It’s free entry. Hope to see you there!

I’m playing rock bass for my good mate Guillaume Thursday night at the Exeter. If you feel like checking it out, come and have a look in. We’re good chaps.

The song is “Masters of War” by Bob Dylan, but it is performed by Guillaume Soloacoustic. Thanks to G for letting me use his recording.

Enjoy. :)

See it to believe it. This is not from the Onion, it’s from Fox News. They’re pissed that a photo of Sara Palin wasn’t touched up.

Incredible.

The good chaps of Bjango made the above concept video for iPhone copy and paste. I think it’s the best implementation I’ve seen so far.

Their post goes into full detail of how this could work.

Copy and paste workflow

• Tap-and-drag to the start of the selection, keep holding
• While holding the first finger down, tap anywhere on the screen with a second finger
• Drag to the end of the selection with the first finger

Word and line selections
If we’re using a second finger tap to signify “I want to make a selection and copy”, why not use a double tap for word-constrained and triple tap for line-constrained selections, just like a computer?

Nice work Bjango.

I started writing another Failcorp rant, but for it I needed a photo of a zombie shouting. A few Google image searches found this. (and this, which is equally funny) I fired up photoshop and added the rest.

Failcorp rant coming later or maybe never.

The Australian

This news is a week or so old, Techspansion closed down and discontinued one of my favourite pieces of shareware, Visualhub. I wanted to make a post to thank the chap(s?) over at Techspansion for the work they’ve put into their software.

That is how your iTunes 8 window will look after a fresh install or update. Note the clutter.

Removing these bits requires you to edit a .XML file in a hidden folder. You can use any editor, but for this guide, I’ll be using Notepad which comes standard with every Windows installation.

Step 1: Quit iTunes

Step 2: Show Hidden Files and Folders: In any open Explorer folder window select ‘Tools’, then ‘Folder Options…’ from the menu.

Step 3: Select the ‘View‘ tab, then ‘Show hidden files and folders‘. Press OK when done.

Now, we’ve made it so you’re able to browse to where the file you need to edit to make the changes are.

Step 4: Depending on your version of Windows, browse to the iTunes folder under Application Data.

Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\your account username\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes

Windows Vista:

C:\Users\your account username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes

Step 5: Open the file called ‘iTunesPrefs.XML’ in Windows Notepad. You will see a heap of garbage text. Don’t be put off by it. Just scroll right to the end of the file until you see the closing tags:  </dict></dict></plist>

Just BEFORE those tags, insert text below:

<key>show-genre-when-browsing</key> <data>False</data> <key>show-store-arrow-links</key><data>False</data>

Step 6: Save iTunesPrefs.XML by hitting ctrl+S. Quit Notepad. Launch iTunes. Enjoy your genre-less, store-link-less iTunes8. :)

Torrentfreak have posted a write up and preview of the upcoming Mac version of the popular Windows bittorrent client, uTorrent. 

An early Alpha release of the long awaited Mac version of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent has leaked to the public. The application is still in development, but most features seem to work just fine. As expected, the application looks very Mac-like, and better than its Windows counterpart.

The thing is, the Mac uTorrent’s interface is a complete rip off of two of the Mac’s current leading bittorrent apps, and I don’t mean that in a small way. Check out the screenshots below.

 vs
That’s Transmission on the left. (click for bigger versions)

 vs
uTorrent (right) has an almost identical info box as XTorrent (left). (click for bigger versions)

 vs
XTorrent (left) details and uTorrent Details. (click thumbnails for larger size)

uTorrent’s preferences pane is almost word for word the same as Transmission’s. Even the icon layout in the toolbar is the same. As I mentioned in the caption, the information box in uTorrent is a perfect copy of XTorrent’s (down to the background gradient).

uTorrent looks like the concept and design of xtorrent with the interface elements of Transmission.

Don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself:

• Transmission
• XTorrent
• uTorrent for Mac alpha leak (Pirate Bay)

Greetings, traveller. I see your journey throughout the bowels of Failcorp has made you ragged and dreary. Let us continue your orientation so that you can fit into the Failcorp ecosystem.

Annually, each office drone will have a birthday. Other office drones will see it necessary to halt work for twenty minutes on this occasion so all staff can stand about a room in near silence. This silence ensues as the birthday celebrant has the honour of cutting their cheap, nasty sponge cake in awkward fashion.

Today’s tip: There is no way out of this. You have to go. Just stand there and smile if you can. If someone attempts conversation, answer in the affirmative, smile and for the sake of all that is good - be pleasant. These vultures sense fear. Don’t give them the slightest hint of it and you should be fine.

Set your phone’s alarm to go off, 5 minutes in to the cutting and call it an ‘emergency’. Exit stage right.

This is one of the bigger huntsman’s I’ve seen, though I know that they can get much much bigger.

I’ve uploaded a large higher quality picture of him to my flickr.

• 8GB of storage.
• Fast data access
• Tiny!
• Can act as a mirror, so you can flash sunlight at search choppers overhead as an S.O.S.

More pics after the break.

Pope Benedict XVI condemned unbridled “pagan” passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague Saturday as he led more than a quarter of a million Catholics in an outdoor Mass in Paris.

But…this is from the Mr Fancy Pants in silk clothes with gold stitching who lives here:

The pope has already hit the max in flashy clothes and overly elaborate residences, so the only way to increase the glitz is to pose against a backdrop of dreary people in dun clothes living in shacks, I guess. More poverty, please! We need to make the papacy look more posh!

From Pharyngula via Danamania.

10.5.5 Combo Updater (601MB Direct Link)
10.5.5 Server Combo Updater (729MB Direct Link) 

There’s also a security update out for 10.4 users to download:

Security Update 2008-006: (PPC | Intel)
Security Update 2008-006: (Universal Server | PPC Server) 

10.5.5 Changes

General

• Includes recent Apple security updates.
• Addresses stability issues with video playback, processor core idling, and remote disc sharing for MacBook Air.
• Addresses an issue in which some Macs could unexpectedly power on at the same time each day.
• Resolves a stability issue in TextEdit that could be found when accessing the color palette.
• Improves Spotlight indexing performance.
• Fixes an issue in which contacts might not sync properly with PalmOS-based devices.
• Improves iPhone sync reliability with iCal and Address Book.
• Includes improvements to Active Directory (see this article for more information).
• Improves Speech Dictionary.
• Fixes Kerberos authentication issues for Mac OS X 10.5 clients that connect to certain Samba servers, such as Mac OS X Server version 10.4.
• Includes extensive graphics enhancements.

Address Book

• Addresses stability issues that may occur when creating a Smart Group.
• Resolves a printing issue with address cards containing information that spans more than one page.

Disk Utility and Directory Utility

• Improves reliability when rebuilding a software mirror RAID volume in Disk Utility.
• Improves reliability of server status displayed in Directory Utility.

iCal

• Updates iCal to more accurately handle repeating events.
• Improves performance when choosing meeting attendees.
• Resolves an issue in which the “Refresh All” option may be dimmed (”grayed out”) in the contextual menu for certain calendars.
• Fixes issues with read-only calendars.
• Addresses an issue that prevents an invitee from moving an event to a different calendar.
• Resolves an issue with syncing published calendars.

Mail

• Addresses performance issues related to displaying IMAP messages.
• Resolves an issue with SMTP settings for AIM, Compuserve, Hanmail, Yahoo!, and Time Warner Road Runner email accounts.
• Addresses stability issues that may occur when dragging a file to the Mail icon in the Dock.
• Addresses an issue with the “Organized by Thread” view in which the date does not appear when the thread is collapsed.
• Resolves an issue in which RSS feeds could temporarily disappear from the sidebar.
• Improves Mail robustness when sending messages.
• Improves reliability when saving drafts that have attachments.

MobileMe

• Improves overall sync reliability.
• Improves Back to My Mac reliability.

Time Machine

• Improves Time Machine reliability with Time Capsule.
• Addresses performance issues that may affect initial and in-progress backups.
• Fixes an issue in which an incorrect alert message could appear stating that a backup volume does not have enough free space.
• Time Machine can now back up iPhone backups that are on your Mac, as well as other items in (~/Library/Application Support).

One feature I found that they’ve removed is the preference option to remove ‘genre’ from the browser view. Since I’m an Artist > Album > Song browser kind of guy, i really had to find a way around this. Fortunatley, I did. Fire up terminal.app and paste this in:

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing  -bool FALSE

Then restart iTunes. As his Steveness would say: boom. No genre.

Update: It seems iTunes 8 also adds iTunes links to all your songs, with no option to turn them off… If you don’t wanna see those (like I don’t) then fire up terminal again and paste this in:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

Enjoy. :)

UPDATE: Here is how to do this on the Windows version of iTunes 8.

We’re having a hard time as no one has properly booked (In true Adelaide fashion) to let us know they’re coming. 

Unfortunately we can’t take the risk of assuming people will turn up on the night because we’ll have to cover the fundraiser’s cost ourselves if they don’t.

It’s going to be a great night, you get gourmet food, cupcakes, delicious wine & beer + a hilarious drag cabaret act AND a fashion parade AND a dance review and more.

And please remember the ticket price is not just for that it’s to fundraise for our film too.

So please if you’ve planned nothing this Friday, come along…JUST LET ME KNOW BY [Matt edit: COMMENTING ON THIS POST]. I’ll put tickets aside for you, easy.

Then we can all have an amazing, glamorous time and our hard work can amount to something! Hooray!

Like the message says - if you’ve got nothing on this Friday, come on down. Tickets are $30. Guillaume will be playing with the legendary Doormats. It’ll be a top night. 

Update: View this on Eventful.