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Friday 5 May 2006
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As you can probably see, I haven’t updated this blog in far, far too long: just in excess of six weeks, in fact. There is a reason for this. As most of my close friends and fellow Listers – that probably accounts for most of the people who read this blog – may know, I’ve started my new job, working for a company called Torchbox, toddling off to Oxford in mid-April to friendly cries of “Judas!” from my Cambridge-based friends.
As I have spent most of my time between then and now either working, pursuing accommodation or getting to know my new colleagues (with the aid of the odd beer festival here and there), this hasn’t left very much time for blogging, especially as my new house doesn’t have wireless internet access… yet.
Rest assured though, dear reader, that this blog is, while perhaps not particularly well, still very much alive and likely to remain so. I may write up a slightly fuller account of my experiences with the new job in due course, or I may just talk about the first really geeky thing which catches my eye. This may well be Django, as and when I get the opportunity to have a play with it; it may be something entirely different. Wait and see.
Oh, and I have a Mac mini at work: it’s highly gorgeous.
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Saturday 8 October 2005
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As many of you know, as some of you don’t know but I really should have told, and as some of you would never have had any reason to know because you’re here as a result of searching Google for common terms such as “jesus”, “muppet animal” and “demon baby” (don’t ask me, I just work here) I’ve been in the United States for nearly a month.
I’m currently coming to the last few days of my little sojourn up and down the East coast of America and will have a fuller report once I get back home and have access to my lovely shiny iMac G5 (oh, how I miss you). I will also have what is known in the photography business as (and I quote from a professional photographer) “a shitfuckcrapload” of photos. For now, however, I shall just note some salient points:
Read on…
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Wednesday 24 August 2005
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I am currently sitting on the horns of a dilemma (well, actually a trilemma, but let’s not get into that again). The source of my troubles is the choice of which browser to use for my day-to-day browsing needs.
Firefox
You might have heard of a little browser called Firefox: word has it that it’s fairly popular. What Firefox seems to have that recommends it over the other two browser is that
- It’s free, and
- Extensions
I shall assume for the moment that most of you know how useful Firefox extensions are, so I shan’t talk about them at great length. I shall merely point out that the Web Developer extension is invaluable for development work and, while I haven’t tried it yet, Greasemonkey looks very exciting.
So what’s wrong with Firefox? Sadly, as with the majority of open-source software, its main problem seems to lie in usability: not to anything like the same extent as some of the worst offenders (as previously discussed) it does lack some of the Mac Polish that I’ve come to know and love.
Safari
Ok, on to the next option: Safari. What makes Safari good?
- It’s polished
- It’s free (at least in practical terms: strictly speaking its price is included in the price of the operating system)
So far, so good. Unfortunately, what really lets Safari down for the power user is that it’s pretty lightweight on features. Want type-ahead find? Nope, sorry. Site-specific preferences? Ain’t gonna happen. That said, Pimp My Safari looks very interesting: I shall have to give it a more thorough look soon.
OmniWeb
Now on to the third browser: OmniWeb. The bad news first: it ain’t free. The good news: it’s got some lovely Mac Polish, integrates nicely with the Mac UI and has features coming out the wazoo (or would do if there weren’t remarkably few software-based wazoo implemenations). The tab drawer (complete with itty-bitty thumbnails) is lovely, the workspaces (think saved, switchable browser sessions) are lovely, the whole thing is lovely.
Sadly, the whole thing also has a number of performance problems and guzzles memory faster than a cry of “Who’s for shots?”. Even worse, there are a number of stability problems causing the browser to occasionally crash, which is awfully annoying (although, due to the browser’s ability to remember your session details, not devastating to productivity). I think, however, it should be taken as a Sign that any browser which repeatedly crashes when visiting Weebl’s Stuff has no sense of humour.
Conclusion
What, therefore, is my conclusion? My conclusion is that I have no conclusion. The problem appears to be “Feature-filled, polished, free and stable: pick two (where free and stable are a single item)”. Granted, it’s not the snappiest of posers, but never mind. I’m thinking my current plan is to see whether I can get Safari up to scratch on the extension front and, if so, stick with that. Failing that, I reckon Firefox is probably the way to go. Sorry OmniWeb, but the stability and performance problems really kill you off pretty quickly.
Addendum: looks like Jon “All-Round Web Design God” Hicks has been having similar thoughts and even done a little survey of which browsers people use. He also mentions Camino, which I haven’t talked about here because I’ve never tried it. Yet.
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Tuesday 2 August 2005
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Apple have released a multi-button mouse. They have called it…Mighty Mouse.
Yeah, just let that sink in for a few minutes. The company who brought us Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Exposé, Bonjour (né Rendezvous) and, of course, the iPod, now bring us…Mighty Mouse.
Getting past the enormity of the name’s crapness, the mouse really looks rather promising as, once again, Apple seem to have managed to add features without sacrificing the sleek design or the “oooh, so shiny” factor. The two-dimensional scroll ball sounds like a nice improvement on the scroll wheels of other mice (certainly a damn sight better than the “Tilt Wheel” present on some Microsoft mice, which I can personally attest is a right pig to use). The touch-sensitive buttons allow for a right mouse button without changing the now-characteristic “single shell” design of Apple mice, plus the squeezable sides acting as another button sound very interesting.
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating so I’ll wait for the reviews to come along before I make my mind up about whether this mouse is good or bad: either way, I’m not planning on buying one any time soon. All I can say for the moment is that I’m impressed with the design and it certainly comes across as very Apple-y.
Still, Mighty Mouse?!
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Wednesday 27 July 2005
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(For those of you unfamiliar with what X11 is, it’s essentially the protocol Unix/Linux systems use to control their interfaces. For more information, as always, Wikipedia is your friend.)
As you may or may not know, Mac OS X includes an X11 server, no doubt in deference to its Unix roots. This is perceived by many to be a Good Thing™, as one can run all of one’s favourite graphical Unix applications on a Mac with the minimum of reprogramming required. The bevy of developers writing open source applications (free in whatever sense of the word you like) for the various Unices can produce Mac versions and we, the Mac users, can download and use them. The GIMP on your Mac: check. OpenOffice on your Mac: check. All through the beauty of the X11 server. You get all the fruits of open source software development right there on your Mac.
Unfortunately, you also get all the fruits of Unix open source interface designers right there on your Mac.
It is a well-documented phenomenon that interface design and usability in general of open-source software tends to be bad. Like really bad. Similarly unfortunate, albeit in a slightly different way, its conventions are very different to those of a Mac. On a Mac, you press ⌘+W to close a window: when running an X11 application, this tries to shut down the X11 server. While this does at least prompt you when you have applications using the server, it’s not overly pleasant.
So what’s my point with all of this? I suppose my point is that, while having an X11 server included with OS X is probably a good thing overall in that it allows me to get hold of decent (and free) image processing and office applications, it’s also something of a problem in that it makes it too easy for open source developers to produce lazy ports of their applications, leaving us with clunky apps which just don’t feel “Maccy” (both of the applications I’ve mentioned previously, plus many others). So my message to all the thousands of developers of high-profile Unix software (ahem) my message is this: if you’re going to produce an OS X port of your application, please take the effort to make it a good one, make it fit in with the OS X conventions and themes (look, Apple have produced reams and reams of documentation about this) and make it really feel like a Mac application. Do this and I will love you forever.
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