This morning, I picked up a Wireless Mighty Mouse at the Arndale Store Opening. So far, I'm really impressed. It's really responsive, and with the new laser tracking technology - and invisible beam - it's more reliable on my rather cool Office for Mac mousepad I picked up at Apple Expo. The best thing though, is that it's a heavier mouse - it feels like it has far more substance - thanks to the AA batteries. The extra weight makes it better to use (IMHO) and whilst Apple did supply some decent Single-use AAs, I'll likely use some of my re-chargeable AAs from my camera kit to keep them in use and not be affected by the memory effect! Here's a photo :)

No photos yet folks. Just wait and be patient. It might be worth it. :)

As ever, photos here

If you're going to pop along, now might be a better idea than later. The queue is currently numbering 5. Busy I know. More later :)

Richard Hammond has been one lucky bugger. This (courtesy of Digg) has made me proud to enjoy TopGear. I love TopGear, it's a fantastic programme, and I've been dreading the news that TG would be scrapped, but all is not lost. Even if it's in the Daily Mail, the grit and determination shown by Hammond, and all the other TG staff is unbelievable. Go Hammond, and GO TOP GEAR.

Wow. People like my iBook modding shot! It made Flickr Explore yesterday, which makes it my first photo to do so! Go me. Hopefully the Apple Store ones will also be popular tomorrow!

After much debate, and a little bit of time, it's finally done. The iBook has a Rainbow logo! Sweeeet!

The photo below has become one of my own instant favourites so check out the Flickr set here and take your pick!

Update: iColours.Ca has featured my iBook in their Gallery!

That's right folks, Apple fever is about to hit Manchester again! Get your geekiest T-Shirts out, and bring your iBooks, MacBooks, Powerbooks (and Mac Pros for those who dare to be different ;-) ) along with a digital camera and Flickr account. Let's show Manchester that Macs (and Apple) ROCK!

More here (will be continually updated until after the opening)

So I finally bit the bullet and signed up to MySpace. Boy is it a load of rubbish. I hate the SLOOOW site, but it's pretty good fun. Now I'm going to try and load a flash slideshow up and see what happens.

Oh, and if anyone's on MySpace, check out my profile here.

Jeees. This is too good not to post a link to!

Entry Exam For The BBC Symphony Orchestra-Viola Players

The pass mark is 10% but be careful—over 45% and you are overqualified.

1. Who wrote the following:
a) Beethoven's Symphony No. 6
b) Faure's Requiem
c) Wagner’s Ring Cycle

2. Tchaikovsky wrote 6 symphonies including Symphony no. 4. Name the other five.

3. Explain "counterpoint" or write your name on the reverse of the paper.

4. Which of the following would you tuck under you chin?
a) a timpani
b) an organ
c) a 'cello
d) a viola

5. Can you explain "sonata form"? (Answer yes or no.)

6. Which of the following literary works was made the subject of a Verdi opera?
a) First among Equals — Jeffrey Archer
b) Macbeth - William Shakespeare
c) Noddy and Big Ears — Enid Blyton

7. Domenico Scarlatti wrote 555 harpsichord sonatas for which instrument?

8. Arrange the following movements in order of speed, starting with the slowest first
a) Quickly
b) Slowly
c) Very Quickly
d) At a Moderate Pace

9. Where would you normally expect to find the conductor during a performance?

10. Which of the following wrote incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream?
a) Des O'Connor
b) Mickey Mouse
c) Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
d) Terry Wogan

11. Which of the following is the odd one out?
a) Sir Colin Davis
b) Sir Andrew Davis
c) Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
d) Desmond Lynham

12. Arrange the following words into the name of a well known Puccini opera.
Boheme, La

13. Within five minutes, how long is Chopin's Minute Waltz?

14. From which of the following countries did Richard Strauss come?
a) Venezuela
b) Sri Lanka
c) Germany
d) Japan

15. For what town were Haydn's "Paris " Symphonies written?

16. Which is the odd one out?
a) Fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet - Tchaikovsky
b) Romeo and Juliet — Beriioz
c) Romeo and Juliet Ballet — Prokofiev
d) 10 Green Bottles — anon.

17. From which song do the following lines come?
"God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen."

18. Spell the following musical terms.
allegro
rallentando
crotchet
pizzicato
intermezzo

19. Tosca is a character found in which Puccini opera?

20. Arrange the following letters to form the abbreviation for a well known British broadcasting corporation.
C, B, B.

Thanks Aimee!

Earlier in the week, I saw a post from David Chartier which expressed annoyance at not being able to use a Gmail Account in the great (Google-acquired) Writely. I fully agree, so I was suprised to hear my prayers answered!

Dear Nik,

In a few days, we will update your Writely account to use your address@gmail.com Google Account registration settings. This means you'll need to use your Google Account password when signing in, not your Writely password (if they're different).

If you've forgotten your Google Account password, just go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd

Thanks!
Google Writely Team

Woohoo! No more funny usernames! Rejoice oh Googleholics!

Finally the net is working here in Manchester. Expect a lot more updates soon!

aka Where the F**ks My Keyboard Shortcuts?!*

Download the very new (but highly inconsistent and frankly ridiculously slow) iTunes 7 at your peril. Not only have there been problems reported, but one minor feature changed. The Command 1 & Command 2 shortcuts are gone! This may not be a big problem to many people, but to me it is. I live off of keyboard shortcuts, and find that I now cannot use iTunes effectively. The library loading feature sucks - it's far too slow, and really ought not to be there (6.0.4 worked just fine). WHY Apple feels the need to ignore their own Interface Guidelines, and use so many custom UI elements is beyond me. It's something that makes me wonder:

• What on earth do we call this type of interface? Brushed Steel, Unified, Plastic etc.
• Is this gloomy interface something that we're going to be seeing more of in Leopard (something I sincerely hope is not the case)
• What's wrong with the normal tick boxes and scroll bars?

I'm still not convinced by iTunes 7. But I'm going to give it time and see what happens. Incidentally, if you're wondering why I've not posted as regularly recently, then have a look here. Enjoy!

*OK, the keyboard shortcuts have not disappeared entirely, they're actually being used for something else (video playback) but come on Apple. Can we please have a keyboard shortcut for showing and hiding the iTunes Window?

So I'm sat here at Apple Expo Paris (after quite a busy day and a lot of walking). It's been a lot of fun. I caught up with a lot of different companies and saw a lot of insanely great kit (I'm just glad I'm already skint, as I probably would be now I've seen some nice Bose headphones, the 24" iMac and a whole lot more! Flickr would be getting some love. Were it not for the fact that I've not got a USB mini cable with my for the camera - I have a habit of forgetting those damn it!

So what have I seen so far? Well, Paris. The Louvre, the distinctly petty and hideously unimpressive Mona Lisa, the Champs-Elysees, and a far too expensive beer or two.

The write up is rather long, so please click on to read if you're interested in finding out more about CocoaDevHouse London!

Thanks to sponsors Wired Up & Fired Up and RealMacSoftware for their support of the event.

Read it here

Today has been a mighty busy day. After leaving the house at 6.45am and arriving in London at about 8.30am we've generally chatted and coded all day. It's been a great day, and I'll hopefully get a blog post out in more detail whilst I travel to Paris tomorrow.

RapidWeaver 3.5.0 is finally available! Head over to RealMacSoftware and see what's new! As an Official Download Mirror, you can get a copy right here. I've been using it and it's a great new version. Congratulations to Dan & all the RealMac team for a great product.

GO DIGG RAPIDWEAVER 3.5 HERE. NOW! ;-)

If you're as interested as I am in knowing more about website visitors, you probably use something like Mint or in my case Google Analytics. The other day I somehow managed to come across a really useful widget for Dashboard that might be useful to all those who use GA. Get Dashalytics here! It really is useful - in fact so useful I've now re-activated Dashboard after 6 months of not using it. It's good to be back in Dashboard. Expect me to link to more widgets as I re-discover this bit of Mac OS X!

Oh, and if you're a RapidWeaver user visiting Apple Expo Paris, check out the RapidWeaver User MeetUp next Tuesday evening. Hopefully we'll be in a WiFi-enabled location to catch the 'It's Showtime' event.

I came across this on TUAW.com and thought it worthy of a mention. Ironically, just days before, I had been talking to Seb and we both agreed that we'd actually quite like laptops with the original rainbow Apple logo on! As mine is already out of warranty, I was tempted! iColours.ca offers you a filter that you can fit behind your Apple laptop's glowing Apple logo. There's literally loads of them to choose - not to mention the custom ones also available. I've chosen the uber cool 'Rainbow' filter. my order has just been sent from Canada, so I hopefully will get it soon! Of course, when I get it you can expect a whole plethora of Flickr photos! They're not quite suited to MacBooks (and MBPs) but if the thought of free filters is enough to get you to void your warranty and rip open the LCD part of you Intel Mac laptop, click here! I cannot wait for this to arrive!

If you've ever wonder who on earth I am, then I've now put a fully functional 'About Nik' page online here. I'm using a new plugin from Loghound.com to put a RapidFlickr slideshow (with Lightbox!) inside an Accordion, and all of that is on a Blocks page! It's pretty sweet (not to mention pushing my luck with prerelease software ;-) ), and I'll post some examples of how to use the Loghound plugin when I'm back from Sweden! Leave thoughts in the comments if you've got some.

Anyway, I'm off to the airport soon, so more on Tuesday!