Bit of a dilemma here. The iPhone headphones aren’t brilliant (nowhere near enough bass, leak sound like a sieve – which is bad news for anyone near me, because I like to listen loud), but the hands-free is excellent. Anyone know if there’s a *good* set of iPhone phones that also include a mic? I’m thinking something along the lines of the mighty, mighty in-ear Shures that make even the worst MP3 sound superb…
Woo-hoo! Glasgow tickets here… full European tour dates and ticket links are on the official site, here.
If your wi-fi’s been flaky since installing Leopard (mine was disappearing every few seconds, forcing me to turn Airport off and back on again each time), this might be the answer:
* Find the AppleAirPort2.kext file in Macintosh HD/System/Library/Extensions and delete it
* Launch Software Update and install (or reinstall) the Login & Keychain update
* Restart
It did the trick on my Powerbook, anyway.
Anyone know of a cheap PC web design package that’s roughly equivalent to iWeb, Rapidweaver or the like? Something that builds (nice) standards-compliant sites that’ll behave in Firefox, comes with a fully functional tryout and is particularly good for beginners?
I’ve been asked for a recommendation but I haven’t covered PC web stuff for a wee while now, and I think the last one I looked at was Serif’s WebPlus. It’s amazing how quickly you can lose touch with the market when you’re not covering it from month to month.
As you’d expect, most of the books about pregnancy and being a new parent are written for women. If you’re lucky, the dad gets a passing mention – “make sure he helps with the housework!” – but most of the time you don’t even get that. Maybe it’s because dads aren’t interested; more likely, it’s that dads are just expected to get on with it.
And that’s a shame, because imminent fatherhood is really bloody scary. You worry about all kinds of things, from big things – will I bond with the baby? – to really big things, such as whether you’ll ever go to the pub again (yes!) and at whether it’s still acceptable to ogle Girls Aloud when your very pregnant partner is feeling rubbish (no!). But to the authors of “so, you’re going to have a baby!” books, none of that matters. Those books are for mums, not you.
Hurrah, then, for Fatherhood: The Truth by Marcus Berkmann. I’m not just recommending it because it’s very (often brutally) honest; I’m recommending it because it made me laugh like a drain. The following bit’s typical:
All new fathers are obsessed with not dropping the baby. I have never seen this mentioned in any of the books, but it’s our overwhelming concern. Most of us have never held a newborn baby before. Most of us have fled the house rather than hold a newborn baby. But you can’t avoid holding your own.
So what if you do drop it? First, you will establish whether or not it bounces.
If that makes the book sound rather laddish, it’s not. It’s actually a very warm and sympathetic look at fatherhood from conception to the first birthday party, and it answers all the questions you might have (including the ones you’re too scared/embarrassed to ask other people).
It won’t change your life – that’s the baby’s job – but it’ll give you a much better idea of what to expect, how to cope with it and how to deal with Competitive Dads.
Using Mail.app? Want a three-panel layout with the message at the right instead of underneath? Then get yourself the Widescreen plugin, a wonderful wee bit of code.
I’ve just bought an iPhone, despite saying I wouldn’t. It’s not because O2′s dumped its daft data transfer limit, although that helps. It’s not that O2′s decided to play nice with existing customers or that its iPhone tariff actually saves me a tenner compared to the Blackberry contract I’m on, although that helps too. And it’s not pure techno-lust, although that’s part of it. It’s because I spent the other night standing in the pouring rain in a supermarket car park, cursing my phone.
The other night, we needed something for the baby and it couldn’t wait. After trawling the supermarkets without success, I tried to find a late night chemist. No bother – just Google it. So I did. Or rather, I spent ages typing the search query into my Blackberry’s browser, hit OK, and got the Google home page instead. No search. So I typed the search again, and the browser crashed.
In the end I phoned home, and Mrs Bigmouth used the laptop to Google for me. When you’re paying 40-odd quid per month for an internet-enabled phone, that just isn’t good enough.
Plus, the iPhone looks nice.
(A little later – the iPhone may look nice but my God, O2 really are a bunch of spanners)
In no particular order:
* The Google ads are back on the blog, because rather depressingly ads generate a small income and affiliate links don’t, unless you’re willing to spend time highlighting all the partner firms’ special offers. Which I’m not. The point of the ads (for me) is to pay the hosting bill, not to become the content.
* Leopard. Quite nice. Not vaguely essential. Seems faster than Tiger on the G4 Powerbook, no speed difference that I can see on the MacBook Pro. It’s a bit like upgrading to Vista, IMO: nice to have, but not a must-have.
* iPhone. Now O2′s dumped its dumb data transfer limit, I’ve changed my mind – partly because my (o2) Blackberry bankrupts me whenever I use the web browser, and partly because the BB Pearl’s screen is too damn small to do anything useful internet-wise. And the iPhone’s small enough to use while bouncing babies around, which is becoming an important consideration for me.
* I am very much liking Half-Life 2 Episode 2.
A while back I mentioned the “So You Want To Be a Writer?” ads, whose claims were a tad misleading. Rob Spence took ‘em to the Advertising Standards Authority and won.
That’s me back at work, although thanks to a baby-induced news blackout Google could have built a robot army and taken over the world for all I know. I’ve got a mountain of email to wade through, so apologies if you’re waiting for a reply to something and haven’t heard from me yet. You will, eventually.
On a tangent, this page layout is busted in Safari 3.0. Any webby types know whether it’s the CSS or a Safari issue?
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