Questionable findings.
Study funded by Google shows that Chrome is the most secure browser. Study funded by Microsoft says it’s Internet explorer.
Make of that what you will.
Don’t you dare update my apps.
Dear Apple,
Why do I have to enter my iTunes password to update apps? I’ve already entered it once to download them in the first place, and it’s not like someone is going to steal my phone, and maliciously update my apps for me before returning it in a jiffy bag with a stern note about untimely updating.
Second, particularly on the Mac App Store, it makes the whole process unwieldy. The App Store is supposed to be the best way of updating apps, however, as it is, apps with built in Sparkle updating are significantly more streamlined than the App Store. You only have to enter your password to allow access to the Applications folder, and even that is only if you’re not using an admin account. (My every-day mac user account is unprivileged, a habit brought over from the never-work-as-root unix philosophy)
No limits
We’re the only operator to offer you a fixed price for browsing and emailing on your phone with no limits and no extra charges.
Two paragraphs later:
There is a 500MB allowance for streaming videos and uploading and downloading files. If you hit this limit during the month, you won’t be able to do this stuff again until the next month.
I find carriers definition of the words “no limits” to be extremely questionable.
Alfred RPN Calculator
A reverse polish notation calculator for Alfred.app. I’ve no idea if someone has already made one of these, but it was so simple it was easier to just make it than look for it.
Uses the dc command line calculator built in to OS X (and most unixes), usual RPN format applies, but you don’t have to specify “p” at the end to print the results, it’s automatically displayed in a sticky growl pop up.
Update 1. Now handles precision arithmetic, instead of just doing integers.
Download here (link now fixed, sorry about that).
"I changed the *.dmg to exe and then it would not run."
Forum Moron
- Colleague: Why do stamps have these little cutout bits in?
- Me: To stop cheapskates like you peeling them off and reusing them.
- Colleague: Well that's not fair.
Redundant Backups
I seem to have developed a quadruple redundant backup system, without realising it. Any files that I frequently access from different places are stored in Dropbox, which, obviously, has an off site backup. Reference materials and scans of pretty much all paperwork are stored in Evernote, which, again, has an offsite backup. Everything is backed up locally with Time Machine (Which recently saved my entire iTunes and iPhoto libraries when I accidentally wiped them). And everything important (including the Evernote and Dropbox data) is backed up again, off-site, with Mozy.
Slightly over the top, perhaps. But, it wasn’t really intentional. After I lost my iPhoto and iTunes libraries, and recovered them off my Time Machine, I decided to add an extra level with Mozy, just in case anything happens to my Time Machine drive. Which isn’t unheard of - I lost an external drive myself not long ago. It took 6 hours and rsync to try and recover the 380Gb of data on it, and I only got about 80% off, before it failed completely.
The only think I don’t have backed up are my DVD rips of my movies and TV shows, but uploading terabytes of data to Mozy would be silly, and would take over six months. Besides, by their nature of being rips, I have the majority of the original discs in a cupboard somewhere.
Good start. I should add that I’ve had to turn all the settings down to make it playable too, even though my MBP more than meets the recommended requirements.
Who’d have thought?
So, last night I finally managed to get all 800Gb+ of video onto my windows 7 based media pc. The PC in question is an Acer Aspire Revo, an ION based net top. Turns out that while the ION is quite capable of playing full HD video, and even full HD gaming, the little 1.6GHz Atom CPU is completely incapable of the real time transcoding required for watching things over my network on my iPad. Very unhappy.
There are three solutions to this. One, move it all back again and stream it to the media pc from my MBP. Two, use the media pc for my tv, and stream video for my iPad via my MBP and use that to transcode. Three, transcode all my videos to h264 so no more transcoding is needed.
Three would be the ideal solution, but would take an enormous amount of time. And one and two both require leaving two machines on, which is rather wasteful. Sigh. I have a dilemma.
Who’d have thought ten years ago that a one thousand six hundred megahertz CPU would be under powered.
Our new pond.
