Status-Q

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…

It may seem strange, given that I am so immersed in the IT world, that this morning I did (I think) my first ever installation of Windows XP. I have sat in front of XP machines before, of course, but I switched to the Mac in the Windows 2000 era and have never had to install XP from scratch on a PC. Until today.

Actually, today was an experiment – I have a copy of VirtualPC for the Mac and was interested to try it out. I’ve never had a need for Windows myself, but sometimes it can be useful, if I’m trying to help somebody on the phone, to duplicate their actions on my local screen. This software lets you install Windows within a ‘virtual machine’ on your Mac and run a complete version of Windows and any Windows-only software. It seems to work pretty well, albeit slowly.

But what amused me was the very first thing that popped up on my screen after I installed a nice clean, fresh copy of Windows XP on my Mac.

If I had just paid £170 to upgrade my PC to Windows XP Pro, I’m sure I’d be pleased to see that message. If you ‘Click this balloon to fix this problem’ it takes you to a site which lists the places you can spend more money to buy antivirus software. To me, that’s like buying a shiny new car, sliding happily into the soft leather driver’s seat and discovering a note on the steering wheel: “A helpful tip from Mercedes: The locks on your doors may not work. Here’s a list of local garages who can repair them for you.”

The sad thing is, they’re right. And I was grateful for the reminder. I need to make sure that the virtual Windows machine only has very limited access to the rest of my Mac files…

If you ever need to transcribe audio recordings, I recommend Express Scribe, a lovely utility which is available for Mac and for Windows, and which is now free.

I set it to play back the audio at half-speed, and assigned a couple of global control keys to stop, start, and skip back 5 seconds. Then I could control the audio without ever leaving my wordprocessor and my rather poor typing could just about keep up with it. Very nice.