July 2006

The new OS X Beta of Skype is out featuring support for the built in iSight camera.

Get it now all you Skyperz!

Get Skype and call me for free.

Just been reading this page I found over at the del.icio.us/popular page.

Cosmic Calendar, The Universe In One Year.

It describes the time since “the big bang” to now, compressed into the equivalent of one year, with each month equalling roughly 1 billion years.

Not much happens to begin with, the sun and the planets form in August and a few multi cellular organisms start to evolve around November - just in time for fireworks night.

The real good stuff all happens on December 31st. Apes pop their heads up and are noticed at 10:15am and evolve into “modern humans” at 11:54pm - after they have been for a few pints and a kebab on their way home to watch the new years eve celebrations on TV.

At one second before midnight on that same day, the voyage of Christopher Columbus sets sail. I expect that fractions of a second before big ben chimes the first “bong” of new year, the world spirals into war, poverty and environmental meltdown - but they left that bit out.

I wonder how many days the world would last after that…

Found over at www.orsm.net NSFW BTW!

Got it working - even with firewalls on!

And what did we do to get it working? Fuck all!

To my Brother and his new wife Ravi who were married today.

About this time, six years ago I was saying “i do” to the person who is now my wife.

She does read my blog sometimes, so I just wanted to say…

“I love you”

At the risk of turning MegaTao into a “switchers blog” and although it has only been about one week since I blogged about my new MacBook laptop, I feel the need to “big it up” some more.

Although, I must confess, it has crashed on me twice now.  Once when I was trying to load Photoshop and it would not load, just bounced the icon up and down on the dock and then did nothing.  It also crashed, again when using Photoshop and forced me to restart the machine.  Nothing major I suppose - and probably to be expected after pulling it in and out of sleep mode all the time.

I have migrated from using the Safari browser to Firefox and now onto Camino which seems to give all the benefits of both. WhiteBoyBob and I failed to get iChat to work last night - probably due to a firewall/router/port forwarding issue - so we will have to try again another time.

I am still getting to grips with the workspace, using Expose to show/hide the open windows.  Sometimes you cannot select a window, such as the Firefox download window for example.  Each time I attempted to select it last night it just popped Firefox back up instead.  It was misbehaving a little last night though whilst I was trying to download an… er…. video.  But all seems ok now.

I have also installed the VLC Media Player which, as per the Windows XP version, is excellent.

I turned back on the Bluetooth and synchronised my Motorola phone contacts straight into my Address Book first time with no issues.  The cheeky little application even had the nerve to display an exact picture of my phone!  I was then easily able to transfer files backwards and forwards with no issues - not like my experience with Bluetooth under XP!

I have yet to really dabble with iDVD, iMovie or iPhoto.  I have some pics in iPhoto and was able to create a slideshow with music very quickly.  USB devices such as printers, cameras and portable disks all work perfectly with ease too.

One thing I must do is find out more of the system keyboard shortcuts.  I expect that pressing the Apple key and F might bring up the Finder, but we shall see.

Last year I was diagnosed with a possible Systolic Flow Murmur in my heart.

After months of waiting for the results of the 24 hour holter monitor and an ultrasound scan of my heart two weeks ago I met with the doctor today to go over the findings.

Basically and in a nutshell - my heart is fine.  Perfect results from all of the tests.  Nothing is wrong.

A flow murmur can be detected if one of the valves in the heart is faulty but can also be a result of a “young persons metabolism” forcing blood round the body faster than, say, an older person.  Also because I am a skinny runt, the sound from the blood flow through my heart can be heard better than, say, if I had giant Man Boobs that got in the way of the stethoscope, or a thick coating of blubber surrounding my main organ.  Therefore it could sound as if a flow murmur is there - but as it turns out, it is’nt.
I celebrated with a quick bust of Nordic Cross Country Skiing preceeded by a triple shot expresso with 12 sugars.  And it still did’nt burst!

There’s nothing like being told you are fit and healthy(ish) by a qualified doctor.  For once I feel really “alive“.

You may have seen this little flash based game already - but I don’t really care!!

All praise to the nutting frenchman who was still hailed as a hero when he returned to France after his red card sending off against Italy in the World Cup Final. He was also awarded the Man Of The Match award too! WTF!

What was he thinking?

EDIT: Some classic interpretations of this event over at The Register