BBC's (Beta) Multiplatform iPlayer Downloader

I've tried the Beta BBC iPlayer AIR app (which you can find out about here). It allows UK people (or those with proxy servers) to download those iPlayer files via an Adobe air app.

This the Mac OS is are being drawn into the BBC fold. Platform agnostic is the way to go. Web apps, Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight (is Silverlight available on Linux?.

A nice idea as I was sometimes having problems streaming. Alas not much good to me as my poor G5 PowerPC can't really keep up and the video is laggy (their specs suggest Intel Macs only). I hear there is some programme found here that can download files which you can play in quicktime - so don't have to use the air app to play the files, haven't tried it yet.

I guess it works for Linux too? I don't know, hope so.

A dull post. Doh.

Dabbling in Linux Live CDs

I've been trying some out on my old laptop, sling in the CD and run Linux off it. So far I am liking
Kate OS

a lightweight fast distro, looks nice and runs fast. With XFCE desktop environment. The snappiest of the CDs I've tried.

Wolvix

is also feature packed and looks good (choose between window managers XFCE and Fluxbox, which are my current faves (appearance and design-wise)). Though they are both based on Slackware and not sure I'm ready for escaping the ease of Ubuntu yet. It comes with multimedia apps like MPlayer, Kino and Audacity and Internet apps like WiFi Radar and XChat. It comes in two variations Cub, which is a small edition designed to fit on a flash drive (256 MB) and Hunter, the one I tested, the HD version.

I've briefly (very briefly) tried FreeSbie which i s a FreeBSD distro, which took ages to load, but looks very deep. It features xffm, a window manager I had not come across before with many features, but looks complex. I'll be checking FreeSbie out in more depth later.

I still have more CD flavours to taste.

RAW Developer

I hooked up my camera today and realised that OS X (10.4.11) can now read those Olympus Evolt E510 RAW files, which it previously could not. This means that iPhoto can read them too, but this isn't so great for me as I don't use iPhoto. Alas Photoshop CS still no open, and Olympus haven't released a plug in, and I guess won't. So there are alternatives for RAW work. I could try Aperture or Lightroom, or upgrade to CS3, but I doubt I'll do any of those things. There is a program called RAW Developer which costs about £65 and lets you do all kinds of wonderful to all kinds of RAW images. I like, but am felling cheap and have not bought it yet. You can alter the white balance, RGB and LAB curves both on the same image, adjust highlights, shadows, saturation, sharpness, it's all great, but I feel I can't stretch to it quite yet, though am more likely to buy RAW Developer than Aperture (need faster puter) or Lightroom/Photoshop CS3 (That damned product activation seriously puts me off).


You can try out the prog in a demo mode where your photos are exported with some text printed on them (and are probably digitally watermarked or summink too).

I'm Trying out Flock

Flock the social Web, Firefox based browser again, so far so nice. I am posting this from Flock. It has integrated Photo, Video, blog type things. I'm seeing what it can do. I like the media stream that can display photos, videos etc. in a row along the top of the browser.

Cog 0.06 and John From Cincinnati

New Cog has a shiny new user interface, Last.fm scrobbling support, gapless playback, a new drawer from which to browse a folder (configurable), configurable shortcuts that work when you don't even have Cog in focus and Front row remote controller support. And there are other things too. It's just fantastic. I have wanted something like this. a lightweight player for a few tracks, as an alternative for times when you don't want to use the behemoth that iTunes has become (it's taking up like 100+ MB of my RAM now).

As an aside, have been watching and enjoying John from Cincinnati. A New HBO series featuring a surfing community and superstar surfer family, an intriguing stranger who seems to be able to give other people abilities (e.g. healing, levitation), humour, a cast a ponderous characters, a very definite sense of place a feeling that something is happening - is building. I am interested.

Review here from LA weekly.

Miro Video Player

I have been using the new incarnation of Democracy Player, Miro. I've been watching French video, among other things like GeekBrief TV, there is a lot of French stuff on DailyMotion. I never really got into Democracy player, but I'm getting on better with Miro. Don't know why. It now also does audio podcasts feeds (dunno if it did before) as well as video ones, and it also does bittorrent, but I haven't tried that out yet.

I like it.

Links for 13th March 2007

The Tumbleist is a list of some tumblelogs (brief, immediate, mixed media post blog (ooh - post-blog?)) around on the web. Snippets from a life is the main way they are being used. What is so exciting about the net is that things don't stay uniform for long.

I read tell of Duck stand up on bash.org.

Firefox 3.0 news - ComputerWorld says -
"Firefox 3.0 will also have a small, embedded database -- SQL Lite -- that will eventually be used for full-text indexing of the browser's "history." ".
Useful - but will it slow the browser down? Hope not, sound's interesting.

Shiira Browser - Fast and Pretty

Shiira Browser 2.0b2 for OS X
Originally uploaded by KCanard.

Shiira 1.2.2 (Panther or later) is the stable build, but 2.0b2 (in the pic) is - in my reckoning - faster still, but alas buggy still. Nevertheless I am using this at present. I had tried Shiira before, but wasn't as blown away by it - don't know if it was more a change in the app or a change in me that makes me feel WOW. I can't wait to see the stable release of 2.0.

-
This is my first post from Flickr. I like this Flickr blog feature.

Songbird Web Audio Player/Browser

Songbird is this media player/web browser thing. Windows, Mac, Linux.
Click for Gallery + Features. I've been playing around with for a couple of days. I'm trying to figure out what is is and can do. it seems to be a Firefox based browser with an iTunes type audio player integrated to allow it to play media on the web. It plays many different file types - and is extensionable (like Firefox). You can listen to web radio and streams. It's got built in Audioscrobbler, but I can't seem to get that to work properly.

So - if you go to a net label site (like this one) you can go to an artist or releases page and play and browse all playable media on that page as if you were in iTunes.


p.s.The Finder seems to be telling me that the app is 113 MB - what!?


It's a great idea, and the app looks interesting but it's only in 0.2.1 so is still awkward. I find it works best just using it for web playback and not importing my iTunes playlists + Library. I have downloaded one of the nightlies (0.2.5) and this works a load better than the release I used before.
Yeah -it's buggy but still promising.

Anyway - so still I am confused, but this is a interesting app. It's nice to visit a feed burner type podcast feed and preview the podcasts in the browser.

Right so - I'm still messing at the mo. Will tell more if I learn some astounding thing.

--

On a podcast note been listening to loooaads of TWIT podcasts. Really like net@nite and MacBreak Weekly, but others are good too. And you get some Merlin Mann in MacBreak - Mr Jocularity - always worth a listen.

Shuffle Saver (Flickr Screensaver)

One of my favourite Flickr related Things is the Flickr screensaver Shufflesaver.

Shufflesaver allows you to view a slideshow of Flickr photos from a person (or narrow down to that person's favourite photos), or you can look for photos specifying up to three tags. You can view photos from everyone's latest photos, or from everyone's interesting photos. You can also select photos from your iPhoto collection if Flickr doesn't appeal. There are various slide tramsitions to choose from and you can set the duration for slides to stay up.

There are also options that allow you to save the current slide to a folder on your hard drive, or iPhoto, or to open the photo's page in you web browser (this doesn't disturb the screensaver, it happens in the background).
A feature I would like is the ability to get photos from pools, or from one or more of a users sets - or perhaps from various sets of various users - then it all gets a bit complex, but at leat the ability to get photos from a pool - so I could see photos from the Fruit and Veg pool, for example.

Halloween Textmate

Textmate had a Halloween update that included nice new icons among other things

Then in another update a few days later all the modding got removed.
The readme says -

" >[2006-11-02: REVISION 1324]
"[REMOVED] TextMate no longer pays tribute to human sacrifices, rape, nor does it show a picture of the God of the deaths in your dock -- ticket 945BEB5D"

Awwww. But I have a copy of Halloweenified! So's not so bad.

Firefox 2 Is Here

Firefox 2 is out of beta, and into 2.0 proper.
Big Woos all around.

Firefox 2 Beta 2 (Mac)

Just downloaded the new Firefox 2 beta 2.
And Ooh it is pretty. It looks as though they have updated the icons.

And the little close tab cross on each tab now glows red when you hover over it.
Tabs not currently in use are faded out (I don't recall this before, though I may be mistaken).
There is a small arrow you can click at the end of the window that shows a list of all your tabs. you can then click to choose a tab and are taken to it in the browser window.

Very useful with the sprawl of tabs I usually have open. (Was this around in beta 1? If it was I didn't notice it)

I am excited about the new Firefox. I'm regularly using the spellcheck and the "undo close tab" and the "recently closed tabs" item in the history menu. And of course the session restore feature, which reinstates all your previously open tabs when/if you crash, (which is rarely happening for me now). Lifesaver. I think I have said all this before.
Oh and on the tab thing, you can scroll through your tabs along with some green arrows that appear, so no more "where have my tabs gone" worries. (and yes I think this was in beta 1 too, again I can't be sure, but if it was I don't think the arrows were green.)

Overall it just seems to me to be more a lot smoother to use, and nicer to look at. More Macintosh-y, though is it aqua looking?.
Well whatever, I am impressed.
I shall see over the next coming days how stable it is.

Things to Prettify Your Mac

Breve Creatures screensaver the breve simulation environment.

IdleWeb view and scroll through websites as a screensaver

LotsaSnow - Pretty snowflakes fall against a background or over your dimmed desktop. I love this.

FuzzyClock tells the time in an around and about way.

and many localizations including Pimp-not sure wether this will be a permanent feature in my menu bar.

vUpstream is fast and flashy, but quite nice.

Oh and

ShadowKiller removes window shadows and speeds up my aging iMac (G4 800mhz). Not a prettyfier, but it does change the GUI.

Links for 18/08/2006 or Thereabouts

TimeLapse Screensaver
If I had an iSight this would be excellent, though I am not exactly sure what it does (I wanna try it out).
WebnoteHappy Lite bookmark pages and make notes on them. This is something I've been looking for for some time. For all those times you want to check to something out later but don't want to add it to your "proper" bookmarks (Or del.icio.us or whatever). From Firefox adding a bookmark can be triggered by adding a bookmark in the toolbar and clicking on that or by adding a keyword to the bookmark and typing that keyword into the address bar, WebnoteHappy will be triggered to get the page you want bookmarked and allow you to make a note on it. You can then export these bookmarks and notes to backup or to bookmarks readable by other browsers (I'm assuming they are readable by other browsers, haven't tried importing any yet.)
Pingling this dockling that sits in the dock checking whether you are online or not by pinging apple.com, google.com or shrook.com.
I have a dodgy router so this is very useful.
Quicksilver changes everything. The wowee intro to using Quicksilver. Yes, this has been around for ages but I just got around to it.

Quicksilver

I have experienced a moment of wonder, at Quicksilver. I remembered that I could attach actions to my (and their) applescripts (my applescripts are the talk of - like nowhere). If you install the Extra Scripts plug-in within Quicksilver and then type Extras into Quicksilver you can scroll through a list of the available scripts. Some nice little scripts they have going on there: Sleep, Toggle Audio inputs, also some shell scripts.
Oh the joy of controlling i tunes without making it the foremost application. mmm.

This is new to me thought I'm sure others were well aware of all this before. I still have to figure out how to use the clipboard and the shelf effectively (i.e at all)

p.s.
I just discovered Quicksilver can play audio files. OMFG. Is there nothing it cannot do?

Browers

On Firefox 2.0 beta 1 (OS X) - After a couple of days:
(I am comparing from 1.0.7, so these features may not be new to 2.0)

Me Likey:
Each tab now has its own close button, like in Safari instead of just one right at the end of the tab bar.
Spell check for text input fields.

It still seems quite buggy, I have problems with using the space bar and up down right left buttons to move around pages. Maybe I've selected a preference that I didn't mean to.

I am playing around with some Camino extensions (for Camino of course not for Firefox, I can't hack) If I like them, they might encourage me to use Camino more. I am not big on the extensions I only have Adblock for Firefox, there are so many of them when I go to the extensions directory I am overwhelmed.

I have downloaded Flock, but ahh, I can't be arsed. There always seems so many other thing that I'd rather do. But I must get round to it. Same with OmniWeb. I have folders full of un-tasted apps.

Google Earth and Journaler

Looking at the features of the app Journaler, looks mighty fine.

A few notable features that I like:
Entries filed under date unlike other apps I have come across.
Insert images, video, make voice recordings (via mp3 encoder).
Add files to your entries or photos from iPhoto, music from iTunes, addresses from Address Book via browsers (ie. without having to launch the programs themselves).
Has categories, keywords, search feature.
Upload entries to weblog or Email entries

As yet this is Donationware. I intend to donate when I have given it a good going over.

Google Earth looks good too. Google earth Mac that is. I was using it yesterday and I'm not sure whether it has gremlins within or whether my 800 MHz iMac isn't fast enough to run it, but there were some problems.

iTunes, iPod and some Melancholia

iTunes 5 out there now for download. Am liking the playlist folders.

What of the ipod mini? Are they going for an all white line up? Like those pretty lollipop iMacs, the multicoloured mini's are gone from the Apple site, well for the present anyway. I prefer the look of the mini to this nano thing.(though I will be going to the Apple store soon to have a gander (oh the punnery)).
iPod pico next? some kind of 10GB little iPod? Cos there's a gap at the mo between 4 and 20 GB. For me 4 is too small and that 20GB is too big for my pocket. I feel perhaps some of these new bigger tiny drives will be featuing in a smaller iPod soon. I "feel" - make that I would really like.

links
Om Malik's 10MacApps
good GUI practice (and theory) at asktog.com
I'm having a look at this timer thing. ("Designer's time clock")

The line in a Belle and Sebastian song "everyone she knew thought she was beautiful, only slightly mental". wonderful lyrics.

A year is nothing anymore. i am a young duck and i feel so old. I feel that I am waiting to live, in a queue and soon I will be dead standing in line. I don't know what I'm waiting for. Permission or something.

The nights are drawing in. It's reminding me of last year and that is sucking happiness from me. I remember when the long nights used to seem mysterious and exciting. Beautiful and cosy. Now they make me melancholy. Have you ever seen duck weep?

In the spring the lengthening days depress me; in late summer the shrinking daylight depresses me. today is the first day this summer I have really felt that winter is on the way. This should be a good thing, as I like Winter.
I don't think listening to Belle and Sebastian is helping. I'm going to try the Distillers.

Sometimes I think I'm stuck in the past.