Relatively Ignorant Blog

Thanks to Simon Willison’s clear description of how to delegate an OpenID, I can use michaelstrasser.com as my OpenID URL.

In my previous investigations of OpenID I hadn’t discovered delegation. Brilliant!

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The latest web idea that might catch on is revyu (and it’s alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha, so don’t expect too much).

It looks like a good idea, but to use it I need to create yet another bloody net login! Aren’t we past that yet? Why no OpenID?

I almost Googlewhacked with a search for revyu openid: two pages generated by del.icio.us and one No such article from Gmane.

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Phew! I did goodest at the Are You Gooder at Grammar? quiz:

OK, so it’s really about punctuation, but it is fun.

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When I got my PowerBook nearly two years ago I started using NeoOffice for office documents. It is a Mac-specific port of OpenOffice.org and was a bit slow on the PB, but usable. I don’t use office apps very much at home and it was perfectly adequate for my needs.

After upgrading to the MacBook Pro I had to ditch NeoOffice because it didn’t work on Intel-powered Macs. It was also based on OOo version 1.x so it was a bit out of date. I switched to the OOo version 2 release that uses Mac’s X11.

OOo worked fine (but not very Mac-like) until last week, when it broke: it wouldn’t even start. The killer was probably Apple’s X11 update which I automatically installed (as you do…). Installing a new version of OOo and deleting OOo pref files did not fix things.

I couldn’t be bothered trawling the Net for solutions, reverting X11, etc. (the usual geeky fix-it-yourself stuff) so I took another look at NeoOffice. Lo and behold! the NeoOffice team had updated it to be based on OOo 2.x and to work on Intel Macs. A double bonus.

It is in beta but has worked fine for me so far. I can use the Command key again (As God Intended™). I have even donated money to support NeoOffice development.

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I watched some of the Australia vs. Paraguay match on TV last night. In every international soccer match I can remember watching (including the World Cup) the name of the host city is displayed in large letters in the centre of the ground-level advertising opposite the main TV camera. That way you can quickly tell where the match was played: a useful convention.

But not in Brisbane. The words on the gap in the advertising were too small be read in the usual TV long shot. Only when the players were in front of it, a close-up enabled the text to be read: Get Active in Queensland.

What the?

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I just discovered that Google Maps supports zooming with scroll-wheel mice. This is fantastic and makes the browser-based Maps much easier to use.

It works in IE6 and Firefox on Windows, and in Firefox, Safari and Opera on Mac. Well done, Google!

One thing though: the scroll wheel direction in Google Maps is opposite to that in Google Earth. In Maps a forward (up) scroll zooms in and a backward (down) scroll zooms out (this feels natural to me). But in Earth (as it is in Heaven?) a forward scroll zooms out and a backward scroll zooms in.

Are there competing software development camps in Google, like in Microsoft?

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Many Australians found out about the death of Steve Irwin today around 2pm local time, about three hours after he died. Word spread quickly around my office after one person found out via a phone call.

Like very many Australians (also in offices, I guess) I jumped on the Net to find out more. After reading a quick report on ABC News Online I looked further. I was amazed that for over half an hour all of these Australian online news services were overloaded:

• ABC News Online (ABC)
• NEWS.com.au (News Ltd)
• ninemsn (Consolidated Press)
• smh.com.au (Fairfax)

ABC News Online quickly put up an apology page, followed 20 minutes or so later with a Steve Irwin news page. It had a message stating that their servers were overloaded and that other features of ABC Online would be restored soon. The other services simply didn’t return pages.

It’s quite concerning that when this story broke, not one of the major Australian online news channels could cope with the load. What would happen if some really serious news broke during the day? Something like an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel?

Or wouldn’t as many Australians clamour to find out more as quickly?

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On Sunday I sang the biggest solo gig of my life so far: Elijah in Mendelssohn’s wonderful oratorio of that name. It was at the Lake Kawana Community Centre on the Sunshine Coast. (The hall has an easy natural acoustic – a rare beast when most hall builders don’t bother with catering for unamplified performance.)

The organisers opened the huge folding windows open at the side of the hall during the rehearsal and left them open during the first half of the performance. While we were singing the beautiful quartet chorale Cast thy burden upon the Lord, a crow outside the hall decided to join in and could be very clearly heard through the open windows.

Luckily for us, the crow chose to sing in E♭, the key of Cast thy burden.

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The newest instalment of Australian Idol has just started. Louise and the boys watch it and have a laugh at the no-hopers and jokers (and the judges too). I can’t bear to watch, mainly because of the no-hopers, but also because of the ‘good’ ones.

What I see and hear, apart from a very high proportion of mediocre singing ability, is an apalling lack of originality. I just see all these people trying to be someone else. Someone who sings with soul. Someone who sounds American. Anyone but themselves.

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Sometimes you get surprised by good service. We were last week when we discovered our fridge was warming up (the ice cream was more cream than ice).

Louise rang Fisher & Paykel on Monday and a serviceman came on Tuesday. He told us that the fridge was losing gas and that it need to go back to the service centre to have the leak fixed. Oh dear.

Then the good news. This fridge is still within its five-year warranty period (by three months) and will be fixed by F&P without charge to us. Also, they will lend us a fridge while ours is being fixed. On Wednesday a replacement (same model) was wheeled in and ours taken away to be fixed.

Wow. That is good service.

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