• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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I’ve had a whole series of potter articles in the back of my brain for the last few months and I just haven’t gotten them out. Now with the book officially only two days away and a leaked copy doing the rounds on the internet I guess those posts are just not going to be. Two friends of mine now have a copy of the leaked book and both are convinced it is genuine. So, it would seem that the time for predictions is over and the time to watch out for spoilers has begun. I have to say I just don’t get the mentality of those people who think it’s fun or clever to ruin the book for the fans. Yesterday a supposedly sensible and educated chap ruined the book for a good friend of mine by posting spoilers on Mikado (our college bulleting board system). I have to say I was not impressed. What kind of sicko takes pleasure from causing others pain? Surely someone with a personality like that needs help? Anyhow, I’m being very very careful about what I read and what sites I visit for the next few days but before I vanish into hiding I just want to list the important un-answered questions from the first six books as I see them (in order):

1. What were Snape & Dumbledore arguing about in the forest when Hagrid over-heard them? – Theories that Dumbledore ordered Snape to kill him hinge on this
2. On who’s orders Snape to betray Emaline Vance? We know Snape gave Voldemort information that led to her murder, was that a solo-run by Snape or was it on Dumbledore’s orders? This would give us insight into which side Snape is really on.
3. What did Dumbledore’s little gleam of triumph at the news that Voldemort used Harry’s blood to return to power mean?
4. Who is R.A.B.?

There are some things we expect every media player to do out of the box, you know, the basics, actually playing media and that kind of thing. Most people would consider a full-screen mode to be one of these core features that all media players must have. Apple didn’t think so. Past versions of QuickTime made you upgrade to the pro version for $30 if you wanted full-screen playback. Needless to say this annoyed a lot of people. It just looked like greed on Apple’s part and drove people away from Quicktime towards free alternatives like VLC. However, as of QuickTime 7.2 which was released this week you get free full-screen playback. Great to see common-sense finally winning out in the QuickTime division of Apple. THANKYOU!

It was my brother’s stag do last weekend and he chose to spend it in Letterkenny in Donegal. I took my camera with me and got some nice shots around Letterkenny town on the Saturday morning while the rest were still in bed. Then on the Sunday on the way home Dad took a detour via the first wind farm he ever developed, Owenreagh in Co. Omagh.

• The Letterkenny Gallery
• The Owenreagh Gallery

[tags]Donegal, Ireland, Letterkenny, Omagh, Owernreagh, Wind Farm, Wind Power[/tags]

Despite the advent of broadband excessive round-trips to the server still slow websites down. Having to send a request to the server to get the same data again but in a different order each time someone wants to sort a table is just not efficient. Hence, what you want is some nice simple JavaScript to do it for you. Ideally this JavaScript should be cross-browser and should not require you to make any substantive changes to your mark-up. Well, the good news is that this ideal has been realized and has been released under the free and open source MIT License. I’m talking about Stuart Langridge’s Sorttable.

Assuming you use proper XHTML markup for your tables, in particluar thead and tbody tags, making your tables sortable is a two-step process:

1. Include sorttable.js
2. Set the class of the tables you want sortable to sortable

For a basic setup that’s it! If you want to get a little more fancy you can by doing things like making some columns un-sortable but that too is trivially easy. Honestly, I have no complaints at all about this script, it just works!

[tags]XHTML, tables, sortable tables, JavaScript[/tags]

I reviewed Perian a few months ago when it was at version 0.5. I was already very happy with it then, but it’s gotten better. It used to just be a simple QuickTime component, now it comes as a Preference Pane so it can be easily controlled from within the System Preferences app. It still does everything it used to do, and indeed more, but now it’s easier to manage. If you run OS X Tiger (doesn’t work on earlier versions) and you haven’t already done so, now is the time to download and install Perian.

[tags]Perian, Apple, OS X, Video, QuickTime[/tags]

Despite what we were promised by the weather man the weather was wonderful this afternoon so I went off for a cycle around Maynooth. I decided to take my camera with me and try to capture some of the sights I met along the way. In particular I stopped at Taghadoe Round Tower and Connolly’s Folly. You can see all the pics here.

[tags]Round Tower, Taghadoe Round Tower, Connolly’s Folly, Photography, Ireland, Maynooth[/tags]

The amount of non-news and pure garbage that the iPhone has spawned is amazing. You have analysts predicting failure and success without ever even having TOUCHED an actual iPhone. I mean really, how low can journalistic standards go? Since when is guesswork (often un-educated guesswork) news? There have even been iPhone stories complaining about the amount of iPhone stories! But, at long last, amidst all the crap, we finally have real review from someone who’s actually GOT an iPhone! What’s better still is that it’s a real review rather than the fan-boy rubbish we are sure to see spewing forth from the blogosphere as soon as the infernal thing finally gets out. Anyhow, go read David Pogue’s review and get some real iPhone news for a change.

[tags]iPhone, Apple, David Pogue[/tags]

As some of you may remember I was getting rather frustrated with Hosting365 a while ago. However, Hosting365 responded very positively to the frustrations I expressed and, at their invitation, I paid them a visit today. Firstly, it was nice to put faces to the names. The guys all seem dead sound and the big-wigs are all Mac users so they must be alright 😉

Anyhow, I didn’t trek over to Park West at rush hour just to attach faces to names and engage in some Mac nostalgia. I went down there to see for myself what kind of infra-structure I’m entrusting with the task of hosting my sites and my customer’s sites, and to see how Hosting365 are going to resolve their problems with domain registrations. Bottom-line, I’m happy with what I saw.

[tags]Hosting365, Hosting, Domain Registration[/tags]

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Ireland has been honored as the only country in Europe to get a visit from a full-size model of the James Webb Space Telescope (the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope). At the moment the model is in the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham in Dublin. It will be in Ireland for a few weeks yet but it may be moving around. For information on where and when you’ll be able to see the model contact the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. If you’re going to see it in Kilmainham my advice would be to park in Heuston Station from where it’s only about a five minute walk.

The museum itself is a beautiful building in beautiful grounds. Had the weather been better I could have happily spend a few hours there. As it was it was dull and raining on and off. Regardless of the rain I did take some pictures which you can see in my gallery.

[tags]Dublin, Museum of Modern Art, James Webb Space Telescope, JWST[/tags]

There are many people who like the dock and many who hate it. Me, I like the dock, but I know it has limits. It’s excellent for keeping those programs you use day-in-day-out at your fingertips. That’s what the dock is for after all, it’s not meant to be the place you keep ALL your apps, just your favorites. On OS X you’re expected to user the Finder to launch those apps that you don’t keep in the Dock. Apple tried to make it a little easier with a keyboard shortcut for going to your applications folder (command+shift+a) but that’s not all that great and it only works from within the Finder anyhow. So, that’s why I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect application launcher for the Mac for quite some time now.

[tags]Apple, OS X, Quicksilver, Spot Light, Himmel Bar, Namely, Application Launcher[/tags]

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