hard over those months to make the new facility a reality. They worked longer and harder than they normally would because they could see how they would directly benefit from the project.
While it was a rush and hectic, it was also exhilarating and immensely satisfying to complete. Of these two companies I know which one I enjoyed working with the most.
I run a small company with the help of a few other people. As you can imagine we work well because we have clear understanding of our goals for the business, client projects and specific products. This is why we manage messages about what we offer and the expectations for products very closely.
I was brought up with the rule never promise anything you’re not going to deliver, don’t be vague about what you’re saying, be precise so people can’t read their own wishes into things you say.
If you speak in general and vague terms about a product or a service you will end up with clients that have expectations that match their desires and needs.
That’s why we don’t talk about a product until it’s goals and feature set are defined, we don’t even put a feature on the list until we know how we’re going to implement it. We don’t even talk about the potential features, generally we listen to what people are saying about their needs and see if we can answer that need.
Our first publicly available Joomla component, EasyTable, is exactly what it’s designed to be, a simple to use component that imports CSV files for display in the front end of Joomla websites. EasyTable FC9 will hopefully be feature complete and will, once any bugs have been squashed, form the release version of EasyTable 1.0
We manage a range of clients, from individuals to Local Government sized operations all with Joomla websites, some have 1 website while others have more than 20 websites. From our experience with them, 90% of the website owners have enough problems using the article editor and don’t want or need an over complicated interface - the original product goals for EasyTable reflect this.
Listening to users and remembering the goals for EasyTable, that’s how the feature list for EasyTable Pro came about. From the user forums, email conversations and feedback, from not trying to cram more features into an existing product that 90% of it’s users will never use.
I think successful small companies and indie developers work this way, otherwise I doubt they would be successful.
]]>In addition we’ve replaced the temporary See People website with a new Joomla based one that has an integrated user forum (we’re using PHPBB3) and file download area (using RokDownloads).
The See People Software website is still young so if you notice anything odd feel free to ping us and we’ll try and get it fixed.
]]>Given the vintage of this component it only supports Joomla 1.5.14 and later, so sorry no 1.0/Mambo support (and no plans to add it). I don’t have the time/resources to test it out on earlier version of J1.5, but feel free to try it out and report your results in the forums.
At this point I can only tell you that if enough people like and support EasyTable we’ll bring it to Joomla 1.6 - so here’s hoping.
A simple and familiar layout for the EasyTable manager leverages your existing familiarity with Joomla administration allowing you to create, delete, publish (and unpublish) and of course edit tables. The EasyTable manager also leverages Joomla’s check-in/check-out framework to ensure that only one user can edit an EasyTable table at a time.
EasyTable despite it’s singular name supports multiple tables and even allows you to link a sub-table to a master table through the values of a key field.
The number of tables and the amount of data in each table is only limited by your server limits as EasyTable stores each table in it’s own database table.
Each CSV file you upload creates a new native table in the database your Joomla website uses. As such, searching and record retrieval is only limited by the capacity of your database server. The small amount of meta data and any options you specify for column data do not impact on your website thanks to the paginated presentation of records - no matter how many are in your tables.
1.5.14 ( although it may work on previous versions of Joomla 1.5 { 1.5.10 does have a known issue with packages that we haven't addressed at this time } )
MySQL 5.0+ ( FC1 has run on the last version of MySQL 4.1 so it should work )
5.0+ ( it's nearly 2010 people - you'll just have to live with it ).
I had hoped to cover off the range of table features available in EasyTable’s editing screen but I’ve run out of time, so instead I’ll leave you with this annotated screen shot and write up the rest in another post when I get back from Joomla Day.
Of course something significant must be happening to generate another post and as the title of this post indicates it's Snow Leopard. As you're probably already aware Snow Leopard is due to hit tomorrow - Friday 28th August 2009, up to a month before most developers expected it. Snow Leopard is expected to be a significant polishing exercise for the OS and the user experience - so it means there will be software that doesn't work in Snow Leopard. To avoid the problems many people experienced upgrading to Leopard I thought I'd better recount my efforts todate.
Now for most major applications the transition should be relatively painless especially if they're up-to-date. However, it wasn't the front of screen applications that brought down users upgrading to Leopard nearly 2 years ago. It was a system extensions/hack that really made a mess of things for some people.
]]> To start off the most publicised problem people experienced with the release of Leopard occurred when they tried to install over a system that had Unsanity's APE installed. This problem was compounded by the fact that many people had the Logitech Control Centre installed which "secretly" installed APE - bad form really - as covered on DaringFireball.There were two ways to avoid this 1) not have APE installed or 2) do a clean install of Leopard using "Archive and Install". Of course if APE was up-to-date the problem wouldn't have occurred - which is why secretly installing and notupdating a system hack is a bad thing.
Of course the logical thing to do prior to installing Snow Leopard would be to check your system extensions compatibility. Given how much trouble a system hack gave last time - I decided to check the non standard System Preferences installed on my Mac's. Some companies will be proactive and provide a compatibility page for you to quickly check - for example Unsanity. Of course some compatibility pages make no mention of Snow Leopard at all and haven't been updated for a while.
Other's you may have to search for, here's ones I've found during my preparation.
Perian (currently 1.1.4 -> 1.2 for full Snow Leopard compatibility)
[From cocoaforge • View topic - What do I have to do to get ready for Snow Leopard?]
Perian is partially compatible, at least that's the impression I get from reading the forums however 1.2 will apparently bring full compatibility, and they're aiming to get it out Friday.
Growl (currently 1.1.6 -> 1.2 for full Snow Leopard compatibility)
"Is Growl compatible with Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard?
Growl: Growl itself should work just fine.
[From Growl - Frequently Asked Questions]
Growl preference pane: Somewhat. It works, but you need to restart System Preferences into 32-bit mode.
GrowlMail: No.
Growl framework (for developers): It should work, but it's 32-bit only."
Flip4Mac WMV (currently 2.2.3.7 -> 2.3.0.7 for full Snow Leopard compatibility)
"Flip4Mac WMV Support"
[From Telestream Flip4Mac - Support Center]
Flip4Mac 2.2.3.7 is currently not completely compatible but they're working on it - sign up for the Beta of 2.3.0.7 if you like. The Beta also brings fixes for the issues with Safari 4's updated plug-in API.
MacFUSE (currently 2.0.3.2 -> 2.1.5 Beta is experimental Snow Leopard compatibility)
MacFUSE is used by a few different products including some that offer vm services for running other OS's - that's why I've got it.
At this point in time the FAQ doesn't currently have any information on Snow Leopard compatibility, and the change log only a a few reference back in December 2008 that are marked as [Experimental] or [Highly Experimental].
- "Feature: 64-Bit Support. The entire MacFUSE software stack: the kernel extension, the MacFUSE user-space C library, and the Objective-C framework now also come in 64-bit versions. You must be running Leopard or above for this. Naturally, you also need 64-bit hardware to make use of these capabilities. [Experimental]
[From FAQ - macfuse - Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers) - Project Hosting on Google Code]
- Feature: Support for Snow Leopard. You can now install and use MacFUSE on the latest Snow Leopard developer seed. [Highly Experimental]"
You can get the 2.1.5 Beta by enabling the "Show Beta Versions" in the MacFUSE System Preference and proceeding from there, however this may not work.
At this writing the thread on the MacFUSE forum about "Snow Leopard status" is basically unanswered.
MediaLink (currently 1.72 -> Snow Leopard status unkown)
"WHAT'S NEW IN V1.7?
[From Nullriver Software : Products : MediaLink]
Fixes major video streaming bug when using a high speed connection (Caused random errors during streaming)
Adds automatic garbage collection on Mac OS X 10.5 or later"
Wacom Drivers 6.1.1-2
"This driver supports beta versions of OS X v.10.6 in 32-bit emulation."
[From wacom]
Unfortunately there is no other information for this product so like me you will just have to suck it and see.
Xmarks 1.2.2 (honestly, folks just un-install this)
"Honestly, we've not yet had a chance to test against Snow Leopard, so Xmarks for Safari isn't yet guaranteed to work there."
[From Snow Leopard Error]
Given that it's stopped syncing for many users of Safari months ago you may as well pull this one until they get around to it.
In the meantime for more information on upgrading and the compatibility of user applications may I recommend:
I'm sure a lot more will appear over the next few days.
]]>Recently I had to re-install my CS4 upgrade and hit a strange error, opening the "Setup" application resulted in the normal request for Authentication, as shown below. The problem is, nothing else happened - the dialog box went away and literally nothing happened.
]]> Naturally I tried again by opening the "Setup" application and again it asked for me to authenticate, and again it silently failed. After a fruitless search on the Adobe websites and Google I decided to dig around and find out what was actually happening.
My first stop when things are not working right is always the Console, and yet again it gave me the answer.
If you open Console and see a line like this being dumped in to the logs every few tenths of a second you know somethings not right.
23/04/09 16:22:55 PM authorizationhost[58799] Failed to authenticate user bob (tDirStatus: -14090). 23/04/09 16:22:55 PM authorizationhost[58799] Failed to authenticate user bob (tDirStatus: -14090). 23/04/09 16:22:55 PM authorizationhost[58799] Failed to authenticate user bob (tDirStatus: -14090). 23/04/09 16:22:56 PM authorizationhost[58799] Failed to authenticate user bob (tDirStatus: -14090). 23/04/09 16:22:56 PM authorizationhost[58799] Failed to authenticate user bob (tDirStatus: -14090).
The most annoying part of the experience is the complete and total failure by Adobe's Setup application to neither notify me about the error or to time out (the first time I authenticated I went and had a coffee before I came back to check on it). The problem may have been a result of something else going wrong in my Mac but surely an installer that is custom built should at least do as good a job as the OS's supplied Package Manger? Shouldn't it? Otherwise why build it?
Not wanting to waste any more time, on this silent failure I took the quick and simple way first - I rebooted the Mac Pro.
Upon restart the CS4 upgrade installed without a hitch. I hope this saves someone a few minutes somewhere.
Till next time - watch out for those silent failures. Right now I've got to go an look at some code that relies on system frameworks and user interaction to see if I've left a potential silent failure waiting to bite someone.
]]>Without checking I searched for a supplier that would ship to Australia and found Expansys which even has an office in Melbourne (well not really). A quick check and they had a good price and the units were in stock! Excellent lets press the buy button already and get those bad boys shipping out to me. (See how the excitement pushes you into driving yourself off a cliff, it all seems good, but, you forget to check things out first).
So I pressed the buy button and felt great - until a little while later I got an email saying that it was out of stock and that they were expecting stock to fill my order in 6 days. What? The site said expected to ship in 4 working days... what happened? Note the screen shot above, still, today, says there are 9 in stock and expected to ship in 4 days. OK, still not wanting to buy into "You're a sucker" line of thinking I thought that's OK I'll check in a few days.
A week later I remember to check on the site and it's still saying not in stock, 6 days before it will be in stock. I send off an email, 10 days after my order and 4 days after my followup email nothing nada. So, I finally buy into the "I'm a sucker" line of thinking, get pissed off, do a quick Google search and react in horror. Oh how could I be so dumb, you know better, wake up man!
In a previous life and business I had occasion to use Expansys and I can't remember any issues from that experience, but remembering my own advice that "things change" I still should have checked. If only I'd done the same search with expansys.com, a simple Google search using the terms "review expansys.com" and I would have have found good reason not to place the order and waste nearly two weeks waiting for a product that in all likelihood will never ship. For your edification here are excerpts from some "reviews" from the top links Google returned. I find the last one, that points out that they don't have a Melbourne office anymore to be particularly painful, sigh... guess I'm just a slow learner - I'm hoping you'll do better and learn from my experience. Now, let just hope my order cancellation goes through and I don't get double billed for a product that never shipped like some reviewers.
[From expansys - expansys.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings]
I ordered a part on 1/20/09. Each time I emailed an inquiry they said they were expecting the item "by the end of the week".
[From expansys - expansys.com - Reviews, Ratings and Prices at ResellerRatings]
A month later and it still is not in stock. Needless to say, I canceled my order. Fortunately, they were prompt in sending an email confirming cancelation. Now I just need to make sure my card doesn't get charged.
[From Reviews on Expansys Look at tests, reports and read reviews: dooyoo.co.uk]
by Sven - written on 16/01/09Rating: 1 star.
[From Reviews on Expansys Look at tests, reports and read reviews: dooyoo.co.uk]
Expansys have double charged me for an item ordered a month ago and still have not delivered it even though they reported it as shipped a fortnight ago
[From expansys.com - Read Reviews]
Quick review of expansys.com
[From expansys.com - Read Reviews]
Review of expansys.com by Graemehull
Don't buy from these people! I bought an HTC s710 top of the range mobile phone which arrived with a cracked screen. I contacted them on the day it arrived, and they said was HTCs responsibility, despite the fact that their website clearly states that they offer replacements and refunds within 21 days. I contacted HTC who said it was Expansys's responsibility. So I've paid £270 for broken phone from this bunch of cowboys, who's customer service was appalling DONT EVER BUY FROM THESE PEOPLE!!!!!!!
[From eXpansys Reviewed By Australians. http://www.expansys.com.au]
]]>March 5th, 2009
Pros: Offer what u cant get here easily.
Cons: I couldnt agree more with the bad reviews they should have the decency to update their site and tell u the Melbourne office DOESNT EXIST anymore. When they say its in stock DONT BELIEVE IT!! Still waitingn to see if i get what i paid for.
Overall: What can i say, extremely disappointed. Wish i had serached out these reviews first. So far the jurys still out, but Im not happy so far. Horrendous that they seem to have not updated there site since there only Australian office closed not informing anybody here. Pretty shabby behaviour as far as Im concerned. SUX BIGTIME!!! That includes if, when & in what condition I receive my order. Avoid them.Reviewer: SkyPilot
[From eXpansys Reviewed By Australians. http://www.expansys.com.au]
This is just spam that makes it through the ISP's filters and into the Junk folder of Mail, no one really knows how much money I'm really missing out on.
For your edification and enjoyment copies of the promissory notes are included after the jump.
]]> And for your reference here is todays supporting spam:From: Barrister Steve Khumalo [Esq.]
(For Trustees) Managing Partner (Dlamini Chambers)
PRETORIA SOUTH AFRICA
Tel: +27-83-589-7873
Tel: +27-790-555-806
Email: steve.chambers@live.com
Attn: Sir
NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEST:
On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Mr. Edwin Gabriel, I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter was returned undelivered. I hereby attempt to reach you again by this same email address on the WILL. I wish to notify you that late Mr. Edwin Gabriel made you a beneficiary to his [WILL]. He left the sum of Five Million One Hundred Thousand Dollars (USD$5,100.000.00) to you in the codicil and last testament to his will.
This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past.
Mr. Edwin Gabriel until his death was a member of the Helicopter Society and the Institute of Electronic & Electrical Engineers. He was a very dedicated Christian who loved to give out. His great philanthropy earned him numerous awards during his lifetime.
Late Mr. Edwin Gabriel died on the 16th day of February 2007 at the age of 90 years and his WILL is now ready for execution.
Please if I reach you, as I am hopeful, endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible to enable me conclude my job. I hope to hear from you in no distant date. Please contact me on this email: steve.chambers@live.com
Yours in service,
Barrister Steve Khumalo.
BARCLAYS BANK PLC.
CLAPHAM JUNCTION BRANCH,
7 ST JOHNS HILL,SW 11 1 TN,
LONDON
WWW.barclaysbank.co.uk
Attention: Beneficiary,
REF: - INSTRUCTION TO CREDIT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT
This is to notify you about the status of your fund right now on my desk. After due vetting and evaluation of your Inheritance file which The Ministry of Finance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Forwarded and contacted us to see to your immediate payment.From our findings you have been going through hard ways by paying a lot of charges to see to the release of your fund ($25 000, 000, 00) which has been delayed. We advice that you stop further communication with any correspondence from Nigeria. You don't have to pay any charges to receive your Inheritance fund anymore as you have met up with the whole requirements, your representatives in Nigeria will tell you to still go ahead with them but on your own risk.The only thing required from you is to obtain a Non-Resident Clearance Form/Receipt which we are not asking you to pay the fee to us here in United Kingdom as the Government of Nigeria have paid us for handling/processing of your payment with other customers.We will help you to see that you obtain the form so that our bank will effect immediate transfer of your inheritance sum ($25 000, 000, 00) into your designated bank account.If you follow up our directives your fund will reflect in your account within five Banking days from the day you obtain this form. Do not go through anybody again but through this Bank if you really want your fund.Please respond to my private email (davidbrw43@yahoo.de)
Yours sincerely,
Mr. David Brown
Head, Private Banking Section.
Barclays Bank Plc.
DEAREST
BEQUEST NOTIFICATION/PAYMENTOn behalf of the trustees and executor to the Will of late Sir. Dennis Kute Estates. I wish to notify you that late Sir. Dennis Kute made you a beneficiary to his will. He left the sum of Ten Million Five Hundred Thousand($10.5m) to you in the Codicil and Last Testament to his will.this may sound strange and unbelievable to you,but it is real and true.
Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were nominated to him by one of his numerous friends abroad that wished you good. Sir. Dennis, passed away peacefully in the General Hospital Ikeja after a brief illness at the Age of 60 years. He was born on May 10 1927; Died June 26 2007. Although he had enjoyed success as a millionaire businessman,Sir Dennis' Public fame owed most to his marriage to Margaret Kute,
In a tribute to him at a news Conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, British prime Minister Tony Blair said: "Sir Denis was a kind and generous-hearted man, a real gentleman who had many friends here and abroad. Until death he was a very dedicated Christian who loved to give out. He was also a member of several non-governmental organizations,his great philanthropy earned him numerous awards during his lifetime. He is survived by his wife Margret, and twins Mark & Carol Kute and also two grandchildren.
According to him this money is to support your activities and to help the poor and less privileged. Please if I reach you as I am hopeful, endeavor to get back to me as soon as possible to enable the attorney executing the Will conclude his job. You should forward along your telephone and fax numbers including your present mailing address. Looking forward hearing from you in no distant time.
Reply to: revthomasellis@live.comYours in His Vineyard,SMMMRev.Fr.Thomas Ellis(Parish Priest)