Software Development and Other Stuff
The GPS Route Planner seems to have been well received by a LOT of people… but to date I’ve had TWO donations for this… not a lot of beer, people! If you haven’t seen it, there’s a “donate” link up in the top right of the main screen to this blog. If you don’t feel that the GPS Route Planner is worth buying me a beer or two, at least get clicking on the Google advertisements littered around this site. I get a few pennies each time you do.
Go on, motivate me to add the exciting new ideas I have!
I’ve been really busy on other stuff for quite a while now – but realize that the “beta beta” version of the route planner (http://www.marengo-ltd.com/map/development.html) needs work. As has been noted, Safari support is completely borked. Also there have been some good suggestions coming in over the time from readers of this site. So…
This is by far the shiniest, jangliest gadget I’ve played with for a long time.
It can play games (MAME, squillions of other emulators, and also full SDL). It can play your movies (DivX/Xvid/OGM). It can play your music (Ogg/MP3). It can view photos. It can read Ebooks. It runs on just 2 AA batteries – And it can do all this in the palm of your hand or on your TV screen.
As I may have mentioned in previous posts, I really like my new Macbook (initial hardware teething troubles aside), but one thing has been bugging me. I’m a programmer by trade, and simply because I’m always on a keyboard, can touch type very well. On a PC keyboard.
I’ve been running Firefox 2 on my Macbook at home, and on Windows XP in the office (where I don’t have a choice of OS). Today I noticed something odd on the Mac – neither GMail nor Google Calendar would display…
Continue reading “Firefox and GMail / Google Calendar Blank Pages”
I recently bought an M-Audio Keystation 88es MIDI keyboard (I’ve wanted to learn to play piano for years, but strangely have always been drawn to strings – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, violin, and, for a short while, cello).
It works brilliantly with Garage Band, but the speakers in the Macbook are small and tinny. So I plugged it through the hi-fi. It sounds fantastic. However, I really wanted to leave the keyboard set up in the spare room, where there’s no hi-fi. So I started to think about getting some computer speakers…
Well, my Macbook has been behaving impeccably after the repair. The other day I upgraded the hard disk… here’s how easy it is…
Much as I love my new Macbook (I write this as a diehard Linux user), there’s something that’s soured my burgeoning new relationship with the thing over the last few weeks.
Google for “Macbook Random Shutdown” and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a fairly large section of the Macbook owner population that are having some odd problems…
The latest “beta beta” can be found at http://www.marengo-ltd.com/map/development.html
The new features are fairly minor: there are options (under Tools) to change your units (miles/Kms) preference, and to quickly go “home”. The “Help” box now contains a link to the GPL, and there’s a nice “Paypal donate” button unobtrusively placed in the top righthand side of the screen (I can’t believe, considering the interest this has sparked, that no-one’s bought me a beer yet…)
We’ve had record heatwaves here in London, apparently even beating the droughted summer of ’76. This sparked some pretty ferocious thunderstorms on Thursday evening, which caused me to get soaked to the skin on my 26km ride home from work (I was also worried about getting hit by lightning in Richmond Park). When I got home there were house alarms going off all over, and in my house half the circuits were blown. And worst of all my ADSL modem was fried. No internet! Continue reading “The Outage – and a Rant”