Archive for April, 2006
Mac software picks – Parallels, GMail+Growl, Uno & TheftSensor
Another round-up of the best Mac OS X software I can find.
Parallels Workstation
Piping Microsoft and VMWare to the post relative unknowns Parallels are on beta 6 of their Parallels Workstation for Mac OS X/Intel.
As well as being able to guest OS/2, DOS, BSD, Solid, Linux and all flavours of Windows their product also features support for Intel’s VT virtualisation technology built into the Intel Core chips giving it an edge in performance.
Parallels also offer Windows and Linux versions of their software as well as a virtual disk compressor that works with VMware and VirtualPC as well as their own Workstations products.
They are currently offering the OS X version for $10 off so you can grab a copy for $39.99.
Gmail+Growl
Growl allows other applications to pop-up messages in a very customizable way and is used by the likes of Adium messenger and Colloquy IRC.
This universal app however uses Growl to offer you a sneak preview of your latest Gmail’s as they hit your inbox. Yummy.
Uno
I’ve blogged in the past at just how annoying and inconsistent the Mac UI has become with Aqua, BrushedMetal, Platinum, ProTools, Dashboard and GarageBand UI’s all being totally different. There are even variations between those…
Uno lets you choose between Platinum or it’s darker iTunes variant for Aqua and/or BrushedMetal apps and be done with it. It’s free, fast and easy.
TheftSensor
One of the cool things about OS X is the way Apple build cool features into the OS for application developers to use. Some examples include dictionary/spell-checking, voice recognition, iSight and AppleRemote access, system-level address-books and calendaring…
The result is you find very innovative applications using these features in new and interesting ways. One such example is DeliciousLibrary, another is TheftSensor…
TheftSensor allows you to use your AppleRemote to “lock” you machine just like you would a car with a remote locking fob. Should somebody attempt to move your laptop then an alarm will continually sound until you deactivate it with the remote. This is made possible because of the movement sensor inside Mac laptops put there to protect hard disks in the event of being dropped :)
Remember to pair your remote with your Mac so that other people can’t unlock your laptop with theirs.
TheftSensor is free but the the company behind has another more advanced non-free application called Undercover. Install this and should your Mac be stolen notify them and the next time your Mac hits in the Internet it’ll realise it’s stolen and start sending iSight cam pics of the perpetrator using your PC as well as IP tracking information.
If that doesn’t do the trick it starts to simulate hardware failures and then should it find itself on an Apple certified service center IP allocation it’ll let the service tech know it’s been stolen.
[)amien
From Blogger to SubText – Export psuedo BlogML from Blogger
Getting my blog out of Blogger.com and into Subtext was not as easy as I’d hoped…
What is BlogML?
BlogML is an XML format designed to encapsulate a blog, it’s posts, comments and categories. Sounds great for transferring between blogs… Alas while SubText and many other engines support it Blogger.com does not.
A simple category-less BlogML file without comments looks something like this;
<blog root-url="www.damieng.com/blog/" date-created="2006-04-25T01:02:25" xmlns="http://www.blogml.com/2006/01/BlogML" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<title type="text">damieng</title>
<sub-title type="text">Random musings from Guernsey</sub-title>
<author name="Damien Guard" email="damieng@gmail.com">
<posts>
<post id="113889650370084235" date-created="2006-04-20T01:53:00" date-modified="2006-04-20T01:53:00" approved="true" post-url="http://www.damieng.com/blog/2006/04/hello.html">
<title type="text">Hello</title>
<content type="text"><![CDATA[This is a blog post<br />With HTML!]]></content>
</posts>
</author>
</blog>
Check out the BlogML standard itself for full details although doing so requires registration.The first thing to do is to enter Blogger.com and change the settings for your blog. Specifically you want to go to Formatting Settings and enter 999 and Posts next to Show. If you have more than 99 posts you might have problems.
Setting options on Blogger
Set the Timestamp Format to 4/25/2006 10:38:00AM (obviously the date will be different, it’s the format we’re after) and set Enable Float Alignment to No.
Go to the Comments section and set the Comments Timestamp Format to the same.
Changing the Blogger template
By changing the template we can get Blogger.com to output something close to BlogML but not quite there.
Paste the following block into the template area but DO NOT hit save.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="<$BlogEncoding$>"?>
<blog root-url="damieng.com" xmlns="http://www.blogml.com/2006/01/BlogML" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<title type="text"><$BlogTitle$></title>
<sub-title type="text"><![CDATA[<$BlogDescription$>]]></sub-title>
<author name="<$BlogOwnerFullName$>" email="<$BlogOwnerEmail$>" />
<categories />
<posts>
<Blogger><post id="<$BlogItemNumber$>" date-created="<$BlogItemDateTime$>" date-modified="<$BlogItemDateTime$>" approved="true" post-url="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">
<title type="text"><![CDATA[<$BlogItemTitle$>]]></title>
<content type="text"><![CDATA[<$BlogItemBody$>]]></content>
<comments>
<BlogItemComments><comment id="<$BlogCommentNumber$>" date-created="<$BlogCommentDateTime$>" date-modified="<$BlogCommentDateTime$>" approved="true" user-name="" user-url="">
<title type="text"></title>
<content type="text"><![CDATA[<$BlogCommentBody$>]]></content>
<author><![CDATA[<$BlogCommentAuthor$>]]></author>
</comment></BlogItemComments>
</comments>
</post>
</Blogger>
</posts>
</blog>
Now hit the Preview button and wait. Once complete, view source and save that somewhere. Feel free now to cancel the template change.
Patching up the bad output
The output from this template isn’t BlogML yet but it’s not too far off. Cut out the junk before <? xml and and after </blog> to get one step closer.
Now that just leaves us with three problems.
- Date/time formats are incorrect for both posts and comments
- Comments have no titles
- Comment authors are in <author> tags encoded as a CDATA hyper link instead of user-name and user-url attributes of the <comment> tag
These are all limitations of the Blogger template system but with a short XML parser and writer you should be able to fix them up.
[)amien
Welcome to my new home
It’s been long overdue but you can thank Blogger for being down for long enough to force me to move my blog to the same host as my web site.
I’ve been wanting categories, track-backs and finer control for some time. I looked at dasBlog, .Text and CommunityServer and rejected each for one reason or another before settling on SubText. It is far from perfect but it’s the best .NET blogging engine for me right now – yes I know there are some great PHP blog systems out there but I have an aversion to PHP.
You’ll find the links are currently broken because SubText strips the www. portion from URL’s but I think I’ve got a patch together that will address that tonight.
I’ll be going through the old posts and making minor textual changes and improving the context of the titles. I’ll try and resist the urge to mess with the actual content though and stick to fixing typo’s, spelling mistakes and bad formatting.
You’ll also notice that there are too many posts on the first page the author names of comments are missing. These will also be addressed “Real Soon Now”.
I’ll be putting up a new style too – got something under wraps for use across the blog and main site… although there’s a possibility the main site will end up as SubText articles. We’ll see.
I’ll also be putting up some information on how I managed to get 100+ posts out of Blogger.com and into SubText. It involves BlogML and a custom template for Blogger.
Stay tuned… and don’t forget to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.
My Technorati Profile
[)amien
Apple introduces 17″ MacBook Pro
Apple have announced the 17″ MacBook Pro at their US Store that should be shipping within the next 7-10 days (early May).
Specifications
The machine is almost identical to the 2GHz models of the 15.4″ MacBook with the following differences;
- Processor is no longer an option – Core Duo 2.16GHz only
- Screen resolution changes from 1440×990 to 1680×1050
- FireWire 800 port
- USB 2 ports up from 2 to 3
- Battery power increase from 60-watt-hour to 68-watt-hour
- Battery life increase from 4.5 hours to 5.5 hours
- Hard drive options are limited to 100GB 7200rpm or 120GB 5400rpm
- Superdrive recording for DVD-R and DVD+R up from 4x to 8x
- Superdrive can now burn double-layer DVD+R
- Width and height increase to accommodate larger screen
- Weight increase from 2.54kg to 3.1kg
Commentary
It’s good to see the FireWire 800 port make a comeback which should quiet some critics of the 15.4″
The larger resolution doesn’t share the same aspect ratio as it’s smaller sibling – adopting for a much wider display – indeed the 17″ only boasts an addition 60 vertical pixels against the horizontal increase of 240.
The battery life is interesting – there’s no way I get near 4.5 hours on my 15.4″ MacBook and Apple had been very quiet on battery life with little or no mention until recently. I’m hoping that the batteries for the 17″ will be compatible with the 15.4″ to perhaps boost up from my current 2-2.5 hour battery life running just simple non-3D apps.
The hard drive options still lack Seagates 160GB Momentus option – very strange when you consider they already use the Momentus line and the 160GB has the same physical and environmental attributes. Unlike the previous Titanium PowerBook models it seems replacing the hard drive is not a do-it-yourself task and would, I imagine, invalidate your warranty.
Still you can’t argue about the price – the Apple US store currently puts the price of the standard 17″ 2.16GHz/120GB model at just $300 more than the 15.4″ 2.0GHz model.
Upgrade the 15.4″ 2.0GHz model to 2.16GHz/120GB and it’s actually $100 more than the 17″… despite being a smaller screen, 4x Superdrive and no FireWire 800…
Oh well, perhaps I’ll upgrade to the 17″ when it gets the 64-bit Merom. Unless my MacBook is already 64-bit…
[)amien