Codename: Cashew

Big news! I am going to be a Dad!!

That's right, Ruby is pregnant with our first child and now that we are past the 12 week mark I can tell everyone. Why 12 weeks? This is mainly due to the risk of a miscarriage is greatly reduced after that time (though we did let immediate family and a few close friends know easrlier). Also, we had an ultrasound on Monday so now I have some pictures to show off!

Ruby already reckons that it looks like me!

The reason for the ultrasound was a Nuchal scan which is normally done at 12 weeks to check for the risk of Downs syndrome. The good news is we have a reduced risk (now 1 in 2000 as opposed to 1 in 400 before the scan).

Oh and "cashew" is what we started calling the baby back when we first found out Ruby was pregnant and the name has kinda stuck (though I have suggested others...).

I was wrapped with the ultrasound. Just seeing our little cashew waving and bouncing about was nothing short of amazing (and yes we do have a video of this).

Revised Applescript for downloading EPG for use with EyeTV

Last year I wrote an Applescript to download an xmltv file and load into EyeTV (see this post). This relied on downloading a single xmltv file from Free*EPG. Unfortunately in Septembver 2008 they discontinued providing this file for direct download and instead required their software which only worked on a Windows PC. 

The handy part with the Free*EPG file was they handled all the location set-up and provided a single file for download (EyeTV only accepts a single xmltv file). The other choice for downloading xmltv files was OzTiVo , but this required updating the Applescript to do all the file handling and aggregating. This turned out to be a bit of work and some of the bugs I had to fix took a week to appear which slowed things down a bit.

Version 2.0 of my xmltv Applescript can be downloaded here (168 K). I also included instructions on its set-up. Apart from choosing which channels (e.g. ABC-NSW) to download on first run, it is basically the same as for version 1.0.

11th Doctor Announced

David Tennant announced in October 2008 he was leaving Doctor Who in 2010 which was a bummer as he was one of the best Doctors. Today the BBC have announced his replacement: Matt Smith. Who? Never heard of him! But go to this link to find out more.

North West rail link cancelled/delayed

Bugger! I just read about this today (even though it came out on Friday). The NSW government has cancelled the North West rail link.  Pathetic and completely unacceptable.

SMH - North West Metro cancelled despite demand

Large Hadron Collider

Exciting week for particle physics with the Large Hadron Collider being turned on the 10th September. Pity though that some seem to think that it will destroy the Earth when it is switched on. Have a look at these links as to why this is not correct:

No, the LHC won’t destroy the Earth | Bad Astronomy

Brian Cox calls ‘em like he sees ‘em

New iPods next week

ArsTechnica - Apple confirms September 9 Special Event: "Let's Rock"

Yep 2 posts in one day! There has been some speculation on this on the interwebs but today Apple released invitations for the annual September iPod update. Easy guess is that the iPod Nano and Touch will be updated. The rumors are suggesting another big change to the Nano (much like the change from the 2G to 3G last year).

I think we will also see a price restructure of the Touch to align with the iPhone changes in July. There will also be an update to iTunes to v8 with appropriate features to justify going from v7 to v8 (MacRumors link). As for Mac updates, these will come later in September. 

However, it is also worth noting that Apple hinted at a product transition in September. Perhaps a Mac Tablet or a Nano that runs the iPhone OS? Or is this just the price restructure of the iPod line or something else Mac related? 

Google's browser released

Google released their web browser today, called Google Chrome. Currently it has only been released for Windows with Mac and Linux versions on the way. Overall they have taken a very minimalist view of a web browser, there is no menu bar and the tabs are on the top. For a good overview of the interface see John Siracusa's blog post.

I tried it out at work today and I am very impressed and I will probably use it instead of Firefox and Safari. However, at home I will most likely continue using Safari, but I will give Chrome a go when it comes out for the Mac. Interestingly the rendering engine they used is WebKit which is the same as used by Apple's Safari.  Also, a very cool feature is the saving web pages as applications (Safari will get this in version 4 apparently). Now I can just have a shortcut on the desktop to Gmail or Google Docs!