A random thought for the day…
Too few people realise that the ICT industry has revenues of nearly $70 billion. Our employment is larger than banking and finance, larger than television, media and communications, larger than mining, and larger than wool, wheat and sugar combined. We are a significant contributor to the social and economic wellbeing of our country.
Why is it then that so few understand how important ICT is?
Being a web developer, I always struggle with the arduous task of testing websites in different browsers. I’d already had a way to test multiple versions of Internet Explorer but now there’s a solution to check multiple versions of Safari.
The challenge with Safari is that Safari normally uses the Web Kit framework found inside Mac OS X to render web pages and execute javascript. This means that if you preserve an old version of Safari to run it on a newer version of Mac OS, it will use the newer Web Kit found in the system and you will get the same results as with the newer version. Thus, you would normally need a separate installation of Mac OS X for each version of Safari you want to test a website into.
These special versions of Safari use the original Web Kit framework that came with them, bundled inside the application. They will mimic original Safari rendering and javascript behaviours.
They even have funky icons to tell each version apart. Now I can test Safari 2, Safari 3, IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and Firefox 2 side by side, all on my Mac! Happy coding!
Yes, that’s right, my shiny new iMac has arrived. It was taking it’s sweet time getting here and after the initial backlog of orders, it’s finally made it to my desk. That’s not to say it wasn’t hard work getting it here. You see if my brother had been awake when TNT tried to deliver the package (at 1.15pm) yesterday it wouldn’t have been a problem! But no, so after many calls back and forth, I managed to get them to let me go pick it up today - in Hallam!! Ah the things you do for your toys. :)
Anyway, the thing is totally awesome. I wasn’t too sure about the glossy screen but after going to DesignWyse to look at one before I ordered, I’m quite happy with how it’s turned out. It really depends on the lighting conditions in the room, and well, mine has its back facing the window so there’s no glare problems here.
Other than that, it’s just a Mac. There’s not much different about this than any other - except for me, discovering what it’s like to finally have an iSight built-in and an Apple remote that launches Front Row (not that that’s anything to write home about). At least I’m sweet for the next three years now. At around $2500 it’s a fraction of the price of my Powerbook back in the day. What a bargain!
Among my busy first week back from holidays, I’ve managed to find a little time to update my TomTom maps. It turns out that while I was away Dean managed to obtain a copy of the latest Australian maps (v14). It’s always handy to keep the maps as up-to-date as possible because it means you get lost less often! I was surprised at how easy it was to install them and there are a lot of changes - it even includes EastLink.
While I was there, I also updated to the latest version of Tripmaster. This has to be the most useful TomTom third party application out there. It allows you to log where the car has been and then import that information into Google Earth for further analysis. It has a stack of other features too - like the ability to keep track of the highest speed you have achieved in your car (something I can see Dean is enjoying!). If you have a TomTom, you really should get it. I’ve been using it for over a year now, and it only keeps getting better.
All I need now is the update to the Core OS v7 which is due out sometime this quarter. Maybe it might even be time for an upgrade. :)
Today, for something completely different I attached my iSight to my car and recorded my trip to work. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to go to work during the day. I’ve sped it up because obviously you don’t want to sit around for half an hour! The traffic was pretty bad, so if you see me stopped, at 30x speed, I’m stopped for quite a while. It’s kinda interesting. I might have to rig it up for the next road trip to Bright.
Get Adobe Flash Player to see this video.
It’s my one weekend off (no Saturday sport or Rehearsals) so I took the opportunity to head up to Bright. To my surprise, the weather up here is actually cooler than Melbourne by about six degrees or so. It’s usually hotter this time of year but I’m not complaining! Bright is such a great town all year round.
Now I don’t usually blog while I’m up here, and that’s because dial up is a pain and makes everything ten times harder. So why am I blogging this time? Well it’s because I have Telstra Wireless Broadband. The whole wireless broadband thing sorta frustrates me. The speed is surprisingly good, but the cost really outweighs the benefits. Now I know there are the economists out there who’ll say that Telstra are simply paying off their investment in the whole NextG Network, but c’mon $109 for 1GB/month. That’s a little extreme.
It’s so typical of Telstra to overprice their services that it makes me wonder what would happen if they ever lowered them to a reasonable level. People might actually start to buy them! But who am I kidding, nothing is going to change. At least for the meantime, I can enjoy broadband speeds wherever I am!