The Police & KT Tunstall live in Belfast

| | General

Went to see The Police and KT Tunstall at Stormont last night. It was brilliant. KT Tunstall is excellent live. Especially Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, which she does mostly solo using echo loops. The Police were excellent as well. They played several tracks that I didn’t recognise that were really heavy and good. The famous singles that everyone knows were good as well.

Here are some pictures (taken on an iPhone). BTW the concert was on the back cricket square at Stormont. This is shown in this picture from 2005.

KT Tunstall on screen ThePoliceBelfast1.JPG Click Pictures for larger view

More aliens from Spielberg?

| | Uncategorized

In this post about the latest Indy film I asked the question:

What is it with Steven Spielberg and aliens?

It seems he will be producing the upcoming film Cowboys vs. Aliens, set in the wild west that has Apaches and cowboys setting aside their differences to run aliens out of town. This has to be a comedy. Right? Another go at the aliens story.

Film Guardian story here.

Trying MarsEdit

| | General

The latest beta of Ecto has been doing weird things on me recently, so I’m trying MarsEdit again to see what its like. Nice Mac OS X interface. I’ll probably give the other Mac OS X blogging clients a whirl as well.

UPDATE: Back to Ecto. MarsEdit is nice and a good blog client, but I just like Ecto better and I’m used to it.

Northern Ireland Cocoa Developers

| | General

Some of us from Northern Ireland, who were at WWDC, are thinking of setting up a local Cocoa developers group to met and discuss development and technologies related to the Mac OS X and iPhone/iPod touch platform. It is envisioned that there will be periodic meetings, a mailing list, a web page, possibly guest speakers, etc. All this is still to be determined. The following 5 domains have been registered for the group to use:

nicocoadev (.org, .net, .com, .co.uk)

nicod.org

If you would be interested in participating in the group then email me using the contact link in the sidebar on the right of this page.

Feel free to pass this information on to anyone else who you think might be interested.

WWDC is nigh

| | Technology

I fly out to SF on Friday for WWDC next week. Schedule is done. Mostly Macs in IT with a smattering of Cocoa and iPhone sessions to break them up. Plus some extracurricular activities. See iCal screen grab below.

IRWWDC.png Click picture for larger view

Playing along

| | General

Love the drum kit. You can plug an iPod in and play along to your favourite tracks. This is so much fun its probably illegal. Plus it seems to be good exercise.

“Science is a way of life”

| | Science

Brian Green has an opinion piece in the New York Times outlining why science is important. It’s well worth reading. The following quote is a good summary:

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

iRex Iliad

| | Technology

I’ve been using a Sony eInk device for about a year. It’s an excellent device for reading fiction (and text grabbed from opinion piece web sites). The Sony is poor for A4 PDF documents though, as the screen is too small. The whole A4 page is rendered on the small screen and the text is too small to read. There are tools to change the PDF’s and increase font size etc., put they are a bit of a pain.

I’ve been looking at the iRex Iliad as a device for reading A4 PDF’s on for a while as it has a larger display, but it has always been a bit too expensive. iRex recently introduced a new Book Edition model with a different case, no wireless networking and a reduced price. I bought one to replace the big pile of paper I’ve been reading (Apple Mac OS X Server and VMware VI3 documentation). I recently printed out a PDF technical manual (that was a few hundred pages long ) and 2 days later a new updated version was released! Now I just update the version on the Iliad. I could read these on my Mac laptop but the eInk screen is much easier on the eyes for prolonged reading. Plus you can use a pen to annotate the PDF’s.

I have to say that the Iliad did not have the wow factor that the Sony PRS-505 had. I think this is a function of the design of the device, and maybe because I’ve been using eInk for a while. The design of the Sony is much better than the Iliad. The Sony feels like a book, whereas the Iliad feels like an electronic device. Both are better than the Amazon Kindle though! What an abomination in design.

So the Iliad now hosts my technical library and the Sony is my electronic paperback. I’m hoping that there will be a larger screen iPod touch device released by Apple that’ll have a good PDF reader. The Sony will stay as a fiction book replacement for the foreseeable future though irrespective of any new iPod touch type devices. It’s just too good to be replaced. The battery lasts for weeks and it fades into the background in use.

Life with a MacBook Air

| | General

I bought a MacBook Air a few months ago to use as a travel computer so that I could travel light. I had planned to use it just when away for work. A project I was working on required that I set-up a test Mac OS X Server machine. The only machine I had that was capable was my 17-inch MacBook Pro. As a result of this I’ve been using the Air as my only Macintosh portable machine. I’ve had to add a 4-port USB hub and an external USB drive for my iTunes folder. But apart from that the machine has met my needs perfectly. The screen was a bit small for my tastes but I’ve got used to it. I use Spaces in Leopard to increase the real estate I have. The lightness of the device is the biggest plus point. My shoulder will thank me if I think I keep the Air as my portable Mac and use the MacBook Pro as a mobile music workstation for Logic Pro, EZDrummer and GarageBand. I’ll also use it to record midi drum information from my Roland drum kit. Iv’e had to put that in a different room from my other stuff.

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