The Author – Bart Busschots
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Apr
6
RDP on OS X Revisited
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 3 Comments
In work I have a G5 PowerMac but I need to run one Windows application (our call tracking system). Since it’s not possible to run Windows on a G5 using Parallels or VMWare I use an RDP client to connect to a Windows machine I have in the office for testing purposes. Up till this week I’ve done this using Microsoft’s own RDP Client for the Mac. The first version of this client was very basic but functional. Last year Microsoft released two beta versions of the up-coming 2.0 release and I’ve been using those since they came out. These betas were an improvement on the 1.0 version but they are far from perfect and crash just about every time I close a connection. If it has to crash that’s probably the best time but still annoying However, this Week the annoyance factor for the MS client took an upward turn.
[tags]Microsoft, Remote Desktop Protocol, RDP, OS X, Apple, Mac, CoRD, SourceForge[/tags]
Apr
4
A Picture Says a Thousand Words
Filed Under Polemics & Politics, Photography | 1 Comment
John Gruber linked to the image below on Twitter today (it’s from Der Spiegel). This one picture sums up the effect of US foreign policy under the Bush administration better than even the best polemic. I’ll stop talking and just leave you with the picture
Apr
3
NeoOffice has been around for ages and I keep expecting and wanting it to get better to the point where I don’t feel an urge to buy iWork or, heavens forbid, MS Office. I installed it on my work machine yesterday and I’m sorry to report they’re a LONG way off yet. Firstly, it does not play nice with Spaces so it’s simply not Leopard ready. Poor show at this stage of the game. Secondly, the spell checker is broken, AGAIN. I had problems with this during the very early days of NeoOffice and then they got it fixed but now it’s bust again. What good is a word-processor that can’t spell-check? It’s possible that the spell checking problem is showing up because my computer is configured to use British English rather than American English but that’s not a valid excuse.
NeoOffice is still sluggish, un-polished and buggy. I’m sorry to have to report that but it’s the truth. The sooner the native OS X port of OpenOffice comes out the better.
[tags]OS X, Leopard, OS X 10.5, OpenOffice, NeoOffice[/tags]
Apr
2
At long last after years of building pressure Bertie Ahern is to step down as the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) next month. I think it’s fair to say that he was hoisted up by his own petard to some extent. It was Bertie who set up the Tribunals and it was Bertie who told them to follow the money. I doubt he expected those instructions to lead to his own accounts and I doubt he wanted the public to get an insight into the way he operated them. It’s a fantastical tale involving literally bags of cash and multi-thousand-pound whip-rounds by friends who who just happen to be major business figures. He also conveniently didn’t have a bank account for many years, even while he was minister for finance, and when he did have bank accounts he didn’t seem to know much about what was happening in them. He’s been shown not to have been telling the truth by his secretary and it really was high time he stepped down. He should have done this ages ago. I expect the highest standards of ethics from my political leaders, and Bertie’s didn’t meet the mark. For him to stay on so long despite what the tribunals have been uncovering was damaging to Irish politics and sent out the complete wrong message. Personally I don’t care whether he actually committed any crimes, his carry-on fell far below what I expect from a minister. I won’t be shedding a tear for Bertie.
[tags]Politics, Ireland, Bertie Ahern[/tags]
Mar
27
Why Jing Is Absolutely Not For Me
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 5 Comments
Before I explain what it is about Jing that makes me grumpy I’ll start by explaining what Jing is. The product was entirely designed around the idea of making it easy to show someone how to do something on a computer. Rather than trying to laboriously describe what to do step-by-step you simply fire up Jing and record yourself doing the task. It’s the standard a-picture-says-a-thousand-words idea. A very sound idea indeed. Jing also goes one step further and provides one-click web-publishing for your little screen-casts. So, it’s certainly safe to say that Jing is built around a very sound concept. My problems are with the implementation.
Mar
24
If You Want Something Done Right ….
Filed Under Photography | 2 Comments
You may have noticed that at long last there’s a picture of me on my blog. I always prefer blogs where the author is not anonymous and I think having your picture there on every page is about as un-anonymous as you can get. The reason my picture wasn’t added sooner is that I simply didn’t have a picture of myself that I didn’t hate. Yesterday I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and keep taking pictures of myself till I got one I didn’t hate. I took a fair few goes (about 40 shots as it happens), some serious cropping, and the removal of all colour, but in the end I finally got a shot I don’t hate. In fact, I actually kinda like it.
Mar
23
Photo of the Week 5 – Nightfall at Taghadoe
Filed Under Photography | 1 Comment
This photo was taken on the evening of the 26th of July 2007 at Taghadoe Round Tower just outside Maynooth. One of the things I really love about living in Ireland is that there is history all around you if you just go out and look. What disappoints me a little is how few people who live in Maynooth realise that this little treasure is hidden just a mile or so from the edge of the village on one of the smaller back-roads.
Click to View Full-Size (1.2MB)
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: 1/10 Sec
- Focal Length: 22mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 1600
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -2.0
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, Sunset, Taghadoe, Round Tower, History[/tags]
Mar
21
Tips for Shooting the Moon
Filed Under Science & Astronomy, Photography | 1 Comment
It can be very nice to include the Moon in your shots of buildings or landscapes but it’s not easy. The reality is that the Moon is very small in the sky and that it’s hard to pick up detail on the Moon while also properly exposing your subject. That’s why so many people cheat and get the Moon into their shots using PhotoShop. They stick on a massive zoom lens, shoot the Moon, then stick on a normal lens to shoot their subject and finally combine the two shots into one. If that’s the way you want to do things that’s your call, personally I look at it as cheating and would prefer to do it the hard way and actually capture the Moon and my subject in a single shot.
[tags]photography, DSLR, the Moon[/tags]
Mar
21
To The Death of Catholic Ireland
Filed Under Polemics & Politics | 8 Comments
The title of this article is a toast I make each year on Good Friday while enjoying an alcoholic beverage with some form of meat dish. Before continuing I think I need to give my non-Irish readers some background. In theory Ireland is a secular state. In reality it wasn’t for much of the last century when it was in fact a Catholic state in which the church wielded significant power and influence. Much of the church’s influence is gone but there are still a few glaring reminders of a more theocratic past. The law banning the sale of alcohol on Good Friday is one such out-of-place reminder. My own private little protest against this probably unconstitutional law is to toast to the death of Catholic Ireland each Good Friday.
Mar
18
I’m no expert on HDR but since I spent most of my weekend playing with it now seems like a good time to write about it, while it’s all nice and fresh in my mind and all that. One of the first things I noticed when I started shooting DSLR is that the dynamic range of the camera was a lot narrower than the dynamic range of my eyes. I didn’t know it was called dynamic range back then but that’s not really the point. When a scene has a big range in brightness between the brightest parts and the darkest parts then it’s said to have a high dynamic range. Our eyes are quite good in those situations, DSLRs on the other hand are terrible at capturing them. On a sunny evening when the sun is low in the sky casting shadows all over the place you can still see just fine but a DSLR gets into all sorts of trouble.
[tags]HDR, Nikon, Bracketeer, iPhoto[/tags]