Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Latest Updates

Published
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Paul
on August 16, 2008
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It’s been far too long since my last post, the holidays are always busy and writing sometimes takes a back seat. Over the past month I’ve made a few changes to existing downloads and I’ve added a few new packages.

First up, the FFDShow codec (Beta 5) is available to download as a CC3 package, allowing playback of almost any media file from within Windows Media Player. I’ll be keeping this updated as new versions are released. Secondly, EduSweep is now available with a standard GUI installer and a CC3 package is ready for AUP Informant. MSIs for both of these will be coming soon.

I’ve several other CC3 packages ready to upload including Notepad2, a feature-packed notepad replacement, Paint .NET 3.35 (RM’s package blueprint version is lagging behind), PICAXE electronics software and an installation script for ArcGIS 9.2.

Work on EduSweep 2 and AUP Informant 2 is going well. I’ve had several people ask when they’ll be released and I hope to be finished by November, though that date may slip depending on how quickly I settle in at uni. In my next post I’ll demo a couple of features in action.

Take screenshots on your iPhone

Published
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Paul
on July 16, 2008
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If you’ve ever wanted to get a perfect screenshot of a program on your iPhone, there’s a simple command that Apple has built into the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.0 firmware that lets you save a screenshot of the current app.

Hold the home button down and tap the power/sleep button. That’s it!

Can the iPhone really deliver the full web experience?

Published
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Paul
on July 16, 2008
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Visiteurs de MacPlus: Salut, merci d’avoir visité!

The iPhone browser appears to be king of the hill right now when it comes to browsing on mobile devices but just how close is it to being the full web experience? I decided to test its rendering capabilities when compared to some of the major desktop browsers. Read on, the results might surprise you!

Acid 2 Test

For some time now, the Acid 2 test has been used as the benchmark for CSS standards support. Several major browsers achieved support with Safari being the first in October 2005, followed closely by Konqueror and then Opera in the following year. Let’s see how the current versions of the browsers stack up:

Opera 9.51
Firefox 3
Internet Explorer 7

iPhone 2.0

As you can see, the iPhone, while not perfect, produces a decent rendering with just a few small defects. When you take into account that IE7 is the most widely used browser on the web, Mobile Safari suddenly seems very capable in comparison. After all, if IE7 is “good enough” to render most sites correctly, the iPhone ought to handle most pages just as well, if not better. The only browser here to score a perfect rendering was Firefox 3, though Apple’s desktop version of Safari (not pictured) also passes.

Strangely, Opera 9.51 has actually regressed on the Acid 2 result since 9.50 renders it correctly. Initially I thought it was a problem with my machine but clearing the cache and reinstalling gives the same result. Quite why this would be, I’m not sure. It’s unlikely that Opera would remove support for part of a web standard so perhaps this is a bug resulting from a recent change.

Acid 3 Test

Next up is Acid 3, the most demanding test of a browser’s capabilities. Whereas Acid 2 focused on CSS support, this new test is centered around ECMAScript and DOM handling and it tests several components vital to “Web 2.0″ functionality.

Opera 9.51
Firefox 3
Internet Explorer 7

iPhone 2.0

Incredible! Mobile Safari actually scores better on Acid 3 than the latest Firefox release by the narrowest of margins. Opera 9.51 is the most capable browser here with IE7 trailing behind with 12. IE8, due out late this year promises great improvements in standards support.

The Web. Mobile.

Apple and the Webkit team have worked very hard to really bring the full web onto the iPhone and for the most part, they’ve succeeded. Mobile Safari on iPhone 2.0 is a very capable platform for developers and it reduces the hassle developers face when targeting mobile devices. There’s still work to be done, however, particularly with rich media such as Flash and Quicktime support, and I look forward to seeing progress there in future.

Has Mobile Safari worked well for you? Are there websites that fail to behave? Post a comment and let us know!

A Day Out

Published
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Paul
on June 24, 2008
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Took a lovely trip to London the other day with Rach. After Oxford Street we went to Leicester Square and found this little café that does Italian food along with the most enormous ice cream creations! Take a look at the yummy photos.

After lunch we headed to the IMAX cinema down by Waterloo, something I’d heard a lot about but never seen for myself. The screen is just staggeringly huge (puts Stevenage’s cinema to shame!) although when the adverts were running they only took up a fraction of the whole screen and I thought we were in for a let-down. Not at all, I’m definitely going back there again!

That evening we took an ‘Eye flight’, as it’s called now. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been on the Eye but it’s still great fun. Luck was definitely on our side since the eye closes at 9 and we just bought our tickets and made it there in time, the last two people allowed on! I’d like to think we were let on because of my sweet smile but it was more likely the fact that we were running towards the queue looking desperate.

Here’s a few pics…

Engadget are missing the point of WWDC

Published
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Paul
on June 9, 2008
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Did Engadget get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Have they gone to the wrong conference? I love their live coverage of the event but some of the comments this year are a little snide. Take a look:

And our LAST app [emphasis ours] comes from Digital Legends Entertainment…

ANOTHER medical app. This one by MIMvista. Someone, wake us when Steve’s back.

Forstall back, and another developer demo. Ugh.

Man, please let this string of demos end!

Man, these demos are crazy boring. Throw us a bone here Apple!

Okay, so everyone’s really waiting to see the new iPhone of course but please, Engadget, it’s almost as if it’s a conference for…developers. Sort of like the WorldWide Developers Conference, no? Of course there are going to be loads of app demos, that’s the idea. And as a developer, I like to see them!

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008

This sort of commentary frustrates me, not because I’m an Apple fan but because it’s damaging to the credability of bloggers as a whole. I was hoping that people would have raised their game after the Gizmodo incident at CES yet these little jabs detract from the professionalism of a great news source.

ThinkGeek and the lure of the 8-bit tie

Published
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Paul
on May 29, 2008
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Sometimes you come across things that are just so quirky, you can’t help but buy them. I finally caved and got myself one of these funky 8-bit ties from ThinkGeek. No, that’s not me modelling. As luck would have it, they’re running a buy one, get one free promotion at the moment so I have two of these retro wonders heading my way - Mario would be proud!

The 8-bit design is a nice throwback to the days of the NES and makes for something a little different around the office. Not wanting to get stung too badly on shipping ($36 to ship a tie is a bit pricey!), I got some other assorted geekery including some highly caffienated candy, a multi-tool, Timmy the ThinkGeek monkey to sit on my monitor and a couple of other bits.

I really wanted to see what all the fuss over Jolt Cola is about as well because I’m a sucker when it comes to shiny packaging - you can see why they’re called Battery Bottles! But sadly it can’t be shipped internationally. Why? I assume it has something to do with pressurised liquids but I’m not sure. Either way, it means no Jolt for me which, considering the 220mg caffeine content per can, is probably no bad thing.

Finally, a proper photo gallery

Published
by
Paul
on May 20, 2008
in Personal and Photography
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It’s been a long time since I updated the gallery. I must have literally thousands of photos lying around on my laptop and at least some of them are worth putting online! :P

Now that summer’s rolled around I’m gonna get back on track with my photography as well. My poor old camera has been sitting, gathering dust for most of the winter and it’s about time I dusted it off and went on a trip somewhere. With half term coming up, I’ve no excuse!

For the moment, though, I’ve gone and added about 400 photos from my collection which go back a good couple of years. Who knows, you might even be in one, say cheese! 8)

Looking at Wordpress 2.5

Published
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Paul
on March 30, 2008
in Personal and Technology
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I’ve just moved up to Wordpress 2.5 and it’s very impressive. There’s been a lot of nice work done to the post editor and the theme is a lot nicer.

The only problem I did encounter was that my wp-admin page was blank. Typing in another page, like wp-admin/plugins.php worked fine. gatewayy describes this issue at wordpress.org:

What I mean by this is that when your view domain.com/wp-admin nothing is viewable except for a blank page but if you view a specific page within /wp-admin such as /wp-admin/plugins.php the page displays properly. I have tried deactivating all plugins but the issue still occurs. Are there any suggestions for possible troubleshooting for a resolution?

Apparently this is because the dashboard page is now a widget page and some themes have incompatible widgets which can prevent it loading properly. If you’re having this problem, go to your /wp-admin/themes.php page and select the default. Apply it and all should be well again.

If you’re considering upgrading, it’s very smooth on the whole. I deleted one or two directories and then just copied the whole package over the top. There’s a handy list of compatible themes here.

I’m Going to Durham!

Published
by
Paul
on February 27, 2008
in Personal
. 1 Comment

It’s late so this post won’t be anywhere near eloquent but, put simply, I must’ve ticked some of the right boxes during the interview because this morning I got my acceptance letter from Durham university, much to my relief! It really is a lovely place, take a look at their video here: http://www.dur.ac.uk/tour/

What’s more, it’s fully catered so I won’t need to learn how to cook. Well, not just yet anyway. I’ll be leaving in October to go up there but my job ends in July so I ought really to plan a trip or two for those couple of months in between. Hmm…what to do…?