I've previously recommended Parallels Desktop for Mac as a good way to run Windows on a Mac. But I'm not going to upgrade to version 4.
Essentially there's no big stand-out feature that I see as important, bar some speed improvements. Though better performance is always nice, I don't want to pay £33 for it (that's $39.99 plus 19% sales tax). The rest of the new features, such as the bundled Acronis software, just don't interest me.
There's also the new kid in town - VirtualBox. It may not pack as many features as Parallels but it certainly beats it on price as it's absolutely free (and open source too). In my opinion VirtualBox is better for running Linux as a guest OS than Parallels 3 (in terms of my experience of Ubuntu). Once I can get my Windows VM converted to VirtualBox I may not even need to use Parallels anymore.
I may consider Parallels 4 again if there's an upgrade at a more reasonable price - say $19.99 - which has the performance improvements but doesn't have all the bells and whistles that I'm never going to use. I don't own an iPhone so I don't need the remote control, I can't imagine I'll ever need to use PXE booting, and I never use speech recognition.
This is mostly for my own reference, but may also be useful to you.
My MacBook has been afflicted by an issue whereby the root process syslogd uses up excessive CPU time. Thankfully, there's a reasonably straightforward fix on The Mark Bao Weblog for those who are reasonably au fait with the OS X Terminal, and it certainly solved the problem for me. That said, your mileage may vary - this is one solution to a problem potentially caused by many different things; a Google search also brought up potential issues with iDisk, Back to my Mac and Time Machine.
I've had a few issues with the MacBook getting too hot lately (while playing World of Warcraft) so hopefully the fact that both CPU cores are not working flat out will mean it runs cooler. And make the battery last longer.
This video was out a few weeks before the US elections yesterday, but now that the result is in, it's significantly more amusing:
Let's hope that we really do have some Change over the next few years.
Those of you on Macs or Linux boxes may be interested to know that you can get a free 1-year license for CrossOver. It's only available today (Tuesday 28th October) and only allows you 1 copy. Existing customers (like me) will get a free 1-year extension to their existing license, which is nice.
CrossOver is an enhanced version of Wine, an open source tool which allows you to run Windows programs on computers which do not have Windows, namely Linux and Mac OS X (Intel only). On OS X, I use it to run programs like Picasa and IrfanView which I haven't quite found acceptable native Mac alternatives for, as well as Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player. Even without the special offer, it's cheaper than a Windows license and more convenient than either rebooting the machine or running Windows in a virtual machine.
Note that the site is suffering from the Digg effect at the moment, so while you can request your license key you probably won't be able to fully register your copy straightaway.
(Heads-up via Brad Choate)
Weirdly, there's been a small increase in the number of comments on here over the past few days, despite the fact I've only managed one post so far this month.
Main reason for the lack of posts has been partly because I've been very busy, partly because I've had nothing interesting to write about, and partly because my life isn't that great right now. Those of you who know me better will know the details but I don't want to say much publicly until the situation calms down. Which it should do soon, I hope.
Me and Hari are fine, by the way.
In the absence of anything more interesting to write about, here are some Firefox extensions that I've recently installed and found useful or interesting:
Effortless Good - automatically adds an affiliate tag for products bought at Amazon, with the income donated to 4 charities. Doesn't overwrite normal affiliate links. Means you can do good with minimal effort. FireGPG - integrates GnuPG with Firefox, and in particular Gmail. You can encrypt, decrypt and sign the contents of a text box or emails. Requires GnuPG. ForceHTTPS - ensures that you're using the encrypted (HTTPS) version of popular web sites like Gmail and PayPal where you share personal information. firefox-mac-pdf - allows PDF files to be viewed from within Firefox on a Mac, rather than in Preview. Mac-only. YouTube Comment Snob - hides idiotic comments on YouTube videos.
I came home this evening after work to find our* garden had been dug up by the gas board, so there are now big holes with uncovered pipes leading right up to the front door. And then later on this evening we had a power cut, which seemed to affect the whole street.
* = I say our garden, but actually we share it with the flat above us and it may actually be owned by the council or housing trust.
It's fair to say I don't like the archiving software StuffIt - see previous rants - but it's been a couple of years since my last rant. StuffIt 13 is out in all of its flavours so it's about time for another rant, I think. Unlike previous rants, I'll focus purely on the Mac version since I'm a Mac user and the StuffIt .sit file format used to be popular with Mac users.
In a nutshell, I dislike StuffIt for the following reasons:
It's bloatware. The downloadable disk image for the basic StuffIt Expander is over 22 MB. To put that into context, Firefox for Mac, which is a universal binary, weighs in at 17 MB, and is arguably a far more complex piece of software. In fact, Firefox supports the unzipping of (at least) gzip and zip archives since web pages and images can be encoded using these formats. Quite what they need all of those megabytes for is a mystery, since all the expander does is dump the contents of an archive into a folder. It would be hugely ironic if the expander's disk image wasn't compressed, of course. To download it, you have to give a working email address. You can't just give a fake one and get the download link, as the download link is emailed to you. And there's this gem of a notice at the bottom of the page:
Please note: By confirming your email address and downloading this file, you are signing up to receive periodic followup emails from us. Any emails we send you will contain unsubscribe information, and you may opt-out of future emails at any time.
Sure, you can unsubscribe when the next email comes through, but frankly I would rather not be subscribed in the first place. SmithMicro, StuffIt's distributor, is an American company, which is probably a good thing for them as I'm pretty sure this would fall foul of data protection laws in other countries. All I'm asking for is a tickbox that lets me opt out of receiving emails. Or, better still, a direct download link, like 95% of other software downloads.
The free expander program has been made deliberately obscure, and instead its bigger but non-free brothers are promoted. Now SmithMicro have to make their money somewhere but even when you select to download the free Expander you are bombarded with links to the paid-for packages. And when you click the link to download the program from the email that you receive, it defaults to the paid-for version, even if you previously selected the free version. StuffIt is the only program I know of capable of reading the .sitx format, which is apparently an improved version of the .sit archive format. .sitx thankfully hasn't really taken off so these files are rare, but I have Expander handy in case one crops up. If it weren't for this archive format I wouldn't even bother with Expander, never mind any of the other StuffIt programs. The Unarchiver is what I use for every other type of archive and it works well without needing my email address or trying to sell me software that I don't want, but alas .sitx support is missing.
The fact is that these rants essentially echo what I have previously written 3 years ago - in other words, the situation hasn't improved in 3 years. In fact, I'd say version 13 of the Expander, with its vastly over-inflated size, is probably the worst version yet. It's telling that its Wikipedia page has a 'Criticisms' section. If SmithMicro are serious about people wanting to use the .sitx format, they either need to make the software considerably less intimidating for those wanting to open the files or publish the file format for people to integrate into their own programs.
Windows users wanting to free themselves of StuffIt can use ExtractNow, which supports .sit files when the appropriate addon (available from its FAQ page) is installed, but again, no support for the .sitx format. Again, it's free and doesn't require your soul email address.
While cleaning out my spam folder on Gmail, I found these gems of email subjects:
"Jamie Lynn: Britney impregnated me with Ron Paul's sperm"
"Britney vagina transplant to erase fools' memory syndrome"
"K-Fed & Justin Timberlake to release Britney Spears tribute album"
"Britney is to be sold on eBay"
"Britney Spears Confession: 'I'm the Father of Anna Nicole Smith's Baby!'"
"Britney Spears Blows Her Nose on Designer Dresses"
"Britney Spears is dating Obama"
This was one page. Obviously she's been busy,
Bonus link: Daily Mail headline generator, which is in a similar vein. But it doesn't spam your mailbox.
Also, this is coming via Google Chrome which I've finally got around to trying out. I suppose it's nice but Firefox appeals more to the power user in me. And there are text selection bugs which are starting to get slightly annoying... It is beta, I suppose.
We've entered 'Week -1' at work; essentially this is the week before all of our new students arrive to enroll (most of whom will arrive on Sunday). I actually worked on both Saturday and Sunday afternoons and will almost certainly be putting in extra hours this week, so it's unlikely I'm going to have much free time as I'll be late home from work and also bloody knackered too (went to bed at 2230 last night; normally I go closer to midnight). Therefore, blogging may well be very light again, after the increase of posts over the past few days. Sorry to build your hopes up.
Unless I can find some time before then, see you after the end of 'Week 0' (i.e. next week).
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