SanDisk Does Better
July 11th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
SanDisk won the gratutious packaging award a while back. Bought some more. This time the packaging was of a scale matching the product…
Intro to Geocaching
July 7th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Added the new article to the MapToaster website, an introduction to geocaching.
Browser Wars
July 1st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The stats for one of our product websites has some interesting data on web browser use.
- Internet Explorer has fallen below 60% for the first time – $58%
- Firefox use has hit 30%
- Safari is 6% and Google’s Chrome is 4%
- Safari is pretty much only used by Mac owners. Safari use on Windows is negligible.
Uptake of new software versions differs markedly between Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Internet Explorer
The following tables show the percentage of users with each version and the release date for that version.
| IE 8.0 | 25% | Mar-09 | |
| IE 7.0 | 57% | Oct-06 | |
| IE 6.0 | 18% | Aug-01 |
After 8 years the much loathed (by web developers) IE6 is still used by almost 20% of IE users. A look at the IP addresses of these users indicates that about 60% of them are corporate or institutional. They are probably stuck with IE6 through cost of change or the requirements of legacy intranet applications.
The number non-institutional users with either IE6 or the three-year old IE7 is surprising, as you’d expect the updates to have been pushed through by Windows Update. You have to wonder if these PC’s have updates disabled!
96% of Windows users are using either XP (69%) or Vista (27%).
Firefox
| FF 3.0.11 | 26% | Jun-09 | |
| FF 3.0.10 | 57% | Apr-09 | |
| Other V3 | 11% | Jun-08 | |
| Older | 6% |
In contrast, with Firefox there is a very different pattern. 83% of the Firefox users had updated within the last two months and 94% of Firefox users were using a browser less than a year old.
Perhaps the difference is cultural. Firefox users have made a conscious choice to switch and are probably generally more aware of the need to stay up-to-date.
Web of Life
June 13th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Life is connected. We have a lot of small grasses growing in the cracks between the paving stones in our yard. You might have an urge to “tidy” these up, but their seeds are currently sustaining a flock of 20 or so finches…
Hans Rosling and Data Visualisation
May 14th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Hans Rosling (blog), Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, using data visualisation to explain poverty, health and economic development.
Swine Flu and Tuberculosis vs the news media
And two talks from TED. The first on HIV
And the second exposing preconceptions about the “developing world”
Ubuntu Netbook Remix
May 7th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Put Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the AspireOne. Amazingly good.
The Windows XP installation on this machine was crumbling. Suspend/hibernate didn’t work. There would be no fixing that without re-installing Windows. Even when it was working properly, the XP user-interface was kind of awkward on the small keyboard and trackpad. This seemed like a good opportunity to try out the latest Ubuntu release – 9.04.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix
The Ubuntu installation took about 15 minutes, using an USB CD-ROM drive. As far as I could tell everything worked except the network activity light and the SD slot. Fixed by running this, in the terminal, then rebooting
sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty
The next step was to install the Netbook Remix (UNR). Execute this in a terminal window and re-boot:
sudo apt-get install go-home-applet human-netbook-theme \
maximus netbook-launcher window-picker-appletsudo apt-get \
install go-home-applet human-netbook-theme maximus \
netbook-launcher window-picker-applet
The result is brilliant. The UNR user-interface is much more manageable with a small trackpad and keyboard.
UNR replaces the standard Gnome interface with one more suited to a small screen. Instead of the usual Applications/Places/System menu, there is a full-screen “home” panel that shows the icons for the installed applications. The applications are organised in a series of tabs. Clicking the tab shows the application in that category. The tabs and icons are large and easy to hit.
UNR Main Screen
The right-hand part of the the top bar has the usual status applets and you can add more from the standard selection
Status Bar
The task bar lives on the left of the top bar. The running applications are represented by 16×16 icons. Click the icon to bring the application to the front – much like the standard task bar. The front application gets a larger tab in the top bar.
Taskbar
Overlapping windows are gone. All the applications run with their window maximised. All the window decoration is stripped away leaving only the application, maximised against the top bar. There is no title bar, minimise/maximise/close buttons or window resize controls.
Compared to a normal notebook, the netbook’s small trackpad and screen are quite fiddly. UNR’s simplification of the user-interface makes the netbook so much easier to work with. The effect is surprisingly good and far better than using Windows XP.
Overall UNR has transformed the Acer from something that was tolerable to a device I actually like using….
ANZAC Day
April 25th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Watched the Leopard Coach Lines Canterbury Brass play World War 1 era music outside the Canterbury Museum. Here’s what twitter said about ANZAC day.
Click on the image for a zoomable view (requires Microsoft Silverlight)
ANZAC Day 2009 - Canterbury Museum
Gratuitous Packaging Award
April 21st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
This month’s award goes to SanDisk for the mountain of unnecessary plastic and cardboard surrounding these three USB flash drives. At least most of the materials were recyclable and the drives themselves are excellent.
(Much) Too Much Time on Their Hands
April 12th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
New Mapping Articles
April 6th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Added some new mapping articles to the MapToaster website.
- Choosing a GPS
- About datums and map projections
- New Zealand Transverse Mercator (NZTM) projection
How to manually add a Windows printer for OS X
March 19th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The printer preferences dialog on a Mac allows you to browse for Windows printer shares and add them by clicking. If the share is not browseable, or the printer is on another IP subnet, then the printer wont show up. On a PC, you can simply enter the server and share name.
On a Mac there’s nowhere to do this. While waiting for Apple tech support to figure it out (they tried to give up on me a couple of times) I stumbled on the salient KB article. Turns out the Advanced tool button you need to do this is turned off by default.
Just Works If You Know How…
The Ides of March — Old School Gospel
March 15th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
David Byrne’s playlist this month is a beautiful collection of old gospel songs.
Monarchs Emerge
March 10th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
After the 3 weeks the coccoons became transparent. This seemed to be triggered by a hot day, after a week or so of cooler weather.
The following day the butterflies emerged. They under the empty coccoons for a few hours, waiting for their wings to straighten an harden. Then they were off into the garden. Here’s the full gallery of photos.
Monarch Butterflies
March 1st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
One of this summer’s science projects was growing Monarch butterflies. A single Swan plant. This yielded a dozen or so caterpillars. The plant grew to a good size, but was no match for the caterpillars’ ferocious appetite. It held up for a while, but 4th instar caterpillars stripped the plant of leaves in a couple of days. At that point we fed them on strips of butternut pumpkin until they pupated.
We now have four pupae. The remainder of the caterpillars wandered off into other plants and couldn’t be found or were predated by wasps.
Pupae are two weeks old – should emerge any day…
Blackout
February 20th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Speaking as someone who makes a living from selling intellectual propery, Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act provides nothing of value to the majority of New Zealand copyright holders. It creates a situation of guilt by accusation and in doing so endangers my business by exposing it to malicious accusations. Rather than using the courts, it places responsibility on ISP’s, who are ill equipped to make the necessary judgements.
This absurdly amateurish piece of legislation appears to be the result of lobbying by an industry that has forgotten how to be a business…
Update: the start date for this legislation has been delayed by a month….
Leaving Money on the Table
January 23rd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
On the one hand, HP is cutting 24,600 jobs. On the other, here’s the response I got, from their pre-sales team, to a simple question about the specs for a high-end (read expensive) laptop I’m interested in buying:
I would like to inform you that from the model number and product number I am unable to trace any specifications. Therefore, I request you to get back to us with the exact Model number of the PC. However, you can check the specification for any model PC by logging in to HP website :…
I had previously read the specification on their website and it didn’t have everyting I wanted to know. So I tried again including the link to their website for the model/options and this came back:
I would like to inform you that we, at HP Email support are dedicated to provided technical support to the HP PCs. I regret to inform you that we do not have information regarding this. At this moment, I recommend you contact the nearest HP Reseller, so that they will provide you complete details about the pricing and the features.
This stuff isn’t rocket science…
Warhol’s “Fashion”
January 12th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Nokia E71 vs iPhone
January 10th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
After having used an iPhone for almost a year, I’m now using a Nokia E71. In many ways the Nokia is an anti-iPhone. More powerful, but more complicated. Here’s what I like about the new phone, compared to the iPhone:
- Real keyboard – typing is much faster and more accurate than the iPhone touch-screen keyboard.
- Background apps. Having software continue to run in the background transforms the mobile data experience. It’s a big deal. You don’t have to wait for an email to be sent, instant messaging continues to run, web pages don’t have to reload when you go back to them.
- Better voice quality on phone calls.
- Bluetooth DUN provides a 3G data connection for a laptop or N810
- Voice dialling and speed dial. A lot quicker to make a call.
- Can use one-handed for making calls.
- Louder speaker – better for handsfree and listening to internet radio or podcasts.
- User-interface is fast. The iPhone animations are pretty to watch, but make the phone feel a little sluggish.
- Instant messaging (gtalk) that really works.
- VOIP client – can connect to the office asterisk server.
- Skype. Interestingly Skype uses a standard local cellphone call for the “last mile”. 3G data connections aren’t really suitable for VOIP, so Skype uses your cell carrier to make the link between you and the Skype network. If you have included minutes, there might not e a lot of benefit over a cellphone call, but you also get instant messages and presence.
- I can write software for it using Python. No Objective C required.
- No nanny-Apple looking over my shoulder.
