Originally uploaded by t1mmyb.
We had our 20-week scan last Thursday (20th January 2005). I took photos of the prints with the digital camera (we don’t have a scanner that works with our iMac), and here they are!
Monthly Archives: January 2005
Room to move
I’ve finally upgraded the hard drive in the iMac. Although I had an offer to use an external USB drive, in the end I backed it up to a Windows machine, using a mixture of disk images and ditto-created zip files.
I followed the easy instructions at Macworld US and I was done inside 20 minutes (I think, as I wasn’t timing myself). The backing up and restoring of data is much more time-consuming than the actual hard drive swap.
A few tips for success:
- Use a magnetic screwdriver.
- Assuming you’re reinstalling OS X from scratch, it’s best to patch the OS up to the same level as it was previously before restoring user data and prefs, in order to avoid conflicts between user prefs and the OS version.
- Use the command-line tool ditto instead of the finder (zip) or even disk utility (dmg). This Mac OS X Hints tip gives the details. It will happily write out a zip file to a mounted drive on another machine (in my case, on a Windows share). I created a 1.8 GB zip archive of my Pictures folder without any fuss or bother.
Now we have an old, somewhat slow but no-longer-running-out-of hard-drive-space iMac. I can store all of my music on there instead of my Archos, rip Kathy’s CDs, and record my vinyl to MP3 too.
Syndication
You can get my stuff in a variety of flavours:
Apple Expo Banner, Paris
Originally uploaded by t1mmyb
We’ve never been to San Fransisco (maybe we will one day), but we did manage to go to Apple Expo Paris back in September.
Flickr
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
The Quickening
Kathy and I felt our unborn baby kicking last night. With a strong kick like that, I expect he/she will be either kicking footballs or doing kung-fu or something. The 20-week scan is on Thursday; it’s all becoming very, very real, very quickly!
This afternoon we’re having a demonstration of all the available ‘real’ nappy options at Born, a relatively new baby equipment shop in Bath & Bristol. They’re not cheap, but everything’s organic etc. – no nasty chemicals in the lotions and potions. So, if anyone’s thinking of buying us stuff: they do vouchers, or you can shop online 
Fads, or not?
I’ve got accounts at Flickr, Del.icio.us, 43 Things, Technorati, GMail and Basecamp [1]. I use Flickr and Del.icio.us regularly, and I’m really getting into 43 Things.
My recent change of blog platform has hobbled me somewhat, though, because Flickr and 43 Things will both act as clients for various blogging platforms (just not Textpattern, at least without some hackery); thus, when you post to either service, the post will also show up on your blog.
So, I’m looking forward to adding XML-RPC support to Textpattern so that I can do the above things.
Update: There’s an experimental XML-RPC implementation available from Pixel Meadow.
I’d also like to be able to post photos to Flickr via MMS, but that costs money, so I’ll hold off on that for now.
My main point, though: will I be using these things in four years’ time, like I’m still blogging four and a half years after I started? Or are they just fads?
[1] What are all these things of which you speak?
- Flickr is a fantastic photo-sharing web site with great community features.
- Del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. Keep your bookmarks online, access them from anywhere, see what other people bookmark too when they add the same URL as you.
- 43 Things is somewhere to keep your New Year’s Resolutions
Seriously: it’s a place to add goals, updates on your progress, meet others with the same goals and share tips etc. - GMail is Google’s webmail service
- Basecamp is 37 Signals’ web-based project management tool.
Mac Mini
Apple have released the most affordable Mac ever: the Mac Mini. Starting at £339 (G4 1.25 GHz, 40GB HD, 256MB RAM, Combo drive; no monitor, keyboard or mouse), it represents a bit of a bargain.
Yes you can trick it out to the max and push the price up to over £1000, but a simple boost to the RAM (to 512MB) and hard disk (to 80GB) and a Superdrive upgrade comes to £527. Not bad for a Mac. Still expensive compared to a Wintel box, but I don’t plan on buying one of those any time soon.
More Jerry Springer
The blogosphere is hotting up in the wake of the Jerry Springer – The Opera "scandal" — mostly free-speech advocates equating Christian=Right Wing Nutjob and not-outraged Christians actually looking beyond the swearing and so-called blasphemy to the message that was actually in the show.
Maggi Dawn goes into the issue in some length, but here’s a snippet. As usual, her blog is well worth a read.
The tragedy the opera highlights is the moral vacuity of a society that in the end, does nothing much more than "Eat, excrete and watch TV", and looks to celebrities for their hope and inspiration. Rather than an offence against God, I thnk it’s a strong statement against a Godless, individualistic, celebrity-obsessed society.
To any non-Christians stopping by (especially of the free speech / anti-censorship persuasion): please remember that Christian Voice don’t speak for all of us. Thanks.
The FA Cup is still romantic
The romance of the FA Cup returned this weekend, as Yeovil, Oldham and Sheffield United (amongst others) defeated higher-division opponents. Yeading couldn’t do the same against Newcastle (and, thankfully, neither could Northampton beat Southampton – phew!), but acquitted themselves reasonably well against the Geordie Millionaires.
I watched the Yeading game and, while they did brilliantly to only lose 2-0, I felt that they tried to be too ambitious too often: trying to play the ball out of defence; attempting to pass through (literally) opposing players; playing backwards into danger; giving the ball away etc etc. Still – the players were nearly dead on their feet by the end, so all credit to them. Let’s hope they can go on and turn their nine-point advantage at the top of the Ryman Premier League into promotion, come May.
All we need now is a sympathetic 4th-round draw. We’ll know at 1.30pm…