Photographers being stopped from taking pictures in UK

Interesting piece on Saturday PM Radio Four news programme, about people being stopped from taking pictures in public due to the incorrect or over-zealous application of anti terrorist laws in the UK...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2008/04/youve_been_framed.shtml

You should be able to listen to the programme on the BBC Listen again service - it would be the 26 April 2008 edition of Radio Four's PM news bulletin.

How to quickly launch preferences for volume or screen brightness in Mac OS X

To instantly launch the preferences controls for audio or screen/display settings, simply hold down the Option key (between Control and the Apple command key, i.e. the Alt key) then press one of the keyboard shortcuts for either volume or brightness control. Newer Apple keyboards have re-mapped these keys, so exactly which keys you press depend on the age of your keyboard; the controls are usually marked on the keyboard.

Some more keyboard volume tips:

• To move the volume up or down in tiny steps, hold down Shift and Option when you tap the volume keys, this will move the volume in quarter steps. (Possibly this is Leopard 10.5 only, I can't remember it in Tiger 10.4).
  
• To silence the volume feedback "blips" noises which trigger at each step, hold down the shift key when adjusting the volume. The noises can also be turned off completely on the Preferences Sound controls window, uncheck "Play sound effects"

Does email encourage insanity?

Merlin Mann on the nature of email to make people behave like sociopaths...

http://www.43folders.com/2008/04/24/taking-crazy-out-email

Robot typing 02

Robot typing 02
Originally uploaded by Mooganic.

Strange how a Gorillapod tripod is a very handy gadget, yet is also slightly sinister.

How to keep those cables tidy

Lifehacker has a good list of ten ways of tidying those errant cables. The bulldog clip as a cable organiser is the most snappy (sorry) idea.

Tidy those cables

These velcro re-useable cable ties are good, but a little pricey (Amazon UK), for a huge list of cable harnessing and organising widgetry, try StudioSpares (UK).

Nobody said every post has to be exciting, did they?

Engineer's Guide to Cats

Funny video from Paul Klusman

Max - a powerful multi format audio converter

Max for Mac OS X is now at v0.8 and Leopard compatible. A great open source project that can convert in batch mode and rip CDs. Handles a huge range of different audio file formats and meta tags.

Handles multiple processors such as the Core Duo type elegantly with good multi threading to speed up conversion.

Recommended.

http://sbooth.org/Max/

from the main site: "Once the audio is extracted, Max can generate audio in over 20 compressed and uncompressed formats including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, AIFF, and WAVE.

If you would like to convert your audio from one format to another, Max can read and write audio files in over 20 compressed and uncompressed formats at almost all sample rates and and in most sample sizes. For many popular formats the artist and album metadata is transferred seamlessly between the old and new files. Max can even split a single audio file into multiple tracks using a cue sheet.

Max leverages open source components and the resources of Mac OS X to provide extremely high-quality output. For example, MP3 encoding is accomplished with LAME, Ogg Vorbis encoding with aoTuV, FLAC encoding with libFLAC, and AAC and Apple Lossless encoding with Core Audio. Many PCM conversions are also possible using Core Audio and libsndfile."