While over in California this month we saw some rather interesting things. Thought I would share them.
..can you buy 4 Litres of wine for less than $8
..can you buy a sandwich bigger than your head
..can you buy weed from a doctor
..can you drive to the shops in a Monster Truck
..can you buy gifts and guns in the same shop
.. well California actually but im just listening to abit of Prodigy so I thought it appropriate.
Was over for just over two weeks, hired a car with Toni and went-a-road-trippin. First few days were down the coast from San Francisco down the Big Sur to LA. Then from LA accross to Vegas, then all the way back again.
Apart from a parking ticket (who knew you have to park in the same direction traffic is flowing?!) everything went pretty smooth. Toni is still over there, will be for the next 6 weeks, hitting the research with the very clever physics bods over at Berkly University.
As usual the holiday snaps can be found on my Picassa Web Albums page, but here are some highlights:
Well as I have announced (rather pointlessly) every time I moved in the past, I thought I would continue the tradition by announcing that I have moved again. This time its back again to my old room in one of my previous flats, The Grand Mancehster.
As I have already done a video of this place, Ill just reuse it:
EDIT: It would appear that Youtube have removed the soundtrack to the video, so, while watching this video imagine “Manson – Wide Open Space” playing in the background 
Tags: Flat, Manchester, Move, Personal, Video
Well after a little deliberation I decided to go for it and take a leap and pre-order a “WakeMate“. Mainly as an experiment but partially to fuel the geeky gadget lover inside of me, but I do think this sort of thing is a natural extension to our techno-obsessed lifestyle.
Im a big fan of Science-Fiction, and my favourite author is Peter F. Hamilton. In the vast majority of his books he portrays a future where humans and technology merge, generally just an extension of the shrinking of personal gadget devices (think iPhone) down to microscopic scales which can then be embedded in the body (nano-robotics). These personal devices then allow the user to interface with the internet directly, without screens or input devices. This I think is a logical direction of our shrinking hardware and smarter software.
Glimpses of this future have already been seen with basic data-visual augmentation apps such as Layar for the iPhone. In addition to the ‘net-interface’ capability of the technologies described by Peter F. the micro-devices are capable of reading biometric data from the body directly and also capable of modifying and augmenting the bodies own capabilities.
So back to the point of this post. I think that Wake Mate is a tentative step in the direction towards the “personal doctor” and “human augmentation”. What it does is monitor your sleeping pattern through a wrist-band you put on when you go to bed. As you sleep it records your cycles and if you set it to, it can wake you when it considers is the best time, so you always wake up feeling refreshed.
Thats the concept anyways. I have no idea if it will work, but as a techno-gadget-geek im willing to give it a shot for $50
P.S. I would like to point out that Wake Mate isnt the first to make such an app. Zeo Sleep Coach has been around for a while selling a product, it however, is 5 times more expensive than Wake Mate and doesnt interface with the iPhone.
Tags: iPhone, Productivity, Sleep, Utility
Following on today’s handy tips that I have commonly had to employ when dealing with fresh PC installs, I present PyDropboxPath.
As Dropbox doesnt let you rename the root folder your files are stored in on windows (Defaulted to “My Dropbox”) there are occasions when you want to choose a different name. In particular when you are running Bootcamp on a Macbook Pro with a drive shared between Windows and OSX.
Luckily some clever Python developer on the Dropbox Forums came up with a little tool that lets you rename said folder.
Again im just copy / pasting the install instructions directly from the forum (replacing the download link for the file):
Dowload: PyDropboxPath_082
Tested on Ubuntu Jaunty, Windows XP Pro and Windows7 x64 RC. Others tested on OSX and told me it was OK too 
Feedback welcome.
IF IN DOUBT, DO NOT USE and ask here first.
If it breaks up somewhere, please post here.
The old terminal 0.7.1 version is in a subdirectory, only use it if you do not have wxpython and your system paths have no non-ascii characters.
The windows (EXE) terminal version needs msvcr71.dll, and the EXE GUI version needs msvcp71.dll – It’s on the download list if you don’t have it.
If the GUI version generates a error log file telling
EOFError: EOF when reading a line
then you probably are missing the msvcp71.dll.
WARNING: If you change the dropbox folder name to a root of a drive (Like, from “C:\My Dropbox” to “D:\”) or you will miss key features like sync icon overlays and right-click context menu items – good ones like “share this folder” and “copy public link”. If you are okay with this, everything else works fine.
Note: I initially named the script ‘DropboxPath’ but there is one .NET app that does the same thing in the wiki with that name. From now on, the name is ‘pyDropboxPath’.
Just got my new computer at work. First thing I did was chuck out the stock keyboard and replace with my favourite mac aluminium keyboard.
As usual when trying to get Apple hardware to play nice with Microsoft there is a little friction. In this case the keyboard doesn’t come with any mapping drivers resulting in the fact that some of the keys are messed up and in wrong locations. So we get to the point of this post. As I have had to do this several times now I thought I would post my solution so I dont spend ages searching each time.
The solution is to use the Apple Pro Keyboard Layout from parkernet.com.
For convenience I have taken the details on how to use the file directly from the stite: http://parkernet.com/applepro/
Download
Download the installation package Apple_Pro_KBD_v2 (250K)
System requirements
Windows XP or Windows Vista, 32-bit or 64-bit versions. Maybe Windows 7 RC but not tested. Apple Pro Keyboard or new aluminium Apple Keyboard. Untested with wireless keyboards but it should work okay.
Installation
After unZipping the Apple_Pro_KBD_v2.zip file, open the Apple Pro KBD v2 directory and run the Setup.exe installation file.
The installer will run and automatically install the keyboard layout .dll file into the correct location for your operating system.
To remove the keyboard layout simply run the installer again.
Configuration
Use the Windows XP Regional and Language Options control panel to select the new keyboard layout. Full details are included in the read me text file included in the ZIP download.
For those of you who want a step-by-step guide with pictures that you can print out, click here.
Sorry there’s no Vista step by step, but I have skillfully avoided Vista since it’s release.
Keystrokes
All keys now operate as per the legends printed upon them.
Shift-2 = @
Ctrl-Alt-2 = €
Shift-3 = £
Ctrl-Alt-3 = #
Well I guess im a little late to the party but I have recently discovered the joy that is Google Reader.
I never truly understood the purpose of RSS readers until I started to wonder how I could make my daily trawl of flash, flex, tech blogs faster and more efficient. It was then I re-discovered google reader (I had played with it before but didnt understand the purpose too much).
Needless to say it has pretty much transformed how I use the web. Now instead of opening 20+ tabs every day to check my favourite blogs I instead just add a subscription to the blog and then I am updated whenever there are new posts. Old concept I know but im amazed how I did without it until now.
There is one problem however. Im a little bit of a neat freak and I just cant stand seeing that there are unread items. This becomes an issue if you subscribe to a very busy site such as Gizmodo. If I leave it for a day or two without checking im liable to have 100 posts from that one site alone to read. As much as it pains me I have taken to reading about 10-20 from this site a day then clicking the “mark as read” button, just so that its nice and tidy 
Well I had mentioned this in a previous post but I thought I might as well add a separate post for it as its quite a big bit of personal news.
Today was my first day at my new job in Wilmslow (20 mins south of manchester) with a new startup named Playdemic.
I cant say what exactly it is im going to be doing yet but it will be Flash related as usual
I will say however, that I am very excited however about the work and the working environment, im eager to get cracking!
Well, this is just incredible, I dont think in my lifetime I have EVER seen so much snow in the UK letalone the city where it NEVER snows, Manchester.
This picture from a work colleague illustrates just quite how much fell over night:
Also the snow is totally perfect for building snow women!
And its STILL snowing! I just took this one out the office window:
Its incredible, snow just seems to bring out some really primal aspect out in me, so excited 
Well after the thieving of my bike a few weeks ago I was offered a new bike as replacement by the insurance company, a Kona Shred, another dirt bike.
And here it is:
Doesnt it look mean?
I dont really need a dirt bike as im not exactly going off road in the centre of Manchester so I had a half-hearted go of selling it on ebay.
In the end I have decided that ill keep it as it is very shiney and im abit of a magpie
Michael is a Professional Flash Developer currently based in Manchester UK. His passion is all things programming, particularly Games and Particle Systems.