The Author – Bart Busschots
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May
31
Spaces Finally Achieves its Potential
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 31, 2008 | 1 Comment
This week’s 10.5.3 OS X Leopard update has finally injected some much-needed common-sense into Spaces. Spaces is one of the new features in Leopard and had amazing potential from the start, however, it had one massive flaw. Spaces is basically a re-implementation of a very very old idea, virtual desktops. The idea is simple, you have a different work-space for each of your separate tasks and switch between them as you move from task to task. This idea’s been around in the Unix and Linux world for decades. Apple just implemented it in a more user-friendly and sensible way. With the older implementations you had to do the switching yourself, in Leopard the idea is that the vast majority if your switches will be automatic so you don’t have to think about it. The other innovate Apple added is massive concerted effort to evoke the idea of a virtual grid of desktops which you move around in. Everything about the implementation re-inforces this metaphor and it works very well.
[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard, Spaces, virtual desktops, 10.5.3[/tags]
May
31
This week’s Leopard update from Apple sparked a thought in my head that’s been brewing for a while now. Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie seem to have been on to something when they sang Every OS Sucks a few years back (lyrics – video).
[tags]Leopard, OS X, Mac, Apple, Vista, Microsoft, Linux, Three Dead Trolls and a Baggie[/tags]
May
29
Irish Broadband – First Impressions
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 29, 2008 | 4 Comments
I’ve been holding off on this post for a while just to be sure I didn’t speak too soon. Simply put, I am delighted with IBB. They deliver what they promise. Simple as that. My traffic graphs are almost perfectly flat when downloading large files, and right on the money in terms of speed. This service bears all the hall-marks of a happy and un-stressed TCP/IP network. So far I have no complaints at all. The modem supplied works perfectly with my existing router, and I have no idea what support is like because I haven’t needed them.
Long may this continue!
[tags]Irish Broadband, IBB, broadband, internet, Ireland[/tags]
May
25
Photo of the Week 14 – The Moon Over the Gunne Chapel
Filed Under Photography on May 25, 2008 | 3 Comments
I took this shot back in December last year as the sun was setting after work. This shot was taken as a very special time of the day, when you can expose both the landscape and the Moon correctly in a single exposure.
The shot shows the Moon over the Gunne Chapel (AKA the College Chapel) on the campus of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Ireland. This campus is also shared with NUI Maynooth.
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/200 sec
- Focal Length: 45mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 200
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: 0.0
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Moon, church, spire[/tags]
May
23
Perhaps I was a Bit Hard on Scott
Filed Under Photography on May 23, 2008 | 2 Comments
When I wrote my review of Photography podcasts I was not entirely complimentary about a certain Scott Bourne. He still annoys me every time he brags about his expensive this or his expensive that but he does write some very good posts on the TWIP blog and indeed contributes very well to the TWIP show – despite the occasional slip into bragging. On-balance I think I’ve been converted to a Scott Bourne fan … mostly.
Anyhow, it was reading the third part of Scott’s three-part article on choosing a camera that finally prompted me write this post. Have a read for yourself here.
[tags]TWIP, Scott Bourne[/tags]
May
21
The Hidden Danger of Fundamentalism
Filed Under Polemics & Politics on May 21, 2008 | 2 Comments
This evening I watched the episode of Channel 4’s Dispatches program entitled “In God’s Name”. It scared the hell out of me. When you see kids being brain-washed right in front of your eyes you worry for the future of our society. Surely this kind of brain-washing is in direct violation of those children’s human right to freedom of thought and belief? The intolerance and the hate being spread by Christian Fundamentalists in the name of a supposedly loving God terrifies me. Because they hide their message of hate behind a veil of religiosity they get away with far more than any other hate mongerers can. Hate in the name of love gets treated very differently to plain naked hate. Why should it be OK for a Christian organisation to promote racism? The actual views are no different to white supremacists or indeed neo-Nazis, it’s just the justification that’s different. Christians protesting against Mosques is tolerated, but just imagine the out-cry if Muslims started to protest the building of Churches! It’s OK to harass gay people at their events, but just imagine the out-cry if gays were to start protesting at Christian Churches handing out hate-mail and disrupting services! Because these people hate in the name of God they get away with more than any other hate mongers can.
[tags]fundamentalism, hate, racism, homophobia, God[/tags]
The reality is that those who have a strong faith in a particular god or gods will not be swayed from that belief. They will literally die to protect their faith. Whether we like it or not that is a fact borne out time and again throughout History. That’s why freedom of belief was included in the UN Charter of Human Rights. This level of faith is the same in all religions. This gives fundamentalists a stark choice, they can persue an agenda of tolerance, or of conflict with the ever looming threat of war. There is no other way.
You cannot force any one set of beliefs on an entire nation let along an entire world. If you try then you will be met with resistance every bit as strong as your oppression by people who believe they are right every bit as much as you do. If you do not respect the rights of others to hold their own beliefs then you are on the side of never-ending conflict and war. The only way to get a peaceful society is to have everyone agree to respect everyone’s human rights. You can’t have a peaceful and free society if any religion tries to force it’s beliefs on an everyone. That’s what fundamentalists are doing and that’s why they scare me so much.
Every time you see members of any faith attempting to force their views on an entire nation, remember that’s the road to oppression, conflict and war.
May
19
Photo of the Week 13 – A Horse Chestnut Blossom
Filed Under Photography on May 19, 2008 | 1 Comment
This week’s photo of the week is a little special in that it co-incides with my camera’s first birthday. Well, rather with the first anniversary of the day it arrived.
Anyhow, last week’s photo of the week served as an example of how some of your best shots come from pure chance. You see an opportunity and you shoot, no planning, no preparation just a spur of the moment capture. This week’s photo of the week is pretty much the complete opposite. This is the culmination of an extended effort to capture the beauty of the flower spikes of the Horse Chestnut tree.
These flowers proved hard to capture well because of their subtle detail and dazzling white colour. They are mostly white but the centre of each flower is either pink or yellow and you get both colours within the one flowering stalk. There is also a veritable sea of stamens sticking out at all angles which must be captured too.
I tried quite a few different approaches until I finally got this shot last Thursday. It captures all the details of the flowers as well as the wonderfully majestic leaves. You should look at the larger version to really see the detail in the flowers.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again!
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/1250 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: F8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -0.67
[tags]Photography, Maynooth, Ireland, Horse Chestnut, tree, flower[/tags]
May
19
Making sorttable Work With AJAX
Filed Under Software Development, Computers & Tech on | 34 Comments
I’ve blogged about how great sorttable is before. I use it a lot in work and people love it. However, because of the way sort-table works normally it won’t work with tables that are not in the document when the onload event for the document triggers. What does that mean in real terms? It means that if you use AJAX to render a table it won’t be sortable even if you include the sorttable.js file and set the class of the table to sortable. A quick scan of the source code showed me the answer, you have to manually call the function sorttable.makesortable() passing it the table you just got back from AJAX. The simplest way to do this is to give your table an ID and then use:
sorttable.makesortable(document.getElementById('the_table_id'));
May
17
OS X Internet Sharing – Simple & Effective but not Perfect
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on May 17, 2008 | 1 Comment
I’m in the process of changing ISPs at the moment and have ended up without any broadband for a while. So, at the momet the only internet we now have in the house is my Three 3G dongle. It would be very mean of me not to share its rather slow and poor connection with the rest of the house so I decided to try out OS X’s built-in internet sharing feature for the first time. I have to say I’m impressed. You just choose which connection you want to share via which network connection and away you go. I shared mine over WiFi so I had a little more setup to do but not much. I just had to enter an SSID and a WEP Password.
Although it works well it’s not perfect. For a start only supporting WEP for the encryption is a poor show, you may as well offer no encryption! Even the WEP does not work reliably. From time to time other Macs can’t connect because of “incompatible security settings” and you have to re-start the sharing service. I also had a rather odd issue where I couldn’t share because my AirPort was automatically associating with my wireless base-station and there’s no way I could find of disconnecting so I could enable the sharing. I fixed the problem by turning off my wireless access point since it wasn’t connected to anything useful anyway.
I have a feeling sharing over ethernet would probably be a lot simpler.
[tags]OS X, OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple, Mac, Internet Sharing[/tags]
May
14
The Windows Dilemma
Filed Under Computers & Tech on May 14, 2008 | 4 Comments
A phone call I got from my Grandfather this evening set me thinking about OS choices for non-experts and Windows in particular. I’d been dreading and expecting this call ever since he got Broadband last year. Although my Grandfather was the first person in our family to buy a PC the internet is new to him. For a man of his generation he is a positive technophile. His first computer was an 80286 from Amstrad and he’s never been without one since. He’s always bought computer magazines and for a long time he was always the person in our family with the most up-to-date machine (I’ve taken over that position in recent years). When my parents (and hence me) were using a 386 he had a 486. He was also the first in our family to use Windows 95, and the first to get a Pentium processor. He was also the first, and hence only, member of our family to go Windows ME, so glad he took that bullet for the rest of us 🙂
Anyway, I think you get the point, when it comes to computers my Grandfather is no ordinary Grandfather, however, when it comes to the internet he is. Broadband only became available to him last year so he’s only had it since then. He’s in love with Skype, adores internet banking, and is getting to grips with email and googling. So what call did I get today? The call to say he’d been infected with malware, something calling itself WinFixer which is demanding money to fix what ever it’s broken.
[tags]Windows, OS X, Linux, Internet, Viruses, Spyware, Malware.[/tags]