Expose for Firefox tabs

There is a neat little extension that enables you to use expose on the tabs in Firefox. Works a wonder for the 8KB file!

Buses back on George Street

It seems as though there is at last going to be some buses using
George Street again, through the reversal of the Central Edinburgh
Traffic Management Scheme (CETM.

See Lothian Buses web site.

2006 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One interesting thing that I noticed on the Wikipedia is that there is the predicted release of the Aqua version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X

Sourceforge Updated

Sourceforge has a newly updated interface. It looks a lot cleaner and
easier to user. At the moment it seems a little slow at times.
http://sourceforge.net/
Letterdoc project

Upcoming Lothian Buses changes

Some more changes to the local buses.

It's strange that they are making the 20 circular considering that in July 2003 the took away the last of the circular routes, I wonder what caused their change in mind.

The 35 is being extended to the Airport again, yet they don't seem to be putting it into the Gyle Centre. There is demand for this. One example being two weeks after Lothian Buses took it away the last time a couple came up to me, while waiting at the Gyle to ask which bus went directly to the Gyle.

The 36 is being extended to the Scottish Parliament, I wonder what frequency it is going to be! The last time they had a bus doing a similar route, it was every half hour. So infrequent that you could walk o your connection by the time the bus would turn up if had missed it.

The number 30 has finally been increased to every 10 minutes. I knew it would eventually get increased to this frequency, ever since they took the other services away from Fort Kinnaird.

The 29 is going to have more journeys to Gorebridge in the evening. Will they be going into Tesco Hardengreen?

Evening and Sunday journeys to ASDA the Jewel using the 49 are all very well, but it takes longer than walking there directly from South Edinburgh.

So it seems as though they are not going to extend the 18 from the Royal Infirmary to Fort Kinnaird and ASDA the Jewel. It worries me when they don't say what the changes are explicitly and just say "revised timetable" or "minor timetable changes" as in the past this has meant that there was a decrease in frequency.

Police Force Bans Smoke in Grounds

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/4426374.stm

It's great to see someone doing the right thing. Hopefully the same
will be done else where.

Dictionary Definition for any word

I've finally found out how to get the dictionary definition for any
word on the page. You use the keyboard short cut control+cmd+D.

Thanks to this page http://www.macosxhints.com/pollbooth.php

Google Base

There seem to be a number of places going on about Google's Base webapp that is meant to be available at http://base.google.com/. I only seem to get as far as the login, then another screen asking to confirm password. I don't know what is going on.

Mind you it is probably still in Beta, just like many of the other things at Google, so they will be just preventing people from accessing, just the same way that they prevent too many people from accessing Google Mail (or out with the UK GMail).

Edinburgh Travel Survey

The City of Edinburgh Council, Lothian Buses and Colin Buchanan are doing the "Edinburgh Travel Survey" to make a model of travel in Edinburgh.

The only reason I found out about the suvey was because I just happened to to be on a 22.

Take a look at http://www.edinburghtravelsurvey.com. To see for yourself what the survey is.

Stop using the Lothian Buses 22

I'm fed up with the very high frequency of the Lothian Buses 22 and 26 in Edinburgh, especially when there are so many other routes that are so low frequency, such as the 15(A), 18, 32, etc.
Maybe if everyone were to stop using the 22 and 26 whenever possible and use alternatives instead, maybe the Lothian Buses management will take notice and redistribute their services.

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=2117062005

AppleInsider: Fifth-gen iPod photo

Take a look at http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1317 , you will notice that it is a FireWire cable in the picture, rather than a USB cable. That is very strange, considering Apple has stopped bundling the FireWire dock connector cable with the iPod for some time now!

Blog Comment Spam

I've been a victim of blog comment spam, so I have decided to turn of word verification.

OpenOffice.org is 5 Today

Today, 13 October 2005 is OpenOffice's fifth birthday today. The project has come a long way in the past five years, with the imminent release of version two, which is currently in release candidate stage.
I'm currently using Eric B's latest build for Mac OS X, which is the best build I have seen so far!
Excellent Work keep it up OpenOffice.org team!

iMac G5 has no internal modem

I've just noticed on the Apple store that Apple now have a USB modem that is required for connecting to the internet. This is probably due to the fact that the majority of people connecting tot he net these days do so via broadband rather than dial-up.

Is Apple starting the beginning of the end for dial-up internet connections by phasing out modems in the iMac? This seems to be the same thing as the loss of the floppy disk drive from the iMacs when they came out in 1998.

iPod HD crash

I managed to crash the startup script on my iPod Photo, when trying to update it.

The syptoms constantly force restarting its self after starting to read from the HD.

I did eventually managed to sort it. How?
Put the iPod into disk mode (press and hold select and menu keys to reset, then when you see the apple logo immediately press and hold the select and play keys). You can then connect it to a computer and run a disk utility app over it.
Fingers cross the disk utility app will sort the problem out. If it does your fine, you can just eject the iPod, disconnect it and it will hopefully work. It did for me after a few runs of the repair disk in disk utility. Any comments let me know.

Edinburgh Trams

Why not use hybrid trolley buses as an interim measure, until there is enough money is available to fund the laying down of the tracks.

I would say that using hybrid trolley buses instead as it would be more flexible. They don't always require electric to run, and they don't need the expensive tracks.

The Museum of Transport in Glasgow has a trolley bus from the 60's, so it might be an idea taking a look at it.

What I've been up to over the Summer

Take a look at: http://www.genecombio.com/news.asp?id=23, to see the company and project I've been doing.

Edit:
Due to a change, to make Google index the news articles properly, the above URL no longer takes you to the correct place try http://www.genecombio.com/news.asp?pageref=23 instead.

iTunes 5.0.1 out already

It seems as though there was something up with iTune 5, that Apple have released an update to iTunes. The update is available from http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ . It seems as though Apple is NOT being explicit on what has changed between versions 5 and 5.0.1.

City Centre Bus service to be axed to make way for the Trams

According to the Evening News - End of the line for bus routes once trams start to run in city . Bus companies are going to have to cut the bus services to the city centre. If the right routes get cut then it won't be a bad thing as the current probem with the city centre is that there are far too many buses there. So many they are holding each other up! If this goes ahead I just hope that the buses that get taken off from the city centre will be put on to the routes avoiding the city centre!

Yahoo Mail

Unfortunately the new Yahoo Mail service that makes webmail feel like your at you desktop is only available to those who have a @yahoo.com address. See Yahoo's Beta Signup page.

It's a real shame I only have a @yahoo.co.uk address, I was looking forward to trying it out.

Quicktime 7

It seems as though the release of Quicktime 7 for Windows has been overshaddowed by the releases of the iPhone, iPod Nano and iTunes 5.

iPod Nano out, iTunes 5 out as well!

Apple have just released a new iPod, the iPod Nano.

It seems to be simply a larger shuffle with a colour display.

There also seems to be a new version of iTunes too according to the page of about the iPod Nano.

The new iTunes features a new interface similar to Apple's Mail in Tiger.

Other features include:

• Streamlined Search
• Album Groups, similar to calendar groups
• Smart Shuffle
• Parental Controls
• Sync with Outlook
• Sync with Motorola Phone.

Spam

I wonder what is happening, I'm starting to get some. Strange, but annoying. You really need to watch out for phishing, i.e. e-mails claiming to be from somewhere, when they are not. I have found a few from eBay and PayPal claiming strange activity on an account apparently belongs to me.

Buses in Edinburgh

The dispute with Lothian Buses drivers is now over.

Great, I'll get the refund for the inconvenience of buses not turning up.


I have noticed that they are trying to bull-doze through the trams, when there are far too many buses runing in the place that the trams are due to run.

Glad I didn't renew my bus pass

I'm Glad I didn't bother renewing my Lothian Buses bus pass at the end of last week.

Why? Quite simple. Had I taken the bus today I would have missed the two connections because the 37A was running on time.

The shortest route by bus to Roslin for me, is to take the 18 to Kaimes cross roads. Fingers crossed the 18 was running on time. Then I have to hope that the 37A is running 2 minutes late, otherwise I miss it and the next connection, with the 15A from Bilston into Roslin.

The problem with taking the earlier 18 is that the 15A only runs every hour, if I have to wait more than 10 minutes on the 15A, I'm faster walking!

By the time I'm missing either the 15A or 37A on a regular basis, I'm as well cycling the whole route, it only takes around 10 minutes longer than the fastest time I have managed by bus!

Most importantly, it is considerably more reliable!

Lothian Buses Drivers take Strike action

I have just noticed on Lothian Buses website: http://www.lothianbuses.co.uk/news/serviceChanges.asp that they will be running a Saturday service from 19 July 2005. It's a real shame for those who live out in the sticks.

Quinn

There is a clone of tetris built specifically for Mac OS X, with networking. The game is called http://www.stud.tu-ilmenau.de/~siha-in/thesoftware.html Quinn.

Blogger

So you can use email to blogger!

X11 Forwarding on Mac OS X Client

For those of you who might be wondering how to enable X11 forwarding, like I was. A quick Google search came up with a couple of Developer articles.

Vital Flaw inroad pricing plan from Darling

I've had another letter published in the Evening News

Automator PDF workflows

WARNING: If you are using a PDF Workflow from the Print sheet, then you may have a problem with permissions with the generated PDF.
Essentially, your web server won't see it as world and group permissions are set to nothing.

Spotlight behind dashboard

That's weird, after activating dashboard, press cmd+space for spotlight. You can search away and open results, behind dashboard.

PDFs not opening in Firefox

I've just noticed that Firefox isn't opening PDFs internally. I suppose that old PDF plugin is still of some use.

Mintelac

Going by ThinkSecret, the Intel macs are using a different build from those of us on the PowerPC machines. Will this change in the future???
If the build numbers end up the same, it will prove that they are using the same binaries!
We'll just have to wait and see.

Edinburgh City Centre

Lothian Buses have come out with a leaflet detailing the changes from the 19 June 2005 regarding the City of Edinburgh Council's so called Central Edinburgh Traffic Management Scheme (CETM). There will be even MORE buses on Princes Street. Grrr.
All the buses via George Street or Queen Street are being diverted away over to Princes Street. Why??
Supposedly to reduce congestion. Eh? Take longer to get to where you want to go maybe, though extra diversions, you end up using extra fuel, and by the way paying extra tax.

Unfortunately, almost all the buses in the city go via the city centre, so avoiding the city centre as much as possible could prove very difficult. Especially after Lothian Buses cut all the circular service back in July 2003.

OpenOffice 1.9.107 Mac OS X

I have installed eric b's latest build of OpenOffice. Seems to be working better. Not done any great testing in it.

Tiger's Safari and PDFs

When Tiger's Safari is loading a PDF why doesn't it show up the first few pages, while still downloading the rest of the document?

iPod Photo notes

Did you know you can use folders in the notes folder?

It will take some time to open the first time, but there after it will open quickly.

HTML notes will show up with some formatting, such as an underline.

Test

This is a little test to see if you can use widget from Safari. Not perfect, but it is possible!!!

New version of dash blog

The author of dash blog has put up a message on the blog that I have been looking at for the new version, that she isn't blogging there any more. This version is much better!

Quicktime Update 7.0.1

It seems as though the Quicktime Update for 10.3.9+ has caused Safari to be updated too. It's had to update all the keychain items.

Driving Test

I passed my driving test this morning. Great.

RSS feed now works

I've done a bit of poking around with the settings in Blogger, and you can now access the RSS feed of my blog, from various applications. I have tested it in Safari RSS, that comes with Tiger.

South Local Development Committee Don't mention petition in minutes

See http://cpol.edinburgh.gov.uk/getdoc_ext.asp?DocId=65425
for the minutes of the meeting that the petition to get the 18 increased in frequency, increased hours and extended to Fort Kinnaird was handed in.

It does not mention anywhere that a petition had been handed in!

Tiger: PSyncX: Fix

If you had PSyncX installed prior to installing Tiger and you did anything other than a clean install then you will need to re-install PSyncX. Thereafter it will work perfectly again!

Mac OS X Tiger: Spotlight: Man Importer

There is actually a useful Spotlight plugin on Apple's Spotlight page!

Unfortunately Spotlight won't index hidden folders or files, which means that you need a copy of the man pages elsewhere, what a waste of space, but never mind.

That script is all very well. But if you buy things from the same place regularly then you will have a number of PDFs with very similar names.

You can add an extra step before it to rename the PDF. Do a search for "rename" you should get an option to rename finder items. Drag that step before the current one to create a new folder.

You will then need to customise it.

By default it will append the current date to the end of the file name, but before the file extension.

You can use this for other things that you save regularly too.

Dash Blog

Just found the Dash Blog dashboard widget. Might make me blog a bit more.

Shamble of bus service

I got the letter published in the Evening News

New Nvu Update

It seems as though Nvu have been busy. They seem to be nearing a 1.0 release.

Nvu is an open-source project, built on Mozilla.

Petition Update

I submitted the petition to get the Lothian Buses 18 increased in freaquency, Hours increased and an extension to Fort Kinnaird to the South Local Development Committee a week ago.

Update to http Mail

There is a minor update to the Mail plugin so it should prevent the problem with hotmail requiring verification now.

Romeo

I have just come accross this remote for Mac OS X, very useful, though the mouse movement is very poor.