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.
This is so cool. Updates from the Mars Phoenix lander via Twitter.
I’ve succumbed to Twitter. My page is here. Surprisingly IanRobinson was not taken!
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…
As reported by Scientific American. Writing about your experiences can have beneficial effects. From the article:
Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.
I think my scribbling here certainly helped me.
I’ve changed the settings that govern comments here to remove the requirement for registration before comments can be made. I had the registration set to guard against spam. Several people have told me that they have had trouble registering, or that they don’t like to register on blogs. So from now on people can comment without registering. Comments from new posters will be held in moderation until I approve them. A name and email address (that will not be published) will still need to be entered as per most other sites.
I got back from San Francisco on Monday afternoon after Macworld last week. The weather was a bit of a shock! I saw lots of flooded fields and rivers on the approach into Heathrow. The weather in San Francisco was very good. It was sunny for the whole time myself and 2 others were there. Apparently this is unusual for January. The sun shines on the Mac users! When I got back to Belfast it was blowing a gale and there was horizontal rain. Cold. These things are relative though. I came out of the hotel in San Francisco one day last week and saw a girl on her way to work with wooly gloves and scarf on. For me it was a warm morning, for the natives it was cold. Transplant one of them to Belfast last Monday and they’d probably have died on the spot!
On the subject of travel, well flying, I have to say that British Airways are excellent. I’ve always had excellent service from them and they are my carrier of choice.
Macworld itself felt a bit flat to me. There were some good points. The Microsoft Day at the Office session to launch Office 2008 for Macintosh was good. Attendees had to pay $199 to attend this session. It was worth it. There was some very useful info from people who knew the software. They also gave everyone a copy of the Special Media Edition of the suite. A $499 value. Nice. Other highlights for me from a product point of view were: TheSkyX and Seeker from Software Bisque, Casper from Jamf Software, and Filemaker Pro 9. The new virtualisation solutions from Parallels and VMware that allow Mac OS X Server to be run in a virtual machine looked good as well.
There were several very good talks, as well as several indifferent ones. On the good side there was the talk by Merlin Mann. Very entertaining and very useful as well. Leo Laporte and Alex Lindsey gave a good talk on podcasting and video podcasting. No slides in this one, just a conversation with the audience. Andy Ihnatko gave a good talk about how to use iTunes and iPods better. The Expo show floor was a typical trade show. I had a good talk and made some contacts with Jamf Software about Casper that’ll be useful for work.
I wouldn’t rush back to Macworld. I’d rather spend the money on attending Apple WWDC. This is a better conference for my needs. Entries in the Moscone Centre schedule for June list a corporate event from 8th to 13th June. That’ll probably be WWDC 2008. I’ll hopefully be at that.
This entry was composed using MacJournal 5 which has just been released and I’m testing to see if I can adopt it as my journal and blogging software. If you are reading this then it works!
UPDATE: MacJournal isn’t going to replace Ecto for blog editing.
I’ve just signed up for the Amazon UK Associates Program. In the interests of disclosure please be aware that I will be putting my Associate ID into the links I provide to the Amazon Uk site from the Soapbox. This means that I will get a 5% kick back if anyone follows a link and then buys the linked book, DVD, game etc. If you follow this site you’ll know I link to a lot of books on Amazon. The addition of the Amazon ID, and its potential financial kickback, won’t make any difference to that. There won’t be any more or less links to Amazon. If there are any kickbacks as a result of links then that’ll just be a bonus. Any funds generated will be paid to me in the form of Amazon vouchers to buy more stuff.
I’ve just done a complete fresh install of WordPress 2.3.1 here on the Soapbox. Gave it a good scrub and now it’s all shiny. I’ll update the theme over the Christmas holidays. In the interim I’ll just leave this default theme in place.
Update: New theme in place. I like it 🙂
A few years ago I was in San Diego and got the head burnt off me by the Sun. I learnt my lesson then and don’t venture out in sunny climes now without a hat. I’ve now learnt the same lesson for my arms and neck! During a walk from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco yesterday, I got sunburnt on my arms and neck a lot. Lobster Boy rides again! Next time I’m walking along the sea front in San Francisco, it’ll be Factor 50 sun block for me (next time will either be MacWorld in January 2008 or the Apple WWDC in June 2008).
Posted from my iPod touch.
Update: Pictures from said stroll along the sea front are available here.