Another one of my completely random, and probably uninteresting observations about the MobileMe preference pane in Mac OS X System Preferences. It’s also an excuse to try out a very short screencast with Jing and its Screencast.com hosting.

If you can’t, or don’t want to watch the video, if you search for iTools (.Mac/MobileMe’s original name) in the search box of System Preferences, it highlights MobileMe as a search result. Just as you’d expect from an intelligent search tool, it realises what you really mean.

However, that functionality hasn’t been replicated for if you search for .Mac, now MobileMe’s former name. It does highlight Back to my Mac as one of the results, but just as with iTools, MobileMe should be highlighted straight away.

Due to some work that is happening to our house (hot water here we come), the electricity supply will need to be turned off at some point. This means that there will be some downtime for this server during the period of Monday 11th - Wednesday 13th.

Unfortunately, I will not actually be here at the time and it is not yet clear when or for how long the downtime needs to occur. It should, however, be a relatively short downtime period; I am not expecting the server to be down the whole three days.

In any case, the machine will be safely powered down before the supply is turned off and will come back up as soon as possible.

UPDATE: In the end, it didn’t need to go down at all! Everything is still running smoothly.

Like many, I use FeedBurner to handle the RSS feeds for this blog, which gives me the benefit of all of FB’s special features, including detailed statistics on my feed’s usage.

I also make use of its email subscription service to allow people not familiar with feed technology to subscribe to the blog and have updates delivered to their inbox (Publicise > Email Subscriptions in your FeedBurner account).

My recent redesign means that my pages are now served as XHTML 1.1, rather than 1.0 Transitional*.

The code that I use in the sidebar to show the email subscription box (the code provided by FeedBurner) won’t validate under XHTML 1.1, though, which annoyed me. So, I fixed it.

You may wonder why anyone in their right mind would care if a little snippet of code doesn’t quite validate, since it doesn’t make any user-visible difference. Aesthetics are one reason and also some mobile browsers can be really fussy about validation.

So here’s how to use my fixed code if you want to have the email subscribe feature - but also have valid XHTML 1.1 markup.

First of all, log in to FeedBurner, click the relevant feed and go to Publicise > Email Subscriptions. Under Subscription Management, there should be a box with the default code, which should be something like this (line breaks added by me for readability):

» Read the rest of this post…

SleekTabs still often has a bit of a learning curve to implement for many people. It is a bit, well, quirky, in the way that it has to be implemented. It could be better.

I have previously put together a video tutorial explaining with a good example how to implement it, but there has still been confusion, partly due to the old example/tutorial that ships with the download.

I’ve now put together a text version of the video tutorial (just Part 1 for now), which is easier to consume than the video if you’re pressed for time or just want to quickly look up a detail.

I’m also considering removing the old example file as part of the SleekTabs download, to avoid future confusion. The problem stems from the fact that implementation is approached two different ways across the old and new examples.

I am concerned, though, that because it is a much simpler example, removing it could be a problem for those who want to get up and running as quickly as possible, without digesting the more detailed tutorial.

I welcome all comments on SleekTabs and the documentation, so if you have ideas on how to make things better, or want to feedback things that you think are working well, please do let me know!

It’s been quite a long time since my site and blog have seen any major visual changes. I thought it was about time to give it a visual refresh, so over the past few days, I have put together this new design.

Hopefully, it retains much of the visual identity of its predecessor, while giving a welcome refresh, making things visually cleaner and making it a little less bland than previously.

I particularly like the new main navigation bar, which I think is more attractive and clearer than it used to be, while also removing the old hack I used to get the ‘button’ effect (there is no more ‘button’ effect)!

There are also a lot of changes behind the scenes to make the integration between the non-WordPress portions and the WordPress blog a lot easier.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the new design. Comments and suggestions for improvement very welcome!

Just a quick post to cross-post the fact that I’ve just put out a new printable guide, designed for Linux beginners which details installing software on Ubuntu.

It’s posted at FOSSwire - here’s where you’ll find it.

The idea is to bridge the knowledge gap for the person literally just starting out with Linux. Installing software is one of the big areas where there are differences, so this double sided guide covers that.

Yeah, so, I just released some Windows software.

My program for converting and splitting Mac OS X .dfont files into TTF files, DfontSplitter has been a pretty popular route in to my website for some time now.

While the original program is written for OS X, it became apparent from my website statistics that many people who needed to convert .dfont to .ttf were Windows users.

So, today, I have released DfontSplitter for Windows, version 0.1. This program is, again, simply a wrapper script for fondu, which does the real work. It has a completely unique GUI, custom built for the Windows platform.

There is also a brand new project page for DfontSplitter, with links to both the Mac and Windows versions of the software and the documentation too.

Hopefully this can serve the need of Windows users who need to convert those filetypes, and don’t want expensive or spyware-ridden software. Enjoy!

A quick footnote - this is a bit of a licensing quagmire. There are lots of different licenses that apply to different bits of DfontSplitter for Windows, including GPL 3.0, GPL 2.0, BSD and Creative Commons. That’s all explained on the project page, and in further depth in readme and licence files in the downloads.

Oh and it’s also slightly ugly, in terms of how it interacts with fondu. But it works.

It’s actually quite difficult to believe that my MacBook is 18 months old now. About a month ago, I noticed that mounting DVDs became unreliable. CDs worked fine, you put them in the slot, it span up fine and everything was good. DVDs, though, would take a long time to decide whether to read, involving a lot of spins up and spins down.

Eventually, reading DVDs became unreliable to the point of not working most of the time, and on Tuesday, since I could now do without the MacBook for a few days if necessary, I decided to ring AppleCare (I have the three-year Protection Plan) and get booked in to get it looked at.

I called the number and got through pretty much instantly. The guy on the other end didn’t sound like a native English speaker and occasionally was difficult to understand, but I got my message across quickly as to what the problem was. I got booked in at the Genius Bar at the Southampton Apple Store. It’s about 30 miles away, and I had to take two trains to get there, with a total journey time (including walking to the station and to WestQuay at the other end) of about 2 hours.

So on Wednesday I arrive at the Apple Store. Despite the fact that it was still being intermittent, in the sense of working, but being slow about it and making some funky noises, I was surprised that the Genius didn’t need much convincing that there was an issue.

It was checked in there and then for a new DVD drive (they call them SuperDrives, but for some reason I don’t like calling them that).

The one thing I didn’t like at that point is that the agreement you sign to give it away for service states that if you don’t let them take it, they apparently charge you £100 plus VAT. It’s labelled as a diagnostic fee, but really it’s a lock in to get service done with them if they think you need it. Well, fair enough, but that should have been disclosed up front, before the ‘diagnostic’ is done. This is especially important if you don’t have AppleCare, or you’ll be at the mercy of Apple’s repair prices, whatever they make them, or £100 odd and nothing done.

Anyway, it went off and they reckoned 2-3 days to get fixed, as they didn’t have the drives in stock.

The next day, in fact little over 24 hours after I checked it in, I get a call saying it’s ready for pickup. I headed back down and picked it up.

They even managed to handle the potential confusion due to the fact that it was bought in my dad’s name, but I alone did this whole process. I made this clear at the initial Genius Bar appointment, and it was subsequently well communicated between the staff for when I picked it up.

The result? I have a new … er, SuperDrive and DVDs work fine again.

Overall, a pretty positive experience. Just watch out for diagnostic fees, and don’t go to the Genius Bar unless you’re sure you can hand the machine over there and then for service.

An interesting footnote - they quoted that without AppleCare, the repair would have cost just under £200. Which incidentally, is what AppleCare costs. So, it’s already paid for itself, perhaps?

The photo is hideously blurry… but for some reason I like it.

I’ve just pushed out a new version of WPGet, to fix an issue with its category support that has been there for quite some time.

For those not in the know, WPGet is a script that is designed to allow you to include a short summary of your recent blog posts on your website. Specifically, it works with WordPress and is great for integrating a WordPress blog into a site that isn’t completely powered by the WP platform.

The new version of WPGet brings the following to the table:

• The ability to retrieve posts only from specific categories that you choose is now fixed*, and works with WordPress 2.3.x, 2.5 and higher.
• The ability to retrieve posts that match certain tags. This is an all-new feature.
• Support for WordPress version prior to 2.3 is dropped. It might still work (except Categories and Tags), but I can’t help you if it doesn’t.

If you’re not using the Category and/or Tag features, there’s probably not a compelling reason to upgrade, but if you do want to include a summary of blog posts from a certain category (or categories) or that match certain tags, WPGet can now do that for you.

* WordPress 2.3’s new database structure for categories and tags is what broke WPGet in the first place. I’ve been slow in releasing a fix, I know.

How do I get it?

The easy way: Run the installer and it will walk you through the process. There’s more help here as well if you need it.

The not-so-easy way: Download the code yourself, and run the installer on your own server (or just set it up manually).

The WPGet section of the documentation wiki is alive again and should be featuring some more documentation pretty soon.

If you have any feedback or comments, please do leave a comment on this post, or you can get in contact another way. I would love to hear from anyone successfully using WPGet!

To follow up, I’m now done with all of my coursework, and therefore pretty much done with the whole Further Education experience as well.

I’ll still be sporadically going in next week, for what is probably the last week for a few reasons, but subject to any potential moderation and official things happening, I now know what I’m going to get.

Which, is a Distinction Distinction Distinction (DDD). Or 360 UCAS Tarrif points, if you prefer. Equivalent to three A grade A-levels. Yeah, I’ll stop now.

Again, provided that nothing unexpected and untoward happens, I’m well on my way to taking my place at Reading in October time. Looking forward to it.