Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 11, 2007 in
General I was looking through the stuff that got past bad behaviour straight into the Akismet filter and I found the weirdest comment spam I’ve ever seen.
Good day!
Why do dogs eat their poop? One reason dogs eat their poop is because it just plain taste
good. Another reason is it could be a vitamin deficiency. One other reason for the poop
eating is that it is an instinctual behavior in the wild to eat the poop to keep other predators
from tracking their movements.
Some solutions for stopping poop eating are: You can put meat tenderizer on it.
What do you think?
By the way, I love that too! How did you find that?
Bye, bye – Wendy!
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Humour, blogs, commentspam
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 10, 2007 in
Photos 
In case you ever wondered what a man with brussel sprouts growing out of his back looked like.
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Photos, Humour
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 9, 2007 in
Mac My copy of Cocoa: Programming for OS X
arrived today, and even just reading through the first couple of chapters on the tube I am bowled over by how good it is.
Not only is this the best book I’ve seen on Cocoa yet, it’s probably also one of the best books on a computing topic I’ve read.
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Mac, cocoa, aaronhillegass, books
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 8, 2007 in
Mac So I was going to write a post about how to waste more of your life using Twitter but do it more efficiently using Quicksilver. I had half a script written, but I thought I would integrate it with Keychain to make it really nice.
After a little searching it turns out Coda Hale has already done a perfect job of integrating Twitter and Quicksilver using Applescript. Well done him, but what a git for stealing my thunder!
Anyway, I thought I would write some comments about basic integrating with Keychain instead, to make up for my lack of having a Twitter script quite as nice as Coda’s.
To access the Keychain, instead of using Keychain.app, instead you use Keychain Scripting.app. This is a non-GUI app that allows Applescript access to the keychain, so it still has a dictionary to use as a reference.
You can access information in the Keychain in several ways. You can either access the keys by type, i.e Internet Key, Appleshare Key, etc or by the Keychain it is in. You can also lock and unlock Keychains. Like all instances of doing stuff with the Keychain a permission dialogue will confirm to the user any changes being made. If you are running the Applescript from an application, such as Quicksilver, the application’s name will be on the request. It may also ask for permission for Keychain Scripting. This might be a barrier when writing stuff for general consumption as users might find it confusing.
While I sometimes moan about Apple not supporting Applescript properly with some of their applications, Keychain Scripting does rather a lot. You can do pretty much anything you can do in Cocoa to the keychain right here. It’s worth knowing, because the keychain is really one of the best features of OS X. Next step, I may write something to use 1passwd logins in Curl/Wget.
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Quicksilver, AppleScript, Mac, Productivity, Security, keychain, 1passwd, codahale, twitter
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 7, 2007 in
General In ten words, it is very addictive. Vist thetenwordreview.com today!
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Fun, wordgames
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 6, 2007 in
Mac Niceplayer is a FOSS video player for Mac. It just updated to version 0.95 and I've decided I like it better than the VLC player. Not only does it do completely chromeless video out of the box but it also happily floats on top. This really suits me as I like to watch videos while working on my MacBook Pro. Better yet, it can use the decoding capabilities of Quicktime, VLC or a number of other suites, making it play virtually anything!
Niceplayer also supports Applescript which is really great, especially as VLC, the next best media player for Mac, is cross-platform and doesn't. The piece of applescript below can be saved into a script and dropped into your Quicksilver actions folder to play/pause the current Niceplayer movie.
APPLESCRIPT:
-
tell application "NicePlayer"
-
playpause front playlist
-
end tell
I give Niceplayer 2 thumbs up.
N.B. If you were wondering about the title, cue pop-culture reference to Patrick Nice of the Fast show.
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Quicksilver, AppleScript, Mac, Niceplayer, VLC
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 5, 2007 in
General Tonight I cooked the Veg Family recipe for Banana bread. It's very tasty and super easy. I challenge anyone not to manage making it, or enjoy eating it. I also like to add about 100g of Pecans. In case you are wondering 350F is 180C or Gas Mark 4.
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vegan, cooking, cake
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 4, 2007 in
General There has been a lot of discussion of Payperpost.com recently. I'm going to add my two pence. This site is only as bad as you make it. The essential idea is a good one. If a manufacturer or vendor wants to raise awareness of their product they can engage the blog community to do it. They pay bounties to people who write posts about their product or service.
As long as those are the rules, things are fine. Bloggers will be able to blog good or bad comments about a service and get paid. I have looked at the site, and I haven't seen anything that is appropriate to my blog, but if I do, I don't see the issue with me posting about it. That's the crux. It's the bloggers that make this idea good or bad, not the advertisers.
The 'a-list' bloggers, some of whom hate this idea, have the ability to work with advertisers direct to get the right revenue streams for their traffic. This isn't something really available to the smaller blogger. I like the idea that regular bloggers can be paid for reviews, as I said, even if those reviews don't favour a product.
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blogs, payperpost
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 3, 2007 in
Mac I found an interesting tip on how to integrate Quicksilver and App Delete on Mac OS X hints. The tip was cool, however I could have done it myself.
What did interest me was that cmd+backspace deletes files. It's one of those little things I never knew that turns out to be really useful.
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Quicksilver, AppleScript, Mac, Productivity
Posted by sh1mmer on Feb 2, 2007 in
General Anne van Kesteren posted today on IE7 CSS hacks. If I am understanding correctly IE didn't fix the parse errors on property hacks, they just banned certain ones. This explains why my post on the star property hack still works.
That said, in other news today Molly is doing a consulting gig with the IE team. This seems really good, WaSP actually working with vendors is about the best thing that could happen.
Finally, I noticed Opera have caught up to everyone else (lagging even behind IE) and this week's build has a Developer Console, which use JS to do Web Developer Toolbar type stuff. Good work Opera team, but we'd like something more akin to Firebug or Drosera please!
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Browsers, IE, Web Development, opera, ie7, molly, css, drosera, webdevtoolbar