Interesting Links

Tuesday 01 February 2005 at 08:06 am Makes sense to me - Why everyone can't hire the top 1% of developers. Before the Simpsons - Matt Groening Apple Ad. Excellent resource for Music buffs - Rate Your Music. Heres a list of albums I own. Stream iTunes to your PocketPC - WiFiTunes. Flash demonstration of GNUstep Application Development. Looks easy. Another LDAP based tool to maintain a central authentication repository for Linux, Unix and Windows - XAD Identity Server. Not everything Apple has created has been a success - Top 10 Mac Failures . Build your own Knoppix style bootable CD using this GUI tool - LiveCD. Select packages, customise various templates and then generate a bootable iso image. What more could a person ask for - M&M Sorter. I guess it works for Pebbles and Smarties too.

Interesting Links

Friday 28 January 2005 at 08:11 am As the mini-Mac has started shipping there are a few excellent reviews that have started to appear - A mini-guide to Mac OS X for new Mini owners and AnandTech: Apple's Mac mini - Tempting PC Users Everywhere.

The Open Sourcing of Solaris has begun at OpenSolaris.org. The first component released is the DTRace tool.

Fascinating - NewsForge | Firebird targets the enterprise database. There is a Firebird Project underway to provide an Oracle PL/SQL emulation layer to help provide an Open Source alternative supported database to Oracle.

Some small but useful Mac OS X utilities - particularly Spark.

Application for Mac OS X to allow your phone to act as an answering machine - OVOLAB - Phlink.

Useful FreeBSD tool - Logmon. Allows you to monitor multiple Unix logfiles simultaneously.

OpenOffice Base - NewsForge | OpenOffice.org database application: A first look review.

Donationware - HornWare: SharePoints. Allows you to easily create Mac OS X shares from any directory.

Useful - MSI Packaging Tools.

Interesting Links

Friday 21 January 2005 at 07:59 am Nifty guide to User Mode Linux - Howto for UML. UML lets you run multiple virtual Linux machines on a single server in 'user mode' - as an application process rather than a single server utilising all of the hardware.

Windows clustering - Understanding How Cluster Quorums Work.

Only in Japan - Giant Red Self Destruct Button.

WTF - Defense Tech: AMERICA'S IRAN RAIDS ?!?!

At last something genuinely useful - Cliche Finder.

Humour - One does not simply walk into Mordor. Animated gif - watch it all the way through.

The net is full of opinions on the mini-Mac - this one seems to sum it up nicely - Mac mini - the "just enough" computer. It should be noted that there are two PC manufacturers that also make 'small' PC's - cappuccinopc and Logisys. Unfortunately both lack the style of the Mac (or anything else by Apple).

Interesting Links

Wednesday 19 January 2005 at 07:30 am A must read for Ruby and surrealist fans is whytheluckystiff who wrote the excellent Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby and has now created hobix which is a Ruby based blogging engine.

Nice hierarchical drive navigation menu for Windows Exmenu.

Mark Taw has collected his Favorite Smallware. And for the Mac - 43 Folders: MacOSX Inventory Collections.

One day I'll get my favourite keyboard - IBM model M keyboards. You can even get these classic devices with built in trackballs and thumbsticks.

Why this hasn't hit the mainstream I don't know - its certainly evidence of what home automation will be like in the very near future. Home Monitor on a Cell Phone was knocked up in 5hrs for a contest in 2001 and needless to say actually won the developer a new BMW.

An excellent explanation of Apple's Tipping Point: Macs for the Masses.

Very cool idea for a tree house - Free Spirit Sphere's. Bet they're not cheap.

These actually do sound pretty relaxing - Nippaz With Attitude - Music CD albums in a lullaby style for babies.

Interesting Links

Thursday 30 December 2004 at 5:42 pm meta-creation_date: 22/12/2004 09:19:23
Engadget has a comprehensive and indepth review of the Sony PlayStation Portable/PSP.

Retro innovation - Commodore64 on a Joystick.

PCMagazine - Ten to AvoidThe Worst Products of the Year. The only one that doesn't ring true is the eMac but it is a PC magazine afterall.

More wikipedia goodness - Apple Newton.

Compact PC - Kim Young releases updated Sumicom mini-PC. The size of a drive bay. Awesome.

Great - Simple guide to LaTeX.

Interesting - MetroPipe Portable Virtual Privacy Machine. A virtual Linux secure machine that fits on a USB key and runs as a virtual machine.

A similar homebrew effort utilising WindowsCE to create a PortableCE.

Increasing privacy fears fuel efforts to improve anonymity - Tor anonymous Internet communication system.

Useful Windows tips - Windows Explorer Hacks.

One day I'll look into Plone and when I do I'll need some good documentation - The Definitive Guide to Plone.

Interesting Links

Wednesday 22 December 2004 at 10:19 pm Engadget has a comprehensive and indepth review of the Sony PlayStation Portable/PSP.

Retro innovation - Commodore64 on a Joystick.

PCMagazine - Ten to AvoidThe Worst Products of the Year. The only one that doesn't ring true is the eMac but it is a PC magazine afterall.

More wikipedia goodness - Apple Newton.

Compact PC - Kim Young releases updated Sumicom mini-PC. The size of a drive bay. Awesome.

Great - Simple guide to LaTeX.

Interesting - MetroPipe Portable Virtual Privacy Machine. A virtual Linux secure machine that fits on a USB key and runs as a virtual machine.

A similar homebrew effort utilising WindowsCE to create a PortableCE.

Increasing privacy fears fuel efforts to improve anonymity - Tor anonymous Internet communication system.

Useful Windows tips - Windows Explorer Hacks.

One day I'll look into Plone and when I do I'll need some good documentation - The Definitive Guide to Plone.

Interesting Links

Friday 17 December 2004 at 08:08 am Huge news - first Oracle and Peoplesoft and now Symantec and Veritas. Thats close to $24bn US changing hands if these deals proceed.

Apple storage tech making slow inroads into enterprise markets - Oracle uses and endorses Apples Xserv. They'll have a tough time beating the biggies in the storage market but at least they provide a high-quality low cost alternative (especially when Xsan is available).

Very useful resource for Windows application deployment - Appdeploy.

I wonder if this Nintendo GameBoy Advance gadget will make it out of Japan - Nintendo MP3/MPEG playback.

Much simpler than the paper LCD screen but no less elegant - heat sensitive paper clock.

Computer history in fashion - Geek T-shirts through the ages.

Interesting Links

Monday 29 November 2004 at 9:33 pm Wired is running a Whatever happened to SGI ? story. Nice comparison with the Mac community. Introduction to 64-bit Windows on Opteron/Itanium hardware. An insight into the IBM Power Architecture. Also some very brief details on Power7 - it looks like IBM really will smoke the opposition in the Unix (primarily Sun and HP) marketplace. Fan of classic cellphones - Retrofone has something to meet all your needs. Quick backup solution - Rsync Snapshots. The ongoing hunt for the perfect Windows - Sticky. Having come back to Outlook I can safely say that its 'Notes' feature is terrible compared to the flexibility offered by Mac OS Stickies. Useful - WordWeb is a free 'lite' Dictionary/Thesaurus for Windows.

Interesting Links

Tuesday 23 November 2004 at 06:50 am This open-source tool provides similar functionality to Salling Clicker on the Mac - FMA for Windows. It allows you to access your Bluetooth enabled phone (particularly the T610) from your Windows PC. A pretty simple article but the juicy stuff is in the links to running partitioned Linux servers alongside AIX - take a look - Installing Linux on an IBM pSeries server. Interesting but not surprising - Novell Linux Desktop review indicates its not quite ready for primetime with a few rough edges. If you didn't already know Novell bought SuSE. I guess it'll take a few iterations before it has that slick look to it that users are accustomed to in a 'corporate' product. And that enormous 'N' has to go . . . A good introduction to Open Firmware. I'd originally thought this was just an Apple invention but it appears to have originated at Sun. Emulation - a little light on detail but this brief article shows you how to Emulate CP/M and OpenVMS on Linux. This is cool example of why a mainframe class OS still has life left in it yet - Simulate OpenBSD on a Vax using SIMH. This story has been linked by many many sites but its to good to miss so - The Audion Story. A glimpse into the workings of a small Mac developers product from conception through to the release of Audion as freeware. Audio recordings of somewhere else - One Minute Vacation. Nifty and simple web based whiteboard - Webnote. The cool thing about it is that it also supports an XML feed so you can use it as a common 'post-board' which people can subscribe to and receive updates from. Filched from Gizmodo - a small database of Japanese Consumer Design. Nice pictures of Nakamichi, Onkyo, Yamaha and other brands through the ages. The 70's weren't so tasteless afterall but I still maintain the vertical record player was a bad idea.

Interesting Links

Saturday 30 October 2004 at 08:26 am These updates may be a little more infrequent now I'm back working again. With the US elections looming next week Mark Perkel has made Fahrenheit 9/11 available as a free download - everyone needs to see this movie. Another nice article on the 64-bit PowerPC Architecture. If you're a Windows user that wants a few Mac-like features or a Mac user stuck in a Windows world here are some ideas on making your Windows PC work like a Mac. This is amazing - dual and quad processor mini-itx motherboards from Via. Geek-chic - a coffee-table book of retro computers - if you're a fan of the Osborne, Spectrum, Commodore era of computing then check out Digital Retro by Gordon Laing. A nice howto - Install WordPress on a Windows machine. WordPress is a blog engine - its recently come into favour as people have moved away from MovableType over licensing issues. A brief article on Building an Enterprise Linux Cluster solution.