Dom Barnes’s Blog

Ok, well I failed and didn’t do this over Christmas. Had too much to do giving advice to my parents about their own PC’s to worry about mine. But here it is, the fourth and final part of my Great Mac Apps segment.

GimmeSomeTune - This is the most useful iTunes plugin I use (and the only but thats beside the point). What it does is simple. It does loads. I will give you on-screen displays (like Growl) of your currently playing tracks, add hotkeys to control iTunes globally. It will fetch album art from Amazon, it will even fetch song lyrics from Leo’s Lyrics (which I find particularly useful). Basically, its a nice little plugin to have running. Only downside is upgrading it isn’t the easiest thing to do.

Missing Sync for Windows - I won’t say much about this since I don’t use it now. I was using it to sync my iPaq 5450 PDA with Address Book, and iCal. Its still really useful, but since I got my iPhone, I don’t use it. Still worth checking out if you own a PDA.

Miro (Formerly Democracy) -Its like TV on your computer, from the internet, like IPTV almost. Its a massively useful program that will let you watch video and audio from the web. There is a built in directory for videos, and you can subscribe to podcast feeds and (here is the best bit) you can subscribe to bit torrent RSS feeds and get your fave shows as soon as they are released. I tend to use it for any shows I don’t wanna watch on my iPhone, like Command-N, Webnation, Unwired, Diggnation (sometimes) and so on. Check. It. Out.

Microsoft Office - Now we all love our Macs, how could we not, but the fact is, there is a large amount of people who don’t know about them, so use Windows, and they are likely to have Office (99% for Word) so to help them in their niche little world, we can get Microsoft Office for Mac. And guess what? It’s actually better than the Windows version. I could tell you why, but why don’t you just try out the 30-day trial and see for yourself.
If you’re not bothered about the tracking features, and other advanced stuff, try iWork ‘08 from Apple. Its lurvly.

Onxy - Another little utility which you can use to keep your Mac running smoothly. Great for laptop users. The most useful tools are clearing caches (to free up some much needed free space) and running the cron jobs that should run to help maintain your disk which usually run at 3am.

Original List, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Well thats your lot. I’m done with this. I might put up some more suggestions as I think of them, but for now, I can close this chapter of my blog.

It just occured to me that I never did part 4 of my Great Mac Apps list (see part 1, 2, and 3). So my objective for this weekend is to do just that.

Here it is folks. Not long now. And here’s a preview to get you excited

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid824731283?bctid=1347890043 

Its th 16th of December and I’ve had my iPhone for a month. So what are my thoughts so far?

Well overall I’m really pleased. I can easily say the main features I’ve used are Mail and Safari . Since Gmail opened up IMAP, I’ve got my gmail accounts set up in Mail.app so I get all my mail straight to my hand, so I can keep on top of the Google Groups, blog comments, and various other emails I get.

I really love the Maps. While I had Google Maps on my last phone, its nothing compared to the experience on an iPhone. The scrolling is fantastic, and even though its on EDGE, loading of the maps seems so much faster. Its also really easy to look up people in my contacts list, or look for business (which came in handy recently) as they appear in the search box as you type. The routing is great, and really well animated which makes it so much nicer to use.

The SMS conversations are great. I would like to be able to forward texts, send multi-recipient messages. I’d also like to be able to clear conversations up to a point (to save a specific message), but besides that, its a hell of a lot nicer dealing with texts in a chat form, rather than an email format.

There isn’t much else I can say that hasn’t been said a hundred times on a hundred blogs. I look forward to the future software updates and am excited to see what Apple offer for new features.

For what its worth, my thoughts on Macworld are this: No iPhone 2.0, no 3G iPhone announcement, more likely details of the SDK, software examples, the coveted ultra-thin Macbook or Tablet, maybe a power boost on the rest of the line.
One thing I’d like to see is a bump on the Airport Express, and see it taken up to 802.11n, although I have just bought one of eBay so that would upset me a bit.

Well we’ll be discussing the topics of the keynote at MMUG that night so if you’re in the area, come along.

Despite my avid Mac-love, I do listen to a few Windows podcasts, since I will be working with them soon (call it wishful thinking). These include Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott (I used to read the blog a long time ago, back when XP was in beta!)

Anyway, I recently discovered ITT (In The Trenches) which is a great podcast for IT professionals, by IT professionals, where Kevin, George and a slew of other guest hosts,  chat about general IT stuff, like servers, mail systems, networks, qualifications, and share some handy tips, in fact it was George who provided the iPod Backup idea and system.

Well, this was their last podcast recently as they’re closing it down. Kevin’s site is going to be reused for his own purposes as he moves on to a busy time in his life.

Anyway, wanted to post a thanks to them all for the great discussion and info they’ve given me over the past few months, and wish them both the best for the future.

Feel free to check out some past episodes before they vanish from the site.

As I posted before, I took my A+ 220-601 exam recently and as part of the study, I got a few books that came with CD-ROM’s. They all contained test engine software which I was looking forward to using, but of course, cos of the narrow minded people, it was Windows only. Since I don’t have Leopard yet (Jan ‘08 after payday and I get an external drive to backup so I can clean install) I was encouraged by a friend to get VMWare Fusion. So I took the plunge and forked out the £45-odd quid for the software.

I downloaded the dmg file and installed the software, and put in the serial number supplied via email. And there I was, ready to install Windows. I pulled out a disc I had nearby and got to work on the dreaded install. I’ve already done this a few times with Boot Camp beta, so was more than familiar with the many many many many updates needed when you install Windows, and because they don’t do bulk updates like Mac OS gets (only their infrequent Service Packs) It took about 4 reboots, to install around about 90 updates, hotfixes, bug fixes and new software, included the fantastic(!) IE7.

So I finally got that sorted, downloaded Firefox, TweakUI, Acrobat Reader, and got them installed. Finally I was ready to actually get studying, but before that, a good nights sleep.

Well it seemed to do the trick cos I passed the exam, and now I have XP working for the future. I’m going to keep the virtual image on my laptop cos it will no doubt come in handy next time I need to tech support for my parents.

The next step for me is to set up a Ubuntu install. Its all done (off the Live/Desktop CD) and now just updating that. To make it work smoother, I need to install VMWare Tools, to allow shared folders and other business. Luckily, this website provides a great step-by-step for this  as it seems a bit tricky.

So I’ll be a triple boot system soon, which is nice to have. And certainly one to impress the friends and family, and people at MMUG.

I got news today that our cat of over 19 years, Twinkle, was put to sleep the other night.

She had been getting worse recently over the past few weeks, and this weekend she got a lot worse quickly, and after a word with the vet, it was discovered she had either a kidney problem or an over-active thyroid.

In her honour, I made this video, and by made I mean put music to this video.

So today was the culmination of about 14 months of slow studying towards my CompTIA A+. Today I took my 220-601 A+ Essentials exam. And I am glad its over.

I arrived at the test centre (thanks to the kind people at New Horizons, Birmingham) and within 30 seconds of arriving, the fire alarm went off, so I had to stand out in the cold for 20 minutes before I got started. But we went back inside, and I got to it.

I took the sample exam, which was too much really. 15 questions on the universe (none of the answers were 42), and then got stuck into the actual exam. I blasted through the 100 multiple choice questions in about 20 minutes, then spent another 20 reviewing my answers, making some changes and then ended the test. And there it was on the screen. I’ve passed! Scored 780 out of 900 so did quite well considering I was half expecting to fail.

Only query, why did I get three questions, all relating to anti-static wrist straps? Seriously are they worth testing that much? Not that I complained. A few easy questions.

Now I’ve got  90 days to sit the 220-602 IT Technician exam and then I’m fully qualified. That means I’m job hunting soon, and not soon enough.

I was here. It rocked!

I had a letter back from the Computer Training College today.

Bad news.
Firstly, they went into administration on 26 September 2007. So if thats not a clue to NOT JOIN THEM, what is?

Secondly, they completely ignored my actual complaint and only addressed one issue of my original letter to them.
So what now? Now I’m going to reply to them with some strong words. These companies hope that they can fob you off first time and you’ll back down, so remember to be persistent. Continue to  argue your point to them.

So lets give it another go.

Peace out

UPDATE: I’ve opened a Google Group to discuss things in more depth. Check out http://groups.google.com/group/ct-college-complaints