leyton.org

I use Firefox almost exclusively when I use Linux, or if I’m forced to use Windows, but the last couple of weeks I thought I’d give Firefox a proper ‘go’ and make it my default browser on my main work computer (A Mac Pro since you ask).

For whatever reason – most probably that I’d just become very used to Safari – I really struggled with Firefox. I just like Safari’s RSS implementation (and Firefox didn’t convert those bookmarks to it’s setup). I like the Safari’s reasonably quick startup time, and I like the shortcuts to the bookmark bar (option-1 opens bookmark #1). Plus Firefox’s plugins just get to be a pain with all the updates. And none of them really seemed to be a killer.

With Safari v4 coming out, I thought I’d give that a shot to see how it faired. I hate rebooting computers when adding applications (it implies too much deep integration for my tastes), Safari 4 feels faster. Bar the new tab setup (Think Chrome), I like all that seems to come with it. There are some hidden preferences that mean I can switch off the new tabs, but I’m going to see how I fare for now.

I did have a ‘moment’ when I realised 1Password didn’t work with the new version, but in perhaps one of the fastest update turnarounds I’ve seen in an application, they pushed out an update in no time, confirming that this is by far the best Mac application I’ve had the pleasure of buying. I’ve too many passwords to remember, by merit of my job, so a very secure and safe way of generating and storing them, makes a huge amount of sense.

So, Firefox on the Mac just doesn’t quite cut it for me as my main browser. It’s not about Firefox itself: It is a good browser, and I use it where I need a second browser (in my line of work, that’s quite often). It’s probably that my working habits have settled around Safari, and the Firefox User Interface just doesn’t quite work for me. I just can’t be bothered adjusting, and Firefox doesn’t have enough extra to warrant the change. It needed to be something special, and wasn’t.

A new iPhone release is a good thing, on the whole. New shiny features aplenty

But a small request to Apple: make SMS reminder notifications optional!

Like many geeks, my phone has replaced my pager. So I get notifications and warnings aplenty. And the preview is usually enough to see what it’s about so I don’t ‘acknowledge’ them. This new release insists on doing just that, and insessently (well, twice) notifies me. And gets very annoying very quickly, as I can’t distinguish a new message from a reminder.

So, Steve, an option to disable this would be very welcome. Mmmmok?

Today is the start of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Connference 2008, and the highlight of this is always the keynote from Steve Jobs, as he inevitably has product announcements. Given Apple’s innovation record, they’ve always been important in much of the tech community (where Apple has led by innovation, others have eventually followed), but since Apple entered the consumer marketplace with the iPod, and more recently the iPhone, the announcements have become even more widely watched. The event is always enjoyable given Apple’s intense secrecy (which doesn’t seem to have been particularly good this year!) about the products, Steve Jobs famous thoroughness, standard jeans-and-turtleneck outfit, and – of course – that he is a extremely accomplished speaker and presenter.

There are lots of predictions and rumours about what might be announced, but most attention is focused on the iPhone. It’s widely expected that iPhone 2.0 will be announced, and maybe even launched later this month, with the 3G technology and perhaps built-in GPS. Whilst that sounds attractive, it’s the launch of third party applications that I’m particularly excited about: Being able to run applications that help me do my job (OmniFocus for the iPhone is what I’m most excited about), and fill gaps in the toolset on the iPhone (where are calendar todo’s and central contact management?). Rumours also abound that Apple may relent at let mobile networks subsidise the iPhone, which together with 3G, could really help it’s adoption in Europe.

As for non-iPhone products, there are rumours of Mac OS X 10.6, although it seems too soon after Leopard, with no particularly key features being talked about yet. And a re-branding of Apple’s .mac, to make it focused more on the mobile user, is as overdue as it is welcome. I’ve never been particularly impressed with the pricetag or feature list of .mac, so will be intrigued to learn what they have in mind.

Certainly looking forward to it, and perhaps even watching (via the official video PodCast that now exists) the keynote on the train tomorrow morning

Because I had a nasty fall against a table when I was small, I’ve got slightly odd shaped left ear, so I frequently find that the headphones that come with personal stereos (well, iPods!) quickly get uncomfortable after an hour or so of continual use. Some years back though, I discovered the joy that was bud earphones, and having non-white leads also, I thought, would make me slightly less likely to get mugged for my 2nd Generation iPod (ie. back when they weren’t ubiquitous, and quite the mugging target).

Unfortunately, choices for bud earphones the iPhone were somewhat more limited. There was a set of bud earphones available, but as they cost over £100, they was simply waaaay over my budget. I just didn’t need them that badly. So when I read on TUAW that a cheaper product was available, I jumped at it.

The product was the ProCable In-Ear Isolation Headset for iPhone, from Radtech. The product even boasts the strapline “Comfortable and durable audiophile quality in-ear headset with Sound Valve Technology.“. For $24.99, and just shy of $10 shipping to the UK, $34.93 amounted to somewhere around £17, which was also below the customs duty level.

A bargain. Or so I thought.

Firstly, it’s worth stressing that the service I received from radtech was excellent. The package arrived in about a week. It was all very well packaged, and no problems (or charges) clearing customs. I really can’t fault them there, and I’d buy something else from them again, quite happily. It’s just that the headset itself that proved catastrophically, thoroughly and entirely awful, useless and a waste of money. That the buds didn’t quite fit in my ear was one (minor) thing. The big problem was that the sound quality is truly awful. Cheap for a reason.

I’m far from an audiophile. I know a few of these strange creatures, and I’m afraid I’ve really no interest at all in optimal room conditions, gold-plated cabling, filtered power supplies and records vs CD’s, AAC vs MP3 and so on. I just can’t tell the difference, and largely don’t care: So long as the speakers or headset I’m using sounds reasonable and has a respectable range, I’m happy.

Unfortunately I could immediately tell there was none of that with these headphones. I was listening to Arcade Fire’s stunning album “Neon Bible”, and my favourite track on the album “Intervention” makes impressive use of a powerful church organ. If you’ve not heard it, go find it on iTunes, and give it a listen. It’s one of the stand-out albums in the last few years. But with these headphones, it was, I’m afraid, pitiful. Absolutely no punch. The song sounded poor on every level. I immediately switched back to my iPhone headphones, and the difference was profound.

Others might find them fine. Perhaps you care less about the sound, or don’t use the iPhone for music as much as I do these days (twice weekly trips through to Edinburgh). They’d probably make acceptable headsets for telephone purposes. But not music.

Ironically perhaps, I’ve found I’ve subsequently got quite used to the iPhone’s bundled headphones. Whether that’s because they’ve changed the moulding from the previous iPod earphones, or that my ears have become more used to the shape, I don’t know.

In short: Avoid. Put your money elsewhere, or stick with the excellent headphones supplied with the iPhone.

Because the iPhone supplied headphones have a small but noticeable microphone, you also get to take part in the “is-that-an-iphone-or-ipod-owner”. I’m spotting them more and more, and with the 3G phone, and v2 firmware due very soon now (next week?), I’m sure we’ll see more of them on the streets. It’s still the best portable gadget I’ve ever bought.

I’m not always the most organised person, and recently it’s reached a point where it’s rather gotten in the way of a few things, not least the feeling of being rather overwhelmed by “stuff”. This has manifested itself most in my finding it increasingly difficult to simply ’switch off’ and unwind, without worrying about clients, projects, and so forth.

I’d picked up a copy of Getting Things Done last year, but not got around to actually, well, getting on with it. A problem deferred is a problem solved, for a while at least. But it’s all caught up with me, and Something Needed To Be Done.

Since moving to Glasgow, I’ve made conscious decisions to take up – and stick with – running and learning the piano. And it’s worked: In a few months it’ll be two years of running as a hobby (a surprise one at that; I’d thought it’d be a chore). Unfortunately, the general feeling of being overwhelmed by everything has started to get in the way of both enjoying running and the piano. I’ve not had a lesson in a while, and not done any practise either. So, my third life-style change I plan to stick by is one that I hope will actually facilitate more of the other activities, as well as giving me more time for Frances, the house, life in general, and actually enjoying myself by being able to switch off.

So today is The Day I start to put the ‘GTD’ approach in to action. Finding every pile of things (physically and on my computer) into an inbox, which I’ll then start processing. Simply writing down all the things that occur to me as I wonder about the house is already making me feel better, so I’m quite optimistic this might just work. And that’s before I’ve tackled my e-mail, much less made a decision on a piece of software to use (There are some very cool options with the Mac, and with the iPhone SDK promising even cooler stuff, it’s quite a choice).

Anyway, watch this space

Right, coffee break over with. Back to the collecting and tidying. It’s actually a lot more fun than I’d thought… But please, don’t tell my mother….

Finishing up with a client recently has meant that hardware VPN/firewall/router I used to get access their network needed to be unplugged, and I thought it was high time I did a refresh of my home network.

So I’ve plumbed for an Apple Time Capsule as the main wireless access device, and a Netgear DG834G router, but with the wireless component switched off.

I spent a bit of time in Maplins looking at pure ADSL modems, but just figured it’d be more useful to have a wireless router “just in case”, than a simple modem without such. Still a bit puzzled I had to go to Maplins at all, as Apple staff in Glasgow were largely bemused at my request for their ADSL modem recommendation, given the Time Capsule doesn’t have an ADSL modem I would have thought they’d get that question a fair bit more.

The Time Capsule looks good, but it’s proving rather slow to do the initial backup. 133Gb of data won’t be done in a hurry, certainly. This, I should add, is on top of my second hard disk in my Mac Pro. Given Time Machine makes doing backups so easy, it’s as well to have a few alternatives, so that if ever there’s a problem, or a burglary, I’ve got a few fall backs if my main computer gets nicked. Insurance covers the cost, but it’ll never cover the data, and to be honest my data is infinitely more important, so I don’t mind spending a bit of cash to ensure it’s safe.

An Apple network should also put me in good stead for the Apple TV when it comes out in the UK. Well, it is out in the UK, but when movie rentals comes here, I’m keen to get one. It’s the ‘killer app’ I’ve been waiting for. Of course, I’ll also need a TV with HDMI too…

My day job, as an infrastructure consultant, necessitates that I need to know lots of different passwords, almost all of which are very important to keep secure – they give me access to business critical systems. Outside of that, I have countless accounts with websites, for shopping, networking, bank accounts, and discussion forums.

As somebody who preaches good password security I was starting to risk being a bit of a hypocrite: I was starting to re-use passwords that I had already committed to memory, in multiple places. Consequently, there was some risk that anybody determined enough, having somehow got hold of my login details for one site, could then go on to gain access to other – far more important – services.

It was therefore with some relief that I found out about 1password, a Mac application that has slotted in to my work flow with such ease, it’s very hard to understand how I possibly got by without it. Using heavy duty encryption for it’s local store (so it’s impossible to use without entering a strong passphrase), it takes care of the hard work of remembering passwords and form filling, and also generates random, highly effective, passwords for you.

Logging on to a website, I now just click the 1Password icon, and enter my standard passphrase (Which is a very long, and secure phrase, that I believe would be almost impossible for anybody to guess). This unlocks the password database, and fills in the forms for me. The password database is periodically re-locked (when, for instance, the screensaver kicks in), so it’s very difficult to use maliciously in an open environment.

I think I’ve freed up a good number of brain cells, and not a lot of stress and worry, about remembering all my passwords. The terror of visiting a website and realising I’d forgotten the password details after months, or even years, without having logged in, is taken away.

It’s taken care of very well, very securely, by this excellent application, I have absolutely no qualms about recommending it to every other Mac user out there. Highly recommended, and probably the best piece of software I’ve so far bought for the Mac.

Plenty more at: http://www.1password.com

One of the things I absolutely despise about Microsoft Windows is it’s counter-intuitive interface. Perhaps this is because of my years as a Mac user, but I find it infuriating that simple things like dragging a file to Outlook doesn’t create a new e-mail with that file as an attachment (as Mail.app does on OSX). I have to open outlook, click ‘New’, then Attach, and then hunt again for the file. So much for a smooth workflow.

Don’t even get me started on dialogue boxes that prevent access to the application itself. Oh, you did. Setting up filters in Outlook is positively painful if I can’t check something in the e-mails: But you can’t, because the focus can’t be switched. So I have to close down the dialogue box, make a note/copy the details, and re-open the dialogue.

But most infuriating of all is “Explorer”. The default display format is just a list of filenames and an icon. I never find that useful for my generally technical purposes where I’m often looking to see the detail of the file, ie. date stamp or file size. I had, however, long ago resigned myself to having to change it every time I opened a new Explorer window. It was just “one of those things”.

Thankfully, however, I happened to vent about this to a developer, and he pointed out there is actually a way of setting it (Andrew earned his pay that day from my perspective, I can assure you!). Not particularly intuitively, oh no. Mac’s remember the last file view you used, which works wonders, and even have easy short-cuts (Mac-1 through 4) to change the view type. So, In Explorer, click ‘Tools’, then ‘Folder Options’, click the ‘View’ tab, and then ‘Apply to All Folders’. And relax. Quite why it’s under ‘Tools’, I know not, but then when have menu options ever been intuitive with Microsoft? It does affect your Control Panel view too, which is a pain, but bearable.

It’s a small thing, and perhaps well known to most heavy Windows users, but it’s one less annoyance for me, and I thought I’d share it. Still find it a painful OS to use, and quite why people continue to insist on struggling away with it at home, I know not. Computers shouldn’t be that difficult.

Despite some wariness when the product first came out in the US, I’ve been extremely happy with my iPhone since buying it. The recent 1.1.3 update brought along a few extra features that were missing (most notably multi-recipient texts), but the device has slotted in to my life extremely well. I can’t wait until the SDK is released and we start to get some community developed applications to take the device further ahead.

I was also happy to be saving a few pounds each month compared to my previous Orange contract (which didn’t include any text or data time). Whilst I had to buy the iPhone, I looked at it more as getting a new iPod than purely buying a new phone. Some also critics argued that the iPhone tariff was expensive, but it was largely comparable for me. The lifetime cost of an iPhone is often cited as being £800 or more, but ignores that fact that most people considering such already have a contract phone, so would largely be paying out that amount of money over 18 months anyway.

But I digress. Today, the tariff just got a heck of a lot better. I found out via TUAW that O2 have announced they’re bringing the iPhone tariff in line with their other plans, so for me on the basic £35/month tariff, I’ll be getting 600 talk minutes, and 500 texts, as well as the ongoing free wireless access at The Cloud. That’s compared to 200 minutes and 200 texts which I had when I first got the iPhone, and the 200 talk minutes at Orange too. That’s makes it really quite an impressive and (to me) competitive tariff, and that it’s being given to existing iPhone customers is simply wonderful. I’ve been happy with O2 since moving. Coverage is very good, call quality is good. This news is just brilliant.

Perhaps it’ll also help Apple get the number of unlocked phones down, now that the tariff is even better value?

It’s not everyday I get to parade a world-first about on my website, much less one that relates to the work I do, and the interests I have, and was done by people I know and respect. So please excuse me for one moment whilst I take advantage of the opportunity presented to me to talk about it.

One of my clients is in the mobile gambling sector, where they produce some very cool little apps for mobile phones with J2ME (aka ‘Java games’) where you get to play with real money. We’re all adults here (aren’t we), so you can sign up here if you’re interested in taking a look. Do play sensibly now.

But I digress. As we all know a certain fruit based computer company released their take on the phone this year, and sadly for many of us who like such things, they didn’t include support for Java. So no games, much less any decent gambling games.

Until now that is. Click here to see a very cool video demonstrating the worlds first real money blackjack gambling application for the iPhone. Hopefully if you’re interested in the gambling sector, technology sector, and mobile telephone sector, like me, you’ll be quite intrigued by what they’ve put together. More from Probability PLC here.