albino irishman

For the time-being, until I figure out a better way of doing things, I’ve disabled the comments on the posts to stop the comment spam that’s been arriving in my inbox. I’d rather not do it to the 3 people that read the site but it needs to happen. Email me, hit me back on Facebook, or push me to get site registration if you really want to comment on something.

Well I’ve been seeing so many people talking about a “blogging”:http://macromates.com/blog/archives/2006/06/19/blogging-from-textmate/ bundle for “Textmate.”:http://www.macromates.com/ This is hot on the heels of a “Textpattern”:http://textpattern.com/ “bundle”:http://www.consking.com/article/bundle-for-textpattern-reborn released recently. Being into that sort of thing, I thought I’d give it a shot …

If you’re using a Mac for web development and you haven’t heard of Textmate you’ve probably had your head removed from your body and stored in a glass jar somewhere, well away from an internet capable computer. Textmate has been popularised as the best editor for writing “Ruby on Rails”:http://www.rubyonrails.com/ web applications and after “using”:http://www.jedit.org/ a “few”:http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ “editors”:http://www.radrails.org/ over the past year or so I’d have to say it wins that claim hands down.

Recently, a programmer by the name of “Brad Choate”:http://www.bradchoate.com/ decided he’d write a bundle (application extension) to allow Textmate users to compose and post blog articles from Textmate, thus removing the need for applications such as “MarsEdit”:http://ranchero.com/marsedit/ and “Ecto.”:http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/ Note, I claim that there was the intention to remove the need for other blogging programs - a claim that the author has not made (yeah, I’m covering my backside on this one). But why write a utility like this if that wasn’t the intention?

Anyway, before I get really off-topic about the appropriateness of such a plugin (bundle, add-on, whatever), the verdict is that it’s a pretty sweet addition to an already highly competent editor. If you haven’t given it a go, take 10 minutes out of your day, brew some coffee, and give it a whirl.

I do apologise for the last couple of posts being concerned with the new technologies that I’ve been playing around with to post to this site. It does remind me of the reaction after my 4th post about updating the look of the website a while back.

Promise better content :)

Thought I’d give “Flock”:http://www.flock.com/ a whirl this morning. I’ve been across Flock before but dropped it mostly due to the fact that it didn’t (and still doesn’t) support native OS X widgets. This still hasn’t changed but my distaste for non-native OS X widgets has lessened somewhat due to my reliance on Google services (Gmail, Google Reader etc). It also has some nifty “features”:http://flock.com/tour/ built in that could be handy when they receive a bit more polish.

First impressions are pretty good but it’s certainly a beta product and still has a few bugs running around that need a squashing. I’ve just been playing around with the blogging tool.  While being a breeze to setup it certainly lacks many features that most blogging backends provide as standard.  If you’re into playing around with newish technology and think you could use a browser with built in RSS, blogging, and photosharing capabilities (and plenty more) give it a whirl. You could be converted.

There are times when I fully understand why I moved to a Mac and why people hate IT personnel.

This morning I’ve come into the University to sit out the most enjoyable hour of the week. This basically consists of sitting in an empty room, drinking coffee, and listening to music. Sweet, sweet, consultation. Consultation has been so good to me, that I haven’t seen a student all semester. It’s not that I’m an amazing tutor or anything, it’s just that I’m in a position where I’m not that involved in the subject that my feedback would be that helpful. Better that the students go directly to the source, i.e., the lecturer.

So how does this have anything to do with the Mac and hating people? Well, today’s tasks, aside from the aforementioned sitting around with coffee, were to print out next weeks questions for the students and print out the solutions for me - both tasks involving a University supplied and administered computer. So what’s involved? Well basically, download the materials from my Gmail account onto my Flash Disk, open the files (PDF and MS-Word) in their respective programs, and print them off. Easy enough eh?

For the most part things go well. Word is nice. It loads. It prints. I copy. Adobe, on the other hand, has a different story. It loads - swell. But it doesn’t want to print. Complains about something to do with a printer not being installed. Great, now I’ve got to install a printer. So, I hit the preferences, navigate to the print menu and make sure the correct printer is showing up. Yep, Level 5 Black and White. Sweet. Try again. No print. Printer not installed. But I just insta…

Die Windows! Die Adobe! Die IT personnel administering this piece of junk!

And don’t get me started on the Firefox proxy debacle!

Decided to sink some cash into a Flickr Pro account today. I’ve had a free “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com/ account for some time, mostly just to upload some photos for family and friends, but I’ve never had too many that I really needed serious space. Recently, however, I had a hard-drive crash that took some valuable data with it, but not the photos. While I’m not the sort of person that hangs onto photo’s for dear life, I do enjoy going back through them now and then and reliving the events, so I though it would be nice to have a permanent storage area for them. Away from my experimenting.

So if you’d like to catch up on what’s been happening in the last couple of months/years pictorially, keep your eyes pealed “here.”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/38174277@N00/

_Update:_ Uploaded most the the University of Queensland Tae Kwon Do (UQTKD) photos as a backup of what’s already on the main “website.”:http://www.uqtkd.org/ Just need to chase down a few people for some older (pre-2006) photos and those taken from the events this year. I’m in a couple of the shots but the majority of them bridge the year or so that I had off from training. More to come soonish.

_Update:_ More TKD photos, this time of the 2006 cocktail party. I’m still chasing down some photos from other people at the party so I’ll add them to the collection when I get my hands on them. Next to come is the stuff from home.

_Update:_ The TKD Semester 1 camp photos have been uploaded - cheers Jack. Still have the ones from Henry coming before this set is complete. Yeah I know I look a bit cranky in a few of them - but you try to muster a smile at that time in the morning when someone’s pointing a camera (repeatedly) in your face …

There is something profoundly disturbing when you log into your brother-in-law’s laptop (or sister’s … you take your pick) and the host name (computer name for you non-nerds) is the root password on the laptop you own. Now for those of you not in the know, a “root” password is the password you use on certain computers to be able to do anything you want. Things like removing important system files (which normal people shouldn’t be able to do), reading important files, and pretty well much anything else your little heart desires. Think about it as the “root” password gives you super-human powers to do anything you want on a computer.

While the fact that his computer’s name and my password are equivalent, what freaks me out more is just how someone could think that someones password should be used as name for your computer. Sure, someone looks at your computer’s name and thinks, “… weird”, and leaves it at that, but I’m sure 9/10 people would ask, “Dude, why on earth did you name your computer that?”

Lets see you get out of answering that without mentioning something about a password …

Just thought I’d put in a quick welcome back to Aus. for Jacqueline and Dan. A couple of points on your post though.

Yes the sun is bright. My guess is that it might have something to do with it being a huge ball of fire. Don’t quote me on that one though. No, the clouds aren’t super fluffly, they’re clouds. England doesn’t have clouds. What you see in the English version of sky is a concentrated form of depression that makes the sun less bright and causes everyone to whinge and complain.

Yes there are too many crows in Brisbane. Personally I think we should have crow whacking day, very much like snake whacking day in the Simpsons - preferably without the small annoying yellow girl. Same idea, same result. Yes, people around here sound very Australian. Prossibly because this is Australia. Wait, wait, yep - that’s probably it.

If by “not very much” you mean shorts and shirts, then yes we don’t wear much clothing. It could have something to do with Australia having a much more hospitable climate than your previous location - but that’s just a guess. Yes, the beach is nice. Notice it comes with sand, not rocks? It’s a novel idea but we think people will like it. And finally, yes the temperature is perfect. It’s a wonder why you left it in the first place!

Welcome back guys!