Month: January 2007

Damien writes about the need for a Geek Dinner in Limerick after Paul Walsh opens an invite to anyone Thursday night in Dublin.

Where are the geek dinners in Belfast?

We’ve had coffee meetings – under the auspices of CocoaHeads for a few months – but there needed to be more general geekishness, more general technology and not just for Mac coders.

I want to talk to Linux nerds, BSD beasties, Telecoms dweebs, Windows freaks, Web geeks, RSS dorks and Mac zealots.

I don’t know what is going on with BT these days but it’s certainly not progress. Who would have thought that getting in an extra phone line could be such a hassle.

The guy on the line to us LIED to us about the pricing, lied to us about the servicing and if we had continued with the call, would have undoubtedly lied to us about how long it would take to install had we stayed on the line long enough.

This is why we moved carriers in the first place.

The conversation continues…

[Addendum: Turns out that talking to Royal Mail is just as frustrating. Where’s the disruptive influence here?]

The eirepreneur delivereth:

“For too long I have behaved as if I could postpone going indefinitely, and thus have so many things that I must do first.” – A 93 year old on dying.

Sobering thoughts.

Should you have worked harder, loved more, trusted further, played with more joy in your soul, drank heartily, eaten less healthy, experimented more? Found yourself? Found someone else? Shared more?

I would hope so.

Each morning I get up I die a little, can barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord, what you’re doing to me
I have to spend all my years in believing you
But I just can’t get no relief Lord

I work hard everyday of my life
I work till I ache my bones, at the end of the day
I take home my hard earned pay all on my own
I get down on my knees
And I start to pray (praise the Lord)
‘Til the tears run down from my eyes

Joe writes about his cycle lane to work with a little humour.

Have a look at the picture in that blog post and read the description:

Yes, if you manage to negotiate the telegraph pole, that is a waste bin behind it.

I’ve been accused of this before (turning pong into a philosophy) but this cycle lane really reminds of what it’s like starting a business in Northern Ireland and getting assistance from InvestNI.

There are some superstars I’ve bumped into within the organisation, but without exception they have been guys I know from my days in Nortel (Hi Dave S, Cormac K) and if you don’t get one of those guys (as I didn’t when starting Mac-Sys) then things become a lot more opaque. In those days, InvestNI made us jump through hoops just to get to talk to someone who wasn’t a landlord in an enterprise park and even when we’d made our pitch, they were no help at all.

That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t bother with their business start programs with the last couple of ventures.

They say:

We can offer all the encouragement, advice, information and financial support you need to Go For It and get off to a flying start.

What they mean is:

We have heaps of paperwork for you to fill in before we even look at you.

I’m sufficiently frustrated with InvestNI that I simply cannot be bothered with the runaround. Is this damning? Not necessarily. Some people are paperwork gurus. They can afford to spend hours and hours trying to interpret what they need.

I’d rather do it myself anyway. At least then I’m to blame.

Mark Pilgrim sounds off about full screen “writing-focussed” text editors:

Reading the change logs of these programs is like traveling back in time. Way back. Latest changes in JDarkRoom 8: Undo / Redo. Seriously. Version 8, and they now support undo. No offense, but what the fuck?

He makes a good point. Does the world need yet another Text Editor?

Probably not.

But WriteRoom did the write thing and popularised full screen writers recently. The other apps (Darkroom, jDarkroom, whatever) are just trying to emulate this success on other platforms.

Who’s to say the “next great thing” for Text Editors has been done yet? I like the idea of WriteRoom but I’m now ooking for a different development platform – a cross between a good text editor, with IM support, collaborative editing and version control all built in. Sort of like iChat mixed with subEthaEdit. And if it can do a CoreAnimation fade of my background so I can see what’s going on while working, then all the better.

I would have to say that I don’t agree with Mark on this one. Yes, its a fad but it’s one that was probably needed.

He was one of the people at the front of the banner charge against Mac OS X and Apple a few months ago which ended up looking a bit like when the International Pippin Society rioted outside Apple HQ.

Steve Jobs:There’s three guys having some sort of fit in the parking lot. Can we call security? Or film them for the next iPod advert?

Bambi:Cameras on the way…

Go figure. I don’t know why he’s bothered, none of these apps run on Ubuntu anyway.

I’ve been using Dashcode beta recently for mocking up some interfaces for Desktop apps. Does this make me a bad person?

I thought it might but as time has gone on I’ve become more and more convinced that it might be the best way to go. I find the basic UI elements in Cocoa to be pretty tired and frankly, the fact that a lot of the UI elements I want to use don’t seem to be available in Interface Builder is just frustrating. This Bezel UI type stuff as used by Aperture, Motion and the other Pro apps and as coming to Leopard in Quick Look.

So, next best thing, DashCode.

This recent post on Violent Acres reminds me of conversations over the last two years with a good friend, ex-co-worker and Mac convert. At the time we were both single and discussing men and women and the whole problem with “nice guys” and how it affected us.

Being a nice guy sucks. You’re told how great you are. You’re told you’re “the type of guy that girls should be looking for”.

Bollocks to that. Girls don’t want nice guys, they never did. They want outlaw bikers (Link NSFW and more than a bit rude).

I remember a lot of “mean girls” from my school days. I don’t hold a grudge of course, to them or the bullies. I mean, we were kids. I was a geek…or a dork…or a nerd…or something. But I’m going to make sure that my daughter and son are aware of the social hierarchy there.

The Lone Sysadmin rounds on Vista and everything he doesn’t like about it.

There is a resounding cry from a lot of educated IT folk about the “increased security” in Vista.

This was an opportunity for Microsoft to do the right thing and they missed it with their “all or nothing” attitude.

Sounds about right.

Who’s waiting for Vista SP1?

Rich Segal posts:

A Microsoft guy walks into a booth and says “So, what do you do?” The friendly people in the booth explain the technology, customer base, happy people, cool stuff, etc. All normal, all happy happy.

Microsoft Guy: “Oh. Well, I’ve been in our research department and they do what you do, so, well, bad for you.”

The booth CEO says, in effect, I don’t think so, we have 9 patents, millions of users, and do this that nobody that we know of does.

Microsoft Guy: “Well, research has stuff that we can use and it probably is good enough.”

This isn’t about BAD MICROSOFT

This has two points:

• Good Enough. Windows is Good Enough.
• (the) big challenge is to make sure your prevent one (or ten) arrogant people from destroying the hard work of 1000s of others.

Building a product, you’re up against good enough which is why there are a thousand word processors available for Windows, but most people use Word. You’re up against that. There will always be someone making a less smart, less sexy product cheaper than your product.

Also, be confident without being arrogant. If you shit on someone, they’ll know in future that you’re a git and will treat you like one.