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barnskiblog

Barney's blog. Just a load of old shite really.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Remember Mozilla? - it was a rolled-up suite of open source web tools, including browser, e-mail client, a web page composer and an IRC chat client. It's what I used in the good old days before the tools got split up (the browser component became Firefox, the e-mail client became Thunderbird and the web page composer became Nvu. There's also work on the calendar component as Sunbird).
Anyhoo, Mozilla Application Suite went off the boil for some reason and stopped being developed by the Mozilla Foundation (I believe they just switched their focus to Firefox and Thunderbird). Then some enterprising Open Source developers picked up the code and started hacking on it again to produce "production-ready code derived from the application formerly known as Mozilla Application Suite". This project was named SeaMonkey and is now looked after by the SeaMonkey Council rather than the Mozilla Foundation (although Mozilla.org still host the SeaMonkey website).
Confused? Good.
Put simply, Mozilla lives on as SeaMonkey, and today marks the release of Version 1.0. To borrow some words:
"The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to deliver production-quality releases of code derived from the application formerly known as "Mozilla Application Suite". Whereas the main focus of the Mozilla Foundation is on Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, our group of dedicated volunteers works to ensure that you can have "everything but the kitchen sink" — and have it stable enough for corporate use.
SeaMonkey is available as a free download from its mozilla.org-hosted website, features a state-of-the-art web browser, a powerful email client, a WYSIWYG web page composer and a feature-rich IRC chat client. For web developers, mozilla.org's DOM inspector and JavaScript debugger tools are included as well."
So, all good, healthy open source stuff, and of course it runs on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. Downloads are here.
There's also an interesting post here that claims that, ironically, Mozilla is a faster browser than Firefox overall, despite the fact that Firefox is supposed to be smaller and lighter. I wonder if this holds true for SeaMonkey.......

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Monday, January 30, 2006

My Dad sent me a link to the Cloud Appreciation Society, who are are a bunch of friendly-sounding guys that, well, like clouds. They also have an awesome gallery of photos (I still can't believe that some of these are real) - this one in particular is superb.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

SkyOS is a new proprietary operating system (i.e. you will have to pay for it). It's still in Beta, but it does look very interesting - they've done everything from scratch, apparently (even if the icons are the same as those used by KDE).
I guess it seems like a halfway house between Windows and Mac OS X, so I reckon they might have a winner if the predicted demise of Microsoft on the desktop comes about. I mean, if you were to move away from Windows you would choose a Mac if you had enough funds. However, if you didn't have a bundle of cash and you wanted to re-use your PC hardware then SkyOS might make a fairly compelling alternative to Linux, especially if it's easy, multimedia-ready and well supported from the off.
Check out the video of SkyOS in action.

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Monday, January 23, 2006

I meant to post this a while back, but in the madness of moving house, I forgot. If you're a Windows or Linux user, chances are you use the Open Source Firefox browser from Mozilla, or maybe their excellent Thunderbird mail and news client (version 1.5 recently released, btw). You might even use them on a Mac. In any case, if you like Firefox or Thunderbird you might want to consider buying some cool gear to help advertise and support the software. I recently discovered that they have finally opened the International Mozilla Store which means that if you live in the UK or other (non-US) parts of the world, you no longer have to pay ferocious shipping charges.
I am now the proud owner of a tasty Firefox tee :)

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

iTunes Can Finally Stream to Multiple Speakers. This is great - it's been on my wish list for ages, and now they have finally sorted it out. I'm lucky enough to have 2 airport express units, and I can now stream music from iTunes to both simultaneously, thus filling my world with beautifully synchronised digital sound :)
It's probably worth an update even if you only have one Airport Express actually, as your local speakers also appear in the list, so you could stream to the stereo connected to the airport downstairs and the speakers connected to your mac at the same time.
The firmware update is here.
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Oh, and Ars|Technica have published a review of the new Intel iMac.
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Friday, January 13, 2006

A friend was telling me about an article he had read where someone had filled a PC with cooking oil as a sound-deadening exercise. Turns out it was those crazy guys at Toms Hardware. They say that the "non-conductive properties of the liquid created a totally cool and quiet high-end PC, devoid of the noise pollution of fans".

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006


Well, it's been a while. I am now living in my new house, and am still spending most of my spare time sorting through junk, putting stuff away, decorating, making shelves or buying additional stuff to put all my crap in.

Anyway, today seemed like a good day to try and kick-start the blog again, since Apple announced some really cool stuff last night (streaming video of the keynote is here). I can't be bothered to type up a big analysis, but some quick thoughts:

1 - New iMac. Same as old iMac, but featuring dual-core Intel CPU. Much faster at floating-point and integer, but we'll wait for the hardcore analysts to provide some independent results. The thing that I'm wondering about though is why did they put an Intel Core Duo CPU in it? - my understanding is that this is the Yonah - a mobile CPU, so it's designed for power-conservation as well as performance. This thing replaces a G5 in a desktop machine, so why not use a big hairy ole' Pentium D desktop dual-core in there? Screw the power consumption - give us the performance. If you need a differentiator for the Power Macs later, there's still dual-core Xeon and 64-bit above Pentium D in the Intel roadmap and due this year.
2 - New Macbook Pro. A 15" powerbook with a dual-core Intel Duo CPU. This is where the Intel Duo CPU belongs, as we need the low power consumption in a notebook. Looks much the same as the old Powerbook G4 15", but also features a funky new power adapter connector (why didn't I think of that?), built in iSight and FrontRow with Apple Remote. Very nice. Might have to get one when funds allow, as the G4 550MHz is looking a bit sluggish now......
3 - New iLife. Great. Definitely on the "to buy" list - new iPhoto handles more photos and has more features and iWeb offers a much needed update to the .Mac homepage offering with stacks of new features. Family pack is a bargain.
4 - New iWork. Still don't use it that much really, so personally I'm not too excited, but I'm still hoping they'll expand this to become a drop-in relacement for MS Office.
5 - Not really mentioned, but the online .Mac interface has been given a facelift, and it looks nice.

Basically, I'm still kinda gutted that Mac users are going to lose the differentiator of running on PowerPC instead of Intel. That said, if the 3-5x speed bumps are real, it's worth it.

I still love Apple :)