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September 25, 2012 / 2 Comments

Review: Apple EarPods

Please note: I am not a writer, journalist or a master of the English language. This is also my first review of a product, ever. So I do apologise if my spelling or grammar offends you.

Recently I had experienced some pretty bad luck with headphones. I usually sport a pair of Klipsch S4i in-ear headphones on my commute to work, and am also often found programming with them on, piping my own eclectic and weird musical tastes aurally into my brain. The trusty Klipsch though played its last tune earlier this week, with the left channel spluttering into nothingness during my walk from the train station to my workplace. I did have a pair of original Apple iPhone 4, but as we all know from the past 11 years of history, the sound quality and comfort are quite low. I also started running again, and the headphones I used for that activity had gone to voice coil heaven many moons ago. These cheap TDK over-ear clip-on headphones weren’t designed for jogging at all, what with their heavy cans and flimsy ear foam. Read more

March 6, 2011 / 2 Comments

Retro Apple //e

This weekend, the opportunity to receive an old Apple //e had passed my way and I took it eagerly with both hands. The guy who had it before me (one of my dad’s work mates) didn’t know much about it, but was about to throw it away or sell it, so I made sure I snapped it up real quick. As we got it home, I had a good look around it and it seems to be an Apple //e Platinum with monitor and disk drive. Unfortunately, the other end of the cable for the disk drive has been cut, so I can’t use any floppies until I either get a new cable and do a transplant, or get a new drive overall.
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December 22, 2010 / 1 Comment

PHP technique: Using arrays as function parameters

I’ve decided to start a not-so-regular string of blog posts that explore PHP programming techniques that you may or may not know of. I am in no means a perfect PHP programmer, and I’m sure there are heaps of people that are, but this is I guess my way of contributing back to the community.

I’m going to start this not-so-regular string of PHP programming posts by commenting on a technique that is relatively new to me (I’ve known it for a couple of years now, but to be honest the opportunities to use this haven’t been that numerous), but improves programmer usability ie. it makes your life as a PHP programmer just that little bit easier. I call it ‘array parameters’ for lack of a better term.
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October 11, 2010 / 2 Comments

Arduino!

I had been meaning to get into some embedded development for a little while now, as I am slowly getting bored of PHP / web development and thought it would be nice to broaden my horizons a little. I failed Computer Systems Engineering back at uni (but repeated it and passed the second time around) simply because I hated assembler – I didn’t see the point of having to worry about which accumulator has been primed, or moving values left right and centre, and I much preferred C++ as I focused more on the task at hand, and not trying to show the computer what to do with values and memory.
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March 27, 2010 / 1 Comment

Proposal via iPhone app

For those who know me quite well, they already know this, but for those who don’t, I’ll just come clean and say it.

I proposed to my (then) girlfriend in November 2009 via iPhone app. Yes, I’m a nerd. Here’s how it happened.
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September 6, 2009 / 2 Comments

What ticks me off about OSX & culture

This might come across as a angry little Mac fanboy venting, but I was wondering today what aspects of OSX and/or its culture that tick you off. We talk about what’s great about OSX all the time (and in my opinion, there are heaps of HUGE plusses), but I can easily come up with a few points myself:
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August 30, 2009 / 7 Comments

Combining PDF docs using Automator and Services in Snow Leopard 10.6

UPDATE (10/09/2009): A big thanks to Eric Weijers who pointed out in the comments below that the “Get Finder Items” action that I implemented in this workflow actually doubles up the pages that are in the resulting PDF. If you follow the instructions outlined in the post below, please make sure you don’t add the “Get Finder Items” action.

Before upgrading to Snow Leopard, I had made a few Automator actions that were saved as Finder plugins, and hence were accessible from Finder’s contextual popup window. However, after upgrading to Snow Leopard I found that these Finder plugins were gone (amongst other undesireable, but tolerable and fixable changes). After hearing about Services through the Apple Snow Leopard features page, and podcasts such as MacBreak Weekly, I decided to retool the Automator action as a Service instead.
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June 21, 2009 / 0 Comments

Pulling apart a Wallstreet G3 (and then putting it back together)

I had received an Apple PowerBook Wallstreet G3 some time ago that was looking a little sad. It had been an education machine, so it has had a bit of a rough life. Its external case has many scuffs and scratches, with some worn bits on the bottom where you can see the underlying metal, the PRAM battery was shot and the trackpad had been attacked with what I gathered was a sharp instrument of some sort, perhaps a drawing compass. Naturally, the laptop battery was dead and could only hold a couple of minutes’ charge.

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