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% defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES % killall Dock [This is a hint to take away the daft reflections in the Leopard Dock] Related posts: Yeahbut, Apple doesn’t do Defaults iPad OSX for generic PCs? Snow Leopard: the next version of Mac OS X – due 2009
% defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
% killall Dock
[This is a hint to take away the daft reflections in the Leopard Dock]
John Welch writes (in his Oc 27th entries) about
John Welch writes (in his Oc 27th entries) about people who upgrade to Leopard and then whine about how their software, which they need to do their jobs, stops working.
Boo, fucking, hoo.
While the rest of us are either waiting for the updates or finding workarounds (and considering small companies who manage to get their updates out in time), Mister Upgrade Moron is sitting outside playing with his poo-poo.
[I’d add a feed link but he’s moving to MT4 and I can’t find one!)
[[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:_attachmentStorageDirectory withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:nil]; NSLog(@”Directory created!”); Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not a programmer. I speak Hello World in about 8 languages. Not very impressive. I’ve been able to hack a little php and javascript in the past and played with perl and Java for nothing useful. I did fix a couple … Continue reading “Small steps…”
[[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:_attachmentStorageDirectory withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:nil];
NSLog(@"Directory created!");
Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not a programmer. I speak Hello World in about 8 languages. Not very impressive. I’ve been able to hack a little php and javascript in the past and played with perl and Java for nothing useful. I did fix a couple of C programs back in the day so, like music, I’m able to read it but not really write or play.
The code block above represents my first real line of production code and though it’s fair to say that my hand was guided at every step, I do see it as a way forward.
I’ve never really needed to be a coder which is apparently one of the main reasons I can’t code. It’s never been instrumental to my daily bread and so it wasn’t a skill I retained despite learning Modula 2, C, Java, Javascript, Perl…etc. The only “code” skill I developed in any meaningful way was shell scripting which was used infrequently enough to require relearning when I needed to modify my own code.
My background was in Networks and there’s little programming needed in desktop support and network support. My own shell scripts were developed to enhance my burgeoning laziness (it is my contention that the best IT person is a conscientiously lazy IT person – someone who will work a 36 hour shift in order to put something in place that will shave 5 minutes off his daily routine.) I was happy to script snmp commands so I didn’t have to type them in, I’d just cron them. I was happier still to script AV definition file distribution so I didn’t need to visit every desktop and laptop with a floppy disk.
But there’s a change afoot and I want to get more into the code. It’s not something I really relish because after being known for years as the local Mac Daddy I find myself now a complete noob and no-one likes to feel stupid. But it’s something I want to do and, to be honest, feel compelled by myself to manage.
Learning Objective-C with Cocoa is daunting, not only because the syntax is odd (though really I have little to compare it with) but because the libraries are so comprehensive. As I’m also trying to get to grips with Object Oriented Programming, I have a double-whammy of confusion.
John Battelle writes on the recent investment into Facebook from Redmond giant Microsoft. Microsoft invested $240 million and got a measly 1.6% stake (and likely the guarantee they’re going to be the advertising supplier for the Facebook platform). The real upshot of this is that Microsoft just verified the wild claims that Facebook was worth … Continue reading “And the winner is…”
John Battelle writes on the recent investment into Facebook from Redmond giant Microsoft. Microsoft invested $240 million and got a measly 1.6% stake (and likely the guarantee they’re going to be the advertising supplier for the Facebook platform). The real upshot of this is that Microsoft just verified the wild claims that Facebook was worth $15 billion dollars.
Maybe it comes down to this: Microsoft won, Google lost. If that’s the case, OK, but…the real winner here is Facebook. At least, until it has to earn into a $15 billion valution. Good luck with that if social ads doesn’t pan out. On the other hand, well, congratulations for getting money so cheap.
All of the recent activity indicates to me that the market has certainly gotten over the dot-com bubble bursting at the start of this decade and they’re ready to invest in internet firms. It used to be enough to use the word internet in your business plan to have investors falling over themselves to throw money at you. Now, the buzzwords are “social networking”.
Were our lives better when we could buy pet food over the internet the first time round? Are they better now that we have Facebook and Friendster and Myspace and Bebo? We’re not seeing much enrichment of people’s lives from these companies and I think that’s why we’re headed for another bust.
It’s also a big red flag to me that Microsoft desperately needs to compete with Google and they’re willing to spend a lot of money for a tiny stake in order to beat them, even at this one, potentially ephemeral, game. I mean, you’re not going to drop that amount of money for that amount of equity just so you can scrape pennies from online advertising? Are you? Ah. It seems you are.
Microsoft has too many enemies at the moment and I feel a little sorry for them. They’re having their ass handed to them in Operating Systems and Music/Media players. They’ve had their first good month for the XBOX 360 and to get that they had to develop Halo 3 and say goodbye to Bungie (there’s a tradeoff – can you see that Bungie was bored of Halo and used the development of Halo 3 to buy their independence? Oh yeah.). They’re trying and failing to get Silverlight positioned as a Flash replacement (I mean, who cares?). They’ve previously failed to displace PDF. They’re not doing too hot with the Open Document format wars. They’ve a litany of failures (Tablets haven’t taken off. Mira? Zune? and I’ll let you in on a secret regarding their competitor to iPhone and multitouch: Surface, the $10 000 coffee table – it’s going to be shit.)
The theory goes that we’ll see targeted ads because of entries on personal profiles. If Facebook knows you’re into Hello Kitty, Friends and Lost but you dislike 24 and CSI, then they’re going to tell Microsoft and Redmond is going to fire adverts at you containing just the things you like. Advertising based on what you’ve told the system – what you like and what you dislike which, I suppose, has better success criteria than “what I’m searching for now” which is the model espoused by Google. Not sure about that one.
Reading the Segala blog on enabling more trustworthy, relevant and reliable search, I’d think that was a worthy way for Google to combat Facebook. (I’ve never spoken to Paul @ Segala but I’m sure he’d like $240 million!) Remembering that Facebook is very much a walled garden at the moment (you can put your data in but you can’t get it out –not quite true, but still ) and attempts to retrieve data have found some companies getting a kick in the nads and told to eff off. Facebook wants to own the data, thanks, so please stop doing that and use the limited APIs we’ve provided. Or we’ll kill you. (and we have £240 million dollars with which to buy hit-men).
At least with such a minority stake we’re not going to see a desperate, drawn-out attempt to make Facebook just like Hotmail, including ripping out any server not running Windows.
You’d hope.
Damien Mulley pointed out some of the following: On Tuesday, October 30th 2007 The “possibilities for a post Web 2.0 world†will be explored iby Mike Culver, Web Services Evangelist with Amazon. The presentation will provide an overview of Amazon Web Services, the company’s distinct technology arm, which allows developers to build software applications leveraging … Continue reading “Upcoming nerdiness”
Damien Mulley pointed out some of the following:
- On Tuesday, October 30th 2007 The “possibilities for a post Web 2.0 world†will be explored iby Mike Culver, Web Services Evangelist with Amazon.
The presentation will provide an overview of Amazon Web Services, the company’s distinct technology arm, which allows developers to build software applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology that supports Amazon’s retail business; there will also be a code demonstration showing how .NET developers can easily build managed clients for these services.
This takes place in the swanky Westin Hotel, Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2 with registration from 7.00 pm. If you wish to book a place, please contact Cormac Moore, Verkom, on (01) 432 1501 or email cmoore [ at ] verkom.ie- On November 1st Digiweb are holding a free seminar called ‘Making Websites Work’ which is part of their Online Edge Seminar Programme. At the Digital Hub, Dublin. All you have to do is go to www.digiweb.ie/onlineedge.ie and register your attendance. Registration closes at 6PM Tuesday 30th October. Laurence Veale, Eoghan McCabe and Richard Hearne will be the speakers this time round. They’ve a lot to live up to since I was fantastic at the last talk. I’m sure they might get near that high bar. You can do it guys!
- Mashup Camp Dublin. November 10th. Seriously, get to it. Also, if you have a blog and readers of the nerdy/tech variety can you let them know about it too? It’s not everyday we get people of this calibre mixing together and it would be great to see Mashup camp come back on a regular basis.
(rearranged into chronological order – mj)
If that’s not enough, check out:
I doubt I’ll actually get to any of these because weekends are sacrosanct and $BIG_BUSINESS would hardly entertain the idea of sending people to learn about something that’s “new” (they much prefer old, archaic, pre-dot-com-bubble 1.0).
If you do, ping me with your review? I can live vicariously through your experiences!
Steven Aitchison writes on his three pillars of creativity Do it alone Do it with available tools and material Do it anytime, anywhere Do it alone This is more a criticism of committees. You can certainly brainstorm with a few people to be creative but using these as springboards for ideas and not as decision … Continue reading “Getting Creative”
Steven Aitchison writes on his three pillars of creativity
- Do it alone
- Do it with available tools and material
- Do it anytime, anywhere
Do it alone
This is more a criticism of committees. You can certainly brainstorm with a few people to be creative but using these as springboards for ideas and not as decision makers is important. Creativity requires vision and it takes a special sort of person to spread that vision to other people. I think small groups are best. With a small group (say, less than 4) you’ve got enough room to express yourself without feeling like you’re being talked over or interrupted too many times.
Do it with available tools and materials
I’m guilty of this but sometimes you do need the right tool for the job. While I enjoyed using it, blogging was a pain on my Nokia N800. It was never a good fit. In fact, any sort of data entry was just painful. I had to wait until I got a laptop again before I could feel productive again. Likewise, give me a camera and I’ll give you some shaky mis-aligned photographs. Give me a violin and you’ll give me a Noise Abatement Order.
Do it anywhere, anytime
At the most basic level, this means keeping a notebook and pen with you at all times. This also means getting yourself into the lifestyle where you can work when the inspiration strikes you. My after hours are flexible enough that I seldom need to pencil in time to do things, I use something called a “Nag” (which will feature in an upcoming Infurious product) to remind me to do things and along with my Do Something Now guidelines, I’m usually kept busy with the jobs I want to do when I want to do them.
A rather stupid young woman in a red VW Polo (OXI 3333) clipped my rear wing and mirror and then drove off. Grrrr. Related posts: Right or Left? Mirror’s Edge for iPad: Spiritual Successor of Saboteur! Guns and Games: it’s a dirty deal EA refuses to licence guns and war paraphernalia its action games this … Continue reading “Pissed off and it’s only 09:17 am.”
A rather stupid young woman in a red VW Polo (OXI 3333) clipped my rear wing and mirror and then drove off.
Grrrr.
In mere hours now, people all over the world will be cracking open cases of Leopard and drinking deep of the experience. For our part we’ve been developing using the developer seeds from Apple’s Developer Connection and then testing on Tiger for compatibility. Why? There’s several reasons: 2 Million Macs sold last quarter. 1 million … Continue reading “Getting down with the Leopard”
In mere hours now, people all over the world will be cracking open cases of Leopard and drinking deep of the experience.
For our part we’ve been developing using the developer seeds from Apple’s Developer Connection and then testing on Tiger for compatibility. Why? There’s several reasons:
and these will all, from tomorrow, run Leopard (truth be told iPhone/iPod touch are already there).
We’ve been enjoying working with Interface Builder 3 and the rest of the new tools and we’ll be over at Mac-Sys on Friday to see if their copies of Leopard have arrived….
I have it. Someone attacked me anonymously on one of my other blogs, denounced my writing, said bad things about me and hurt my feelings. I have a feeling I know them – (they’re in the UK, they seem to know enough about me, they use my first name with other people they know). Ouch. … Continue reading “Stupid Male Pride”
I have it.
Someone attacked me anonymously on one of my other blogs, denounced my writing, said bad things about me and hurt my feelings. I have a feeling I know them – (they’re in the UK, they seem to know enough about me, they use my first name with other people they know).
Ouch.
WTB says “Reads to me like they’re jealous.”
BestMan says “Has to be someone who knows you. With a bit of a chip. Could be any number of bottom feeders”
Yeah.
There’s a wordy post on The Equity Kicker about how to think about product (in terms of Seedcamp). The point that caught my attention more than others was: Find the ‘nub’ of your product and only build stuff that fits with that. You should be able to capture the ‘nub’ in a single sentence. If … Continue reading “Do One Thing Really Well”
There’s a wordy post on The Equity Kicker about how to think about product (in terms of Seedcamp).
The point that caught my attention more than others was:
Find the ‘nub’ of your product and only build stuff that fits with that. You should be able to capture the ‘nub’ in a single sentence. If you find yourself wanting to build stuff that doesn’t fit with the nub then it is probably time to re-examine it….
With Infurious, we have four guiding principles and this coincides with one of them. We want to create products that people will use to solve problems. Some of these will be problems we’ve had and we’ve built the solution to solve that. When you look at the list of apps that we intend to build eventually, it would seem we have a lot of itches that need scratched. The truth is: collectively we have a lot of experience in our markets as users and, perhaps more relevantly, as troubleshooters and consultants. The apps we build are maybe not for scratching an itch we have but they’re certainly itch points, or in some cases, pain points for customers.
I guess what the quote says is that you have to define the itch. What does a product do? In simple layman terms.
SyncBridge, for example, allowed the sharing of calendars with friends and colleagues. Other apps just remove pain points that we’ve witnessed (and I’m waiting for one of the guys to finish a blog post on the next product).
The mantra: Do One Thing Really Well is really a paraphrasing of the UNIX way and, to a lesser degree, the Mac way. I find there’s a surprising correlation between the two though on paper they used to be such diametric opposites. I grew up in a culture of UNIX + Mac = Computers.
I’m excited about some of the things coming because they scratch an itch I have and I’m even more excited about the pain points we can remove for some of the customers I have in Mac-Sys.