SVN is now up and running again. ApacheMap and MonoBackup are on google code:
ApacheMap: https://code.google.com/p/apachegeomap/source/checkout
Mono-backup: https://code.google.com/p/m0n0-backup/source/checkout
wp-rdfa and wp-dephorm are hosted by wordpress:
wp-rdfa: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-rdfa/
wp-dephorm: http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-dephorm/
Feel free to download alter and suggest changes again.
I’m doing some work on the dev server here at SquareCows to improve performance. This however means the local SVN is not currently working. I’m planning to migrate all the SVN repositories over to google code and will be pushing lots of new software patches at the same time. Hopefully I’ll get some time over the holidays to do this. For those of you interested in what I’m doing with the server I’m trialling lighttpd to see what kind of performance boost can be achieved.
Recently I’ve been asked to convert a few Windows Machines to Ubuntu after some spectacular failures in the MS operating system. The main problem with converting people to Ubuntu or any flavour of Linux is iTunes! Apple and Linux are both trying to take on Windows in the market and as Windows is the biggest user base for desktop users iTunes is often used as a way to give Windows users their first *Mac Experience*, hoping that more and more people will convert to their platform. This approach seems to be working as Apple grows in the desktop usage charts. Linux on the other hand is a very small market and its users, so far, have shown no interest in switching their distro to OSX. So this is why Apple haven’t spent lots of money and released a Linux version of iTunes. However we still love our music, and one of the best players (IMHO) on the market is still the iPod. Because open source users are a resourceful bunch it wasn’t long before they started work on a integrated media player and portable music device manager. Enter the Banshee!
Installation
On Ubuntu install is very easy, by either using synaptic or the command line:
sudo apt-get install banshee
It really is that simple to get started.
Importing Music
Banshee will either let you import CD’s, current mp3′/ogg’s etc on your hard drive or there is a VERY VERY handy feature. On plugging in your iPod your presented with a screen that may or may not report that banshee can not read your library. This is to do with the fact apple keep changing their library format which tells your about all the details of the song your playing. However all is not lost, by clicking convert my library you’ll instantly be granted access to all your songs and can just drag and drop them into your local library!
Album Art
The version of Banshee I installed on Ubuntu shipped with the album art plugin. Automatically on importing tunes to your library banshee will go and find artwork for your tunes.
Purchasing Music
Banshee doesn’t offer a built in music store like iTunes does so purchasing music has to be done via separate programs. There are several alternatives on offer now and many download the music straight into your Music directory. All you have to do then is tell Banshee to import the music and your ready to go. I would however recommend using a DRM Free music service such as amazon MP3.
Video and Podcasts
Yes you can even subscribe to podcasts via banshee however you’ll need to find the url of the podcast via firefox and paste the details into banshee which doesn’t have a iTunes style store for such things. Banshee will also play a hole plethora of video formats so you could even use it to manage your video library.
Overall view
I’m a big banshee fan however I’d love to see work for more devices being ploughed into the project. Whilst iPods and creative xen’s etc etc etc we are still missing some support for newer iPod’s like the touchs. Hopefully the power of open source will come up with a solution soon. Using banshee beats the pants off running iTunes in wine performance wise and to me this far out ways any losses you may loose in functionality. It you really want to go the whole hog with open source and your music collection check out the rockbox project which is an open source firmware for your portable music player.
Well first impressions of iPhoto 09 are generally good. The interface is very similar to iPhoto 08 which from memory was a big improvement from 06, there are two major new features, faces and places. The “face’s” feature searches your pictures and tries to match people and group them together is pretty accurate. On first run however it does take some time analysing your photo collection, which if you have a lot of photos seems to take for ever, however whilst this is going on in the background you can still play with some of the other new features. You get chance to confirm that the photo does actually include your named people and this seems to increase the accuracy as you name and confirm/reject more and more people/photos. On the whole the pictures it got wrong on first run I could understand why this happened, if you have family members with similar facial features or partially obscured faces for example.
The “places” feature however wasn’t so intuitive, although I fully admit I may of been doing something wrong. I decided to tag the photo’s of my house and update their location to the exact spot. The search for a location I found very disappointing. The search links through to google maps and I would expected to be able to search via postcode (zip code) or street name just like on google maps. This gave no results so I was forced to search by town name then manually kick on “new place” and move the marker pin. When I did this for the house and later tried to tag some more photo’s to the same location I had to repeat this step! However doing this a third time it seemed to have remembered, but this seems hit and miss. However this feature is pretty cool when you start plotting on the holiday photos and you can see where in the world you’ve been. Gimmicky I know but I like it.
All in all iPhoto 09 is definite improvement over 08 and I’m sure there are many more fun feature for me to find once I scratch the surface a little more. Faces works amazingly and places is ok but I would like to see some extra features especially on the search and save place. I’m yet to try it with geo-tagged photo’s but I imagine this works pretty well, as there is very little to go wrong in that! I’ll hold fire on recommending an upgrade of iLife based on iPhoto alone until I’ve had chance to review and play with a couple more of the products.
The Aero EV can do 0 to 60 in just 2.5 seconds and has a 208mph top speed!!!!! I need one of these, I wonder if I can put it on my amazon wish list!
But seriously the technology behind this car is amazing! The 150-220 mile battery can be recharged in just 10 minutes Yes one zero minutes! Apparently a Tesla takes 3 and half hours. This is thanks to the “Charge on the Run” on board charging system, which should help reduce the need for a battery swapping infrastructure too.
Original here: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/27/shelbys-amazing-aero-ev-0-to-60-in-2-5-seconds-10-minute-rech/
Drool!
Nice Wheels, the Aero EV
