My life is complete...

I recently discovered a Z-code interpreter for iPhone - Frotz - and my life is complete! Z-code is the way of coding those text based interactive adventure games which were the basis for my love of computers in the early 80's. There are any number of Z-code adventures which can be played on any Z-code interpreter, including several versions of the classic Will Crowther Colossal Cave/Adventure. But in particular Z-code was used by the company Infocom to produce some classic games of all time.


As well as the popular Zork series, my personal favourites included a quirky 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy' game as well as the hilarious comedic outing 'Leather Goddess of Phobos'. If you have original versions of these games you can use the original Z-code data file for an interpreter like Frotz (which has been ported to many platforms). If you don't own the original games, then for the enterprising there may be other sources (*cough* *cough* *torrents*) for the z-code files. Once you've obtained the files, you need to put them on a server somewhere, then Frotz iPhone can browse to the appropriate URL and can download the z-code files.

Anyway I'm going to stop blogging now and get down to it! Ahhhhhh, memories...

"You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it, which you can't.

It is pitch black."

Entourage and iPhone

I have been having a very annoying issue where messages sent from my iPhone (via my work Exchange server) show up as goobledygook in Entourage, though they are fine on the phone and indeed fine if I go into Windows Outlook. Apparently this is a long standing bug in Activesync for Exchange server 2003 (but not 2007). Anyway, short of persuading IT to upgrade to exchange server 2007 (yeah right, they're going to do that for a mac user they don't want to support anyway!) there doesn't appear to be a good workaround but I did find an Applescript that will let you look at the message and then save it to the desktop and then you can drag it back into Entourage and delete the original. Clunky but better than nothing. The script is found here. If I ever have time I might look at further automating the process of saving, re-adding and deleting via mods to the AppleScript or automator.

MobileMe and Safari 4 Developer Preview

Apple's replacement for .Mac - MobileMe has (after a slightly rocky start) now launched and it looks pretty cool. It consists of a number of very polished webapps to do Calendering, Contacts, Email and Photo galleries, but more importantly it uses push technology to make sure that all your information stays up to date on any Macs you use, your iPhone etc. Linked with ActiveSync support, push mail makes MobileMe very cool for business people on the go.

Unfortunately, when I logged in to MobileMe, I found that a lot of the Ajax-y goodness wasn't working for me. In particular many of the icons weren't responding to mouse-clicks (though a right/control-click could be used ok and the desired option could be opened in a new Tab or Window - marginally workable but very annoying). Everything worked ok in Firefox so I eventually tracked the issue down (via a helpful Wikipedia article) to my use of Safari 4 Developer Preview. That left me with a real problem! You see Safari 4 has one killer feature I can't do without - full page zooming, rather than just changing font sizes. For an oldie like me who often needs a larger font size, the old zoom feature was a pain - only the text changed so the whole page layout and design was killed and overlapping boxes and controls often made readability a problem. But Safari 4 zooms the whole page, graphics and all to give an excellent result - layout intact and fonts large enough to read! If it came down to MobileMe vs Safari 4 I knew which would win!

Luckily a quick visit to the Apple Developer Connection revealed a version of Safari 4 Developers Preview with a date from a few days ago and I (correctly) surmised that this might solve the problem. So now things have settled down in the Cullen household, full page zooming intact, new MobileMe apps to check out, and continued lust for the iPhone 3G unabated...

P.S. I'm writing this in MarsEdit, having previously written it (or a nearly similar post) in ecto 3beta only to have it disappear when I tried to change from rich text to HTML mode. Sadly this isn't the first (or even second or third) time this has happened but it was the last time. Ecto development seems to have stalled and I'm leaving.

P.P.S. I then updated the Wikipedia article ;-)

Make love not warcraft

The Australian iTunes store now has TV programs, so as a test I downloaded a copy of the South Park episode, "Make love not Warcraft". It's hilarious, especially for a player, although I was just a little concerned at the fact that the evil character looks just a little like moi (but with the baldness...).

iTunes
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!
iTunes
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

me

My favourite sequence is:

Cartman: Ok, hit him with pyroblast, Kyle.

Kyle: Casting... there's an 8 second cast time.

Cartman: Aren't you specced to reduce cast time?

Kyle: No, I'm an arcane fire mage.

Cartman: (Disgusted) Christ...

Family Trip to the new Sydney Apple Store

Ok, so I didn't camp out waiting in line, or even visit on the opening day, but I think that a visit within 48 hours of the opening "shows willing". The store was still pretty crowded (I'd say about 100 - 150) on each of the three floors, and it was exciting to be there. (The bagpiper busking directly opposite the Store just added to the vibe!)

Apple Logo 2Me at the Sydney Apple StoreAirlie at the Sydney Apple Store

See the rest of the pics (shot from my NON-iPhone, till 11th July) at Flickr.

Suzie is in the middle of a fine arts course which includes 2D imaging and digital photography, and the G5 is getting a bit long in the tooth, so we may return in the next few weeks to look at the 24" iMacs.

Testing Ecto 3

I've had it sitting around for a week or so, but this is the first time I've gotten to test out Ecto 3 which is in public beta (actually perhaps it's public alpha).

One of the things which looks nice is a media panel like the iLife apps to drag and drop photos, movies and audio. Here's a shot taken recently of Airlie, our adoreable daughter.

Other changes are not yet obvious.


Opportunity to hear the candidates

At our church we have used material from Micah Challenge to highlight issues of poverty in services from time to time. Today I received an email newsletter from Micah Challenge which (among other things) gave some information about a unique opportunity for Australia Christians to hear both the Prime Minister John Howard and the Leader of the Opposition and prospective Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, address Christians in the lead up to the federal election to be held later this year.

Both men will speak live, via webcast, to churches around the country. Details can be found here. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say and hope that they will speak to issues of justice, community building and reconciliation, and not just the usual swag of 'personal morality' issues.

Frustration

For the past three days I've been trying (on and off) to put up a post about a little free utility called Thumbscrew. It's also worth mentioning that I got the tip-off on Thumbscrew from a handy site called FreeMacWare, which gives descriptions, with links, of hundreds of nifty bits of Mac freeware. I subscribe to their feed, which sends me a description of one app each day (though every time I visit to get the link I am seduced by the pretty little icons into exploring and testing ten or a dozen more!).

Anyway the reason for the blog title is that I wanted to include a couple of 'thumbscrewed' pics on the blog, with the thumbnail acting as a link to a Flickr page with the full-size photos. Now admittedly I haven't spend long on this, but I'm getting frustrated at how to do it in ecto. The built-in thumbnail settings seem to pre-suppose that you give ecto a pic which it uploads to your server and also generates (and uploads) a thumbnail. On the other hand if I treat the thumbscrew generated image as just an image to include inline in ecto then I can't see how to associate the link with the image. It would be easy as in an html editor, but my experiments with just adding html to the xhtml mode editing window seem always to lose me the code, the picture or both.

If anyone can help me out I'd appreciate it, and in the meantime, here are a couple of thumbscrewed pics:

200701191032200701191033

with the originals to be found here and here.

Feeling proud... (“the few, the proud, the geeky”)

**Warning slightly technical nerdfest follows**

... but I have to tell someone...

Went to a Council of Synod meeting in Canberra last weekend (Standing Committee of the NSW body of the UCA) and my Presbytery (regional body) was 'on' to do the devotions. I took a CD with a few flash presentations and a couple of recent Keynote presentations. I also took my recently fixed laptop. Only problem is that said laptop is running Panther (OS X 10.3) and I now use Tiger (10.4) on my main machine along with Keynote 3 (which doesn't run on 10.3). I figured I would drop by the AppleCentre at ANU and buy a copy of Tiger and then install Keynote 3 and load the stuff from the CD.

First problem... as I drove into the parking lot of the AppleCentre I realised that I had forgotten my original media for Keynote 3. Bugger! Oh well, I'll buy that too and give or sell the extra copy to my church who I'm hoping will be buying a Mac in the next week or so.

Second problem. AppleCentre has a copy of Keynote 3 (well iWork '06 actually) but is out of stock of Tiger!!! An AppleCentre without even one copy of the current Apple OS - What the?! Oh well, my colleague Karyn is a Machead - hopefully she will (a) bring her laptop and (b) be running Tiger.

Third problem. Karyn does indeed have her laptop and she has indeed got Tiger running on it. But she has never bothered to update from Keynote 2 to Keynote 3. Oh well, surely Keynote files are backward compatible.

Fourth problem. Well, yes they are... if you save them in the old format... but who would need to do that, eh? I always keep my software up to date... Oh well, I'll just scrub using the Keynote 3 files and use some of the Flash stuff plus write some prayers and stuff.

But I really wanted to use that cool presentation with the Paul Kelly song (Surely God is a Lover) and nice piccy's. It would have impressed them. <sulk>

So anyway, here comes the good idea. I realise that I have an old copy of iMovie on my laptop (version 4). So first I used 'Show Package Contents' to crack open the Keynote file and extract the raw photos and the mp3 file. Then (between 11pm and 2am) I fired up iMovie; laid the mp3 down as the soundtrack; re-created the carefully timed Keynote slideshow transitions by listening to the song to gauge approximate times, then creating appropriate length video clips out of the still photos (adding interest with judicious use of the 'Ken Burns effect'); created titles over the top to recreate the lyrics which had been tastefully laid out as part of the Keynote Presentation; realised I didn't have a blank DVD and it was 2am; exported the movie to a Quicktime file; exported the movie to a Quicktime file again at full resolution to overcome some conversion artifacts; waited 15 minutes for the bloody thing to render into Quicktime (at 2.15am, 15 minutes seems to last about 3 hours); and, 'YAY', I'm home and hosed. The next morning everyone is duly impressed and I am a hero to my Presbytery colleagues.

For an encore, let me tell you about the time I used 2 bent paper clips and a perished rubber band to recreate the entire hash table for a 250Gb database whose index had been corrupted...

My new toy

Well, I think I have just laid eyes on the sexiest sight of my life (other than my gorgeous wife of course!). My new iPod Shuffle was just delivered and it is absolutely stunning. You just can't believe how tiny and cool it looks till you see it in the flesh. The setup was quick and painless and I am now (10 minutes later) listening to a selection of favourite podcasts and music. Man are the kids at the High School going to be jealous next time I address their assembly. (Because I will wear it of course...) (That's why I got it - to help me understand youth culture...) (Honestly, it's for ministry...)

CIMG0841.JPG CIMG0842.JPG

Running behind Lara Croft

I just bought Tomb Raider: Legend and so I guess I'm in for a few more days of running around behind a woman with improbably large breasts! I'm a crappy gamer so when I get good at any game I like to stick with it. Hence I have purchased every Tomb Raider game in turn. I must confess to the fact that the first thing I do after purchasing a game is to download and print a walkthrough. After all, I play for fun and if I've been stuck in the same place for 30 minutes wondering what arcane key combination will get me past the latest trap - it ceases to be fun!

I was also reminded by this to do the “Which Action Hero Would You Be?” quiz, mentioned by Darren (Batman) from planet telex, and guess what...


You scored as Lara Croft. A thrill-seeking, slightly unscrupulous, tough-as-nails archaeologist, Lara Croft travels the world in search of ancient relics perhaps better left hidden. She packs two Colt .45s and has no fear of jumping off buildings, exploring creepy tombs, or taking on evil meglomaniacs bent on world domination.

Lara Croft 71%

Batman, the Dark Knight 67%

James Bond, Agent 007 63%

El Zorro 63%

Neo, the “One” 58%

William Wallace 58%

Indiana Jones 54%

Maximus 46%

The Terminator 42%

Captain Jack Sparrow 42%

The Amazing Spider-Man 33%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

We want your soul!

On an email list, Darren from planet telex mentioned (with lust in his heart) the 'ShowLED' sample movie, which is totally awesome. While watching the movie I was struck by part of the soundtrack and after some googling discovered the totally awesome track, “We want your soul” by Adam Freeland. There is a free download (note risque language) from the site, but the iTunes version is longer and is also interesting. Adam also had designed a “We want your soul” website to add to the viral marketing of his anti-consumerism message.

Postscript: It does, on further reflection, seem rather ironic that a company producing a promotional video would use as a soundtrack a song decrying consumerism...

Greed

So what does it say about me that the thing which gets me blogging again is the possibility of personal gain?

Nonetheless I do think that the MacAppADay offer sounds a great one. My Mac productivity and experience is greatly enhanced by a whole raft of shareware and freeware programs (maybe I'll blog that list later) and if MacAppADay helps to get more people looking, downloading and trying apps it will be good for Mac development and the Mac platform.

So sign up to MacAppADay's RSS Feed and check back throughout December. I will be!