I have found that this forum software integrates very nicely with WordPress but the default template is, in my opinion, an awful mess of tiny fonts (‘font-size: 62.5%‘!) and impenetrable DIVs.

I had made some progress with integrating the design of the fora with that of the rest of the site. Then, I installed BBpress 0.74 over v0.73 and, being a bit dim, lost the changes I had made.

I think the principle benefit of having a forum at the moment is that it presents a less intimidating interface than WordPress.

Networked printing is similarly simple. If two Macs are on the same network they will, if permitted, share printers painlessly and automatically.

Or, at least, that’s the idea and, for several years, it worked in exactly that way until I bought a new wireless router, a Netgear DG834G. It appears that this router does not support the necessary multicasting protocol— the two computers work perfectly if connected over a wired network but not wirelessly. This issue has had me scratching my head for some time. Until tonight.

Graham, on uk.comp.sys.mac, gave me the final piece in the jigsaw. I was aware that the computers were failing to resolve .local addresses and now know, surprisingly courtesy of Microsoft, that NetInfo manager is my friend. Briefly, I needed to edit my hosts file such that kates-imac.local would resolve to that computer’s fixed IP.

A lot of open source software has previously been let down by poor documentation. Not Scribus. It already has enough documentation for me to make good use of it and this appears to have been written by a user rather than a programmer.

The two key differences between Scribus and its commercial counterparts appear to be speed and beauty. As with many open source applications, the icons could be a lot prettier and the program could run more quickly. Frankly, with the money that is saved by not buying commercial software, cheapskates like me could possibly afford to buy a faster machine (or more RAM).

Because the program fully supports SVG, users can make good use of the Open Clip Art Library, a repository of mostly good quality public domain files. One oddity I discovered is that I get a far better end-result by creating a PDF before I print than by sending my work direct to the printer.

For those who are interested, the first open source NftP is available here for download as a 1 megabyte PDF.

Sadly, the operators of the service, PremiumTV appear to have little or no knowledge of reality. The service for which I pay allows me to receive a 16 kbps stream of BBC Essex commentary on Southend United games. The service is ropey in that the link is frequently lost but there is no other practical way for exiled football supporters to follow many of their clubs’ games.

Now, however, I find that PremiumTV are changing the system. Currently it can be accessed using almost any web browser and Windows Media Player 9 using the ACELP codec. In the future, however, the system will move to WMP10′s DRM system, compatible only with Windows.

For music sales, I am in many ways ambivalent about DRM. I have bought a good number of tracks from the iTunes store and rarely ever now buy a physical single. However, this is for a 128kbps recording. I honestly struggle to believe that PremiumTV will do anything to protect their market by moving into DRM to protect a 16kbps audio stream, a bitrate which is in quality terms roughly halfway between a telephone call and medium-wave radio.

I remain optimistic that the company may see sense. For what it’s worth, I have contacted the Football League, Southend United F.C. and the SUSCT.

Technorati Tags: Football, League, PremiumTV, Windows Media Player, ACELP, DRM

Ordinarily this would not be an issue. After all, James would perform in their home town again.

Wouldn’t they?

Watching BBC NorthWest Tonight on the evening of 7^th December 2001, a week after we had seen Depeche Mode, we saw the flaw in our plan. Tim Booth was leaving the band he had fronted for eighteen years or so. Kate and I had spent years failing to see James. I had caught them on their 1992 acoustic tour, when they avoided Manchester and instead played a fine set at the Town and Country Club in Leeds. Kate had completely missed out on them live.

We were, to say the least, annoyed. Ever since the release of Laid in 1994, James had been my favourite band-that-actually-does-any-work (Ian Brown and John Squire being rather too keen having a holiday for my other favourite band to be a realistic live proposition) and I was one of that limited number of people who genuinely had fallen in love with the group before the release of Gold Mother (only by a matter of weeks, mind).
It was, then, without any hesitation that I bought the live DVD. Up until now this has been heard only rarely for one simple reason: iPods do not play DVDs.

Now, thanks to two pieces of software, this is about to change. MacTheRipper performs the useful task of extracting the audio (a forum post explains how) and the snappily titled AIFF from PCM converts the files to something iTunes can use.

Users of more recent iPods may well be pleased to see that this software can also be used to put video on their devices.

Technorati Tags: James, Tim Booth, Manchester, iPod, iTunes

2) The fact that Office builds under Xcode not a very good predictor of when we’ll ship. We’re doing a heck of a lot more in this release than just ‘making it Universal.’ Remember, we were already more than a year into the product development cycle when Steve & Co. announced the Intel switch, with lots of planning done well before Office 2004 shipped.
However, the world just wouldn’t be right without rampant speculation and rumors, so please, go ahead and give it your best guess. Predict away, and we’ll see where we end up.

From Schwieb » Schwieb.com » Predicting the future. Or not.

Okay then… it will be out before Vista.

SVG Document templates – Scalable Vector Graphics

SVG Document templates – Version 1.0 utlilizes both SVG and XML can be viewed with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and other Internet Browsers supporting the SVG format. These documents are best viewed with Firefox. I.E. users, right click and use Zoom In and Zoom Out function.

SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML. SVG 1.1 is a W3C Recommendation.

SVG documents were created using Inkscape.org and can be opened and edited with the program. Download Inkscape here.

These SVG documents can be saved and opened for editing in Openoffice.org Draw ODF Open Document format: you will require a SVG Reader here”

BBC NEWS | Technology | Malicious worm aims to bite Apple: “Installing and running the worm requires users to go through several stages and this, along with bugs in Leap-A’s code, have led security firms to play down the threat it poses.

‘The important piece of advice for any iChat users running OS X 10.4 is not to accept file transfers, even if they come from someone on a buddy list,’ said Kevin Hogan, Symantec security response manager.

Symantec said Leap-A was a level 1 threat on its ranking system – the lowest level. Computer security firms McAfee and F-Secure also said it posed little threat.”

Perhaps Symantec ought really to give sensible advice like: feel free to accept file transfers from your contacts, but ask them first what the file actually is.