November 28th, 2003
A Software Engineer, a Hardware Engineer and a Departmental Manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car’s occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no rakes. What were they to do?
“I know”, said the Departmental Manager, “Let’s have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals, and by a process of Continuous Improvement, Change Management, Re-Engineering and Service Integration, find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way.”
“No, no”, said the Hardware Engineer, “That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I’ve got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip
down the car’s braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way.”
“Well”, said the Software Engineer, “Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again.”
November 27th, 2003
Meanwhile look at these:
Remember how TimeSplitters 2 on PS2 can be jury-rigged using a PC to play over the internet rather than just a LAN?
Well – some other pixies are busy on an equivalent for GameCube – WarpPipe. Mario Kart OnLine! And they are planning an OS X port.
Halo for Mac’s release date has slipped about a week (no big deal after 4 years!)
God help me – but I am addicted to Strong Bad’s Emails.
Tom links to how to make a paper 007 / Mario
Jobs vs. Gates – Hmm – Alvin Hall usually discusses Personal Investment in a Bow Tie – What will we learn from him about PC moguls?
Also the Christmas edition of Edge is in shops:
November 18th, 2003
Apple have updated the iMac – there is now a 20″ 1.25GHz version available.
November 17th, 2003
Yay – Head over Heels for Mac OS X (and other Platforms)
Get it here.
I have memories of the original on the ZX Spectrum (mid-eighties) being very clever – but very hard.
Excellent.
November 13th, 2003
I’ve learned a lot of Mac Keyboard shortcuts over the years – but one that I never seems to stick in my head is the Command-Drag for windows.
If you Hold Command and Drag a Window then you can move that window around without “losing focus” (as developers say) on the current window. (even if the window belongs to an application that is not currently the front application.)
This means you can muck around with semi-obscured windows without having to switch apps.
An even more impressive feature is that you can do other mouse actions using this method – so you can drag-and-drop data from a window behind into the front window – all without having to leave the current window.
This has been in the Mac OS long before Mac OS X.
November 13th, 2003
Steam is a nice little application that shows you what’s on now and next on your favourite BBC Radio stations. It also opens the streams should you wish.
More useful if you are abroad I suppose – but nice to have.
November 13th, 2003
There are many, many nice little improvements in Panther – One of the less noticeable (but very welcomed) changes is in the NSMenu class. It used to have a limit on the number of levels (5 I think) that a menu could have. As the screenshot above shows – that isn’t the case anymore.
So you can now get to anywhere in your filesystem from the dock. Now if only Apple would make the Dock “Spring-Loaded” (Like the folders in the Finder – so if you drag onto it – the folder pops open.)
November 12th, 2003
Streetmapping for ABook.
Very cool – opens StreetMap.co.uk Maps of contact addresses in Pather’s Address Book.app
November 5th, 2003
One piece of software that I have wanted for a long time has just been released.
Veta for UIQ. Veta has been available for Series 60 and Palm for a while, but wasn’t available for the Sony Ericsson P800.
Veta is one half of a partnership – It’s other half is Romeo. Together they allow you to control your Mac (via AppleScript) from your Bluetooth-Enabled Palm , Symbian Mobile Phone or Sony Ericsson phone.
This is the kind of application the creators of Bluetooth were thinking of when they were developing the standard – It really does mean you have a Personal Area Network – where devices around you can communicate and interact with each other.
November 5th, 2003
The Reg has an article about Sony showing off conceptual pictures of their forthcoming handheld device – the PSP.
November 4th, 2003
Nokia has announced their replacement for the Communicator (The Big Brick that opens like a book, but has always had more features than any other GSM phone.)
The replacement isn’t a phone – but a platform: Series 90.
Series 60 is already a big hit – Nokia’s recent “SmartPhones” (7650, 7600 , 6600, 3650 & 3660 – link) have all been Series 60 devices.
Series 90 expands on Series 60 and is a bit more PDA-like (and UIQ-like) in it’s UI. It also has a bigger screen. See here for the Register’s article / recycled Press Release.
It looks like Bill Gates was right to fear Symbian.
Here’s the First Series 90 Device:
The 7770
[edit] – Oh yes and the last film has some of the worst dialogue in Film history. People were laughing at the “Emotional Scenes”
