The Author – Bart Busschots
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Apr
27
Windows Remote Desktop Client for OS X
Filed Under Computers & Tech on April 27, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I unfortunately need to run one Windows application at work (Remedy for managing user-support calls) so I need some form of access to Windows from my Mac. Dual boot is just not an option, I need remedy running in one Window and everything else I need to actually solve the users’ problems in other windows all at the same time. There is a very old Windows machine in my office that is just used for Remedy so in theory I could move over to that machine each time I need Remedy but that’s just annoying so I’ve been using VNC and it worked OK but I couldn’t copy and paste and the lag was a bit annoying. Anyhow, today a colleague was looking for something else on the MS site and found a Mac version of the Windows Remote Desktop Client and me the link. I’ve just installed it and I have to say I’m well impressed. The app is small, efficient, fast and very user-friendly to configure. I have no problem with lag anymore and can copy and paste to/from the windows machine. It even has a cute icon! Basically everything I expect from Apple Apps but it’s a MicroSoft App! Here’s the link: www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient
Apr
22
Developing My First Dashboard Widget – Unix Time Stamp Converter
Filed Under My Projects, Computers & Tech, Software Development on April 22, 2006 | 3 Comments
I recently did a post on Dashboard Widgets for techies and am working on another about Dashboard Widgets for developers. There was one important widget missing from my list of widgets for techies, one for converting Unix Time Stamps to human readable dates and vica-versa. The reason it was missing was because I couldn’t find one anywhere on the Apple site! I find this strange because I regularly need to deal with Unix Time Stamps in things like logfiles and raw data in Databases, hence I’d have expected others to need this too and hence for there to be a widget for it. Well, I decided to remedy this omission by writing my own Widget which I’ve now submitted to Apple for addition to their Widget Downloads Page. I’ve decided to release it as GPL so you can get it on the downloads page of my home page.
So, how easy was it to develop my first widget? Trivial! I went from deciding to write the widget to a fully working first implementation in about 2 hours including all reading and experimenting that I had to do to get started. IMO that’s not bad at all, in fact I can’t think of any other platform I’ve ever used where I was able to do something useful as quickly.
So, what’s involved in writing a Dashbaord Widget? TBH very little. If you are up to speed with client-side web technologies then you’ve pretty much got everything you need. Yes, there are some extensions to these technologies involved to allow you to interact with the OS and the command-line and also for 2D graphics with Quartz if you want to get fancy but they are very easy to get to grips with and there are some excellent guides on Apple’s Developer Site.
A Dashbaord Widget is basically a web page written in XHTML that is skinned with CSS and made interactive with JavaScript. There really is nothing more to it than that. If you want to give this a go yourself the links below are all you’ll need.
- Apple’s Dashboard Developers Page
- Apple’s Dashboard Programming Guide
- Apple’s help topic on getting your Widget to flip
As I said I had a fully functional Widget in two hours, took me a little longer to get it to do cool stuff like flipping round to show the credits on the reverse side and getting it skinned in a way I was happy with but all in all that Widget was no more than 5 hours work including all the fiddly graphics and layout stuff. A screenshot of the finished product can be seen below.
Apr
10
Finally got round to Watching HP 4 – What a Disappointment
Filed Under 42 (Life the Universe & Everything) on April 10, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I finally made the time to watch the fourth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire tonight. Have to say the film didn’t come anywhere near to it’s potential. JK Rowling provided an excellent book which Mike Newell turned into a mediocre film. There are those who say it’s fabulous and so forth, I have to wonder what commission they are on or whether they saw a different movie to me. There are also those that say it is a travesty and worse, I can’t say I agree with those people either because the film had some excellent moments and aspects that should not be ignored.
Before I go any further I’ll have to put my hand up and say that I am a fan boy and that as far as I’m concerned the best possible Potter film would be one that sticks 100% to JKR’s plot, regardless of whether that results in a 4 hour film. However, we don’t live in an ideal world so I know that is not really on. Film is a very different medium to print so the director and screen play writers have to make changes to mold the book into a good film. They also have to go further than that and make it into a popular film because WB have spent an absolute fortune making it and want to get their money’s worth. Again, an unfortunate feature of reality. In aid of making the film easier to sell to the masses I can forgive things like the dragon scene as necessary sacrifices to the god of commerce. However, what I cannot forgive is blatantly missing the point of some of the key characters. But before I get into what’s wrong I think I need to give the creators fair credit for what they did well.
The Right Sound
The first and most obvious success in my view was the music, it was phenomenal and really set the right tone. I bought the sound track months ago and thought it was perfect before even seeing the film and now that I have seen the film I’m even more certain it worked (see my comments on the soundtrack). Yes, it was a new composer and yes the style is different in parts but it works and there are enough common elements in it to make it fit with what has gone before too. Mr Doyle, I take my hat off to you!
I also have to say that although it deviated massively from the book the scene in the maze was very well done and the scene at the end when Harry returns with Cedric’s body is just perfect. Basically the nearer the end of the film the better the scenes are.
New Faces
There were also some new characters that I thought were very well done, Rita Skeeter topping the list. Miranda Richardson nailed the character perfectly. I was also impressed with Barty Crouch senior and Amos Diggory, we don’t see much of Diggory but what we see is really believable, you can really see himself and Arthur chatting about plugs over tea at the ministry! Having said that some of the new characters were a bit of a let down but none were terrible. Moody is a hard one to place, at times Brendan Gleeson hit the character perfectly yet at others he missed completely but over all he was certainly passable.
The Old Guard
The old reliables were also excellent as ever, Maggie Smith was perfect as ever when portraying Professor McGonagll, Alan Rickman was again excellent as Snape and Jason Isaacs again captured the evil Lucius Malfoy wonderfully. Robbie Coltrane also did a great Hagrid, in fact he did a much improved Hagrid compared to some of the earlier films, the first one in particular. I was also impressed with how much the trio have come on over the four films. They had some really rough spots in the first film but I didn’t notice any in this film at all. Having said that Hermione’s character is still being wrongly enhanced but that’s more down to the script than anything else. From the films you get the impression that Hermione is hip and popular which just doesn’t tally with the books at all. Mind you that’s far from new in this film, it was really bad in the second and third films but actually a bit better in this one.
There were also a few nice little touches thrown in for the die-hard fans but fewer that I’d have liked. The one that I was really surprised at was the subtle inclusion of the school song during the celebrations after Harry beat the dragon. I hadn’t expected that at all and it really impressed me.
And Then it all Goes so Wrong
So, what really lets the film down? The most obvious let down is the first few scenes which are horribly rushed and the dialog painfully wooden. It’s almost like watching 15 minute Hamlet at times, they are saying all the right lines but in such fast succession that the whole scene looks forced and wrong. The scene in the side room after the champions are picked is a perfect example, the dialog is almost straight out of the book yet the scene is almost cringe-worthy and totally unbelievable. The Quidich World Cup was also a complete disaster as was the scene with the dark mark. We didn’t see a single second of action at the world cup and they didn’t bother with any of the important plot since house elves were totally written out. You have to wonder why they bothered with the world cup at all! The simple fact is that about 20 extra minutes, a few seconds of world cup play and some house elves would have made all the difference in the world and turned this from a disappointing film into an OK film.
Apart from the half-hearted opening to the film and the rediculously rushed scences the really un-forgivable aspect of the film is the total mess made of two of the main characters, Professor Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. Both are supposed to be the greatest wizards of their time and one is an emotionally unstable babbling wanna-be-Irishman and the other is a ballerina. I’ve never liked Gambon’s Dumbledore because he just doesn’t fit with the Dumbledore we get to know and love from the books at all but in this film the director and the script writers just didn’t give him a chance at all. He looses his temper, he shouts, he even goes to pieces and ends up sitting on the floor of his office looking like an emotional wreck. That’s not Dumbledore! This one really gals me because Dumbledore is by far my favorite character so seeing him so terribly portrayed is so so disappointing. However, regardless of the script Gambon just doesn’t do a convincing Dumbledore, he speaks too fast and his body-language is all wrong. He is supposed to radiate an aura of power and Gambon just doesn’t portray that at all. I’ve always said Ian McKellen should have followed on from the near perfect Richard Harris but sadly I don’t get to cast the films!
Then we come to the Dark Lord. What a let down. The most evil wizard in the entire magical world, a wizard feared almost universally and responsible for an 11 year reign of terror the likes of which had never been seen before and he prances around as if he wants to be in the ballet! What ever Mike Newell was aiming for it’s safe to say he missed. The only thing that was even passable was his appearance, makeup were doing their job but I don’t think anyone else was. The body-language was terrible, the voice, a disaster. He didn’t come across as frightening at all. Simply put, he just wasn’t believable. The grave yard looked great and I thought the scene had potential but Voldemort ruined it.
Conclusions
So, bottom line, what would I give it out of 10? I’ll give it a pass, nothing more nothing less. Here in Ireland that’s 40% so 4 out of 10. Great potential, let down by poorly portrayed characters, badly rushed scenes and pointless penny-pinching. Worst HP film of the 4 we have seen so far, which is really disappointing considering it is following on the heels of the best.
Apr
7
Finally – a FOSS OS that anyone can use
Filed Under Computers & Tech on April 7, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I got shown a working demo of ReactOS running on an old Dell GX1 at work today and I have to say I was impressed. The idea of ReactOS is that it is a FOSS implementation of Win32 so the environment it provides to apps is indistinguishable from Win32. ATM ReactOS supports WinNT4.0 apps and WinXP apps but it will continue to develop as Win32 develops. To find out more have a look at www.reactos.org. What I found particularly interesting was the screenshots section showing MS Office, PhotoShop, PSP and even Unreal Tournament! And yes, it does run Solitaire!
What is really surprising is how small the ISO is, the one I saw installed was only 16MB! It also booted in literally a few seconds where even Windows98 takes painfully long to boot on the same hardware. Despite still being officially Alpha software it seems stable and quite nippy to me.
I also noticed some KDE stuff well merged into the Windows GUI. The most obvious example being multiple desktops, which can be neatly controlled from the Start menu.
Apart from just running Windows apps the other great things is that you can use Windows device drivers with it too so any hardware that works with Windows should also work with ReactOS. This is a big deal for gamers and may remove the need for people who enjoy playing games to rely on a Windows Partition. Instead you can have just ReactOS or, Linux & ReactOS but either way all your opperating systems are FOSS so you can run them for free without breaking the law, which is nice!
I’m actually going to give this a go on a crappy old machine I have lying around just to see how it behaves (when I get some free time) so hopefully I’ll be able to follow this up with a detailed review in about 6 months or so.
Apr
4
OS X Dashboard Widgets for Techies
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Software Development on April 4, 2006 | 2 Comments
OS X is becoming a popular choice among techies these days but many of us tend to ignore the Dashboard feature introduced in OS X 10.4 Tiger. I find Dashboard quite useful and have compiled the following list of widgets you might consider installing. They range from the very simple things like password generators to nmap frontends and system monitors.
Beginners/Lazy People
Although I can now easily calculate Unix file permissions in my head I’m sure there are many people who are new to Linux/Unix who may find it helpful to get a bit of help with them so below is the nicest of the Unix Permission widgets I found on my travels.
It’s called, sensibly enough, UNIX Permissions Calculator Widget and you can get it from http://vocaro.com/trevor/software/widgets/.
Another handy one that I do confess to using myself from time to time is the IP Subnet Calculator Widget which you can get from www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/ipsubnetcalculator.html.
Password Generators
I’ve tried out a LOADS of password generators over the last few months and some really suck! The first one I tried always gave the same sequence of ‘random’ passwords which sorta defeats the point some what! ATM I use the rather simply named Random Password widget (www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/randompassword.html).
System Monitors
There are more system monitor widgets than you can shake the proverbial stick at but after much experimenting and playing around I’ve settled on iStat which comes in two versions. There is iStat Nano which is small and compact and has multiple screens you can flip between as well as a nice, compact overview, and then there is iStat Pro which is far from small but wonderfully detailed. I generally use the iStat Nano but both are very good. The screenshot below is taken on my PowerMac and shows both nano and pro in action at the same time. You can get these widgets from:
- iStat Nano – www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatnano.html
- iStat Pro – www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html
Network Monitors
Something I like to keep an eye on is what network connections are going to and from my machine at any time. A lovely compact little widget for doing this is called Pakze which may sound like a strange name but if you speak Dutch you’ll realise it means ‘get em’ and the background is a rather grumpy looking doggie! You can get Pakze from www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/pakzewidget.html.
There are also lots of other network status widgets that tell you what you internal and external IP addresses are and how much bandwidth you’re using etc but since iStat has all that information anyhow I don’t see the point in cluttering your dashboard with extra widgets that tell you nothing new.
What can be useful is a widget called Sunemo (www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/sunemo.html) that uses nmap to show you all the machines that are active in your subnet. I only use this widget on my home network and I would warn others to do the same. Your network administrator will probably get grumpy at you if you try using this on a corporate or university network!
Finally, it can be useful when keeping an eye on who is accessing or attempting to access your servers to know where suspicious people are coming from, hence the GeoLocate widget can be very useful to techies. I’m not really sure how accurate it is but it tends to get the country right at least. You can download it here: www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/geolocate.html.
Final Word
Those are the techie related Dashboard Widgets I use. Of all the widgets I’ve downloaded and installed I’d say only about 25% are keepers if even that so these really are the cream of the crop that I’ve been collecting pretty much since Tiger came out. I also have other good widgets for helping web programmers so I might do a follow on article shortly on Dashboard Widgets for Web Monkeys.
Apr
1
Thunderbird 1.5 Released
Filed Under Computers & Tech on April 1, 2006 | Leave a Comment
I’ve just switched to Thunderbird 1.5 and I’m impressed. There is no real noticeable difference in the overall look of the app but there are some changes that really make it worth upgrading from 1.0. The most noticeable difference is that it now checks your spelling as you type rather than only doing it when you click send. This will save a lot of time and effort and gives Thunderbird the only thing that apple’s mail client had over it IMO. The other thing they have finally addressed is the interface for setting up multiple SMTP servers. Each account now has a simple dropdown menu for specifying what server to use which is a big improvement to the hoops you used to have to jump through in version 1.0.
Basically, if you haven’t upgraded yet, get cracking and if you are still using something ghastly like Outlook Express or Eurdora get switching now, you won’t regret it!
Apr
1
Tonight the Moon makes a very close pass to the most visible Star Cluster, the Pleiades (or Seven Sisters). I just got a brief glimpse of the pairing a few minute ago with my 10x50mm binoculars and the view was stunning. Both easily fitted in to the same field of view and there was a lovely display of Earth Shine to top off the view! I’d estimate that the Moon was between two and three Moon diameters from the cluster.