An amazing entry into the recent Threadcakes competition, a sped-up video diary of the creation.

Stolen faithfully from the news section on the RealVNC website..

VNC Enterprise Edition Version 4.5 Released

Tuesday May 12th, 2009

RealVNC is pleased to announce the release of Version 4.5 of VNC Enterprise Edition. Customers with support and maintenance cover are eligible for a free upgrade. This release, for Windows, Unix and Mac OS X platforms, includes the following major new features and enhancements:

• Printing – print files to the default printer attached to the computer running VNC Viewer.
• Cross-platform VNC Chat – chat with other connected users, or with a VNC Server user, across all supported platforms.
• Connection notification – VNC Server provides notification when users connect.
• Copy and paste non-ASCII text – special characters can be copied and pasted between computers, as well as normal text.
• Faster and more stable.
• New documentation.

Release notes/documentation are here and you can download it here.

My Macbook’s iSight camera randomly stopped working today, having worked fine ever since i’ve had it. I originally found the problem with photo booth, and went searching for a resolution. After reading numerous posts about potential fixes, I found out that you should try the following (in order of severity);

1) Double check that it isn’t limited to Photo Booth (try iChat, and check if you can take a new user picture from the Accounts preferences)

2) Make sure it isn’t limited to just your user, which would suggest a problem with your user settings. Login as someone else (create a test account if there’s only one account), and try the same applications.

3) Close and re-start the problem application.

4) Reboot your Mac.

5) Force shut down your Mac (hold shutdown key for 10 seconds)

I tried all of the following, and my iSight camera still wasn’t working. So the last resort, is to reset the SMC (Systems Management Controller) of your Mac, for which there’s a detailed guide in the apple knowledgebase:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1411?viewlocale=en_US

Full official apple article on troubleshooting your iSight camera is here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2090?viewlocale=en_US

.. Sign me up!

A new service called Graze has been set-up, and allows you to order daily/weekly deliveries of a small amount of fruit, dried fruit, nuts and other healthy snacks, for a relatively small price (£2.99 per box).

The snacks arrive in a single box, and you’re charged on the day that the food arrives (no mass payments). Looks like a really nifty idea to me for the person with a bit of extra cash, but too lazy to regularly buy fruit/snacks from the shops (like me..).

They seem to have a few promotions going, one of them allowing you to enter the following promotion code and get your first box for free. Why not give it a go?

Promotion code: PJWJLDNG (First box is free, second is half price)

You can cancel after the first free box if you don’t like it, without having to pay, so there’s really nowt to lose!

Link: http://www.graze.com

I came across this recently, and it made me smile.

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

It’s attributed to Emerson, although it seems that may be incorrect. Regardless of who the author is, it’s a fantastic quote.

Happy Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras or whatever else you may be celebrating!

For a year. I’ve seen people doing this for a while and really liked the concept, and told myself i’d do it for ages, until I finally got around to starting:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robmacintosh/sets/72157613046915827/

It’s pretty interesting looking at other peoples sets (I joined the flickr group “project 365″ where a whole load of people are doing it), different people have such varied skills and subject matter. Places, people, objects.. I seem to be all about the objects.

If a directory on your website doesn’t have an index page, then by default it’ll present the user with a directory listing. This isn’t usually a good thing, especially if it’s an image directory. You can prevent this from happening by modifying your .htaccess file (or creating it if you don’t have one).

Open your .htaccess file in notepad (or create one) and put:

IndexIgnore *

The * is a wildcard that matches everything, so if you put this in your htaccess file in your images directory, nothing in that directory will be listed.

If you want the directory contents to be listed, but ignoring certain files, you can:

IndexIgnore *.gif *.jpg

This will ignore all .gif and .jpg files in the directory, but list everything else.

Alternatively, if you want to blanket block all directory listing from all directories on your website, simply put the following in a .htaccess file in the root of your website (usually public_html):

Options -Indexes

… and lastly, if your web server already blocks directory listing by default (some apache webservers have this configured by default), but you want to enable directory listing for a particular directory, stick this in the .htaccess in the directory:

Options +Indexes

Words cannot express how much I want this right now:

BBQ Bacon Explosion

Finally, something different. Obama is challenging our expectations of a “say everything, do nothing” US government. It’s still early days, and he’s getting alot of media coverage that a long-term president might not, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s doing things, and keeping promises

Green light for US stem cell work – BBC news

Obama orders Guantanamo closure – BBC news

Obama aims for oil independence – BBC news

Obama reaches out to Muslim world – BBC news

Obama’s priorities for 2009 – BBC news