Currently:
2002-07-21»
No popups the Mozilla way»
I wrote in the Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago about how relatively free
of spam and popup windows my online life has been since I started using Mozilla and SpamAssassin. Quite a few people wrote in to
ask for instructions on getting hold of these programs for Windows. I don't
have a place to stick Sunday Times feedback (I really should get around to
archiving the old articles), so I'll dump the instructions here.
I haven't used it myself, but there's now a commercial version of
SpamAssassin for Outlook. You can get a trial version from the Deersoft's SpamAssassin Pro
homepage.
Mozilla has always been available for Windows machines. You can download it from the
Mozilla site. To turn off popups, you need to dig into the advanced
preferences a little. Here's what my preference panel looks like:
Hope that helps!
Playing around with Tinderbox»
I downloaded the 14 day trial of Tinderbox, Eastgate's
fascinating new hypertext organiser. It's a sort of
outliner-cum-mindmapper-cum-hypertext-cum-blogging app. On first glance, I
really liked it. I especially liked the fact that the file format is in a
clear and simple XML. I have an outliner on my Palm - Progect - which has a huge
chunk of my life in it. It's GPLed, and there's a great Perl library that can parse
its database contents. So I installed the Perl program, and converted my
outlines to Tinderbox's XML format to play around with. Six months worth of
notes seems a good thing to test out their organiser, and if it makes sense to
commit to using Tinderbox, I can probably write a decent Palm->Tinderbox
syncing app. That'd be great!
The trial version of Tinderbox isn't having any of it. It tells me that I
can only create a few notes in this limited version, and politely declines to
do much more.
Fair enough, I guess.
Sigh.
So far, since borrowing this iBook, I have, or have seriously consider spending the following wodges of
cash:
- $ 80 - bust iBook power supply
- $129 - Jaguar
- $100 per annum - .Mac subscription
- $ 95 - Tinderbox
- $ 80 - QuicKeys
- $ 20 - Keyboard Maestro
- $700 - Apple Developer Connection subscription
Some of these don't really count - I didn't ponder the ADC membership for
very long, and QuicKeys is just a more expensive version of Keyboard Maestro.
I really didn't consider any of them for very long, to be honest,
because I can't afford any additional expenses right now.
But all of this is mounting up - to a lot of virtual money, and a very
unsettling sensation.
Every time I get to something interesting in the Mac world, I bump into a
barrier of dollar signs, where upon I have to spend more money to access the
secret levels. It feels strange to have the possibilities of what I can do on
my own PC suddenly limited by how much I can afford.
No, that's not right: it feels odd to be unable even to ascertain
the limits of what I can do, by dint of what I can afford.
Of course I understand that this is the way the world is. I'm not
complaining about people asking for money. I'm guessing that Tinderbox is
worth $95 - perhaps not to me, not right now, but certainly to many others,
and definitely to the people who wrote it.
But you know what? I feel poor. And I never felt poor with Linux.
On the contrary, I felt drowned in riches.
2002-07-20»
The Milkman Cometh»
Andrew Mackay (who
appears as Prof in TV's "Time
Gentlemen Please", but is better known off screen as my mate), has written a
one man show about being a milkman. Which he was, once. It's called "A Measure
of a Milkman". You've missed the previews in London, but you can still book
the Edinburgh Fringe run online. It will be very good.
To publicise the London run, Andy sent out a limited edition sound file of
some milk being delivered (using the traditional British electric milk
float). I, of course, believe that all information should be free, so here
is a copy of it. Please do not use it to
construct your own one-man shows about milkmen. Thanks.
Here are some
poems about milkfloats.
2002-07-19»
Barcelona = nil»
I hate it when it takes me six months to catch up on the news. Barcelona have disbanded! My friends
will tell you that I despise all music (a useful affectation in any
conversation). But I genuinely loved I Have The Password
To Your Shell Account, and not just for the lyrics.
Oh alright. Mostly the lyrics.
2002-07-16»
Raphael Photographers of San Jose, You Provoke Me To Great Wrath»
Oh, what do you do? I came back from an argument at a photographers today.
The Irish Times needed a headshot for a column I'm writing for them, so I just
popped around the corner to a place called Raphael Photographers, run by a guy
called Phil. The prints came back today. They are, to my unprofessional eye,
really bad. Like, patently bad. There's a water marking on the print. The
background is dotted, as though it was poorly developed. There were reflections
off my glasses that Phil's tried to clumsily retouch, which leaves my right
eye looking like I have a third pupil.
We got into a row. Phil there claims that reflections are "inevitable". In
a studio, with full control over lighting, and says that any professional
photographer would agree with him. He refuses to reshoot the picture, or give
me my money back. Quinn turns up. Quinn's dad was a photographer, so we find
ourselves trying to explain to Phil that you can avoid reflections,
that you can fix these things if you pay attention at the time. He denies this
vehemently. In the end, Quinn and I start getting the giggles. He seemed to be
making such bizarre claims about the nature of photography. I really needed
some pictures - and fast; but in the end both Quinn and I were both pulling
our punches. Essentially, Phil had more to gain from this argument. If we
lost, we lost $60 and some lousy photos. If we won, Phil would lose $60, have
to redo the shoot, and we'd have to make him admit that he was a bad
photographer.
If I was giving a review of Raphael - which I am, because I'm writing this
to get spotted by Google (hey, Mr Googlebot: that's Raphael Photographers of
the Alameda, San Jose, California) - I'd say he was a bad photographer. But
that's easy for me to say. What's it like for him? I'm not the world's
greatest writer. Often, I suck. But Phil doesn't seem to be able to admit when
he screws up. I don't know what to do in that situation: am I supposed to
convince him, grind him down, rub his nose in it? That doesn't seem what one
should do. He kept showing me other photographs, pointing out the reflections
in those, and saying "Look! Here!". And I kept biting my tongue from saying,
yeah, Phil - but that's because these completely suck too. You need to
find a better job!
But what if there are no better jobs? What if he doesn't know how to do
anything else? What if he's a bad photographer, but really good at selling his
photos? And why don't epinions ever end up
this wishy-washy and existential?
2002-07-15»
All Hail Harry Newton»
One of the best bits about living with people is you get to read all their
books. Gilbert is in my eternal gratitude list for showing me Harry Newton's Telecom
Dictionary. Any dictionary that includes definitions for Caller-ID message
format, Poisson distributions, meatware, Podiumware, RS233 and Harry himself
("According to Susan, his wife of over 21 years, he has become a sex symbol
for women who no longer care."), is a winner.
There's no topical reason
for writing this. I just thought people should know.
petit disclaimer:
My employer has enough opinions of its own, without having to have mine too.
