liam cassidy

Goodbye summer, Hello Houseplants

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:51:54 +0000

I just don’t like the autumn or winter. Too cold, too wet and just too damned dark.

…and the trees all start shutting-down. That’s the worst part. I really love green. I value green. I need green. London has too little of it to begin, so I don’t like seeing it turn brown and grey! Particularly since I know I gotta wait five months to get it back!

I need to buy some plants for my house. And lamps. Many more lamps.

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Michael Jackson's This Is It

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:54:32 +0000

I just watched the movie-documentary Michael Jackson’s This Is It. I saw it at the O2, the same venue where, three months ago, I would have witnessed the concert itself.

I won’t write a review, I do that for a living and anyway, in this matter, I’m terribly biased. I have been a Michael Jackson fan my entire life, and have never (for one moment in the last thirty one years) failed to stand by his phenomenal artistic vision and obvious talent. I don’t use the word ‘genius’ much, but for Michael, it would be shameful not to call him a genius. Unlike the world’s media hacks, I didn’t need him to die so tragically to acknowledge that.

I’ll just say what I know is incontrovertible fact; you have to see this movie. It’s two hours of magic. When I wasn’t smiling moronically from ear to ear, I was laughing. There was hardly a moment I wasn’t wiggling in my seat, resiting the urge to dance. It was mesmerising. As we filed-in to the theatre the usher urged everyone to “Please use every seat, this show is sold out”. It was remarkable. A cheer went-up from the packed audience at just the BBFC certificate! The audience sang, cheered, whooped and yelled. Some cried. Everyone clapped their approval at the end of every single song. And for the first time in over 25 years of cinema-going, I witnessed as an entire audience patiently sat through the full end-credits.

There was a palpable, bitter-sweet sense in the theatre tonight that we were seeing something remarkable, breathtaking - and painfully fleeting. This was the last ‘new’ magic from the King of Pop. In the coming years there will be endless greatest hits compilations and new tracks retrieved from the Sony vaults. Some will be amazing. Many more will be diluted pop. (There’s a reason Michael didn’t release some songs you know! Not everything he committed to tape was a Billie Jean or Man in the Mirror!) So… go watch the movie. Take your friends, take your family. And be sure you make the most of every last second. It’s a celebration from beginning to end. You won’t be disappointed.

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For all you iPhone owners - here's a wallpaper. Photo taken from my back garden. Enjoy :-)

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:45:30 +0000

via tweetie

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Ads That Fail to Work, But Succeed in Annoying

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:03:19 +0100

Just wanted to share a thought. Those fucking annoying “roadblock” ads that crop up on sites like WinSuperSite.com and more recently, on Macworld… you know the ones I mean. You click a link, but before you get to the relevant web page you are stopped in your tracks with a different page that exists only to display a fucking ad. NO ONE ON EARTH READS THOSE FUCKING THINGS OR BUYS WHAT THEY ADVERTISE. EVER!!!!!

All they do is piss-off the site’s readers. On both the sites I mention above, I’ve become very well trained in knowing where to click on the ad-page the moment it starts to load. I’m able now to click-through to the content I ORIGINALLY WANTED TO FUCKING SEE faster than the ad can fully load.

It’s wrong. It’s utterly, utterly despicable. It’s intrusive and displays a complete lack of respect for the readers. Ad-supported content is fine. I don’t mind ads. I’m accustomed to seeing ads in web pages. But these roadblocks are simply annoying and surely fail to successfully sell anything. Surely?!

Rant over.

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Minimal Mac

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:23:20 +0100

via minimalmac.com

Minimal Mac published a submission I sent them a few days ago - awesome!

I love this site, it’s a daily dose of inspiration, and a sweet reminder of how much my daily computing has changed for the better since I switched to Mac.

If you don’t already visit this site every day, you really ought to!

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Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? | Charlie Brooker | Comment is free | The Guardian

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:59:33 +0100

Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?

via guardian.co.uk

Brilliantly funny article from Charlie Brooker - well worth taking the time to read in full!

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Spotify Just Pissed me Off

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:26:24 +0100

I generally really like Spotify, and until now, I didn’t mind that there was the occasional ad. It makes sense, and I appreciate that, so long as I don’t pay for the premium service, ads are the burden I must bear. Except that I hate how they are implemented. I really truly *fucking* hate how they’re implemented.

Why? Because I can’t mute them. If I hit the mute key on my Mac, they don’t play-on in silence, they actually PAUSE. That’s right, they fucking PAUSE. To get past the ads, I have two options. Either I let them play in their entirety and suffer the indignity of some stupid bastard commercial that’s not actually targeted at me at all, or I have to restart Spotify completely.

If I listen to the radio and mute the ads, they play regardless. That station’s programming doesn’t fucking STOP until they’re satisfied I’ve listened to some stupid ad for a car I can’t afford to buy anyway. If I’m watching a commercial television channel, I can mute the ads. The rest of the show I’m trying to watch isn’t held the ransom until I’ve agreed to watch all the bastard commercials in their entirety (even though I’m not in the slightest bit interested in the products they’re selling). Put simply, if a broadcaster employs some insidious trick to MAKE me listen to/watch their commercials, I’ll simply never listen to/watch that channel ever again. For that reason, I’m gonna uninstall Spotify.

It’s a shame; had they employed less draconian advertising practices - and, god forbid, actually tried analysing what I listen to, then matching & delivering ads to me based on my profile and the media I consume - I might have stuck with the service. I might even have listened to what their sponsors had to say, on the crazy understanding that profile-matched-ads are more likely to offer something the end user might want. But not now. Now Spotify can fuck off. In today’s world of media-on-demand, consumers can’t be forced to do something they don’t want to do. You try that sort of bullshit and they WILL go elsewhere.

Sigh.

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Braying Jerks

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:21:29 +0100

Sorry, but this is gonna be a bit of a moan. I have to let off steam. I’ve rediscovered something I had learned to forget; that the Internet is full of braying jerks who can’t *wait* to criticise and dismiss every thought, every suggestion, every shared feeling, hunch or personal opinion by tech bloggers.

I don’t intentionally write to cause controversy or distress. I don’t write to wind-up the readers, either. I write from the heart, I write from the head, and I write from a desire to share my enthusiasm for technology with what is – I assume – an audience of like-minded, intelligent people. Yet – there are some noisy individuals who, it seems, exist merely to attack, condemn, criticise and insult the efforts of those of us who are trying to create interesting content on a regular basis.

What I produce for The Apple Blog is fun to write, fun to research, fun to share. I’m proud of what we do as a team and the modest contribution we make to the Apple community. And I know we make a valuable contribution because, long before I wrote for TAB, in the days when I was gearing-up to switch from Windows to the Mac, TAB was one of the first websites I enthusiastically added to Google Reader. I still love reading the articles that appear there. It’s still a valuable service I use all the time. I’m moaning, I know, but I’m so sick of the arseholes who troll the articles we publish over there. They’re damned quick to declare our efforts as “terrible writing” and slap arrogant statements like “worst article ever” and other similar such bullshit in the comments. But, y’know, I don’t see those ‘critics’ making any effort to produce content for, and make meaningful contributions to, the tech community. And no – acerbic, idiotic comments at the end of articles does not equal “meaningful contribution”.

I’m no MG Siegler or Dan Gruber. I know this. I’m just me, trying to enjoy my love of technology and trying to make a contribution. And usually, I can ignore the trumpeting whines of those faceless, anonymous trolls and their pathetic cries for attention. But sometimes, just sometimes, it gets to me that those morons are given a platform from which to spew their vitriol.

I notice that this isn’t unique to TAB. Every other tech website I visit suffers the same parasites. In fact, when I look at cnet, zdnet or engadget it’s pretty clear to me that over on the The Apple Blog we don’t have it so bad. And, this isn’t a new problem. Anyone who has spent time on a discussion board knows already that anonymity encourages (nay, breeds) The Stupid Ignorant.

I can’t help but think these people were bullied at school, hate their jobs, harbour bitter dissatisfaction with their lives and so, with twisted glee, compensate and de-stress by attacking people they (secretly) respect and admire from behind the mask of anonymity afforded them by the ‘net. Cowards.

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Intel & Apple’s Light Peak – My Favourite New Standard http://go.meebo.com/liamcassidy.co.uk/f

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:08:17 +0100

Intel & Apple’s Light Peak – My Favourite New Standard http://go.meebo.com/liamcassidy.co.uk/f

Pay Attention 007: the iPhone is Cooler than you http://go.meebo.com/liamcassidy.co.uk/g

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:08:16 +0100

Pay Attention 007: the iPhone is Cooler than you http://go.meebo.com/liamcassidy.co.uk/g

http://post.ly/6GLn ok it’s happening everywhere! On the iPhone, too! Grrrr!!!!

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:25:54 +0100

http://post.ly/6GLn ok it’s happening everywhere! On the iPhone, too! Grrrr!!!!

Is it just me getting “Syncronization Failure” messages in Evernote for Mac EVERY TIME...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:25:54 +0100

Is it just me getting “Syncronization Failure” messages in Evernote for Mac EVERY TIME it tries to sync? So annoying…

http://post.ly/6GHp Here’s what Evernote keeps telling me on ALL of my Macs for the last two...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:25:54 +0100

http://post.ly/6GHp Here’s what Evernote keeps telling me on ALL of my Macs for the last two days. So sick of this… :-(

Another (fantastic) day… http://post.ly/5xQ3

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:33 +0100

Another (fantastic) day… http://post.ly/5xQ3

Just tred to import a folder of PDF’s into Evernote. That’s over 500 windows that just...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:33 +0100

Just tred to import a folder of PDF’s into Evernote. That’s over 500 windows that just popped up. My poor MBP is practically crying…

Spiders! http://post.ly/5wvN

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:33 +0100

Spiders! http://post.ly/5wvN

Good morning Tweeple :-)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:32 +0100

Good morning Tweeple :-)

RT @Zee Wouldn’t surprise me if Steve Jobs had this on his bedroom wall. http://bit.ly/Wo9Gp

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:32 +0100

RT @Zee Wouldn’t surprise me if Steve Jobs had this on his bedroom wall. http://bit.ly/Wo9Gp

Carol Bartz at D7 - so funny and fascinating, too :-) http://bit.ly/KyWQO

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:32 +0100

Carol Bartz at D7 - so funny and fascinating, too :-) http://bit.ly/KyWQO

Am I being dumb? Pls someone explain the difference between Google Sync Push Mail and the push imap...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:51:31 +0100

Am I being dumb? Pls someone explain the difference between Google Sync Push Mail and the push imap gmail I’ve had on my iPhone for years?