apple – Urban Giraffe

Unassigned IP Address

I recently upgraded to a gigabit router, with the intention of having my various computers and backup devices all wired in together and backing up at gigabit speeds. The router (a Billion 7800N) worked great, and the wireless-N speeds are very nice indeed. However, when it came to connecting to my Mac using an Ethernet cable all I got was:

Unassigned IP Address 169.x.x.x

I’d actually experienced this before while staying in a hotel and trying to use their free internet but had assumed it was the hotel’s problem. Not what I wanted to see from a new router.

Querious

A few days after I wrote about Sequel Pro, a link from Daring Fireball leads me to Querious, a commercial MySQL management tool. At a glance it seems to offer everything that Sequel Pro has, along with the ability to manage users and permissions.

Hot on the heals of this The Apple Blog has a Sequel Pro vs. Querious showdown. The conclusion is similar, and the comments make for interesting reading with links to further tools.

Sequel Pro

Back in 2007 I wrote about CocoaMySQL, a small GUI for MySQL that allows you to manipulate and manage MySQL databases through a native Cocoa application. Since then development of CocoaMySQL died off and it has since been abandoned. A shame really as it did have several frustrating quirks that spoiled an otherwise great application.

Recently I came across Sequel Pro, a fork of CocoaMySQL that has big plans to stabilise the core code and turn it into a multi-engine database management tool (with support for SQLite and PostgresSQL scheduled for the future). Despite being available since early 2008 I’ve seen very little mention of Sequel Pro.

Late New Year Update

Yes, this is one of those late-late February New Year round-ups! And what a year it’s been in general. Moving back to the ‘real world’ (aka London) has now come and gone, and I’m safely wrapped up in trying to stay ahead of the world’s general downward curve.

This site has fully moved from it’s previous Dreamhost location and is now being hosted by Slicehost. This has allowed me to add bug tracking through Redmine, which has helped considerably in keeping track of the state of things. I’m still experimenting with the right settings, and there are occasional weekend dips as I move things around, but everything should now be running quite nicely with a combination of Apache and Phusion Passenger. If you’re not afraid of managing your own system then Slicehost are highly recommended.

A Year In The Life Of A Secret Mac User

Just over a year ago my long-suffering Windows laptop decided enough was enough and stopped working. As writing software is my profession, and it being the only computer I possessed, I was forced to make a quick-purchase decision for a replacement.

After some research I was going to settle on an Acer TravelMate 8204 laptop, it being a logical progression from my existing TravelMate 800. With money in hand I ventured out and visited a series of computer stores and cubicles in Hong Kong’s electronic forest, before returning home satisfied and with a shiny new computer – not an Acer, but an Apple Mac Mini – a major departure from my original plan, and the beginnings of a voyage into completely unexplored territory.

It’s over a year now since I first tasted the world of Apple and I thought it would be interesting to write about my experiences, the software I’m using, and why my next computer will almost certainly be another Apple.

Apple iPod Shuffle

So what can be said about Apple’s latest product that hasn’t already been said in a thousand other reviews, and hasn’t been dissected in essays and dissertations across the world? Love them or hate them, Apple have managed to create a modern religion by fusing technology with style, and setting a price point high enough that it forces people to part with their money. People will, it seems, pay almost anything for something when it looks good, and when their friends have one.