Archive for November, 2007
Right said Ned…
... I'm off! Effectively what happened yesterday with respect to Fianna Fail TD Ned O'Keefe when he was told in true Fianna Fail democratic style to vote the same way as the party had chosen to and not express his own views. The context: Yesterday Mary Harney faced a vote of no confidence with respect to her position as health minister. Ned O'Keefe was openly critical of the government for failing to provide a good health system and was in favour of change. He was told however that the party stance was that they would support Harney and that he would have to tow the line. The result: For the [...]
Judging De Dept of Education
I recently heard some discussion about a new book by Diarmaid Ferriter, entitled "Judging Dev" that is being forced into the secondary school curriculum this year by the Department of Education. One of the key components in Ferriter's undertaking was supposedly to deconstruct the sometimes harsh character of Eamon de Valera, Ireland's well-known figure from the revolutionary times surrounding 1916. By all accounts, the book is supposedly a very good piece of work and worth a read. I really must get a copy myself to check it out. However, what I would have issue with is that this book, [...]
iPhone not doing well in the UK?
It would appear, from this Reg article, that the iPhone-omenon that swept the US earlier this year is not translating similarly across this side of the pond. I have to say that I'm not totally surprised by that news. Any uber-geek that really wanted an iPhone before it was released recently in the UK probably already has one. Anyone else probably isn't that bothered. The article goes on to say that perhaps lots of units were bought as presents? If so, then what a miserable failing of a new product launch, that people didn't even want to buy them for themselves. The problem is that the US [...]
Plug and Play Music
I've had a Maxtor 300GB NAS drive for a few years now, serving as a back-up solution and also a samba share for my digital music files and videos. I recently saw somebody else's NAS solution, a DLink DNS-323 with RAID options for the two drives that it holds it also boasted an iTunes server that got me thinking and a little jealous. My Maxtor was running an old firmware version 1.2.2 and there was an update available 2.6.2 so naturally I tried it out and discovered that the new firmware provided an iTunes server, DAAP (Digital Audio Access Protocol) compatible. Joy sadly turned to dismay when [...]
Evil, nullified
Today was one of those Sundays when I just didn't feel like doing anything at all. So I plonked myself in front of the TV and watched brainless shows for a while. As it happened, this braindead activity lead to a thought provoking moment. I was watching a music channel and they were playing videos of heavy metal from the 80's G'n'R, Bon Jovi, etc. As I watched, I wondered; as a child of the 80's I grew up with a leaning toward the heavy metal bands of the time and remembered that this was devil music, the stuff you'd hide from your folks unless you really wanted to rebel against something. [...]
Things I don’t like about Safari 3
A few days ago I was very happy to finally return to using Safari as my main browser on OSX. A few days on there are still things that are upsetting me about it and which I wish Apple would fix as it has to be simple enough to do so. My first bugbear is the GMail window title not updating to show the current number of unread messages. I find myself frequently checking my GMail tab because it shows 2 unread messages despite having already read them. Also with respect to GMail, the inbox doesn't always update with new messages and I have to click the inbox link to refresh the listing. Still [...]
Nokia getting cranky…
... or is their latest patent just a wind-up? According to this article in the Reg's Hardware site, Nokia have lodged a patent for a device that looks somewhat similar to the famed Sidekick communicator that every celebrity under the sun has. However, the laterally sliding screen on this device is slipped into one of two positions by the use of a rather archaic turn-screw type appendage at the end of the phone. The latch-like mechanism slots the screen into two different positions where different features are available, e.g. photo cam vs video cam. Underneath the sliding display is of course [...]
Google Docs working in Safari 3
Just noticed by accident that Google Docs now works in Safari on the Mac, or at least in version 3 of Safari. I know that it didn't work in version 2 up until a few weeks back but can anyone still running v2 confirm this? Safari 3 is really matching up to what I want from a browser now. However, there are a few small bugbears. For example, GMail doesn't seem to update automatically any more, i.e. I have to click my inbox link again to see if I have new mail, in addition when I get new mail or read all mail the title bar in the browser doesn't appear to update to say that I have no more [...]
It Looks Different; Again!
Yes, the layout of the blog has changed again for the second time this year. When I moved server and upgraded to the latest version of MovableType 4 I discovered that there were a few changes in the template structure that would have required a few changes on my behalf. So, I decided to be lazy and use one of the many styles from the Stylecatcher plugin instead. Perhaps that will change in time to come. Also the old template that I hacked together was getting a little cluttered and this one looks a little fresher; maybe just because it's new? Anyway if anyone notices any problems please let [...]
Tiger never changes its spots
Greetings, I'm back writing again after a wee break of moving server with the site. Took me a while to set everything up again and I've noticed that I have one or two folk I need to reply to. Apologies for the delay. Anyhow to get the ball rolling on a new era: I see that the good people at Apple have decided that the non-Beta version of Safari 3 should not be contained purely within Leopard and have released the browser upgrade in the OSX update 10.4.11, available now. I have resisted temptation to try out the Beta til now but having just upgraded I have to say that my needs have finally [...]
