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...
Sunday, 2 March 2008
My Money Minder 1.9.8 released
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
Monday, 3 December 2007
Kyoto Ratified!!
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.
Saturday, 10 November 2007
Mr Howard, you're Fired!
(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.
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.
Monday, 29 October 2007
Matthew Reilly, Leopard and our new Mac Mini
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!
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!
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Leopard release date announced and price drop for iTunes DRM free tracks
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 :)
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 :)
Tuesday, 16 October 2007
Get This cancelled - TripleM you buggers!!!
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.
Sign this petition to try and reverse this.
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