ikisai

New Twitter gadget

2009-03-01T08:19:00.001Z

Played around with a Twittercount gadget, not sure why since I don’t really blog anymore, well not in the original sense, I do use Ping.fm to update status, or micro-blog, but I just don't take the time to write ‘proper’ posts anymore, despite regularly having ideas to write up !

I do still vaguely keep up with events like I used to do all the time but i only occasionally remember to load up a newsreader, perhaps I need to figure a new way, or certainly cut down on who I subscribe to.

Only really doing this post to try out Live Writer on Windows7 !

If anyone reads this try pinging me on Twitter (and if I’m running Twhirl I might even see it !)

Pesky Kids...

2008-08-14T09:27:00.001+01:00

Not mine this time either, neighbours have gone and left their 16 year old boy in the house on his own. Constant flow of noise and visitors until 4am. Going to have a 'word' with him today, however keep trying to remember I was 16 once.....

2008-07-28T18:14:00.001+01:00

spent all morning playing golf, all afternoon knocking out walls and running cables and now doing kids tea and having a well earned cider

2008-07-27T06:25:00.001+01:00

bloody phone alarm woke me up at 6 to remind me I'm on holiday this week !!!! too damn hot to sleep anyway...

2008-07-25T21:29:00.001+01:00

nice merlot, decent baguette, better ardennes pate and some lovely sweet chili crisps, sweet !!

2008-07-23T08:22:00.001+01:00

Last day of school today. Yay for the kids. I'm taking 4 weeks off too !
Sent using BlackBerry� from Orange

2008-07-22T21:53:00.001+01:00

Body of ping email ping - oh and watching Stargate Atlantis. *********************************This message and any attachments (the "message") are confidential and intended solely for the addressees. Any unauthorised use or dissemination is prohibited.Messages are susceptible to alteration. France Telecom Group shall not be liable for the message if altered, changed or falsified.If you are not the intended addressee of this message, please cancel it immediately and inform the sender.********************************

2008-07-22T21:17:00.001+01:00

really is time for some TV + Wine - Computer :)

2008-07-22T21:13:00.001+01:00

it truly is amazing at the interesting crap that goes through syslog on my Mac now that I watch it scroll up the bottom of my desktop, sooo many errors ....

2008-06-11T16:30:00.001+01:00

twitter is down so this wont show - Leopard verified and apparently 37 minutes away from being done

2008-06-09T20:45:00.001+01:00

right, that;s A-E done in music re-classification project - sick of it already but I'm sure will feel good when all done

2008-06-09T20:10:00.001+01:00

why is it that 9 times out of 10 Last.fm fails to scrobble my iPod tracks!?!?!

2008-06-09T12:34:00.001+01:00

I hit Apple-W by mistake in Twhirl and now the display window has gone and I'm damned if I can get it back !!!!! any hints?

2008-06-06T22:55:00.001+01:00

watching old films, enjoying some wine for first time in ages, Wii Fit aint gonna like it !

2008-06-06T22:43:00.001+01:00

didnt realise that Sky Mail was basically a renamed Gmail service with 10GB storage, the layout is the same as are all the options !

2008-06-06T22:30:00.001+01:00

ok new work laptop more locked than i thought previously, when I thought it wasn't, but now is, you know?

2008-06-06T19:07:00.001+01:00

i AM Super Dad for fixing my boys scooter that he was heartbroken about :-D

2008-06-06T15:03:00.001+01:00

looking for good ID3 tag tools for Mac - iTunes is being sucky and i don't trust it to do the job right anymore

2008-06-06T14:25:00.001+01:00

can anyone confirm if Firefox RC2 has Applescript support back to save me 'upgrading' again !?

2008-06-06T11:12:00.001+01:00

trying to find all the bits for my work laptop that needs to go back today to be replaced with a newer, probably more locked down one

2008-06-05T19:58:00.001+01:00

indysearch is killing my CPU - through Safari that is

2008-06-05T17:32:00.001+01:00

taking part in my 1st ever standards org conf call - I'm the FNG so mostly catching up

2008-06-05T14:34:00.001+01:00

Christ I've collected some odd music in my time, thinking of a two tier library now

2008-06-05T12:30:00.001+01:00

Lego Indiana Jones for the 360 has been dispatched :)

2008-06-05T11:04:00.001+01:00

add another one to the 10.5 only list of things I might want to try .... Screenshots Desktop http://is.gd/rjE

2008-06-05T09:46:00.001+01:00

I HATE it when I hit Apple-Q instead of Apple-TAB....

2008-06-05T08:04:00.001+01:00

Wii Fit puts me below 13st (12st13) for the first time in a few years :D

2008-06-03T20:41:00.001+01:00

I'm liking the clean lines of http://goosh.org/ thanks to @laughingsquid for tweeting it

2008-06-02T21:09:00.001+01:00

already starting to regret my Music re-classification project, trying to avoid thinking of the size of the task

2008-05-31T14:36:00.001+01:00

Spent all day tidying up and sorting out kids cr@p - ended up with 6 big bags to go to Ghana orphanage, be more if up to me!

2008-05-29T10:38:00.001+01:00

Jeez - Google search on an electrical product simply gives pages and pages of price comparison sites - its all about the $$s

2008-05-29T09:59:00.001+01:00

figured out why mail.app is hanging on switch to Gmail IMAP - its sending visual notifications to Growl for EVERY mail EVER - eek

2008-05-28T14:02:00.001+01:00

back to the ppt grinder it seems....... yuck

2008-05-28T10:18:00.001+01:00

Do people just assume other people can't read when presenting ppt - and therefore need to read out every word!?!

2008-05-28T09:58:00.001+01:00

launching ppt (windows) and dialling in to huge conf call - hAPI hAPI Joy Joy for certification

2008-05-27T21:11:00.001+01:00

turns out Firefox 3 has knackered all my Applescript that relied on getting URL of current tab - arrgh

2008-05-27T19:45:00.001+01:00

Embedding artwork in mp3s and generally sorting a part of my collection out

2008-05-27T13:22:00.001+01:00

really really really trying to focus on completing a dull ppt - I'd use Freedom but need wiki for info

2008-05-26T20:26:00.001+01:00

finished ER and desperate Housewives seasons - decided to chill out to a film now

2008-05-23T23:25:00.001+01:00

Twitter is down AGAIN - Something tehnically wrong apparently

2008-05-23T14:51:00.001+01:00

almost out of power and no sockets in sight

2008-05-22T13:37:00.001+01:00

still wishing i could use Quicksilver/script to update through API rather than IM client

2008-05-22T12:54:00.001+01:00

Running blackberry setup wizard - wonder how much of a Wizard it is

2008-05-20T09:51:00.001+01:00

Twitter is down again - thought it was twhirl but at least it gave me something nice to look at http://ping.fm/QB6fS

2008-05-19T20:20:00.001+01:00

Waiting for Mac The Ripper so I can start Toast b4 going to make some toast to eat while I watch BSG - phew

Wii Fit Thoughts

2008-05-16T11:39:00.001+01:00

When my wife showed me the Wii Fit when it was announced my initial reaction was "Oh no yet another fitness fad..." mixed with a little anticipation, mainly because although we managed to get a Wii in time for Christmas we decided not to give it to the kids as they had too much already we figured ( I was looking forward to some more Wii Tennis since I played it at BaaCamp)

So I walked in to our local Sainsburys on the day of release to get some bread when I saw the display with the Wii Fit on, I asked and out of 16 units they had there were only 3 left at 10:00am so I decided what the heck and bought one. At this point I was still struggling to get fit after back surgery and was perhaps looking for some inspiration.

So we decided to get the Wii out which made the kids really happy (that includes me) and give it a go, setup was simple as you might expect (more batteries of course) and registering my Mii etc was kind of fun.

There are two main functions to the 'game' which are Body Test and Training, in Body Test you get weighed and perform some basic balance tests, you are then presented with BMI, Weight and the all important Wii Fit Age, more on that later.

Training comprises 4 main disciplines : Yoga, Aerobic, Muscle and Balance. The first time you start you get to pick a male or female trainer to work with you, I picked the girl, my wife went for the male and my daughter picked the girl, I found this slightly amusing but its possible to change whenever you want, in fact later on I had the male trainer take some sessions since my usual trainer was taking the day off !

I've never done Yoga despite being told that it could be good for my back/hip problems so was quite keen to give it a go, each module in training allows you to start with a few of the total available exercises, as you spend more time in each module you unlock the rest, this took me about 10 days of high usage and I now have all exercises in all modules unlocked, progress now seems to be in the number of reps I can do. Most of the exercise use the balance board but there are few that rely on you using the Wiimote in your hand either on or off the board (jogging and Tricep extension for example) and some require you to use your hands on the board rather than stand on it.

The most useful thing for me despite it's flaws is the feedback during each exercise, measuring your centre of gravity while balancing, displaying an expanding and contracting blue circle to help you time your deep breathing and ultimately these are all used to give you a score for each exercise which is put on a leader board, the motivation is there to get to and stay at the top, especially within my family! This got me to thinking that with the online capabilites of the Wii why didn't they make a social network based on this like Xbox Live, it would be fun to compete and compare with people other than those that are using your Wii. I would also love to be able to skip to an advanced mode where I don't get the same facile comments after every exercise.

During all your training you get a 'Fit piggy' (the Fat Piggy we've come to call it) which you put 'time' in to, you should aim for at least 30 mins a day, it tells you to take a break as you reach an hour though and to drink plenty of water, in fact the whole game is constantly reminding you to be safe, to balance on other people or items if required. In the early days this was quite useful; as I got used to it, however it is still doing the same and it's starting to get annoying!

On my first body test I was deemed as having an Obese BMI and a Fit Age of 50 ! (9 years over my age) and the bit that really made me laugh is that my skinny Mii suddenly expanded into a FAT Mii to match my score!!! This all motivated me to prove it wrong, and that's where my main problem with it starts since Wii Fit is just so damn NICE about everything, I found myself wanting it to say "Hey you fat bastard - you really need to lose some weight before you die" or at the very least stop being so polite about it, after a few sessions I wanted to have a Gunnery Sgt Major shouting at me to get some work done, I guess my old military school background came out of hiding. So over the weeks I've found myself very self motivated by the BMI graph, after 1 week I got down to Overweight and am working my way towards Ideal on a pretty much daily basis.

In summary I've recommended Wii Fit to many people including my Physiotherapist who is going to check it out, I find the best use for me is that it is a consistent record of what I've done and what I've become, if I do all the sessions (some I can't even try yet due to my back problems) then I find that by the end I've had a really good workout and feel better, I'm enjoying the Yoga a lot and will add seperate Yoga sessions from DVD soon, and I can add these external sessions to my activity log on Wii Fit too. As I get fitter I'll increase the number of reps in Muscle and try out the aerobic jogging too.

If you want a polite superset of weight scales that allows you to record all your data and present it in a fun way then get a Wii Fit and get training.

2008-05-15T16:07:00.001+01:00

Macbook is being handed over to encoding duties while I leave it be

2008-05-14T12:45:00.001+01:00

full systems reboot required - all network equipment too - must be work !

2008-05-14T10:40:00.001+01:00

Working in my home office feels odd, in fact working feels odd full stop....!

2008-05-12T18:43:00.001+01:00

Ordering Lego Indiana Jones from Amazon for £27 delivered !!

2008-05-12T07:57:00.001+01:00

Where's the sun gone for my first attempt to play golf in over 6 months ffs - back to work tomorrow

2008-05-11T21:59:00.001+01:00

Body line of email to Ping

Long Time to think

2008-05-05T14:43:00.001+01:00

I'm approaching the 6 month mark for being off work since the back operation and I'm finally starting to get a good (ish) feeling about getting out of this rut and getting on with things.

One reason for this is that I've had a LOT of time to sit and think things over, I haven't spent a lot of time in front of the computer, I haven't read RSS but have managed to keep up on email as I really can't stand a full inbox, it does mean I have a fairly big '2 do' folder to get through when I do get back though but that's a relatively easy way to ease back in to work which should be 15th May.

During this time I've thought about writing many blog posts but in the end haven't bothered as I'm taking a break I keep telling myself, in no particular order:

Commercial flying is a terrible experience (I'd love to be able to box myself up, sleep all the way, and wake up the other end, Peter F Hamilton style!)
Delivery of online shopping (the overall ability to not have to wait all day for a delivery that doesn't show)
GPS Navigation on N95 (touching tale of meeting a family in a Walmart that were lost, exhausted and desperate, Google Maps found their Villa)
The wonderment of seeing middle aged couples with no kids queuing up pushing in to go on KIDS rides
The problems of partners working from home at the same time, aka sharing an office space

But the moment has passed for them, I think the next post I will do is a piece about Wii FIt which I have been using to try and get, well, FIT !

I think I'll keep posting too since I'm feeling the urge to do more than look after the kids and get fit, saying that I really do see how people can get used to not working, there's times I wonder how I would be able to fit a job in to a day!

Technorati Tags: Health, Thoughts

New Year Update

2008-01-06T12:08:00.001Z

I still have nerve damage on the right which is causing numbness and ‘tingling’ in my right thigh, this apparently should heal in a ‘matter of months’ (between 3-9 usually) and also is causing the entire top few inches of my right thigh to feel bruised, like someone whacked me with a bat over it but weirdly there are no visible signs (it's all in my head perhaps)

I also have persistent trouble with my Sacroiliac joint (pelvis/hip) which I may have to go and have an injection in to allow me to do my rehabilitation exercises properly, this would be done under sedation in a theatre so is not quite as trivial as it sounds (something to do with needing real time x-rays to position it) I’m due to see my specialist on the 14th where the decision will be made on whether I'm going to have it or not, my Physio (who is suggesting it) says that immediately after the pain will be gone and I can do my exercises properly so I'm quite keen to get it done assuming that he is right of course

Apart from these two issues I’m making good progress, I can drive now but still can’t get my own socks on!!

I'm checking email etc but not really doing much else PC wise as it's been a really good rest for the RSI in my wrists and to be perfectly honest I haven't missed it or all the 2.0 ness of my usual work routine, god knows how many unread posts are in my RSS reader :)

Technorati Tags: Health

Getting increasingly bored....

2007-12-15T10:46:00.000Z

Frustration is creeping upwards at not being able to do much now, especially as everyone else in the family is busy around me....

Pain levels are manageable and the wound is very nearly healed up which is good news, still hurts like fook when I cough or sneeze !

Exercise and physio starts in earnest next week so hoping to get some level of fitness back by Xmas

Technorati Tags: Health

the Wound is healing at last....

2007-12-12T10:58:00.001Z

FINALLY today the hole in my back got scab on it and stopped oozing puss all the time, perhaps the 4 grams of penicillin (plus 1 gram of another type) has finally killed it and it can heal now. The best thing about this is once it has healed I can have a bath and have a good soak again, the other thing is that it makes my exercises easier to do, just want the lump to go now too!

Moving around ok, doing about 1.5-2 miles walking a day as i work my way up again, plus some early exercises, quite light weight for now which is good since it still hurts a fucking lot !

onwards and upwards and while I can't do much else COD4 multiplayer is proving to be lots of fun

Technorati Tags: Health

The Drugs Dont Work.....

2007-12-07T03:27:00.001Z

well, maybe they do in terms of clearing up the infection but damn I feel sick tonight, so much so that I can't sleep so here I am playing Xbox and nipping out to the kitchen every few minutes thinking I might throw up... I really hate vomiting and will endure hours of pain to avoid it, however in this case I know it will be even worse as I can't bend over very far...

hey ho, it might have been food or it is just the big jump in dosage I had this afternoon kicking in, time will tell, I might drop it back a bit and see

at least I finished COD4 and will get on multiplayer soon, along with Halo3 that should keep me busy, oh and the Arcade part of COD4 looks like fun too, anything to keep my mind off throwing up....

Even more drugs...

2007-12-06T17:52:00.000Z

went to see my GP and the specialist today, should have just gone to the specialist since my GP reduced my anti-biotics but kept me on them as the infection is still there but the specialist that did the op is more worried about infection getting into my spine so has doubled the dose and added another for good measure!

I now take 7 pills 4 times a day, looking forward to when it's all over as a) i generally dont like taking pills B) it's costing me a small fortune !

Searing pain has reduced but was in quite a lot of pain by the time I got back from my trip out to see the Doctors and my right leg isn't right at all ..

2 weeks later

2007-12-04T14:17:00.000Z

things were going ok until the wound got infected, bad enough to make my wife want to vomit when he changed the dressing, pretty smelly I have to admit !

Now I feel like someone is poking me in the back with a red hot poker and twisting it around some, I'm ok if I lay down in one particular way but otherwise it sucks, I'm off to lie down...

1 Week later

2007-11-27T13:52:00.001Z

It's been a week since i had my back surgery, i reckon I can mange a few lines, I have to be stood up to do it as not allowed to sit for some weeks yet, it's been VERY fucking painful, I remember that the last time I said i would never do it again it was so painful, I guess time makes you forget just what real pain is about..

Things I can't do still:
sit for longer than 10-15 mins
dress myself
wash myself (as in shower)
reach anything below waist height
pick up anything heavy
cuddle/play with kids

I am managing to hobble around now, until the muscles in my legs give out due to being used the wrong way

all the drugs I'm on cause constipation so that's been bad too, you've no idea what it's like to miss having a good crap everyday, or put another way, only having one incredibly painful and awkward crap every 2-3 days

must lie down again soon, just doing this as a reminder to self sort of thing - pain has many forms and shapes and can be really bad, short sharp vs long enduring is the key point here, ans as my carer (wife) points out, she gave birth to both our kids by C-section and the scar was way bigger than mine......

More Drugs ... Man....

2007-10-04T14:40:00.001+01:00

Back at the docs for a check up today, came away with two sore arms and a bigger dent in my credit card...

I've been given another inhaler to try , green this time, so now I have three in total to use 2xbrown&green 2xday plus blue whenever needed, while seeing the Asthma nurse she told me I was best off having a Flu jab and might as well get a Pneumonia one while at it (hence two sore arms)

When I came out of her room I was surrounded by half the OAP population of Darlington, all in for Flu jabs, christ I feel old sometimes....

Technorati Tags: Health

Data Troubles....

2007-09-21T14:43:00.001+01:00

While I've had some time off I've been trying to get my data sorted out, as in pictures, music, videos (camcorder) and movies, something I've been meaning to do since I got my NAS delivered, however the task is way bigger than I thought initially and has a lot more to do with design and planning than actual action and moving stuff around, in fact I've finally realised that I need to approach this with some of the old System Engineer skills I built up over time before doing what I do now, why? Because although the quantities are different I realised after a couple of failed attempts that I need to take account of the requirements of ALL users before finalising a plan, and then figuring out how to achieve it.

I may be on the early adopter edge here buying a small business NAS for storage needs, but as megapixels grow in devices then so do file sizes, VOD means more digital movies etc, anyway everyone's needs are growing and proper planning is essential it seems....

Some lessons I've learned while I've been trying to sort this out...

Having a lot of storage to hand solves nothing, just dumping everything there means it's there but how do you expect to use it?

I've discovered that whilst I want to use 'modern tools' my wife wants to use old ones, I'm using Aperture to catalogue the photos, will get round to tagging them, putting in to projects, sorting, arranging etc, my wife insists on using Windows Explorer and manually creating folders and moving them (incidentally this also seems to have created HUGE duplication, when I copied over the 'My Pictures' folder from her computer it weighed in at 47GB, I knew that was wrong and after a LOT of sorting through it, assuming I didn't delete anything I shouldn't have, it's now a more respectable 17GB.

I tried to use automatic methods to sort out the mess but in the end the reality is that doing it by hand, manually comparing was the only way, I found using my Mac easier for that by using Spotlight, I tried Singular but it crashed every time until I reduced the amount of files significantly, and then once it did run I still had to manually decide on every file by ticking a box, that was going to be about 17,000+ clicks - ouch !

The other problem is that lots of different devices have been used so I had:

SAME pictures with DIFFERENT names (manually and automatically renamed versions)
DIFFERENT pictures with SAME names (DSC0001 for example)

So I couldn't even just select files with the same name using a script and delete them.... I'm still not sure I've got it right and making sure is going to take a long time... for now I've backed up the full 47GB in case it's ever needed (one day my wife will say 1 picture is missing and I'll have to find it.....) and I've made further copies of the reduced set on spare physical disks that I'm going to store offsite somewhere. The reduced set is also on the NAS and is in PhotoStation which is a built in feature that creates a web based photo gallery, i may use this in future to show off whole sets of photos to family etc and just use Flickr for one off stuff (oh and the PhotoStation also supports video which I may use for the increasing number of Mobile Phone footage I'm getting)

So note to self, whenever I get a new camera of any sort go in to options and change the file prefix to the device name (and a version number I think too)
Get better at deleting 'rejects' since right now we keep everything we shoot, especially true with the Panorama shots

So that's photos for now

The next big problem I've had is music, not so much duplication other than the Greatest Hits problem, can't decide what to do on that one yet, keep all or delete duplicates from the Greatest Hits albums? The other issue is the size of the library and how it is slowing iTunes down. Then there's the amount of time it takes to do an operation once you've decided on a plan of action. I reckon I need to upgrade my home network to Gigabit as the transfer of 120GB worth of 20K+ files takes several hours, and the indexing of it on both the NAS and then in iTunes is about a day in total so you don't want to do it too often

Another complication is the bizarre fact that my USB disc I'm using only works on my Macbook if I plug it in to the keyboard port (that is plugged in to hub in my screen that is then plugged in to my macbook) and does nothing when plugged in directly, this makes it slow as hell since the Apple keyboard ports are 1.1 only (which may be what makes it work)

My NAS has a built in iTunes server that I want to use as it means any iTunes client can access all the music through the share, this does mean that all the music has to be in that one share, I was hoping to split it up to increase performance. I'm toying with the idea of putting only some of it on the share and the rest on the NAS but not shared but still accessible if I want, however that's a pain too, especially as I'd have to keep multiple iTunes libraries to manage it probably.

Then there's the fact that I have to have a simple system so that my wife and kids can use it and especially so that my wife can easily burn a CD if needed and me and my Macbook are not around to do it, more importantly is the iPods we use, you can't sync with a share which means in order to get the music on I also have to import all the tracks to an iTunes client, this again takes hours and iTunes insists on determining gapless playback for a few extra hours too !!

I'm sticking with one big library on the NAS, shared through iTunes server and also imported to iTunes on my Macbook for now but there is still issues with speed and iPod syncing when my machine isn't here, be nice if I could plug the iPod in to the USB on the NAS and direct sync I guess.

That's where I've got so far, several hours of metadata tidying to do and I'm trying to decide also what to do about the kids movies, I only ever let them have copies of the original discs as they get trashed easily, I got half way through building a media server that had them all as xvid but then decided not to, now I'm thinking I might just store uncompressed VIDEO_TS folders on the NAS so I can make a new copy whenever I want....

decisions are the hardest, the actions are easy assuming nothing odd goes wrong !

Technorati Tags: Backup, Thoughts

Two Weeks off.....

2007-09-21T10:24:00.001+01:00

My sick note is about to run out and I figured I'd write up a few thoughts now that I'm going to have to spend more time on a PC again, one of the main things over the last two weeks is I haven't been using my PC, to be honest I've just been too tired and not feeling like it, other than recently trying to sort out my music collection (and data in general)

Over the weekend of 8/9 September I had trouble breathing all weekend, I thought it was just the really bad chest infection I'd have for two weeks or so, I'd been to the Doctors on the Friday and he said my chest was clear and to take some cough linctus.

However Sunday night I nearly called in to A&E as I was really struggling and steam etc didn't seem to be helping, however I have some weird thing where I don't like to go if I can at all help it, turn out that wasn't such a good idea. I barely slept that night and when I did it was sat in a chair downstairs, the moment the Doctors opened I made an emergency appointment, when I got there he put me on a nebuliser which really helped as I could finally get a full breath!

So apparently I've got late onset Asthma triggered most likely by the chest infection, and most likely I've had it for years but it was covered by the smoking, I put the wheezing etc down to that.

I was kind of shocked by the whole thing and now I have to live with it, two weeks on and I'm using both inhalers, still on steroids, still tired and get breathless when I do too much (as in things I was doing fine before when I smoked still !) but knowing and dealing with it better than before I guess. I'm still very hopeful that it will clear up somehow, got a review in another week to see what's what, how ironic is it that after giving up smoking after 25 years I get this though......

In a related note I found out later the same day that I have two degenerated discs in my lower back which require repair, it's a standard procedure apparently called a Posterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion and is scheduled for November so I'm going to have more time to finish my data projects once I'm up and about and will not be taking part in the Winter League (Golf) this year again which sucks, as does the not playing golf for at least three months but I'm told I'll get an 80% reduction in pain and since I have two knackered discs I need this to see me through and ensure I can still be playing in the seniors as well as be more active with the kids and generally more fit.

Technorati Tags: Health, Smoking

Plaxo is ill like me.....

2007-09-06T10:16:00.000+01:00

Seems the whole thing has keeled over...

Technorati Tags: Plaxo, Services

Sick as a ....

2007-09-05T14:00:00.000+01:00

I can't recall the last time I felt this bad, ironic as I haven't smoked in over two months and now I'm coughing myself sick, thumping headache, nausea from the medicine that is SUPPOSED to stop me coughing and all this on top of the usual back , knee , shoulder stuff that seems worse most likely because I haven't slept properly in 4 days now.

In the long run though I'll be better off, or I better be after all this, I signed up for the gym again last week in anticipation of getting fit in my post smoking stage, now I just want to curl up and die instead, however kids still need looking after but for the first time in 17 years I'm taking sick time off work that isn't related to an operation....

Technorati Tags: Annoying, Smoking, Thoughts

Region Freeeeeeeee, as free as the wind blows.....

2007-09-05T13:29:00.001+01:00

Like many I have DVDs from more than one region of the world as I travel a fair amount

Like many I really hate the fact that my Macbook limits me to 1 region even if they kindly let me change it 5 times

During a search for RPC1 firmware (something I've done on PC's many times) I found an argument I tend towards, having region protection actually encourages people to Pirate movies, why? becuase you can always play a pirate movie in any drive as it has no region, whereas a shop bought one....

I have been making region free copies of my DVDs for this reason and to allow me to make new copies when the kids wreck them but it's nice to have a region free drive when travelling around and now I do and I'm very happy about it.

HUGE thanks to ben11 who wrote the firmware and was kind enough to package it up and make it dead simple to use...

Cheeky Twats - Apple

2007-08-21T11:09:00.001+01:00

In the long running nightmare that has been 3rd lost disk in almost as many months, the 5 days spent recovering data, the purchase of a new solution I am nearing the end of the marathon, to make life a little easier I took out the USB extender cable that came with my Apple keyboard so that I could (more) easily hook up the external drive I've recovered data to on my Macbook so I can start sorting out pictures again (in Aperture my new toy) only to find there is a small ridge inside the female end which means a normal USB male can't enter, it's like some weird Apple Male only chastity belt.

Maybe it's the stress of fookin around with disks and data for several days but this discovery has really pissed me off for some reason.... or it could be I'm less forgiving in my new non-smoking mode

Technorati Tags: Annoying, Apple, Smoking

Screen Sizing

2007-07-13T13:37:00.001+01:00

If you follow Twitter or Flickr you'll know I got a new screen for my Mac and that I'm very happy with it.

I have a new problem now though as switching from it to the Mac internal screen means resizing everything, I'm going to go out searching the webs to see if there is a good solution, I did think that OS X would just sort it out but when disconnecting the screen and opening it up here all the windows that I'd made nice and big at home are all off the side of the screen, I reckon there'll be an easy way to do it rather than click on the 'green' button or manually resize them all, just need to find it, if not then Applescript may come to the rescue again

Technorati Tags: Mac

Smoking - NOT

2007-07-09T16:03:00.001+01:00

Been a week now with no smoking, got a new supply of pills, finding it hard at times but otherwise I'm determined to keep going....

Technorati Tags: Smoking

Last.fm supports iPod

2007-07-04T12:30:00.001+01:00

Been a long time coming on Windows (wonder if the Mac version does it now as well since I use iScrobbler instead) but the client updated today and now supports scrobbling of track plays on your iPod, this makes me happy happy happy......

Technorati Tags: Music, Last.fm

Last Cigarette

2007-07-03T23:25:00.000+01:00

I just smoked what I plan to be my last ever cigarette, not the first time I've said this of course but I really want to this time so fingers crossed.

If you see me with a cigarette remind me politely and then tell me you'll never talk to me again if I don't get rid of it immediately

No smoking

2007-07-02T11:56:00.000+01:00

well not quite, I'm reaching the period of 8-14 days while on Champix that I should stop, in some ways it's been hard to keep smoking, which is good I guess, but the dirty addict in my head still wants me to, it's just got much more unpleasant which again is good, I think I'm my last packet of tabs/fags/smokes/ciggies

Technorati Tags: Smoking

Champix = No Smoking ?

2007-06-26T22:31:00.001+01:00

So I got a phone call from the doctor yesterday asking if I'd ever thought about giving up smoking, if course I have, a lot! and I have been a lot lately as I've had a chest infection of some kind since Easter.

So I went in that afternoon, got prescribed a new drug called Champix which is supposed to block the impulses to smoke:

How does it work?
Champix works primarily in two ways. Firstly, it reduces the smoker's craving for nicotine by binding to nicotine receptors in the brain and reduces the symptoms of withdrawal. Secondly, it reduces the satisfaction a smoker receives when smoking a cigarette.

I took my first pill today which means my quit date is 3rd July (you're supposed to smoke for the first 8 days you take the pill) and then that's it hopefully, in fact the Nurse told me the 6 patients she has on this so far all stopped before the 8 days so I figure I'll aim for the 1st July since the public ban comes in then

It's not a cheap drug, you can buy it online for £99.99 for the 2 week starter pack, or £375.99 for the full 12 week course, for once the prescription fee on NHS seems pretty good !

Technorati Tags: Smoking

Mount/Unmount Windows shares easily

2007-06-26T16:51:00.000+01:00

I used to do this with a custom trigger in Quicksilver but it kept disappearing and now it wont work as I have to turn off Assistive devices access in order to get parallels to behave nicely (annoying!) so I decided to play around with another method to see if I can make it easier.

I regularly mount shares from my XP machine when at home and find going to the Finder, cmd+k and then selecting one from my favourites a pain. This started out as an effort to unmount Volumes in QS in the beginning, turns out you can do one at a time easily through a proxy object, however you can't do the comma trick and do several, so I went hunting the answer in various scripting sites, turned out to be pretty easy to unmount all of them using:

tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose local volume is false)

in Applescript of course, bind to a custom trigger and then whenever you want everything unmounted easily just hit your key combo, during this though I came across several scripts to mount shares, lots using alias, automator actions and login items, none of which suited me as I like to mount on demand so to speak, I have about 4 that I use regularly but not usually all at once so I wanted to be able to mount one of my choice at any time and default unmount all when required. It comes down to one useful line:

mount volume "smb://server/share"

But in order to get what I wanted I added the process text action from QS so I could pass a share name as an argument and then bind it to a trigger, so if I want my Movies share mounted now I hit cmd+ctrl+K, text entry for QS pops up, I type movies and hit enter, here's the script

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
on process text share
if share contains "dis" then
tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose local volume is false)
else
mount volume "smb://SERVER/" & share
end if
end process text
end using terms from
** Replace SERVER with your server name if you plan to use
** dis is used to unmount them all, replace with whatever makes you feel good

Save in your default Scripts folder or where ever you've told QS to catalogue them and away you go.

This didn't take long but I've spent twice as long trying to figure a way of passing two arguments so that the first one is SERVER and the second one is SHARE (and possibly third forth etc if I want to do more than one at a time) but it's stumped me, for now.

UPDATE: I actually found some code that allowed me to pass separate words as arguments in the end but then it dawned on me that I was over complicating things again, I've now changed it so I simply pass "server/share" as the argument so I can choose server and share. I don't think I'll do a multi share one unless I feel like messing with argument parsing more....

Technorati Tags: Applescript, Mac, Quicksilver

Glubble

2007-06-25T17:22:00.001+01:00

My good friend talked to me about this a while ago, we both have small children but mine are a little older so we are ahead of the curve a bit in terms of child safe web use, it's a very good idea and now it's time to see how well it works in a house where the kids both like to use the PC

Technorati Tags: Glubble

Squabbling (60+) Kids

2007-06-19T21:29:00.000+01:00

I'm on the cityhopper from AMS to MME and there is an old, I'm guessing at least 60+ dressed in North Front hiker gear backpacks and all and they are having an argument EXACTLY like my 4 and 8 year old kids would have, it's the funniest thing I've heard in ages !

The reason, well as far as I can tell the man was off doing something as he thought there was plenty of time before the flight boarded, I know we waited on the bus shuttle for some time but then left before anyone else got on, and then a bus turned up for the flight later on and just this couple got off, they looked flustered as they got to their seats right behind me.

The argument was basically her telling him he shouldn't have gone wandering off and him saying it wasn't his fault

Technorati Tags: Funny

Dopplr Facebook

2007-06-19T10:19:00.001+01:00

Just added the beta facebook app and as with everything the guys at Dopplr do it looks good and works well

Technorati Tags: Dopplr, Facebook

Extra Life battery

2007-06-18T10:49:00.000+01:00

I really like coconutBattery but I' starting to wonder how accurate it may really be, according to it since I got my Macbook back I not only have a new battery but it holds more charge than it is designed for or originally did ! Not that I'm complaining, the battery life is good but it just strikes me as odd is all....may also account for why slim battery tells me occasionally that I have over 6 hours battery life left

Technorati Tags: Mac

Lego Overkill

2007-06-18T10:39:00.000+01:00

I think Angus may be using the Club Lego site a little too much, in the car on the way to the airport today he recited word prefect the narration to the movie all about the Lego City Fire Rescue Boat, me and Jo nearly wet ourselves when he ended with:

"Batteries not included ,each set sold seperately"

and don't forget, the Fire boat is powerful and perfect for the job.....

Technorati Tags: Funny

GT3 and Now 4

2007-06-15T20:56:00.001+01:00

I've decided to move on at last from Gran Turismo 3 to number 4 in the series. I decided to check the stats and was amazed to see I've only completed 55.5% of the game, why you may ask? well I've been playing it for nearly 6 years now!

The rest of the stats read:

4,840,600 credits earned (if only that was real money)
280 wins from 389 races = 71% winning ratio
42 cars owned
8465 Km driven
14,987,470 value of cars owned (again nice if real)
58 bonus cars
335 trophies

Total real time played 394 days

So considering there's been a long spell where I haven't played it it shows there was a point when I played it a LOT (Sweden to be precise)

At least I got amazing value for money and now I can play GT4 for another 6 years perhaps....to be honest I really want to get a good force feedback wheel for my Xbox 360 and get Forza2 when it comes out though

Technorati Tags: Gaming

Mood 2.0

2007-06-14T13:09:00.001+01:00

I'm really in the 2.0.ish mood today, twittering, rss feeding, linkedin recommendationing, calling folks I've been meaning to for a while (ok not so 2.oh.ish as using mobile and not VoIP)

Tweaking Applescripts to set IM status and grab URLs for posts, sorting out home PC stuff and drinking lots of coffee!

oh and actually writing a post for my blog of course, why is this worth pointing out? because for the last few days/weeks I've been in a really Bad Mood 2.0, I just haven't been bothering with it, probably a lot to do with work & health but there you go

Technorati Tags: Thoughts

Parallels 3.0

2007-06-02T15:08:00.001+01:00

the feature list looks very cool, 3D support stands out and the screen shots look very nice, wonder how well it will work on my Macbook though as the graphics aren't so powerful, I'm guessing you need a Pro to get decent performance

Also I'd like to try it out to see if it fixes the coherence problem (cmd-tab stops working, Quicksilver stops working) as I would really like to be able to leave 'Access for assistive devices' on AND use coherence, turning assistive off fixes it but I want both !

$40 special offer upgrade price seems reasonable for the amount of effort they have put in to it but I want to make sure it fixes my major gripe before splashing out more cash to them

Technorati Tags: Mac

Macbook broke again

2007-06-01T12:41:00.001+01:00

A while back a Genius at Apple told me I was a fool (well almost) cos I didn't hit apply to get an ethernet connection, turns out it wasn't that at all since I am now sat here holding a network cable up at an angle with my thigh in order to get a connection, if I let it go the connection dissapears, as I suspected it's a faulty RJ45 port which if I want fixed will most likely mean my machine goes away for another 2 weeks minimum - arse....

Technorati Tags: Annoying, Mac

Computer do things themselves - honest

2007-05-29T09:46:00.001+01:00

I fired up Parallels today like I do every day so that I can file mail away etc, I usually close it for the rest of the day as it mucks up cmd-tab and Quicksilver although I may have a fix for that now, more testing required..

Anyhoo, I haven't changed a thing wrt networking since I got my machine back and it all works fine, this morning I had limited or no connectivity in XP, tried a reboot of XP but still the same, changed the netwroking from Shared to Bridged and Voila! it all works again, why? I have no clue, perhaps I should have rebooted OSX too and might still try that, but why - when NOTHING has been changed would it require a change like that !!

Bloody computers....

Technorati Tags: Annoying, Network

Further modified Tweet

2007-05-26T19:32:00.000+01:00

I like using Tweet to post Twitters, I like fiddling with Applescript too lately so I decided to change the modified Tweet written by Nils Breunese to add length checking (which is handy since Quicksilver will allow you to put a lot more than the 140 chars allowed)

What I found annoying though was finding out I'd typed say a 141 char message, I get a notification through growl but the text is gone, so I added a couple of lines to copy the text to the clipboard in the event of an error, that way I can try again, cmd-v in the last text and modify.

And for fun I've got it to check whether Adium is running and if so change the status message to the Tweet, I may drop this though as it got me in trouble recently as I had forgot I had done it and sent a Tweet about something I was doing and a contact in Adium sent me an IM asking about it, too much info too many places perhaps.

You can grab the updated script here if you want to play with it further

Technorati Tags: Applescript, Hacking, Mac

SpamUp

2007-05-25T14:24:00.001+01:00

I've started using the Meetup service through getting involved in OpenCoffee meetups, I went to the London one yesterday but got called away which was a shame, however I'm really looking forward to the Leeds one being setup by my good friend Imran, if you live near Leeds please get yourself there !

I want to make clear this has nothing to do with Meetup themselves but this morning I got a familiar spam mail appearing to come from them:

From: Muhammad Jeffery Charles <info@meetup.com>
Date: 25 May 2007 05:20:22 BDT
To: ikisai@gmail.com
Subject: Urgent Information
Reply-To: pratt27jcharles@yahoo.com

Apparently someone in Kuala Lumpar has died etc etc, I reported this to the customer service department at Meetup, in less than 20 minutes the account has been deleted, good riddance I say and I'm sure there's some inner mocking going on here with a name like Pratt or perhaps not and he just is one...

Thanks to the excellent Tammy at Meetup, it's a shame when idiots try to spoil the experience that others have built

Technorati Tags: Spam, Annoying

Wifi woes

2007-05-22T22:28:00.001+01:00

For some reason my wifes XP laptop with a Belkin Pre-n card in it keeps dropping the network whenever I get near her with my Macbook, not all the time but it just happened three times in a row in the last 5 minutes so i've been banished to the office..

The really annoying thing is I'm not really sure how to go about problem solving this particular one ... argh!

Technorati Tags: Mac, Network

Just turn them off !!

2007-05-22T20:16:00.000+01:00

I was reading an interesting article on a new way to reduce power consumption recently Reducing the Power Consumption of Your Gadgets written by Brady Forrest from O'Reilly.

I'm on a drive to reduce my own household draw by any means necessary but at the end of the day there is nothing better than just remembering to turn stuff off!

That said some things are better at being turned off than others and until consumer electronics gets better at reducing/removing the standby on most devices then things will still require some intuitive thinking on the users part, as Brady points out though some are starting to get the picture it seems and devices that try to solve the problem are coming out

Technorati Tags: Energy

The Return of Applescripts

2007-05-19T00:25:00.001+01:00

I've been sat here for a few hours watching Heroes, which is as wicked a show as my mate Aaron told me and (re) writing scripts to do things on my Macbook that I had setup before the Hard disk died and took everything with it.

I guess because it wasn't that long ago that I did it the first time I found it pretty easy this time, with the help of a little bit of Google of course to remind of some syntax and get examples, so nothing written from scratch but mostly hacked about with.

The main thing I wanted to do was get an easy workflow for getting links in blog posts, which is now done:

Highlight in Ecto -> QS trigger to Google search in Firefox -> select best link and load -> QS to create HREF in ecto, one little kink to sort out but I need to learn more about process checking.

Time to relax and enjoy more Heroes now though

Technorati Tags: Applescript, Quicksilver, Mac, Hacking

Energy Saving

2007-04-21T09:55:00.001+01:00

I've been trying to do what I can for a while now, mostly for me it's about switching off things that don't need to be sat on Standby all the time, so I've bought a lot of switched 4/6 way power expanders or whatever you call them.

In my office for example everything except the actual base unit is on a switched gang, flick one switch and monitors/speakers/chargers all go off just leaving the base unit on.

I've started doing this with the home cinema/hifi stuff downstairs too, allowing me to turn everything off except the Sky+ box in case it's recording something.

The problem is that it's a pain in the ass to do, it means the switches are all tucked away behind things (where all the power is) so I was thinking about better ways to do it when I remembered back to the days when I worked in a datacentre (literally, I moved the ops function in there so we could play loud music and ignore everyone else!) after I moved on they moved it back out though....anyhow the thing about the datacentre is the big red emergency panic button that kills power to everything dead, this made me think that if I could do it easily I'd really like that kind of function in every room in my house.

I imagine something like this, next to the light switch is a power switch, you walk out and turn the lights off and if you know you aren't going to need anything in that room for a while then hit the power switch too and the room goes dead. In order for it to work well then you'd need two different types of socket in the room of course, one set linked to the power off switch and one permanently live for things like sky+, alarm clocks etc

I'd like to do it now but that would entail a major re-wire of the house (I think) and I'm not ready to do that just yet, but if I ever have the chance to do it I would, oh and I'd stick fixed network in too, Gigabit most likely!

One final thought is that when network based PVRs become a reality and work well then I don't even need to leave sky+ or similar on at all, I get everything I need from the magic cloud...

Technorati Tags: Energy, Ideas

Killer QS tips

2007-04-19T15:08:00.000+01:00

Picked this up out of RSS feeds, from TAB I think, this is the sort of thing I have been thinking about trying to do and as usual it's been done and I'm going to use it !

I have a standard procedure for when I start my Mac (which actually isn't very often to be honest) and I don't like the login items either (mainly because they seem broken for me which is part of the legacy problems I have - I WILL do a fresh install when I have time/inclination/the problems get too annoying) plus sometimes I want to start it and NOT have everything startup

So I'm going to create sets of commands for groups of apps that I tend to run together and then key them to a trigger, want Firefox, Adium and NetNewswire to open up with cmd-ctrl-a - easy :)

Technorati Tags: Mac, Quicksilver

Quicksilver Stikkit Plugin

2007-04-11T19:35:00.000+01:00

I saw a sneak preview of this from Rael at Etech but now anyone can get it and it is just plain great stuff, no more messing about with Applescripts etc for me, the setup takes a bit of getting used to but a kind user on the Stikkit forums posted an explanatory note, in my case I had to restart QS to get the new catalog type to show, after that it's fine.

However ! I think I've found a bug, I keep a todo list as a stikkit and just keep adding things to it (and occasionally tick them off) so I immediately setup a trigger to 'Append to...' my todo stikkit, it works great, however it seems to me that it keeps overwriting the last line which is a shame. More testing required but if this is the case then it's not going to be much use for the way I use it until it's either fixed or the behaviour is changed !

Technorati Tags: Quicksilver, stikkit

More AppleS(cript)

2007-03-31T12:46:00.000+01:00

I'm almost getting the hang of it I think, it doesn't make sense and once you understand that it get easier, I know what I want to do but learning what are valid commands for applications is tough, until you discover the library which lists them out ! And can add you apps assuming they are scriptable.

I've been scratching my own itch with it, which is easily putting my machine into offline mode through my fav Quicksilver of course, however I'm struggling with screen brightness and turning Airport off and on, I can do it in QS already but I want to script it !

oh well it's a pretty good way to learn, however I'm moving on to Ruby soon, just need to figure out the best install/setup etc

Technorati Tags: Developing, Mac, Applescript, Quicksilver

Dopplr

2007-03-31T12:32:00.000+01:00

I'm liking Dopplr a lot, it scratches an itch for me, and many others, and those are the people that travel a lot, a crazy lot. It's not a huge market but it's a needy one at times and Dopplr can help with that need.

In a nutshell it fixes the problem of being in a foreign city and not realising that someone you know is also there at the same time, it puts travellers in touch.

On top of this the design is top notch, especially for an Alpha, there are some niggles but Matt is aware of and working on these

From my point of view I especially like the fact it has a mobile interface, I spoke with Matt and asked him to add the ability to text in an Airport code and have it set your location against your planned trips automatically.

I already knew Nat was going to Oscon (he chairs it after all) but if I hadn't then Dopplr would have told me and I can leave him a note to meetup etc.

Even without the social aspect of it the slick, simple design means it's a good place to plan out your trips, you can see a timelime that isn't obvious in Calendars like iCal and Outlook, check mine out here

It's in Gmail invite only mode right now but looking forward to some invites as are most people on the service right now

Technorati Tags: Developing, Webstuff

Forgotten Skill(z)

2007-03-30T07:37:00.000+01:00

I used to build pretty big HPUX systems all the time for Orange, I was pretty damn good at using awk and sed to manipulate file output to do lots of god things which I wont go in to here.

However now that I want to start doing this sort of thing again I find that I've forgotten even the most basic stuff, as in the actual commands, for example I want to run a job in cron, figured that out again pretty quick however ot's stopped working already and I can't remember how to see the output (logs) or how to direct output to a log file even ! I muddled my way through some vi but even that was tough going...

I'm hoping it's like riding a bike but let's see how that goes..

Technorati Tags: Developing, Mac

TinyTwitter

2007-03-28T07:23:00.000+01:00

Just installed it, Yet another way to view twitters....

We (Orange - or more specifically Surj and I had a very twitterish idea 3 years or so ago but the 'business' didn't want to listen) but now it's taken off big stylee it seems that there are sooo many ways to interact - and let's face it that is the key to adoption

Twitterific
Tiny Twitter
Quicksilver (+Applescript)
API call with Geektool
SMS - see the FAQ
IM - see the FAQ
Web - see the FAQ

It could have voice but that would be MySay after all.....

testing new get firefox url link script

2007-03-28T05:41:00.000+01:00

So i nicked it from Adiumscript (right click, show package contents, then drill down to Contents -> Resources, open .scpt file) and saved it out to Ecto scripts file so i can call it.

The idea behind this one is that when you want to link a word or phrase in Ecto all I could find to do was:

write something in a blog post and decide to link it
Highlight word
Right Click and Search with Google
launches Browser
Click on suitable link
click in Address bar
cmd+c
flick back to Ecto
cmd+shift+u
Href link created

pretty long winded I'd say so I knew that I can paste current URL from Firefox directly in to an Adium chat with either /ffl or clicking on icon (i ALWAYS prefer keyboard) so I figured there has to be a way to highlight word, call script which stores current URL and then cmd+shift+u, perhaps I can get it all in one at some point but baby steps here as I'm just learning.

Oh and this is the post that I want to test it on so here goes, real time, I've copied the script so the word on the next line I will highlight and give it a go

Etech

Hmm, if you click on that link you wont get Etech, it's the last thing I cmd+c even though my new Firefoxcurrentpage shows in the list....thinking

Ok I've been messing about with this for over an hour and i can get Applescript to show results of getting current URL in the bottom window now but when I switch to another app and cmd+v I don't get the same contents..damn i thought this would be easy!!

Duh moment, I removed the return statement immediately before the set clipboard line and it seems to work now, why the hell would a return statement wipe the set command !!!

Etech

but anyway it works now an after all that is it easier, maybe not but I learned something which is always good, next up remove some more steps, for the record it's now at

write something in a blog post and decide to link it
Highlight word
Invoke Quicksilver and type term
launches Browser
Click on suitable link
flick back to Ecto
click on scripts
click on Firefoxcurrentpage
cmd+shift+u
Href link created

hmm, looking at previous list NO steps saved ! However some ideas spring to mind about how to save some of them but need to learn more and since I had a few glasses of Red at the Exhibition open night and I really want to watch final episode of BSG I'll stop for now

ok i was going to stop but then I got a sudden idea to add to the script, let's see if it works

Happy Days http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://pastie.caboo.se/15553 http://about:blank http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=interrupt+applescript

oops that's some verbose output from a cock up !!!!

and there was another section after this but deleted, don't want too much link love to Etech after all !

Etech

Yay it works !!!

ah , maybe I can do a bit more.....

oh maybe not, maybe don't need to more later, BSG now

Technorati Tags: auto, Developing, Hacking, Mac

Geektool & Stikkit

2007-03-28T00:58:00.000+01:00

I setup geektool to get my todos from stikkit but the problem is that it only works when I'm connected and often I am not, here's what I used initially:

curl http://api.stikkit.com/todos.txt?api_key=4b9d0075517fd37629631xxxxxxxxx

but after a quick chat with Michael I realised something, you can pipe commands in GeekTool so why not do this instead:

curl http://api.stikkit.com/todos.txt?api_key=4b9d0075517fd3762963xxxxxxxxxx > /tmp/stikkit.tmp; cat /tmp/stikkit.tmp

So now I have a local file that is always there even when the network isn't

This fixes reading todos offline (which I can do already by displaying my todo.txt already of course, it's ok for creating a new one if i'm online through QS but the remaining problem is creating new one's offline.

Two possible fixes for that are almost here, A widget that supports offline creation (and listing I think but need to try it out) and the next version of Stikkit

Technorati Tags: GeekTool, Hacking, stikkit

Quicksilver Triggers - Flickr tags

2007-03-26T21:57:00.000+01:00

I'm going to write these up here mainly so if I ever need them again in the event I lose my machine I'll know them again.

Using the standard replace search term with *** I defined a trigger that lets me:

invoke QS, it's in the text entry box, type a tag name, like Etech07, hit enter and I get a browser page with all the pictures matching that tag

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/***/ is the URL btw

Technorati Tags: Quicksilver

More playing with APIs

2007-03-26T02:08:00.000+01:00

I've been playing with APIs lately, actually using my Mac for more than reading email/IM/RSS which was partly the point of buying it in the first place.

First up was a simple Twitter pull of friends timeline into Geektool, then found it's been done, and better you might say by people using Ruby (I haven't even started that yet!)

Just now I got my todos from Stikkit onto the desktop, very easy mostly due to the exceptionally easy to use and modular API the folks at Values of n have provided, in my limited experience of using them so far it's very good.

I'm keeping it simple and using curl mostly and formatting output as required with awk or sed

still it's good fun, it's sparking my interest in coding at last, lots more to learn though

update, found a Applescript update from Buffington to enable growl notification when stikkits are posted through Quicksilver so I copied it and pasted it in to the Tweet one and now I get a notification if it gets posted, not sure how well it error checks, if at all but I like it so far (and I know if tweets get there as twitterific tells me!)

[composed and posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: Developing, Hacking, Mac