So I Bought An iPod Touch

Posted on Tue Oct 14, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

In spite of Apple’s many transgressions, I finally caved, and bought a Touch. What transgressions?

They’re suing a small Victoria, BC business school over the apple logo.
The iPhone/Touch doesn’t have cut and paste.
The iPhone/Touch doesn’t have an SD card slot for extra memory.
The iPhone/Touch SDK comes with a punishingly harsh NDA.

Ok, they’ve actually retired that NDA, but there are other offences. The highly vaunted Apple user experience has been a bust for me. I tried and tried, but couldn’t get into the App Store, which is the ONLY WAY to download programs onto the platform. Continue reading →

Google Chrome Coming Soon

Posted on Tue Sep 2, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

Google Chrome Google is today releasing a new browser called Chrome. It’s supposed to be much faster and more robust than existing alternatives. (Yes, even better than FF. Can you believe it?) Google describes the philosophy and advantages in a 38 page comic book:

https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

The big question is what this will mean for the current players? I figure it’s too soon to tell. But I’m hoping Mozilla will use the opportunity to pick up whatever they can from the GPLed Chrome, for inclusion in Firefox.

Also, I’m not sure how much I can trust Google since they’ve pulled the rug out from under my feet with their now defunct Browser Synch extension.

I Want to Get This Good at Photoshop

Posted on Tue Aug 12, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

I’ve been using Paint Shop Pro for years. I got pretty good at making greeting cards, but there was a limit to what I could do in terms of photo-realistic compositions.

My friend, Kristan Uccello, posted a link on Facebook to a set of tilt-shift miniatures, which I think I can pull off. I’m also interested in learning how to do High Definition Range photos. I’ll keep you posted.

What really got my juices flowing, though, was a link to one of the artists in that list: Glenn Karlsen from Norway has some terrific and amazing images.

I’m not sure you can do this stuff with The GIMP, which is the open source, cross-platform image manipulation program I’m currently using, but I’m going to give it a shot. Watch this space for developments.

OLPC Redux

Posted on Sun Aug 10, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

The new OLPC, the XO-2 There is a tremendously well-researched, well-reasoned history of the OLPC, and it’s subsequent effects on the computer industry, at “Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptop”. A minor quibble about the article: the author didn’t mention the ASUS Eee PC, which clearly owes it’s existence to the OLPC, and then went on to spark other ultraportables such as the HP 2133 Mini-Note.

From Windows to Mac: Another Convert

Posted on Mon Aug 4, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

Mac OS X Finder I’ve been using, playing and struggling with Windows since version 3.0. Before that, I used pretty much every version of MS-DOS. I’ve poured a lot of my money into Microsoft. I’ve watched them go from enthusiastic techno geeks, to arrogant robber barons.

When Vista was announced, I vowed not to donate another dime to the mighty Microsoft marketing machine. I was planning on going to Linux. But when push came to shove, I didn’t want to spend days struggling with obscure arcana. So I decided to go with an OS hailed as a paragon of ease of use: OS X. Continue reading →

Lexmark X9575 Loses Out

Posted on Fri Jul 25, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

HP Officejet Pro L7650 A few weeks ago I picked up a Lexmark X9575 Wireless 4-in-1 printer, scanner, dicer, chopper, at Costco. It’s sat in the box, unopened, since then; not because I’m a lazy sloth (I am, but that’s another post, probably written by my wife), but rather because I looked up whether it was supported in Ubuntu. The forums say, it isn’t. So we wouldn’t be able to print from our Ubuntu-based Toshiba laptop in the living room. Continue reading →

Strangle the Yak Now!

Posted on Wed Jul 23, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

The spectrum auction is over, and from all accounts, the big winner of the new entrants is Globalive, which runs the “I can’t believe it’s a phone company!” Yak Communications.

Myself, I can’t believe they’ve survived this long! These buffoons are so massively incompetent it staggers the imagination. Continue reading →

More Firefox 3 Plugins You Didn’t Know You Couldn’t Live Without

Posted on Fri Jul 18, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

I’ve been frustrated after the conversion to FF 3.0, looking for the Dictionary.com search engine. The Mozilla addons site only has the Merriam-Webster engine. I went hunting for it on the Dictionary.com site, and finally found the link: https://dictionary.reference.com/tools/firefox.html gives you access to the dictionary, thesaurus and reference engines. Continue reading →

A Brief History of the Cows

Posted on Mon Jul 14, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

Shawn Chittle writes that he was there at the beginning of Tucows, when it was just one cow. Before they had a barn, even. I love these impromptu histories. They remind me of my days as a young geek in my high school’s computer room.

Pooh on the iPhone 3G

Posted on Thu Jul 10, 2008 by Alfred Ayache

Earlier this year I dropped my Palm m505. On a really hard surface. At Orly. It survived, but would no longer sync. Clearly the Universe was sending me a message it was time to upgrade my PDA. And, of course, that would mean re-evaluating my entire gadget strategy, including my PDA, cell phone, iPod, and camera. And there, in front of me, was the answer, clear as day: it was time to get an iPhone. I heard a choir of angels singing. Oh, it was so right. Continue reading →