Status-Q

Well, I’ve been very patient. Patient, first, while my insurance company took two months to pay up after my old Powerbook came to a tragic end, and then patient while I waited for Steve Jobs’ keynote address. But it was worth it, because he announced the Powerbook replacement, the MacBook Pro, and I have one on the way… Hee hee.

But my patience is not yet exhausted, and it’s just as well, because though they’re taking orders now, delivery is sometime in February. And the Apple retail stores will no doubt get them sooner than the local dealer with whom I placed my order. I’m hoping that good things come to those who wait…

I’m a bit late with this one, but the new official DivX codec for the Mac came out a couple of weeks ago, and integrates nicely with QuickTime. After the trial period there’s a charge if you want to create DivX-encoded movies, but the package also includes the free codec which will let you watch them indefinitely.

If you don’t know why you’d need this, you probably don’t! If, on the other hand, you regularly download movies created on PCs and find that they don’t play, this will help with quite a lot of them. The other solution is to install the excellent VLC player, which seems to play pretty much everything, though it isn’t as pretty or as easy to use as QuickTime Player.

I’m not normally a listener to the Catholic Insider podcast, but I think, at Christmas, if you know anything about Apple’s products, and especially if you’ve ever watched one of Steve Jobs’ keynotes, you will enjoy God’s Keynote Speech.

First heard on the MacCast.

I’ve been experimenting with the Open Source backup system ‘Bacula‘, which is gaining popularity as an alternative to the venerable Amanda.

I wanted to use my Linux machine to backup our two Macs, so I needed a version of the Bacula agent bacula-fd which was built for Mac OS X. That turned out to be pretty easy to do, but since I’ve had an amazing number of visitors to the post where I made a copy of ‘wget’ available, I thought I’d put this up here too in case anyone else is looking for it.

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I think this is fabulous.

The video is worth watching, at least for those of you who haven’t already considered the possibility of sticking your Mac to the outside of a train using suction cups….

Great advertising opportunities here.

…you’ll probably like Logorrhea.

One of the things I discovered when I moved from academia and research into the business world is that there are an awful lot of rules that you’re supposed to follow. A lot of received wisdom, and if you are reluctant to receive it, you won’t get taken seriously by others. That’s a problem if you are dependent on them for funding, for orders, for recruitment or whatever. Things that seem to normal people as if they might be a good idea because, say, you’d buy one and all your friends would too, are countered with a whole barrage of reasons why they wouldn’t work because “it isn’t done that way”. If you live with it for long enough, you learn the rules, build a proper business, and stop having good ideas that appeal to normal people.

One thing that is traditionally held to be very important for a business is a very clear focus. As someone once put it, “If you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either of them”. This makes a lot of sense, and I have repeated it to others.

But an inner, rebellious, part of me rejoices when I read an article pointing out that Apple, whose recent share performance is the envy of suits everywhere, breaks many of the cardinal rules.

The article will shortly drop into a premium-rate archive, but you somebody you know mght have a PDF. Thanks to Creative Generalist for the link.

For all you dedicated Apple fans who want all your accessories to match your veil, iPod and those white headphones on your wedding day, Apple has today announced the iDo wedding ring – the essential choice for any young person getting married in the coming months.

Also available in black, for those who like to Think Different, the iDo is carefully sculptured for maximum comfort.

“We’re seeing Apple styling becoming an important part of every aspect of people’s lives”, said an Apple spokesman. “Why should you give that up when you get married?”. All models can be engraved with a special message in Apple’s traditional Garamond font.

Apple has refused to confirm reports that, in an attempt to encourage more ‘switchers’ in the run up to Valentine’s Day, it will soon be introducing an entry-level engagement ring named the iWill.

Well, OK – I made all of that up. I’m actually just learning how to use the amazing Open Source 3D modelling package Blender. You can read about Blender’s history here. It’s quite an amazing package, especially since the Mac version of the application is only 12 MB! But nobody should expect to learn it overnight. If you thought Photoshop was complicated…