2007 — 20 Feb: missing one Mac mag

Chum Brack down in New Zealandland has kindly supplied a batch of Mac web sites and software suppliers with his personal seal of approval. (Or maybe it was an otter?) I particularly admired the class act that is About This Particular Macintosh. I'd forgotten how much fun e-zines can be.

Chum Catherine, meanwhile, has helpfully identified a magazine I didn't even know existed. While I was busily grabbing (and paying for!) copies of iCreate, Mac Format, and Macworld in the local emporium (aka WH Smith), I don't recall seeing her specific recommendation: Mac User. I shall resume the hunt. I must say this is all starting to feel a bit like my time in the Acorn world (except I haven't even got hands on the demon device yet).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find out more about the outfit (Magix) that's bought my favorite software house (Xara) and it seems there's an IE7 update¹ available that has improved their phishing filter. Ho hum.

Resuming after the inevitable re-boot

Well now here's the thing. Unless I miss my guess, I've just installed the patch that is the subject of KB92089. But where, pray tell, is the evidence? Any evidence? No, it's not in my Update History — I've looked. Aha! Found the little booger. It's in "Add or Remove Programs" if you remember to tick the "Show Updates" box.

As for Xara, it's now to trade as a subsidiary of the Magix guys in Germany with whom I had a bit of a run-in over a faulty CDROM in their Audio Cleaning Lab 2004 product.

Does not compute department

It seems "Even IT professionals struggled, and were revealed as finding long division, calculating percentages and multiplication² trickier than any of the other surveyed professions" according to today's Guardian. Thinks: crikey!

Day 109

Footnotes

¹ aka "The computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents in Internet Explorer 7." It seems to be an issue with frames — horrid things.
² I had what was, in hindsight, a weird liking for hand-worked long division and multiplication. I can still tell (instantly) how many seconds there are in a "standard" year (not because I have any special maths prowess but simply because I worked it out so many times that I reckon I probably got it right) and I quite enjoyed calculating how many miles there were in a light-year too. Not that the answer ever seemed to change.
The liking wore off, or at least partially transformed, into what is possibly an equally weird fascination for programmable calculators. I guess I was never cut out for the IT profession therefore. Mind you, at least I stopped writing endless columns of ascending numbers in blank exercise books, and filling in graph paper with intricate colour crayon patterns. Thus unwittingly ruling myself out from any future as an IT manager.