Jan 2, 2011
Excitement and Trepidation at the prospect of the Mac App Store —
Setting aside the geeky shame in admitting it, I’m quite excited to see the launch of the new Mac App Store this Thursday (6th January).
Excitement I’m excited about it for a number of reasons but the main reason is how it restores the process of shopping for software to the way I remember it to be. I remember the pre-Internet days of buying software - I used to take my pocket money to the local computer store and peruse the shelves for games and other software that would take my fancy.…
Dec 24, 2010
Cooking the Christmas Ham —
Cooking the Christmas ham on the stove.
(Taken with Instagram at Derry, Dromara)…
Dec 19, 2010
Mr Plow —
Continuing with the recent snow theme… being stuck in the house for a while inevitably leads me to idly browse the InterWebs in search of new things to buy1 that I don’t really need.
Today I’ve been looking at snow blade attachments for the front of the ride-on mower which would convert it into a small scale snow plough. We’ve got a nice Castelgarden mower and, lo-and-behold, Castelgarden produce the snow blade you see above.…
Dec 18, 2010
Disappointment —
Maybe it’s just the child in me, but I can’t help but feel disappointed that the flash weather warnings issued by the Met Office for a heavy and disruptive snowfall did not materialise overnight. I have nothing to gain by seeing the entire country ravaged and paralysed by Arctic conditions but I’m going to be a little selfish here.
We’d done the hard yards:
the heating oil tank was full; the coal bunker was full; the cars were filled with fuel for emergencies; the house was full of food (especially bread and milk); the fridge was full of beer and the cupboard full of crisps; Call of Duty: Black Ops and Rock Band 3 were ready to go.…
Dec 14, 2010
"Why I'm returning my iMac" —
I love this article. Personally I think it’s either:
comedy gold - the author has really made an effort to come across as idiotic as possible; idiotic - the author has got no clue about computers, which makes this comedy gold. My personal highlight:
“To make the Mac [Thunderbird] program livable, I increased the font to 16 point, then continued writing emails to military sources. That night, at 3:30 a.…
Dec 14, 2010
The Indie Mac Gift Pack —
The never-ending river of Mac software bundles continues to flow past me. My1 experience to date has always been the same: these bundles inevitably contain just one piece of software that I actually want or need, and a lot of extra filler that I’ll never use.
But finally a bundle has come along that actually contains more than one application that I’ve been holding out for. That bundle is the Indie Mac Gift Pack.…
Dec 13, 2010
Marco Arment on Chrome OS and IT platform longevity —
This is an interesting commentary from Marco Arment. One thing that rang particularly true was this statement:
“That’s why that PC on your banker’s desk is probably running Windows 2000, an 11-year-old platform: because it’s extraordinarily expensive to update it, and the current system works acceptably without any massive, one-time expenditures on this year’s budget.”
This is why it doesn’t matter what kind of business I go into the person behind the desk/counter always seems to say “I’m really sorry - the computers are running really slow today.…
Dec 12, 2010
Curse you iPad and your lack of multi-user support —
The iPad pisses me off. It’s such an amazing device, and it does just about everything I could wish for from such a revolution in computing. It always sounds contrived to say that the iPad has changed things but it really has! (Ooooh, that sounded contrived). My laptop rarely comes out of an evening anymore - most of my casual browsing, mail checking, tweeting, etc is done on the iPad. My wife is able to use it to make Skype calls, do the grocery shopping, keep an eye on Facebook.…
Dec 12, 2010
Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead —
At last - mainstream IT media is finally catching on to what I’ve been saying for the past 3 years.
Don’t get me wrong - I love Linux as a server OS, and I was a huge advocate of it as a desktop OS for a long time. I used to write tutorials and reviews for Linux Format magazine so I really put my money where my mouth was at the time.…
Dec 10, 2010
Daily Backups —
Following some hard disk wobbles in the last few weeks I decided to take a more rigorous approach to my backup strategy. I’ve been using SuperDuper! for some time now but my backups were infrequent to say the least. So I bit the bullet and set up a scheduled backup for myself to run every lunchtime when I was away from my desk.
After a couple of days I decided that wasn’t quite enough - what I really wanted was a backup at the end of the day to complement the lunchtime backup.…