The Author – Bart Busschots
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Oct
31
A Big Day for the IEDR
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on October 31, 2007 | 1 Comment
Those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time may remember the battle I had with the IEDR to get my name as a .ie domain. I should probably explain at this point the the IEDR are the people who control the .ie top level domain (or TLD) and that they manage very differently to the .com TLD. They only give out domains in line with very strict policies and generally require a lot of documentation before approving a domain. Anyhow, I was very miffed with the IEDR for not serving anyone but business and government properly. Individuals could not register their name but were instead only entitled to two initials and a number. Needless to say I made it my mission to find a loop-hole and did. Then, when I had my domain, I dedicated one of my first posts on the domain to pointing out in great detail everything that was wrong with the IEDR (The Problems with the IE Domain Registry). Today, for the first time, regular people have the right to register .ie domains. That’s right, after many years the IEDR has finally seen sense. Prices are also starting to come down so credit where credit is due, I really think things are finally changing for the better in the IEDR. Well done lads!
Oct
29
Second Leopard Update – Spaces Feels Beta
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 29, 2007 | 5 Comments
One of the first new things in Leopard I’m really giving a run for it’s money is the new Spaces feature. It’s basically virtual desktops the Apple way. If it were not buggy it would be fantastic, even with the few bugs I’m currently experiencing it’s still the first virtual desktop program that I’m actually finding useful. No other virtual desktop system I’ve used places as much emphasis on the relative locations of your desktops. Believe it or not it’s this real feeling of working within a grid that makes Spaces work. This feeling of working in a grid comes from a number of interface elements. The most of obvious of these is the bird’s-eye view of all your spaces brought up by hitting F8. This metaphor is further emphasised by the icon that shows up on the screen when you shift Spaces and by the animation employed to make those switches. Your feel as if your view is sliding from one space into the other. In addition to these graphical cues there are also some interactions that further re-enforce the grid metaphor. Firstly, you can drag a window from one space to another by dragging it to an edge of the screen which borders another Space and hold it for a second. When you do this you move to that other Space and bring the window with you. Secondly, you can navigate around the Spaces use the ctrl+arrow key combinations. This much all works perfectly, however, many other aspects of Spaces are a lot less polished. The rest of this article is dedicated to detailing the bugs I’ve found so far.
[tags]OS X, Apple, Leopars, OS X 10.5, Spaces[/tags]
Oct
28
First Leopard Update – Application Compatibility
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 28, 2007 | 5 Comments
Since I chose to format my drive before installing Leopard I’ve spent much of today installing and testing software. The news is good, in fact, the news is very good, out of the twenty 3rd party apps I installed nineteen worked. The only thing that didn’t work was the Logitech drivers for my ergonomic keyboard and it turns out that doesn’t matter (more on that in another post). Everything else, including the drivers for my scanner, worked perfectly. Below is the full list of 3rd party apps that I’ve successfully installed and tested on OS X 10.5 Leopard.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard, Compatibility[/tags]
Oct
27
My Very First Thoughts on Leopard
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 27, 2007 | 1 Comment
My copy of OS X 10.5 Leopard arrived yesterday, so I spent the evening backing up, and then installing. I’m sure I’m going to be posting plenty more about the new cat over the coming weeks and months, but for now, I just want to give you my very first impressions. I have a number of Macs but I’ve only installed Leopard on one for now, that way I can be sure everything I need works before I install it on my Mac in work or the Mac I’m using for my PhD work. So, that means I’ve installed Leopard on my oldest and lowest-specked Mac, my fist generation G4 Mac Mini. This was one of the first Mac Minis to make it into the country so it’s not at all a new machine. It’s a G4 so it’s three processor architectures behind (64 bit Intel, 32 Bit Intel, and G5 PPC), it does however have 1GB of RAM because I was quite forward thinking when I bought it. By anyone’s standards this is an old machine, so, if Leopard runs well on it, it will run even better on modern machines.
[tags]OS X, Apple, Leopard[/tags]
Oct
26
Comet 17/P Holmes Observed Again
Filed Under Science & Astronomy on October 26, 2007 | 8 Comments
After yesterday’s surprise outburst comet 17/P Holmes continues to put on a great show. This object is highly dynamic and you can watch it move day-to-day with just the naked eye. Between yesterday and today the comet has moved noticeably closer to the star Alpha Persei and has also definitely brightened. Yesterday Holmes and the star Delta Persei looked to be the same brightness, today the comet is definitely brighter than the star. I’d estimate it’s brightness at about Magnitude 2.5.
I’ve been following the comet with my trusty 10x50mm binoculars and the changes are even more spectacular through them. Yesterday Holmes looked like a star, a point of light with no noticeable coma or tail. Today, it looks like a compact globular cluster with a bright core. Yesterday I didn’t really notice a colour buy today it’s clearly yellow. I’ve never seen an astronomical object change so much so quickly. I hope we get to watch this fascinating object evolve for a few more days to come, however, the weather forecast for us here in Ireland is not looking good :(.
I’ll leave you with a scan of my record of today’s observation of the comet:
[tags]Astronomy, Comet, Holmes[/tags]
Oct
25
Pipette – Easy Colour Grabbing On OS X
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 25, 2007 | 1 Comment
I heard about this app on a recent episode of the Nosilla Cast by my good friend Allison Sheridan and my immediate reaction was “this app shouldn’t need to exist”. I’ll admit it’s a strange reaction but bear with me. OS X comes with a built in utility, Digial Colour Meter (which resides in Applications->Utilities), which does literally everything Pipette does, and more! So, there really shouldn’t be a need for Pipette, and yet, there is. Why? Because Apple did an uncharacteristically bad job of making the the Digital Colour Meter intuitive, whereas Charcoal Design (who wrote Pipette) didn’t. Visually the interfaces have the same components, a windows showing the area around your mouse pointer zoomed in to aid precise selection, and a readout of the colour you are currently over. The difference is entirely in the interaction.
[tags]Pipette, Apple, OS X, Freeware, HTML Colour Codes[/tags]
Oct
25
Surprise Outburst of Comet Holmes Observed
Filed Under Science & Astronomy on | 6 Comments
It’s very rare to get to see a comet which is so bright that you can easily see it from the middle of a housing estate through light haze with a near full Moon with just your eyes. No telescope, no binoculars, nothing! But that’s what I’ve just done. The Periodic comet 17/P Holmes has just surprised the heck out of Astronomers by brighting from Magnitude 17 (you need a professional grade telescope to see things that faint) to Magnitude 3 (easily visible with the naked eye) literally over-night. Obviously something very spectacular just happened on the comet.
Thanks to an email with coordinates form Terry Mosley I knew Holmes could be found near delta Persei at around midnight. When I got outside conditions were very poor and not helped by the street lights all around me. As I mentioned there was a near full Moon high to the south and a think layer of haze across the whole sky being lit up by the Moon. Needless to say my expectations weren’t high. However, Holmes was so bright that it distorted the shape of Perseus to the extent that I had trouble finding the constellation! My brain just kept saying “no, that’s not Perseus, Perseus doesn’t have that nice little triangle of stars in it”. You guessed it, one of those three stars was not a star at all but the comet. To me Holmes looked to be about the same brightness as Delta Persei so that would put it at around the Magnitude 3. I’ve never seen a comet like this before. It looks just like a star, even in binoculars. No Coma, no tail, nothing, just a point of light. For all the world it looks like an extra star has appeared out of nowhere in Perseus. I’ve attached a scan of my record of the observation below.
If you’re interested in observing the comet yourself the guys in Astronomy Ireland have been kind enough to put a finder chart up on their website. You can find it here: www.astronomy.ie/holmes2.gif
[tags]Comet, 17/P Holmes[/tags]
Oct
24
OS X 10.5 Leopard Security Features Explained
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Security, System Administration on October 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment
How Leopard Will Improve Your Security – a great article explaining the security enhancements brought by Leopard in plain English.
Oct
22
Eircom And Security – They Still Don’t Get It
Filed Under Security, Computers & Tech on October 22, 2007 | 4 Comments
The letters which Eircom promised to send out to users to inform them of the security flaw I described previously have started arriving and one of the boards.ie users was good enough to post a scan on his website. In this post I’m just going to go through some of the choice bits of this letter and rip them apart. I really wish Eircom had made a competent reply so this wouldn’t be necessary, but sadly it really is. They still don’t get security and seem more interested in glossing over the problems rather than addressing them.
[tags]Eircom, Security, WEP, WPA, Wireless, WiFi[/tags]
Oct
21
Bleezer Test Post
Filed Under Computers & Tech on October 21, 2007 | 8 Comments
This is a test post from within Bleezer to give it a test run. First impressions are not good. It has messed up my categories because it doesn’t support hierarchical categories, or if it does, it’s buggy as hell with WordPress. The GUI feels typical of free software, it feels crude and un-polished. As a Mac user I’m not at all impressed.