Bug-Man’s Blog

Just in case you can’t get enough Cop shows in your TV diet then you really should subscribe to Pay TV. It’s incredible how much trash they really do play on Pay TV as opposed to any actual quality programming (which is what I really expected to see a little more of.)

For a good example, here’s a list of all of the fly on the wall and reality style TV shows you can find in just one week of UK Pay TV!

Animal Cops Detroit

Animal Cops Houston

Animal Cops Phoenix

Bailiffs

Brooklyn North Homicide Squad

COPS

Cop Files

Cops Uncut

Cops in the Sky

Cops on Camera

Crime Fighters

Crime Scene USA

Crime Scene

Dog the Bounty Hunter

Ice Cops

K9 Cops

Lawless Britain

Miami Animal Police

Most Shocking High Speed Pursuits

Motorway Patrol

Nightwatch with Steve Scott: Crime

Police 10/7

Police In Action

Police Patrol

Police Rescue

Police Stop!

Police, Camera, Action!

Rail Cops

Road Wars

Sky Cops

Street Crime UK

Street Wars

The Food Police

Traffic Cops

Video Justice

World’s Most Shocking Police Videos

World’s Scariest Police Chases

Wow. Are you sure this isn’t enough variety? Perhaps they could put on some other reasonable television instead of the same old stuff over and over again!

Justin has been having some difficulties with the iScrobbler client that lets you scrobble your tracks to Last.fm. If you don’t know what Last.fm is, it is a website that trends your music listening over time, and lets you link to your friends as well as strangers who have similar tastes in music to you. Of the things I don’t use it for, you can play music through the website as well as create radio stations, post blogs etc. But one of the best things about it is that it knows about all of the artists that nobody’s ever heard of — the ones I listen to! The entire database is community driven/build which is what makes it so great.

Just for good measure, here’s my feed:

The normal Last.fm client is a rather bloated piece of crapware so it’s no surprise that people don’t want to use it. I have used it for quite some time because I found that previous versions of iScrobbler failed miserably and crashed a lot. Annoyingly when you search for iScrobbler in Google, one of the top hits is an out-dated version on Sourceforge, which is probably why I have had so much trouble previously. That version hasn’t been updated since 2002. All hail the new version!

I have read on the Internet that iPod submissions don’t seem to work very well because once you scrobble data to Last.fm and then try and scrobble data from a time earlier than your last scrobble, it will fail on those submissions (Say you listen on your laptop, go for a walk, come back, listen more, then sync your iPod — those iPod tracks won’t scrobble!) The client uses the Recently Played playlist to work out what it needs to scrobble. I’m going to run some tests and see how the new iScrobbler client behaves with the iPod. Now that I actually have an iPod, scrobbling my history from it is rather important to me.

Test #1 – Installation!

Initial tests for iScrobbler 2.0 are good; it installs and runs without crashing. It’s more advanced than any previous version I have used, which is a good sign. It detected my previous bloated Last.fm client which I have disabled. It has an option for iPod sync which I have selected.

Test #2 – Scrobbling

As I write this I am waiting for one track to scrobble that I have listened to in full…. and it has scrobbled successfully, proving that full communication back to the Last.fm server is working properly. This is good news.

Test #3 – Listening on my iPod

I played four tracks on my iPod. When I plugged it in to sync, iScrobbler paused track submission on the client (nothing was playing anyway) and successfully scrobbled the tracks I played.

Test #4 – Listening on my iPod and iTunes mish-mashed, then performing an iPod Sync

Alright! I’ve plugged my iPod back in and I’m listening to music again. A couple of tracks on the iPod, a couple of tracks on iTunes, then back to the iPod, then one more on iTunes for good measure. It will be interesting to see how the client handles this mish-mash of history, considering the tunes I play from within iTunes will scrobble automatically.

Theoretically the tunes on the iPod will be cast down as un-scrobbable because they pre-date the latest submission. If it fails here, it’s painful, because it will mean making sure you plug in your iPod EVERY SINGLE TIME you finish with it. Damn, if only it my iPod had wireless.

I got a bit confused during my track playing and lost track of what was doing, and I think I went:

ipod
ipod
itunes
ipod
itunes

So for good measure I added in another few tracks:

itunes
ipod
ipod
itunes

There! That should be plenty to play with. I’ve kept the track titles properly recorded in a text file this time so I can be sure of my results when I compare it to the Last.fm website.

And the results?

“No Matching Tracks”. This is the message you get if there are no tracks to scrobble. So yes, quite simply this means you can’t scrobble your “historical” data and you MUST sync your iPod before using iTunes (with iScrobbler enabled anyway) otherwise you WILL NOT be able to Scrobble your iPod’s history. This isn’t a fault of the client as far as I can tell, rather, it’s a fault of the submissions system being unable to receive out of sequence scrobbles.

The application is awesome and I will continue to use it. I will just have to remember to sync my iPod more regularly!!

Here’s a great little game on the theme of attack/defense which is a load of fun. It’s called Age Of War. The aim of the game is to defend your base and attack your opponent, ultimately defeating them and their base. Throughout the game as you earn money and experience points you evolve through the ages from the Stone age, Medieval, Colonial, Military and then on to a future age. It’s a very simple but addictive game. Along the lines of Desktop Tower Defense.

You can either play it in the browser but if you link directly to the Flash file you can stretch the game a bit wider and see the whole distance between the two bases instead of having to scroll back and forth to see what’s going on. It wasn’t designed for that size so it won’t look all that tidy!

Normally I don’t do very much for Australia Day but considering I’m living in London, but this year Lindsay and I went out and celebrated being Aussie London. Not surprisingly, London’s city streets were packed full of Aussies with aussie colours, flag tattoos on arms, cheeks and foreheads, flags draped over them like capes, and they were all hanging around the Aussie bars, of course. Lindsay, Michelle, Adam and myself went down to Covent Garden where we picked up a few necessary Aussie supplies: Chickos, Arnott’s Shapes, Mint Slice, Ice Magic, Vegemite, and a couple of other Aussie things. It’s amazingly strange standing in an Australian shop with just about every Australian food icon on display. It’s almost like being back home and going to a deli. About the only thing we didn’t buy was a carton of Coopers Pale Ale, for two reasons: a) It was sold out and b) It was £36.90/carton (around AU$80.)

Onwards with our supplies we headed to the pub.

No, we avoided the Walkabout because it would have been just far too busy, but went to another pub instead which we knew served Coopers Pale Ale. Downing a couple of those, we were surrounded by Aussies. Trying to explain exactly what a ‘Bush Pig’ is to Adam the Texan was something interesting and there weren’t too many examples of them around; they were probably all at home in Australia. It was getting late and Lindsay and I needed to head off to Justin’s place where there was a late night Australia Day BBQ. Outside the pub I let out one loud “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!” and was glad to hear several people immediately respond “Oi! Oi! Oi!” That made my day!

We headed off to Justin’s house and although he lives only a few miles away it still took 1 hour and 2 buses to get there. I carried my backpack with a carton of beer inside of it, and we arrived. We had a good night meeting a few other Aussies, watching Skippy, singing Australian TV commercial jingles and getting drunk like Aussies should. It was meant to be a late BBQ and it wasn’t until 11:30PM that we actually started eating! Nonetheless it was a good night. Here are some snaps:

But there are more on Flickr.

Sunday was spent in bed.

Well as you’d expect, less than 24 hours into the MacBook Air being released to the masses, Gizmodo has taken it apart for all to see. What else would a bunch of geeks do?

The least they could have done was destroyed it! Here are a couple of pics:

It’s also been reported that over the remote disk, you can’t play DVD media, burn a CD or listen to music.

A few details are now out!

The new James Bond film will be called Quantum of Solace, and although this sounds a bit unconventional for a Bond film title, we’ll just have to wait and see how it all connects. The title was chosen within the 48 hours, and is the title used on one of Ian Fleming’s 007 short stories. This Bond will star Daniel Craig and Judi Dench, but there will be no Q and no Moneypenny this time around. Felix Leiter will reappear and the Aston Martin DBS V12 will be back!

This film will be a direct sequel to Casino Royale, so direct in fact that the first scene will be set only one hour after the final scene of the previous film. According to the press there will be more action, more girls and more gadgets. Even M gets a chance to play with some extra gadgetry and in this film we’ll even hear (or maybe even see) M’s husband.

“It’s grown on me,” said Daniel Craig. “I was unsure at first. Bond is looking for his quantum of solace and that’s what he wants, he wants his closure. Ian Fleming says that if you don’t have a quantum of solace in your relationship then the relationship is over. It’s that spark of niceness in a relationship that if you don’t have you might as well give up.”

Casino Royale was a reboot *right* back to the start and the movie’s premise was based around Bond having to prove himself to earn the stature of 007. **Spoilers Follow** Bond and M continue to interrogate suspects from the crime organisation uncovered in the previous film and Bond learns that there is a great deal of evil in the world. Bond travels to Venice where he meets his movie nemesis, Greene, who wants to control one of the world’s most important natural resources, who is helping a Latin American general to return to power in exchange for support in his evil deeds. Bond will collaborate with a girl with a vendetta against Greene and the two will work together to bring him down (both with slightly different agendas, apparently!)

There’s more information available on the film and probably one of the best places to follow the actual facts is Wikipedia (it usually is!)

I’ll be looking forward to going to see it

Here’s a story which has just run regarding Heath Ledger.

This story is regarding the intentions of the American Baptist church of Westboro to rally and picket at Heath Ledger’s funeral. Why, you may ask? What did Heath Ledger do to directly offend this church? Well, nothing. Not directly anyway. Heath played a the character of a gay cowboy in the film Brokeback Mountain. No, Heath Ledger is not gay himself; he just portrayed the character of a gay cowboy in a movie, and for this, according to the Westboro Baptist Church, he deserves to be picketed with hate propaganda.

Here is an excerpt from the flyer that the Westboro church has issued regarding the picket:

“Yes. WBC will picket this pervert’s funeral, in religious protest and warning: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” Gal. 6:7. Heath Ledger thought it was great fun defying God Al mighty and His plain word; to wit: God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates the sordid, tacky, buckets of slime seasoned with vomit known as ‘Brokeback Mountain’ – and He hates all persons having anything whatsoever to do with it.”

Now that’s certainly preaching the word of God, isn’t it. Where in the Bible does it say that “God hates fags and fag-enablers”? Doesn’t the Bible teach that God loves all of his children, regardless of creed or culture? Regardless of whether or not they are a believer? Didn’t God create all children in his own image? Don’t we, as sinners, get a chance to repent our sins and be forgiven if that is what we so choose (and believe?) Hasn’t homosexuality been around for thousands of years?

This church completely full of narrow-mindedness and vitriol. Here are some pictures to explain.

“Fags Die. God Laughs.” What kind of message is this preaching? One of acceptance and love or one of hate and bigotry? Aren’t there churches out there (ridiculous as it may seem) who are there to HELP people be saved from their sins, including homosexuality?

This particular church is run by Fred Phelps, as pictured in the last picture. I just wonder how what goes through the minds of him and his followers and how they can be the source of so much hate in the world. I wonder, if the entire Earth took on their view, what would happen to us?

During 2005, a Swedish pastor was convicted for 30 days for preaching anti-homosexual propaganda. This is not legal in Sweden as their law allows for a high tolerance and equal rights, and after a number of complaints the law jailed him. Phelps and the church took this very personally and began to target hate propaganda towards Sweden.

The church made a number of hostile statements regarding Sweden, specifically targeting Sweden’s homosexual-friendly politics and gay rights, naming the royal family as proprietors of incest and bestiality, and went on to mock the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, a disaster which killed thousands.

I listened to some of Phelps’ 2005 Sweden sermon, and from that sermon, only a few setences in, he says:
“Thank God for Tsunami! And thank God that 2000 dead Swedes are fertilizing the ground over there! And we pose the question; how many of those 2000 do you suppose were fags and dykes!?”

Phelps goes on to abominate Swedish people simply because he’s angry that a fellow “gospel preacher” was jailed. According to Phelps all nine million Swedes are perverts, including the infants and the sucklings.

It seems that this Church, and perhaps others, can’t recognise the difference between the law and their own religion. The law is designed to protect and serve. It is not allowed to pass judgement on people’s lifestyle, it is only allowed to prevent people from performing acts that are deemed harmful to society. I can not see how the private act of a homosexual relationship between two men can be seen as harmful to society in a legal sense. I can see how it can be harmful in a religious sense, where religion promotes strong family values and male/female copulation, but still, this is contained within the religion, and other similar religions.

So what is a religion? Isn’t it a person or person’s beliefs? Aren’t we supposed to be tolerant of all religions? I’m tolerant of people who believe in God and believe in male/female family relationships; without straight couples and families the world wouldn’t survive, but humans are not going to die off simply because a portion of the population is homosexual. Life goes on!

Surely these people shouldn’t worry about how other people are living their lives and carry on living their own lives according to the Bible? If they did that, they wouldn’t waste so much of their lives preaching anti-gay and hate propaganda all over the place. I am not religious, but I believe that these people’s crime against their fellow humans is far worse than than a homosexual in the eyes of God. I find it quite ironic that they believe they are doing good for the world by preaching such hate.

From time to time it’s good to go back and look at a big list of keyboard shortcuts. There are plenty that I had completely forgotten about. I thought it might be a good idea to jot some of them down to make myself a bit of a quick-reference sheet for those that are useful to me.

Please note that some of you on non-Mac platforms may not be able to view the symbols correctly. Also, this is not a complete list. It’s just a list of shortcuts that I deem useful to me. If anyone else has anything they’d like to add feel free to add a comment!

Symbols
Remembering all those keyboard shortcuts can be annoying. Most of what we need is already laid out on the keyboard but not everything useful is there. I’ve just moved to the UK so I need to use the £ key a lot more, but how do you know where to type it in if it’s not printed on the keys? I suppose you have to rely on your memory.

™	Option-2	TradeMark
£	Option-3	Pound Key
¢	Option-4	Cents
®	Option-r	Registered TradeMark
¥	Option-y	Yen
©	Option-g	Copyright
…	Option-;	Ellipsis
	Option-Shift-k	Apple

---

Universal/Finder/System
Some useful universal keyboard shortcuts that help us through our every day.

Command-Delete	Delete (to trash)
Command-Shift-Delete	Empty trash
Command-Shift-Option-Delete	Empty trash without warning
Command-Ctrl-d	Hover over a word and get the dictionary definition
Command-H	Hide application
Command-Option-H	Hide other applications
Command-,	Application preferences
Command-Drag	Arrange menu bar items
Command-Option-Esc	Open force quit
Command-Shift-3	Capture screen
Command-Shift-4	Capture screen selection
Command-Shift-4, Space (2 sequences)	Capture a window by selecting it
Command-Option-d	Show/hide dock
Command-Option-Ctrl-8	Invert Display
Ctrl-Scroll	Zoom in or out
Ctrl-Shift-Eject	Put the display to sleep
Shift-Volume	Increase/Decrease the volume silently
Command-`	Switch to other windows within the same application

---

Boot Up
The keys you can press during a boot-up sequence.

Shift	Prevent automatic login
Shift	Enter safe mode (press after startup tone; release when you see the indicator)
Shift	Prevent opening startup items (after login)
C	Boot from CD/DVD
T	Start in Target Disk Mode
Option	Select startup disk
Hold Mouse Button	Eject removable discs
Command-v	Verbose mode
Command-s	Single user mode

---

Safari
Useful shortcuts in Safari.

Command-Option-F	Google search box
Option-Up	Scroll to top
Option-Down	Scroll to bottom
Command-Click	Open link in a new tab
Command-Shift-[	Previous tab
Command-Shift-]	Next tab
Option-Up	Scroll to top
Command-Option-e	Empty Cache
Command-f	Find term
Command-Plus[+]	Increase font size
Command-Hyphen[-]	Previous tab
Command-0	Original font size

---

Mail
Useful shortcuts in Mail.

Command-0	Open activity window
Command-Shift-r	Reply to all
Command-Shift-t	Convert to rich/plain text
Command-Shift-b	Bounce

As I mentioned earlier it’s nice to remember these every now and then because some of them can be very useful.

A few other things you may not have known about OS/X:

You can click on a menu and start typing the letters of the option you wish to select, then press Enter.

Spaces lets you move applications from desktop desktop simply by dragging the window to the edge of the screen.

Launching a new application and dragging it into another position on the dock will keep that program’s icon on the dock permanently.

You can export anything to a PDF simply by going File, Print, and clicking the PDF button.

After launching Quicklook with Space bar, you can click on other items and Quicklook will automatically change. If you’re previewing a movie and click elsewhere, then click back on the movie, it will remember where it was up to in the preview.

PS. You should check out www.macosxhints.com frequently!

I have a phone interview tomorrow at 4PM for a team leadership position which I’m looking forward to, and another company is also interested in me but they haven’t called me back yet. Both companies have said that work permit sponsorship is not a problem, which means that if I’m successful at either I will be able to work here as long as I am sponsored and not have to worry about this silly working holiday Visa. If Lindsay and I both want to stay on longer I believe there is even room within the bounds of the law to let him stay and work here as well. I’m looking into the details of that!

Yes, there is a new Star Trek film coming out in December of this year, and people are getting excited about it. Until this was announced, everyone thought Star Trek was dead. I’ve been following certain aspects of it as it goes along, and I think the campaign between now and the release will be interesting. What are the biggest concerns about it so far? Well it’s directed by J.J. Abrams. How one man can work in the industry with such a big name and get such negative press about everything? I suppose that’s because he’s responsible for TV series such as Lost and Alias.

I have seen the entire series of Alias. I don’t think I’ll watch it twice; it was good fun for action/entertainment, and poor for believability and sincerity. I have seen Lost too, and although I like it simply for the fact that it’s a little different, it sure does drag on and milk suspense for all it’s worth, even if that suspense turns into an anti-climax when you watch the next episode. But you still keep on watching.

So the question is, will Abrams do anything good with the next Star Trek or will he kill it? So far everything seems to be good. I trust Leonard Nimoy’s judgement in saying that if the script wasn’t awesome he wouldn’t be in it. What better recommendation to see a film can you get than Spock? But as it’s still in production it remains to be seen what the end result will look like.

We’ve seen the teaser trailer and a few other bits and pieces. Bits and pieces being four little videos released at http://www.ncc-1701.com, which is dressed up to look like some sort of terminal display, showing various camera feeds of the construction of the Enterprise.

The teaser is showing us the construction of the Enterprise with sound bites from NASA, as well as Spock’s “Space… The Final Frontier” monologue. The problem with this is that the Enterprise was originally captained by Christopher Pike. This is canon! You can’t mess with that. So what in the film will bridge the gap between the construction and the voyage with Kirk?

We shall see.

Here’s some stuff:

http://www.paramount.com/startrek/

http://www.ncc-1701.com/

Enjoy.