JustTheSam

Woodlouse Spider

18. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Nature, Photography

Look what Mrs C found in the bathroom today! A very large woodlouse spider – at least 25mm including legs, which seems to be as large as they come. I've seen smaller ones before, about half this size. Yes, this picture was taken through the side of the pint glass that I put over it! These slightly scary spiders have very large bitey things at the front (technical term chelicerae) and can give a nasty nip apparently, though are unlikely to.

Beer Review: Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer

15. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Beer, Food and Drink

I bought this in the hope that it might be in some sense a real beer, but it's basically just an alcopop. Not being a complete fool, I realistically expected that to be the case but assumed that it might at least be quite a special and interesting variant on the ginger beer theme. I like a nice ginger beer, but this is nothing special I'm afraid – sweet and straightforward. It might be just the right drink for certain circumstances, but I can't see myself buying it again.

Beer Review: Fuller’s HoneyDew

14. July 2009 · 2 comments · Categories: Beer, Food and Drink

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this before now as it's a classic and a firm favourite of mine. At 5% ABV and with just enough honey to notice but not overpower, this is a well balanced brew. This is true in every sense with not too much bitterness either – just enough to counter the sweetness. It doesn't taste as alcoholic as it is and I reckon it's a perfect if-you're-going-to-have-just-one-beer-in-an-evening beverage. I prefer it reasonably chilled – more so than less sweet ales – which probably makes me a philistine, but so be it. It's quite similar in style to some of the more floral, sweet and spicy Badger beers, of which I am also a huge fan.

Name That Car

12. July 2009 · 3 comments · Categories: Culture, Photography

A classic car seen at a steam rally in St Albans. But what is it? Answers on a postcard please.

Fly My Pretty

10. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Nature, Photography

Shaw’s Corner, at Ayot St Lawrence

09. July 2009 · 1 comment · Categories: Nature, Photography, Travel

On a balmy summer's day (the day of the men's final at Wimbledon) we ventured back to Shaw's Corner for a stroll around its beautifully relaxed gardens. This is where playwright George Bernard Shaw lived for over 40 years. The house and gardens aren't huge, but I like their style – lazy, slow, ambling and pleasant. Lawns, shady paths, vibrant flowerbeds, meadowy orchards, languid trees, and all kept in a not-too-formal style that sees the stresses ooze out of me.

I only had my macro lens, so no sweeping panoramas – you'll have to take my word for it on the descriptions above, or visit the National Trust page I've linked to for that sort of thing.

This is a slightly frayed Comma butterfly, amidst the meadowy flowers and grasses.

iCal Event Inspector – Welcome Back!

08. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Mac

I hear that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will herald the return of the permanently visible event inspector panel in iCal. I've really missed it for the last couple of years. Double clicking each item then clicking "Edit" is a major chore and I look forward to getting back to the simple old ways.

Whilst they're at it I hope they fix the basic mouse event handling so I can reliably grab and drag the edges of an event. The current behaviour seems to be based on coin flips.

Update: It's not quite what I hoped unfortunately. Rather than having a fixed panel for displaying and editing the full details of the currently selected event, there is a popup window. In exactly the same manner as the Finder's Get Info window, this can also be opened as an 'inspector' that changes to reflect the current selection. It is always a floating window above the rest of the UI rather than a built-in portion of the main iCal window like it used to be. I've arranged my main iCal window and inspector alongside each other and thankfully they both reappear when the app is quit and reopened. So nearly, but not quite what I was after.

How to Upgrade WordPress (on Mac OS X)

05. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Mac, Programming, Web/Tech, Weblogs

I've been putting together a WordPress powered blog or two recently and diligently documenting the steps required, as ever. The documentation available from the WordPress site is pretty good, but sometimes it's over verbose, whilst frustratingly also stopping short of giving you exactly the details you need. So here's what works for me to upgrade an existing WordPress installation to a newer version. This is using the manual approach BTW rather than the built in auto-upgrade functionality, which asks for FTP details (of what I'm not sure, and it doesn't bother to elaborate) and therefore makes a mockery of the term 'auto'.

The official instructions that got me going initially are at http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress FWIW, but I do precisely this on Mac OS X:

Download the zipped upgrade package and unzip it somewhere - e.g. to wordpress_upgrade directory for the sake of this example.
Backup existing installation in full – both the wordpress directory itself and the associated MySQL DB, just in case.
Merge the newly downloaded package over your existing install (assumed to be a directory named wordpress here) with the following incantation at the command line, which takes advantage of the fact that cp merges, whereas Finder copying just oafishly replaces:
> cp -r wordpress_upgrade/ wordpress_original
Compare the new wp-config-sample.php with your existing wp-config.php (e.g. using FileMerge) to see if any new config items have been added. If so, manually add those into your wp-config.php file, or if easier rename the sample to wp-config.php and put back the DB connection and other relevant bits.
Load up the /admin page in your web browser and follow the instructions to complete the upgrade, which involves it upgrading any DB bits, etc.

Can you dig it?

03. July 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Comedy, Me, Photography, Travel

No, apparently not.

iPhone calendar sync with MobileMe

02. July 2009 · 6 comments · Categories: iPhone

You receive your sparkly newiPhone, plug it into your Mac, everything works – and calendars are synced. A few days later you realise that all is not well as calendar updates only make the jump when you physically connect phone to the Mac and sync, but MobileMe’s supposed to sync over the air with push updates and all that jazz. Turns out you need to do the following, which isn’t entirely intuitive:

Perform a full physical sync to ensure all data on phone is on your Mac and therefore in the MobileMe system.
On the iPhone go to Settings > Mail, Contacts and Calendars
Select your me.com/mac.com Mail account
Turn on the switches for syncing contacts, calendar and bookmarks as you wish.
This will ask what you want to do with the data already on the phone. Select “Do not merge” and then when prompted agree that it can indeed delete the existing data from your phone.
Et voila, all your data is still there and changes you make on Mac or iPhone swiftly wing their way across the void to the others.