MacBook Pro

by Kieran

Let me admit something to you. The system I have now is something I bought when I was in college, taking in mind of course that I’m just about to finish my four year degree, so yes, it’s old, and it’s slow. Of course, it’s slowness is only relative to what I do on it, and some things I do are very application heavy. Running Eclipse with some larger applications causes a huge impact on the memory usage. Otherwise, for your general wishy-washy use of a system, it would run perfect. I’ve grown very fond of this system, though for my area of work, and especially the stuff I’m about to get into, it just won’t cut it.

Today my parents revealed to me that they would buy me a MacBook Pro as a graduation present (yes, they are extremely generous, so much so that I don’t quite know what to say other than “thankyou”). Fortunately I get quirks pointed out to me such as the glossy screen, and the new Multi-Touch on more recent models. I’m quite patient, however, therefore I will wait until after I get back to Guernsey most probably before I go and buy one. It’s probably a good choice as the price may slightly go down, and it’ll be more than likely that the newer models are in stock back at home in the Apple store.

I’ll be going for the 17″ screen seeing as though I have the choice available to me. The more space available on the desktop the better really, and the systems themselves aren’t actually that much bigger than the 15″, from what I’ve been told. Plus, it’s rare that I take my laptop out and about, but neither can I justify a desktop as it’s likely I would be taking it out of the house.

What can I say for the transition to Mac OS X? Well, as Mac are so oriented at key usability features (as I’ve previously studied in course content) then I can’t see there being a problem. Sure, I’ll have to learn new shortcuts and the use of the Multi-Touch mousepad etc., but it’s all a learning curve in using new things such as my GIMP woes earlier today.

In what way will it benefit me? Well, I’ll have more speed, but as for Mac OS itself, I don’t really know of any yet, but I’m willing to try, and I’m more than willing to stick to alternatives to what I currently use. MS feels more like bloat-ware every day, and the consumer market feels to me as if it’s being dumbed down further and further to the point that error messages are aimed at a five year old. Don’t get me wrong, MS is just about right for the consumer market, but for me personally, I simply can’t agree with everything.

Furthermore the use of virtualisation is going to be a great benefit as what’s held for me in the future is some lean, mean, cross-platform software development team. I’m aiming at releasing some software (OSS) with its first version being compatible on Mac OS X, Windows, Vista, and finally Ubuntu. Why Ubuntu? It’s all the rage, and I’ll get along with it quite well I’m sure. Hopefully I’ll get some tips, though ;)

Even More Reason to Hate MySpace

by Kieran

Sure, I use Facebook, and I enjoy using it. It allows me to keep in contact with friends without having to use instant messaging, something which soaks up all of my time sometimes, and I try and avoid it at all costs. MySpace was something I used before Facebook, and did enjoy it, until of course the editable profiles were exploited to the point that killer JavaScript scripts were being used to screw the general public over when they wanted to read their so-called friend’s latest blog post. Of course there was then a constant peeping into one’s life with stupid features primarily aimed at acknowledging oneself as the centre of the universe (see bulletins.)

So who was “Tom”? You know, the guy who “invented” it all. The face that spread across the world. The user with the most friends. The user with the most hate groups spawned over and over again in the MySpace world. Tom, as you may know it, is actually a big fake. That’s right, if you’re a devoted MySpace user you’re going to hate this statement. Tom, according to many-a-website, is a big fraud in the sense that you think he was the inventor and sole developer of MySpace. This quite simply isn’t the case.

I need not say anything else when you can simply click on this link to find out more. I found it rather interesting.

The GIMP, Woes

by Kieran

Now that my university year is coming to a close there are many doors opening in the future of my software development. Fortunately I have a handful of people who are very eager to work together on solo-driven, yet team-oriented software projects. As a part of this we’re setting up our old team, and reviving old projects that have been left for dust to settle on them, and hopefully with enough time to get something decent developed. As part of all this setting up, I’m having to develop a unique website, as some of the projects will be for sale (although none of my own will be, only some that I will work on).

I’ve started to use GIMP instead of Adobe’s Photoshop for developing graphics for a number of reasons which I won’t go into now. I’m a big fan of Open Source Software (OSS), though occasionally I do have certain “issues” with their usability features. There are a few projects lurking around the Internet that are almost synonymous with that of commercially-released products, for example, Splashup being similar to Photoshop, and Canvas being similar to Microsoft’s Paint. Both of these are very good, especially on a usability level being extremely similar to that of the commercial counterparts that they mimic.

The problem that I find with GIMP is that its default behaviour is quite different, particularly in the areas of keyboard shortcuts. Now from the outset it is quite obvious that the user interface is different from that of commercial competition, yet I don’t see the need to switch around all of the keyboard shortcuts. I have seen scripts which allow an exact replica of Photoshop’s interface to be used in GIMP, but then many people may disagree with that.

My main issue - after all of this - is that some projects attempt to be different from big projects quite simply to “be different”. Some of the things I learnt in HCI theory was to mimic other products because it’s obvious that users will be familiar with their key usability. Sure, you can extend this to a certain degree, but completely changing every single shortcut just isn’t right. I sure won’t be doing that in some of the applications I’m working on.

In addition to this, however, I can’t see why the GIMP isn’t suitable for much development. It sure is going to take me a while to get used to all of the shortcuts, and I’m going to try to learn using the default ones as every time I reinstall it I won’t want to be applying scripts to the application just so I can use it.

Broken Theme, Tarski

by Kieran

Tarski is a very nifty and editable theme developed so much so that it has its own website. This is the second time I’ve had to reinstall WordPress on my hosting because of that theme eventually killing my administrator pages. I haven’t seen any web links mentioning that the latest version of WP and Tarski don’t agree with each other, and instead I’ve had to find out the hard way. Twice.

I’d recommend not using that theme for now, although it could just be something to do with my hosting. I’ve reverted to some other random theme for now, although I’m doing a bit of web development at the moment so I might just have a bash at making my own one. Not that themes matter too much, although it’s nice to be consistent (something which I’ve never learnt to do).

EDIT: Sorry, this was against WP 2.5.1, FYI.

Final Stretch

by Kieran

I handed in my research project yesterday which was just over twenty-thousand words, not that word count matters in these kinds of things but you can imagine how many hours of work that is.  In fact, OpenOffice tells me that I had done 350 hours of work on that particular document, which is more than I expected it to be.

I had about two hours sleep the night before hand in as we stayed up until 4am then got up again at 6am. It’s not that it was a rush job towards the end but we had read over each others (me and a friend that is) and found a large number of errors throughout each others documents which needed fixing.  Then there were just all of the loose ends such as appendices.

Printing and binding actually took about 3 hours, so it’s a good thing we got up so early to make sure we were prepared. We ended up handing them in at about 2pm I believe, so an hour shy of the deadline.

I’ve learnt a lot from the project, mainly time management, research skills, development skills and research writing skills.

Now I have two exams left which start in three weeks time, and I’m very much unprepared for them as I’ve been focusing on the final year project so much. I slept for 12 hours last night so today isn’t a good day to be studying as my body seems to be trying to want the caffeine that I’ve been feeding it four times a day for the last two weeks.

Oh also my WordPress install died, so the change of theme is because I’ve forgotten what the one I was using was called. I have no idea why the install stopped working, I hadn’t changed anything.

Music of the Month

by Kieran

As I sit behind a computer all day everyday it’s important to keep a focus on my work without any distractions.  Each individual works differently when sat behind a computer, I know some that prefer silence, and some that keep desktop toys to stop them from going mad (I’m talking of things you get those gadget sites).  My sanity-focus is music, so I tend to listen to a lot.

Recently I got a hold of Ani Difranco’s album "Canon".  I’ve been a fan of Difranco for a couple of years now and I have only ever owned her ever popular Knuckle Down album.  If you don’t know who Ani Difranco is, well, she’s an acoustic folk artist with a passion for singing about unspoken things such as sexuality, homophobia, drugs, money etc.  Her style of music is confusing to say the least with a heavy acoustic style and a passionate voice.

The album itself contains many of her older songs but "revamped" as so to speak with live versions also.  I must say that my favourite song is "Fuel" which is a very rhythmic track containing some extremely absurd, yet true statements.  It almost sounds as if she’s rapping, though it’s more of a rhyme.  I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I definitely recommend this album, and it’s rare that I recommend music.  Perhaps find some previews of tracks somewhere, or jump on Last.fm and try and get a listen on some of it.

Coffee Accompanied Deadline

by Kieran

I remember about two years ago I would proclaim my dislike for coffee to my housemates at the time.  "It’s foul stuff!" I would say without thinking twice of taking a quick sip to glimpse a recollection of the horrible taste.

For a period of time I was an absolute health freak, I wouldn’t even eat a chocolate bar or have a fizzy drink.  I went from a thirteen stone, five foot four, sixteen year old to a nine stone, five foot six, eighteen year old.  Previously I led a care-free lifestyle with absolutely no consideration for the foods and drinks I was consuming on a regular basis.

Of course there’s a picture of me of when I was at my skinniest (I’m on the right, picture taken 2004), and I find it mildly disturbing.  Three years later I weighed in three stone heavier.  My weight has been up and down over many years, and again I lost stones worth of weight during my stay in hospital and the time afterwards.

Though despite all of my health-concious years I still had never touched a cup of coffee and stood religiously next to my bottles of water.  Let’s take that and put it into perspective.  Yesterday I believe I had five cups of sugar-spiked, three-spooned-strong coffee and I loved every sip of it.  I first tried coffee when I started having Mocha’s at a company I used to work for (we had two Costa Coffee’s in our buildings).  I think I’ve been hooked ever since.

With a fiancee who regularly drinks coffee, and a software developer whom I work side-by-side with drinking it as if it were the cup of strength there is no way for me to avoid it any more than I’d like to.  The question is, does it really help?  I have actually been drinking caffeine-free coffee which tastes very similar, but the health risks of caffeine-free coffee are supposedly greater than that of regular coffee due to the chemicals used to remove the caffeine, plus, you don’t get the "hit" from it.

What I will say is this.  I’m giving up as soon as this research paper is due in, and I’m going to get quite health-concious because I believe I am doing far more harm than good.  Stay safe kids, avoid the dream-beans.

The Final Stretch

by Kieran

Well it’s Tuesday night and in one weeks time I will be taking my research project to a print shop to get it printed and bound.  At this point I’m loving the fact that I can use the word "I" as my project disallows this kind of language use.  I expected the project to reach about 12,000 words at the most, and I can safely say that there’s sections which will be at least 4,000 words that aren’t touched yet despite my word count now being almost 14,000.  Of course word count has absolutely no impact on the quality of work and projects with just 10,000 words can do better than projects with 20,000 words.

I’ve been trying to ignore the word count and am planning on cutting out any irrelevant text in the days leading up to the hand in.  This Saturday a full project review is being done to tie up any loose ends from a third party perspective.  It’s been a really interesting project I admit.

I don’t plan on it stopping there however.  Personally I think I’ll take it to the next level and re-develop the application from scratch and turning it into something usable by the general public.  It has also given me enough insight to hopefully give some talks at the GSDF on network-enabled application programming in the summer if they allow me.

Anyway, I need to be strict on my bed time and it’s already 10:30.

WordPress 2.5

by Kieran

Following Damien’s post on WordPress 2.5 I decided to upgrade from quite an old version that I had installed.  I must say, I am amazed at the amount of changes that have been made.  The AJAX-esque improvements are tasteful.  The features that were most significant to me are as follows:

  • Permalink shown immediately
  • Tagging on the fly
  • Improved widget control
  • Improved administration interface design
  • Advanced media inclusion

There’s loads more but those are just a few I noticed from briefly using it.  The only thing I dislike so far is how tag selection/categories are placed underneath the input box which means you have to scroll to complete a blog post which is quite frustrating as you didn’t have to do that before.

I’m sure there are many more improvements to be made in the future, and this is the beginning of far better versions of WordPress.

OpenOffice Writer, Error Writing File

by Kieran

I love OpenOffice.org, I think the team have done a splendid job, and I particularly can’t wait until OpenOffice 3 is released as outlined by OONinja.  Before I begin I wanted to clarify that I have nothing against the team, or the work they’re doing, just in case this seems like a true rant.

I’m a sucker for optimisation, and I particularly like keeping my "Temp" folder clear in "C:\Documents and Settings\Kezzer\Local Settings\Temp".  It gets full quite quickly with arbitrary files that serve no particular use.  I clear it out every few days and sometimes find 20MB > worth of temp files that serve no use.  At least, that’s what I thought.

Now onto OpenOffice Writer.  I’ve recently been getting error messages crop up saying "Error writing file" when attempting to save, or auto-save.  I would have edited a large portion of my document only to find I couldn’t save it.  I promptly copied the entire document and pasted it into a newly created one and was able to save it.  However, I had never put temporary files and writing file errors together, I had never seen the link and of course it may be hours until my document was saved after clearing the temp folder.

There’s a folder that exists in there (for me anyway) called "svhc4.tmp", if this folder is deleted then the relative OpenOffice session loses its ability to save the current file.  I assume the folder name is relative to the current session and perhaps is incremental.

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