digicasts

Apple Activates Podcast Downloads in 2.2 Firmware - Mac Rumors

Woo and indeed Hoo

This is great news, always a pain to not be able to download the latest podcast if you are at your iTunes. Also gives you more to casually download and listen to, for free!

They try for bigger and better but I think they will never get back the magic they had with the bouncing balls. They should just keep showing that ad.

Also, who decided to use dominos?

Surely this concept had hit it’s peak with the excellent Guinness ad below.

After installing leopard I brought a new hdd to take advantge of Time Machine. A great backup tool as I am sure you are aware. But since then my mac would never go to sleep. After much searchig and deactivating Time Machine I discovered that it was not the source of my problems.

Again, more seaching. I looked to are what apps were running and there was nothing out of the ordinary. But still my mac would not sleep. I eventually just lived with it. It is a good idea anyway to leave it on occasinaly so I can do all it housework whilst you sleep.

But enough was enough. I was more bothered that I didn’t know why.

More searching. And eventually I discovered that you can use the Console to see what processes are happening and check the system logs. I found put that mysql server was running and failing. Every ten seconds. Bingo. It was my machine running as a server and failing that stopped the sleep mode kicking in.

I used to use leopard as a server for development work with php and mysql. But I disovered xamp and that made life a whole lot easier. So I must have installed an mysql update and not configured it correctly.

To fix I reinstalled mysql buy used the version for 10.4 rather than 10.5 and made sure I selected ppc rather than intel (fell into that trap before)

So am really writting this post so if others can’t get their mac go to sleep. This may be the reason. If not use the process viewer to keep an eye on what is running and use the console to see the system logs. They reveal a lot and ultimatly ended my ten months of a no sleeping mac.

EDIT

Was all fine and basking in the glory of seeking the standby light pulse as beautifully as it does. But when I went to use mysql. It failed.

So I reinstalled xampp but after I did the error in the cosole came up again.

On a mission I googled further and found that there was a plist for mysql in the launchDaemon folder. I removed it an restarted and all is well.

My guess is that the xampp installation of mysql confuses the built in or seperatly installed mysql. The plist was trying to boot the local version failing then retrying every ten secpnd and that is why I got the constant errors.

Sounds simple all laid out like that. Oh well.

…and I am getting four to five bars when I previously used to get one or two in the house. I put this down to o2’s coverage because in Victoria and down on the coast I was getting five bars. It was only at work and home that I was getting a crappy signal.

This should mean better battery life as when then phone is looking for 3G on such a low “barely on” state it used more power a it latches on and disconnects to the 3G service.

As much as I love the iPhone, 2.0 has been a bit buggy.

Well we have shopped till we dropped. Would be rude not to take advantage of the exchange rate. Macy’s offer an extra 11% off for international shoppers. Again rude not to.

Went to Fishermans Warf today. Don’t think we will be going again. A million tourists and over priced crap. But we have our tickets for Alkatraz tomorrow so that should be fun.

The sea lions on Pier 39 were cool. A bit smelly and very noisy. A strange attraction. Again loads of tourists but they didn’t seem to mind.

Weather wise it gets pretty chilly in the evening. Like now I am sitting on the patio type thing with a jacket on.

Oh well. No rain yet though you can see the rolls of fog coming in.

Off out again tonight. My poor liver.

Yum

After the dissapointment of six flags magic mountain being closed on weekdays out of season. Today we went to Knotts Berry Farm. America’s first amusement park.

Some pretty wild rides but best of all, zero queues. The place was empty and you could walk onto any ride. I brought a couple of “on ride” movies but will have to wait till we get back to rip and upload them.

We now have our convertible. Which as sexy as it sounds is not very nice on the freeway. And LA seems to be one giant freeway. I guess as we start our trip down Highway 1 we will get more benefit.

We left Palm Springs yesterday. It was hard to leave as we had a lovely time there. So relaxing and the weather which was mega hot (in the forties) did not feel as harsh as 28 in London. Some nice bars. A fave of mine was the Barracks. Where the hottest barman in the world was serving drinks with his nuts hanging out of his denim shorts. But it was out of season so nowhere was packed. The whole place had such an easy pace about it. Would love to go back.

But we didn’t want to sacrifice missing out on less time at another place further into the trip so moved on

Now staying in a not so loverly Best Western Hotel in LA very close to Hollywood Boulevard.

Yesterday we walked the walk and saw the stars on the pavement (as well as the litter, the bums and a bunch of people dressed in costumes trying to coax your dollars from you for a picture). Then to the Chinese Theatre to look at the hand prints etc. We also saw a film there, Death Race. Was so so. We mainly went for the experience of being in the famous cinema.

Then today to a theme park. We are probaly going to leave LA tomorrow. We didn’t come here for hustle and bustle, could have stayed at home for that.

Tired now. Trying to find a bar for tonight. Though am a bit knackered tbh. We shall see.

Well, not me, but this blog.

251 posts and counting.

My, doesn’t time fly!

IE Death March

I fully support stopping development for IE6, I have read that some companies charge more to develop for IE6. On any project I undertake IE6 always doubles the coding time, it is so full of bugs and you have to put a million hacks in for the site to work properly.

The same site coded the way it should be works in all the other major browsers bar the odd minor bug here and there, but IE6 can completely screw it up. But I guess anyone that works in web development knows this. It is evil.

But saying that you will stop developing for it is a big issue. My other half works for the government and they have to use IE6. At work we have a large global client, who also all have to use IE6, which was a major deal when told that the uber modern AJAXariffic practically WYSIWYG CMS had to work in the primitive browser.

So there is a massive audience out there who have no choice but to use IE6 and to not develop to be compatibly means you alienate a big potential audience.

Ho hum

Boo Microsoft, they should have never of released such a piece of crap in the first place.

All of my experiences of The Post Office have been, well… shit.

Rather than try to sell those in the queue “the peoples pet insurance” or “the peoples credit card” why not try to do the one thing you are supposed to do and that is deal with the post.

There is always a massive queue and always only 10-20% of the available counters open. Today I was waiting outside the Post Office as the queue was so long. And was just made angry at the constant looping ads and posters trying to sell me Post Office services. The idea of using the Post Office to withdraw money is laughable, does anyone really want to queue for that long to get some cash?

If there was an alternative I would use it, alas there isn’t. Perhaps if they sold real commercial advertising space in their queues, they could hire more staff and then we wouldn’t have irate old ladies slamming on the windows (as happened today). Or perhaps companies can buy a square of advertising space next to stamps. No more imposing than the piles of junk mail we get every week.

Also I really don’t like the term “The peoples Post Office”. What is that supposed to mean anyway? Are they just mooching off Diana? A Post Office for the common man? Did I miss the launch of the Post Office for the rich and affluent man? No, so just call it the Post Office.

My issues are with the Post Office, altogether I am quite pleased with the delivery service (though the random times of day you get a delivery in London is a tad annoying). But typically for a thirty odd pence you can send something to the other side of the UK and it will normally get there the next day.

Rant over - and relax…