Author name: Ian Robinson

Assuring failure from the start…

| | Technology

Gordon Brown seems to make pronouncements too soon. Witness the Iraq war enquiry. Private on Monday. Maybe not today. Then we have him saying he wants Britain to be the Digital Capital of the world. This is just opening the project up to accusations of failure. Why not just talk about the goal being to improve the broadband access across the country. It doesn’t mean we have to be the Digital Capital of the World. We just need better infrastructure to allow our digital industries and consumers to function. If other countries have as good, or better, digital access then more power to them. It doesn’t mean the UK project will be a failure. Unless you declare up front that the goal is to be the Digital Capital of the World!

WWDC ’09 Schedule

| | Technology

The WWDC session times are up on the Attendee site. Here is my plan for the week. Click picture thumbnail for larger view. There are a few sessions still to be announced after the keynote. These will be sessions related to new stuff 🙂


Real Formula 1 gaming?

| | Uncategorized

I was recently slagging of Formula 1 as boring on Twitter. And it is. Watching it is so repetitive. But what would be really interesting would be to combine the GPS data from real races and F1 games, like that shown in the Playstation 3 trailer shown here, to allow you to compete in races that have just been completed. Take the Monaco grand prix last weekend. If the games companies and the F1 organisation made all the data for the race available as an in game download, via a subscription model, then gamers could rerun the race and try to beat the real drivers. The real drivers cars in the game would go round the track and pit etc., as they did in the real race. Using the GPS and other data that is collected during the race. I think that would be cool. And much more interesting that the real thing 🙂 There would need to be logic built in to allow the other cars to avoid you on the track and stuff. But that shouldn’t be too difficult to build in.


WWDC is imminent – Essential sessions

| | Technology

In 3 weeks it’ll be day 2 of WWDC. Day 2 is the start of the topic specific sessions. The Monday is taken up with the Keynote in the morning and Several State of the Union sessions in the afternoon. The State of the Union sessions are on things like Mac OS X Server, Graphics & Media, etc.

The majority of the sessions I will be going to will be related to management of Macintosh computers and integration into ICT infrastructure based on Microsoft Windows. Listed below are the sessions from those published so far that I’ll be going to. There are usually additional sessions added after the Keynote, to cover any new features that are announced, and there are also some brilliant Brown Bag sessions at lunchtime with external guest speakers (like Pixar). There are also evening events such as the Apple Design Awards and the Thursday Night Party. The Bare Naked Ladies were the house band for the party last year. Here’s a good picture of 3 reprobates watching them from just above and behind the stage 🙂

Here are the ICT management sessions I plan to attend:

Mac OS X Server State of the Union
Mac OS X Server uniquely combines a wealth of powerful–yet easy to use and configure–services that elegantly simplify communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes. Learn the latest on Mac OS X Server’s technologies for streamlined mobile access; enhancements to mail, calendar, contacts, and wiki services; advanced capabilities in Podcast Producer 2; and an update on Mac OS X Server’s performance and storage capabilities.

What’s New in Directory Services
Open Directory provides standards-based storage and organization of user and network resource information. Get the details on Open Directory enhancements in Snow Leopard Server including a new UI for binding, refinements to Active Directory integration, password synchronization, and performance improvements.

What’s New for Wiki Server 2
Wiki Server 2 in Snow Leopard Server allows any organization’s users to collaborate more easily and effectively. Learn about new features such as Quick Look previews of wiki attachments in the browser window; content searching across multiple wikis; and wiki and blog templates optimized for viewing on iPhone. Wiki Server 2 also introduces My Page, which gives each user one convenient web portal to view and create wikis and blogs, use web calendars, track wiki updates, and access webmail.

What’s New for Podcast Producer 2
Podcast Producer automates and streamlines the capture, encoding, and publishing of high-quality podcasts of your organization’s lectures, training, and other presentations. Snow Leopard Server introduces a host of new features including Dual Source Video capture, Podcast Composer, and Podcast Library. These features let you create picture-in-picture podcasts, provide an easy-to-use application for designing video-based Podcast Producer workflows, and define a new publishing model that uses Atom and RSS for providing long-term media file storage and organization.

Deploying Podcast Producer
Podcast Producer streamlines consistent creation, production, and distribution of rich media assets. Learn deployment best practices from experts with real-world installations. Discover how to use new features such as Podcast Library for seamless integration with iTunes U, adding content to in-house web portals, and publishing training materials.

Podcast Composer In-Depth
Podcast Composer provides a visual step-by-step approach to easily build powerful workflows for Podcast Producer. Get in-depth information from the experts as they show you how to get the most out of this new application. Find out best practices for integrating with Podcast Library and learn how you can incorporate your own content and customize workflows to meet the needs of your organization.

System Management with Apple Remote Desktop
Apple Remote Desktop is the best way to provide system management for the Macintosh computers on your network. Learn from the experts how to optimize Apple Remote Desktop for various networking topologies across NATs, LANs, and WANs. Discover how Task Server can help manage your mobile computers. Come for the latest tricks for easing your system management duties with the Send UNIX task.

System Image Creation and Deployment with Snow Leopard Server
System Image creation and deployment is the best way to ensure consistent configuration of Macs in your organization. Learn how to use the new features in System Image Utility 2 to create NetBoot, NetInstall, and NetRestore images to simplify the deployment of Mac OS X across your organization.

Managing Home Directories with Mac OS X Server
Mac OS X Server delivers flexible options for managing your organization’s user home directories including Network Home Directories, Mobile Home Directories, Portable Home Directories, and External Accounts. Learn which of these options is best suited for your environment, while getting field-tested best practices for home directory deployment and management. See how new features in Snow Leopard Server enhance your options for managed home directories.

Snow Leopard Server Setup: Under the Hood
Snow Leopard Server includes a powerful new Setup Assistant that streamlines the configuration of your server. Learn from the experts about the rich set of functionality that the new setup experience provides for several different network topologies. Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the Setup Assistant can automatically configure other network devices such as client computers, Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule to provide seamless network connectivity for local networks as well as the Internet.

Integrating iPhone into the Enterprise
iPhone has become a leading choice for mobile professionals. Find out about configuring and deploying iPhone in your organization, learn tools and techniques for configuration and deployment of native and web-based iPhone applications, and discover how server-side technologies integrate with iPhone, all from the IT professional’s perspective.

iPhone Configuration Creation and Deployment
iPhone configuration profiles make mass configuration of iPhones a snap. With configuration profiles, your organization can deploy account information, password policies, secure access settings, certificates and more, all within a single package. Get the latest details on the iPhone configuration profile file format, new additions to the managed services they support, Apple’s profile creation tools for Mac OS X and Windows, and new deployment options that make profile distribution even easier.

I also hope to be able to get to some of these Macintosh and iPhone development sessions:

iPhone User Interface Design Prototyping
Learn how to turn your personal vision into an elegant iPhone application design. Explore your ideas through rapid prototyping and experience the iterative design process that leads to a truly innovative user interface. With some cool tricks and a few lines of code, see how a working prototype provides insight far beyond a static mockup. Watch your design evolve from good to great.

iPhone Application Design Using Interface Builder
Interface Builder provides the easiest route to an elegant and well-designed iPhone application, letting you seamlessly implement many popular interface styles. Take your experience with Interface Builder to the next level and learn how to efficiently build and structure your iPhone interface. Find out how to create a multi-screen interface, work with view controllers, employ navigation controllers, and properly isolate data across master-detail interface pairs.

Effective iPhone App Architecture
Whether your iPhone app is in development or on the App Store, strong code architecture is an essential part of your daily process. Learn about good data modeling, communication between view controllers, and when to use delegates and notifications. Find out how to make important decisions about memory, speed, and a responsive UI. Developers of all skill levels can benefit from this thorough examination of iPhone SDK best practices.

State of the Art Cocoa: User Interface Design
Often, the difference between an amazing application and a merely adequate one lies in the level of polish applied to the user interface. Learn how to take a functional Interface Builder project and add the subtle details that make the user experience feel intuitive and look more attractive. Find out how to add custom drawing and controls to get the exact effect desired, and even how to add Core Animation to make your application shine.

What’s New in Core Data
Both Mac and iPhone developers now have the power of Core Data at their disposal. See what’s new in Core Data for both iPhone OS 3.0 and Snow Leopard. Learn the most efficient ways to employ Core Data in your next project while taking advantage of recommended design patterns. Walk through solutions to the most common problems facing experienced Core Data programmers.


President Obama on science

| | Science

More change 🙂

If anyone doubted that change has come, and come to science, they need to watch this video. We’ve been waiting a long, long time for a president to take this kind of interest in furthering the cause of science in our country. His budget calls for a doubling of our nation’s investment in basic research in the coming years: “No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals; new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and drought.” “It was basic research in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today’s GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago….”

You can watch the video at the Cosmic Variance site linked below.

Read more & watch video: Obama on Science | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine


I like BASIC!

| | General

I like programming in BASIC. There I said it. I can hear the purists poopooing, indeed some may be fainting. But it’s only a language. It has been said that modern versions of BASIC are not your fathers BASIC. What this means is that there are versions of BASIC available today that have most, or even all of the features found in other modern languages like Objective-C, C#, Ruby, Java, etc.

I’m a Macintosh guy. For a long while I used FutureBASIC but it has fallen by the wayside a bit. A good modern BASIC for the Macintosh is REALbasic. It’s actually cross platform and runs and compiles for Macintosh, Windows and Linux. I only have the Macintosh version. REALbasic has an object-orientated language with lots of modern features:

21st Century BASIC
Yes, it’s BASIC. But it’s not the interpreted, procedural, line numbered, spaghetti-code-producing BASIC from the old days. This is a robust, modern, fully object-oriented from the ground up BASIC that compiles to native X86 and PowerPC machine code. REALbasic supports inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, delegates, introspection, the works. And if all of that made your eyes glaze over, don’t worry. The great thing about REALbasic / REAL Studio is you can do a lot without having to know any of this, but it will be there when you need it.

One downside is that it produces quite large binary files. REAL Software have made changes to the system to allow them to address this but at present it still links in everything and this gives big executables. I don’t think this is a problem these days. Another issue with the Macintosh version is that currently it uses the Carbon framework (mostly) for interface elements. Cocoa is what modern Macintosh apps should be using. The good news is that a beta that uses Cocoa is imminent. I’m looking forward to it. It should make it easier to produce Macintosh apps with REALbasic that have more Cocoa UI compliant interfaces using a language I know and I’m comfortable with.

Will still need to know Objective-C for iPhone apps though…


Bill Maher Mocks Texas Gov. Perry Over Evolution and Swine Flu

| | Science

Mocking the stone age science at the Texas State Board of Education has now gone viral — late-night comedians have the rest of the country laughing at us. Bill Maher de-pantsed the governor on last Friday’s episode of his HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher: “He [Perry] appointed a creationist to head the Texas State Board of Education, which is shocking. Texas has a board of education?!?”



More at: ‘ Bill Maher Mocks Texas Gov. Perry Over Evolution and Swine Flu’ by Texas Freedom Network – RichardDawkins.net


New contact lenses

| | Technology

Got new contact lenses today. Slightly different shape from the last ones, in the right eye. Left eye identical to the ones I’ve had for a few years. Had to get new ones as I lost the previous right one when drunk. lost it removing them. Went to put it in again a few days later and it wasn’t in the case. Maybe I ate it!

The new right one has a slightly different shape. The optician (a new one in the usual practice I’ve been using for decades) said she wasn’t convinced with the shape of the one I had. It did tend to rotate in my eye and sometime this had an impact on the vision. The new one doesn’t seem to rotate when I blink and sits more snugly on the cornea. I had the new ones n for about 6 hours today. They were very comfortable. What was less comfortable was the ÂŁ228 price tag!!


Shaving: A technical solution?

| | Science, Technology

I hate shaving. I’ve Twittered about it a few times. Beard hair, especially just under my jaw line and on my neck, grows very quickly and mostly dark. If I shave in the morning then by lunchtime there will be significant regrowth of the hair. A 12 o’clock shadow! Not only that the hair is like stiff wire and rubbing a finger over it is actually painful to the face skin. The shaving bumps and razor burn I get are quite painful as well. It’s not quite as bad as the Pseudofolliculitis barbae that some people get, but still a pain in the neck (pun intended!) I think that the hair composition changed a bit after I had surgery for testicular cancer. Maybe my hormone levels went a bit haywire for a bit. I don’t know. I wasn’t tested for testosterone levels at the time.

I’ve been a long advocate of the mantra there is a technical solution for everything. It’s a bit of a glib phrase I know. But it suits my view of the world. If you define it widely enough then the phrase can take in braces for teeth straightening, surgery, lots of things.

So, is there a technical solution for the shaving problem? Research shows that there is. Laser hair removal. In particular a technique that uses a laser with a certain wavelength of laser light that is meant to work really well on coarse, dark male beard hair. It’s known as the Lightsheer Diode Laser System. There are lots of sites on the Internet where people outline their successes (or not – mostly successes though) with beard removal using with the Lightsheer machine. Apparently it works due to the melanin pigment in dark hair follicles absorbing the energy in the laser light. This heats the follicle and destroys or impedes its ability to produce new hair. It seems it doesn’t work on light coloured hair or hair that has gone grey or white as there is not enough melanin to absorb the energy.The science behind it is interesting stuff. Not sure why I didn’t think of this before. I lost the hair on my chest and abdomen during my radiotherapy. That grew back after a while. With Lightsheer it takes several sessions spread out over about a year to provide a complete zapping.

Do I hate shaving and the associated razor irritation enough to try getting it lasered? I don’t know. My beard now grows with colours like a Persian carpet. Not all the hairs are as black as they were 20 years ago. The laser might not work on the light coloured hairs, and definitely won’t work on the white/grey hairs. But then again maybe removing the majority of the hair, which is dark and susceptible to the laser, would be enough. It’s also meant to be painful. Do I have the balls for it? I don’t like pain! There is also the societal aspect. Is it socially acceptable for blokes to get their beard hair permanently removed? I don’t see why not. What’s the difference between a few laser removal sessions and shaving everyday?

Anyway. I’ll have to have a think. It’s meant to be quite expensive as well.


Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Who’d be female under Islamic law?

| | Uncategorized

Sometimes I despair. I really do. The content in the article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent has made me despair today. Especially the bit quoted. Read the rest via the link below. Or maybe not. Do something to make yourself happy instead.

Iranian painter Delara Darabi, only 22 and in prison since she was 17, accused of murdering an elderly relative, was hanged last week even though she had been given a temporary stay of execution by the chief justice of the country. She phoned her mother on the day of her hanging to beg for help and the phone was snatched by a prison official who told them: “We will easily execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Her paintings reveal the cruelty to which she was subjected.

Read More: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Who’d be female under Islamic law? – Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Commentators – The Independent


Added WPtouch plugin

| | General

Just added the WPtouch plugin to the Soapbox. This uses a different mobile optimised theme when you hit the site with an iPhone, iPod touch or (apparently) an Android device. I like it.

More than just a plugin, WPtouch is an entire theme package for your WordPress website. Modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, WPtouch makes your WordPress website load lightning fast on touch mobile devices, show your content beautifully, all while not interfering with your regular theme.

More info at: WPtouch: Mobile Plugin + Theme for WordPress ↔ BraveNewCode Inc.

Click Picture for larger view


Back to programming basics

| | General

I bought myself a copy of the Pragmamatic Programmers Learn To Program book. I’ve decided to go back to basics and make sure I have a good foundation in the basics of programming before trying to build some applications I want for the Macintosh and iPhone.

Not because I have tried to build the applications and failed. I haven’t. No, I just want to build the foundations first before moving on to meaningful stuff. Sort of fill in some of the knowledge you’d get from doing a formal programming course at College or in first year University; but by self study. What is that term about a house built on sand…

In addition to the Learn To Program book, which uses the Ruby language for its examples and exercises, I’ve also got two entry level Objective-C books that I will be studying at the same time. These are Programming in Objective-C 2.0 by Kochan and Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Dalrymple & Knaster.

I’m going to use all three of the books at the same time by reading a chapter at a time from each. Is this sensible? Who knows? I’ll get back to you on that in a month 🙂


Song Lyric: Let’s Party

| | General

Lyric I first did ages ago. Have resurrected and amended it. Probably still needs some more polishing and refining to make it scan and easier to sing.

Let’s Party

Sometimes I feel I’m pissing
Straight into the wind
Other times I feel as if I’m
Being slowly skinned
Perhaps I’m on a treadmill
Going round and round all day
Or is this all illusion
Does life have to be this way?

At times like this I have to say
Sod it!
There’s just one thing to do
Just step back and loudly say
I’ve had enough of all this crap!
Let’s party for the rest of the day

Let’s party, Oh Yes!
Party!

So don’t let life get you down
Treat your problems with disdain
Just stick on your favourite music
And get down to its refrain
If people try to drive you down
Step back and loudly say
I’ve had enough of all this crap!
Let’s party for the rest of the day

Just step back and loudly say
Let’s party for the rest of the day

Let’s party, Oh Yes!
Let’s party
Party!
Just get right on down
Party Yeah!
It’s the only thing to do
Let’s party for the rest of the day!


Guitar news!!

| | General

I’ve just got the following in an Email from Andrew Guyton:

Ok, I’ve attached a photo of your guitar. Must admit it doesn’t look very green in the picture, but I can assure you it is.The certificate is coming this Friday, so all being well, I’ll get the guitar on a carrier to you by Tuesday or Wednesday.

And here is said photo:

My new Guitar Click Picture for larger view

OMG! It’s beautiful 🙂 Cancel all appointments next week…

UK rejects privacy group’s gripes about Google Street View

| | Technology

Just bloody right too. Put the torches and pitchforks away folks.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has responded to complaints that Google’s Street View doesn’t do enough to protect citizens’ privacy by stating that removing Street View would be disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment.

More info at: UK rejects privacy group’s gripes about Google Street View – Ars Technica

Apple Reports Second Quarter Results

| | Technology

Not to shabby 🙂

CUPERTINO, California—April 22, 2009—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2009 second quarter ended March 28, 2009. The Company posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

From: Apple Reports Second Quarter Results

Been neglecting my geek muscle…

| | Technology

I’ve been neglecting my geek muscles way too much lately. It’s time to get back in the game and immerse myself in the new stuff that is hitting the market. Basically do stuff for The Plan minus the Open University stuff which I’ve dropped.

From a infrastructure technology point of view I plan to dive in deep and dirty with:

On the development front I will be reading the small mountain of books I have on:

On a personal front I will be finally studying some mathematics and reading through the huge pile of unread books I have bought over the last year.

Books to read Books to read. Click for larger view

This weeks events in Belfast (DevDays and BarCampBelfast) will be a good springboard to get back in the geek game…

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