Delia Derbyshire has long been considered ahead of her time. One of the earliest creators of electronic music, she is most famous for her work with the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale, at which she created the haunting original Dr Who theme, in an age without synthesizers:

A lot of modern musicians like Orbital, Stereolab and Spacemen 3 cite her work as an influence, and it’s easy to to see why.

What sparked this blog post was the news that more of her work has been discovered, some 267 tapes to be exact! All of this is going to be digitized and made available, but in particular was this experimental dance track that she created in the 60’s. Made decades before ‘electronic dance music’ really happened, and yet it sounds like something created today.

This clip from a BBC Four documentary gives some insight into how she created music with reel to reel tapes:

Sadly she died in 2001 at 64, just after rediscovering her love of electronic music, working with Peter Kember (Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom), of which she said:

“Working with people like Sonic Boom on pure electronic music has re-invigorated me. He is from a later generation but has always had an affinity with the music of the 60s. Now without the constraints of doing ‘applied music’, my mind can fly free and pick-up where I left off.”

Discover more about her life at delia-derbyshire.org

When a concert says "rain or shine", they mean it. That's exactly what happened to us at Meriweather Post on Sunday night, when a long line of thunderstorms moved through during the concert and soaked those of us cheapskates on the lawn. Thankfully we stopped at the mall right beforehand and picked up umbrellas, but we were still wet by the time we left. It rained pretty much from the minute we sat down until the minute we drove off. At least John Mayer seemed moved by our plight, but not enough to let all of us backstage.

The concert was pretty fun regardless, though I still have no clue who the opening act was. Some guy that looked like a girl. We couldn't really hear them or see them (everyone was huddled under umbrellas). Things opened up a bit when JM came on as everyone stood and most of the umbrellas came down (not the ones in front of me, however, so I couldn't see except for the screens). He's a great guitar player and worth seeing live if you ever get the chance. I may have to go buy his last couple of live albums.

Walking out in the darkness and mudslides at intermission, i almost wished for an iFlashlight on my phone. I said almost. I'm lying.

I’m big fan of the French artist/illustrator Geneviève Gauckler, having discovered her work via the Guardian Angel Room project.

Now, I’m not sure why, but I was really surprised to see her work (or at least her style) in the backgrounds of CBBC, the site for BBC’s youth output.

I’ve tried to do a bit of searching, but no information is forthcoming, and I can’t see a credit anywhere. I’m surprised, can anyone tell me if these really are her work?

There’s also wallpapers available too:

Things have been really hectic of late with Jo and Alaina moving in this month, so I haven't had much time to blog. My life has become very different, now suddenly being a full-time parent and my house is a lot smaller. Not in a bad way, just different and new. At least I'm drinking less, that's probably good, though the reverse of what I would have normally expected.

I was one of the foolish who downloaded the iPhone 2.0 image, but thankfully for me it didn't apply (I even tried twice, what was I thinking!?). I gave the other foolish mortals a day to let iTunes activation shake out (tvl?) and tried on Saturday where it went through without a hitch. I miss the days of iPods with Firewire, restoring 8gb of media takes like a half an hour! We're still holding off doing Jo's phone, but will probably do it once she builds her music collection back up on her Mac. You think I'd let a PeeCee in this house!?

Along those lines, I'm having to rely on my router (a linksys that's destined for the landfill, I hate this POS) for parental controls since the iMac in A's room isn't souped-up enough to run Leopard. I'd like to swap it for a TimeCapsule, but I can't find anything (anything!) on Apple's website that talks about its parental control functionality. Yes, I get it, it can do backups. Anything else!? If Apple is assuming that everyone can (and will) run Leopard, that's t3h suck. Tiger runs just fine on this little iMac, why should I be forced to upgrade?

The app store is fun and kinda cool, it's nice getting to run what I want, though I think I'm still one of the few who is more than happy to cede all control to Apple to ensure that my phone doesn't flake out or brick because of some rogue app. I do have some issues with them controlling what can and can't go on the store due to fears about competition (c'mon Apple, just don't be evil!), but as an end-user, my sanity thanks them. I don't think I need 3 flashlights, 10 tip calculators, or 8 todo apps, though. My currency converter is better than yours!

What I really want is a way to easily blog from the phone, but maybe that's asking too much. What I've found is that my main obstacle to doing things on my phone is that nothing remembers passwords. So if I want to make a note in FaceBook or sign into my blog, I have to re-log in, and that's a serious pain. Yes, I'm lazy. There, I said it.

I've also taken on a new role at work, leaving the Desktop team for something more exciting. After almost three years on the same team, it was time, but doing so simultaneously with Jo moving in certainly adds to my stress. I can't talk about the project, but you'll find out eventually. Or you won't and I'll go back to drinking.

Going to see John Mayer tonight, should be fun, though any long car ride with a tween is an adventure. No, damnit, we're not there yet.

Gawd Bless™ Chris MIlls and Gawd Bless™ Opera, for together with authors like Norm they have begat the Opera Web Standards Curriculum.

I linked to this in my sidenotes a couple of days ago, but really felt it deserved a bit more attention, considering the extraordinary amount of work that has gone into it.

Opera’s new Web Standards Curriculum, released in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network, is a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics. It already has support from many organizations (including Yahoo! and the Web Standards Project) and universities. The first 23 articles are currently available, with about 30 more to be published between now and late September.

Finally, there is non-reference resource to point people to, where they can actually learn in stages what web standards mean, and how to adopt and use them to build a better web. Heartily slapped backs to all of the contributors!

On Saturday 9th August, I’m going home! Leamington Spa is where I was born and spent 22 (in total) years of my life, and I’m going back to talk at this years Geek in the Park organised by the Multipack. There’ll be a picnic in the picturesque Jephson Gardens, followed by an evening at KoKos.

I’ll be talking on “Pixel Pushing: An introduction to Icon Design”, which will go over the theory and practice of creating icons for desktop applications and websites.

Drew will be tapping in to the nostalgia vein again, with ‘What Brian Cant Never Taught You About Metadata’. I hereby give him the challenge of working Jamie and the Magic Torch into his next talk.

I’m praying for good weather, and looking forward to meeting other geeky picnicers!

Once people got wind that I’d been trying out Expression Engine, I’ve been badgered with the question “Which one should I use: Textpattern or Expression Engine?”. This post is to try and answer that, but be warned it’s going to be a long one!

When choosing a CMS for a site, I would say that there are 2 main factors in the choice:

• What you want to use it for
• Personal feel

The latter can’t be argued. It’s a tool, and what feels right to me, won’t necessarily feel right for someone else, and this a very important point. The former is a bit more tangible however.

Just as I like to try out every browser to make sure I’m not missing anything, I feel the need to dabble in as many CMS’s as I can. I’ve flirted with Wordpress (loved the theme system, hated the template tags use of raw PHP), Pivot, MovableType (used on the first version of Hicksdesign), Sympony (burnt my fingers on the paid pre 1.0 beta), Tumblr and EE. I feel I should mention Chyrp here too, as I recently tried and loved it – logical layout, nimble and simple without being too simple.

However, each time, I come back to Textpattern.

My last date with EE was 2 years ago. I spent a few days getting used to it, and got into the idea of template groups and found it a really flexible CMS. However it didn’t offer me enough over Textpattern to make it feel worth the effort of converting my site over. Without a real life project to use it on, that EE knowledge faded away. In the meantime, every other designer on the planet has raved about EE. So much so that it was a bit of a turn off ;o)

Recently, I decided I needed to try EE again, so instead of replicating my site, where I couldn’t see any advantages, I picked on my wife Leigh’s site Hicksmade. So, after a week of re-acquainting myself with it, I can now see why EE is raved about so much, and where it would be useful. I was helped along by Ryan Irelan’s excellent EE Screencasts (very highly recommended!) and EE buddies Simon Clayson and Brian Warren.

Excuse the bullet list, but here is where EE shines:

• The key thing about EE to me is more fine grain control over everything (with some exceptions!), right down to whether a page is cached or what fields are available when posting to certain weblogs. Everything can be tweaked to your personal preference. This level of control isn’t necessary all the time however, so that would be the first deciding factor in EE over TXP.
• Members and member management is other main feature that would make me decide to use EE over TXP. I can think of 2 sites I’d created in TXP that would’ve benefited from this.
• Custom Fields madness! Textpattern has a great plugin to provide similar functionality, but the level of control and ability to associate the fields with a certain section is great, and of course, built in.
• It’s the same with categories. The rss_unlimited_categories plugin for TXP provides a lot of what EE does by default but not all. Categories are a weak area in TXP, only allowing a maximum of 2, without clean URLs.
• The Multiple Site Manager is genius. Again, something that can kind of be replicated with a TXP plugin, but it feels like a hack in comparison.
• You can edit the templates in a text editor, rather than via control panel. Lovely! (You still have to create the template in EE first, but hey.)

All good so far! But wait! Here come the rants!

• My biggest beef with EE is the admin panel. I find it needlessly complicated, with options hidden behind many overly-wordy, illogical links and dropdowns. While a certain amount of this is inevitable with the level of control that it offers, it’s certainly more painful than it needs to be. The longer I have to look at it, the angrier I get!
• EE promotes itself as a CMS, rather than blogging tool, yet out of the box it insists on referring to ‘weblogs’. This can be changed through one of many preferences to something more logical like ‘section’, but the template tags will still refer to weblogs. Harumph.
• /index.php/ shouldn’t be in URLs by default, and it’s right pain to get rid of (but you can do it). Likewise, getting simple /section/title/ urls requires a lot of work. For something so flexible, getting the URLs I want is painful. With a new site this isn’t so bad, you can put up with the extra URL segment, but when converting a site from TXP, and not wanting to write large .htaccess redirections, it’s vital.
• EE seems obsessed with statistics, time taken to render page etc. It’s all superflous fluff. Generally, I’m left with the feeling of “I wish I could just get rid of this bit here…”
• A smaller rant, I’m none too keen on the tags: some require exp: at the start, some don’t.
• File management is behind Textpattern, which has more control over uploaded images and files. This really surprised me! There is a good file manager plugin for EE, but this review is looking at built-in functionality.

The upshot is, that for a lot of client sites, EE is wonderful (if you can put up with the admin side) – especially sites that need members, forums and all that jazz. The thing is, if a site doesn’t need those things, it’s less pain and more pleasure to use TXP.

I keep coming back to TXP because:

• I love the control panel. Clients love the control panel. When you first log in – it takes you to the write tab. It assumes the first thing you want to do is add content, not look at a dashboard with a load of statistics. It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it’s clear and laid out logically – Content, Presentation and Admin. It’s clear where you need to go to add new content, change layout and edit preferences
• I love Textpattern’s XML style tag system. For someone like me who writes in HTML, it clicks instantly, and has a consistent structure that aids recollection.
• TXP’s file management and automagic thumbnail creation/relation with it’s parent image
• In general, I feel I can do a lot with Textpattern, and quickly.

So, in summary, I like both, and which one I use will depend on the job in hand. EE v2 will bring with it a redesigned admin panel, and seeing as that is my biggest complaint, I’m keen to see if it improves the situation. The wee preview that was given at SXSW looked a bit ‘created last minute’, but even that looked hopeful.

What a week it’s been for a browser whore – 2 major updates to trial! Opera brought out 9.5 last week (in a move that felt a bit “We must beat Firefox!”), and Mozilla delivered FF 3 this week after some false contractions. What follows isn’t meant to be a proper review, just a brain dump of impressions from living with each one for a few days. Neither have I ‘plumped’ for one browser – I continue to use them all!

Mac Native Themes

Both of these browsers are in the same difficult position – trying to keep a ‘family’ style across platforms while also being a good desktop citizen. My position on that is that looking and acting like a native app is far more important than keeping it in the family, but I guess if you use the same browser on dual platforms, it helps consistency.

Both of these new browsers have much improved Mac themes, that still don’t quite hit the mark. Firefox has managed to get a unified toolbar at last, but still needs an Arronax theme to finish it off. I’ve not found anyone yet who thinks the bloated back button is a good idea (yes I do know you can turn it off with ‘use small icons’) – it also looks more like a slider rather than a button:

That’s the default, and here it is with GrApple Graphite applied:

See how it adds nice little mac touches like the header for the sidebar, at the same height as the tabs? Lovely! However, beyond the browser theme, Josh Aas has done incredible work in connecting to Cocoa API’s, resulting in elements like proper, rounded semi-transparent menus and progress thermometers. FF no longer feels like the homely Java app that it once felt like on OS X!

Opera’s new mac theme is a vast improvement too, although to be honest, any change to the previous theme would be an improvement. I’d refused to use Opera for anything other than testing sites because of it. When the alpha for 9.5 was released, it didn’t look much better, but a week before the final release, it finally started shaping up.

However, it still falls short. For example all the toolbar buttons are grey except for the stop/reload and home:

It doesn’t feel as good as the ‘native’ Opera skin, which is lighter and crisper, and to me, feels more mac-like. The dark tabs have caused some controversy, but I quite like it in this configuration:

This is something I like about Opera – being able to have the toolbar underneath the tab – don’t ask me why though. Form widgets and scrollbars aside, I prefer to use the native theme in Opera.

Neither browser has an updated icon (a new FF icon is awaiting approval!), but Opera in particular really needs to. The shadow is the first thing that strikes you as being wrong, not just the lack of transparency, but the fact that it has highlights in it! I really fancy having a go at updating the Opera icon.

Rendering

First of all, Opera really wins on speed, hands down. It renders fast, and the interface is nimble. Speed is a very subjective thing, and is governed by all sorts of different factors, so this is just my experience. Firefox on the other hand still has some of the sluggish interface feel from v1 & 2- when switching tabs or resizing the window. Opera joins Camino and Omniweb as being the fastest browsers I have, but overall, I reckon Opera has the edge. It also has lots of new CSS goodness, including text-shadow (yay! can has etched text!) and @media queries.

Firefox has still to implement selectors like text-shadow, but rendering is much improved nonetheless. The move to Cairo has brought with it decent crisp type at last, with support for kerning and ligatures (even if they don’t always happen where they should).

Other Features

• FF now has growl support! Something Opera would benefit from, as their ‘toast’ style notifications are decidedly un-mac.
• The new FF location bar menu is great, and I think the new of quickly adding a bookmark (click the star to add, and deal with filing it away later)
• I don’t think it’s new to 9.5, but I like Opera’s content blocking system. When turned on you can click the areas you want to block (which feels like a shooting game!).
• Opera does thumbnail previews of tabs when you hover over them. I’d love them to provide this as a sidebar option like Omniweb.

Cons

Downsides to Opera? I miss being able to correct spelling on a single word. I keep looking for a history menu at the top that isn’t there. I miss a preference to open new tabs in the background when cmd-clicking (you can hold down shift to do this, but I want a preference!). I’d also feel more inclined to make use of the mail client and RSS reader if they weren’t just basic unstyled views. It still feels like you still have to put in some work to get the chrome layout looking as you want it, but to be honest these are fairly small nitpicks. Opera is now a browser that I would want to use everyday.

Downsides to Firefox? Well, first of all, I really hate the way it adds ‘- Mozilla Firefox’ to the window title (can that be turned off?), I just want it to butt out! Update – this seems to be a inconsistent bug rather than an intended feature!

I would’ve liked a little more movement on the CSS side and Acid 3. Again, these are small complaints rather than major ones, and like Opera, it’s become a browser I would want to use!

Summary

Out of the two – Firefox has most mac native look and feel (once Arronax has polished things up a bit) while Opera has better performance. Both are great, and the world is better off with them both of them around. Not sure that I’m better off though – for me the choice of browser is harder than ever.

Newport in 1875 was a hotbed of crime, as documented here regarding the theft of a LARGE CUCUMBER from Mrs Holland’s garden:

Here’s an album that feels like it’s release is timed to perfection. Fleet Foxes really suit the unusually summery weather we’re having in the UK. For an idea of the sound, I’d start with Band of Horses, and make it mellower and folkier, and well, a little more baroque. White Winter Hymnal is an ideal introduction, but don’t stop there, because the self-titled album is a blinder. A definite contender for favourite record this year, but then again, I’m always a sucker for harmonies.

Download Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal. There’s also a session on Daytrotter for further free enjoyment.

Over on 37 Signals, there’s an interesting post about why they don’t use Photoshop, and prefer to go straight to HTML and CSS to create a UI. I agree with a lot of what Jason says here, especially point number 3 – you can never get text in a static comp to look the way it does on the web. (This is unless your name is Malarkey and you create your comp text by screenshotting text from the browser!)

I would also add a couple more points in favour of going straight to HTML/CSS:

• You can’t demonstrate a fluid design with a static comp, and show how it reflows with window sizes. This is a biggie.
• Why spend time recreating form widgets in Photoshop, when you can have the real thing by just typing the html tag? Also whoever looks at the design, sees these widgets in the style of their OS, rather than one fixed style in a static comp.

This is the approach that I’ve been taking over the last year, and it felt right at the time. It felt like removing the middle man, and being more efficient.

The one drawback was the designs were often dull, dull, dull.

This is not an approach that encourages visual richness. That’s not to say you can’t create a good design this way, or that a design needs ‘superflous eye candy’, but my thought processes were definitely being constrained by the tool I was using. As Jeff Croft points out in the comments on , this is an approach that works well for a 37 Signals style application, but not necessarily for everything else.

I’ve been trying to think through why this is the case, and the only thing I can come up with, is that it’s easier and quicker to move stuff around in a graphics editor. Also, I find Photoshop the wrong tool for mockups. Fireworks, rules my roost, and here’s a few reasons why:

• I can keep all the page designs of a site in just one file – with shared layers for common elements like navigation. When it’s time to export, Fireworks can create an individual file from each page with one click.
• The ’9-slice tool’, in combination with it’s Symbols Library, means I can have a pre-made set of form widgets and other interface elements that I can drop in to the page, and resize without losing the integrity of the image. Mocking up is fast.
• The vector tools are superb. Create a pixel-constrained layout in Illustrator is a pain, and Photoshop was never meant to be a vector creator. Any Photo collage work is done in Photoshop though.
• The Fireworks colour picker can sample from anywhere on the screen, not just the open document. (Apparently Photoshop can now do this by clicking and holding!)

Yes I still have to create it in HTML and CSS at the end of it, but by that point I know exactly what I need to do.

Fireworks still isn’t the absolute ideal tool though. The ideal tool hasn’t been created yet, and would be a mixture of the two, but that’s for another post I think!

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the Google Reader theme, and when/if I’m going to update it, so here’s an update on the update.

The ‘OS X’ style google reader isn’t going to updated. It’s a pain in the arse quite franky, and rather than being able to finish it off, I’m just spending my time cleaning up the mess after a new feature has been launched by Google. The code is all there if someone wants to take over the theme and carry on working on it, but I’m afraid that won’t be me!

Instead, I’ve been working on something I’m calling ‘Helvetireader’, a stripped back, cleaner style, inspired by the lovely interface for Times.app RSS Reader. No rounded boxes, shadows or superfluous buttons. As there is less forced positioning going on, it should break less when new features launch. That’s the plan anyway.

As it removes a lot of stuff that people might use, and only keeps the bits I use, it might not be that useful to some people. Once I feel it’s ready, I’ll release it!

This blog post is seven words long.

I downloaded the 10.5.3 update tonight (see, I do update sometimes!!) using the "install and keep package" option in SU. It's 420Mb, for goodness sakes, and I've got several machines to upgrade. However after the upgrade, the package wasn't anywhere. I looked around using some search engine and found it's supposed to end up in /Library/Packages. Nope. There's not even a Packages folder. Wonderful.

I bought GranTurismo5:Prologue over the weekend. Yeah, it's basically a glorified demo, but the graphics are gorgeous. Stunning. Wow. I want to write software like that.

I wanted to buy Crash (2005 Best Picture winner) as I really enjoyed the movie and figured that I should buy it on BluRay now that I have a player. What I found was interesting, and not in a good way. I can get the 2 DVD Director's Cut with several commentaries and loads of special features for $9.99. The BluRay version is only the theatrical release with no features (none at all), and costs $29.99. WTF?

The visuals for BBC’s Filth (the story of TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse, played by Julie Walters) were right up my alley. It’s a view of England in the sixties: Morris Minors, pristine red Post Boxes and Routemaster buses, sunshine, village greens and every other sign written in Gill Sans.

I have no idea whether it really existed or not, but I love just the same. More on Flickr

All praise to the God of Electro – which I guess would be would be Numanus ? – Ladytron are back with a new album ‘Velocifero’, which literally means ‘bringer of speed’. The cover artwork by Brazilian art collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus is rather splendid:

…and it’s at least as addictive as ‘Witching Hour’. Having only heard it twice, it’s still early days to pick favourites, but here’s a taster:

Velocifero is supposedly only available through iTunes until June 3rd, but I found it on play.com just fine.

Published by Usborne books in 1979, The Detectives Handbook (also published as 3 separate books) was quite simply my favourite childhood book.

Usborne are always known for the wealth of their illustrations, and these were no different. Pages of Colin King’s artwork that made me want to go out and re-enact the scenes, and above all, I really wanted that detectives office!

I found a copy on ebay last week, so I’ve taken some examples from it, and set up a Detective’s Handbook Flickr Set

If you are a Camino user, and you've encountered WMV video or audio online in the past couple of years, you've probably seen pages inexplicably scramble themselves as you scroll, type, or select text (although you probably didn't realize that it was because of WMV content in another window or tab). This is due to an old bug in Telestream's Flip4Mac plugin which, since it's a third-party plugin, we rely on them to fix.

Six months ago, I had the opportunity to talk to a Telestream engineer about this issue. To make sure I could describe the problem as accurately as possible I spent about an hour testing pages with WMV content and looking at what exactly happened to other tabs and windows (that was the first time I'd personally looked into it, since I knew that others involved with Camino had talked to Telestream and been told that it was being investigated at their end). After that hour, without looking at any code or having any special knowledge beyond a basic understanding of how plugin drawing works on the Mac, it was clear how they were corrupting the graphics context: the plugin was changing the location of (0, 0) out from under us.

I had assumed that they already knew this, and that the problem was figuring out how to fix it, but as it turned out, the step from knowing that to finding and fixing the bug in the Flip4Mac plugin was tiny. So I found myself wondering: if it took me an hour to do essentially all of the work necessary to get this bug fixed, just by looking at the behavior, how much time could Telestream—with access not only to their code, but to the specific changes that they made in the version that first introduced this bug—have put into investigating in the year and a half since we had been assured that they would look into it?

If it were just that, I would write it off to a communication failure and think nothing more of it. Perhaps it was never made clear to them just how severe the problems this bug caused were, and certainly we should have followed up with them regularly to ensure that the bug didn't fall though the cracks by accident. The important thing was that now they had a fix in hand, and they understood the severity of the issue, so surely a fixed version would be available soon.

But here we are, six months and two releases of Flip4Mac later, without a fix. I was disappointed that the 2.2.0.49 release at the end of December didn't have the fix, but not too surprised; there's a whole release cycle to go through to get fixes out to users, and a month-long cycle isn't at all unreasonable—although it certainly suggested that they didn't take this issue as seriously as we do (if somehow Camino were making the entire system unusable for 2% of our users every time they launched it, and we had a fix, we'd risk slipping a release slightly to get it in, without hesitation). We followed up, just to reiterate that we viewed the fix as critical, and why: that it was not only damaging the WMV experience for hundreds of thousands of their users, but that it also crippled the entire browser for those affected, creating widespread problems for users, and offloading the large support burden of their bug onto us. We made it clear that this was by far our most frequently reported bug. We've made these points to them a number of times over the past six months.

Earlier this week, there was a new Flip4Mac release (variously labeled in the download as 2.2.0.49A, 2.2.0.49R, and, confusingly enough, just 2.2.0.49 again), the second since they have had a fix. It didn't include any release notes (the release notes they link to are the original 2.2.0.49 notes), so we don't know what they did fix, but it definitely didn't include the Camino issue.

A release process where an important fix takes more than six months to get into a release isn't plausible, so the only possible conclusion I can reach is that Telestream's management has made the explicit decision that fixing a problem that affects every single Camino user using their product isn't even moderately important: not important enough to slip into a release that was winding down, not important enough to get its own tiny bug-fix release in a span of five months, and not even important enough to put into a release that could not realistically have been assembled until well after they had this fix. So users continue to suffer, and we continue to shoulder the support burden and the negative publicity of their bug, because they apparently don't think that Camino matters.

Since Telestream is choosing not to fix the bug, I'm releasing a stop-gap fix: this tool will modify the released version of the Flip4Mac plugin to remove the problematic code, so that it will no longer corrupt drawing throughout Camino. I can't easily make any complex changes, so unlike a real fix to this bug it won't be selectively applied to Camino; as a result, WMV content may behave differently in Firefox once you run it (Safari uses a different plugin, so should not be affected in any way).

Hopefully, Telestream will reconsider the importance of this bug, and the workaround won't be necessary for long.

Writebacks (4)

Wonderful news for the future of Dr Who today, not that Russell T Davies is to step down as Executive Producer, but that Steven Moffat will replace him.

Steven is the writer that consistently writes the stand-out stories in each season – The Empty Child, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink. Whenever Mr Oxton tells me ‘last weeks episode was a bit meh”, I always tell him to wait for the Moffat story, then you’ll be impressed. ‘Silence in the Library’ is the next Moffat story (in 2 weeks time, because of a break for Eurovision – grrr!).

I’m very appreciative of everything Russell has done for Dr Who. I may not agree with all his decisions, but without him, there would be be no show to get all ‘comic book store guy’ about in the first place. Plus, I still think Gridlock was a darned good story. However, I think Who can only get better under Steven’s guidance. Yay!

(Photo by Denni Schnapp)

I recently had a go at installing the excellent Wood Shelves Summerboard* theme on my iPhone, but found the process of adding a theme manually a blind stumble. It involves using SFTP to connect to the phone, but various tutorials had outdated information, and I had to cobble together the various snippets until I got it to work.

So, just in case this is useful for someone else, here’s how I got it to work. This assumes you’ve already jailbroken your iPhone, and have installer.app and Summerboard installed, ready and waiting for you.

How to connect to your iPhone (1.1.4) and add a Summerboard theme:

1. Via Installer.app, install BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH (found in the ‘System’ Category)
2. Go to Settings> Wi-Fi > (Network Name) and click on the blue arrow to get your IP address.
3. In Transmit (or other SFTP capable app), enter the following information to connect:
   • IP Address
   • Username: root
   • Password: alpine (not ‘dottie’!)
   • Mode: SFTP
4. Once connected, navigate to /private/var/mobile/Library/Summerboard/Themes. There are, it seems, 2 locations for Summerboard themes, but for the 1.1.4 iPhone, this is the one SMB prefs reads from – iPod Touch may be different.
5. Upload the theme folder and change permissions on the folder (and its contents) to 755

The theme will now show up in the SMB prefs menu! Hurrah!

Vishal Parpia reminded me that you should disable SFTP by removing OpenSSH afterwards, otherwise your iPhone becomes eminently hackable. If you can work out how to change the root user password, so much the better!

Last.fm recommendations have turned up trumps for me this week. M83 turned up with the new album “Saturdays = Youth”, and I’ve been playing it on loop ever since. Incidentally, I’ve been buying music from Play.com. MP3’s, no DRM and 320kbps, it’s a great deal (and sadly I don’t get any commission for pimping them).

Graveyard Girl is a luscious 80’s flavoured song from the album, and while the video isn’t all that great (except for the floating dogs – GENIUS!) it’s enough to give you a taster.

These Esso maps from the 1960’s were a great ebay bargain find. I particularly wanted the London map, as the cover illustration was just stunning.

Collecting motoring maps from the 30’s onwards has become a bit of a hobby of late, and I’ve started uploading photos of some of them to Flickr.

I’d missed this the first time I watched the Poison Sky last week! I know, I’m probably the last person to notice it…

In the Tardis, just before Donna looks at the monitor, there is a brief flash of Rose calling the Doctor – just for a few frames. Often the ‘story arcs’ throughout the season get on my pip, usually because they’re loud and obvious, but these brief flashes of Rose are really well done. Yay!

I've settled on just using the display modes on my TV to squeeze 4x3 DVD content. It's unfortunate since there's no way to automate that. I guess I'm just expected to tell the non-AV-savvy members of my household to press the buttons when the people look horizontally challenged.

The other thing I can't really explain is that I seem to be hearing a lot more from my surround channels now. I can't understand why, I know everything was set up correctly before and the only thing different (besides the source device) is an optical cable vs. coax. The pre/pro is doing all the decoding and signal processing so there's really nothing the PS3 can be doing to affect the signal. I don't get it.

Yes, I'm late to the game, but I finally saw "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" last night. Hysteric! Now one of my new favorites. The bait wearing the Fight Club tshirt was the best. If you haven't seen it, go rent it now. Oh, yeah, and Brad and Angelina are hotties.

What am I watching these days? Real World, Deadliest Catch, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, PTI, Idol, Americas Port, Hells Kitchen, 30Rock (season's over, booo!), Scrubs (end it already!), Law&Order, Last Restaurant Standing, Survivor, Ace of Cakes, and, last but not least, PLAYOFF HOCKEY!!!! Jo's mad that her Sharks lost, but I'm so used to the Caps losing that there's no point getting upset about it.

Last August, I was in a pub near Lindisfarne (The Lindisfarne Inn no less) when Richard Hawley and two members of his band came in for a drink. At that time, I had never seen a photo of him, and had only downloaded a few tracks from 3hive. All I knew was that he looked very cool, and that I kicked myself a few weeks later when I saw him perform on Jonathan Ross and realised it was him.

It became the catalyst for discovering his wonderful music. Echoes of Scott Walker, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash often make his songs seem suited to late nights and rain soaked streets, much like this title track from his previous album Coles Corner. I’m guessing not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s most definitely mine!

Download Richard Hawley – Coles Corner. In addition to the tracks available from 3hive, there are more at Last.fm.

As a DVD player, the PS3 is insistent on stretching all 4x3 DVD content to fit 16x9. Who ever thought this was a good idea!? I don't want fat people! Show me the content as intended!! I've been through the menus 5 times, I don't think I'm missing anything. Terribly, terribly disappointing.

UPDATE: Setting the "DVD Upscaling" to any value does nothing (it's not upscaling at all, it's still 480p). I called Sony, per their support docs, and they are not taking support calls for the PS3. Period. None. Don't they like having my money?? Because they may not have it for long.

Ok, I got the PS3 yesterday. It's surprisingly slick. Using component outputs it unfortunately doesn't upscale DVDs to 1080i, but it still seems ok so far. I'm going to give it a workout tonight on a couple of movies at 480p and see how it stands up to my Panasonic RP-91. We shall see. As far as a remote, you can use the controller for everything and it has a nice on-screen display. A regular hand-held remote just for the PS3 seems like a total waste, esp. given its lack of backlighting. I still want to run it with my Pronto remote, which some have pointed out (thank you, though I already knew) is possible with extra parts. Maybe I'll give it a try at some point.

Bluetooth controllers? OMG I love them! No cord. I can sit on my couch and just play. No cord!!!!

Grand Theft Auto IV? OMG Awe-some! I played some of the earlier versions and they were fun, but nowhere near as entertaining as this one. The girl at the checkout asked me "Now you know this is rated 'M' for 'Mature', right?" Um, yes. I wouldn't want it any other way. Thanks for your concern, I hadn't heard.

We're putting together a date for this year's Camino Shin-dig the weekend after WWDC. I'll keep everyone posted as details firm up, but it'll only be one day compared to last year's two. I'll just have to talk fast.

The new Grand Theft Auto looks awesome and from everything I read, the PlayStation3 is actually a really good BluRay player. It's less than the price that I'd probably pay for a good videophile-quality player, plus I can play some games on it.

Unfortunately I'm out of component inputs on my Denon. It has three, which are taken up by my DVD player, AppleTV, and satellite box. So I have to pay an extra $250 for a component video switcher just to get to use it. Argh.

Then there's the lack of a remote. No, you can't use a typical universal remote -- it's all Bluetooth! There's no IR port on the PS3! Ok, maybe I'll suck it up and buy the Sony BT remote. Wait a minute, it's black keys on a black remote, with no backlighting. How the #%@!& am I supposed to read that in the dark!? Hello? Sony? How about using some of that R&D on your remotes!? Argh.

I may still impulse-buy it anyway. GTA4 is just too damn cool.

With Speed Racer's impending arrival at theaters, I wanted to share a bit of Camino trivia that I doubt anyone but a select few of us would remember.

There was a time, long long ago, when Camino was in its infancy and Netscape was still working hard on a product they'd eventually call "Netscape 7" (code named Mach-V). Jinglepants kept calling our little Cocoa browser "Chimera" but just to piss him off I'd call it "Chim-Chim". Back then, Camino was still a skunk-works project at Netscape and I thought it made perfect sense that it hid in the back of the Mach-V and caused everyone problems. Hilarity then ensued. Alas, my name never caught on, but if you could go back in time and find the initial public webpages for "Chimera", you'd see images of Chim-Chim and Speed Racer (put there by yours truly, shamelessly violating all applicable copyright and trademark law). Good times.

A screenshot of what Chimera 0.2 looked like, for those who never got to see it. Remember when we thought pinstripe was cool? Remember when we thought Member's Only was cool? Man, what we were smoking?

Go Sharks! (and I'm not just saying that cuz Jo made me.)

Now that I’m back from Future of Web Design, I’ve got a chance to do more of a write-up.

The FOWD sessions were great, with sponsored Microsoft slot aside (“Please make the bad man stop…”). Andy Budd particularly engaged me with his presentation of the “User Experience Curve”, and Steve Pearce from Poke had the slides I wish I’d done. It was the first time I’d heard Paul Boag outside of the podcast, and I think he did a tremendous job of chairing the event.

My first duty of the day was the ‘live Photoshop Battle’ which I had a few misgivings about. The team weren’t keen on the ‘battle of the sexes’ idea, so we’d decided to collaborate in teasing Andy Clarke instead. It was a bit of an experiment, especially in the “people still wandering back in from lunch” slot, but afterwards I think all involved agreed that it didn’t really work. I saw one comment on Twitter that said it was “Cliquey in-jokes” which I think was fair-comment!

I had been asked by Paul to talk about the nitty gritty end of design – taking a design through to launch, which I was concerned would be teaching people to suck eggs. After all, this would be the bread and butter of everyones everyday work.

For those of you that weren’t there, I decided to do this via Cheesophile- a demo site to highlight a few of the choices we have make while creating a website. It was never intended to cover such things as dealing with Content Management Systems (where would you start?!), fluid vs fixed or ems vs pixels. In 50 minutes, you have to focus and I wanted to cover some topics like excluding certain browsers from seeing CSS, typography tips and image creation. Yes, it did turn into a bit of a Fireworks advert, just be glad I didn’t go on about how much I love Coda!

In the end, I realised that I had cut out about 15 minutes of the talk. Not intentionally, but once I got up there, I found I wasn’t looking at my notes and missed a few key points I wanted to make!

So, here are my slides in Deployment.pdf (21.9 MB PDF) for the talk. The demo page of Cheesophile is also live, with the accompanying files available to download (includes the layered Fireworks PNG files). Cheesophile is far from perfect – it’s not bulletproof and lacks some basic things (like a search field) that you would expect from a site, but it is what it is – a demo for the purpose of the talk.

URLs mentioned in the talk:

• MAMP
• Headdress
• Yahoo Graded Browser Support
• Matthew Pennells Grid Calculator
• Grid Layouts.js
• Firebug
• Position is Everything

I missed out on the last 2 talks, and the post-party as I felt as rough as 2 badgers – but I was really sad to miss out on meeting people that evening. The following day was not only my son Daniel’s 5th birthday, but it was our 10th wedding anniversary, so it was definitely time for the family!

Many thanks for the kind comments about the talk. If you have any constructive feedback, positive or negative, please leave a comment. I feel that I am gaining my confidence as a speaker, and I’m genuinely interested to hear any suggestions on how to improve.

Finally, as the PDF doesn’t include the movie clip, here’s the scene from Father Ted that was used in the talk!

While I was away at FOWD, Camino 1.6 was released, with lovely new features like the find bar (at last!), OpenSearch support, and many more. Wonderful stuff!

In particular though, I had a lump in my throat at the new homepage screenshot, that apparently was taken for me:

Very touching! :D

There's nothing better than playoff hockey. Except perhaps playoff hockey in HD. Tonight's Bruins/Canadians game was amazing. I'm not sure if hockey translates well outside of North America (heck, most of the USA has lost interest after the last lock-out) but it really is a great sport to watch.

Please please please, ESPN. Please bid on it next year! Don't let NBC and Versus hide it from everyone. It needs to be back on a channel that everyone watches.

I've been looking around at reactions to the release of Camino 1.6, and a lot of it could be summarized as: “So?” The points are generally valid; amid the hype around the upcoming release of Firefox 3 (and to some extent, all the WebKit hype), releasing a new version using Gecko 1.8 (as seen in Camino 1.5 and Firefox 2) is hardly ground-breaking. But then, it wasn't meant to be, which is why it's Camino 1.6, rather than Camino 2—that would have been more clear if we'd released it last November as we had originally hoped, but such is the nature of trying to do scheduling in a volunteer project. Camino 1.6 is, as it was intended, just an incremental improvement; nice if you were already using Camino, but not nearly as exciting to read about as Firefox 3. (Here's a hint for the people wondering why we didn't use Gecko 1.9 by the way: Gecko 1.9 development is very, very closely tied to Firefox 3 development, and Firefox 3 isn't out of beta yet.)

If it were just the unfortunate timing of releasing amid flurries of stories about how Firefox 3 is just around the corner and will bring about world peace and cut through tin cans without getting dull, having press coverage like “Good news for those of you who are part of the ever-shrinking community that still uses Camino” (thanks for the love, Ars) would be easy to ignore, but I think the real issue is a more lasting one: the change in Safari's place in the web.

In the past year or so, WebKit has made very significant advances in compatibility, the iPhone has raised WebKit prominence, site authors are finally starting to get the idea that locking out the browser that comes installed on the machines of 5+% of their potential visitors (as well as the only one available to iPhone users) is probably not a good idea, and Safari is available for testing (and with Drosera, potentially development) on Windows. All that adds up to far fewer people finding themselves in need of a browser other than Safari to use all the sites they need to, which used to be a big part of why people turned to Camino.

That leaves us competing almost entirely on browser features and UI. But things have changed there too: with Safari 3, Apple changed their approach and actually back-ported a new version of Safari to the previous OS, rather than just back-porting WebKit as they had been doing. Assuming that continues, historical OS X adoption rates tell us that new versions of Safari will be available to almost all Mac users, rather than only about half, and so we lose another large uncontested (by Safari) user base. In a head to head match between Apple and a handful of very-part-time volunteers, it wouldn't take much effort on Apple's part to move fast enough that we wouldn't be able to keep ahead of them.

To be clear, I'm not complaining. Camino is about giving users a sleek Mac browser that Just Works; if Safari is equally good at being the browser that we have been working to build, then users win, because the browsing experience we wanted to provide is pre-installed on their machines. And it's not like we are in this for the money. I'm also not saying I'm ready to hang up my hat just yet (nor am I in any way, shape, or form speaking for the Camino project; this is all just my own musing and opinions); just that I spend a lot of time recently thinking about what might be next for Camino. Certainly, in the short term, we work to get Camino 2 out there soon, based on Gecko 1.9 and with a few new features that we've ween working on tossed in for good measure. Beyond that, the path is (to me, at least) unclear.

Writebacks (8)

We released Camino 1.6 today, congratulations to the entire team of developers, testers, localizers, bug helpers, irc hangers-on, and supporting fans! As always, it's a bit behind schedule (we talked last Summer about a 2007 release), but we managed to stick to our plan and nail just about everything we wanted.

New features include:

• Improvements to toolbar search - now it's even easier to add new engines to the search bar, with auto-discovery
  
• New find bar - my own personal contribution to this release. No more red-headed step-child Find panel
  
• Scrolling tabs - life really sucked before with a lot of tabs. Now it's much better (but it's still not Tabspose, we're still working on it!)
  
• Software Update - finally! Always stay up to date.
  
• AppleScript support - a contribution from my Google Summer of Code mentee.
  
• Save passwords for multiple accounts - finally finally!
  
• Web-based Feed support - want to use Google Reader (like I do)? Now it's even easier!
  
• ...And tons of bugfixes and improvements so the web works better!
  

I'm quite impressed with this release. Give it a spin for yourself at caminobrowser.org. Now onwards to 2.0 and the new Quartz graphics layer like Ff3.

Update: I’ve had such a great response to this! It looks as if I’ve already got the job covered, but please do send in your details and samples. I promise I will look at each one and keep your details for future projects. Thanks!

I need help! Are you icon designer, experienced in creating application and interface icons for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista? Can create icons from 16px up to 512px? Yes? Now, are you free this month?!

I have an large-ish icon project for a software application (can’t say more than that at the moment) on with an urgent deadline of the end of April, and I need your help! If this sounds like you, please drop me an email (see the footer) and let me see your portfolio, either online, or as attached samples. Even if you’re not contracted on this project, I’m always looking for good designers to recommend clients to, and work with.

I spent a thoroughly fulfilling hour last night watching Cabel Sasser’s presentation for C4 on how Panic started, developing my favourite tool Coda, and generally interface and icon design. I’ve never heard Cabel talk before, although I got an impression of his voice from his blog, but the reality was better than I had imagined.

(This post is a work in progress, that I will continue to update and tweak. The comments are great, with a whole variety of suggestions and details of other setups. I’ll try and keep the comments open as long as I can)

Apple TV or Mac Mini?

No getting away from it – I still yearned for a Mac based media centre. I’d hoped Wii Transfer would fit the bill, but the quality of the video streaming isn’t good enough (yet?).

That meant either a Mac Mini or an Apple TV, but that’s a hard decision. Apple TV has the ease of use that makes it ideal for the home. No fiddling about, but no PVR functionality either. In the end, I went for the Mac Mini’s potential over the Apple TV ‘just works’, and using FrontRow and EyeTV to provide the interface.

But, I’d dabbled with a Mac Mini media Centre a couple of years ago, with a G4 Mini hacked to use FrontRow. I gave up on it a few months after, but recently decided that the time was now right. So what’s different this time around?

Front Row built into Leopard – rather than tied to particular machines and requiring a hack to make it work. Front Row 2 also adopts the plugin ‘appliance’ architecture of Apple TV, as well as supporting sharing from other macs. As far as I can see it only lacks the YouTube feature of the Apple TV.

Screen sharing – After using other VNC clients, the inbuilt screen sharing facility is easy and responsive. I can barely notice a difference in performance between administering the Mac Mini and working on my MacBook Pro.

Intel Mac Minis – Compared the original G4 Mac Mini I was trying to use, the new Intel Mac Minis are faster, have larger hard drives and Bluetooth and airport as standard (which the G4 didn’t have). They also come with a built in remote and receiver. I previously used a bluetooth phone and Salling Clicker, which works, but it isn’t the kind of ‘slick solution’ you can hand to someone else and expect them to want to use it. The Apple remote works very well, and isn’t too simple (it is easier to lose though, and you can’t ring it to find out where it is.)

Leopard brings everything you need to run a media centre, with the exception of a PVR, and an automagic system for adding new content to the Mini. Finally, I was trying to run the last system through our old CRT telly, that only had 2 scart inputs. It looks like ass. Now that we have an LCD, it doesn’t.

So after st