From the category archives:

Tech & Geekery

My top five apps – what would you recommend that’s different?

February 28, 2010

I find that some apps move in and out of my top five list while others are very long term residents. My top two are long term residents, accompanying me from Windows days into my Mac incarnation. Two are Mac only, and have been on my list from soon after switching. A fifth is one [...]

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Birthdays and the passage of net time

February 16, 2010

There are some birthdays in the software world:

YouTube is five – well sort of, since that’s when the domain was registered. The first video wasn’t uploaded for a couple more months.
Photoshop is 20 – that’s some going, and that anniversary refers to the release.

The thing is, that’s not a long time, yet it seems like [...]

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The campaign for real type

February 9, 2010
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David Lang raises a design issue issue today on the Accordance blog – it’s one where I largely disagree with him. So first, this is David:
Every long-time Mac user knows that not everything in OS X has been an improvement. For example, OS X has some incredibly cool typographic capabilities, yet it still cannot italicize [...]

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Hitler can’t see the point of an iPad: me neither

January 28, 2010

I have to confess that I’m still among those feeling a little underwhelmed by the iPad. I can’t quite see the point of a 10inch mobile phone that doesn’t make phone calls. It’s quite pretty, but when I’m doing anything approaching a serious computing task, I need more than one application open at a time [...]

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How things changed in the noughties

December 31, 2009

The millennium proved not to be the end of the world, just the start of a very noughty decade.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way first. I know that technically and pedantically 2010 is the last year of the previous decade and not the first year of the next, but sometimes pedantic technicalities are [...]

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My new (supplementary) site

December 12, 2009

Probably.
I was thinking about grouping the Advent calendar posts together. I’ve set up a site on my MobileMe space by way of trying it out. I have that service for other reasons – mainly to keep my devices in sync, but I decided I might as well make use of it for storing more permanent [...]

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Safari search: why can’t I do it my way?

October 26, 2009

Google was playing up for a short spell just now when I needed to find something in a hurry. I discovered for the first time that there is no way to choose a different search engine in Safari. (Well, there is a hideous way that involves terminal and re-writing code, but that isn’t a “select [...]

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Google fail

October 25, 2009
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Oops! Sometimes there is more than one story in a news feed page. But this is just too good not to note.

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The curse of the mouse

October 23, 2009

I was browsing the Apple Store in Birmingham this morning, to see the new kit they’ve just brought out. They’re making a big fuss over their new so-called Magic Mouse. It looks gorgeous. It feels absolutely horrible in the hand.
The thing is, Apple just can’t do mice. When they finally surrendered to having more than [...]

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Windows 7 has taken up guest lodgings on my Mac

October 19, 2009

My copy of Windows 7 arrived early (and I only pre-ordred because it was by far the cheapest way to get it). I’ve found time for a very painless boot camp installation. I have to say it’s also the smoothest and fastest Windows installation ever. Initial impressions are that it’s a very handsome and slick [...]

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