Well 10.4 got previewed this morning and provoked mixed reviews. 3-way video conferencing in iChat AV will be pretty useful for keeping in touch with family etc., there’s some cool graphics stuff and the Spotlight search thing has potential. If the user can specify their own metadata it could be really cool. Automator just seems to be a GUI for building Applescripts.
Dashboard seems to have been a rip-off of Konfabulator, though Tom deems me an idiot for saying so. Desk Accessories were allegedly Apple’s prior art, which is rubbish. They were little applications implemented as device drivers that relied on main applications to figure out that a mouse click should go to a DA and then pass it to them. If the app didn’t support DAs then tough. That’s hardly a comparison to Konfabulator, which is a scripting engine, which uses XML to define the UI and JavaScript to provide functionality, in a manner which makes it easy for people to write their own widgets. Apparently it’s also a big deal that these widgets are out of the way and accessible by hot-key a la Expose. When I’m using a big application all my small apps are already hidden behind it and easily accessible by Cmd-Tab. Certainly just as quick to access. Just missing the eye candy.The Konfabulator debate doesn’t centre around whether ot not it was a unique idea. It’s true that it has been around before in various guises. However, it didn’t exist on OS X before Konfabulator came along. Apple made a big song and dance at the launch of OS X about developer relations and encouraging more developers onto the Mac platform. They should be offering support and encouragement to sharware developers who come up with good, slick products, not just waiting to see what it reasonably popular and then incorporating it into the OS. Apple should spend their R&D money on bringing $5000 media tools to the common man, a la Final Cut Express and GarageBand, not shitting on the little guy.RSS in Safari doesn’t seem to be much of a big deal. Anyone who is aware of blogs knows that RSS has been around for years and is not new as Jobs claims. If I go to a site I don’t want to see its RSS feed. I want to subscribe to RSS feeds of sites I like and have an aggregator alert me when one of those sites publishes something. NetNewsWire already does all that and does it well. I can see a precis of the article and if I’m interested, then a key press opens it in Safari. Maybe when it comes out in almost a years time there’ll be something more significant.So, we have searchable metadata from BeOS, widgets from Konfabulator and RSS from NetNewsWire. Not exactly innovation and a bit hypocritical when you have “Redmond, start your photocopiers” posters all over the conference hall.Just back from a great weekend down in Perisher. The first boarding weekend of the year and what a good one it was. Friday was OK. It was good just to be on the slopes but the visibility was terrible. I managed to fall into a dip while traversing Mt. Perisher and twisted my knee a little. It was pretty sore at the time, but after 10mins or so all was well again and I could get back on the board. That was just as well, since Saturday was perfect. Clear blue skies and lots of powder made for a brilliant day. It was easily the best conditions I’ve boarded on, though that only covers the last two years ;-) Flying around the slopes in knee deep powder with the tunes blaring on the iPod makes for happy days. Sunday was also good, though there was no snow overnight. Tom managed to get himself rescued by ski patrol, which evened up the score between himself and Kevin. Thankfully it seems to be nothing serious, just a bad case of “dead leg”. I accompanied him back to Front Valley in the big Snow Cat which was fun. After a couple of more hours all over the resort it was time to call an end to the weekend and hit the road back to Sydney. All in all, a great weekend. Hopefully there’ll be plenty more this season.
Went to the movies last night with Tom. Saw Dawn Of The Dead…. don’t bother. 28 Days Later was much better, or maybe I just preferred that because I saw it first. There’s only so much you can do with a zombbie-flick it would seem. Anyway, unless you’re particularly into the genre, don’t waste your hard-earned.
Went up to Bondi Junction yesterday to check out the new shopping megaplex thing they’ve almost finished building. It looks pretty nice, though I did notice that it has been divided into ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-nots’ sections! On one side you have David Jones, Versace, Tag-Heuer and various designer stuff, whereas the other side has Myers and regular stores. Even to food courts are themed differently, with the ‘Haves’ section being very subtle and stylish and the ‘Have-nots’ being garish and in-your-face. Pretty funny really.
I bought myself a new phone while I was up there too. I ended up getting the SonyEricsson T630 in black, though they had to order it for me so I’ll collect it next week.Finally, saw Shrek 2 last night. Great fun, really funny and well worth a look.Got my short run in last night – 2.3km. Felt good, getting the hang of this running lark ;-) I kept the pace down and timed it at 11:30 which is just about right.
500m easyD: 2.3km – T: 11:30 – HR: 150I woke up yesterday with the beginnings of a cold/sore throat. It felt OK last night so I went for the run, but this morning it’s there again. I’m supposed to go for a bike ride this evening, but I reckon I’ll skip that, do nothing tomorrow either, dose myself with Beroccas and hope for the best.B: 94.6km – R: 6.6kmBevin has just left and headed over to New Zealand to be a snow bum. While she was here I took her around Sydney to show her the sights. She was suitably impressed. Here’s a photo gallery of Sydney, mainly from our trip to Taronga Zoo.
I’ve just finished revamping the site. I moved this blog from Moveable Type to WordPress as it uses MySQL & PHP instead of being flat-file based. Makes things easier in the long run. I also did a bit of a redesign to clean things up a little. I think it looks better anyway.
Two friends of ours, Kristy and Ben, have headed off on a round-the-world trip, so we volunteered to mind their budgies while they were gone. After a couple of quiet days as they adjusted to their new surroundings, they’re now happily chirping away.
Farewell Gus, you’ll be missed. R.I.P.
No training at all this weekend. Kirsten’s birthday on Friday, boat party on Saturday afternoon, Graham’s birthday drinks after the boat party, then white-water rafting at Penrith for Nick’s birthday. The rafting was good fun. Not as hard as the Zambezi obviously, as it’s a man-made course, but fun nonetheless.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone. Enjoy a Guinness for me!
I was reading Peter FitzSimons in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday and was very disappointed that he hadn’t named Ireland as one of his ‘Teams Of The Week’, seeing as how he’s an ex-Wallaby and would have been delighted that England were beaten. I emailed him the following tongue-in-cheek letter:
TFF, how could you? After all we’ve done for you lately!You were unconvincing in the early stages of the World Cup. We came along, and after administering a severe wake-up call, graciously stood aside so you wouldn’t have to meet France in the quarter-finals. We rejoiced as you reached the final, admired your gallant efforts against the English and groaned when you failed at the final hurdle.As if that wasn’t enough, when you were down, and facing 4 years of ignominy, we stepped up to the plate and showed you how it should be done. We battled your oppressors on their home turf, wiped the smile off their faces, humbled them in front of their adoring fans, and brought delight to Australians everywhere.Was all this deserving of a mention as Team Of The Week? Bloody oath it was! What more do we have to do?Yours etc.,Lo and behold, I actually got a reply!
Donncha Redmond
That is a very good point!And I stand before you with my head bowed in deep regret…Please forgive me…Peter TFF Fitz
Well, as Chris pointed out, I really should mention this…
Ireland beat England 19-13 in the Six Nations at the weekend!England, who are current World Champions, and have been unbeaten in 22 games, got taken to the cleaners on their home ground. The World Cup was paraded around Twickenham before their adoring fans prior to the game, then the boys in green ruined the day for anyone in a white shirt. They also earned the enduring gratitude of Aussies everywhere who now have some a comeback when the Poms slag them off for losing the World Cup.
I found out this morning that Cormac & Belinda have just had a baby boy, Jacob Finn Cormac Redmond, who weighed in at 6lb 3oz. All are well, and I’m now officially an uncle!
Not much exercise done this week. Have spent the whole week cleaning our apartment in Canberra, packing stuff up and moving out. We should have taken before and after photos! Now it’s spotless and we’re all back working in Sydney. Will have to get used to the trafffic all over again, and will have a much longer commute into work, but, as part of ‘The Year Of Getting Fit’ the trusty bike will be dragged out and used to cycle to and from work. Should be fun.
Welcome to 2004, the year of getting fit.
New Year weigh-in: 89kgFeeling a bit better today. Can walk & stand properly, but still have twinges in my back if I try moving suddenly. Looks like that’s it for exercise before Christmas, or at least the rest of the week. Physio dude recommends running and swimming to strengthen my back.
Great weekend. Surprised Jacqui on Saturday morning with tickets to see Duran Duran and Robbie Williams that night. She was over the moon. Concert was great. Going in I could only name two Duran Duran songs, but once they started playing I recognized nearly everything, including some that I didn’t realise were theirs. Robbie put on a fantastic performance. He’s such a showman, and a real cocky bastard. All in all, great concert and Jacqui loved it.
I lifted her up a couple of times so that she could see over the crowd. All was fine, until I was reading the paper on Sunday arvo and put my back out! It was excruciating all day yesterday. Got some remedial massage today and it’s a lot better now. There’ll be no exercise for a couple of days though! Bloody old man.Lot’s of excitement last night. Was on the couch watching TV, when the couch wobbled. I thought it was John, but he thought it was me. Tom, sitting on the other couch, had his wobble too, so we realised it was an earthquake. Very cool! Turns out it was 4.3 on the Richter, centred on Mittagong, about 100km outside Sydney.
Got a phone call today from Apple to say that the final 15" AlBook in the recently arrived batch will be allocated to me, so hopefully I’ll have it before the weekend. About time too!