November 30, 2006
That whole shutdown debate
There's been a lot of noise about the right and wrong way to provide shut down / sleep options on computers since Joel wrote his "Choices = Headaches" piece a few weeks back. In his latest post on the subject, "Shutdown on OSX", he says there's no need for a software command for sleep, linking to Arno Gourdol who says there should be no Restart, Shut Down and Sleep in the Apple menu.
Now, I'm a great fan of simplicity, and yes, I think having a simply mechanical, physical interaction of closing the laptop's lid is perfectly fine in most scenarios. But we should be aware of the dangers of oversimplifying: I have a very straightforward use-case for why I need Sleep in the Apple menu, one that hits me every day.
In the office, I have an external LCD monitor and keyboard. When I arrive each morning, I plug in the monitor and the external keyboard, hit a key on the external keyboard, and my Mac wakes up, without opening the lid.
At the end of the day, I select "Sleep" from the menu, then unplug the monitor and the keyboard, and then drop the laptop into my bag. So I've used it all day without that simple mechanical, physical interaction.
I suppose the next argument is "unplugging the monitor/keyboard is the mechanical interaction that should trigger sleep", but then you get in to all sorts of edge cases - what happens if I unplugged the monitor to plug in the projector? What happens if I have a wireless keyboard and the connection was momentarily lost? What if ...
As you can see, it quickly goes from a simple use-case to a complex one, and sometimes the right thing to do is just put that choice right back up on the menu. So thank you, Apple, for that little bit of complexity that makes my daily life a little easier.
November 29, 2006
Using an HP 3300C scanner with a Mac
I keep forgetting the magical mojo I need to make scanning with an HP 3300C work on my Macbook Pro, so herein are the notes for future posterity.
From TWAIN SANE Interface for MacOSX, download then install:
- libusb
- sane-backends
- TWAIN-SANE-Interface
- SANE-Preference-Pane
Then, fire up GIMP, and in the menus go:
- File -> Acquire -> TWAIN -> SANE
Bingo!
November 28, 2006
What did the Romans ever do for us?
With tongue firmly in cheek, I point my Italian colleagues at this: It's payback time, Rome. Yes, Gab, Mau, Gianugo, Simone et al - I'm looking at you:
The invaders introduced nude bathing, gladiatorial combat, wild orgies (and we wonder how our youth became so depraved!)
Have they no mercy? Since I am indeed sustained by pizza, I think reparations should begin immediately, in the form of bottles of wine, if you don't mind. Actually, sounds like it would be a good idea for them to invade again ;-)
The little things
So I tried to get a copy of some slides off a colleague, but it turns out they used Keynote '06 to create them, and I only have Keynote '04. It turns out that Keynote '06 has no "Save as Keynote '04" option. Bad Apple. Even Microsoft in all of their duplicitous lock-in practices have worked harder at backwards compatibility.
So I buy a copy of Keynote '06, because I'm a sucker and because despite the lock-in and forced upgrades, Keynote is still the best presentation software out there.
So I go to fire it up, and I discover that it's in a folder called iWork '06. Fine, but hang on, I also have a folder called iWork. What's that about? Ah, I see - it's my copy of iWork '04. Ok, I'm confused. Didn't I just upgrade? What's this old software doing? Ah, taking up 600mb of disk space. Right, I'll delete that, then.
So I fire up Keynote '06, and on first run it asks me for my license number. It's a good job I fired it up at the office this week, and not next week when I'm 3000 miles away. Why not ask for the license number while I'm installing, at which time I'd have all the paperwork with me?
So I fire up Keynote, ready to get on with some work, and it tells me that there's an update available, and would I like to go to Software Update? Sure, I think, as I click on "Take me to Software Update". First releases of new versions of Apple software are well-known these days for being a little, uh, quirky, so having the latest and greatest makes sense. Software Update loads, and does it's thing, downloading version 3.0.2. It then tells me this:
Please quit Keynote before beginning this update. Right. But hang on, Keynote sent me here, so why didn't it quit after starting Software Update?
It's amazing how the litany of tiny little details soon builds up into an overwhelming dislike of a brand. Apple, if you're going to continue making my life progressively more difficult, I may as well use OpenOffice.org for my presentations (I already use it for spreadsheets and word processing). End rant.
November 22, 2006
National Distress
As they say, the best-laid plans of mice and men... after a wonderful event in Milan, I had something of a nightmare of a journey home. It made a pleasant change for everything to go smoothly with my Easyjet flight (something like 75% hit rate with delays so far), and we actually got in to Gatwick 15 minutes ahead of schedule.
From Gatwick my plan was simple - catch up on email and business at the airport, then hop on a National Express coach back to Norwich, sleep through the journey, and arrive in time for an early start at the office. Unfortunately, National Express had other plans. With no warning and no reason, they cancelled the coach service from Gatwick. I found myself, along with 16 other passengers, stood outside the airport at 2 in the morning with no means of transportation.
I called National Express, and their response was "do you have a ticket?". The answer to that was simple - no, I didn't, since National Express clearly advertise that you can turn up at the station and pay for your journey. Many of the other people waiting had tickets for an earlier coach, but their flight had been delayed so they'd missed it. Three other passengers were fortunate enough to have a ticket for that specific service, and found a taxi waiting to ferry them to Heathrow. Unfortunately they were beaten to the taxi by two other frustrated National Express passengers determined to get to their destination.
After explaining the situation, National Express stuck with "well, sorry, but that coach was cancelled". I asked them why there were no signs up warning passengers in advance at the coach stop, and they couldn't give an answer. I asked them why there was no warning on their website when I checked times and prices, and they weren't able to give an answer. I asked them why there was no warning at the National Express service desk in the airport, and they weren't able to give an answer.
Feeling increasingly frustrated, I asked them what they expected the 16 stranded passengers to do. National Express basically said "we reserve the right not to run a service, you'll just have to take the next coach". They couldn't offer any assurance that the next coach would actually show up.
So it seems that there's no point in assuming you can catch a National Express coach at any advertised time with them, which as far as I can tell renders the whole point of their service, well, pointless. National Express? Try National Distress instead, or maybe National Disgrace.
The main reason I opted for National Express was because they (in theory) run a service when the trains aren't running overnight. In the end, I waited until the first train out of Gatwick at 4.30am, and after an exciting time with closed tube stations, and catching the first tube train on two lines and the first train out of London, I stumbled into my house around 9am this morning, some twelve hours after I took off from Milan.
An exciting journey. I think next time, I fly from Norwich or not at all.
OSBA
I'm back from the inaugural Open Source Business Academy event, and from my point of view it seemed to be a huge success. There was a great turnout, and the talks were all very well-received. Ugo's OSBA photos are online, and I'm sure more will be added shortly.
I enjoyed hearing Mark Brewer, Simon Phipps and John Powell give their take on Open Source in business. Unfortunately I struggled with my Italian comprehension during Angelo Solari's talk (it was an Italian event, so it's entirely my problem!), though from what I understood from his slides it looks like Telecom Italia are really seeing the benefits.
I particularly enjoyed Simon's take on "connected culture instead of consumer culture" - it's the first time I've heard Simon talk, but he managed to appeal to both the Open Source advocate and the capitalist in me - which is a first. The idea of moving from a hub and spoke model to a mesh model in both society and software is so obviously true, and it's great to see some hard numbers quoted about the relevance of Open Source.
The materials from the event should be online in the next few days, I'll link to them as soon as they are.
All in all, an excellent day, and I look forward to the next OSBA events.
November 20, 2006
New website ...
The new Sourcesense website is now live, just in time for the Open Source Business Academy event in Milan tomorrow. It's currently available in English and Italian, and is of course powered by the Hippo CMS.
From a technical point of view there's lots of wrinkles to iron out and a ton of features we'll be adding over the next few weeks, but hopefully you'll agree this is a big improvement!
Feedback is of course welcome to info@sourcesense.com, or leave a comment.
November 15, 2006
Macs don't crash
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x001A3135): Unresolved kernel trap (CPU 0, Type 14=page fault)
[...]
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0x0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.5.1)@0x6b6000
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.1: Mon Sep 25 19:42:00 PDT 2006; root:xnu-792.13.8.obj~1/RELEASE_I386
So I was suspending the laptop after a long day, and the machine hung. The screen was off, no response from the caps lock light, and all fans on at full speed. I forcibly powered off the machine, and rebooted. During boot it didn't get as far as the startup sound before rebooting again, but then it came up cleanly.
I think Apple should be sued for false advertising for their Mac vs. PC adverts...
!?
Simply put - this.
Six years in, and the entrepeneurial pendulum still gets me on an almost-daily basis.
I think it's particularly troublesome if you're in IT, since working with computers can be one of the most humbling experiences you can have. Programs have no qualms about telling you just how good or bad you are, you are laid bare by the compiler or interpreter, they show you no mercy as they pummel you with error messages.
On the other hand, nothing can beat the feeling when the code all falls into place and everything start to work for the first time. Customer requirements met and exceeded, program working as expected and often better than expected, beautifully-crafted code that perfectly solves a problem.
Yup, that pendulum's still swinging.
November 13, 2006
I am a ....
... no rude answers please. Apparently I am a "considerate leader", according to PersonalDNA:
Which, given my job, is rather lucky really, isn't it?
(via Mobile Marketer)
Not just a hobby?
I don't know ... I don't blog for weeks on end, and then suddenly a whole slew of posts in one day.
Anyway, seeing Filippo's post about being a published photographer reminded me that two organisations have pinged me recently about using my photos. Schmap included Jeanneke-Pis and Manneken-Pis in their Brussels guide, and KUT Radio in Austin, TX asked to use Flags for their website.
Ironically those are some of the photos I least liked - my favourite Brussels one is the cathedral and one of my favourite Texas ones is reflections is but I guess they are less applicable for their target audiences. Still, it's pretty cool that other people appreciate the photos!
I've been having a bit of a discussion with Stuart about cameras and lenses - I notice he's now bought the Canon 400D, and it looks like Marcus may have bought the 30D. I'm jealous, but I've promised myself I'm going to keep buying lenses for now and upgrade to a new camera body when I win the lottery. Which could take some time since I don't play it.
More travel
The year's nearly done, but there's still a bit more travel left for me to do.
On Thursday this week I'll be at Casa Google for the first London Open Source Jam. There's a bunch of people attending that I'm looking forward to catching up with, and it'll be great to step away from the spreadsheets briefly and do some open source hackery.
Next week I will be in Milan for the Open Source Business Academy (english page), organised by Sourcesense and Sun Microsystems. This looks like being a pretty impressive event (and I'm not just saying that!) - I look forward to hearing "straight from the horse's mouth" about open source Java, and the parallel sessions in the afternoon should be a great opportunity to dig into the issues surrounding business adoption of Open Source.
Finally, my last (in theory) bit of travel for the year will be XML 2006 in Boston (Norman Walsh has iCal files available). While I'm there I'm hoping to do a bit of catch-up on some of the XML stuff that I don't have time to keep an eye on during the day job. The XML Pipeline Processing panel should be of interest too, given my Cocoon background.
Speaking of Cocoon, I'll be running the Hands-on Apache Cocoon tutorial at XML 2006 on Monday 4th December afternoon - I believe there's still a few spaces, so sign up quick to avoid disappointment!
Work for OSS Watch
OSS Watch are currently advertising for a Research Officer (Software Development). As Mark notes, it would indeed be good to see a free software person fill the post. It's not often that a job this focussed on OSS comes up, and I imagine working alongside the team at OSS Watch would be rewarding and enjoyable. The deadline is midday Friday 17th November, so get those applications in quick!Updated to fix the link. Ooops!