A (Very) Simple File Manager in PHP

July 20, 2015 | Comment

A while back I decided that I didn’t require my iPad any more so I sold it. On the whole I haven’t missed it until this week when I needed to do some testing for a project at work. Given that this was such a short term requirement buying an iPad just wasn’t sensible but I decided sitting in the local Apple store and spending half an hour doing the testing there was! However, part of what I needed to do was to save some screenshots and get them back to my work machine, something that the restrictions on the … Read the rest

The dio Naked Reversible USB cables

May 20, 2015 | Comment

Reversible USB cables are, it seems, a lot like buses – you don’t see any for ages and then two come along in quick succession. Just last month I wrote about the Belaycord and now here is the dio Naked from moopti.

Like Belaycord this is also being offered through a Kickstarter campaign and as of writing there are just over two days before that closes. Rather than have to wait for mine to arrive (I have backed the project) moopti kindly sent me a sample to review which arrived today.

The first thing you notice is how well the … Read the rest

Crapware, courtesy of Oracle Corp.

May 19, 2015 | Comment

I thought that the practice of forcing useless software onto users as part of an installation had died out but apparently not by the looks of this Java installer.

That this is being foisted upon us by Oracle, who clearly don’t need the little money they must be making from this, is a surprised as I thought this practice was restricted to smaller outfits but clearly not.

If you want to help stop this practice you can sign a petition at change.org here. … Read the rest

Thoughts on Apple Watch Battery Life

May 16, 2015 | Comment

I have been wrestling with the idea of an Apple Watch for a while and admit that it is beautifully made but what is really putting me off is the need to charge the thing every single day.

On reflection I can see that could be considered a positive thing. My existing Pebble has what can only be described as a variable battery life ranging from about 2 to 5 days. I have never been able to work out what makes it drain quicker sometimes more than others but it does mean that I need to keep an eye on … Read the rest

Casting a Presentation to Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV

May 9, 2015 | 2 comments

The last few years has seen the emergence of small devices that plug into the HDMI port of a TV, connect to your wifi, and allow you to stream from online services such as Netflix and Amazon.

What you also can do is “cast” content from a mobile device to the stick, content that includes movies, photos and music.

What isn’t currently possible is to cast documents to the stick and onto the screen which is a shame as it would be good to do so in situations where you might not have your laptop but do have the stick … Read the rest

Too Much Apple Watch

April 24, 2015 | Comment

I woke up this morning to find that Apple’s App Store has been overtaken by apps offering Apple Watch support. Nothing greatly surprising in that as it was officially launched today.

But does it really have to take up so much precious screen real estate? In fact given that I don’t have a watch and nor am I likely to be getting one anytime soon (due to this) can’t I make it go away altogether?

No, of course I can’t. That’s not allowed.… Read the rest

Opening Links in Evernote Client rather than Web

April 13, 2015 | Comment

Despite all it’s foibles Evernote remains one of my most used apps and being able to link to it from elsewhere, such the task app I use, adds enormous benefit.

At one point you used to be able to generate links that when clicked would open up in the desktop app, these started evernote://. At some point these were lost and the link generator in the client only returned http:// links meaning that the request opened in the web site app. Problem with this is that it is slower and I usually have to authenticate again to get access.

I … Read the rest

Belaycords Reversible USB Lightning Cable

April 6, 2015 | Comment

My Belaycords Reversible USB Lightning Cable arrived this morning and I’m pretty impressed and also left with the question why hasn’t this been done much, much sooner.

USB connectors have had one major problem (until the USB C arrived) in that they had to be inserted the right way round and when you were most likely to be doing that round the back of a PC in a dark corner it was bound to lead to frustration. It seemed that you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right but ended up always 100% wrong!

The Belaycord overcomes that … Read the rest

Resolving “Error 1 – Operation not permitted.”

March 31, 2015 | Comment

Trying to unpack a zip file this afternoon I kept coming across the error message “Error 1 – Operation not permitted.”. When I have had this before I have just switched from the default Archive app to Keka or Stuffit Expander and all has been good but for some reason that wasn’t working on this zip file.

Then I cam across the following tip on Stack Exchange. Drop into a terminal session, change to the directory with the zip file and run this command:

jar xvf <zip file name>

It worked a treat. Give it a go next time … Read the rest

Windows 10 Preview

March 26, 2015 | Comment

I finally got round to downloading and installing the Windows 10 preview this morning to allow me to test our web app with it and the latest version of Internet Explorer. I had also wanted to take a look at Project Spartan but it seems that isn’t available yet.

Like so many others I wasn’t a great fan of Windows 8 but based on the very brief look this morning Windows 10 is a vast improvement on what went before. The start menu has been restored and the titles are not incorporated and it’s not a bad look.

There is … Read the rest