Leopard

I had no idea TNT deliver on Sundays.  It doesn’t make up for their call centre lies, though.

Anyway, it’s very nice.  The big flashy features are great (I actually like the new dock and menu bar) but the small things are where you get nice surprises.  For example, when you hit enter to rename a file in the Finder, it now selects only the filename and not the extension, eliminating the need to position the cursor with the arrow keys.

Do Not Use This Company

I have sat at home all day waiting for Leopard to arrive, and TNT have failed to deliver it, despite several call centre employees assuring me it was on the truck and out for delivery today. TNT, you suck.

Steve, I know you’re probably busy today pimping your new operating system, but when you finally get round to checking your RSS reader and notice an update on your subscription to j4mie.org, please heed this advice: TNT must be punished for breaking that final link in your impeccable customer satisfaction chain. There are several ways you could accomplish this, but here are just three suggestions:

• Immediately withdraw all your business from them. That’ll teach them for failing to employ a few extra drivers to deal with the demand.
• Ban all their employees permanently from Apple Stores. Not only will they be unable to take stupid pictures of themselves with Photo Booth and upload them to their MySpace accounts, they’ll be stuck using Windows forever. Actually, this option may be slightly too cruel.
• Brick their iPhones.

Shipped!

Prepared for Shipment

A couple of links..

Seminar groups:

Life and Mind

New Approaches to Modelling Evolution/Ecosystems

Blog Action Day: Another Kind Of Green

So today is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is Global Warming. Oops, I mean Climate Change. Or, as the organisers themselves diplomatically and non-specifically put it, the environment. “What would happen,” they ask in the catchline of their website, “if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day?” As if the answer is obvious: the temperature of the planet will begin to decrease, of course. Well, it all sounds like a lot of hot air to me (Ouch. I apologise for subjecting your eyeballs to that pun).

Why the scepticism? It certainly doesn’t stem from the science: the data is in, and the results are conclusive. Even Sir David Attenborough is convinced. There is no serious argument to be made against the fact that we are changing things for the worse, and something needs to be done.

Continue reading Blog Action Day: Another Kind Of Green…

Tadpoles

My latest project with Processing has been implementing a flocking algorithm based on Craig Reynolds’ “Boids” using the Traer Physics Library.

“Tadpoles” simulation

See the full article for more.

Continue reading Tadpoles…