Windows Vista

For god’s sake Windows Vista.

I downloaded installed a program to view my cache.
Windows tells me “this program wants to access your computer: Cache Viewer, do I let it?”
Okay fair enough, even though it doesnt say what that access actually *means*.

So then I run the program and it doesnt work. I go to uninstall it in the control panel.
Then pops-up another window saying

“This program wants to access your computer: Unidentified Publisher, do I let it?”

…what?! It *knows* what it’s uninstalling, it only just installed the damn thing.
And why does it need special access to *remove* a program?
What the hell is the point in having that safety feature, if it can’t give me any information about what I’m allowing access to what?

It’s actually much worse than not having it at all, because its teaching people to just click “ok” when they dont understand what’s happening.

Safari is fast!

I’m very impressed with the speed of Safari on Mac OSX. I’d previously been using Firefox 2, which despite its name is as slow as a dog! Safari seems to execute javascript much, much faster, and just be more responsive overall.

Be evil

If Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil”, then Microsoft’s must surely be “Be evil”:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7414547.stm
“The International Standards Organisation approved its use but the full specification of the OpenXML format has yet to be published”.

http://www.noooxml.org/
“Microsoft has compromised the International Standards Organisation (ISO) during the rush to get a stamp for their Office OpenXML (OOXML), using unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process”.

I heard that they forced it through the fast-track process which is meant to retrospectively approve standards that are already widely in use.

iPlayer on Virgin Territory

Notes:

You don’t need a TV license if you only watch iPlayer on the web! (loophole). The loophole doesn’t exist with iPayer on Virgin.

Why promote the iPayer brand so much?
Because in 5 years time when on-demand is everywhere, they don’t want people to say “I won’t pay the BBC license fee because I only watch Virgin ‘on-demand’, not realising it’s brought to them (funded) by the BBC.

What about the PVT?
It was included in the main iPlayer PVT.

Can’t turn PIN off for adult content.
But doesn’t display after 9pm.

App built in Liberate.

Uses MPEG2 (all virgin needs this) around 3Mb/s, 4 for BBC One.
Metadata: Seachange flatfile bespoke virgin feed.

Has an ’sms’ search feature that even Virgin doesn’t have.

1/4mil programme views in 2 weeks.
With no marketing!
normally 2 mil views/week thru Virgin Catchup.

Blogging websites

WordPress

Good:

• It’s got built-in webstats, referrers, top posts, recent comments

Bad:

• It’s more clunky than Blogger

Blogger

Good:

• It’s awesome
• It lets you put all your blogs in one place
• It’s all dynamic and AJAXey
• So good they named it twice
• Integrated with your google account

Bad:

• Sometimes it errors. At http://www.blogger.com/home. Yesterday.

We are sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

 

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Flickr and Picasa

I have used websites with bulk-uploading tools written in Java before, that ‘just work’ providing you have Java installed. So why do both Flickr and Picasa require a full install of an operating-system-specific executable in order to upload files? For that matter, why don’t they use a system the same as facebook’s picture uploading page? I don’t know what technology it’s built on, but it’s very easy to use.

Plus the authentication is a bit fiddly with flickr, having to swap backwards and forwards between the browser and the application. With Picasa it was smoother.

Debugging MySQL stored procedures

possible tools:

1. MyDeveloper Studio (windows only, 30 day free trial) — Looks very promising, had some problems with a DO … WHILE … loop. Investigating.
2. Toad for MySQL (windows only, freeware) — haven’t tried it.
3. Eclipse plugin — there are several database plugins, not sure if any of them would be suitable.
4. Hand-written SELECT statements to track variables — a reasonable alternative for projects with only a few stored procedures. Would quickly become slow, tedious and inefficient on bigger projects.
5. MyProcDebugger
6. gdb