Category: geek

Posted on

Cars, Meteors, Jonestown and Office Space

Here’s a few things I’ve come across on the web, as well as just a few thoughts about things, news etc.

Car Dealerships in Second Life:

Picture of Nissan IslandHow can you buy a Nissan, Toyota or Pontiac car for around $1US? Well, get into Second Life or course where Nissan, Toyota and Pontiac hope you will check them out. Now cars come out of vending machines…


Leonid Meteor shower:

Image of Leonid meteorThis weekend sees the annual Leonid meteor shower happen, if you’re up around 04:45 in the mornings of Friday, Saturday or Sunday then you might be able to see up to 150 meteors per hour at that time.


Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple:

Image of Jonestown movie posterToday is the 28th anniversary of the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana, an event often referred to as ‘the largest mass suicide/murder in history’. There is a documentary out now called ‘Jonestown’ which documents all of the background to this event.

I’m interested to see this film as I actually lived in Guyana at the time this happened. Although I was only 6 years old at the time I do have some memories of it, I was at a North American school there and I remember there being armed US Marines being stationed outside the School due to there being a bit of a backlash against the US (or at least fear of a backlash).

If you want to read more about this then there’s an interesting page on Wikipedia about it. You can also see a trailer for the movie over on Quicktime.com.

Wanted: One new office:

I just found out on Friday the floor of the building where I run my business will not be available after the current lease held by Scottish Enterprise runs out. So, it seems I’ve now got to look for a new office! Even worse I’m probably going to have to do so before the end of December which doesn’t leave much time.

It wasn’t the best news to find out last thing on a friday, we had thought we were going to be able to stay on beyond the expiry of the lease but it seems the Landlord’s had a better offer apparently. If you know of any nice office space around 300 – 500 square foot, preferably with a nice view then let me know ;)

~Rick

Posted on

MacHeist – Want an invite?

If you’re a Mac user, like free or cheap software and don’t mind a little challenge to get it then you might like to check out the invite-only MacHeist.

Picture of Macheist website

MacHeist has been described:

MacHeist is a 5 week long event that will be invitation-only at first and will work towards an über bundle at the end with the last week starting on December 11th.
~PaulStamatiou.com

Anyway, if that’s got you interested then I have some invites for it, I’ve got 7 at the moment so if you want one get in touch! So far the 1st week’s challenge has already been done and I’ve got 3 little applications for free already.

~Rick

Posted on

Something’s cooking in Adobe labs…

There’s some really interesting stuff coming out of Adobe recently, they have a section on their website called Adobe Labs which has a lot of new software being developed but is available for testing.

Soundbooth

There’s a new application called ‘Soundbooth’ that has just appeared on their Labs website. The description for Soundbooth says:

Soundbooth is a brand new application built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16 and Cool Edit that provides the tools video editors, designers, and others who do not specialize in audio need to accomplish their everyday work such as:

  • Editing audio quickly.
  • Cleaning up noisy audio.
  • Visually identifying and removing unwanted sounds.
  • Recording and polishing voiceovers.
  • Adding effects and filters.
  • Easily creating customized music?without musical expertise.

My initial thought is that it sounds like something to compete with Apple’s Soundtrack Pro or GarageBand software. I’m going to check it out and see, it’s available for both Windows and Mac, although only Intel Macs will ever be supported interestingly.

» http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundbooth/

Lightroom

If you’re into digital photography then you’ll definitely want to check out Lightroom. It’s a piece of software that provides for the whole workflow of digital photographers, not just for doing retouching but actually the whole importing, comparing, selection process as well as colour correction and output. This software is comparable to Apple’s Aperture software which has been out for some time which is also and excellent piece of software. Go and check out Lightroom now if you haven’t already.

» http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

Digital Editions

This is a new eBook reader / management application providing a way to read eBooks, not just in PDF format but also HTML too. The description for Digital Editions introduces itself:

Adobe Digital Editions is a completely new way to read and manage eBooks and other digital publications. Digital Editions is built from the ground up as a lightweight, rich Internet application (RIA). Digital Editions works online and offline, and supports both PDF and XHTML-based content.

Digital Editions is currently only available as a Windows download, but if that doesn’t put you off then I’m sure it’s worth checking out.

» http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/

Disclaimer – Beta Software!

Remember, all these packages are beta software, that means they are available for testing purposes. I would always recommend making sure you have all your important data backed up before trying them out!

Adobe appends each one with the following notice:

Note: This is a public beta, not a final release. Neither the quality nor the features are complete yet. We want to show you our direction and get your feedback so that we can incorporate it into future releases.

Go check them out.

~Rick

Posted on

New look Suburbia!

Just a quick post to announce that I’ve finally had a chance to do a bit of work on Suburbia’s design. I’ve actually gone for a bit of colour this time! I’ve also used it as an opportunity to include some photographs in the form of a randomly loading image whenever you view a page. The photos are a mixture of some taken by myself, Annie and also other people (well, at least some by Colin anyway!).

One word of warning, as of the time of publishing I haven’t tested this on any browsers apart from Safari, Firefox and Camino on Mac OSX, so if it looks funky on Internet Explorer 6 on PC then you’ll have to wait until I get a chance to test it and fix any problems.

I’ve also been doing a lot of work behind the scenes too with the actual code of the site, basically improving it and optimising how it works. Also you may notice a change in the format of the links for blog entries on the site, I’ve basically made it a bit friendlier than the old “?entry=20061020211436” format that the site used to use. Fortunately the old format still works so any links to pages will still work just as before.

So, any problems, comments etc then feel free to post them in the comments!

~Rick

EDIT: The site has been redesigned again since this post!

Posted on

Congratulations Alyn and AJ!

Alyn announced in his own amusing way about his and AJ’s impending ‘download’ of a baby in his latest blog post, the mark of a true Mac geek to announce a baby in the same paragraph as mentioning the iTunes 7.0.1 update!!!

So as a fellow Mac geek to another here’s a little graphic congratulations for Alyn and AJ:

iBaby '07 - the must-have upgrade...

The one bonus thing with iBaby is that you get the ‘Family Pack’ by default!!! ;)

Congratulations to Alyn and AJ!!!

Posted on

Leuchars Airshow 2006

On Saturday we had a day out at the Leuchars Airshow, it’s something I’ve kind of always wanted to go to as it sounded cool.

So with camera in hand (along with my 300mm lense!) I went there with Annie and Natalie along with Colin and Jackie. Oh, and about 44,995 other people who were there too.

It was a pretty awesome day and I shot about 188 pictures which I have simply uploaded as a basic slideshow without any real editing done to them, so they’re available to view warts and all as it were.

Full photos available here: Leuchars Airshow 06 Photo Gallery…

But here’s a few sample thumbnail images to give a little flavour of what could be seen there.

zoom!Zoooom!
Hawk trainerWho needs to buy a programme? ;)
Lots of planesThe Red Arrow's parked up
A B52 monsterRed Arrows cross over
Red Arrows in formationThe Typhoon Eurofighter landing

Leuchars Airshow 06 Photo Gallery…

~Rick

Posted on

So, long time no blog?

Mmm, yep, it has been a while since I posted anything on my blog. Almost a month in fact! Well, what’s my excuse? I guess just work and being generally busy, plus skateboarding a lot more too.

Good news is that my sore back is getting better, it’s taking time but I’m able to skate and ride my bike without much pain, I’ve still to go surfing (no waves!) and see how that goes though as laying horizontal on my board is one of the sorest positions for me. Hopefully it will be all good though.

Other news:

Our car is running well, Annie is busy playing a bunch of ceilidhs, three this weekend actually, Fri, Sat & Sunday nights!

Birthday boy:

Sunday is a special day, it’s the day I become 34 years old! If I had gotten my driving licence at the age of 17 I could now have been driving half my life! However, this birthday makes it 21 years since I got my first skateboard! Wow, 21 years of consistent skateboarding! Definitely my preferred method of 4-wheeled transport!

Must sleep:

Ok, well it’s late on Saturday night and I think I’m going to go to bed now and catch up on sleep!

Geek info:

One final point of interest for those interested in the technical aspects of this blog and what I do. This blog entry was posted using a cool little plain text markup tool called PHPMarkdown, this in turn is a PHP port of John Gruber’s original Markdown program. Check it out if you’re interested in that kind of thing.

Posted on

Viruses, OSX and chiropracters…

Ok, quick update, got my Nokia N80, it’s pretty cool. Although my old number hasn’t ported across to it yet so I’m not using it day to day yet. Very cool surfing with Wi-fi!

Mac OS X: Viruses and Security

There’s a really interesting article on the Symantec website, entitled ‘Mac OS X: Viruses and Security’, it’s a good read to clarify the true situation regarding Mac OSX and viruses.

Check out the article ‘Mac OS X: Viruses and Security’ via this link.

Backpain

For the last week and a half I’ve been having loads of hassle with my back, not so much pain in my back as the pain is actually in my arm but the source of the problem is in my upper back. I’ve been to the chiropracter once this week already but I’m going back again today so hopefully that will bring relief! Ibuprofen has made no real difference so I’ve not been taking anything for the pain.

I post this for your sympathy! ;)

~Rick