Hi, I just wanted to share with you that I actually recovered a mail item which I had written in Thunderbird for Windows with Time Machine. Yes, Apple’s Time Machine.
Author: rolfje
SVN is missing the point?
Our company was using Rational Clearcase for version control about 6 years ago. The developers decided it was way to clunky, error prone and WAY too expensive. We introduced CVS and it has been working fine for a few years now. CVS is widely known, stable and simple. I looked into using SVN a few years ago but the clients were unusable at that time. This year, the SVN discussion came to life again and some of my collegues started playing with it after I mentioned it as being a step forward from CVS.
Google Maps Improved?
Just noticed a funny Google Maps parody video. Enjoy.
Philips Wake-up Light review
With the “Wake-up Light”, Philips has taken the “dawn simulator” from “alternative/hippie” to “trendy”. Cleverly marketing it as simply a pleasant way to wake up, making it available in many stores and adding “trendy” pricing, Philips has a lot of people looking into one of these. But is it worth the money?
Philips Wake-up Light HF3461/01 Manual
For some strange reason, Philips doesn’t provide you with a manual when you buy a Wake-up light. For those of you who want to download the full manual, you can do so by browsing through the directory at:
http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/h/hf3461_01/
The filenames are a bit strange, but looking at the last three letters in the filename will generaly give you a manual containing the language you can read. (“fra” for France, “nld” for the Netherlands, etc.). The Manuals describe the models HF3451, HF3461 and HF3462.
Funny detail: After downloading the manual and opening it, it says “Read this manual carefully before using this device”.
Macworld 2008 thin as air
Hi, I’ve read the writeups on Steve’s keynote this year, and listened to some podcasts of people who were in the audience. Personally I’m a bit dissapointed by the features introduced at this Macworld. Surely it’s hard to live up to the ever rising expectations every year, but I do have some comments to make on the introduced products.
Irritating “Features”: Philips Matchline TV
Okay, I have to get this out of my system. It is something I’ve been complaining about for months, and it is really an example of the utter dumbness of some product designers. What am I talking about? Simply turning on my TV.
I have this very nice big heavy 100Hz 4:3 Phillips Matchline TV, which I bought 8 or so years ago. For that time, it was a feature-rich TV which could store all kinds of user settings through on-screen menus, and keep them stored even when the power went out. A few weeks ago I noticed a new TV at a friends house has the same “feature” as my old Matchline. You can’t turn it on!
What happens? Monday evening, you are done watching TV and use the remote to switch it to “Stand By” mode. Before you go to bed, you walk by the TV and hit the power button to completely turn it off. Now on Tuesday, after dinner, you decide to watch TV. You walk to the TV, hit the power button, and what happens? The TV goes from “off” to “Standby”. What complete and utter IDIOT designs a TV which goes to “standby” after turning it on with the power button? It wouldn’t surprise me that a junior programmer was showing off his l33t skills by remembering the state of the TV before it was turned off.
So, after 8 years of introducing the wierdest features to TV’s, the usability labs in this world have still not found the most obvious feature to a TV: Turning it on.
Real guitar game: Guitar Wizzard
No, I’m not a guitar player, but I noticed this cool post on TUAW where the “Guitar Hero” game has been taken a notch up. TUAW reports that the guys at www.musicwizard.com have built “Guitar Wizzard”, a game with which you can learn to play popular songs on a real guitar. From what I can see in the video, this looks way less frustrating than doing the same excersizes over and over to learn to play the guitar.
Okay, you might not turn in to Mark Knopfler in a week, but isn’t it a much better feeling to hold a real guitar in your hand, in stead of that plasticky, toy-like mini quitar with the bright colored buttons? And the price is about right for a game including hardware aswell.
Dakar, 369 days to go…
The organization of the Dakar rally has cancelled the rally because some idiots are planning terrorist attacks. Instead of doing a partial rally, or a couple of stages around Lissabon, the complete rally is cancelled. I really think this is unacceptable for all riders, sponsors and TV stations depending on this rally.
All the time and money people have put into making it to Dakar is wasted. Next year it will be harder to get sponsors for the rally, because the sponsors will not risk investing large amounts of money in a rally which “may or may not” start. All those private riders which loaned money from the bank will have a hard time returning next year.
Although not nearly as bad as for the competitors, this means a lousy start of 2008 for me and a lot of Dakar fans eagerly waiting the start of the rally, which was scheduled tommorow.
Dakar 2008, 4 days to go.
Only 4 days until the biggest and toughest rally in the world starts in Lisboa. After 2 weeks, on the 20th of Januari, the bikes will finish their trip in Dakar (oh yes, and there will be some cars too, and some uninteresting truckers). The number to keep an eye on (again) this year is bike 041. It’s Miriam Pol, who is planning on finishing high in the bikes classification.