Tag-Archive for » rant «
It’s been a while since I threw a Mac tip into the mix, so here goes.
A pet-hate of mine is that annoying noise that plays when your machine starts up. Whether it’s a PC or a Mac, I have no idea why someone would think it was a good idea to by default play a sound at startup, or shutdown for that matter.
What is the benefit of that? No, I can’t think of it either.
Strange thing is, on the Mac it’s not something you can easily get rid of. So, other than remembering to mute the sound before shutdown, you’re was stuck with it. Grrrr.
However, after a little bit of digging about, I’ve found a method to stop the startup sound on the Mac without the rest of the sound being muted.
As you may have seen from other posts, I’m a big Apple fan.
I’ve admired them since the early days, but until relatively recently never owned any of their products. A bit too expensive and not mainstream enough to be in use where I worked.
That all changed with the iPod. Still expensive but luckily I received one as a gift. I liked the simplicity; the controls, the minimalism. Then, more recently and long overdue, I got myself an iPhone; even better. Finally I took the big step and plunged into OSX and a MacBook; rock ‘n roll!
It’s all about the little design things for me. The way it looks, feels. The buttons are just right, the precision machining (the sim drawer on the iPhone for example), nothing is superfluous; all form, fit and function.
You’ll be hard-pushed to persuade me against any of the Apple products I own, other than with newer, better versions of them.
And therein lies my gripe about Apple…
I like music. I’ve always liked music; all kinds of music. In days gone by, I would spend my spare cash on buying vinyl or things to play it on.
When CDs arrived on the scene, I switched to the new medium and the vinyl was assigned to the loft. I even re-bought some of my old vinyl on CD (you’re welcome guys – double-whammy for you).
When downloads came into play (jeez this makes me sound old) I still continued to buy CDs, because some strange part of me still liked having something solid and tangible in my hand after parting with my cash.
When I finally took the plunge and bought a few individual tracks from iTunes, to fill some gaps on my iPod, all seemed fine. Until I decided to move some of my music onto a little stick MP3 player and I happened upon the problem with Digital Rights Management.
The iTunes-purchased tracks wouldn’t play on my stick drive because it was in iTunes format, not standard MP3…
Regular, ahem, readers of this blog will perhaps know about my other site, bimbogami.
It’s a site for those with a passion for puzzles. And, by puzzles, I don’t just mean puzzles, I mean challenging puzzles, I mean HARD puzzles. There’s not many of the 2000 registered players managed to complete either of the main seasons of 40 questions.
For those less obsessive souls than the die-hard puzzlers prepared to stick with it, there are a couple of easier puzzle seasons, based on song lyrics and movie quotes.
I’m pleased to say bimbogami passed a nice milestone recently…
For anyone who may not know, a big thing for SeaWorld is its association with Killer Whales or Orca to give them their Sunday name.
So much so, their logo even incorporates this magnificent creature, as you can see.
SeaWorld has a general sea-related theme running through the park and the majority of the various shows and attractions, including sea-lions, dolphins and sea-otters, culminating in the main attraction; the Shamu Show. So called because of Shamu, the Killer Whale.
Shamu is of course a generic name, a brand if you like, as it can be any one of a number of Orca from the SeaWorld ‘cast’ that take the role in the show itself. Over the years, various Shamu have perished and been replaced with yet more. The show must go on.
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got myself an iPhone 3g at the weekend. It’s only available on the O2 network here in the UK, so that meant having to transfer away from my long term contract with Vodafone.
Not something I was looking forward to, because I was sure the process was likely to be fraught with grief. For the record, if Voda had been able to offer the iPhone, I would have stayed with them.
I knew it was going to be a good device, I’ve read the reviews, considered the main things that are supposed to be ‘bad’ about it compared to ‘equivalent’ handsets on the market…
It’s easy to have a swipe at the banking industry these days, in fact everyone does, relentlessly. In all reality, there’s not much us poor Joe-punters can do about it other than sit back and be affected in whatever proportionally smaller way the the billions or trillions that are talked about.
However, my gripe’s not with the spiffy hedge-fund boys, with their wonderfully complex financial models to efficiently lose shedloads of cash, nor is it the folks that reckoned sub-prime lending would be a wheeze or even those responsible for doling out massive payouts to executives of failing companies. While these are all undoubtedly ‘bad things’ that affect us all, they’re not affecting me directly, personally, right now.
I bought a packet of Polo mints today, when filling up my car at the petrol station. “So what”, you may think, but I was astonished to find that they are 50p a pack now (other currencies are available).
Now grantedly it may be a while since I bought a pack of Polos on their own and noticed the price, but what’s happening to the world? When I think back to the ‘old days’, was when I was a kid, I remember they were 10p a pack, at the very most.
Hogmanay is a dying tradition. Nobody seems that interested in it anymore.
People still seem determined to have a party to celebrate the dawning of a New Year, but it’s really because they think they have to, it’s more like just going through the motions. I mean, we’ve just had a major celebration-fest of over-indulgance less than a week before, it’s not as if we’ve not done anything for a while
Even the ‘Last Call’ and ‘Only An Excuse’ that seemed so good in years gone by appear desperately old and tired; well past their sell by date. And all that tartan and piper nonsense, as if us Scots have exclusivity to this time of year (surely they don’t broadcast all that nonsense elsewhere).
It’s not that I don’t like a party, I can get down with my bad self as good as the next man, it’s just the reason and timing of it I have a problem with.
Getting old? Aye probably.
Do it again? Maybe not, cocoa and bed for me next year!
One of the burdens us IT folks have to bear is that everyone invariably knows you “work in IT”, and so expect that you can fix any of their computer problems.
Over the years I have had countless requests to, “fix this…”, or “stop it from…”, or “tell me why it doesn’t…”, or “show me how to…”, etc., with varying degrees of success. What escapes most folks is that, like probably 95%+ of the people that “work in IT”, I’m not a PC hardware engineer. OK, I do use a PC a lot and it’s an interest for me, but it’s not really my field, it’s merely a tool I use as a means to an end.