Random Thoughts » Technology

Apple Subtly Change Keyboard Experience in OS X Lion

Drew — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:53:56 +0000

We’ve all been there, you have the Mac keyboard in front of you and suddenly you hear the beep-beep-beep as it tries to enter a thousand Xs into the Finder as you accidentally press the key. Well not in OS X Lion. Go on try it. Press and hold a key. No auto repeat.

However, [...]

Turn Any Web App Into An OS X App With Fluid

Drew — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:54:39 +0000

More and more of what we do these days is via the web, from Google Mail to Salesforce there are apps for pretty much any task. Living in the browser is fine but I tend to have a lot of tabs open and sometimes it is nice to just launch an app for a specific [...]

Secure iPad/iPhone Usage on Insecure WiFi

Drew — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 11:24:51 +0000

When I opted for an iPad I chose the 3G version so that I could use it when away from WiFi but as useful as this is it is still bound by caps on usage and can be variable in coverage. The other day I was at an event and had these issues so checked [...]

Gapminder World – Data Visualisation Tool

Drew — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:24:50 +0000

Gapminder World is a fantastic resource. In a nutshell it is a huge repository of world trend data covering a massive range of subjects. To cite some of the examples from the home page;

Wealth & Health of Nations CO2 emissions since 1820 Who has most internet users? Is child mortality falling? Where is HIV [...]

Using OpenID from Your Own Domain

Drew — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:12:21 +0000

I’ve recently added OpenID support to my WordPress installations via a plugin. This allows anyone with an OpenID to log in and set up a profile using an existing provider such as Google,Yahoo etc rather than having to remember yet another username/password combination.

However the one problem I have had using OpenID is that [...]

Map A SkyDrive Folder In Windows via Office 2010

Drew — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:28:15 +0000

DISCLAIMER: What I’m about to describe is tortuous and potentially useless but I use it and I even give an easier alternative so there .

Google tend to get most of the buzz (no pun intended) around the “Cloud” and Microsoft tend to be seen as a company who are being dragged kicking and [...]

Windows 7 “God Mode”

Drew — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:57:03 +0000

I’m a big fan of Windows 7, it has finally moved me from XP on my work machines. However I still haven’t quite got the locations for the settings stuck in the old memory and find myself hunting for them every now and then. I was going to blog about a piece of software called [...]

Installing Windows 7 on a Netbook Using USB

Drew — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:12:57 +0000

I’ve recently acquired a Netbook (Asus EeePC 1005HA to be precise) and in common with many such devices it came preloaded with XP. Now up until 6 months ago I’d probably have left it at that but having used Windows 7 for those last months I really didn’t want to go back. So I decided [...]

OS X Screen Grab Shortcut Reminder

Drew — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:13:59 +0000

When putting together the earlier post I needed to grab some shots of the process and as always I’d forgotton the OS X screen grab shortcut keys so I thought I’d stick them down here.

Command-Shift-3 will capture the whole screen and save it Command-Shift-4 perhaps more usefully will present crosshairs to allow the capture [...]

Setting Up Snow Leopard VPN from PCF File

Drew — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:54:48 +0000

Having recently upgraded to Snow Leopard one of the things that stopped working was my Cisco VPN client for access to my work network. From reading around it seems a reinstall should solve this but rather than go down that route I decided to look to the built in VPN features instead.

The starting point [...]

Colours Made Easy

Drew — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:09:23 +0000

For the non-arty one of the hardest things to do when putting together websites is to get just the right colours. For the criminally untalented, like me, there are loads of free css templates but when using these there is always the desire to choose different colours that make the site stand out. Even if [...]

TED++

Drew — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:41:34 +0000

I’ve posted before about how big a fan I am of the TED conference videos. I have recently stumbled across a similar source of talks, fora.tv.

The breadth and depth of subject matter is very similar to TED, the main difference is that FORA gathers talks from a wide range of different conferences held around [...]

An End to Coin Tossing

Drew — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:14:19 +0000

Decisions. They can be tricky. There are lots of techniques to help though, tossing a coin, rolling a dice, eeny, meeny, miny, moe (which bizarrely has a Wikipedia entry!). There must be a better way.

Well now there is. Hunch.com is a site that guides you through the decision making process. Whether the decision is [...]

Unknown Files? No Problem.

Drew — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:25:47 +0000

You have to love software developers. If there is a chance for them to use a standard file type for whatever app they’ve developed you can guarantee that they will avoid it completely in favour of a proprietary file format that only their software can create or indeed read. So what do you do when [...]

Alternative Software

Drew — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:23:48 +0000

I have no problem with paying for software when it is useful and I’m going to need to do something repeatedly, but what if you need to do something as a one-off or just plain can’t afford the mega-bucks “pro tool” such as Photoshop? Help is now at hand thanks to alternativeto.net. The site has [...]

Ahhhhh Nostalgia

Drew — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:55:29 +0000

I’m the first to admit I’m starting to age. It’s a good thing. Honest. Where technology is concerned I personally find that age brings some benefits and one of them is the ability to reminisce over technologies past. Now Harry McCracken over at MSN has created a list of one time technology leaders who have [...]

Google Street View in the UK

Drew — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:34:02 +0000

Google’s cool street view technology has now been rolled out to a number of UK cities.Â It’s oddly satisfying to be able to roam around a city that you know looking at what has changed.

Here’s a good pub

View Larger Map

[...]

Convert PDFs to Word

Drew — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:48:15 +0000

PDFs are great but every now and then I have a need to edit one. There are of course a whole plethora of PDF creation/editing tools available, most of which will set you back some cash. But generally I don’t need this level of functionality, I just need to move some bits around. Well to [...]

Broadband – The Bad News

Drew — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:48:20 +0000

There are some phrases that we all know. “Don’t rock the boat.”, “Leave well enough alone” and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”. I not only know all of these but also follow them wherever possible. Every now and then though I fail to heed them and always regret it. My latest lapse has [...]

Microsoft – Why do you do these things?

Drew — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:48:23 +0000

It’s always the little things. They are irrational and trivial but they annoy the hell out of me. Microsoft seem to manage more of these little things than any other single organisation I know.

Now I’m not one to moan about Microsoft. Well OK, I’ve used their stuff for long enough that I have [...]