Well, well… I never thought I’d see the day… but it has arrived… I am no longer a Mac virgin

I have a number of long standing issues with Apple… namely I don’t necessarily agree with the way they conduct themselves at times and I have a dislike of Macintosh computers following a somewhat unfortunate incident involving a crashed Mac classic that I couldn’t eject the disc from.

So imagine the turmoil I feel when my brother asks me if I’ve ever thought of writing iPhone games!!!

The short answer of course was “Yes, I have”. The full length answer was “Yes, I have, but you need a Mac to do the development and then you need an iPhone to test with, so you’re looking at a shed load of cash and whilst I like the idea of trying to make some money doing something I enjoy, I object to giving Apple shed loads of cash”. Thankfully though, my usual partner in crime, Spirit, and my brother seem really keen on this venture.

The later stating he has a whole bunch of ideas, and talking to him, he does indeed have a bunch of cracking ideas. So, with all that in mind, I’ve been pondering whether to bite the bullet and buy a Mac for the last couple of weeks. I have read the Apple website so many times and have spent quite a large amount of time walking around various stores that sell Macs.

Finally on Friday night, I relented and gave in to my wants and am now the proud owner of a MacBook Pro.

And I have to say, I like it… I like it a lot.

I said I’ve got a few problems with Apple, one of those is NOT their design. Take the iPod for example… yeah, I’ve done the whole anti-Apple thing and bought a Sansa and I’ve looked at other devices, but I found it very difficult not to keep ending up back at the iPod when I thought about buying another music player. The iPhone is also a nice piece of design and the MacBook Pro is not disappointing with it’s sleek aluminium case, illuminated keyboard, and… I could continue with what is turning out to be a nice list of funky features that just go to make this one of the nicest computing experiences.

I’m not saying it’s perfect, because it’s not. The keyboard for example… no DEL key But a key or two, I can live with. These things are seriously powerful… 2GHz quad core… Nice And I can use some of my funkier software like Reason, Cubase and Zebra… Sweet

Now all I have to do is learn Objective C, how to get the best out of Xcode and hey presto… we’ll all be rich! *crosses fingers*

Well, it’s been too long since I last posted… February in fact… *eeek* oh well… thats work and study for you… so what have I been up to?

Work… it’s been hectic… but at times has felt a bit flash… fly to Aberdeen, spend a week working on a customers site, stay the weekend and then fly out on Sunday to Belfast and spend a week working on a customers site in Lisburn. Interview a potential new employee, get interviewed for a promotion, then fly up to Aberdeen to try and get the systems finished. Then, on holiday… YAY!!!

Study… well, last year I studied MST121 Understanding Mathematics and M255 Object Oriented Programming with Java on the OU. I figured late in 2009 that it was time I got the degree I didn’t get when I was at Uni, so I signed up for those two courses. I was 7pts short of a distinction on M255, but passed MST121 with flying colours. I originally thought I might do a combined degree in Computational and Mathematical Sciences, but having done M255 and not really having felt pushed at all, I decided that I’d switch to a maths degree. So, this year I’m doing MS221 Exploring Maths, the following up to MST121 and M208 Pure Maths, which is normally done AFTER you’ve done MS221. Some of the stuff we’ve covered in M208 at the beginning is normally done at the end of MS221, so it’s a bit hectic and I’m really feeling the pressure, but despite this, I’ve just got 99% in MS221 TMA01 and 94% in M208 TMA02, so I’m chuffed to bits.

Sideline projects… I’m currently working on three sideline projects, a replacement vendor control board for one of my old employers… the prototype hardware is looking great, just have the opto parts and a couple of resistor networks to pop on and it should be all systems go… when I’ve written the firmware that is, but thats looking good too. The next project is the PGD competition system… I’m on holiday at the moment so I’m going to try and get this finished so WILL can run another competition. Not too much to do, I’ve just not had the time to do it, but it is looking good. And finally, a secret little project for PowerPoint (written in… yes… C# *shock*) but more on that in the future.

And finally… ACFW Version 1.0… but more on that in another post.

That’s about it for now. Needless to say, I’ve been really busy

pmG are offering you the chance to get your hands on messiahStudio for an amazing $10 for the standard edition and $40 (normally $1195) for the professional edition. But there is a catch… it’s an experiment in viral marketing so we have to get a whole bunch of people to buy it to get it for this price… that said the target has nearly been reached.

So, if you want to experiment with 3D animation on what appears to be an excellent bit of software, visit the store page here. Payment is through PayPal and there is a limit of 4 copies (mix and match standard and pro) per customer.

Even if you don’t buy a copy, spread the word

Just in case I have regular readers

I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year for 2011, may it be bright and prosperous for you all.

If anyone has visited my site, and you’ve found it useful… how about making a small charitable donation? I don’t normally post about the companies I work for, but in this case, I think I’m going to break my own rules

Two of the directors (Simon Clough and David Todd) are undertaking 3 Tough Challenges for 3 Top Charities. For more information, links, donations etc. please visit justgiving.com/3tcchallenge.

3tc - 3 Tough Challenges for 3 Top Charities Poster

Since my original ‘Scraped by 208.50.101.153′ post, a bunch of guys who were also interested in knowing what it was all about got together here and figured it out. I’ve verified most of what was discovered and written up an article all about here on my wiki.

In short, it appears to be related to Microsoft’s SmartScreen filter, but for more information head on over to my wiki and check out the write up of the guys research.

Well… first we had the scrapers… now we have the spammers… Since about 4:30pm my blog has seen an inordinate amount of traffic originating from all over the place… the one common thing… all of it is apparently referrals from a site that pushes software for getting your links around and about the web. I’m not going to give them the recognition they are after by putting the domain on the front page, so if you want to know more, read on…

The site listed as the referrer is www dot submitter software dot com… they succeeded in posting 5 comments, all punting a piece of software to help drive traffic to your site by abusing shareware software sites and their PAD files… whatever they are. The software in question is actually produced by a another company, so I can only assume that submitter software is an affiliate looking to increase their earnings… maybe I should drop the software house a mail I thought… let them know about the unscrupulous tactics employed by people pushing their products… then when I looked at the products produced by this company I figured they’d probably applaud.

Of course, there could be a perfectly legitimate reason why my site was being spammed… maybe the site owner purchased advertising services from the company they make a mention of on their site and they had no clue what they would do to increase their traffic. So… Rebekah Hudson of 177 Captain HM Shreve Blvd, Shreveport, Louisiana (with the email address kphudson@comcast.net), I’d love to hear how you are involved with submitter software dot com (other than being the registrant).

So, how to stop this kind of crap if your site gets blitzed by this sorted of traffic… well, it’s actually quite simple if you can modify the .htaccess files and your server has mod_rewrite enabled. Google the search string +”block” +”referrer” +”apache” and you’ll get quite a lot of pages that provide details of how to block visitors based on referrers.

If you have an i-Pod and you’d like a ‘sock’ for it, but object to paying money to Apple or someone else for one… if you want to knit one here’s a fairly simple pattern for one.

Cast on 58 stitches

* K2, P2 to end (last two stitches should be K)
* P2, K2 to end (last two stitches should be P)

This sets the pattern.  Continue for another 74 rows.

Knit 2 rows

* P2, K2 to end (last two stitches should be P)
* K2, P2 to end (last two stitches should be K)

This sets the pattern.  Continue for another 8 rows.

Cast off in pattern.

To complete, you need to sew up the sock along the starting and side edges. Then, find some cord (I knitted one with my french knitter and attached a couple of bobbles by knitting into the cord) pop the cord in place, fold the sock over on the 2 knit rows and then sew up the final edge to make the cord tube. This was knitted with Palette yarns 019/219 series yarn on 2.25mm/13 gauge needles. If you want a plainer sock, you could use something like the 018/219 series from Palette.

Here’s a piccie of my finished sock… the picture has been doctored to remove the background, but I’m sure you’ll get the idea.

I’ve not been knitting too long (a little over a year) and I’ve just finished my first real request Up until now all the stuff I’ve done, I’ve offered to do to get some practice in. But just before Christmas I was asked if I’d knit a sackboy for a friends sister. He’s been knitted with the Alan Dart pattern and he’s got a nice little hat and scarf.

The scarf is very straight forward…

Cast on 8 sts
Continue in garter stitch for 266 rows
Cast off

If memory serves, I knitted this on 4mm needles using both the red and white wool (Palette yarns 018/219 series). The tassles are simple loops tied on through the stitches. Depending on how you want your sackboy to look, you can adjust the length… as you can see from the photo, I went for the contemporary look so I made the scarf nice and long.

The hat is also fairly straight forward. This time I knitted with Palette yarns 018/219 series on 2.25mm/13 gauge needles using the following pattern:-

Cast on 94 stitches (thumb method)

* K2P2 x 23, K2
* P2k2 x 23, P2
* Sets pattern for first 6 rows

Continue in STST.  If required, change colour to seperate ribbed band.

STST for 6 rows.
  If you are adding a letter, then start it on the next
  row (should be a knit row) and work as required.
STST for a further 6 rows

Now, on each knit row, work the first and last 10 stitches like this:-

* K2 K2Tog K2 K2Tog K2

Continue until there are 10 stitches, then on the next knit row:-

* K2Tog to end

Break yarn, tie off stitches.

Make a pompom, sew up the hat and there you have it

For anyone browsing with IE 8, the problem with the left sidebar should now be fixed. This is the first time I’ve used IE 8′s developer tools and I have to say, they made fixing the problem a piece of cake. I have Firefox with a bunch of dev tools installed, but trying to fix CSS problems can be a bind… with IE it was dead easy, turn off the items with a check box to see which one broke the page… one item, turned out to be a fix for a problem with earlier versions of IE. Anyhow, it’s fixed and the site now looks how it should in IE 8.