Good news everyone: Futurama is back!
Well, sort of. It’s only back if you’re American, so yet again I have had to resort to (ahem) unofficial distribution channels in order to obtain a copy of a movie that doesn’t even have a UK release date yet. I hasten to add that once Fox remember that there are a load of Futurama fans beyond the borders of the United States, I will gladly, gleefully even, cough up for a legal copy: it’s really good.
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If you want a proper review of Leopard you’re in the wrong place. I’m not qualified enough or enthusiastic enough to bash out thousands of words about the latest version of OS X, so instead I’m just going to list a few of my initial impressions.
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Behold! I just created my first Wordpress plugin: Dynamic Site URL.
Actually, strictly speaking, I didn’t write it, I just lifted it from this thread on wordpress.org and added one extra line to make it work on all parts of a Wordpress install. Hooray for this mysterious chap, who created the five lines of code that do the real work.
It’s useful if you want to run one blog under two domain names and have your links based on the currently active URL. (more…)
I recently treated myself to a new MacBook Pro, and one of the first things I did (after fitting a ridiculous amount of RAM) was to install Parallels. This splendid piece of software allows OS X to run other operating systems in a virtual machine, which means I can do boring Windows-based day-job work on my shiny new Apple laptop.
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Wow. Microsoft and Fiat have teamed up to produce a Windows-based Fiat 500. The legendary reliability of a Fiat combined with the rock-solid stability of Windows! What could possibly go wrong? Enjoy the thrilling experience of a BSOD at 90 mph! Marvel at the mere three minutes it takes to start your vehicle every morning! Feel safe and secure as your car asks you if you really want to change gear again, whilst simultaneously allowing random strangers to mess with your brakes via Bluetooth! Grit your teeth manfully whilst being overtaken by little old ladies in mobility scooters as your mode of transport indexes its components and checks that its engine is still there! Pray for salvation when your car suddenly grinds to a halt in order to install two-hundred megabytes of updates right here, right now, in the fast lane of the M25!
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Let’s consider the following situation: someone has dropped their beloved iBook G4, and has failed to mention this fact to their designated household geek, preferring instead to continue working on said laptop. This they are able to do for a surprisingly long time, until the machine tries to swap some of its memory out to disk, and encounters an area of the drive’s platters which was scratched in the impact, at which point it crashes horribly and thereafter refuses to boot despite numerous threats and coaxings. What happens next?
The household geek gets to take apart an Apple laptop! Hooray!
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This is a pleasing little Google Maps hack.
I remember once arguing heatedly with someone who refused to believe that you’d actually be closer to New Zealand, rather than the canonically accepted Australia, if you dug a hole straight down from the UK. In the pre-intertube dark ages I had no way of proving how utterly wrong this gentleman was, because pointing it out on a globe was insufficiently convincing to the intellectual titan against whom my I had pitted my topographical acumen. But now, thanks to Google and this handy little tool, I am vindicated, and shall no longer heed the sneering disbelief of Craig Thingy from Mr Deakin’s class, the dopy little toerag.
I finally cracked and bought something I’ve been secretly coveting since it was introduced: a Mac mini. So far I’m very pleased with it, and whilst it is not perfect, it is a massive improvement on the big old Windows box that it has replaced in the front room.
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This may only apply to xtightvncviewer in Ubuntu Edgy, but it was an annoying enough problem that I want to make a note of it. Xtightvncviewer doesn’t capture keyboard input properly with it’s default settings, meaning that you can’t type anything on remote computers, and you can’t access the F8 menu to quit or manage the VNC session. If you’re in full screen mode you have to terminate the process manually from a VT, which is hardly elegant. Happily, there’s an easy way to get round this problem.
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I just acquired a new smartphone, with all the bells and whistles, including WiFi capablility, and upon trying to connect to my office network I discovered a particularly stupid piece of GUI design: it is impossible to paste a network key into the wireless key input box. You are forced to type it in manually. If, like me, you have a stupidly long and meaningless 63 character key for security and paranoia purposes, this is rather a pain. In combination with the fact that the input is completely replaced by asterisks it’s borderline impossible. After about four attempts to input my key manually, I gave up and formulated an alternative solution.
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