benb :))

New iPhone release closer?

2008-05-13T22:06:00.003+10:00

A number of recent news reports and press releases are pointing to a new iPhone (and most likely a 3G one) release in the very near future. Additionally these confirm the post on MacTalk just over a month ago. Another post was added today summarising this.
- both Vodaphone and Optus have announced they will be selling the iPhone in Australia (as well as several other countries). Interestingly Telstra has not said anything...
- 3G on/off settings have been found in the latest iPhone SDK. This is apparently to help with battery life
- iPhones (as of Saturday) are unavailable on the US or UK Apple stores. See this AppleInsider report.

I think this points to an iPhone release sooner rather than later (possibly even this week). Whether this means you will be able to get the new iPhone straight away is another matter as Apple sometimes announces products that will ship "in a couple of weeks". However, in the case of us here in Australia I think we will definitely be waiting until Sydney Apple Store is opened in mid June (mainly as this is a great marketing opportunity).

U2 3D

2008-05-03T15:16:00.002+10:00

Back on Sunday 13th April we went to Sydney's IMAX to see U2 3D. Being a big U2 fan (so yes this article will be biased!) I was excited to see this film, especially as this was billed as you getting the best seat in the house. I also wanted to see how this compared to the actual Vertigo concert that we went to in Sydney in late 2006. I was worried that it would be like all the concert films/DVDs I have seen which I find to be a bit lacking and nothing like going to the real concert. I much prefer to listen to them than watch. Well in this case I was not disappointed. You certainly get the best seat in the house as well as get to be up on stage with the band all within the one song. The 3D effects are not cheesy or overused (certainly not like ones I have seen where you get the red and blue cardboard glasses). In fact, you get used to the 3D really quickly and almost forget its there.

So was it like going to a real U2 concert? Well yes and no. On one hand the sound was great and you do feel like you were there. Additionally for us since this was on opening weekend so we had to line up for 30 mins so we could get good seats, so that made it feed a bit like a real concert. However, it was actually easier to go to than a concert as we did not have to line up for as long! For Zoo TV and Vertigo we lined up for 6 hours or so just to get good spots! Also, I was not deaf at the end with ringing in my ears for several days afterwoods. Not that there was any problem with the sound being too quiet!

There was a problem with some idiots in front of us who kept getting up to get drinks or food (why I don't know as the film only went for 85 mins!) But the really funny reason why it felt most unlike a concert was it was a bit cold. Normally you get really hot at a concert, but here since we were in an air conditioned theatre it actually felt cold at the end of the concert! Lastly (and this is more from a fan perspective) I found the concert to be too short and I would have like to have seen the full setlist. I really liked the Zoo Station / The Fly combination at both the Zoo TV and Vertigo tours and was really disappointed that Zoo Station was omitted.

So, even with a few faults I would highly recommend going to see U2 3D, even if you are not a U2 fan. This is an excellent showcase of the 3D technology and I hope more bands and filmakers use this in the future. We will be going again :)

Lastly if you are interested in more details of this, Wikipedia has an excellent write up of how they did the concert and the history behind it.

iPhone in Australia in June?

2008-04-09T19:03:00.003+10:00

According to this post on the MacTalk Australia forums the iPhone will be released in Australia in late June (yes 2008!). Normally I would be somewhat skeptical of this, however, this has come from the Aussie Apple resellers.

Important points:
- late June release
- multiple carriers
- no contract lock in
- current resellers to sell iPhone

Interestingly the last 3 points are a change for Apple as these are not done anywhere else. I wonder if this will be extended to other regions or what other regions will be released at the same time.

The multiple carriers hints at a 3G iPhone as the current 2.5G iPhone needs EDGE which is only used by 1 carrier in Australia: Telstra. Also, this is around the time the 3G iPhone is rumored to be released. Additionally there is this AppleInsider report today on the 3G iPhone. Coincidence?

Using xmltv feeds with EyeTV

2008-03-29T15:48:00.000+11:00

In October last year I bought a Mac Mini to use as a media center. The software I am using is Elgato's EyeTV which does a great job of managing and recording TV shows. Initially I had setup schedules for each of the TV programs I was interested in, but this only works when shows are on at the same time every week (which the commercial networks are notorious at sticking to).

With the release of v3.0 in January one of the new features I was most interested in was "Smart Guides". This allows you to set your recordings based on search criteria (e.g find Top Gear or Doctor Who). This works well when you have a complete EPG. Now while 7, 9 and 10 transmit a 7 day guide, ABC1 & 2 only have one for the next 2 days and there nothing for SBS.

With the latest release of EyeTV (version 3.0.1) it allows xmltv files to be used as an EPG. First drag the downloaded xmltv file onto the EyeTV application. Now Go the the Channels in EyeTV and for each of the channels you want to use the xmltv file for the EPG set its EPG to xmltv.

In some cases if EyeTV cannot find the channel in the xmltv file it will ask you to select from a list of channels it has found in the file (this always seems to happen for SBS).

This works well, however, EyeTV needs to be restarted or the xmltv file dragged onto it for the EPG to be refreshed for a newly downloaded xmltv file.

I get my xmltv EPG from Free*EPG and to make my life simpler I have written the following Applescript which downloads the zipped file, unzips it and opens the xmltv file in EyeTV. The only user settings required is to enter your ClientID and Postcode into the two variables (they currently contain ????) and save the script.

To activate the script you can either set it to run via iCal or cron. For example I set iCal to run the script daily at 6:50.

The same script can be used to grab files from other services. I included a separate variable for the download link so this can be changed easily for other xmltv providers.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke

2008-03-24T09:13:00.000+11:00

It was a sad day for me on March 19th as my favourite author, Arthur C. Clarke, passed away aged 90. I had just finished reading one of his best books 'Rendezvous with Rama' the night before.

RIP Arthur, thanks for the inspiration and all the good reading :)

Website update

2008-03-02T18:10:00.002+11:00

Haha 2 posts in one day!

As well as some of the REALbasic stuff I have been working on I have also been working on updates to the website. I discovered that Firefox and Safari now support rounded corners (one of the new items in CSS 3). So I replaced the javascript I was using (Ruzee Borders). If you are using IE or Opera the borders will be square.

Lastly I found a cool way to show pictures. It is a javascript called Lightbox. Currently I am only using this on the My Money Minder page to show screenshots, but I may move to using this on our pictures page...

My Money Minder 1.9.8 released

2008-03-02T18:03:00.003+11:00

I have released another bugfix to My Money Minder. I had thought 1.9.7 was going to be the last release before 2.0, but a few bugs were found that needed fixing. For the full details of the changes and download links go to the My Money Minder pages

Kyoto Ratified!!

2007-12-03T22:25:00.000+11:00

Really happy to read that the first thing newly sworn in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has done is ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This is fantastic as Australia can now start to regain international credibility in environmental issues.

Mr Howard, you're Fired!

2007-11-10T08:00:00.000+11:00

(or why I am voting to remove the Liberal / National coalition in the 2007 Federal Election)

All governments have a use-by date. I think that the current Federal government has definitely past its use-by (probably before the 2004 election in fact) and I feel more strongly than ever that it is time for a change in government. Normally I think about this closer to an election, but this time I was convinced of this in about January or February this year and nothing since then has made me waver. Why? In this blog post I will examine a number of issues and how I think the current government have failed the Australian people and simply do not deserve to be returned. Please note that this is not going to a critique of the Kevin Rudd led Labor party or why they are better.

• Doing nothing on climate change for 10 years. John Howard has never believed this is an issue, even despite what he is telling us in this election campaign. We should have ratified Kyoto (yes it is flawed, but it is the best thing out there), had a carbon trading scheme now (not in several years) and started energy efficiency programs.
• Involved us in Iraq invasion with the US. This is an unjust war and our involvement helped to legitimise the US invasion. We have had a continuing stream of lies for the reason for the invasion and Australia should never have been involved as it has actually made us less safe. This war has brought attention to us from terrorist elements and for an unjust war that it not worth it. Lastly, Howard has no exit strategy from Iraq.
• I can't believe its not Work Choices. Worst piece of legislation in the last 30 years and exceedingly unfair to younger people. We don't really know if this has created more jobs (the economy was doing well before this!!). Besides the Workplace Authority have not released any stats on this so we just have to believe the government saying we are better off???? This legislation has moved the rights too much towards business and needs to be brought back into more middle ground. The guy in charge of this (the snide Kevin Andrews) is now showing his “talents” in the immigration area recently with his comments on African immigrants.

These are my top 3 (equal placing) reasons. I think each is a reason in itself to not vote for the Liberal / Nationals. However, beyond that there are more reasons...

▪ David Hicks. How could our own government let an Australian citizen (no matter what he did) rot WITHOUT trial for years? Our government failed bigtime in doing nothing. Truly pathetic and completely unacceptable on the part of our government. Pathetic too that they had to gag him until after the election.
▪ Not saying sorry to the stolen generation. John Howard has failed miserably on Aboriginal affairs, he is opposed to land rights and saying sorry. We need to heal the wounds here, not create division...
▪ Wasting a very large amount of money on advertising (especially for Work Choices). $1 million a day, how many hospital beds can that buy? Did you know the Federal government is one of the top advertisers in the country? This is a WASTE of taxpayers money and has really been pseudo election advertising all year.
▪ The so called Pacific Solution for refugees. This is a truly awful way to treat displaced people and a complete waste of money (hundreds of millions!!). These people including children are locked up for years while waiting for processing. Surely there is a better way of doing this.

Now I also want to make it clear that this does not mean I am wholeheartedly voting Labor, but looking at the 2 major parties they are the least worst. However, to make things interesting I will be voting much more selectively in the upper house (most likely Green as the Democrats seem ineffectual these days) and helping to return it to a house of review.

So Mr Howard, for dreadful and cynical performance over the past several years....You are FIRED!!! Mr Costello for not having the guts or gumption to challenge for the leadership you are fired too.

Matthew Reilly, Leopard and our new Mac Mini

2007-10-29T13:51:00.000+11:00

Last Friday we were at Macquarie Centre for 2 reasons. One was to get our new Mac Mini (10% off at JB HiFi!) which will become our new media centre (more on that in a later post). The 2nd reason was to go to Borders to meet Matthew Reilly and get a signed copy of his new book Six Sacred Stones :)

Also last Friday at 6pm Apple released Mac OS X 10.5, though it is probably better known by its code name, Leopard, which Apple is also using in its marketing. I didn't get a copy on Friday (despite NextByte and JB HiFi being open after 6pm) as I qualify for a $13 upgrade with the Mac Mini purchase.

It has been interesting reading the reports on Leopard (mainly since I am seeing what people's overall experiences are). I generally try to ignore the more sensationalist stuff and instead read sites whose authors know their stuff and give praise or criticism when its due (such as John Gruberor the always excellent Mac OS X reports by John Siracusa's reports).

However, I am really disappointed in the Sydney Morning Herald's incredibly poor and badly researched report "Spotty Leopard makes Mac users catty". The report implies that Apple's latest operating system is flawed and Apple have been deluged with support requests. This is simply not the case and the fault of this error lies equally with a 3rd party hack by Unsanity and Logitech. Unsanity provide "extra" functionality to the Mac by installing stuff in into the parts of the OS that Apple say not to. Generally users who install this stuff keep the hacks up to date, but what is worse, Logitech have installed this as a part of a mouse "driver".

The lesson here is when installing a new OS (whether Mac, Windows or Linux) it is best to start from scratch. Leopard (and Tiger before it) provide an option to "Archive and Install". This copies your old system files (including all the 3rd party stuff into a separate folder) and installs a fresh copy of Leopard, it also can (set by default) copies across all your user and network settings.

Back to the SMH. I have noticed of late there has been an anti-Apple bias in the reporting there (or at the very least they just copy their news from blogs). With a small amount of research (like I did above) the article could have been balanced and less sensationalist and instead provide a bit of guidance to users. At the very least once new information became available the article could have been updated to indicate it was a problem with the Unsanity hack and that users were at risk if they had installed Logitech stuff. Newspapers have a responsibility to report critically and fairly, many people read this stuff and just believe it (I had a few discussions on this at work today trying to dispel the fallacies in this article. So Asher Dunn you are now on notice.

And, yes, I will be doing an Archive and Install on our iMac

UPDATE: Apple have sold over 2 million copies of Leopard. It took Tiger (10.4) a month to sell that many!

Leopard release date announced and price drop for iTunes DRM free tracks

2007-10-17T12:52:00.000+10:00

Apple has announced that MacOS X 10.5 (or Leopard) will be available on October 26th and is now available for presale ($158 or $145 for Education). If you bought a new Mac this month then you can get it for $12.95. They have also added a webpage with a categorized list of new 316 new features. However, if you don't want to go through the whole list then Appleinsider has a good summary.

Also Apple (most likely in response to Amazon's MP3 store) have reduced prices of their iTunes Store DRM free tracks to $1.69. However, there is no indication currently if there is a price change for upgrading existing tracks to DRM free. Also, they have also added a number of independent labels. Good stuff :)

Get This cancelled - TripleM you buggers!!!

2007-10-16T20:56:00.000+10:00

Just heard today that one of my favourite radio shows (which I grab via podcast) is being cancelled. Triple M have cancelled Get This (see SMH link). Despite several time slot moves they were rating well, not sure I understand the logic of this one!!

Sign this petition to try and reverse this.

Amazon launches MP3 store

2007-09-29T22:53:00.000+10:00

This week Amazon have launched the Amazon MP3 Store. What makes this interesting is that the nearly 2 million tracks available do not contain DRM. This is another nail in the coffin for DRM after EMIs announcement in April (see my previous post on DRM removal).

This is the first store to seriously challenge Apple's iTunes Store and the tracks are cheaper than the regular iTunes tracks (let alone the DRM free iTunes Plus ones which cost 30% more). However, only 2 of the 4 major labels are available (EMI and Universal). Also "officially" the store is only available for US residents, however, they don't check the country for your credit card's billing address just your home address. Though I reckon this won't last long...

My Money Minder 1.9.7 released

2007-08-30T19:01:00.000+10:00

I have released another bugfix version of My Money Minder (which I hope again will be last bugfix before v2!!). This release also includes a revised help system which is modelled on the current style in Apple's apps and is also searchable. For the full details and download links go to the My Money Minder pages .

Canon 40D, Holden Utes and Google Maps

2007-08-23T21:30:00.000+10:00

Well it has been a couple of months since I started this blog and the regularity of posts has faltered somewhat! However whilst there have been things I have wanted to blog about I have had writers block. Oh and the fact that about a month ago I discovered Facebook...

I do have a few ideas for blog posts (damn writers block, well that's my excuse and I am sticking with it!). We will see :)

Anyway this week I don't have writers block and there are things I want to write about! Firstly I have been thinking for some time of updating my Canon SLR to digital. Until this week it was an easy answer as I would get the 400D which I have found for under $1000 at Photo Buff. This week Canon announced the next model up, to 40D which is tempting but probably outside my price range.

I am bummed that this week's Top Gear was the last one on SBS until summer. But to keep the inner car buff happy Holden has obliged and released details on the VE based ute (which we have waited nearly 12 months for). Tempting as it looks great!! But practically I will still keep my new Golf turbo diesel. It was only this time last year I sold my VR Commodore for it even though was very very very tempted by the new VE SV6. Hmmm, if they had a diesel version...

This week Google has announced two new items. Google Sky is an addition to the Google Earth app where you can reverse things and look at the night sky. In fact many of the southern sky images were taken at the UK Schmidt telescope in Sidings Springs near Coonabarabran in NSW. Also you can now embed your Google Maps into your own websites, which reminds me that I need to sort out our Cairns photos! Here is the map from our NZ trip.

View Larger Map

Transformers

2007-07-02T15:04:00.000+10:00

I was excited about going to watch the new live action Transformers movie as I remember watching the tv show as a kid (and the cartoon movie) as well as having the toys (Bumblebee and Jazz are the two I remember). However, I was a bit worried as I found out the director was Michael Bay who had directed the woeful Pearl Harbour, but only a bit as he had also done the fun Armageddon, The Rock and Bad Boys.

Well overall this movie was not only fun, but was everything a blockbuster should be and was exciting too! Now I am disappointed that Bumblebee was not a VW Beetle as he was in the toys and tv show. However, this was not too bad as instead he was a very cool 5th gen Camaro.

In fact this was probably the best movie we have seen recently so just go an see it :)

Oh and not to detract from the movie, but there is some dumb Hollywood science in it. Have a look at (spoiler warning) the Bad Astronomy review.

Ben: 4 stars, Ruby 5 stars

Ocean's 13

2007-07-02T07:08:00.000+10:00

Another one in the many sequels released this year (still have Harry Potter and Die Hard 4.0 to go). Now in this case the previous installment, Ocean's 12, was just plain dull and really should have been a reason not to make a further one. However, in this case I am glad they did. 13, whilst nowhere near as good as Ocean's 11, is an enjoyable sequel. There are some bits where it falls flat, but overall it was fun.

Ben: 3 stars, Ruby 3 stars

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

2007-06-04T20:09:00.000+10:00

Pirates 3 was missing all that was fun in the first movie. You would be better to skip this film and buy the DVD of the first film and watch that. It was too long (167 mins), the plot too convoluted and it was neither fun or exciting (as a blockbuster should be). This is a great example of why you should not make films back to back and have films with cliff-hangers. What they should have done is cut this and Pirates 2 into the one (shorter!!) film.

Lets hope the other sequels coming out in the next few weeks are better than this one.

Ben: 1 star, Ruby: zzzzzz.

Spider-Man 3

2007-05-28T07:10:00.000+10:00

2 weeks ago we saw Spider-Man 3 and overall, despite it being a long film at 138 mins, we enjoyed it. However, despite it being fun to watch it is not as good as its predecessors. There are too many things going on in this film because of having too many villains and this leads to it being a long film with many plot holes. They needed to have either Sandman or Venom not both. Ultimately, despite these flaws, Spider-Man 3 was still fun to watch.

Ben: 3 stars, Ruby: 3 stars.

Stuff from this week #8

2007-05-12T10:42:00.000+10:00

I think Ross Gittins article on the Work Choices legislation is spot on. Howard's recent minor changes to it does not change a think. This is bad legislation and must go.

Bono's 47th birthday this week (10th May). Happy birthday mate, keep up the good work :)

Were you one of those people who thought Marty McFlys shoes were cool in Back to the Future? Someone has set up a petition to get Nike to put these up for sale. Hmm I would much rather the flying DeLorean...

Looks like New Order have officially broken up (unlike going on hiatus like in the mid 90s). I wonder where the album worth of songs that were recorded during the Waiting For The Sirens Call sessions will get to...

YouTube video of a car owner revenge on a traffic light window washer :)

The Federal Budget was released this week in Australia and you can't half tell they are buying votes in this election year (as they have done in the past couple of election year budgets). Also they have plenty of cash left over for some election spending and wasting it on advertising for Work Choices or Superannuation. I would have preferred that instead of a tax cut and all those payouts that they invested in more infrastructure (like water tank rebates, better public transport, improvement to hospitals).

UPDATE: The New Order break-up seems to be only the bassist Peter Hook. A source close to the band says they are still together.

My Money Minder 1.9.6 released

2007-05-09T22:47:00.000+10:00

Just a quick post to announce the new version of My Money Minder. In fact today is 5 years since I released v1.0.

Originally I was planning to have v2 out this May, however, I realised a while back that this was not going to happen. Along with that several users reported some bugs. So, instead, I combined some of the work I was doing on v2 which fixed issues in csv/tsv file importing, fixed some of the other bugs and added 2 partial localisations. I am hoping that this is the last 1.x versions of MMM...

Anyway head on over to the My Money Minder pages to see what the changes are and grab a copy.

Stuff from this week #7

2007-05-05T09:23:00.000+10:00

Oh no! You can now buy baby clothes to match up with your iPod!

Telstra starting on the broadband propaganda wagon. I getting really sick of Telstra's propaganda on this broadband issue, I have been getting stuff in the mail from them too!

Cool pics of Jupiter from the New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto and Kuiper Belt.

Stephen Hawking takes a zero-g flight. Looks like he had fun too!

Finally Australia has implemented a Do Not Call register for telemarketers. I signed up yesterday, pity it takes 30 days to activate and only lasts 3 years...

Funny stuff from YouTube: Darth Vader calls the Emperor after the Death Star is blown up and Darth Vader vs Japanese police.

Website update

2007-05-02T21:52:00.000+10:00

I have now updated each of the three sections of our website (done over several days). I approached this update much like I do with home renovations, I make a list of things that are broken and things I want to improve.

While my blog is relatively new and the standard Blogger template I was using was ok, if I ever wanted to change any of the colors for the nice rounded boxes I would need to change all the images. This would be a pain! I had used some CSS trickery on the Ben's Software pages to do this but that was also a pain to maintain. I also wanted to have random backgrounds on the blog. The Ben's Software pages were the oldest part of the site (having been transferred from Geocities with little modification) so it was time to do a general cleanup to make them look at bit more professional. With the addition of the blog I now had three separate sections to the website and I wanted each of these linked and improve their navigation. Lastly I wanted to add in better website tracking.

To find the rounded corners I just did a couple of Google searches and reasonably quickly found what I wanted. In the end I chose two different javascripts that generate the corners on-the-fly. In the end I found 2 different javascript solutions. To give me nice anti-aliased boxes that will work with any of the random backgrounds on the blog I chose Curvy Corners. However, since I wanted a drop shadow for Ben's Software, I chose Ruzee Borders (which does not work well with the random background). Another Google search found a random background javascript, currently there are 6 possible background images.

For improving the navigation I had a look at a couple of other websites (such as Apple.com) and they used links at the end of each page called breadcrumbs. These have been added to Ben's Software and the Photos pages.

Lastly I added Google's Analytics to monitor traffic on each section of the website.

I have tried to make sure that these changes work in well in most browsers (let me know if things don't work or look right). However, I have done most of my testing on Safari and Firefox. This should work in Internet Exploiter but I highly recommend you get Firefox as it is quite simply much better :)

Stuff from this week #6

2007-04-28T08:39:00.000+10:00

Kylie to star in Dr Who! Apparently she will be a cyberwoman (perhaps with an Aussie accent “G'day, you will be deleted, maaate!”)

Hmmm, I am also wondering when the ABC will show the new season of Dr Who here. My guess is Sunday night at 7.30 after Robin Hood finishes (mid July I think) as the Saturday night slot is now taken by The Sideshow (not sure how long that will go for).

Plasma Pong. Whoa! An interesting take on this old game :)

Amazon is hoping to sell non-DRM songs in its digital music store (and not just ones from EMI). Apple has also let all its iTunes partners know they can sell higher quality and DRM free songs from May.

Hubble had its 17th birthday on the 24th April. Despite its troubled beginnings it has turned out to be a big success. 500,000 images in 17 years!

Another Exoplanet planet has been discovered by the European Southern Observatory, interestingly this is the first one that is in the habitable zone...

Stuff from this week #5

2007-04-22T11:10:00.000+10:00

15-year old pretends to be the ABC and gets the Chaser's content removed from YouTube. Funny bit is the ABC does not mind it being there! The kid has since apologised.

Australia is in big trouble with the Murray-Darling water system having very little water. Hopefully this will force a rethink on some crops grown which use too much water such as rice and cotton. Also mining out in the west of NSW uses a lot of water too. Perhaps there is opportunity to move to recycling more water for the townships.

Customers are not happy with Microsoft Vista. Dell has changed their policy and is now allowing users to specify Windows XP instead of Vista.

Consortium wants to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait linking Alaska and Russia.