What follows is a deconstruction of the arguments being used by governments and the “creative” industries with regard to sharing over the internet and download culture.

1. “The internet and downloading is going to destroy creativity.”

Now take a step back…. And listen to what you are saying. You propose that sharing is going to destroy creativity. I’ll let you think about that for a second. You propose that the single most facilitative sharing tool ever created by man is going to destroy creativity. Do you know how ridiculous you sound saying that? You don’t? OK, well you sound like an idiot. I don’t feel the need to linger on this any more, a monkey could win this argument, lets move on.

2. “The artists suffer when people share on the internet.”

The sycophants are out in force complaining that the artist will suffer if downloading continues. “Scouting For Girls” I’m looking in your direction. Let’s examine this. First lets look at the word artist. Using the word “artist” in the same sentence as “Scouting For Girls” is a misnomer if ever there was one. That is the crux of the problem. Will real, true artists stop making art if they don’t think they will make any money out of it? No. They will continue to be compelled by something far greater. Will people who want to fabricate cheap copies of the creative process, homogenise it, neuter it, and then exploit it for maximum return suffer? Yes, absolutely. Good.

3. “The fans will suffer.”

You hide behind the fans. You say things like the fans will be the ones that suffer if downloading continues. This seems like something of a paradox. Aren’t the fans the ones doing the downloading? Is anyone making them do this? No. So they must be doing it because they want to. Barring a few masochists over there spanking each other people generally don’t inflict harm on themselves without a very good reason. At the moment, fans have all the power. They are the arbiters of who gets what. This has never happened before. You want to remove this power post haste. Riddle me this, when has removing power from a large (organically) democratic collective and placing it in the hands of an elite of entitled custodians ever benefitted the majority? I’m waiting.

4. “For God’s sake you wordy prick it’s illegal!!”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Here is where the chrome is exposed. Laws exist for a reason. But that reason seems to have temporarily eluded you. Let me give you a quick refresher. Laws exist to dictate what is commonly acceptable behaviour within a society. A consensus if possible, a majority if not. Elections (and the democratic process) use the same system. So laws reflect the people that they govern. This is why the Romans had different laws from the Greeks who had different laws from the Chinese who had, you get the idea. With this kernel of truth cosily stowed let us take a look at sharing on the internet. The law says it is illegal, but a vast majority of people do it. Just like they used to swap cassette tapes. It really is very simple: When a law dictates that almost all of the people that it governs are criminals, the law is wrong. The law no longer reflects and serves the people and should therefore be changed.

Yes I know that it will be a painful transition, great change always is. But change will continue like a Toyota Prius whether you are screaming and stamping on the brake or not. As Mr. Bruce Lee so succinctly put it: “Be like water and you’ll be fine our kid.” I’m paraphrasing obviously.

Now that I’ve cleared that up for you all you can all get back to looking for jobs in the banking sector.

Peace love hugs and kisses,

Ian

Over the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting with an implementation of Ruby named MacRuby. MacRuby enables the use of Ruby as a programming language for the development of Cocoa Mac apps. I love this idea, and so I’ve had a bit of a play around with the Framework. My initial efforts can be found here: http://rivup.com/ Although the app is quite trivial in nature it did serve as an excellent learning platform, enabling me to get used to the layout of Xcode (I normally use TextMate) have a play around with interface builder, and get a general introduction to the Cocoa API.

Moving forward I can see MacRuby being an excellent way of enticing web programmers (like myself) into application development. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this up and running for iPhone development at some stage. At the moment we will alas have to be contented with Mac apps in Ruby. I also found the experience of programming Ruby with the Cocoa API’s very useful. This could be an excellent bridge into the writing native Objective-C code (although I’d much rather deal with the Ruby syntax).

One note on the current state of the MacRuby project. A lot of development is going on behind the scenes and in the rush some features of MacRuby are broken and others are buggy. There is a further abstraction of Objective-C development available called HotCocoa. This enables Ruby developers to write pure ruby applications without using Xcode and it’s companion tools. Alas HotCocoa appears to currently be broken, but hopefully will be back on track soon. I also found a few bugs with compiling Ruby files into binary format, so if you run into problems with that trying building your app without that stage.

Things I’d like to see in the future:
iPhone app support
The MacRuby framework and libs bundled as standard with future versions of OS X. This would remove the need to embed the entire Framework in each MacRuby app.
HotCocoa fixed.

Note: Hotcocoa is now fixed in the nightly builds.

Below you will find a link to one of my Google Docs that I have maintained as a UNIX terminal cheat sheet. There are so many commands to remember with the terminal that it helps to have somewhere to look and quickly refresh the memory.

I thought about converting the document and posting it in it’s own right here, in the end I decided against it because (a) it would take a while! and (b) this way as I update the file you will all instantly have access to the amendments!
The file covers general UNIX commands, copying, moving, deleting, archiving, remote connections (ssh and the like) as well as some specific stuff like Git, Ruby and Rails. As I use this document all the time I’ll be updating as and when the fancy takes me to keep things relevant and current. If anyone has any suggestions or thinks anything could be clearer please let me know!

Here’s the link:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcz7892r_7gdmhzxgx

Hi there John, my name is Ian. I don’t much like radio shows (the adverts) but yours is excellent.
I’ve written recorded and produced music for years. Not in the usual “I’m a music producer because I downloaded a copy of fruity loops and worked out what 4/4 is.” way, but in the other, you know, professional one. Four studios, a robbery, a dodgy Argentinean con-man, and a lot of music later I finally pulled the plug on my dream of making music for a living and settled in to making websites to pay the bills. I still have a studio (Stormont Studios) in Clapham, but it’s for the love not the money that I’m there. My apologies for the long winded tale, the point is approaching I promise!

I made a track. I made it, put it on my hard disk and forgot about it. Yes I liked it, but I’ve worked on dozens of tracks that I liked and that never went anywhere. As far as I can tell unless Daddy happens to know Blur, or you’re an affluent waste of space with a bad hair cut and an opium addiction you shouldn’t plan for a career in popular music. I know too many insanely talented and completely unemployed musicians to be swayed from this mindset. Maybe that’s wrong. I digress. So I have made this track. One of my aforementioned insanely talented friends phoned me up and demanded that I do something about it. I have no idea what that means, and the only credible person that I could think of to contact was you. If you listen to it you’ll probably quite like it. The track is called “Far Far Away” and the recording artist is none other than myself. Just little old me doing my one man band impression. If one person can do every job in the song making process it certainly adds credence to the argument that musicians are lazy. (We are.) Maybe I’m a genius and the voice of a generation (like Kanye West is. Right?) or maybe I’ve spent too long in padded rooms with no windows. Anyhoo I have attached a copy of this track. I’ve called the project Clark Parker after my two favourite super heroes. Both had normal day jobs and amazing powers. I can relate. I also enjoy wearing my underpants outside of my trousers. That last bit was a lie.

I don’t have any expectations as to what will happen to this email, but it would make my day if a real human replied to it, even if it’s just to say: “John Kennedy is in fact an apparition created by the music industry to fool kids in bands into thinking that if they practice really hard, they will become the Beatles. Your surname isn’t Opennheimer and as far as I can tell you are not on Crack. Fuck off!”

Pardon my French and congratulations on recently becoming a Dad.

Ian Alexander Wood (Clark Parker)

I rationalised over and over again. After all having access to things like directional maps would allow me to dispense with the notion of a TomTom. I could just get the TomTom app. I could also dispense with the need for a mobile broadband dongle, I could tether my MacBook Pro straight to my phone using the unlimited data offered with the pricey mobile contract. Unfortunately my worst fears as to the business ethics of those that operate mobile telecommunications here in Britain were proved correct. Boy is it horrible to be so right.

I’ve had contracts before with most of the main protagonists, I’ve always had that weird feeling. It’s what I imagine exiting a particularly murky swamp to discover that you are covered in leeches must feel like. To extend the metaphor, O2, ill contented with syphoning the cash from their customers in the usual manner have decided that their current operational conceit is taking far too long and have endeavoured to suck the iPhone fan-base dry. I just can’t understand it. We’re talking about a demographic of technologically informed, enthusiastic and solvent users who have already been sold on the dream of an iPhone by the manufacturer. All that O2 need do is price their products sensibly, avoid public faux pas and play Santa to Apple geeks everywhere on June 19th. Only a moron, or collection of morons (mori?) could turn this unassailable position into a fail. I mean, none of their competitors have the product, it’s a home run by default. So what did the O2 management do? The unthinkable, they angered geekdom with their blatant profiteering. The first sin they committed was to anger existing iPhone customers with their upgrade policy. Never come between a geek and his latest bit of tech!

The molten lava that was spewed as the news of the O2 upgrade policy broke may have disfigured O2’s image permanently, at least with this demographic. Their “It’s not us it’s Apple” defence fell on deaf ears. This is hardly surprising, many Apple zealots would rather take an iMac to the head than entertain the idea that Apple had committed a transgression against them. The second of O2’s cataclysmic misjudgements was the decision to charge exorbitant fees for tethering. This one is irredeemable. Truly it feels like having that shiny mountain bike delivered on Christmas morning, only for stinky Timmy who lives down the road to break in and steal it while your attention is diverted making eggnog. (Don’t fret it’s not a true story.) Talk about deflated. What makes the tethering situation worse is that O2 won’t admit what they are doing. They are hiding behind the argument that tethering will overload their network in some way, and that they need to charge a ton of money to prepare for the deluge. This is absolute bunk. A megabyte is a megabyte, downloaded to an iPhone or a laptop. That megabyte is free through the phone but if I want the same information delivered to a different device I have to pay again? Please.

Imagine you’re in a pub. Being a gentleman of the ale, you buy a pint. After hanging around at the bar for a few minutes, you decide to take your pint out to the beer garden. It’s a nice day. But wait, as you approach the door you sense that something is not right. There is a sign by the door to the beer garden….. And a man. The man is taking money from people. As your proximity to the sign increases you can make out what it says: “Beer garden beer consumption £3.” “But I’ve already paid for my pint” you reason with the stony faced man that is taking the payments. “If you want to use your beer outside, you’ll have to pay for it again he exclaims.” You leave the pub feeling insulted and never come back. You tell everyone that will listen about how much of a rip off the pub is. They like being ripped off as much as you, and they don’t go there either.

But what if you really love that pub? What if you can’t live without it’s beer garden? (For those that are slow on the metaphorical uptake the pub is the iPhone and the beer garden is WIFI tethering.) Well I’ve done a little bit of research, and I’ve found out a couple of things that you might be interested in learning if you still want to brave the sharks of the O2 waters and buy that iPhone 3GS.

The first thing that you should know is that if you want to use tethering, but don’t want to pay O2 a minimum of £15 a month extra for the privilege you can. In order to achieve this feet you need to step over the line. You need to Jailbreak your iPhone. With the phone Jailbroken a myriad of tethering options surface, the most notable being PdaNet. Tethering for free accomplished. Of course there are risks to going the unofficial route, I recommend researching the subject thoroughly before making the decision for yourself.

The second thing you can do (At least if you are a new customer) to reduce the cost of purchasing an iPhone on contract with O2 is to use an internet cashback service such as TopCashback. For those unfamiliar with the concept, they work like this: You go to the cashback site. You register. You check to see if the product or brand that you want is available through the site (O2 and the Carphone Warehouse are available on TopCashback) You check to see how much money you will be entitled to and then if you are happy, click on the link to take you through to the relevant site and make your purchase as normal. Your transaction will be tracked by the cashback site, and you will receive a balance on that site for the transaction. Carphone warehouse looks like the best bet, offering up to £45 cashback on a mobile contract.

Lets hope that O2 see sense and rectify their barmy pricing policies for the iPhone soon (unlikely). Apple do not escape without some blame in my opinion, and I would like to see them open up the availability of the iPhone to at least one other mobile network provider in the near future. A little competition might keep both parties honest. Here’s hoping.

The problem is not with the analysis that child exploitation is wrong. My problem is with the instalment of an unregulated clandestine censorship committee that effectively gives the government the ability to censor the internet for it’s citizens without anyone even knowing about it. It is my opinion that having such a mechanism in place is an infringement of our civil liberties, and the principles of free speech on which the internet was founded. Worse it is a ticking time bomb for governmental or organisational abuse with no self regulating mechanism to provide information when/if this takes place. It could be happening right now and nobody would know.
I think the people that have the power to make decisions and policy in these matters need to take a long hard look at themselves. Yet again, the weak, short-sighted, reactionary, and downright stupid solution wins the day. Some idiot police chief can take credit for thwarting the evil doers and we can all live happily ever after. Please.

There are some fundamental things that these idiots are missing, not only about the internet but about human nature. Allow me to educate them. First, blocking a few URL’s isn’t going to stop anyone sharing illicit material. It’s like plugging that hole in the dam with your finger, another leak will spring up elsewhere. It’s a terrible thought, but anyone that was interested in the kind of material that would make the rest of us decidedly ill is not going to be put off by his favourite “www.naughty-and-naive.com” going under. Did people do these terrible things before the internet came along? That’s rhetorical so I’ll go ahead and answer my own question: “Yes.” Does this mean that the internet cannot be the cause of this behaviour? Rhetorical again what are the chances, I’ll go ahead and answer that one too: “Yes”. I sense a pattern forming. OK, so I’ll dial the condemnation down to a dull roar for a moment, my point should be pretty clear. It’s not the technology, it’s the people. The hypocrisy of it all, I find it hard to stomach. The people that perpetrate these acts against children are ill. No doubt. But can you honestly say that you are surprised? Just moments ago I watched a ten foot wide poster of Hannah Montana, complete with pre-amplified surrogate phallus, sidle past my window on the side of bus. For anyone that has no knowledge of the picture that I am referring to here it is, printed for convenience on some paper towels.

Again, my point should be clear. I heard a very bright person being interviewed recently about civil liberty, and something they said stuck with me: “The problem with giving up civil liberties is that it’s like erosion, once it’s gone you’ll never get it back.” So say we all.

Before we get started, an admission: These days I am a total Mac convert, long gone are the days of building my own computers and cursing endlessly at Microsoft’s ineptitude. If you are not running an Intel based Mac system on at least OS X Tiger, you has my condolences but you should know that this list is not for you. Number 1 on any list of useful tools for the web professional that I write would be a Mac. That’s just me, but I thought I’d better explain who this information is aimed at as I’m not sure that all of this software is available for other computing platforms. Right, onwards!

1. Textmate

   Textmate is THE text editor for the Mac. It is one of those tools that looks fairly simple at first glance, but beneath this superficial simplicity lies the power of a unix monster! Textmate integrates seamlessly with your Macs terminal prompt, connecting at the very core of your system. You can open files to be edited from the terminal itself. Very handy. This is just the start of the story though, Textmate is fully customisable, both in terms of look and functionality. You can chose from a plethora of custom color coded skins to help you write your code, or if you can’t find one that you like you can make your own! Textmate also comes with an extremely smart set of behavioral shortcuts and commands that are wrapped up in “bundles”. Textmate is fully extensible, so if it doesn’t come with a bundle you need you can just add it on later. Remove the bundles you don’t want, add the ones you need.

   The fluid manner in which you can customise Textmate ensures that you will always be able to adapt the program for the particular set of tasks that you would like to perform. There are bundles for almost everything, from HTML and CSS to Ruby and SQL. There is even a Blogging bundle, which I am using to write this very post right from within Textmate!

   This brief synopsis really does just scratch the surface of what is a juggernaut of a web development tool. It’s not free, but it is very good value for money and their is a free trial version. If you are still building websites in Dreamweaver or some other GUI based tool do yourself a favour, bite the bullet and begin to learn to code your creations in Textmate instead. Yes there is a bit of a learning curve to doing things this way, and the text based approach can seem a little daunting at first, but trust me it’s worth it! Not only will your sites improve, but ultimately your understanding and control of what is going on will as well. Faster, more fun, with better control. What’s not to like!?

   You can download a copy of textmate from here: http://macromates.com/ and there is an excellent book on the subject from the pragmatic programmers:http://www.pragprog.com/titles/textmate/textmate

2. Firefox

   There really is no excuse not to have Firefox installed if you are in the business of building websites. It’s free, it’s relatively small, and it’s very very extensible. It is this extensibility that has made it the most popular browser in use today. No matter what you are trying to do, or how you are trying to work you can be almost certain that there is a plugin for Firefox that will fulfill your needs. This is especially true for the web designing fraternity, with all manner of useful tools constantly popping up. There are far too many Firefox plugins for me to list here, but I will give you the low down on the ones that I think pass the Daz doorstep challenge and make it onto my installed list.

   • Firebug
     Realtime web development tool from right within your browser
     http://getfirebug.com/
   • Ubiquity
     Textual command interface for Firefox, a new way to control your browser
     https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9527
   • Xmarks
     A cross browser compatible addon that will memorise your bookmarks and passwords for you.
     http://www.xmarks.com/
   • Add to search bar
     Add any search from any page to the search bar in Firefox
     https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3682
   • Delicious Bookmarks
     Adds access to the social bookmarking site http://delicious.com from within Firefox
     https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615
   • is.gd URL shrinker
     Shrink those pesky URL’s into teeny tiny ones with one click from within Firefox.
     https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7369
   • SEO Quake
     A whole host of SEO tools
     https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3036

   Firefox itself can be installed from here: www.mozilla.com/firefox/

3. Transmit

   FTP clients are hardly what you would call sexy software. They ferry a load of information from one place to another. So what really counts is functionality, reliability and transparency. Transmit has all of those things in spades. The interface is well thought out and easy to understand, it gives you all the information you need as and when you need it, and it very rarely goes wrong. In fact it has never gone wrong for me. Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner! Icing on the cake are features like being able to create a droplet file containing all of the relevant information for a specific account. This droplet can then be zipped up and sent to the person needing access, they double click it at the other end and voila! Transmit on their machine will open with all of the relevant access informaiton already in place.

   Transmit isn’t free but it is very reasonably priced. http://www.panic.com/transmit/

4. CSSEdit

   Even if you are a die hard text based web site builder (like me!) it can be useful to sometimes step into GUI land when developing the CSS for your site. Most CSS work can be done straight from a text editor, but even the most hardened of coders will occasionally forget the odd styling rule, or want a visual cue to tweek their layout so that it is perfect. This is where CSSEdit comes in. CSSEdit is an extremely light weight and responsive tool for building style sheets and viewing the changes in real time. These changes are rendered using Webkit so you are effectively seeing the output from Safari as you amend your styling rules. The changes are instant, the GUI elegant, and the program responsive. If you have been trying to build stylesheets in Dreamweaver you are in for a treat. CSSEdit is not free, but as with Textmate and Transmit it is extremely good value for money.

   You can download a copy from here: http://macrabbit.com/cssedit/

5. Color Schemer Studio

   This little app is an extremely simple concept: Provide a way for designers to choose colors that complement each other, store them together, and recall the hex values for those colors with ease. Once you have started using this app for your color choices, you’ll feel lost without it. It excels at being a handy and simple repository for the color based information that may be flying around your computer as you move from application to application. Try it, you’ll like it.

   Color Schemer Studio isn’t free, but it is very reasonable, check it out here: http://www.colorschemer.com/osx_info.php

6. Illustrator

   In my opinion Illustrator is the jewel in the crown of Adobe products. If you are lucky enough to own a graphics tablet (I recommend the Wacom Intuos range) then using Illustrator really is a treat. For those that aren’t familiar with Illustrator it is a vector graphics program of the highest order. Vector graphics files differ from their bitmapped counterparts in that they rely upon mathematical coordinates to reproduce what is on the page, they do no track pixels. The use of coordinates brings several key advantages, the main ones being the size of the files created is generally much smaller than their pixel based counterparts, and vector based images can be scaled to any size without any loss of quality or aliasing. With those key advantages in mind Illustrator takes the premise of the vector image and runs with it.

   Since CS4 Illustrator finally has support for multiple art boards in one document. This is incredibly handy for developing graphics in different sizes for different tasks, or for creating differing versions of something based on a common template. Illustrator is not the most intuitive program to use but it will reward those that take the time to progress beyond the learning curve. As with all Adobe products, Illustrator isn’t cheap.

   You can find the Illustrator page on the Adobe website here: http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/

7. Fireworks

   Fireworks is a little bit like the black sheep of the Adobe family. Everyone knows about what great tools Photoshop and Illustrator are, but all too often Fireworks is overlooked. This is a real shame because it really is a gem of a program for anyone wanting to design for the web. Fireworks is something of a hybrid, it can deal with bitmap images and vector images on the same page. This is incredibly useful for anyone that works some of the time in Photoshop and some of the time in Illustrator. Fireworks becomes the hub of the design process, a place where the prototype page designs take place. Fireworks also allows you to create multiple pages and templates within one file, and allows you to create image “slices” from those pages, meaning that you can keep one Fireworks master file that contains all of the images for your site! Very handy indeed.

   The interface is very similar to the other Adobe design applications which makes picking up the program easy if you have spent any amount of time in Photoshop or Illustrator. As of CS4 Fireworks can now even convert your wireframes into working HTML and CSS pages. This is a very cool feature for a quick look at your design in a browser, but in no way would I recommend using the outputted CSS for deployment! Still it shows that Adobe are looking to evolve Fireworks and are trying to further integrate it with the web design process.

   As with most Adobe products Fireworks doesn’t come cheap. Although I love some of their software I do think that Adobe products are generally overpriced in comparison to some of the other excellent software out there. That said I haven’t found programs to replace any of my Adobe tools. If you use something that you think is better, and it’s cheaper I would love to know about it!

   Adobe Fireworks can be found on the Adobe website here: http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/

8. Expandrive

   Expandrive is a handy little application for the Mac that enables you to connect to remote drives as if they were hard disks on your computer. You can access these drives straight from the finder just like any other hard disk! The program is based on the Macfusion open source program. Macfusion provides similar functionality to Expandrive with the added bonus of it being free, but at time of writing MacFusion was a little buggy and harder work. Expandrive is very reasonably priced in any case, and as the main reason for having a program like this is convenience it seems silly to scrimp here! Expandrive provides support for the SFTP (SSH) and FTP(S) protocols, and as of version 2 now supports Amazon S3 straight from within the finder. Very cool.

   You can buy Expandrive from here: http://www.expandrive.com

9. Suitcase Fusion

   Suitcase fusion is a font management tool. Although this doesn’t initially sound that important or interesting, font management quickly becomes a major issue for many designers. The problem is the number of fonts that a designer may need in their library. Traditional font management software like the kind that comes integrated with OS X on the Mac, does a great job of keeping track of what fonts are installed when the number of fonts on the system is at a reasonable size. However it will quickly give up the ghost when confronted with a mound of thousands of typefaces to activate. The system will become sluggish, then unstable and things will begin to go wrong. The solution is Suitcase fusion. This super clever program will manage all of your fonts in one giant “vault” file, quickly and easily allowing the activation of fonts as and when they are needed. Fonts can be activated permanently, or just for the duration of that session. Even better, Suitcase Fusion ships with several plugins for major design programs (such as Illustrator). These plugins will automatically detect any fonts that are needed when a file of the relevant type is being opened, and activate the necessary fonts. Very slick. I’ve tried quite a few different systems for managing large numbers of professional fonts and Suitcase Fusion is by far the best. It may not be the cheapest font management tool out there, but it is the best.

   You can find Suitcase Fusion on the web here: http://www.extensis.com/en/products/suitcasefusion2/index.jsp

10. VMware Fusion

    Product number ten in my illustrious list goes to VMware Fusion, which should not be confused with Suitcase Fusion from the previous entry! VMware Fusion is an emulation environment for the Mac. It enables the user to install any number of virtual machines on top of OS X and run them in tandem with the native Mac operating system. This is incredibly handy for the web professional as it allows you to test across a much broader range of browsers. I run a Windows XP virtual machine through VMware Fusion on my Mac and this enables me to test in Internet Explorer and Google Chrome from my Mac. This is beyond handy. VMware Fusion is not free software, however there is a comparable open source program available from Sun Microsystems called http://www.virtualbox.org/. I prefer the integration of VMware Fusion. It offers additional features like Unity mode which enables you to run emulated applications in your dock as if they were native OS X programs. I find these added extras hard to walk away from but it’s nice to know that there is an open source alternative.

    VMware Fusion can be found on the web here: www.VMware.com/Mac

If you are looking for a way to remove the 3D dock that comes with Leopard then all you need are a few carefully typed Terminal commands.
First open terminal and enter this command:

$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

To change it back simply enter :

$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

Then Type:

killall Dock

Don’t fancy buggering about in the Terminal, then just download the DockDoctor app here and it will do it all for you.

Database fix:
I found the solution on a forum from a guy called camdagr8

On some hosting accounts you’re not a full admin of the db.
so on line: 1009 of wp.class.php when it checks for the db user level it returns if it’s < 8

Commented out lines ( basically delete the lines and add // ):
1009, 1010, and 1108

Skinning:
Make sure first of all you have copied the css from the wp-forum to your style sheet or linked it. Then just edit the css colors to match your scheme. Then go into wp-forum/skins and select images. If you want to change the new post image then on.gif and off.gif controls them. Play around replace images and soon you will have a custom skin.

1. Open terminal and type in the following code:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

2. Next you need to restart the dock by typing:
killall Dock

You will now notice that next to the terminal icon on the dock there should be a blank space that you are able to move around at will, want another space? Repeat the above steps and you may have as many as you like!

If you would like the space to appear on the right side of your dock (on the side with your Trash) then replace the code from step 1 with the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

There have been several changes in the rules and cars for the new season including a new system called KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) which gives 7 seconds of extra power per lap, aerodynamic changes and the return of slick tires. All of these things are designed to make the sport more entertaining to watch by making overtaking easier and the pack run closer together.
I think its still a wee bit early after just one race to say definitively if all of these measures have been a success, but if this race sets the standard for the ones to come then it looks a lot like they have been. The racing was tight, there was lots of overtaking and it wasn’t until the last 3 laps that we knew Button was going to take victory. The race wasn’t decided by fuel loads or pit lane tactics, it was sheer hard work on the track by the drivers battling each other to the end.

The other refreshing change was seeing a top 3 not dominated by Ferrari or McLaren, this time it was Brawn and Toyota (although Hamilton has now been awarded 3rd by the stewards). The Brawn team seem to be going from rags to riches, winning the grand prix only 6 weeks after not knowing if they had the money to even enter a team this year. Good to see that a team with relatively small finances (compared to the big 3 or Ferrari, McLaren and Toyota) can fight with the big boys and win.

The BBC coverage also deserves a mention, with some good punditry (although things did look a little frosty between David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan) and the joy of finally being able to watch a grand prix with no adverts. Good coverage on the TV and as only the BBC can continuing that across on the Red Button, online and on the radio. With all those services they really showed up the failings of the ITV coverage and in my opinion the coverage is worth the cost of the license fee alone. Good old aunty.

Bring on Malaysia in a week.

I seem to be creating a trend of linking to articles about the physical nature of the internet. I’m finding it fascinating to learn about the real world manifestations of a system that I often just take for granted.

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/140574,top-10-it-locations.aspx

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-intrnet

Internet Explorer is changing and Microsoft’s next web browser will be based on a research project named Gazelle.
Link to story

I think amiga is a very personal computer for the people that have used them. Many people have different views on amiga and what it means to them. This is purely because amiga covered such a broad base of subjects and areas. It was not just used by gamers, it was used by video professionals, music makers, arts and many others. Amiga may mean a great game of lemmings to some people or a very good platform for live video switching and cutomzing hardware to others. This means that many people look to a new amiga they expect it to be as broad as the old machines coving all aspects of hardware and software. This is a hard task to accomplish even for apple or microsoft let alone Hyperion or Amiga inc. Think about it macs may be great for video editing and sound work but I would not buy one for gaming. That go’s for a windows box they may be good for gaming and other things but i would not buy it as a stable platform for a total computer illiterate. This may not exist so much these days with vmware and unity but I know from personal experiance that there is still a lot of things I can do on windows that i cannot do on osx and vice versa.

Computers have reached the state wear a 600mhz linux laptop can do everything the average user wants to do so hardware is no longer holding us back. This presents a good and bad situation for the future of amiga comuting. It means with low power boards amiga os can fly and compete on a level of speed as other os’s, but hardware much faster is produced in higher numbers and is cheaper. With emulation and Morphos now on PPC Macs and (fingers crossed) Amiga Os4.1 this solves the problem. So on the hardware side I think its all about playing the waiting game, but hey at least its here (yay hyperion!).

Software is changing and they way its run and distributed. Most software is aiming to be web based and face it Amiga and the web have not had a good friendship for a long while until recently (yay OWB, Netsurf, Sputnik!). With webkit now on Amiga it finally brings Amiga Internet to the level of other systems but also makes which os you are using irrelevant (every os has a web browser, so why choose one?). This may also be good. This development means that software has not got to be ported as it is web based and runs in your browser so yay loads of apps. It also means that any webbased software designed on Amiga will lose its Amiga exclusive appel but its also easy to make Amiga applications that can spread and compete with others on the same level as it could be run on any os with a browser.

I think personally a good way for Amiga to go forward is to use the feature it still has left that are completly unique to Amiga. Like dragging down the resolution and swapping between them instantly and the power and control of the os. The low power consumption, Trackers, great old software. It could be used as a great media center using hollywood and the touch screen driver. The key now is to get onto the cheaper hardware and get the web more advanced. Amiga will never get back to its former glory but it can still make some interesting, innovative and different projects. In my mind Amiga computing has started fresh and still has a way to go but still impressive. Finally we have a good starting base and with os 4.1 and hardware out and available. Hopefully we will get onto smaller cheaper systems and the Os will develop and we will start seen many interesting and exciting projects develop.The future of modern Amiga computing is a great alternative system to use that is not a just a hobby but a great small fast system, people just have to see it and they will come.

Here is the offending article:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/03/05/dreamweaver-is-dying/

AmiKit

This is a guide I have created to get AmiKit fully working on an EEE Pc.

1) First download and install amikit http://amikit.amiga.sk/
2) Install roms and operating system with standard installer in 800 x 600 screenmode
3)Close amikit after instalation and the click on the amikit icon then click configure WinUAE then change the values to screenshot to the ones in the pic

save the settings to the winuae config u are using.
4) Load amikit and use fn + f6 to go to windows and use the Asus EEE Pc utility to change windows mode to LCD 800 x 600 (Do this if you need to move the amikit screen about)
6) Open “amikit” and then “prefs” and select screenmode

save screenmode and exit
7) Then (still in the prefs folder) select “ShowAmiga96_prefs” convert image to the settings on the picture below and save

Restart amikit and play away + make sure u have your cd drive plugged in when u load amikit.

Now it should look like this:

SSH:

To Login to a server using SSH:

ssh user@domain.com

(eg) ssh waavooc@waavoo.com (use -p for specifying port)

To Exit from the server

exitof course!

General file browsing creation and permissions in Terminal

To move to a child directory

cd directory_name

To move up a directory

cd ..

Takes you to your home folder:

cd $home

To show file structure for current location:

ls -la

To delete a file:

rm name_of_file

To create an Alias

ln -s ~/the/original/path ~/the/new/path

(eg) ln -s ~/yourapp/public ~/public_html

To view all hidden files in OS X finder

#!/bin/bash
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder


Replace end of second line with FALSE to turn off viewing of all hidden files.

To change the permissions of a file or folder

chmod 755 your.file

The three digit number denotes the privileges you are applying. Generally 755 is quite a good choice if you are in doubt and need more access than you currently have. It will set all rights to the owner (You!) and read and execute rights for everything else. Use 777 with caution, this grants everyone access to all permissions!

To edit a document from the terminal

To edit a document using Textmate:

mate name_of.file

To edit document using Pico. (If you don’t have Textmate , go get it!):

pico name_of_file.php

Terminal Commands for Ruby on Rails

Do these commands from the root folder of your app:

To launch a Rails app.

script/server

To create a controller for your Rails app.

script/generate controller my_controller_name

To create a model for your Rails app.

script/generate model my_model_name

To launch the Rails debugger:

script/server --debugger

To Rake (like Make) a database

rake db:migrate

Note! You can find lots of useful information about the rake command here: http://www.railsenvy.com/2007/6/11/ruby-on-rails-rake-tutorial

To find out where your Ruby is installed:

which ruby

To create a new Rails app:

rails my_app

To create a new Rails app and specify MySQL as the database:

rails -d mysql my_app

To find out which version you are using:

ruby --version

You can do the same thing for Rails and Ruby Gems:
rails --version
gem --version


If you want to shorten things you could do this instead:

ruby -v
rails -v
gem -v


To see a list of the Ruby Gems you currently have installed:

gem list | egrep -v "^( |$)"

To quit a running Ruby on Rails app:

ctrl-c

To install a Ruby Gem

sudo gem install name_of_gem

To uninstall a Ruby Gem

sudo gem uninstall name_of_gem

To update the version of Ruby installed:

sudo gem update rails

To update the installed Gems:

sudo gem update

To update the installed version of Rails:

sudo gem install rails

MySQL commands:

You can get MySQL and lots more besides here: MySQL

May I prod you in the direction of another Waavoo! article that you may be interested in if you are thinking about installing MySQL. There are instuctions for installation of pretty much everything. phpMyAdmin is especially useful 7 step guide for installing Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Apache with PHP, and phpMyAdmin on OSX Leopard

Log in to the MySQL monitor as the root user

mysql -u root

Create a MySQL database once logged in to the MySQL monitor:

create database database_name;

Quit the MySQL monitor

\q

An example of creating a table in the MySQL monitor:

CREATE TABLE posts (
-> id INT (11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
-> title VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
-> body VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
-> post_date DATETIME NOT NULL,
-> PRIMARY KEY (id)
-> );


That’s it for now, I’ll add more in a future post. I hope you find some of this useful!

Exactly what kind of X/HTML you should be using is a bit of a sticking point at present. The powers that be seem to have made a bit of a hash of making the standards easy to understand, this has resulted in lots of confusion on the part of well meaning Web Designers who want nothing more than to make sure that their code plays by the rules. “Do I use HTML or XHTML? Strict or Transitional? Why on earth is this so complicated” you might say. Well, I can’t tell you definitively what doctype you should be using, there is no 100% correct answer. I personally favour the XHTML 1.0 Strict doctype, although some others will argue for HTML 4.01 Strict instead. Here is an example of an XHTML 1.0 Strict doctype:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Confusing huh? If you are new to this doctype malarky, then perhaps the best choice to start you off would be something like XHTML 1.0 transitional. The transitional doctype’s are a little more forgiving than their strict counterparts, and that may help to get you off and running. Info about current doctypes is also provided by the W3C, and can be found here: W3C information on DOCTYPE

One final thing to bear in mind is that shiny new HTML5 standard is going to attempt to make all the pain go away, and one of the ways it is going to do this is to introduce much simpler doctype declarations. Here is an example of a HTML5 doctype declaration:

<!DOCTYPE html>

All aboard the standards train!

Facebook’s Get-Rich-Quick Scheme

I have seen a lot in the new about crazy massive statues. The angel of the north started it all off and then recent Giant Kent white Horse. I am hoping that in a few years england will be full of giant creatures and celebs. Imagine a giant Bruce Forsyth on the roof of the bcc building.

BAD! BAD BAD!

<a href="http://waavoo.com" target="_blank">WAAVOO!</a>

GOOD GOOD GOOD!

<a href="http://waavoo.com" title="waavoo" rel="external nofollow">WAAVOO!</a>

Hope this helps all those standards sticklers out there.

TTFN!

The 2008 version bordered on the surreal. The stock market was tanking, the bond market had flat-lined, and the price of gold was surging to its biggest one-day jump in nearly a decade, an indication that investors everywhere thought the global economy was going to hell.

Yet here was Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman and CEO, on a sparse stage at the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, in a green-energy love-in with his counterpart at General Electric Co., Jeff Immelt. The pair bathed in the glow of each other’s affirmation, convinced that the two companies, working together, can save the planet.

MORE…

First the disclaimer: I’ve been through these instructions several times to make sure that they are accurate. That said you use them at your own risk, it’s not my fault if you melt your machine etc etc. Right, onward!

These steps will make a new install of Ruby on Rails and MySQL in the directory /usr/local. This means that they should be safe from future OS X updates  which might change how the existing Ruby install behaves.

1. Install Xcode.

You can either install Xcode from your Leopard DVD, or download it from here:
http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html
It’s a large download, so you might want to go put the kettle on.

2. Install Textmate.

You can find a trial of this editor here:
http://macromates.com/
When prompted create a link to
/usr/local/bin
If you are not prompted click Help then Terminal usage to create this link

3. Set paths.

Before we do anything else we need to tell our system where things are going to be living.
We are now going to need to use the Terminal. You should be able to find this in Applications/Utilities. After each line has been typed, press return. Here’s the first one:
mate ~/.bash_login
This will create a blank file in Textmate. Enter the following into the blank file, ensuring it is the LAST line in the document:
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"
Exit and save the file.
Close and re-open Terminal.

4. Install Ruby, Ruby Gems and Rails.

I am basically going through Dan Benjamin’s process for installing Ruby on Rails in /usr/local, I’m just bringing it up to date. The original article can be found here:
http://danbenjamin.com/articles/2008/02/ruby-rails-leopard

Let’s make a folder for our downloads. In Terminal, type:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/src
sudo chgrp admin /usr/local/src
sudo chmod -R 775 /usr/local/src
cd /usr/local/src
Now let’s download and install the latest stable version of Ruby. At time of writing this is version 1.8.7. You can check to see what the latest versions of Ruby, Ruby Gems and Rails are here:
http://www.rubyonrails.org/down
Note! If the software versions listed on the website above differ from the ones I refer to, then in order to download and install the latest release(s) you will need to amend the Terminal lines that refer to these downloads. This should be quite easy, simply update any number that refers to a version of a particular piece of software.
In Terminal type:
curl -O ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.7-p72.tar.gz
tar xzvf ruby-1.8.7-p72.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.7-p72
./configure --enable-shared --enable-pthread CFLAGS=-D_XOPEN_SOURCE=1
make
sudo make install
cd ..
To verify that Ruby has installed to the correct place type:
which ruby
You should see:
/usr/local/bin/ruby
If not, go back and check what you entered in step 3.
Assuming that all is well, we can now install Ruby Gems.
In the Terminal window type:
curl -O http://files.rubyforge.mmmultiworks.com/rubygems/rubygems-1.3.1.tgz
tar xzvf rubygems-1.3.1.tgz
cd rubygems-1.3.1
sudo /usr/local/bin/ruby setup.rb
cd ..
Nearly there. Now we can use RubyGems to install Rails.
In terminal type:
sudo gem install rails
Now that Rails is installed, we can add some Gems in the same way:
sudo gem install mongrel
sudo gem install capistrano
Or we can install multiple Gems on one line like this:
sudo gem install RedCloth termios rspec sake
Finally, we just need to install the Gems for accessing a database. Rails has been configured since version 2.0 to use SQlite as it’s standard database, and this comes pre-installed on Leopard. If you want to install the relevant Gem, then type:
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby
The line to install the MySQL Gem is:
sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql
Hooray! Onto the next step.

5. Install MySQL.
Download MySQL for Leopard from here:
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg
Select the “pick a mirror” link next to the (package format) download for Mac OS X 10.5 (x86)
When you have selected your mirror and the download has completed double click on MySQL package, followed by MySQL startup and finally MySQL prefpane
In Terminal type:
mate /etc/my.cnf
This will create another blank file in Textmate. This one will ensure that only local connections can be made to the MySQL database. Enter the following lines into the blank file, save and close.
[mysqld]
bind-address = 127.0.0.1

6. Edit Apache installation.
Apache is already installed on Leopard, it is turned off by default. We need to enable PHP support which is also turned off by default.
In Terminal type the next line followed by enter:
mate /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
This will open the Apache configuration file. Go to line number 114. It should look like this:
#LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
Delete the # from the start of this line and save the document.
If you want to you can also change the root folder of LOCALHOST in this file. The relevant line should be 163, and it should look like this:
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
If you wanted to change the root of LOCALHOST to say, your Sites folder inside your user account, you could change the path to:
DocumentRoot "/Users/the_name_of_your_user_account/Sites"
Save and close the file.
Now we need to make some tweeks to how PHP will work. This will ensure that all errors will be reported to us.
In Terminal (again!) type these lines followed by enter after each:
cd /private/etc
sudo cp php.ini.default php.ini
mate /private/etc/php.ini
The file php.ini should open in textmate.
Go to line 305. It should look like this:
error_reporting  =  E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE
Ammend it to:
error_reporting  =  E_ALL
Save and close the file.
Go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences
Click on the sharing tab, and enable Web Sharing from the service list. This will turn on Apache server.
If at any point you want to restart Apache, all you need do is turn it on and off from this menu.

7. Install and configure phpMyAdmin.
Download phpMyAdmin from:
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php
Copy the downloaded folder into the root folder of your Apache install. For me this is now:
Users/ian_wood/Sites
Rename the folder to phpMyAdmin
Now in Terminal do these lines followed by return after each: (Note! If you are installing the phpMyAdmin folder to a different location, you will need to amend the first line to reflect this)
cd ~/Sites/phpMyAdmin
mkdir config
chmod o+rw config
Open a web browser and go to the location of the phpMyAdmin folder. If you have done things the same way as me then this would be:
http://localhost/phpMyAdmin
You should see a “Welcome to phpMyAdmin” page, there will be an error on this page saying something like “access denied” because we haven’t created a config file yet.
You should also be able to see a link that says “setup script”, click on this.
Click on the “Add” button
Change the “Host” field from the standard entry of localhost to 127.0.0.1
Click on “Save” in the configuration row.
Now move the config.inc.php file out of the config folder and into the root phpMyAdmin folder. Delete the config folder when this is done.
Open Terminal and do these lines with a return after each:
sudo mkdir /var/mysql
sudo ln /tmp/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Restart Apache.

You are done!