Speaks for itself.
Wilson Miner – When We Build from Build on Vimeo.
Spotify & Apple Remote
In my continuing saga to be as lazy as possible, I have brought back my Apple Remote into use. It has practically no use except when away from the computer you can change the iTunes track. So been as I use Spotify almost as much as I use iTunes why can’t I do the same.
Turns out you can with a little SIMBL plugin, http://themacbox.co.uk/smr/
Controlling Spotify through Applescript & Quicksilver.
Update Available: http://www.jacktams.co.uk/2009/10/09/spotify-applescripts-updated/
I have almost solely being listen to music through spotify for the last couple of weeks, sure it doesn’t replace iTunes but its damn good at what it does, all you can eat music for free. http://www.spotify.com/
The Problem:
Spotify can use the built in shortcuts for play/pause, forward and reverse, but if like me you use a different keyboard and effectively ‘dock’ you Macbook its not much use. Enter Quicksilver, the perennial quick-launch and whiz-kid short-cutter for mac. http://bit.ly/yrlr7
I already have a load of triggers set up within quicksilver for everything from make an event in iCal to post a tweet or send email.
So getting Spotify in there, it turns out Applescript is here to help, using the System Events helper you can select a menu item without actually clicking it. Below is the code for the main actions you would want in Spotify. Simply save the apple script, then attach it to a trigger in Quicksilver. Hey Presto, magic! For more details on setting up triggers check the Quicksilver wiki, it explains it alot better than I ever could. http://bit.ly/134dnL
Play Next
tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Spotify"
click menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
end tell
end tell
Play Previous
tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Spotify"
click menu item 4 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
end tell
end tell
Play/Pause
tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Spotify"
click menu item 1 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
end tell
end tell
Notes:
Don’t forget to activate assitive device support see http://www.macspeech.com/extensions/faq/kb.php?article=48
Government Fail…
Rather than close the stable door well and truly after the horse has volted. The consvertive party website now has a list of the expenses of the shadow cabinet see http://bit.ly/15Vttp.
More interesting than the claims themselves and some are interesting, is the fact they are using Google Docs. Strange you might think but Eric Schmidt of the very same company is an advisor for the conservative party. http://bit.ly/17q273
Sadly Labour’s website isn’t so transparent, in fact there is little to no mention of anything remotely like expense claims on the homepage. So I will let the BBC do the work for me http://bit.ly/HnWDG
What is Yahoo!s’ Business?
The dust is still settling from Jerry Yang’s announcement that he is to step down as Yahoos’ CEO. I wonder if Yahoo! has any idea what it wants to be. Search, Advertising or Neither.
There is still talk of Microsoft buying Yahoo! Search, which is fair enough take the least toxic bit of Yahoo! But what are you then left with. Yahoo! Mail, Delicious & Flickr they are the only remaining big properties that Yahoo have on the books.
Delicious & Flickr have yet to be monetized and the user base on both platforms would kill the person responsible for upsetting the status quo. That leaves Yahoo! Mail, which has some ads but the willingness of Yahoo! to go with the Google advertising deal means they are likely making no money on that either.
So how is Yahoo making money?
Sure its got deals with BT in the UK providing the homepage and mail service to all BT Broadband customers, and it has some News properties which are well trafficed. User growth is going to be negligible anybody who would want to sign up for a Yahoo! Account probably have, its a problem many big companies face and sure there have been attempts to get the workforce re-invigorated but so far nothing new and astounding has made it through the door, and what has been something a bit different had to be bought in.
I have said many times before that Yahoo! doesn’t have a clear sense of what it wants to be; Search, Advertising, Content or Video, it just doesn’t sit nicely anywhere and it can’t be the agregator for all because Google has sewn that one up however, thats not to say Yahoo! couldn’t compete – they could if they become a strong leader in the tech sector again.
If I where Yahoo! I would invest heavily in cloud computing services, rather than following try and jump ahead. Just like Apple did in 1997.
WWDC Roundup – iPhone 3G & Mobile Me
WWDC was a bit of a let down, iphone alleys’ coverage by ustream however was fantastic. I was expecting more information and more products, not a grueling 45mins of demo’s of apps we cant use for a month, not quite the usual Apple finesse we have come to appreciate.
One important thing to note was Steve Job’s committed to pricing the new 8gb iPhone at no more that $199US in all 70 countries the iPhone 3g will be sold in by the end of the year. I hope this is the signal of a much bigger push by Apple to price equivalently in all countries. That said they create products people will gladly pay for in some cases even twice such as myself who will be upgrading come July 11th once again.
Surprisingly the announcement of OS X 10.6 dubbed Snow Leopard was pushed from the forefront of the announcement, giving credence to the fact it will not be a stability release just a fit and polish release to keep ahead of the competition. Also .mac will be no longer and be replaced by mobile me, which has to be an improvement of the aging .mac name and technology.
It was a bit of a let down in the fact that Steve had very little stage time, some reported as usually steve looked ill.
Shock Horror – There was no one more thing.
Why is it so hard to give blood?
3 out of 3 times, I have sucessfully failed in giving a pint of my blood to the blood donation service.
You would think it should be easy, but it seems that they don’t quite get that in a college have lessons up and till lunch and get lunch off for an hour. Yet they stop taking donations for their lunch at the same time???
Why???
I want to save somebody’s life with my blood, lets face it I have ample. Here’s to donating blood outside of college.
Exam Boards Lost the Plot
CCTV cameras could be used in school exam halls in an attempt to prevent cheats using increasingly high-tech devices, examiners said on Friday. Reuters
Cheating in exams no way, mobile phones in exams no way. I know lets put a camera in the room problem solved.
The simple fact is that majority of people who are taking exam at least at A-Level aren’t dim wits and don’t cheat, the ones that do are generally the stupid minority and get caught. Why is are the Exam Boards bothering with this stupid idea, make exams more relevant and interesting for the minority groups who find it difficult to make the step up to A-Level (thats not meaning making them easier)
Evolution?
In biology, evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next – wikipedia
So I thought I would get back to my favorite subject apart weird jokes about people I know. Thats right some more Artilect goodness.
As part of my biology course we are ofcourse studying Darwinian Natural Selection (intelligent design people stop reading here) which is all well and good, but does it still hold true for our evolution now.
At its basic level Natural Selection states that:
Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common.
So taking that definition we could quite easily state that the Human Population is no longer subject to the laws of natural selection, so then what are we subject to. Looking at technology we can see that the computers and electronics we are interacting with on a daily basis, are evolving in a very similar way to how we evolved. Starting with huge vacuum tubes in the 1940s to the miniscule transistors that are in everything today. The pace of the evolution is exponential growing but like most things including house prices at some point it has to stop, but its a long way off yet.
From this it could quite easily be argued that we are stagnant in our evolution and technology is not, we need to evolve to survive, so get them old transistors merged already.
My New iPhone Tariff
O2 obviously isn’t making enough money or selling enough iPhone’s to make it worth there while and they have completed re-structured there tariff plans, basically more for less. I don’t make enough calls to make it any cheaper for me anyway :-(More Details here