Now to keep up the training and look for some races post-UDS.

The reason for my break in training – which resulted in me skipping my second planned race – was that I was waiting for my new tattoo to heal. I’ve only recently (i.e. the last year-and-a-bit) started getting tattooed (any comments about a mid-life crisis will be directed to /dev/null – but it’s true what they say: it’s extremely addictive. I’ve already got about 4 more planned!

Photo of my tattoo at about 1.5 weeks old - the bruising is still evident!

The tattoo I’ve had done is a stylised Eye Of Ra, also known as the Eye of Horus. The design comes from Tattoo Tribes, and the basic meaning is protection although there are lots of other interpretations and meanings. I also have a few personal reasons for using this particular symbol.

Digital Distribution

A commenter called skippy said:

The lack of optical drive strikes me as a clever mechanism to further strengthen iTunes’ dominance in the “legal MP3 sales” market, and to further drive Apple customers to rely on the iTunes music store. I know a lot of people purchase iTunes songs, burn them to CD, then re-rip them to MP3 format for use on non-iPod devices. The Apple Air will effectively put an end to that practice for its users. Certainly not the biggest deal in the world, but I think it’s a sufficiently interesting wrinkle to merit a comment.

He’s absolutely right, and it goes beyond ripping music. The other main use for optical drives is watching movies, and what else did Apple announce? Their (US only) movie rental service.

In the same post I criticised their Remote Disk offering, commented how easy apt-get made software management for Linux users, and summed it up with:

If Apple is serious about digital distribution (and everything indicates they are) then they need to address this shortcoming.

In hindsight of course they are serious about digital distribution, but for media not software (yet). Remote Disk is just the smoke-and-mirrors to help push people toward the iTunes store.

Wired vs. Wireless

Another commenter – Janne – said:

But no ethernet? Only wireless? This is supposed to be a travel notebook. Sure, wireless is common, but so are wired ports (especially at hotels). And you may well prefer wired over wireless given the choice anyway; less connection troubles, higher speed.

I never saw the lack of wired networking as a shortcoming as almost all my devices are wireless, and everywhere I’ve travelled I’ve used WiFi. Considering skippy’s comment though made me wonder if this omission wasn’t just because of size/space/power, but also because Apple want you to use (and buy) WiFi. Although overshadowed by the Air, their Time Capsule product looks very nice (especially if you are a Time Machine user, but it seems to work as networked storage if you don’t) and it was announced as a wireless device. Sure it has gigabit ethernet in there, but all their marketing pushes the WiFi. You have to look at the Tech Specs before you even see wired networking mentioned.

Sealing the deal

Whilst I don’t believe for one second that either of the above were the main drivers for such decisions – I’m sure it really was about size, weight and power – but as added benefits that tie in with Apple’s goals I’m sure they helped seal the deal.

The other day I wanted to print a photo from my N95, which manages to support every function under the sun except IR printing. In all fairness it is a 5 Megapixel camera, so the image would be a bit large (and therefore slow) for IR, but still. The N95 does support Bluetooth printing, but Canon only supports their BU20 Bluetooth module which retails for upwards of £40, and I’ve never cared enough to get one. Fortunately the N95 also supports USB printing, so my immediate problem was solved.

When I ordered my N95 (and N800) I realised I’d misplaced my Bluetooth dongle so I promptly ordered another one off eBay for less than £4 delivered (and then just as promptly found my other one). It arrived this morning and on a whim I plugged it into the DS810 – lo and behold, it worked. I’m sure my other dongle never worked (although I just tried it, and it seemed to), but I had let myself be brainwashed by Canon into believing that only their (overpriced) offering would work and didn’t bother to research alternatives.

Lesson learned.

I wouldn’t mind, but I hadn’t finished drinking it!

I’ve alluded to this several times, but now it is time to forcibly eject the cat from the bag.

In short: my book – Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion will be available soon.

What everyone else says is true: writing a book is hard work, but it’s worth it.

Too make life easier though, here are the feeds most people will be interested in:

• Everything
• Linux
• Ruby on Rails

Although much better, my switch to Mephisto was not without its casualties. This can mainly be seen in three areas:

1. Design. I was using Scribbish before because I couldn’t be bothered migrating my old design to a newer version of Typo. I’m now using the default Mephisto theme, but this will be transformed into a new take of my old design “real soon now”. Honest.
2. Sections (or categories or whatever). The migration script copied everything over but these. Not sure why… Anyway it was time for shakeup. I’ve recreated the important sections and filed recent (hah!) posts. Older posts are not filed. Maybe if I get bored one day… Per-section feeds (for various planets) will be re-instated when I update the design.
3. Links. Links to old posts may or may not work (hopefully they will). If you can’t find what looking for, search!

How can it be both? Because it’s two commercially-oriented software developers discussing a concept they don’t seem to fully grasp or understand. I sure this is in part due to the format and constraints of the show – Scott Hanselman seems to be an intelligent guy, and I’m confident he knows more about Open Source than came across but it didn’t come across that way. It was interesting to see how Open Source is perceived by them, and their take on some of the problems we face.

Go listen and see what you think.