Valhalla Island

I apologise for consecutive iPhone posts but I’ve just come across Laura Reis’s latest post and I just have to call out her bullshit. Continue reading →

In the last month my feed reader has become less of an all purpose news aggregator and more of an iPhone news aggregator. The Unofficial Apple Weblog, a favourite read of mine, has become the dedicated-to-the-iPhone weblog. Crazes like this often bother me, I enjoy it when bullshit is called out and when people are put in their place. Continue reading →

Random Shapes is a blog network for teenagers, called “teens” all over the website. A long while ago, back when this blog was still called fightingfriends, I joined Random Shapes purely for the increased traffic I assumed it would bring. I know, how immoral of me. A little while later it became clear that the tiny amount of traffic wasn’t worth my association with Random Shapes. Six months later, it still sucks. Continue reading →

It’s that time of year again and reports show that Internet Explorer still makes up a good chunk of the browsers used to access this website. As shown by figure 1.3a.

Figure 1.3a Browser usage on jimwhimpey.com

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Slate talked to some authors about the typefaces they use when composing. The favorites were Courier and it’s New variety which initially surprised me but while most have irrational attachments to typewriters, a couple of authors have reasons that made the choice make sense. Continue reading →

The total noobs in every programming course I’ve taken since beginning tertiary study get really down about their applications failing to compile. When there’s a compiling error the complier tells you exactly what the problem is and often points to the exact character that’s caused the error. This is not a bad thing. Continue reading →

A woman will not go back to Starbucks because of something written on a cup. Ryan Irelan nails it:

If you believe your God is all-powerful, etc. then it doesn’t matter what Starbucks puts on their cup…

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Those are big icons and I’m guessing they scale with the Finder window. It’s about time.

Finding a nice simple pastebin for use on your own server isn’t easy. There’s plenty of hosted options - Pastie being my favourite. All I wanted was something small to paste IRC quotes. The Ruby on Rails app Rebbin looked perfect but it turns out it’s quite difficult to get a Rails app running if you know nothing about Rails. Thanks to Mr Paul Dixon, creator or pastebin.com, who released the PHP source under the GPL, I was able to find a solution… Eventually. Continue reading →

I’ve written a lot about web browsers in OS X, always pointing out there’s no perfect browser for OS X, all do different things well. The Safari 3 Beta (for Windows too) brings up the debate again. Continue reading →

You no doubt know a bunch of Leopard features were announced at this year’s WWDC. There were 10 big features presented by Steve Jobs, some good, some bad. I consider myself a bit of a software coinoisseur so I’m going to talk about them all. Continue reading →

A little while ago I read a great article on how to gain 10 waking days per year. There’s some great advice to be found including this:

For lunch, I eat a sandwich and when possible (and only when I feel tired, this is not daily) I take a power nap that lasts all of 20 minutes.

“…only when I feel tired” - that’s so important, for all kinds of sleep. Go to sleep when you are tired. Continue reading →

What’s the difference between an E65i, N93, 8300, X830 or a D520? Unless you own the phone or you’re an Engadget Mobile subscriber, you can’t associate the name to the phone or even to a brand of phone. Dell names their computers in groups but then gives different configurations code style names like E520, Apple gives them one name and ignores configurations. Continue reading →

A day or two ago Garrett Murray did some very short movie reviews. I think it’s a great idea - long reviews, especially movie reviews can be tedious. Every night this week I’ve watched a different movie before going to bed. Here’s my four short reviews. Continue reading →

Useless Account is slowly approaching 10,000 users. If you haven’t already signed up, do it, it’s a valuable, life-changing experience. Anyway, today I was browsing through the database of users and there’s some hilarious answers to some of the less serious questions. Here are some anonymous answers to the question - What would you do for $1,000,000 that you wouldn’t do for $10,000: Continue reading →

ABC 612 Brisbane is my favourite talk radio station but I think it might also be the only talk radio station in Brisbane. 612 isn’t even completely talk, they ruin things by playing the worst music every now and then. Anyway, the whole thing is very two way - they’re consistently asking for callers on subjects and they get them and it’s quite nice, I’ve called in and gotten on the air a few times.

As well as the live call-ins there’s also a feedback line, kind of like an answering machine that they select some messages from each day and play back over the air. Topics can cover anything but usually they’re about things like public transport or government policy, whatever really. Continue reading →

I’ve always thought the fuss made over the iPhone, from the moment it was announced, has been way over the top. An article about the body being slippery received 1500 diggs, that’s just ridiculous. As with a lot of different kinds of things, it’s usually not the source that puts me off but the entourage that follows it. That aside, the three new iPhone TV commercials are amazing. Continue reading →

Thanks to Caius I thought it’d be a great idea to create a single page that amalgamates everything I do online - web apps, blogging, linking, contact info, blah, blah, blah. I call it All My Shit and I think it’s pretty cool. I’m an organised person so this kind of thing makes me happy. Continue reading →

If you haven’t heard, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had an interview on stage together for the first time in over 20 years. The set of videos, broken into 7 parts can be found on the D website starting with Part One. There’s a stark difference in personalities that makes it great to watch - Jobs almost comes across as a crazy person, a charismatic crazy person. Continue reading →