Category: other lesser codologies

maxplanar: Feck all that cobblers, how are you enjoying yer MB?

In response to my good mate maxplanar:

Ah, the MacBook. Now there’s a thing. This particular machine is a Black MacBook 2.16 GHz / 2GB ram/ 160 GB drive.

For the price, it’s a great little machine, does what it says on the tin and more besides. Mind you I wouldn’t want to be re-reduxing Apocalypse Now Redux, the screen real estate is a bit snug for that, but for lashing together an assembly it’s fine on FCP. For doing anything internet-related, it’s brilliant. GIMP, PhotoShop all great except for the snugness of the screen. Writing documents – great. Compressing movies – fast and efficient. I came across some competitively priced RAM and nudged it up to 2GB, so running half a dozen applications simultaneously is no bother.

Pros:
Relatively cheap
Clear, crisp bright screen
Comes with the usual good stuff from Apple
Easy and intuitive to use

Cons:
Slightly cramped screen real estate (solvable by adding an external display)
Slightly noisy when the fans kick in for processor-intensive tasks
Keyboard takes some getting used to.

Of course, I felt obliged to get the more expensive black version because, I just had to. There was no choice. I suppose if I had loads of money, I would have gone for the Pro version, but I don’t so I didn’t.

One man’s hurt is another man’s tickle

Does it actually work or does it just have a placebo affect?

*#7780#

Restores phone to factory settings.

I’m having this problem in that whenever I try to set my phone for MMS, it just hangs whenever it tries to initiate a connection. I have no idea why and it’s really frustrating trying to type in the code above before it restarts itself. Whether or not it’s becuase I bought the phone from the UK and it has something unusual in it’s e-prom I dunno, but that’s my theory anyway. Either that or it’s just a lemon.

Youn need a security code to reset the factory settings which is 12345 by default.

PIN1: 5290
PUK1: 34811544
PIN2: 3018
PUK2: 71078551

I haven’t the first clue about horses, horse racing or even how to bet in a bookies, so here’s my yellow-belly account of on-line betting with a reputable bookies. Bets are purely based on the look of the horse in the parade ring or last minute impulses. I have no clue about form, going or tipsters (except for something with Witchita in its name) so as you may guess, mine is an inexact science. This would explain the tiny amounts.

I’m up €10.06

Just came across a version of the new firmware and loaded it up – here’s the result:

I’ve been building and have recently launched a blog website for the school my kids go to – Kildare Place National School in Rathmines. It uses the Movable Type platform, since it’s the only one I know, and it seems stable enough for our needs. The KPS blog is beginning to fill up with entries from teachers and the PTA and hopefully it’ll gain some momentum before too long.

One of the things I’m reasonably proud of is adapting a piece of Perl to make a random banner for the site, the idea being that subsequent visits will show a random banner image. Must try to extend the idea to this site.

Desktop class applications

I wonder what Steve Jobs meant by this – he seemed to be a bit cagey (in yesterday’s keynote) and talking within the limiting confines of an an announced but as yet unavailable product. Can this thing write documents? On this jailbreak iPhone 4 website it looks clumsy to write more than a few words in an email. Portable computing? I’m not convinced yet. But there again it’ll be at least the end of the year before we see them over here.

Seth Godin, the ur-blogger had a piece in the Guardian on 6/1/07 on how to be remarkable. While I have a lot of respect for his musings in general, I think that in this instance he seems to have turned into Eddy from Ab Fab.

2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.

Pass me a Bolli Stoli quick!

A couple of months ago I signed up to SecondLife just to see what it was like and what all the fuss was about. It was a quiet time in work, I was between projects.

Because of the antiquity of my hardware and network congestion, I suppose my SecondLife experience was not great. It was slow, and I mean really s l o w . My machine could barely keep up with the animations and frequently the burden proved too much, it just sat down. Now I know my laptop isn’t exactly cutting edge, being four years old an’ all, but the SecondLife client is a relatively needy. And another thing, my connection both from home and from work (different suppliers) was seriously laggy.

On the positive side, it allows you explore sartorial diversification in guilt free mode. I’ll let you figure that one out yourselves.

I imagine that once I replace the old lapper with something from the C2D department later this Spring, then I’ll have a better chance to see if SecondLife will intrigue me as much as it’s infuriated me so far.

It’s an interesting concept, virtual money in a virtual world, being adopted by real world marketeers and advertisers.

Finding myself in a bit of a rut when it comes to reading, just at the moment. All I’ve read recently is high altitude literature (thanks to Touching the Void) or thrillers. Never did manage some of the loftier books in this image – Faulkner too slow – Lanchester too wordy – Kafka too complicated and too slow. Double whammy.

As regards the high altitude stuff, I find it fascinating that perfectly sane individuals will risk life and limb for the ultimate in highs – Messner, Mallory and Irvine, Jon Krakauer. I just can’t get enough of this stuff, anything written below 19,000 feet is for wimps.

I think maybe reading a discipline that I have to re-learn, although why reading should be anything other than pleasurable and slightly challenging (in these days when my disposable time is at a premium) is moot. I like books, but I also like an immediate hit.