Mr Diprose! – 30 years in the making November 1, 2007
Posted by mysparetime1977 in Uncategorized.Tags: Diprose, madness, Movember
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Well, today was an interesting day, the official start of Movember. Most people use this as an opportunity to grow a mustache as the other 11 months of the year are officially off limits according to wives, girl friends and the like. No so for one poor soul, David Diprose has carefully manicured his creation for the last 30 years, his kids don’t even know what his upper lip looks like, imagine the surprise (or shock) they are going to get tonight! Full coverage can be seen in the video below.
Second Impressions of Leopard November 1, 2007
Posted by mysparetime1977 in Uncategorized.Tags: Apple, OXS, Leopard, test, Motorola, VODEM, VMC, iChat, V3xx
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Well, as promised, I’ve had almost a week of gloating and showing off the features of Leopard to my jealous workmates. Managed to find a partner in crime to demo the new features of iChat (Mac version of IM). There has been a serious update to this software suite, new features include screen sharing which is fantastic if you’ve got a mate who’s having issues with their Leopard enabled Mac (unlikely I know! User error may be a better description), during the conversation you can ask to “show screen” or “share screen” depending on whether you are the initiator or not. Once the other person has accepted you can user their computer as if it was your own, they can see what you are doing, and you have a PIP (Picture in Picture) view of your screen which you can switch between in real time. Anything you save or change will actually take place on their machine (and of course if you stuff something up, Time Machine will catch you everytime). This will be especially useful for collaborative work where you work on only on instance of a Keynote or Pages document. Naturally because you’re connect via iChat you can continue to talk whilst making changes, so you’re not flying blind!Another cool iChat feature is one where you can present to a wider audience, they can see both you and the presentation in real time, very handy, no need to fly down for that presentation after all. And in this day and age of carbon neutrality…these are all things we must now consider. Presentations aren’t only limited to Keynotes, you can also share videos and other common files formats this way.So all in all, I’m a happy camper with the new system, all the software works including some of my older applications, both my Vodafone Mobile Connect card and VODEM work on the new version of VMC…very important for me as unless I’m at home within my Airport network, it’s the only way I can connect. Another surprise was my Motorola V3xx mobile which wasn’t supported in the older version of Tiger (although I did have a work around) now works seemlessly…brilliant, I can also connect to the net via that if need be. If you have a Mac, get out there and upgrade, if you don’t have a Mac…I’m sorry! Best cure, go and get one, it will now come pre-installed with Leopard, you won’t look back.
Leopard – first impressions October 29, 2007
Posted by mysparetime1977 in Uncategorized.Tags: Apple, Leopard, OXS, test
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Well, I’ve now had most of Friday and the weekend to play with Leopard, Apples newest incarnation of the the popular OSX operating system. Having switched back to Macs at the release of Jaguar (OSX 10.2) I can say that this is a great improvement over Tiger. For those that don’t know, Apple have code named all of their OSX releases with the name of a big cat. OSX 10.1 was code named Lion (but only internally at Apple), 10.2 was Jaguar, 10.3, Panther, 10.4, Tiger and now 10.5, Leopard. There are a couple of reasons why I stay with Mac, I do a lot of video editing in Final Cut and work with large files in Adobe Photoshop and Indesign, sure, you can do those things on a reasonably powerful Windows based machine, but it is so much easier on a Mac. The last thing I need is a system crash on my computer when I’m in the middle of a 4 hour H.264 encode…that’s four hours I can’t afford to lose. Whilst studying a University I was doing a media course which involved using PC’s…I lost so much work with the blue screen of death that I ended up doing all the work on my Mac and then transferred them to the Uni PC (the instructor didn’t allow us to use our own machines…but hey, I needed to get those projects finished).So, call me biased…I am, but this new update is great. The biggest benefit I can see thus far is Time Machine, a nifty piece of software that backs up in real time…if I delete something and then next week discover that I need it back, I can just go back in time and whammo, restore that file…without affecting any of the other system settings…magic! Also the ability to preview all files without having to open a specific application is brilliant, even on a Mac Illustrator and Indesign still take time to open! I’ll post a bit more once I’ve had more time to play, but first impressions are that this is a great update…well worth the money.
Facebook October 25, 2007
Posted by mysparetime1977 in Uncategorized.Tags: Bebo, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, NZ
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I must say I resisted the temptation to join Facebook, however after the many invites and ribbings I finally decided to jump on in and see what all the fuss is about. Well, after a month onboard I’m still finding it hard to see what all the fuss really is about. Sure, you can connect with people from the distant (and not so distant) past, but really, in order to get there you’ve got to dodge 15 vampire invites, 20 petrol head drag challenges not to mention the multiple zombie and “What’s my strippers name” firefights! As a former member of the Bebo site, NZ’s current No. 1 networking site, I must say I’m not sure Facebook is all it’s cracked up to be. Bebo was easy to navigate, you could read info about your mates without the above mentioned junk…clearly Microsoft and Google disagree with me, both willing to shell out 240 million for a 1.6% minor stakehold? This whole web 2.0 thing is a little out of control don’t you think?
Ramblings of a kiwi on Pinot Noir…what I have learnt today October 16, 2007
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Well, here we are after day on of the Social Media Workshop run by the friendly team at Melcrum. I’ve learnt one key thing today…everyone is in the same boat. The runaway train that is Web 2.0 or Social Media (depending on whose talking to you) is moving so fast that even the experts can’t keep up. It’s been fantastic to have a glimpse of what is out there. We’re looking at implementing a lot of what we’ve talked about today into our business so the fact that there are no hard and fast rules makes the job a lot easier for us.Even though the technology is ever changing, one thing remains constant, no matter how flash bang whizzy you make the tool look like, if the content is irrelevant, badly structured of off target, it’s never going to work.Another key thing I learnt today is it’s not so bad being in Australia, as 100 metres down the road I managed to find one of my favourite Central Otago Pinot Noirs, (Wild Earth from the Felton district). Nothing like making you feel like you never left NZ than with a nice glass of Pinot…brilliant! I look forward to what tomorrow brings!
Things I have learnt October 16, 2007
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Today I’ve learnt that the weather in Melbourne is like a yoyo…31c yesterday…17c today…madness. I’ve also learnt that blogging is the next big thing…so here we are. Now I’ve just got to convince my boss!!!
Hello world! October 16, 2007
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