David Forster

I’m getting in on the act early for this years version (for 2008) of my strangely popular Sasco style year planners. As before, they’re done in Microsoft Excel format and are available in both horizontal and vertical formats. Please feel free to download them.

2008 Horizontal Planner and 2008 Vertical Planner

The holidays are official UK holidays taken from the DTI’s web site.

If you find these planners useful, please consider making a small donation

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I would like to say a big “Thank You!” to:

• Sebastian Nickel
• Enda Farrell
• Michel Jreissati
• Michael Cunningham
• Frode Hegland
• Stéphane Noël
• Keith Grant
• Stuart Lacy

who have donated a total of £54.99 (less PayPal fees), as thanks for my Sony Ericsson W880i iSync plugin.

Sorry, but it seems that the SMS functionality has been removed from OS X 10.5 Leopard, so this is 10.4 only for now.

You can easily enable support for sending and receiving SMS messages and making and receiving calls to and from your new Sony Ericsson W880 phone by doing this simple little hack.

1. Open up “\Applications” on your Mac HD
2. Ctrl-Click on Address Book and select “Show Package Contents”
3. Find Contents\Resources\Telephony.bundle and Ctrl-Click on that, select “Show Package Contents” again
4. Open Contents\Resources\ABDeviceCommandSets.plist in a decent text editor
5. Find the line “<string>K700</string>”
6. Add a line below it “<string>W880</string>”
7. Save the plist file and restart address book - you should now be able to pair up with your w880i!

The hack relies on the fact that the K700 talks pretty much the same language as the W880.

Please Note: Some users have complained that they still cannot send SMS messages after following the previous instructions. You will still need to pair your phone with your computer and connect the Address Book app to the phone as usual by clicking on the bluetooth icon in the Address Book window (not the one at the very top of your screen). Once the icon is blue in colour you are connected and the functionality will work.

If you want to enable syncing of your address book and iCal through iSync, then all you ned to do is install my iSync plugin for the W880.

It seems that the Tiger 10.4.9 update has caused new installations of my w880i plugin to stop working. I have released a new version on the plugin page.

Working package installers to come soon, along with plugins for other unsupported phones.

I got a new Sony Ericsson W880i this weekend and, although it’s not officially support by Apple’s iSync, I had gambled that, like other SE models, I would be able to hack the plugin files to get it working.

However, A few hours spent in front of the Mac on Sunday morning and I’ve managed to duplicate Apple’s W810 plugin and modify it so that the W880 works (over USB and Bluetooth)!

Once I’ve sorted out the minor bugs I hope to release this plugin as an installable PKG file and then expand the series to support other models that iSync doesn’t support out of the box.

For now though, I need a few Beta testers to use my plugin and report any results.

Install Instructions:
Download the tar.gz file below and double click to uncompress it. Place the uncompressed “SonyEricsson-W880.phoneplugin” folder into your:
“Macintosh HD::Users::yourusername::Library::PhonePlugins”
directory (create this if it does not exist) and restart iSync. Then just search for your phone and away you go!

You can also place the folder into the system Library folder but until I’ve ironed out any bugs I suggest that you stick to your personal folder to begin with.

Troubleshooting:
Some users have reported sync failures when pairing was initiated from the Mac. I’m not sure why this would be but I think it’s more a bluetooth problem than specifically to do with iSync as it seems to affect file transfers too. The solution seems to be re-pairing from the phone itself.

If you find this plugin useful, please consider making a small donation to help me make more!

Download the plugin for iSync 2.3 (Tiger 10.4.8) here.
Plugin for iSync 2.4 (Tiger 10.4.9) ALPHA here.
EXPERIMENTAL: Installable package for 10.4.9 and later here. Download, unzip, double-click. If this works for you, please let me know!

I also have instructions to get the Address Book app working with SMS and Call notification.

Update: 21/03/2007
Version 0.2 coming soon - Fixed 10.4.9 compatibility, modified support information.

Today my attention was brought (via Digg) to a Guardian Unlimited article by Charlie Brooker on the British “Get a Mac” Ads and why he hates Macs and Mac users.

Now, I am someone who’s been using, building and programming PCs for the last 14 years or so. Programming is my job and also to a certain degree my hobby. I used to harbour the same grudges against the Mac crowd as Mr. Brooker, always harping on about how Macs were only good for designer types who couldn’t understand real computers and could only use one mouse button. Then, 9 months ago, everything changed. After much deliberation (and convincing by my girlfriend), I bought one, and computing became fun again.

Here’s the truth: Nowadays, Macs and PCs are basically the same under the hood - you can even run Windows on them if you want to. When you buy a Mac you are also paying for OS X - and it’s this operating system that makes the difference. It will take a few weeks of getting used to, but eventually you will realise just how good it is, and why Mac users dub Windows as “Fisher Price” OS.

It’s difficult for me to list the ways in which OS X is better than Windows. Maybe because it’s so different that it’s genuinely hard to explain or perhaps it’s because sometimes I struggle to put my thoughts into words, or maybe it’s a little bit of both. Like I said, it will take you a couple of weeks of effort (In much the same way as it took a few weeks to get used to Windows 95 after using DOS for so many years) and it won’t be entirely painless, but it will be worth it if you can. Perhaps it’s time to for me to admit to myself that I have become a dreaded Apple ‘FanBoy’, that I am sleeping with the enemy. Well, I don’t care. Since buying my MacBook Pro I have converted my music library to iTunes, something that I always vowed I would never do, and also bought an iPod Nano. I would wholeheartedly recommend that anyone, be them a silver surfer or a ‘l33t h4xor’, wanting to buy a new PC think seriously about a Mac instead.

[posted from a Windows PC (at work) using Flock (also available for Mac)]

Following the moderate success of last year’s Sasco style year planners, I have finally gotten around to doing a pair for 2007. As before, they’re done in Microsoft Excel format and there are both horizontal and vertical versions. Feel free to download them.

2007 Horizontal Planner and 2007 Vertical Planner

The holidays are official UK holidays taken from the DTI’s web site.

If you find these planners useful, please consider making a small donation

Update 05/06/2007: 2008 versions are now available.

Oh dear… Looks like I spoke too soon when I said that I didn’t have any problems with my new MacBook Pro. It seems that my machinehad some kind of problem with the keyboard controller. When it got warm, it would type keys from the bottom row of the keyboard by itself! It was quite entertaining, when you didn’t want to do any work!

Took it back to the Apple store last night and it was replaced with no fuss and I’m writing this on the new one. So far this one seems fine. It’s a week 21 machine.

I finally succumbed to the temptation last night and I’m writing this from my new MacBook Pro! So far I don’t seem to have any of the manufacturing issues/faults that prevented me from buying one before so it looks like Apple finally have it sorted. Mine’s a week 17 machine.

Microsoft have apparently bundled six new TrueType fonts in with their new Vista OS, one of which is a monospaced font designed for coding. I thought I’d give it a try and I’m really liking it. It goes a bit soft at the edges, especially when you go to small point sizes and have ClearType turned on, but once you get used to it it’s really easy on the eyes.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to figure out how to get it yourself, as it would be illegal for me to provide it for you. I suggest you start with a Windows Longhorn/Vista beta DVD image.

(Image from Poynter Online - The Next Big Thing in Online Type)