The first Apple iPods that came out in October 2001 were sized at 4.02” x 2.43” x 0.78” and weighed 6.5 ounces. The later generations became smaller. However, when larger hard disk sizes were launched, the top end iPods became larger again.

On Tuesday, Apple launched their iPod Photo models. I was slightly perturbed that it was around 1mm thicker (sorry for the variance in units), but apart from this had the same dimensions as the high-end 40GB iPod. So, I checked its dimensions: 4.1” x 2.4” x 0.75”, weight 6.4 ounces.

Almost the same as the original iPod, except about 0.1” taller.

What’s more, the current generation of iPods (not sure about the iPod Photo) use slower processors than the original iPods – two 80MHz ARM 7TDMI chips rather than the 90MHz versions in the first models.

Mark One – “Contagious Rhymin” (LP – ‘One Way’) – (Planet Mu)
Strangulation – “Flesh Harrier” (LP – ‘Atrocious Retribution’) – (Retribute)
Aavikko – “Samojedien Keskuudessa” (LP – ‘History of Muysic’) – (9PM)
Polysics – “Kaja Kaja Goo” (Peel Session)
09 – “Terminal Red” (LP – “Church of the Ghetto PC’) – (Schematic)
Anna Fermin & The Trigger Gospel – “The Box it Came in” (LP – ‘Heard Headed Women’) – (Bloodshot)
The Royals – “Llongo” (LP – ‘Dubbing With The Royals’) – (Pressure Sounds)
Total Science – “Unknown” (LP – ‘Good Game’) – (CIA)
The Workhouse – “Peacon” (LP – ‘The End of The Pier’) – (Devil In The Woods)
Hambone Willie Newbern – “Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Blues” (LP – ‘Century of the Blues’) – (Chrome Dreams)
Polysics – “New Wave Jacket” (Peel Session)
X Plastaz – “Wachaga Piga Chata” (LP – ‘Maasai Hip Hop’) – (Out Here)
Chris TT – “Tomorrow Morning” (CD Demo) – (White Label)
Roy Fox & His Band – “The Longer That You Linger in Virginia” (Pig’s Big 78) – (Decca)
Futurebound & Jaquan featuring Capleton – “We See a Who” (12” – Maximum Boost)
3 Inches of Blood – “Revenge is a Vulture” (LP – ‘Advance & Vanquish’) – (Roadrunner)
Polysics – “My Sharona” (Peel Session)
The Marxist Brothers – “Kunjere Kunjere” (LP – ‘Kunjere Kunjere’) – (Musi-Oa-Tunya)
Amon Amarth – “An Ancient Sign of Coming Storm” (LP – ‘Fear Candy 07’) – (Terrorizer)
Lou Christie – “Lightin’ Strikes” (7”) – (MGM)
Aereogramme – “Lightning Strikes The Postman” (LP – ‘Seclusion’) – (Undergroove)
Lightning Slim – “It’s Mighty Crazy” (LP – ‘Rooster Blues’) – (Blue Horizon)
Lightning Bolt – “Into The Mist” (LP – ‘Ride The Skies’) – (Load)
DJ Wildchild feat Melissa – “Forbidden (Drumsound & Bassline Smith RMX)” (12”) – (Wildstyle)
Polysics – “Buggie Technica” (Peel Session)
Blevin Blectum – “Benadrilled and Taking on Water” (LP – ‘Magic Maple’) – (Praemedia)
Le Force – “Tribute to The Endangered” (LP – ‘Le Fortress’) – (Wantage USA)

The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is a great set of utilities that can be incorporated into PHP scripts. I’ve used PEAR for most of the PHP projects I’ve developed over the past couple of years. Recently two of the PEAR packages have grabbed my attention.

Mail is a package for creating and sending e-mails. As such is very flexible since it allows creation of multi-part messages, with attachments, and copes with HTML and plain text messages. Unlike many PHP mailer classes, it copes with the variety of newline problems that vary according to platform. However, one of the things that is problematic is testing Mail out locally when one hasn’t got a working sendmail feature on the development machine.

However, I just discovered today that Mail now does send e-mails, so I needed to find out why. It turns out that MacOS X 10.3 (Panther) doesn’t ship with sendmail. Earlier versions of MacOS X did but enabling it was extremely difficult. 10.3 ships with Postfix because, quite simply, it’s better. How do you enable Postfix in 10.3?

1. Edit /etc/hostconfig
2. Locate the setting for MAILSERVER and change it to YES
3. Save the file
4. Reboot, or sudo Postfix start

That’s it. Sure there’s other configuration that can be done, but that was all I needed to do. What’s more in my installation MAILSERVER was already set up and Postfix was therefore already enabled. So, testing my PEAR Mail scripts locally was possible straightaway.

The second package that I’ve recently discovered is Log. It provides file, database, window, display, syslog, mail, and console logging facilities. You can have multiple loggers operating at the same time, and indeed create composite loggers that log to more than one place. It also allows observers to be attached to loggers. I am using it in the following way for my current project.

1. A file based logger for all levels of information, so various types of information go to the file. Looking at logs on MacOS X is easy since I just open the file in console and it keeps me up to date with the various events that I’ve filtered into the log.
2. If I’m logged in to the website that I’m testing I get another logger, which is a screen based logger. This is a second window which pops-up automatically when I visit a web page.

Loggers can also be attached to PEAR and PHP error reporting functions. The latter is very useful, albeit it cannot yet capture Fatal errors.

After weeks, if not months of procrastination about the new Apple displays — particularly a concern that it would cause neck ache from looking left and right all the time — I finally gave in and bought myself a 23” Cinema display (1920×1200 pixels). As always I had to justify this purchase to myself and chose the following reasons:

1. The first Apple LCD display I bought (their original 15” model) cost me £1800 back in 1998. Given that computer equipment doesn’t really get cheaper if you’re considering the high-end gear, the 23” display was a fair snip at £1549.
2. For the last 11 months or so the majority of my work has involved spending long periods editing PHP code with Jedit. I usually split the editing area into four squares and I’ve got fed up dragging the ‘splits’ to see more code space for a particular area – it wastes so much time.

I did however have a few concerns:

1. The 23” model appears to have a few problems. Most notably uneven backlighting; magenta or yellowing in certain areas; ghosting or burn-in which can last for a few minutes. However, like all products, one tends only to read about bad experiences. Additionally, I deduced from reading the Apple Discussion forums over some time that the problems were most likely to be software related, perhaps drivers or calibration settings. It would be unlikely for the problems to be a general manufacturing fault (albeit maybe a bad batch) given that the displays are SWOP certified.
2. It is difficult to ascertain the height of the viewing area. I wanted to make sure that the height was similar to my other displays as I would be keeping one of these attached to my Macintosh. Having set it up, I am pleased to report that the bottom of the LCD matches almost exactly with the 17” display. I guess this is due to two things: Apple’s attention to detail and their recognition of all things ergonomic.
3. I have Soundsticks which were positioned to the left and right of my main 17” display. Moving to the 23” would require them to be moved further apart which might have upset the sound stage.

Nevertheless, I took the plunge and ordered a display through the Apple Store on Monday morning. It was shipped that day (although I did subsequently receive an e-mail saying it would ship on Tuesday!) and arrived in Larkhall, Scotland on Tuesday morning. I was contacted by the shipping agent that afternoon and we agreed a delivery today (Thursday). It was delivered around 11am today. That’s great service, although shipping from Ireland is always quicker than from Amsterdam, which is Apple’s other main European despatch point.

Having got it out of the box I let it sit in my office for a couple of hours. This was to prevent any problems at switch on due to the cold and wet weather, and to avoid bad pixels. I’ve found that sometimes bad pixels appear after a couple of hours of use, so I thought leaving it to warm up might prevent these problems. Sure enough all went well when I installed it. No bad pixels so far – but I do have 2,304,000 to check.

I’ll no doubt have more to report over the next couple of days, but in the meantime here’s a summary of my experience.

1. It’s beautiful. Gosh, is it beautiful. Although it has less ‘Post-It’ space than my other displays.
2. The base swivel mechanism is great, as is the tilt mechanism. I also have somewhere to put my keyboard when I need desk space.
3. Moving the Soundstick speakers wider apart, oriented in such a way that their perpendiculars meet slightly in front of me (a classic positioning for speakers of any kind) has actually improved the sound significantly.
4. Now that I’ve moved from two older Apple 17” LCD displays to one of these plus the 23”, Mac OS X’s Exposé feature is slower and can be jerky. My poor little 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics card is obviously struggling, bless.
5. Zoom editing — crucial for pixel perfect web design — in Fireworks is extraordinary. Nothing prepared me for this experience.
6. With this kind of work area and resolution, I now understand the term ‘desktop’. It’s the first time I’ve worked in an environment that feels like a desktop. Perhaps it’s because of the aspect ratio (1:1.6) is more ‘desk-like’?
7. Grey images, such as Metal themes, can appear to be ever so slightly magenta – an effect that appears to diminish after it’s been on for some time. I have deliberately not calibrated the display yet and will give it a few days of run-in before I do so, although the ‘out of the box’ calibration is excellent and I might leave it be. What is clear from the start is that the display is an order of magnitude better than the 17” displays I had (have), and I remember that those were far better than the original 15” I had.
8. There is marginal ghosting on high contrast images. However, this is only apparent in low light level situations, and lasts a few minutes before it goes away. People writing on the Apple forums don’t like this, but, it’s virtually impossible to find a 23”+ display that doesn’t exhibit ghosting. Besides, the effect is known and documented on Apple’s knowledgebase.