Month: July 2011

Apple! What were you thinking? And other one star rants.

by

With the arrival of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) the App Store has seen a flurry of one star reviews…some of the more lucid ones consider all changes a personal affront and complain that they break the industry standards…

Alas the opportunity for such one star rants has not existed for very long so we need to fill in the blanks from the past…


I have just purchased [wikipop search=”Macintosh 128K”]the new Macintosh computer[/wikipop]. Where are the arrow keys and control key? How am I supposed mark out and edit a block of text? These Control key combinations are an industry standard…

I have just purchased the new [wikipop search=”iMac G3″]iMac[/wikipop]. Where is the [wikipop]floppy disk[/wikipop] drive? What use are these new fangled [wikipop]USB[/wikipop] ports? Will anyone ever develop any
peripherals for them? Why can’t we have industry standard [wikipop]SCSI[/wikipop] and [wikipop]Serial ports[/wikipop]?

Etc. Etc. You get the idea.

Just over a week ago we installed Lion on our modest iMac (2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128MB) and the MacBook (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256MB). Apart from the lack of AirDrop on the iMac all seems as expected. No slow downs or crashes as some one star reviewers have seen. Even the 2TB Western Digital external drive continues to chug away. Natural scrolling seems natural although the addition of a trackpad is probably a good idea… Which seems to be the point some people are failing to get. [wikipop]Steve Jobs[/wikipop] likes to quote the ice hockey player [wikipop]Wayne Gretzky[/wikipop] “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”. Watch a young child using an iPad

and it is pretty clear (never mind the sales figures: iPads=9.2 Macs=3.95 Millions in the last 3 months) just where the puck is heading. Of course some people may prefer marking out and editing blocks of text with some obscure control key combinations.. so perhaps this process started with the first Mac which failed to provide such keys to force programmers to think in the new graphical way rather than continue with what they already knew. Today’s children will grow up finding the idea of dragging a mouse around on a desk to manipulate something on the screen as equally silly and archaic even if it was once an industry standard…

Handsome Cabin Boy – Mothers at the Fillmore

by

A splendid selection of 1966 – 1968 [wikipop search=”The Fillmore”]Fillmore[/wikipop] recordings from Wolfgang’s Vault today.

On the 24th June 1966 [wikipop search=”The Mothers of Invention”]The Mothers[/wikipop] were supporting [wikipop]Lenny Bruce[/wikipop]. Bruce was not on his best form and would be dead by August. In 1969 [wikipop search=”Frank Zappa”]Zappa[/wikipop] would release an unedited recording of Bruce at the December 1965 Berkeley Concert (This has subsequently been reissued several times and can be found on [wikipop]Spotify[/wikipop]). Zappa was a fan of [wikipop]Sea Shanties[/wikipop] and had owned [wikipop]A.L. Lloyd[/wikipop] and [wikipop]Ewan MacColl[/wikipop]’s Blow Boys Blow (another Spotify link). He had given the record to [wikipop]Captain Beefheart[/wikipop] which led to a long running dispute between the two as to whether it was a gift or a loan. The record included the song The Handsome Cabin Boy

which Zappa often used in concerts as the theme for an improvisation:

Chorlton trams opens Thursday?

by

As the previous piece about tram testing has been so popular I pass this on as a public service announcement. According to the man working on the testing today the line will be open tomorrow (Thursday 7th July). There is nothing to indicate this is the case…

…either at the station or on the Metrolink website other than the addition of Chorlton in the station listings…

Update: Now confirmed on the Metrolink site.

Metrolink’s new Chorlton line opens for business
Passengers will be able to travel on Metrolink’s new Chorlton line from Thursday 7 July.

Services will initially run every 12 minutes from service start to service end, Monday to Saturday. The Sunday 12-minute service runs between 9am and 5.30pm, with a 15-minute service from 6.58-9am and 5.30-10.52pm.

The journey time from St Werburgh’s Road to St Peter’s Square is approximately 15 minutes.

Cimy Header Image Rotator and the Twenty Eleven theme

by

Here we are with the all new WordPress 3.2 and the Twenty Eleven theme. One difference being that the header images should now be 1000 X 288 pixels. Apart from that you can still insert your Cimy Header Image Rotator plug-in code into the header.php file as detailed for the Twenty Ten theme (with the proviso regarding child themes of course).


// Houston, we have a new header image!

echo get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'post-thumbnail' );
else : ?>


Insert your code here


But it is probably time for a change so I am no longer using the Cimy Header Image Rotator plug-in…hence the lack of image rotation 😉

Update: The Header Image Slider plugin is now being tested.

Wireless MIDI controlling GarageBand

by

NOTE: This post is from 2011 An updated 2023 version is available here.

MIDI controllers control MIDI devices. They do not make sound no matter how high the volume is set.

One of the main requirements for having an app distributed through the App Store is that the app should work as described. So one star reviews claiming “it does not work” should be ignored.

If you have a Mac you have everything you need:

  1. Launch your MIDI app (in this case Pad MIDI on an iPod Touch)
  2. Launch the Audio MIDI Setup utility (found in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder)
  3. If you are seeing the Audio window select Show MIDI Window from the Window menu
  4. Double click the Network button to show the MIDI Network Setup Window
  5. Join a Session by connecting your device
  6. Launch GarageBand which will find all MIDI connections
  7. Play the app to play Garageband