The best and worst Christmas Presents

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

This year, because we are all grown ups and have got most of the toys we want already, we decided to have a white elephant. This meant we had presents to put under the ‘tree’ and open after Santa had passed our house. To be honest, we did wonder how he was going to get through the door of our wood burning stove.

Our tree this year was a work of art. After considering £60 too high for something we would use for less than a week, we made our own by weaving ivy around a conical plant support from the garden. With rosemary branches poking out to look and smell like the real thing, it was remarkably effective, especially after a large pile of Christmas presents surrounded it. (more…)

The best use for a Kindle

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

In the 1970s and 80’s Britain’s brewing industry underwent huge changes as small independent breweries were amalgamated into the large computer-controlled factories we have nowadays. This also meant the loss of some of the countries favourite beers, replaced by bland brews that were made for shelf-life rather than taste.

They were truly dreadful, gassy drinks which many would say tasted the same going down as they did coming out an hour later. CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, represented public opinion and became the most successful consumer group in Europe. The country saw the rise of small artisanal breweries making beers with flavour as the aim and slowly public houses reinstalled their hand pumps and publicans learned how to tend to living beer.

There needs to be a similar movement to campaign for real bread. Even the best supermarket loaves have a list of ingredients including things you can’t even pronounce let alone want to eat. Unlike proper bread from by artisan bakers who make bread for its flavour and texture using only flour, yeast, salt and water. It is strange that the French, as a nation who value their bread, are buying soft and pappy loaves from supermarkets. The same bread would remain on the shelves and unsold in UK shops. This is in the birth place of Louis Pasteur where the French choose sterilised milk over fresh pasteurised.

In the 1980s and 90s another industry also went through complete upheaval as offset litho and desktop publishing ousted the old hot metal presses. Designers replaced most of the people involved in printing who became redundant because their skills weren’t needed. Ten years later content creation has become where the smart money is as desktop publishing is being ousted by digital publishing.

The recession has seen many publishers and book packagers move away from traditional, wet printing and into short-run digital output but even they are being moved aside as the artisan book makers come to the fore. Armed only with a text editor, a modem and a handful of ideas, they can get their books published and on sale at Amazon. It doesn’t mean that their books are any good, though.

Which is how some see the new small Kindle. The screen size is limited, grey-scale and without a backlight. While the memory holds a library of titles, reading on the Kindle’s screen is an acquired taste. However, I have found the ideal use for a Kindle.

Even with large amounts of time on my hands during a sojourn in hospital recently, there was no way I could get into Steve Jobs biography, the book is just too large and heavy. We didn’t have a Kindle when I ordered it so I’m stuck with trying to read a book the size of a family bible. Which in a way, is exactly what it is: a bible for all the Apple disciples of which I am one.

It’s got no blinking light

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Ever since we can remember, before going to bed or going out for a while, we always check around the house and office. In the day time it’s to shut the doors so that when burglars break in, opening a door will damage their eardrums as our alarms set up a cacophony of deafening bells. At night time, it’s to make sure the Macs are behaving themselves.

Looking into the office we see at least 25 neon lights glowing from all the little boxes of electronics. Some pulse slowly as if the devices they are attached to are snoring, others blink rapidly as an iPhone or Pad check for mail. We have always wondered what the cumulative effect of 25 or so consumers of milliamps will be to our carbon footprint but they all stay lit unless we go on holiday.

Recently we checked the office and both felt something wasn’t right. There was a subtle difference that eluded us but neither admitted it to the other until a chance remark in a conversation about a film we were watching. The movie concerned the mysterious going’s on at a school where a ‘malevolent presence’ roamed around, bumping off people one-by-one.

Of course, none of the victims ran away when they entered the room containing the ‘presence’. Instead they stood awaiting their fate as the camera focussed over their shoulder onto the slowly solidifying mist.

It was the same with our office. Something was wrong but we couldn’t tell what. We could stand looking round the room, checking under desks to where the snakes live or into the corners where they spiders hang out. But nothing showed up. Then realisation came us.

The new iMacs have no blinking light.

The best thing about the iPhone 4S and how to cope in clink

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Another two weeks in clink, or hospital whichever way you look at things. All to dig a vein out of my arm to fix the twice repaired artery in my leg. Bloody stuff and still very painful. However, it does give the armoury of entertainment a good run out and here are some recommendations.

First up is the iPod which proved essential when stuffed to the diodes with radio shows and plays downloaded in advance. They even left enough space for a movie or two and some TV shows. All courtesy of BBC iPlayer and home recordings.

Next is the iPad. Its small form factor, with an STM cover for propping it upright, made all night viewing a breeze. Movies and TV shows recorded and compressed kept me going for days, meanwhile my lifeline, or more accurately wifeline, was busy preparing new ones for me.

We did try a MacBook but its weight and large size made it vulnerable in a situation where every surface is cleaned several times a day. A MacBook Air would have been a better choice but I don’t know how safe it would be on open wards with no secure locker. Get whisked off for a scan and return to find it had also been whisked off. Whereas the iPad is small enough to keep with you.

Finally the iPhone rounds off gadgets for the gammy. At first my old iPhone 3GS but the lure of a 4S waiting at home proved too great and what a good thing too. A quick switch of contracts was all that was needed to stream TV and radio to my hospital bed-bound misery.

Obviously the above are all Apple products but there is a good reason for this: they all take the same charger. One tiny white plug and lead powered them all up, rather than the large box of transformer-rectifiers used by other manufacturers.

The best thing about the new iPhone is the aerials. Apple spent extensive research time on them and it has really paid off. This is the first cellphone I can get a signal on in my own home, which being near the seafront, is surrounded by buildings rising higher as the land slopes gently away from the coast. A cellphone signal has been all but impossible to pick up from any supplier on any of the dozens of handsets we have tried.

With the iPhone 4S I get a solid three or four signal bars anywhere in my home. Brilliant!

Death of a salesman

Thursday, October 6th, 2011

After hearing the news of the death of Steve Jobs, my first reaction was of sadness for him and his family. But later, it became more than sadness as the news of his death was repeatedly broadcast by the media. That dull feeling in one’s stomach, tight throat and itchy eyes.

In the 1980s Steve told John Sculley, president of Pepsi, that he could sell sugared water but if he joined Apple he could change the world. Prophetic words and ones I listened to as well. In those days and stuck in a career I hated, Apple’s computers offered an escape route.

The competition then had green and black screens driven by command lines and beeped while Apple’s computers were in colour, operated by a mouse and talked to you in stereo. Macs opened the door into desktop publishing, something I had a toehold in via the old Amstrad PCW and Atari ST. It meant spending as much as a brand new car for a Mac, laser printer and software but my design and publishing business flourished, keeping me in work for over 20 years until the bankers screwed the world.

Now, I am typing this on my Mac Pro (albeit logged in from a PC 10 miles away), make calls on my iPhone, listen to my iPod and take an iPad and MacBook on holiday. Tonight we shall probably watch something on our Apple TV.

Steve Jobs and all the people at Apple transformed my life in so many ways that I just can’t express my gratitude and how much I owe the company and it’s visionary leader Steve Jobs.

iDisk Lament

Saturday, September 17th, 2011

It’s amazing the havoc a dodgy oyster creates. After eating that one manky mollusc, if evacuation was an Olympic sport, I got the gold. Three weeks up and still going, so to speak.

Gold is a target Microsoft’s boss, Steve Ballmer, is avoiding as he aims at a lowly bronze instead. He reckons Microsoft has got what it takes to become a “very strong third ecosystem” in the world of smart phones. As he announced at his company’s recent Financial Analyst Meeting. It seems strange to hear him admit that Google and Apple have beaten Microsoft.

Beating Apple is something I’d love to do at the moment. Preferably around the head with a large and heavy stick. The new iCloud, Apple’s third attempt at on-line services, will not include their iDisk storage. This is the one facility I am happy to pay for at mac.com and the stupidly named MobileMe.

The iDisk is just about the easiest way to share large files. Access can be at desktop level with files dropped into a local mirror, or mounting the iDisk as an external hard drive, or by web browser or WebDAV application. The latter being the quickest way to send and receive files. iDisk is also a good way to exchange files between Macs and computers running *nix or Windows and more recently iPhones and iPads.

In full-colour illustrated publishing, where we can work with enormous amounts of data, an iDisk is almost de rigueur. Editors and authors, many of whom are not techo-savvy, use a variety of different computers, anything that will run Word. Giving them an easy way to send large files or to view PDF proofs is essential and the iDisk does exactly that.

There are many alternatives, such as Dropbox, but they are often more expensive and all have idiosyncratic ways to use them even if they have more facilities than an iDisk. Virgin Internet have even given me free and unlimited on-line storage space but without the ease of use that comes with an iDisk.

All is not lost yet because Apple has not finalised the services iCloud will offer and are open to ideas. Developers who have been given access to iCloud already, have been doing exactly that but there is no guarantee anything will change.

The other alternative is to run something in-house. This is fine if you have fast Internet and luckily we have. Our mini cloud runs via a Pogoplug connected to a cheap 2TB drive. All for the cost of a couple of years subscription to Dropbox. But I’d still have an iDisk if one is available.

Scrabbling around for a solution

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

There is an annoying glitch that many Lion users are reporting with Safari. On some websites, headers are displayed as a string of little boxes with a letter A inside, looking like a Scrabble tile in appearance. Only Safari is affected, Firefox and other web browsers do not suffer the same problem and will display perfectly the sites Safari baulks at. Microsoft Office users also have similar font problems.

While this has been reported mainly in the Lion community it is not rare in earlier versions of Mac OS, including pre-OSX version, but it does seem more prevalent on Macs using a separate font manager such as Extensis Fusion or FontExplorer. Sometimes these are the cause of the glitch and adjusting settings will provide the solution but there are many more reasons for the problem Scrabble tiles appearing.

Obviously each Mac set-up is different but here are some tips for solving the problem which is almost always caused by fonts.

The first thing to try is emptying all font caches by starting in Safe Mode and holding down the Shift key as the Mac starts, then restarting back into normal mode. Or by using font cache clearing routines in most font managers and also the beta version of Onyx for Lion. At this point check whether the font manager’s preferences are set to automatically activate typefaces for Safari. This can activate duplicate typefaces and so create the scrabble tiles.

All being well that should sort things out but sometimes the problem reappears again soon afterwards, calling for more drastic action. Next, check the fonts themselves. Duplicates and corrupted typefaces are often the cause. Turn off all fonts enabled by the font manager and open FontBook. Using its tools, check for duplicate typefaces and whether any essential fonts are missing.

FontBook will show a yellow triangle adjacent to duplicated fonts in its list. Click on the triangle and resolve the duplicates. Similarly, check in the Web set to make sure Arial, Georgia, Verdana and Times New Roman are listed. Many web sites use these as a fall-back position if other fonts are missing.

If any are missing in FontBook, look in Library/Fonts and see whether they are there, or for any duplicates. The latter may have the same name plus a digit in brackets, or preceded by a hash symbol. These typefaces can be dragged to the desktop. If there are fonts in the Font folder that don’t appear in FontBook’s lists, click on the little plus sign at the bottom of FontBook’s screen, navigate to the Fonts folder and add the missing typefaces.

Still not fixed? If you are using a font manager, deactivate it and restart. Has the problem gone away? If so then it is your font manager at fault and you are down to a painful trial and error session trying all eventualities, preferences and typefaces until you resolve the issue. It is often duplicated fonts again, where one is much older than the other and can safely be deleted. If you can see the typeface the font manager activates, try putting a copy into the ~/Library/Fonts folder. Otherwise, turn each active typeface off in turn until the scrabble tiles disappear. Arial is very often the culprit and luckily is near the top of the font lists.

Microsoft and Adobe software have a nasty habit of installing new typefaces outside of the System’s Fonts folders. These often contain newer versions of typefaces than ones on the main System. In which case these need to be whittled out and placed in the Fonts folder as replacements for the older ones. There is no point in removing Microsoft’s typefaces because they will be automatically installed the next time the application is opened.

If the problem is only in Safari and Lion, it may be something to do with Safari’s new sandbox way of working. This will need solving by Apple’s engineers – report the bug and wait for a solution. There is a possible fix for a Safari sandboxing error listed on page 3 of this discussion here. Rather you than me.

However it is far more likely to be a problem with your own Mac and especially the typefaces on it. This very long article here goes deep into font management and solutions.

My bet is that Arial, Georgia, Helvetica or Times New Roman is corrupted, duplicated or missing.

How to become a remarkable asset for the iTunes Store Family

Monday, June 6th, 2011

The problem was simple. For the first time ever I tried to download a movie rental from iTunes. Previously we have bought the films and downloaded them as MP4s to my Mac. This time I didn’t think we would watch the film more than once and tried to download it straight tom my AppleTV. (more…)

The Lion Wores

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

What is it with TV presenters? Why have we got so many all of a sudden who have speech affectations? Should such people be on TV in the first place?

I listened to some last night and their expressions included: Sir Anthony Beaumwant.… The Gweatest Wevolution… Cweated the kitchen wange…  Incwedible… pweliferwation…the scullery mwaid…middle cwases.

These aren’t the words of someone with a speech impediment caused by some physical or psychological disability. If they were I wouldn’t dream of mentioning them. Instead, they are from the voices of those who have been to the best schools, usually now being something like the curator of the Queens handkerchiefs, or should that be Cwuwater? Then there is Jonathan Woss…

After extensive minutes of research it appears I am not the only one questioning this affectation which they also notes as a pwoduct of the wealthy. The Queen in her 1950s voice sounded pretty stupid to us today. As if she had something stuck in her royal passage. Thankfully her accent has tamed and Britain is represented by a softly spoken lady with a wealthy London accent. Unlike the Estuary speech that Nigel Kennedy, wealthy iconic violinist, has adopted. In Jamie Oliver it is natural, in others it is forced.

Here, one American asks the same qwestion:. While here the questioner notes it is not an affectation seen in other English speaking countries. Even the Beeb has some notes about it: BBC – Voices – Your Voice.

Macs have long had voices, which I find useful to grab my attention to something going on. For many years Alex has summoned me to click on a dialogue box or warned that Armageddon would occur if I didn’t choose between two options. Usually Erase Hard Drive Yes or No.

For me, the other voices just didn’t hack it. Victoria was nearly my dream girl but sounded just a bit too CanadianAmericanDigital. The others might appeal to some but I have never wanted to be summoned by Bubbles or his compatriots.

However, with Lion it looks as though this will change. A whole new range of voices may be included, according to those with Developer copies. The voices spoken be real people or nearly real people, from the countries the Mac is present around the world. This includes the various versions of English, such as Australian, South African and so on. Even such third world countries as Scotland are included.

But you can’t mix and match to have Jacques in Montreal speak English with his sexy French Canadian accent. He’s strictly French speaking, just like Brunhilda will always speak in German and Agnetha in Swedish, unfortunately.

Apparently the Speech control panel with have previews of the new voices which are then downloaded if you make a selection. The downside being they will be pretty big files to take in all the nuances of each voice. Personally I’d give a gigabyte to have Agnetha summons me but I can’t be bothered to learn Swedish.

The death of the desktop?

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Most computer manufacturers now sell more laptops than desktops and it’s not hard to see why. Laptops are compact and portable which makes them more flexible in so many ways for both business and personal use. It’s therefore no surprise to see more and more laptops used in the place of desktops, so it’s easy to wonder if there’s any place left for the humble desktop computer. Why buy a big, power-hungry desktop when you can have a slender, electricity frugal laptop?

Even though Apple CEO Steve Jobs thinks we’re now in a ‘post-PC world’, his company is still making a pretty penny off desktops. Apple seems to have given some thought to the design of a desktop in this laptop/smartphone/tablet-drive world with its updated range of sleek all-in-one iMac desktops.

As well as the expected upgrade to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors, the 27in models now have two Thunderbolt ports (the cheaper 21.5in model has just one). We were greatly impressed by the potential of this new port technology when we first saw it in the new MacBook Pro laptops and its presence in Apple’s mainstream desktop computers says much about Apple’s hopes and aggressive rollout plans for the technology.

The fact that the 27in iMac has two Thunderbolt ports means that if the massive 2,560×1,440 pixel screen isn’t enough, you can connect another two displays using the appropriate adapters. Most laptops not only have substantially smaller, lower-resolution displays, but can only connect one more additional monitor. Although it’s possible to connect a third display using a USB adapter, you usually lose 3D and video playback acceleration.

I think Apple is sending a clear message with the 27in iMac and its Thunderbolt ports and high-res screen – a slender all-in-one desktop can do things a laptop can’t, but in less space than a traditional tower desktop. Not everyone needs a compact desktop with multiple monitor capability and an incredibly high-speed external bus, but for workplaces that do, there is clearly life left in the old desktop computer.