October 2007 Archives (17 posts)
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
There have been 5 releases of Mac OS X in the time that it has take Microsoft to deliver 1 version of Windows Vista (Windows CE + ME +NT = Vista). One of the best reviews of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard comes from Ars Technica.
I haven’t upgraded yet. I’m concerned about software that may not work with OS X 10.5, yet. I have a lot of projects on the go and will wait until I get a bit downtime to test things out. From what I’ve seen so far it looks promising. More eye candy, more useful features, great user experience.
Posted in OS X Software at 3:06 AM | Comments (2)
Google Analytics Widget for Movable Type
GoogleAnalyticsWidget lets you view Google Analytics information from within Movable Type. This free plugin from Apperceptive saves a bit of time by providing me with a quick overview of my blog’s website traffic.
Apperceptive also makes a plugin for Google AdSense but I couldn’t get it to work — it’s an alpha release and could be buggy with some installations of Movable Type 4. When it gets released I’ll definitely be installing it.
Posted in Bombippy and Web Development at 2:43 AM | Comments (0)
CSSEdit 2.6 rounds out my web development toolkit
If you’re a web developer you don’t use Adobe Dreamweaver to make websites — you use a bunch of different applications to edit code, transfer files and test your code.
Under Mac OS X I am using:
- Photoshop for graphic design, production and optimization
- BBEdit for coding
- Transmit for file transfers
- Safari and Firefox for initial testing
When it came to editing CSS I would use a combination of BBEdit and Firefox (with plugins) to see how my code was rendering. Switching back and forth between the programs works but it can be tedious. It’s also easy to make mistakes when writing the CSS.
The “one-window web development” of Coda is nice but it sacrifices too much in the way of features and by trying to simplify the web development workflow (at least for me). Joe Kissell at TidBITS has a great review of Coda that explains where the program falls short for some.
If anyone is interested, I’m selling my copy of Coda for $30. It currently sells for $69-$79 on Panic’s website.
Today I found myself having to do a lot of CSS editing for a site redesign and thought I would give MacRabbit’s CSSEdit 2.6 another try. I’m sold! CSSEdit is a fabulous piece of software. I don’t know how I managed without it.
You can also validate your CSS and catch mistakes before your code gets out of control and makes debugging difficult. The interface is very slick and full of useful features that have completely sold me on CSSEdit.
If you’re a web developer and you haven’t tried CSSEdit then download a trial version. Find out why this might be the best $30 you’ll spend his year.
Posted in OS X Software and Web Design and Web Development at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)
Pixar Short Films Collection - Volume 1
The Pixar Short Films Collection - Volume 1 (2004) DVD will be released on Nov 6, 2007.
If you’re in the US, you can buy it for $19.99 from Amazon.com. If you’re in Canada, you can purchase the same DVD from Amazon.ca for $25.89.
The last time I checked, the Canadian dollar was on par with the American dollar. So why does a DVD cost $5.90 more in Niagara Falls, ON than it does in Niagara Falls, NY?
I don’t know about you but I’m tired of being ripped off.
Posted in Movies at 9:52 PM | Comments (2)
Factory: Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays (2007)
All of a sudden, Joy Division and Manchester are popular again. With the release of 2 films about Joy Division and a fabulous documentary from BBC Four, Manchester From Joy Division to Happy Mondays provides a great history lesson of an interesting period in British music.
If you’ve seen 24 Hour Party People (2002) then you have some idea of what all the fuss is about. Steve Coogan does an incredible job of portraying Tony Wilson — founder/manager of The Haçienda nightclub and one of the founders of Factory Records. In the BBC Four documentary he is featured prominently. I was surprised to read that he died on August 10, 2007 of renal cancer.
Manchester from Joy Division to Happy Mondays has some incredible interviews with Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Vini Reilly (who looks worse than Phil Spector) of The Durutti Column and more. There is some great footage of Joy Division and the early days at Factory Records. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get enough of this film.
Posted in Movie Reviews and Music at 1:43 AM | Comments (1)
Newcastle Brown Ale
I’m working late (again), munching on a bowl of popcorn and enjoying a Newcastle Brown Ale — full of flavour, easy to drink, one of my favourite beers. What’s yours?
Posted in Food at 12:54 AM | Comments (4)
The IT Crowd may not air on NBC
Writer/director Graham Linehan has a blog in which he recently discussed his television show The IT Crowd. In the US, NBC has been working on an American version of this hit TV show from the UK, but according to Linehan it may never air.
News reached me a while back that there may not be a US version of The IT Crowd. Apparently, there’s been a change of management at NBC and they’ve gone off the idea. I found this out on the Internet, which is how I find out all my information on the US IT Crowd.
It doesn’t sound like NBC is communicating at all with Linehan which I find odd. Stranger still, is that the US pilot is an exact copy of the British pilot.
Zap2it reported back in September that NBC May Unplug ‘IT Crowd’. The site also mentioned that the female lead, Jessica St. Clair was no longer part of the show. The show still isn’t in production and with only a pilot in the can, things don’t look very good.
If you’re a fan of the show then you’ll want to read Notes on the U.S. IT Crowd on Linehan’s blog.
Posted in Television at 9:44 PM | Comments (3)
How to make crystal clear ice
I can’t believe that I’m blogging about this but somebody might find this useful — how to make crystal clear ice cubes. Two steps:
- boil bottled water in a pot and let it cool
- boil bottled water in a pot and let it cool and pour into your ice tray
If those last two steps were too confusing, then you can watch an instructional video on how to perform this procedure.
Oh and in case you were wondering how to make your own Boba Fett knee armor or a 25mm pneumatic sniper rifle then visit instructables — The World’s Biggest Show & Tell.
Posted in Food at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
Why does Apple Mac OS X cost more in Canada?
Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard can be pre-ordered for the discounted price of $109.00 on Amazon.com. Amazon.ca doesn’t allow you to pre-order OS X Version 10.5 Leopard, but you can purchase Mac Os X V10.4.6 Tiger for $149.99!
Now that the Canadian dollar is worth the same as the American dollar, I wonder if we’re going to have to pay $20-$50 more for OS X.
If you’re new to Mac OS X Leopard, take a look at the guided tour for an overview.
Posted in OS X Software at 11:30 PM | Comments (4)
TextExpander 2 saves me time in Mac OS X
I’ve been on a Getting Things Done (GTD) kick lately — trying to be more productive in my day to day work. Through a series of geeky software tools and by approaching things like email differently, I’m wasting less time than before and being more productive.
If I type ‘ddate’ then it inserts ‘October 19, 2007’. If I type ‘andthe’ then it knows that I meant to type ‘and the’ and corrects my spelling mistake.
If you’re a web developer, you’ll love TextExpander. It will generate code for you automatically by typing a simple abbreviations. As an added bonus, the software inserts the cursor wherever you specify.
TextExpander keeps track of the keystrokes that it saves you from typing and translates this into time saved. After a couple hours of use, it has saved me from typing 1,932 characters, approximately 4 minutes of time.
SpamSieve is another fabulous program that has paid for itself many times. Since I installed the software, it has blocked 70,386 spam messages. Every day it deletes around 106 spam messages from my inbox. That adds up to hours of mindless filtering and deleting of messages.
Some links:
SmileOnMyMac
TextExpander 2: .Mac syncing and much more
Newsletters that teach
Posted in OS X Software and Web Design at 12:53 AM | Comments (1)
40” Sony BRAVIA LCD HDTV
With my home theatre in a shambles and my satellite dish disconnected since May, I’ve been watching TV and movies on my 23” Apple Cinema display. For me, BitTorrent has been the only way to catch up on Heroes and House.
Last week, the brother-in-law gave us a very generous house-warming gift — 40” Sony BRAVIA® LCD HDTV (Model Number: KDL-40S3000). It looks fabulous in our new living room. Now I just have to get my dish reconnected so that I can watch some football or hockey in HD.
I have to say that Sony’s Xross Media Bar on-screen menu system is the nicest I’ve seen in a television set. No wonder it won an Emmy. The graphic user interface is beautiful. The animation is fluid and the graphics are very slick. I found myself playing around with the menus just to see them animate.
The 10-bit processing and 10-bit display is supposed to provide better colour reproduction with HD content. I haven’t had a chance to test this yet but it’s nice to know that it has that capability. The LightSensor™ is another interesting option that “intelligently adjusts screen brightness to match the ambient light in a room” — no need to adjust the brightness/contrast during the afternoon and evening.
Another option called S-Force™ Front Surround provides better sounding audio from the two front speakers. It’s by no means a replacement for a proper surround sound installation but if you don’t want to make your living room into a home theatre, then it’s a nice feature.
Lastly, this model has had nothing but favourable reviews on various websites. I hope I have better luck with this Sony product than the last one I purchased.
Posted in Home Theatre at 11:15 AM | Comments (3)
32 Hours 7 Minutes
Wired has a great story about Alex Roy’s quest to beat the legendary Cannonball Run record by crossing the US in under 32 hours and 7 minutes. The whole experience was documented and will be released as a film in the near future titled 32 hours 7 minutes.
Posted in Miscellaneous and Movies at 1:04 PM | Comments (0)
Springsteen concert at the ACC in Toronto
I go to maybe one concert a year. For the second time in less than a week I was back at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. This time, it was to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
The concert was amazing—better than the Van Halen reunion I saw a few nights before. The crowd was much more enthusiastic and the atmosphere was electric. Not many bands can release a new album and have an entire arena singing the new songs, word for word.
The show was a sonic barrage of E Street sound that was thundering but balanced enough that it didn’t wash out the harmonies of Little Steven or Patti Scialfa. The music lasted about 140 minutes and just kept coming. Max Weinberg would play drum rolls between songs while Springsteen and other band members quickly changed guitars before launching into another song.
The band was dressed in black which I didn’t really notice until they took a bow at the end. Maybe this was a reflection of America’s ‘dark times’ that Springsteen keeps referring to in recent interviews. His latest album, Magic is anti-war and has been called unpatriotic by a lot of critics. In a recent interview on 60 Minutes, Bruce had this say in response to the negative press:
When people think of the American identity, they don’t think of torture. They don’t think of illegal wiretapping. They don’t think of voter suppression. They don’t think of no habeas corpus. No right to a lawyer … you know. Those are things that are anti-American.
Politics aside, the concert was fabulous. 58-year-old Springsteen didn’t do his famous knee slide across the stage and sax player Clarence Clemons rested on a chair between songs but the music was excellent. Springsteen’s voice sounded pitch-perfect. The band sounded crisp and even managed to create some dynamics in the songs—not everything was played with the sound turned up to 11 on the amps.
The complete set list for the Toronto show is on brucespringsteen.net and there is some video of the Ottawa show from Sunday night. Oh, and if you look closely on the left side of the screen you’ll see my brother Drew in the front row. I don’t how he does it but he always has great seats.
Posted in Music at 9:37 AM | Comments (1)
Ice Cream Man
My ears are ringing and I can’t get the song Ice Cream Man, out of my head. I just got back from the Van Halen concert at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and loved it.
I wished I’d seen David Lee Roth with Van Halen when I was in grade 11. Who’d have thought that I’d get a chance to see Diamond Dave perform with Van Halen, 20 years later? Dave doesn’t jump as high as he did 20 years ago and if he did the splits, they’d probably have to end the tour but the concert was still great.
16-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen was solid on the bass, replacing Michael Anthony. Alex Van Halen is still doing drum solos. Someone should tell him that nobody does drum a solos any more, that they’re un-cool. And Eddie is still doing the same ol’ guitar solos that he’s always done. Some things never change.
I got good lemonade, ah, dixie cups
All flavors and push ups too
I’m your ice cream man, stop me when Im passin by
See now all my flavors are guaranteed to satisfy…
Posted in Music at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
“Unnecessary” quotation marks and apostrophe abuse
I just came across the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks which has been “making fun of bad punctuation since 2005”. It’s a very funny blog and it has some great examples of how not to use quotation marks.
Apostrophe Abuse is another very funny site that documents the incorrect use of the apostrophe in signs, websites (NY Times), movie tickets (Alien’s), television and more.
Posted in Blogs and Humour at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)
The IT Crowd on NBC
The other night I watched the season finale of the hilarious British television comedy, The IT Crowd. I’m not sure if the UK’s Channel 4 has plans to do a third season but NBC in the US has “Americanized” the show and will be releasing it midseason!
NBC did this with The Office and has had a lot of success. For their version of The IT Crowd, NBC recruited Richard Ayoade who plays the character of Moss in the original version of The IT Crowd.
I don’t know. I love the British version of the show and think it will be difficult to enjoy and American update. I’ll probably watch just to see more of Richard Ayoade.
Visit NBC for video and images of the new version of The IT Crowd.
Posted in Television at 9:46 AM | Comments (3)
C’mon man, I got kids to feed
Here’s a photo of my buddy Paul trying to sell some Detroit Lions tickets to a scalper. This guy’s look reminds me of little of Snoop Dogg.
When Paul told him the price, Snoop complained and said it was too high. Then he complained to tell Paul that he has kids to feed, that he needs to make a living. Paul’s response was that he has kids too. Four of them!
Maybe Paul can tell us how the deal went down. All I know is that it made for a good photo.
Full-size image here.
Posted in Photography and Travel at 3:25 AM | Comments (1)
