Ingredients
2 Tins Chopped Tomatoes
100g Frozen Carrots (A handful)
1 tbsp Olive Oil 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp Dried Basil
2 Garlic Cloves (thinly sliced)
1 tbsp Tomato Puree
1 Large Onion (chopped)

Method
Heat the oil over a moderate heat in a large saucepan. Fry the onions and the garlic until softened. Add the tomato puree and tomatoes and stir until fully mixed. Add the Basil and salt, then turn up the heat a little. Add the carrots and simmer very gently for 10-15 minutes. Transfer the contents of the saucepan to a blender and blitz. Alternatively, you can use a stick blender directly in the saucepan, but make sure you get all the chunky bits. Return the soup to the pan and heat gently. Add water and keep stirring until you reach the desired consistency. The amount of water you require will depend on how watery your tomatoes were, and how thin you like your soup. Serve hot with some (preferably fresh) bread. Yum.

Note: Although I’ve included carrots, they dont really add anything to the flavour, they are included for texture. You could use fresh ones if you have any handy, but I always have vegetables in the freezer.

Google wasn’t much help initially, but I did eventually come across this gem.

Whilst, like Apple, that article does discuss the process of copying from one physical machine to another, the process described works just as well when copying from a backup. In my case, I backed up the entire hard drive contents of my iMac using SuperDuper! before I wiped the iMac clean. So I had every file I’d ever need, including old system files.

A friend of mine recently bought a new MacBook Pro, and asked me how he could transfer his iTunes stuff to it from his G4 iMac. As he was not familiar with the Terminal, or Unix/Linux commands, I gave him an expanded version of the above article. If you’re in the same boat, here is the full process he followed to ‘restore’ iTunes:

Notes:
The backup drive (or in this case, a target-disk-mode iMac) is referenced here as /Volumes/BACKUP. You will need to substitute this in the paths below with the location of your backup.
To make things as clear as possible, I’ve used blue to show source paths (where your backups are), and orange for destination paths (on your new Mac).
The commands as displayed below may span several lines, but they are all entered on one line in Terminal, followed by Enter/Return.

• Close iTunes if it is currently running, and ensure your iPhone/iPod is not connected to your Mac.
• Open the ‘Terminal’ application. The following commands all need to be performed at the command line in Terminal.
• Copy your iTunes folder from your backup to its new location (this could take a while, be patient!):

cp -R /Volumes/BACKUP/Users/rob/Music/iTunes /Users/rob/Music/

• Followed by your iPhone/iPod backups (the double quotes are important here):

cp -R “/Volumes/BACKUP/Users/rob/Library/Application Support/MobileSync” “/Users/rob/Library/Application Support/“

• Then your iTunes configuration files:

cp /Volumes/BACKUP/Users/rob/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes* /Users/rob/Library/Preferences/

• Open iTunes on your new Mac, and verify that all looks as it once did. Your Applications and Ringtones should also be showing (if applicable).
• Connect your iPhone/iPod and synchronise.

Many thanks to Major at RackerHacker.com for the original article which this information is based on.

I’ve installed countless Windows Server 2003 VMs, and not had any issues. Pre-morning-coffee, it wasn’t immediately obvious why Windows XP would have any issues installing, especially as its listed as a supported VM type during the virtual hardware configuration steps.I found some very helpful instructions here:  http://vantoft.org/2009/01/05/esx-esxi-windows-xp-guest-install-reports-no-hard-disk-found/

Essentially, VMware ESX gives you a choice of Buslogic or LSI Logic SCSI adapters for Windows XP VMs. The Windows XP CD installer doesn’t have built-in support for these adapters, and therefore cannot see the VMs hard drive(s). As such, you need to download a floppy disk image containing the necessary SCSI adapter driver. Thankfully, VMware provides this floppy disk image for download. Follow the 6 steps in the above link to proceed with the Windows XP installation.

I’ve read several articles over the last few months relating to how Apple always seem to be ‘working’ with record labels and movie distributors to improve sales of albums and movies on the iTunes store. Most recently is the news that they may be looking to include better ‘digital booklets’, or some kind of ‘interactive digital booklet’. Now, dont get me wrong, I like iTunes. I regularly buy my music from iTunes, but mostly, it’s just singles, or the odd specially-priced EP. Sometimes even a music video. I’ve not bought a single movie or music album from the iTunes store. I also know that I’m not alone with this. There’s a very good reason I don’t buy movies or music albums for download, and one that Apple (and the record companies/movie studios) seem to be ignoring.

As an example, let’s look at the top 5 albums currently in the iTunes music store:

1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol 73 – Various Artists
iTunes Price: £16.99
CDWOW CD Price: £ 10.99

2. iTunes Price:Lungs – Florence & The Machine
iTunes Price: £7.99
CDWOW CD Price: £6.99

3. Number Ones – Michael Jackson
iTunes Price: £5.99
CDWOW CD Price: £5.99

4. The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies) – Black Eyed Peas
iTunes Price: £7.99
CDWOW CD Price: £6.99

5. La Roux – La Roux
iTunes Price: £7.99
CDWOW CD Price: £6.99

iTunes albums have been getting cheaper, but the £6 difference between the prices of the ‘Now’ album is staggering. Out of the other 4 albums, there’s no difference between the Michael Jackson album versions, and the remaining 3 all cost £1 less for a physical CD. If you prefer the instant gratification from instant download, then the iTunes version may be preferable. Personally, I think that the short wait for a physical CD to be delivered is worth it for original-quality backup purposes alone.

Now, lets look at my biggest issue with the iTunes store – Movies. Again, going with the top 5 movies in the iTunes movie store:

1.Marley & Me (2009)
iTunes Price:  £10.99
CDWOW DVD Price: £10.99

2. Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
iTunes Price: £3.99
Amazon DVD Price: £4.98 (Double Pack)

3.  The Dark Knight (2008)
iTunes Price:  £6.99
Amazon DVD Price: £5.98 (2 Disc)

4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
iTunes Price: £6.99
Amazon DVD Price: £3.98

5. Borat (2007)
iTunes Price: £6.99
Amazon DVD Price: £3.98

I’m impressed with some of the lower priced movie offerings from iTunes, especially the Ice Age pricing. However, for less than £1 more, you can buy the Double DVD version, which includes the first Ice Age film! With the exception of Marley & Me (a new release), which is the same price for both download and DVD, all of these movies can be purchased cheaper in DVD format. Not only that, but some are even the 2 disc versions, offering much more than just the movie.

How can these download prices be justified? Whilst I appreciate that there are hosting, admin and bandwidth costs to consider, these are inconsequential in comparison to the manufacturing and distribution costs of physical media. In my opinion, Apple need to stop worrying about bundling unnecessary ‘digital booklets’ and other such gimmicks, and just make these downloads cheaper. If they truly want to stop people from illegally downloading music and movies, stop making them so prohibitively expensive! I’m a big believer in the KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Why keep trying to add all the superfluous nonsense in order to keep the price high? It’s the movie/song that people have come to your store to buy.

Rant over

Note: I’m not affiliated with Amazon or CDWOW, nor endorsing their services, I just mentioned them as they were the cheapest I could find at the time.

In Microsoft Windows, you can right-click and select ‘Open with’, choose the relevant application and check the box for ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’. This has pretty much always worked for me. Mac OS X has a similar right-click option, but this doesn’t always seem to work system-wide, as you might expect.

In order to make this change system-wide, you need to take a different approach. Right-click on the file you wish to always open in a particular program (the .png file in my case), and select ‘Get Info’. There is a section in the pane that opens for ‘Open with:’, and the ‘rogue’ application should be selected. Choose the required application (‘Preview’ in my case) from the pull-down list, and select the ‘Change All’ button. Confirm that you wish to make this change to all files.

Now when I double-click any .png file, it immediately springs open in Preview, and doesn’t try to launch Photoshop instead.

I’m pretty sure it’s the same procedure for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) too.

If you missed it, the train is completely full (about 39 carriages!) of Fiat Panda’s and Fiat 500’s, as it’s leaving (if I read Google’s translation correctly) Stacja Ostrów Wielkopolski (Ostrow Station) making its way north across Poland, about 240km from Tychy (where the cars are assembled).

Updated 22/06/2009

As with most of the rest of the Worlds iPhone owners, I updated my iPhone 3G to the long-awaited OS 3.0 on Wednesday 17th June 2009. Surprisingly, it seemed to take far less time to complete than any of the other software updates I’ve applied to my iPhones. As to be expected from what we already knew though, most of the new features are subtle ones. The most obvious is the Messages app, which has replaced the old SMS app. Other than that, theres nothing remarkably obvious to differentiate it from 2.2.1. Not that thats a bad thing.

I’ve been reading about the 100+ new features, both known and hidden, but I wanted to note down the ones I’ve experienced which I particularly like or dislike. I’ll keep adding to this list as time goes on.

The Good

• SMS Previews can be turned off, regardless of whether you have a passcode lock set or not.
  
• Messages that fail to send get added to the conversation, but are marked with an exclamation, which you tap to resend.
• No more waiting for a message to finish sending before starting another
• You can turn off the multiple message alert sound (this would have been more useful in 2.2.1, as ive become used to it now!)
• MMS (needs no explanation!)
• Spotlight search
• Copy & Paste (Going to take some getting used to though. It pops up a lot when you dont want it)
• The call log has little icons to indicate outgoing or incoming calls
• ‘lol’ no longer autocorrects to ‘LOL’ (that was highly irritating)
• ‘fir’ will most often (but not always) autocorrect to ‘for’ (this was so annoying previously. I rarely want to type ‘fir’, but often type it by mistake when typing ‘for’)
• CalDAV support. I can now sync my Google calendar directly to my iPhone, and it updates in the background.

The Bad (IMHO)

• No Battery % meter on non 3G S phones. Why?
• Still cant watch Movies in portrait
• Still cant assign custom message alert tones
• After sending a message, the keyboard stays on screen (why doesnt it disappear if you tap in the conversation area?)

The Ugly (Things that work, but could be better)

• Messages speech bubbles are unnecessarily narrow(er) – I’ve discovered that this does not occur with iPhone 2G handsets.
• Messages icon doesnt look right with a blank speech bubble

For the last couple of years, I switched hosting of my main site (this one) to another hosting provider – BlueHost. However, in the last few months of my time with them, the level of service slipped considerably, to the point where large portions of my site would often disappear or fail to work properly. I switched back to NFS recently, and I’m so glad I did. Their hosting is quick, reliable, and affordable.

However, as I mentioned, it really is a bare bones solution. There’s no cpanel here. They wont install WordPress, etc, for you. You need to roll up your sleeves and get geeky in the terminal.

The biggest issue i’ve faced since moving my site back to NFS, is the inability to upgrade plugins successfully through the dashboard using WordPress 2.7. Every time I try to upgrade a plugin, I get a set of warnings along the following lines during reactivation:

Warning: include_once(/f1/content/xxxxxx/public/wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: Inappropriate ioctl for device in /f1/content/xxxxxx/public/wp-settings.php on line 473

Warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘/f1/content/xxxxxx/public/wp-content/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/nfsn/apps/php5/lib/php/:/nfsn/apps/php/lib/php/’) in /f1/content/xxxxxx/public/wp-settings.php on line 473

It also squirts these warnings into the top of my webpages. Not good! The only way I could work around this warning was to deactivate the plugin, then delete the plugin, and then reinstall the plugin. What a mess.

Although I’ve not yet found a fix as such, I have found a decent workaround, which is far easier and quicker than any of the other suggestions I’ve come across:

1. Deactivate the plugin
2. Upgrade the plugin
3. Activate the plugin

Seems simple enough, but this is the only consistent way I’ve found of upgrading plugins and avoiding the warning messages. If anyone else has any suggestions, please leave me a comment as I’d be grateful to hear about them.

UPDATE 15/06/2009: This workaround seems to work very intermittently for me. However, I have noticed a much greater success rate if the ‘all in one SEO pack’ is deactivated EVERY time I try to upgrade ANY plugin.