At previous Apple WWDC conferences Apple bused the attendees out to the Cupertino campus on Thursday night for food, beer and music. The so called campus bash. I’m glad I went last year because the bash this year will be held in San Francisco. Probably be in the big ground floor hall of Moscone West. Should still be fun but going to the Apple campus was part of WWDC the long time attendees tell me. Still, I can say I was at the last one 🙂
Not long to go until Apple WWDC 2007. Just done my preliminary schedule based on the published session info so far. See the picture below. Will probably change a bit as there are some slots in the published schedules on the WWDC site that are listed as TBA. These are likely placeholders for new stuff in MacOS X 10.5 Leopard or iPhone. The picture also doesn’t show any of the evening activities such as the Apple Design Awards, The Scientific Poster Session, The Apple Campus Bash and others. There is also a session entitled Mac OS X Scientific Computing State of the Union that is in the full listings but not on the calendar view. It’ll maybe a lunchtime session. I want to go to that. Many of the sessions I’m going to are IT technology related rather than developer related. This reflects that WWDC is taking on a more technical conference feel rather than a pure developer conference. The IT related sessions are of interest for the education technology job I’m doing at present.
Click picture for larger view
Flight to San Francisco on 9th June. 6 weeks to go. Can’t wait 🙂
Finally stepped into the High Definition television age. I got a Sony Bravia KDL-40W2000 LCD television and a Sony Playstation 3. The TV has a 1080p HD display and the PS3 has a Blu-Ray HD drive in it. As a bonus I get a games console in the Blu-Ray player for free 🙂 Here is a picture of the beasts in situ. The image on the screen is from a Mac mini that I use as my music centre with iTunes.
The quality of Blu-Ray movies via the PS3 and the TV is stunning. Very, very happy. I had to take the first PS3 back as the fans would come on and once they got to a high speed, whilst playing a game for example, they would stay at the high speed until the unit was switched off. This was irrespective of what the PS3 was doing after the fans speeded up. So if I left it idling the fans would never slow down again. This was annoying when using it to watch movies when in a quiet part of a film. You could hear the fans over the film sound. The replacement PS3 seems to be quieter but I’ve still to test it fully.
The game MotorStorm is stunning on the PS3. Really, really good fun as well. It outputs at 720p resolution and looks excellent on the Bravia. Here is a picture of a bike from the game. It has a bit of motion blur.
So I’ve cast my die into the Blu-Ray camp in the great HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray face off. Hopefully Apple will go down the Blu-Ray route with their HD optical drives in Macintosh machines. A Mac mini with a Blu-Ray drive and a version of DVD Player that allowed playback of Blu-Ray movie discs would make a very nice media hub indeed. It’d need to output 1080p via HDMI cable though.
Scrivener is a stunning piece of software. It is designed to help mange ideas, notes, writings research and other items related to a writing project. This could be a book, a short story, a project report, a piece of scientific research, whatever. If it’s a piece of writing then Scrivener can be used to organise the interim drafts and stuff.
It uses a really nice cork board metaphor with notes and ideas pinned to it. Folders can be used to organise the notes. This is only one way of looking at a project. There are other views as well. The interface and attention to detail is very, very good. Take a look at the Scrivener site for more info. If you use a Mac and do any writing then prepare yourself to stump up the cash for this excellent piece of Mac OS software. I did a few days ago 🙂
A 2nd public preview of Papers was released today. Papers is an app for searching PubMed and organising references and PDF files of journal articles. It can also be used to manage any local PDF files already on your Macintosh. It’s like iTunes for scientific papers. The new version interacts with EndNote X which is a nice addition. I’m hoping that Papers will be very useful for a chemistry project course I’ve just started.
As rumoured, WWDC 2007 will be held from 11th to 15th June. Happy days. There is a good chance that the iPhone will ship during WWDC and probably Leopard as well. Looking forward to it. Last year was fun.
Travel Checklist To Do:
Buy WWDC e-Ticket ✔
Book flight from Belfast to Heathrow ✔
Book flight from Heathrow to San Francisco ✔
Reserve hotel room ✔
Book time off from work ✔
All done. That’s me sorted. Now I just have to wait 🙂
UPDATE: AAUC have removed the entry referenced below from their June 2007 calendar.
Apple WWDC was very late in the year in 2006. August in fact. Hopefully this years will be earlier. Just seen that the Australian Apple University Consortium have an event calendar that has WWDC 2007 as running from Sunday June 10th to Friday June 15th 2007. They even have a deadline for their members to take advantage of a special rate for the San Francisco Courtyard Marriott hotel.
Nothing in the Moscone Center event calendar for those dates yet. But that’s not unusual. I hope the AUC are right as June would suit me. Hopefully Apple will confirm the dates soon so I can get flights and hotel booked. Yeah. Summer in San Francisco.
Be a while since I’ve done anything on YAPT. Just posted a new build. See the YAPT page. Here is a screen shot from the latest version:
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. . .when all through the house not a creature was stirring!
I’m really looking forward to the new toys and software that will be released over the next few days. I hope there is a iPod phone. I hope it works with the Nike+ shoe thingy. I really hope said iPod phone isn’t a lemon!
The ModBook should be interesting. If it can do screen rotation and doesn’t add too much to the price of a basic MacBook it might be a runner for me. The battery will need to be readily accessible to allow an easy sleep->battery change->wake from hibernation cycle.
Just a pity we’re not all in SF to see the stuff in the flesh. Still WWDC to come later in the year. Hopefully earlier this year than last. Anyone else planning to go? I’m making it my summer holiday like a sad git!
I wrote previously that I was testing MacJounal as a replacement for ecto as a blog tool and SOHO Notes as a personal journal app. Whilst MacJounal has some nice touches, and does have a nice Mac interface, I’ve reverted to ecto and SOHO Notes for the two tasks respectively. I really missed being able to drag a picture into a blog entry window in ecto and have a thumbnail automatically created that linked to a full size version when uploaded to my Soapbox. I also like the ability to specify a target when creating links. On the SOHO Notes front I like the way it automatically enters the current date as the title of a note when you create one in the in built Journal folder. Hardly Earth shattering I know but the small touches are nice.
Good grief. What a blunder. I was playing a 12 minute game of chess against a human opponent on playchess.com and got to the following position –
I was playing white and it was my move. I had about 3 minutes on my clock and my opponent had about 1.5 minutes. So no time pressure. So what did I play?
49. b7??
Really stupid move or what? Can you see why? Black can checkmate in a single move with 49 … Ng2#. Here is the position at the end:
I couldn’t believe it 🙁 I should have played 49. Rxf4 Kxf4 50. Kxe2 and then advanced the pawn on the b-file to Queen it. More study required I think to spot obvious mating positions. Here is the full game if anyone is interested:
[Event “Rated game, 12m + 0s”]
[Site “Beginners”]
[Date “2006.12.05”]
[White “Canicula”]
[Black “Coriolis”]
[Result “0-1”]
[WhiteElo “1251”]
[BlackElo “1283”]
[ECO “C42”]
[Annotator “Robinson,Ian”]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. d3 Be7 5. Be2 O-O 6. Be3 Nc6 7. O-O Be6 8. Ng5
d5 9. f3 d4 10. Nxe6 fxe6 11. Bg5 dxc3 12. bxc3 b5 13. d4 b4 14. c4 exd4 15. e5
Nd7 16. Bxe7 Qxe7 17. f4 Rf7 18. Bh5 g6 19. Bf3 Rxf4 20. Qd2 Raf8 21. Bxc6 Nxe5
22. Rxf4 Nxc4 23. Rxf8+ Qxf8 24. Qf2 Ne5 25. Qxf8+ Kxf8 26. Be4 c5 27. Re1 Kf7
28. h4 c4 29. h5 b3 30. axb3 cxb3 31. cxb3 d3 32. Kf2 Ng4+ 33. Kf3 gxh5 34.
Bxh7 Kf6 35. Ra1 Ke5 36. Bxd3 Kd4 37. Bc4 e5 38. Rxa7 e4+ 39. Ke2 Ne3 40. Bf7
Nxg2 41. Bxh5 Nf4+ 42. Kd2 e3+ 43. Ke1 Nxh5 44. Rd7+ Ke4 45. b4 Nf4 46. b5 e2
47. b6 Kf3 48. Rf7 Ke3 49. b7 Ng2# 0-1
BTW the chess boards above are taken from the excellent Sigma Chess.
UPDATE: It’s not all doom and gloom. I won my most recent game –
[Event “Rated game, 8m + 0s”]
[Site “Beginners”]
[Date “2006.12.05”]
[White “Canicula”]
[Black “G¸nni”]
[Result “1-0”]
[WhiteElo “1169”]
[BlackElo “1378”]
[ECO “B06”]
[Annotator “Robinson,Ian”]
1. e4 g6 2. Nf3 Bg7 3. Nc3 Nc6 4. Bd3 d6 5. O-O Bxc3 6. bxc3 e5 7. Bb2 Bg4 8.
Bc4 Qd7 9. d4 exd4 10. cxd4 Bxf3 11. Qxf3 Nxd4 12. Bxd4 O-O-O 13. Bxh8 Ne7 14.
Qxf7 Rxh8 15. Qe6 b6 16. Qxd7+ Kxd7 17. Rae1 Rf8 18. f3 Rf4 19. g3 Rf6 20. f4
c6 21. g4 b5 22. Bd3 a6 23. g5 Rf7 24. f5 gxf5 25. exf5 Nd5 26. g6 hxg6 27.
fxg6 Rg7 28. Rf7+ Rxf7 29. gxf7 1-0
I suggest you read this. Do yourself a favour and look at the alternatives to Zune first if you don’t want an iPod. Then do yourself a big favour and buy an iPod anyway.
I’m having another look at MacJournal to see if it’ll work as my personal diary tool and also as a blog editing tool. I’m writing this entry using v4.1d4, which is the latest available development build from Dan Schimpf. The editor is nice. Probably a bit better than ecto form a Macintosh GUI perspective.
I was able to download all 190 entries from my Soapbox okay after pointing it at the base URL. When I tried this in a previous version it only downloaded a subset of them. Not sure if that was as result of something I did wrong or the program itself.
In theory I should be able to use this one program to compose and store both personal entries and public entries for the Soapbox. Anyone want to take bets on how long it’ll be before a private entry gets posted here 🙂
Here is a screen grab of this entry being composed in MacJournal. If picture uploading is working then you’ll be able to see it. If not I’ll need to do some more tweaking!
Click on picture for larger view
Update: Obviously pictures are being scaled to fit the column width. Have to fix that. Three options:
• Find out if MacJournal can mimic the behaviour of ecto. The latter will include a thumbnail of the image in the post and will display the image in a new window when it’s double clicked. This would be my preference for a fix.
• Amend the CSS templates for the WordPress theme to stop images being scaled. If anyone knows how to do this post in the comments.
• Change the WordPress scheme to not use a single centred column. Might be time to go to a normal full window width theme anyway.
Update 2: The images are okay in the RSS feed from the site. Which is how everyone reads blogs anyway! Right?
Update 3: I’ve edited the picture to make it a thumbnail with a link to the larger version.
Finished reading Michael Palin’s excellent Diaries 1969-1979 The Python Years yesterday. I loved it. It gives an inside view (abridged admittedly) of the birth of Python, the ups and downs and tensions within the group and the transition from the TV series to the films of the 1970’s. Palin’s thoughts on the Ripping Yarns TV series are very welcome as well. All in all a wonderful read. I note that on 12th July 1979 petrol hit £1 per gallon. It nearly hit that per litre a few months ago! I hope there will be another volume. I want to read about the making of the film Brazil, the making of the Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (I’m sure there where some tensions in that process), although the initial writing for the 4th Python film just makes an appearance towards the end of 1979 in this volume. Reading some of the entries I wondered how so many activities were crammed into some days. As a counterpoint to some of the hectic days we also read of Palin’s family life and more normal activities. I really enjoyed it.
David Gerrold wrote in his book World’s of Wonder that “…your first million words are for practice. They don’t count.” Meaning that to be a writer you have to write a lot of words. Like any activity you get better with practise. Want to play the guitar? Learn chords and practise. Want to be a good bowler in cricket? Get in the nets and bowl. Want to be a writer. Write lots of words, sentences, articles and stories. Practise, practise, practise. Good advice from Mr. Gerrold I reckon. I started a diary of sorts myself whilst reading Palin’s book. Mainly in response to Gerrold’s maxim on writing, rather than hoping the diary will be of any interest to anyone. No one will see it until i croak anyway! On a technical note I’m using the Journal feature of SOHO Notes as the place where I write and store my daily scribbling. I have a few articles and other ideas that I want to write and the more writing I do the better I’ll get at it!
The Moscone West Conference Centre is ready for Apple’s WWDC 2006. Registration opens on Sunday and the event starts on Monday. This is my first WWDC. Can’t wait 🙂
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I’m in San Francisco for Apple WWDC. When I was up in the wee hours this morning I was listening to BBC radio streamed over the Internet. A sanity saver when away if ever there was one. Said it before, but Radio 4 is worth the license fee on it’s own.
Isn’t US TV awful? Obviously they produce really good individual shows, Seinfeld for example, but the daily stuff is just dross. They do know how to do a mean bacon and eggs breakfast though 🙂
Walking and shopping planned in San Francisco today.
I got the Nike+ iPod Sport kit today and tried it out tonight. I don’t have a pair of the proper Nike shoes yet so I just stuck it under the insole of a pair of Caterpillar trainers I have. They have a thick insole so I was just aware of the sensor under my foot but it didn’t make it impossible to walk. It’d be uncomfortable to use it that way all the time though. I tied putting it under the tongue and laces of the trainer but it didn’t work there. I set it for a 2 mile distance program. It’s pretty cool. As I walked the distance counted up on the screen. It’s shown in 0.00 format so it goes 0.01, 0.02 etc. When I’d done half a mile the music faded down and the instruction voice told me I’d done half a mile. After a mile I was told I was half way there. At 1.5 miles I was told I’d half a mile to go. I had to stop after 1.75 miles as I the car park in Stormont was due to close!
When I docked the iPod it uploaded the data to the Nike+ web site and asked me if i wanted to visit the site. Here is the result –
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I’ll need to get the proper shoes and calibrate it over a known distance. All in all I’m impressed.
As I said in a previous post I was switching the development of YAPT from REALbasic to Xcode. This was due to an overall slowness in the GUI in the REALbasic version. There was an irritating delay in activation and deactivating the buttons for each element when switching the application to and from the front on screen. Also the About… dialog box was sluggish in displaying. Add in the fact that REALbasic can’t create Universal Binaries for Intel based Macs yet.
The first development version of the Xcode Universal Binary version of YAPT is now available. It’s much snappier in use and uses the Cocoa framework and Applescript. Only Hydrogen and Helium do anything at present. I plan to finish the interface using these two elements and then add information for the other elements once I’m happy with the layout etc. I’d be interested in any comments. This switch to using Xcode and Cocoa means that YAPT will be Macintosh only. There will not me a Windows or Linux version. There are plenty of other Periodic Table applications for those platforms anyway. Actually there are several for Macintosh as well but I don’t like them 🙂
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I needed a new chair to use at my desk. After much research I settled for a Herman Miller Mirra. It’s good. Still tweaking the various settings but so far it’s very comfortable and should help prevent back issues due to spending a lot of time at the desk writing, typing and computing in general. Click picture for larger view.
It’s been a while since I posted about YAPT. I said I was going to release early and often. Not much has happened on the often front…
I’ve decided to develop this using Cocoa rather than REALbasic. This means that there will not be a Windows or a Linux version. I’m doing this for fun and recreation, and as such I want to use the Xcode and Cocoa so I learn how to use them.