Although you can set the user interface to display metadata from the mp3 files – whenever you accelerate, the information blanks out. Apparently the user interface designers felt looking at track names could be distracting! Incredible, I know.

The alternative interface is to actually look at filenames (these don’t blank out!). The trouble here is that you end up looking at something like the following:

Ugly. ROOT FOLDER? .mp3 extension?

The numbers at the start of the filenames is a common saved file convention in iTunes. The Prius adds its own numbers to the files when you look at the file list, so you end up seeing the following:

An ugly mess. No idea what band is playing either (well, you would if you liked Guns N’ Roses I guess).

Anyway, there is a trick to cleaning all this up.

First, if you put all your tracks inside a folder at the root level of the disk, the folder name will be displayed instead of ROOT FOLDER. That by itself is a huge improvement. Use the name of the band and things start to look up.

The next thing is that the filename actually displays only 16 characters. This is another example of how poor the user interface is – there is room probably for twice that. Anyway, the trick here is to remove any numbers from the start of track filenames, and add spaces BEFORE the .mp3 extension, so that the extension is out > 16 characters and thus not shown.

To do this, I wrote a quick Perl script on my Mac and ran it over the folder of MP3 files I created ready to burn to CD.

#!/usr/bin/perl
@files = <*.mp3>;
foreach $file (@files) {
    $orig = $file;
    $file =~ s/^\d* //;
    $file =~ /(.*)\.mp3/;
    $file = sprintf("%-40s", $1).".mp3";
    `mv "$orig" "$file"`;
}

I put all this in a folder named “Guns N' Roses“, and burnt it to CD. The result:

It’s not perfect, but it is a big improvement over the default display.

Where are all the good user interface designers? Do they all work at Apple?

One of the highlights of the conference was that we got to look at Apple’s “state-of-the-art” antenna test labs. Incredible images and an amazing video. But this video revealed more than just a cool, expensive, lab setup.

Notice anything from this still from the video (taken at around 45 seconds in)?

But the most amazing leak comes from later in that video:

After last year’s abysmal ceremony – possibly the worst ever – this year was actually pretty good. Bert Newton was great – as expected. He was charming, at ease, funny, and received a standing ovation. Everyone loves Bert.

I’ve got to say though, I was worried. With Hey Hey back on Nine, I was sure we would be treated to stupid Hey Hey inspired comedy skits. Fortunately there were none. And fortunately Hey Hey didn’t win any awards. There is hope for Australian television after all.

Straight out of the gate we had Shaun Micallef. The guy is a comic genius, and his acceptance speech was hilarious as always. In fact, Shaun, or at least the show he hosts, won 3 awards. So we saw a lot of Shaun that night.

I’m still annoyed that we have to have “international” guests at the Logies. I don’t get why we can’t seem to stand on our own feet? Couldn’t we have had Paul Kelly instead of John Mayer for example? How good would that have been?!

Having said that, k.d. lang was brilliant. Absolutely magnificent.

It wasn’t all roses though. There was not enough Bert for a start. It started well, and then Bert disappeared for most of the night. We had a rather lame Don Lane tribute (Don’s son PJ seems rather talentless, yet keeps showing up each year at these awards). And the night went on far too long.

We were also witness to a new trend in Australian television award ceremonies – when you win an award, you must stand up with every cast member and backstage hand, spend 10 minutes finding each other, hug, kiss, congratulate each other, and then slowly wind your way through the tables in order to bring the entire mob up on to stage with you. No wonder it went on so long.

Ray Meagher winning the Gold Logie added some Aussie colour to the proceedings with a comment about winning a chook raffle. That brought some life back in to a long night – but unfortunately, that was the end of evening.

Anyway, overall one of the better Logies.  Would be great though to one day just celebrate Aussie talent.

Finding good mushy peas is actually not easy – I’ve tried many different brands, and amazingly the brand I found I liked the most are Coles $mart Buy Mushy Green Peas – basically a cheap no-name brand. Here’s the simple can that houses the taste sensation that is the minted mushy pea:

So, I’ve been eating these for a while now, and I thought I’d show some images of what they are like. First, in the can – not a pleasant sight at all. And then out of the can in a bowl – much better!

Yum!

Now, apparently the green food colouring used is considered bad for you – it’s always something with these health nuts! So Coles have started selling this without the food colouring. They taste the same, but check out the colour! It just isn’t the same experience:

Close your eyes and think of England!

Coatsie, having seen my previous article, asked me if I would be the child’s scienceparent. I am honoured and accepted immediately. Chemistry sets, electronic kits, models of the solar system – all lining up as potential gifts…well, when they are a little older… :-)

Congratulations once again guys!

I was surprised to see this:

Lots!  Hilarious.

I did a quick experiment, and it seems that once you get past 60 attachments in an email, the display shows “lots”.  It seems to occur in Snow Leopard and Leopard, so maybe this has been around for a long time – it is rare to get so many attachments in one email, so I’m not surprised I hadn’t seen this before.

Apple has even internationalised this – so in Japanese, for example, you get:

That’s Apple sweating the details – unlike certain other companies we know.

Not sure why they chose 60 as the cut-off point (or why they had to have a cut-off point). I would have thought they’d have gone for 64, and that was what I was expecting as I added more and more items to a draft email to test. But still, it was funny and brought a smile to my face this morning.

Oh, and Happy New Year everyone!

“Faster simpler”? What does that mean? Did they possibly mean “Faster, simpler”? And given the other sentences ended with correct punctuation, shouldn’t that one end with a full stop?

Not to mention the large 7 is a different font than the 7 in the actual logo at the bottom?

It’s just lazy, like everything Microsoft does. Their ads have as much attention to detail as their operating system. No need to click the “Experience now” button – I think that ad tells you exactly what to expect.

Obama is currently in Japan to discuss regional security concerns. He is also requesting additional support to halt the production of the “Kung Fu kid” after previous attempts to stop Will Smith have failed.

So what’s next for Rove? Some say a permanent radio gig. Others say he’s working on the 4th phase of the road map for peace in the middle east. We’ll just have to wait and see.

“Don’t stay with XP, you’re bound to get confused, Windows 7 really rules.”

Those are the wise words of Will Smith. No not the Will Smith that spends most of his time butchering your childhood. This is a much smaller, pastier version who enjoys singing. Will appears to be a love child of the actual PC guy from the Apple commercials, brought into this world to defend his father’s honour.

Click the below link to see Will in action.

Will’s Windows 7 Rising

For those who aren’t aware, Tiger is filthy rich, so rich in fact he hires small children to polish his golf balls all day. I have no issues with this, he’s the mighty Tiger and he can do what he likes. But I have to remind the people that the Australian tax payers forked out 3 million for this guy to turn up and then prance around in plaid pants. According to Wikipedia “he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements”.

Tiger Woods might be a golf player, but first and foremost he is nothing but a corporate whore and a sell out. He makes more money than the GDP of a small pacific island and then demands for more. He’s the face of Gillette, he has his own brand of Gatorade, a clothing range, video games and a range of flat pack furniture that would make the Swedish jealous. So before you next tune in to watch Tiger swing his club around like an angry homeless person defending his turf, I want you to ask yourself, is it right he’s stealing people’s wages to feed his Tiger empire? Tiger, you’re a disgrace.

ELDRICK TONT WOODS BE GONE!

Reconnect on Facebook

Logging in to the new look Facebook the other day I was greeted with the following suggestion:

Could it be that I actually talk to my wife in real life? Damn, Facebook is getting to be as crap as Twitter.

Windows 7 copied OS X

A Microsoft exec said they copied OS X. Another exec then said the first has no idea and they didn’t copy OS X – apparently the Windows 7 team lived in a bubble without internet access for the last 8 years and made it all themselves.

I’m going to surprise everyone and say that I think they didn’t copy OS X. If they did, they are shit copiers. Or the photocopier broke down part way through.

Evolution for children

My grand nephew is being brain washed by his grandparents in to Christianity. He’s 7 years old, and being told that God created Adam and Eve. They’ve got him reading a children’s version of the bible at night. Time for me to step up as Great Uncle and self-appointed Scienceparent – I’ve ordered him a book “Our family tree: An evolution story” – something he could also read at night. That’s a first step anyway to give him some balance.

Macs and viruses

I’ve had it with idiots who keep telling me the Mac has viruses too (defending the fact that Windows has a bizzilion viruses and you only have to connect to the internet for like 1 second with Windows 7 and you are infected). The Mac, currently, has no viruses. It has no viruses because no one has worked out how to make a virus for it – not because there are too few users. It is a holy grail for virus writers – the best they have done so far is write trojans for it (which every operating system can have).

Just because you wish the Mac was as virus ridden as the piece of shit operating system you choose to use does not make it a reality. Accept that your choice of computer is crap and live with it.

It is wireless, has no visible buttons (but is in fact a touch sensitive 2 button mouse), has multi-directional scrolling via a touch surface (with acceleration), and support for multi-touch gestures.

WarMouse today announced the availability of a new mouse – the OpenOfficeMouse. Let’s take a look at this beauty.

It is wired, has 18 buttons, a scroll wheel, and a joystick.

I was going to rant about the open source community and how they are even worse than Microsoft at innovation and usability (who would have thought it was possible?), but I think the OpenOfficeMouse does that without me saying anything more. But this monstrosity does remind me of a great cartoon – I recycle this a lot at the office when feature requests start to make the usability of our applications questionable.

Oh, and I apologise for the appalling title of this article. It is late.

This one ad, taking pride of place on Microsoft’s front page, is a showcase for just some of what is wrong with Microsoft.

First, the obvious thing is Microsoft desperately wants to be cool. So desperately. You can smell the desperation.

I can tell you now, using “pretty dope” on your website does not make you cool. In fact, this ad reminds me of some teenager’s father trying to act cool with his teenage son’s friends as they leave to go out partying on a Saturday night:

“Homies…that car is the shizzle! You dudes are dope!!! Where da bitches at tonight? Yo?” (flicks fingers in an attempt to make some cool gang sign he saw on Law and Order).

Mentioning “Twitter” does not make you cool either. You can’t just throw around the latest trends – It makes you look like a try hard.

But there is more. There is always more.

“More reviews”? Was that a review? Well, I guess it was. Just not a particularly good one. A random tweet from a random anonymous user with a one line comment. That’s the quality I’m looking for in a review about an OS that I’m about to drop AU$200 or more on.

But the quality of the copy is nothing compared to the details. Take a look to the right of the ad. We have a number of buttons:

So what’s wrong? Well, first we have different size buttons. This is sloppy when the buttons are all left aligned and not vastly different in text length or position, and even if you argue it is because the text is shorter in some, then you’ll notice inconsistent spacing (between the last letter and the arrow), so that argument doesn’t explain the size variations. And finally, inconsistent capitalisation (“Learn More” versus “Find out more”) – I mean, that is beyond sloppy.

It’s all part of the Microsoft experience – sloppy and inconsistent. Don’t forget this is on the front page of a multi-billion dollar company with an advertising budget of 1.4 billion dollars in 2009 – almost 3 times the budget of Apple in that same year! Compare their ads. Compare their websites!

It’s about sweating the details. It is why Apple’s software is a superior experience to Microsoft’s. It is why the iPhone blows away Windows Mobile. Microsoft still doesn’t get it.

If you are reading this and you still don’t get why those buttons are bad, you see nothing wrong with the ad text, and you can’t smell that desperation, you probably deserve to be using Windows. I can offer you no more.

Friend: You should be his Godparents.
Me: That’s nice of you, but you realise we’re atheists?
Friend: Oh, right. Yeah, that won’t work.

A Godparent, traditionally, is informally responsible for ensuring the child’s religious education is carried out. Now, if you are going to give a child a religious education, that child needs some balance. In particular, they need to learn that “creation” is not “science”. A little education about evolution is needed to ensure they have that balance and can decide what religion (if any) they really want to follow once they are old enough to think for themselves. We really don’t want ignorant children in the world.

Now not everyone was good at science in school, or went on to work in an area of science, or keeps up with modern scientific discoveries. There is nothing wrong with that – I sucked at sport, I sucked at wood work, I wouldn’t know how to fix a drain, build a house, or even bake a cake (well, from scratch at least). But if you have a child, why not ask someone who does know about science to be the child’s Scienceparent!

Now admittedly, you could also have Accountingparents, Lawparents, Medicineparents etc. I single out Scienceparent though, not because I happen to have studied (and continue to study) science, but because science is the balance that is required for any religious education – in particular an education that promotes “creation” as a plausible explanation for the development of humankind.

Would it then follow that if you are an atheist family, you should give your child a Godparent – surely the child needs balance from all that science? If you can find a person willing to teach a child all about different religions and views (not just Christianity), I would have no objection – learning about different cultures and religions can provide a balanced outlook on life and a greater understanding of others in a multi-cultural world. Though I would also suggest studying science will give a child a thirst for knowledge, that will lead them naturally to question everything around them, including origins. This will lead them to study religion themselves, and make their own decisions.

So, I give you, the Scienceparent¹. Make it a reality.

Cosplay

Cosplay is for losers. “Norms” aren’t freaked out by you – they are laughing at you.

There are only two situations where cosplay is acceptable:

1. At fancy dress parties
2. In the bedroom (if you are into that sort of thing)

Get full time jobs and stop hanging out at every convention in Jeff’s Shed.

Windows 7 is the best Windows ever

This article is my best article ever. If you’ve read my other articles, you know that means very little.

Lolita fashion

Lolita fashion is sick.

I’m not talking about a grown woman looking cute in some shirt, or even with pigtails. I’m talking full on shirley temple style outfits and wigs. If you like this stuff you are a pedophile.

They say there is someone for everyone

I want to introduce Gym Boy (the guy in my gym who uses the equipment until sweaty, then jumps straight into the pool without washing) to Gym Girl (the girl in my gym who uses the equipment until sweaty, for twice as long as the rules state you can use a single piece of equipment, and then leaves without towelling off herself or the sweat she has just dripped over the equipment).

Blackface on Hey Hey

The only thing offensive in that skit was that it wasn’t funny. It was not racist. Harden the fuck up Australia.

Gorgeous

Men should not use the word “gorgeous” except when talking to their partner, and then only sparingly. It should never be written down in anything you write. Ever.

Windows 7 is good

8 years of Windows users looking at Mac OS X and wishing they had that. Well, you’re a little closer. You still aren’t there, but maybe “near enough is good enough” for you. Of course, some of us aren’t willing to accept “good enough”.

Terminal illness

I like to think that if I had a terminal illness, yet was still mobile, I would go on the run and kill every rapist and murderer who got off with some stupidly low sentence for their crime. Our laws suck and the gene pool needs chlorine. Fortunately I don’t have a terminal disease (I hope). And anyway, the only weapon I own is a blunt samurai sword.

Women raising their arms above their heads in public

This is never a good look, no matter what you look like. Australian Idol contestants should pay attention.

Free range eggs

If you aren’t buying free range eggs, you are an arse and I don’t want to talk to you.

Glee

This show would actually be good, if it dropped all the singing and dancing.

Electricity bills are going up

People want to fix the damage they’ve done to the earth. They want greener power. Yet they don’t want to pay for it. Why do you think we’ve been using the dirty stuff for so long – it was cheap. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Mac users are arrogant and smug

They have good reason to be. Suck it up.

Do you think Apple create their legendary interfaces based solely on user input? Even Microsoft are smart enough to not do that.

However, I’ve noticed the following Windows 7 ads on the internet:

I give you, the OS built for Homer. :-)

New Facebook updates hit this weekend. Every time my friends make a new friend, I get notified. Why am I being punished with such shit stories?

Facebook is now a continual stream of noise. It seems that every time my friends post anything on anything anywhere I get notified. Facebook is the new Twitter.

So apparently the Facebook geniuses made these changes largely as a result of user feedback.

Let me let you in on a secret of good software design. You can ask users for feedback. And then you are better off ignoring everything they say and doing it properly.

I exaggerate. A little. A good designer must take that input, find the nuggets that are actually useful, and then implement something that is actually going to work. Generally the user has not thought through all the use cases of the change they’ve requested. Do you think Apple create their legendary interfaces based solely on user input? Even Microsoft are smart enough to not do that.

Not following? Think about the car built for Homer.

This is Facebook as of today.

However, my machine at the office is also set up for Wireless Wake on Demand. Those who are interested can read some technical details here and setup details here. This is new in Snow Leopard, and you might recognise that we are talking about waking a machine that is wirelessly connected to a network, not a simple Wake-On-Lan sending a magic packet over ethernet.

So I VPNed to work from home, went to my Finder, selected the menu Go->Connect to Server... and put in “jamie.internal” (my machine’s name on the office network). My machine at work was woken in the background, and I connected to the machine as per normal in the Finder, got the file I wanted, disconnected, and closed down the VPN. My machine at the office went back to sleep and I had the file I wanted.

I could also have shared the screen to manipulate my Mac via its user interface, and apparently even shared iTunes if I had it running.

There is a bit more going on here than just sending a magic packet wirelessly to wake the machine – the Mac is asleep, but our office wireless router is broadcasting over bonjour the services my Mac can actually handle as if it was awake on the network, so that if I try to use these services, it wakes the machine up first. This also means then that my machine in the office, even when sleeping, will still appear on other machines on the internal network as if it was awake, advertising all it’s services. Similarly, if I had it sharing music in iTunes, it would appear as a shared source of music on another machine in iTunes, even when asleep.

This is obviously a very handy feature – possibly more so for my colleagues than for me given I could walk over to the office in 10 minutes from my home to manually get the file (though it is after midnight, and Melbourne streets at night are a little dangerous these days, so I possibly avoided a random stabbing or glassing).

I’m sure you can also see advantages in a system like this for the environment too – machines don’t have to necessarily be running 24 hours a day just so you can access an occasional resource.

This will also work for Macs connected via ethernet. It may also work from a Windows machine to access a Mac at your office (with a SMB share). Not tested, as Windows is not welcome in my home, but I assume it will work.