Windows 7 RC
Thursday, May 14, 2009 ~ No comments yet
Having installed the Release Candidate of Windows 7 a couple of days ago, I have to say I’m fairly impressed and it may even sway me to keep a Windows box in the future despite plans to move to Apple hardware/software completely. Let me tell you why.
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The weekend that wasn’t
Sunday, May 10, 2009 ~ No comments yet
Friday night, drinks are flowing, laughter is heard and, unfortunately so are the voices of … well I won’t names names. Suffice to say there is a very good reason I dislike karoake and Friday night only served to provide me with more ammunition for my argument.
If she talks very nicely to me I might not even put said evidence up on YouTube.
We were in a small restaurant in Dumbarton called Scruples. It’s a BYOB affair, and whilst pretty basic it’s good a well deserved reputation for good food and Firday night was no different. The food was tasty.
Unfortunately the food disagreed with me and I’ve been a bit bleuch all weekend. I had planned to go into work today but never made it and whilst I did get some work done at home it’s not quite the same when you are distracted by, say, a small black cat that is determined to get up onto the windowsill and, yes, he will break the printer drawer and bend the blinds should they dare get in his road!
Wee sod.
So, as I sit here I can’t help think that my weekend has been stolen. I did manage to go out and book an induction at the gym though so at least it wasn’t a complete failure.
And to make sure I have something to show for my weekend, other than an arse shaped dent in the sofa, I’m off to install the Windows 7 Release Candidate. Wish me luck!
Twitter apps
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 ~ 3 comments so far
So Twitter is all the rage. It’s NOW! It’s happening, if you ain’t on it, you ain’t got it! It’s hip to be square!!
Ahhh, except it’s not.
I’ve tried a few Twitter apps over the past few months, some have worked well for me, others not, but the latest one I tried just seems to wedge itself into my way of working without a problem, it’s a delicious slice of Twitter fun, whilst not forgetting all the topping features that every good Twitter app should have.
The idea sounds daft, but it really works well. It’s still in BETA so there are some rough edges, but no square ones!! The basic premise is that (and I think this is just the first of many themes) the app will spin up and show you categorised Twitters from the people you follow, all delivered via pizza (now THAT’S knowing your audience, what geek doesn’t like pizza!):
The smaller slices of sausage are pepperoni, where the twitterers you follow show up. The big sausage slices are “The Big Salami”, where you keep your favourite tweeters or your celebrities! Tweet pepperonis show up in clusters when they’re from the same person or there’s a conversation between twitterers.
It’s available for OSX and Windows, and it’s really worth a try. Go on try a slice of Tweezza!
Groups app for iPhone
Saturday, February 28, 2009 ~ 1 comment so far
I’ve had issues managing my contacts for many years now and, finally, I have a solution. The Address Book software provided as part of OSX is somewhat basic and, oddly, a little clunky to use and my recent debacle with Google Sync only heightened my frustration. Surely things should be better than this?
Enter Groups for the iPhone, by Guided Ways.
From their website, with Groups you can:
- Create, rename, delete and navigate contact groups - all in a single view!
- Drag & Drop contacts into groups. Tap and hold on a Contact to start dragging.
- Send Mass Email to any Group. Tap and hold on a Group name to see available options.
- Dial, SMS, Email and visit URL/Map Locations of individual contacts by tapping on their name for quick dialing (i.e. use it as a mini-dialer)
- Use 5 built-in ready to use and helpful ‘Smart Groups’ to help categorize and manage your contacts the way you wish. These automatically filter on contacts that 1) aren’t part of any group, 2) have No Name set, 3) have No Email, 4) have No Phone or 5) have No Image.
- Trash (and preserve) contacts by dragging them to the ‘Trash’ Group. This would delete the contact permanently from the iPhone/iPod touch and then from your Computer when Synced or Pushed but will allow you to drag these back to normal groups, and thus restore them at a later point, unless you empty the Trash.
Your address book, too, deserves respect.
Similarly to the App Store application that runs on the iPhone, which I prefer using to iTunes when browsing the App Store, Groups makes managing contacts much easier and adds a rich layer of functionality as well, all hidden behind a very smart and slick interface.
Of all the applications I’ve downloaded it’s probably the one that makes the best use of the touch interface, dragging and dropping contacts into group tabs, press and hold on a contact for options, press and hold on a group for options, drag up and down to scroll, it’s got it all but none of it seems superfluous.
Not bad for £1.19!
Groups is the application that Apple could’ve developed, that’s for sure, and for me it indicates another good reason why the App Store (despite the number of dross applications in there) is such a good idea. The Apple iPhone platform is now being extended by 3rd party developers in exciting ways and, hopefully
iPhone Contacts
Friday, February 27, 2009 ~ No comments yet
These days, with so many different ways to keep track of people, managing your list of contacts can be a bit of a chore. Doubly so if, like me, you’ve tried various ways of synchronising your contact list between your phone and a PIM (Personal Information Manager), or even just between any mobile device and any of the myriad of online ‘contact manager’ web-based applications.
When I first switched from a standard mobile phone to a ‘smartphone‘ (about 7 years ago), one of the advantages for someone with as poor a memory as mine, was the fact that I no longer had to remember all the details for someone. I could store them in one single contact and include useful notes to make sure I didn’t get their kids names wrong, not that I’ve EVER done that. Seriously, I haven’t. I may have gotten the sex of their kids wrong but that’s completely different…
A couple of years back I switched back to a standard mobile phone, ditching internet access and other frivolous items, presuming that, by then, management of contact details would be much easier. Ohh how wrong I was. Trying to synchronise Outlook Contacts with my Samsung mobile phone was a world of painful duplicate and triplicate entries, lost information and generally left my contacts FUBAR‘d.
As I neared the end of my contract I looked, again, towards smartphones and as luck would have it, the 2nd generation iPhone was due out mere weeks after my contract finished. I’d already bought a MacBook, was loving it and thought it would solve my problems.
And it did! After a lot of tidying up I managed to get my Address Book (on my MacBook) nicely organised and synchronised with my iPhone. Finally. All sorted.
Then (to cut a long story short) along came Google’s latest ‘Sync’ offering which would let me synchronise my calendars between work and my personal Google calendar (useful when planning physio and dentist appointments!). I was thrilled as this was the last of my PIM issues finally being sorted.
So my calendar is now synchronised and my contacts… yeah they are back to being FUBAR’d as, for some reaason, you can’t get around the first time SYNC ALL option. Google presume that you use their contact management functionality, offered as part of Google Mail. Except I don’t, cos it sucks.
So for the past couple of nights I’ve been deleting duplicate entries, renaming email only entries as Google Mail creates a ‘contact’ everytime you send to a new email address, meaning I have (after a purge) 38 ‘email only’ contacts in my Address Book.
This has pissed me off no end. I like order, I like things to be neat and ‘just so’ and the one area of my personal information, information that *I* should be able to control and manage how *I* want for fecksake, has been nothing but a source of irritation.
Until last night that is, when I downloaded a new app for my iPhone which has helped soothe and calm me and get my contacts sorted out, for once and for all.
And, tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about it.
Muscle memory
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 ~ No comments yet
As I slowly transition my home computing setup towards Mac OSX, the main thing that is slowing me down is my lack of knowledge around the keyboard shortcuts.
Having used Windows for so long now, many of the keyboard shortcuts I use are now deeply ingrained and I my fingers find the correct combination effortlessly. Whether I’m moving a window (Alt+Space, DOWN cursor key, then cursors keys to move), minimising all windows to get back to that file I’ve left on the Desktop (Windows button + D), then restoring them all again (Windows button + D again), or just the basics of CTRL+V, CTRL+Z and so on (Cut and Undo, if you were wondering) the bulk of my time on a Windows computer is spent without touching the mouse.
However, on OSX I’m still heavily dependant on the mouse and that is beginning to become an issue as it’s stalling my productivity. I’ve found plenty of guides to help me learn them but as my day is spent on a Windows machine, I’m finding the nightly transition to OSX still causes me some grief.
My brain isn’t helping at all, as it currently equates “laptop” with “OSX”. Which was fine up until last week where I got a laptop at work, and I know finding myself in a quandary as the Command key on my MacBook (used for cutting and pasting in OSX) is where the ALT key is on my Windows laptop. That’s been fun, with (seemingly) random menus appearing when I’m trying to cut and paste text!
I’m persevering though as it took me many years to get to the level of efficiency I have with a Windows machine, so I know it will take time and the fact that using the Mac is sooooo much nicer than Windows makes it all worthwhile.
Although I’ve still to try Windows 7, so maybe that will change too…
MP3 Tags
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far
MP3 Tags
“You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby” … Cue several of my younger readers to ask “what’s a record?”
When I first started ripping CDs to MP3 I was very careful when tagging the information. I used Tag & Rename to make sure they all (ALL) had complete fields. I didn’t bother, back then, with album art as my MP3 player didn’t support it. A few years on Apple release iTunes for Windows and, after a few false starts, I decide to forego my compulsion and let iTunes do what it does best. Take care of my MP3s.
Except it didn’t. Whilst I’m happy that iTunes manages where the files live (within a directory chosen by me) it isn’t really up to the re-tagging of MP3s.
And yes, for those of a nervous disposition, I am talking about illegally downloaded MP3s, and yes, if I like an album I will buy it at a later date. In fact this post is entirely due to the fact that I’m going through my library deleting albums I don’t want and checking what I have purchased.
Where was I? Oh yes.
The problem is one of album art. My older MP3s (mainly those ripped from CD) vary when it comes to the quality of the MP3 tagging. Some have embedded album art, some don’t. Some have track numbering, some don’t. I’m guessing that my switch over iTunes, many years ago now, is to blame but that doesn’t help me at the moment.
Whilst it’s not a big hassle to add album art, one thing that does seem to have gotten out of kilter is the fact that not only does an MP3 tag have an Artist field, it also has an Album Artist field. It seems that, for one or two tracks across most albums, this field is filled in whereas, for the rest of the tracks, it’s blank. So, when playing an album in iTunes (I’m still very album-centric) the track appear out of order as iTunes thinks they are DIFFERENT ALBUMS.
This is a royal pain in the ass and so I’ve been trying to fix it. I have a large library of music so I thought it would be a good idea to find some way of automating this, as much as possible. I’ve tried MediaMonkey on the suggestion of Lifehacker but that only does one album at a time and, I think, has actually introduced the same issue.
So it looks like I’ll be going through all of my music by hand, tagging it properly (although maybe therein lies the real problem, there is no standard to adhere to, just an open set of fields that can be (and are) abused). That’s over 20,000 MP3 individual files.
I’m seriously thinking of hiring a student to do this in the summer.