Author Archives: Angus Hardie

Cheque Clearance Time

It must be delightful for the banks to be able to get away with taking 4 days to clear a cheque. The interest that they earn on the money in the meantime must be significant. However there is some slight … Continue reading

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Rumors: To believe or not to believe, that is the question.

AppleInsider is saying that a new iMac is coming soon, while Think Secret is saying that there won’t be an iMac at the wwdc which starts next week. So what (apart from the fact that it is probably a bad … Continue reading

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Improved Popcorn technique

I’ve been working away on my method for making popcorn at home in the microwave. I realised after a while that leaving the popped popcorn in the microwave after it has popped just causes it to burn, go brown and … Continue reading

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First Purchase from iTunes store

I have sucessfully managed to make a purchase from the iTunes music store. Oddly enough I didn’t enter the start date for credit card and things went much better. I have no idea why that might make a difference. It … Continue reading

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Technical Problems with iTunes store

Annoyingly there are technical problems with the iTunes store. I’ve made several attempts now to buy music but I always get a form inviting me to re-enter my payment details. Completing the form and clicking OK then either takes me … Continue reading

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iTunes Store open

The Apple (UK and Ireland) homepage is showing that the iTunes store is now open. I haven’t actually bought any tracks yet though. Pricing is reasonable, 79p a track is below what the 86p a track that some people were … Continue reading

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Piracy on ebay

Fun thing to do: Try a search for “photoshop” on ebay. I was looking to see whether it was a realistic way to buy a copy but it really isn’t. Most of the auctions are fradulent or offering pirated software. … Continue reading

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SIte upgrade

Just a quick note to say that I’ve upgraded the site to wordpress 1.2. Hopefully there shouldn’t be any problems. Send email or make comments if you have any problems.

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Presentation at Serve Radio

Chris Hampton at Serve Radio has asked me to give a brief presentation at a meeting of volunteers next week. I’ve been doing some work on internet radio broadcasting and he was looking to explain this to the volunteers. I’m … Continue reading

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Election day!

Well it’s election day. We won’t know the results of the European parliament elections until Sunday and there weren’t any local elections happening here, so there is a gap before we know what happened. The exit polls can now be … Continue reading

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New day, new thoughts

Well, I feel much better today. I’ve thought about it a bit more and I realise how very lucky I was that I found about the bug before the thing got a public release. I’m already working on some ideas … Continue reading

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Mac OS X 10.3 problems

Yet again the fact that I’m developing on Mac OS X 10.2.8 is causing problems. Bruce tried out a copy of SQLEditor (Cocoa) on 10.3 (Panther) and it doesn’t seem to work at all. You can’t seem to add objects … Continue reading

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Beta release schedule

Yes, I know I said Sunday or Monday for the new beta. But instead I’ve been fixing more bugs and various things. So it should be better. There is now a new way of showing foreign key links which adds … Continue reading

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Election time again

Good news everyone! It’s the European parliamentary election on Thursday. Given the amazingly high turnouts of previous european elections (perhaps as much as 25% last time), I’m sure the effect on democracy will be significant. Or perhaps not. The elections … Continue reading

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Create a low end database program

Punkish made the suggestion in one of the comments (actually the only comment) back on May 29th about adding an actual database to SQLEditor and turning it into a database program. The more I think about this the more I … Continue reading

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Popup cat and mouse

Can’t stop the pop-ups | CNET News.com The cat and mouse game between web site publishers, advertisers and site visitors continues. The latest thing is popup adds that avoid getting hit by popup blockers. I’m kind of preferring either regular … Continue reading

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Overlapping NSViews in cocoa

One thing that is desperately obvious when rewriting a java application to cocoa is overlapping views. In java you can often overlap swing components as long as they are lightweight (not operating system controls for instance). The cocoa documentation says … Continue reading

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Static vs Dynamic content on websites

One of the big things over the last few years in websites has been the rise of dynamically generated sites. Instead of writing each page by hand developers use languages like php, perl and python to create pages. Websites are … Continue reading

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SQLEditor Beta 3 (kindof)

SQLEditor Cocoa Beta 3 is making good progress. The only things remaining for the current beta are: Finish the menu handing Write some help It now pretty much supports importing java version saved files although it’s still having trouble with … Continue reading

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SQLEditor drag and drop

David was commenting that drag and drop from the java version of SQLEditor was handy, so it’s returned! I implemented a new floating window which allows the user to drag and drop objects onto the main canvas. Which seems to … Continue reading

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