iTunes Music Store passes 5 Billion downloads
Announced by Apple today. Also selling or renting 50,000 movies per day. Seems to be a success then…
Northern Ireland Cocoa Developers
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.
Hellstrom’s Hive on Audible
I’ve written about Frank Herbert’s Hellstrom’s Hive before. More than once in fact. You can now get the book on Audible read by the excellent Scott Brick.
Mars Phoenix lander is Twittering…
This is so cool. Updates from the Mars Phoenix lander via Twitter.
WWDC is nigh
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.
Click picture for larger view
Phoenix Mars lander movies on iTunesU
The University of Arizona are putting movies related to the Mars Phoenix lander up on their iTunesU page.
Playing along
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”
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.
A shoe in
If they make a film of Freddie Mercury’s life, or indeed the story of Queen, then Noel Fielding would be a good choice to play Freddie.
Click for larger views
Built the drum kit
I finally got round to putting together the drum kit I talked about here. It’s great fun. Headphone of course so that neighbours don’t lynch me. Next step it to link it via midi to a Mac for EZdrummer and GarageBand/Logic use.
iRex Iliad
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.
Joined Del.icio.us
I’ve finally joined Del.icio.us. My bookmarks page is here. I’ll be using WebnoteHappy to manage my links for a while to see what its like.
I suppose it’ll be Twitter next…
Life with a MacBook Air
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.
Glad I got a hybrid car
I wrote about getting my new Honda Civic Hybrid in January. I got this model because I liked the body shape, the interior and the technology it uses in its IMA Hybrid Engine. I didn’t buy it to reduce the amount and cost of the fuel I used. The Honda sales guy kept offering to do calculations in a spreadsheet to show the fuel savings I would get. I kept telling him I wasn’t interested and I wasn’t getting the car for that reason.
Given the rise in petrol costs, I’m interested now! I filled the tank yesterday from reserve. It took 37.68 litres @ 117.98 pence per litre; or £44.42 to fill the tank. This is about £10 less than it took to fill the tank on my Renault Laguna late last year. Plus the petrol was around the 95 pence per litre price point then, if I recall correctly. One of my colleagues in work drives a large 4×4 Volkswagon and it costs him about £120 to fill the tank. Another one who drives a diesel Audi A4 (I think) fills his tank twice a week at £70 each time. He was asking me how I like the hybrid during the week…
Honda claim an extra urban miles per gallon reading for the Hybrid of about 65 mpg. Hmmm. For general start, stop driving around Belfast I’m getting (according to the onboard computer) about 42 mpg. Not too shabby all the same. I did some testing on longish runs recently and got the following fuel consumption figures:
Dual carriageway (50 MPH speed limit – cruise control set for 50 mph) = 55 mpg fuel consumption.
Motorway (70 MPH speed limit – cruise control set for 70 mph) = 46 mpg fuel consumption.
So the claimed 65 mpg is probably for 30 or 40 mph cruising. Still; I’m very happy. The Honda is a lovely car. It’s comfortable, well made and has enough grunt from the engine for normal driving. In fact it feels much the same as the 1.8 petrol Laguna’s I’ve driven for the last 6 years. The Honda has a 1.4 litre engine, drinks petrol like a 1.0 litre and drives like a 1.8. Works for me. Over the 3 years of the leasing agreement I have it on I should save quite a bit on fuel. If the cost of fuel continues to rise it’ll just get more beneficial.
Are you changing your car soon? Get a hybrid!
New Nina Kinert album
Just got the new Nina Kinert album. It’s on my iPhone, but I haven’t listened to it yet (apart from snippets on her MySpace page). The last album was brilliant. I mentioned it here. Looking forward to hearing the new one, Pets & Friends. Now where are my headphones…
Update: The album is good. Not sure if it’s as good as Let there be love.
Delicious Library 2
I’ve been using Delicious Library since it was released. The new version has been in development for a long time. It won an Apple Design Award at WWDC in 2007. I didn’t think this was right. Applications should be available to win an award.
I really liked Delicious Library 1 and the interface that it presented. I liked the flow of the eye from left to right in the window. Indeed this was used as an example of good Mac OS X application design. It was however a bit slow.
Various snippets of information that have come out about Delicious Library 2 have outlined how it would require Mac OS X 10.5 and it would use lots of the technologies that Leopard delivers. Well it’s out now. What’s it like? In my opinion its a step backward from the previous version. The new one is certainly snappier but they have changed the Interface and moved the info section from the right of the window to below the shelf view. The whole concept of the flow of the eye from left to right has been broken. On my MacBook Air with its small screen the new version is largely unusable. I’m really, really disappointed. You can’t even double click on an item in the library and get a separate window to view detail information. Plus there are bugs, such as: it shows links to Amazon as Amazon (null) in the Item menu and the Context menus. I expect this should be Amazon (United Kingdom) in my case. I store my iTunes Library when using my MacBook Air on an external disk with an Alias to the iTunes folder in my Music folder. It doesn’t seem to like this and the iTunes import didn’t work. I’ve been waiting for this for ages to replace the slow v1. I’m afraid the new version isn’t for me.
Instead I’ve bought the Bruji bundle of their 4 ‘pedia apps to store my book, DVD, Game and Music info. Those apps imported my info from Delicious Library with no problems. They are fast on the MacBook Air. They give me a better view of the data on the Air display than Delicious Library 2 did and the CDpedia app imports my iTunes music info. One downside is that there are 4 apps instead of one. I’ve created a small Applescript app to start all 4 at once and have stuck that in the Dock with a nice icon showing a storage box. So a single click gives me access to all the apps.
The bundle cost me 3 times what the Delicious Library upgrade would have. I think it was worth it. If Delicious Library 2 wins another Apple Design Award this year it’ll be a travesty.
Phoenix safely on Mars
Happy days! The Phoenix lander successfully set down on Mars in the early morning (UK time). The first pictures have been sent back. Hopefully there will be some really good science done over the next year or so as it probes its surroundings. The following sites have more info:
Plus, John Welch has some pertinent observations on the fact that it was science that made it possible for humanity to send this probe to the Mars.
Click picture for larger view of picture taken by Phoenix lander (© Nasa)
BBC iPlayer
Virgin Media’s cable TV service now provides access to the BBC iPlayer service.. Excellent. It’s the best way to watch any TV programmes that have been on the UK BBC channels in the previous week. Just watching the first episode of Dr. Michio Kaku’s Visions of the Future.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Went to see the new Indy film. What is it with Steven Spielberg and aliens?