- A Sense of Entitlement: Tweetie 2 – I think Apple needs to do more here — to allow for paid upgrades — but I also congratulate the author of Tweetie for having the nerve to charge for a significant update. He’ll come across a lot of resistance but it’s absolutely the right thing to do and it, potentially, paves the way for smaller developers to do the same thing.
- Peep Show ‘won’t change’ for anyone – Looking forward to this. Slightly worried that it might overstay its welcome — how can you top eating a family pet in terms of gross out? — but then I thought that for the last couple of series too…
- Fail Yet Succeed? – Nice discussion of the kind of things that all software projects go through. Really this is about half of my job!
Last week I complained that my iPhone’s camera was no substitute for my 50D.
The next day I was lucky enough to have my DSLR with me at sunset, and it looked a bit like this.
[](<http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephendarlington/3962039016/[/flickr]
The following day I was in the neighbouring town of Competa and managed to capture these beautiful colours.
[flickr]http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephendarlington/3961264013/[/flickr]
The church also looked fantastic bathed in the evening light.
[flickr]http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephendarlington/3961264081/[/flickr]
I’ll be posting some more pictures taken earlier in the day over the next week or two. Stay tuned!
At times like these I wish that my 50D was small enough to have with me at all times. Still, my iPhone did an okay job.
Most people reading this will know that Snow Leopard refers to version 10.6 of the Macintosh Operating System, Apple’s latest update released late last month.
I wasn’t sure whether I should upgrade initially. I have been stung before by being an early adopter. Mac OS X 10.4 was a nightmare on my iMac G5. The big ticket new features such as Dashboard and Spotlight worked just fine1. What didn’t work were little thing like, oh, networking. Eight times out of ten it couldn’t connect to my AirPort Base station. This made almost everything, including downloading patches to fix this very problem, a compete and utter pain. I think it took until 10.4.3 before everything worked reliably.
I normally try to be pretty positive here. Most reviews you’ll find here are of products that I’ve bought with my own money and that I’m broadly happy with.
That makes this post the exception.
You may remember that ZX81.org.uk went off-line for over twenty-four hours last month. Shortly afterwards I switched away from Adept Hosting, but it’s not only, as you might expect, because of the reliability.
I posted the following review at Review Centre:
- After 1,100 miles and 52 days, Eddie Izzard has finishing line in sight – Awesome achievement. And I don’t mean “awesome” as in an “awesome hot dog.”
- John Marcotte, Author of the 2010 California Protection of Marriage Act – Marcotte is trying to get divorce banned. “People who supported Prop 8 weren’t trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That’s why I’m confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical. "
- PM apology after Turing petition – About time too!
- “The Government” – “Try something. Every time somebody complains about the evils or failings of ’the government,’ strike out ’the government’ and see what results.” (via @marcoarment)
- People get red-dy – “The idea of a ginger festival may sound like little more than a bit of fun, but when 3,000 redheads came together for a recent gathering it became a bonding experience.”
- Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. – “It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.”
- Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty – I find that there are many convincing arguments against capital punishment but maybe it’s the emotional one that works in the end. It could be you?
- Why do some countries drive on the right and others on the left? – Fascinating look at why (and where) we drive on which side of the road.
- Hidden Developer Gems in Snow Leopard – I know it’s geeky but I’m more excited about the new APIs in Snow Leopard than any of the new stuff or even, to a certain extent, the performance improvements.
I try to keep ZX81.org.uk free of direct promotion of my iPhone applications but I think the launch of a new one warrants an exception to the rule.
www.cut is a utility that shortens URLs so that they can be mailed, Twittered or FaceBooked without worrying about character counts or line breaks.
Find out more at the above link or head straight to the App Store to download a copy. It’s free so you have nothing to lose!
- Clive Thompson on the New Literacy – Maybe the Internet isn’t the end of literacy after all…
- Galileo’s telescope reaches 400th anniversary – “Exactly 400 years ago today, on 25 August 1609, the Italian astronomer and philosopher Galilei Galileo showed Venetian merchants his new creation, a telescope – the instrument that was to bring him both scientific immortality and, more immediately, a whole lot of trouble.”
- Creationists, now they’re coming for your children – “The Greatest Show on Earth is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an antireligious book. I’ve done that, it’s another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again. Bishops and theologians who have attended to the evidence for evolution have given up the struggle against it.”