Representing a relative departure from my usual travels, I am currently aboard flight KQ0117. This will take me into Nairobi from where I shall onwards to Uganda and Entebbe. Usually attracted by the bright lights and expensive restaurants of the West and, more recently, the East, I have never found much appeal in Africa, venturing only once to Egypt with my parents a number of years previous. Now, with a friend (as all newly trained doctors seem to) serving out his medical elective in the town of Kiwoko, I find I have cause and my recent departure from my job gives me oportunity.

I shall endeavour to catalog the events of the next few weeks in coming posts which, I expect, will reflect the usual mélange of emotions with no shortage of culture shock as oft experienced during travel.

On Friday last week, I tried to capture just a little of that grandeur:

It is offered as an alternative to the fairly heavy-weight user experiences offered by many of the existing iGoogle-based solutions. All tweets, including replies and direct messages are re-threaded into a single feed to avoid switching between multiple tabs:

As the post title suggests, Flutter is currently in beta and, while I encourage everyone to give it a try, do expect to find a few pesky little bugs. I look forward to hearing about all such occurrences and will endeavour to fix them as soon as humanly possible. (Contact details can be found on the about page.)

Give it a shot: Add Flutter to iGoogle

Not an iGoogle user? Check out the standalone version.

On Authentication

Currently authentication is performed by passing users’ credentials directly through a POST request to Twitter via the server hosting jbmorley.co.uk. I am well aware this is exceptionally in-elegant; it merely serves as an interim solution until OAuth support has been implemented so please bear with me.

The Future

Suggestions and recommendations are always gratefully received. I am personally considering providing TweetDeck-like behaviour in the Canvas view, but this will require some internal rearchitecting so it’s some ways off right now…

This site looks quite different — already Twitter represents a large portion of my content.

Autumn is commonly celebrated in Japan and, in the Autumn of 2007, Miho, Sarah and I journeyed to Nasu to enjoy the autumnal colours. The trip proved a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the splendid Japanese nature and scenery.

Since we, as users, have suffered this strange behaviour for a good number of iTunes releases, I can only assume that somewhere in Cupertino it’s deemed a feature (although I have yet to work out what it achieves).

Fortunately, for OS X users, AppleScript comes to the rescue:

tell application "iTunes"
 
	if selection is {} then
		display dialog "Select some TV Shows..." buttons {"Cancel"} default button 1 with icon 2 giving up after 15
	end if
 
	set sel to selection
 
	repeat with i from 1 to (count sel)
		set t to item i of sel
		tell t
 
			set my_kind to TV show
			set filename to location
			set my_state to unplayed
			set my_played_count to played count
			delete
			set my_track to (add filename)
			tell my_track
				set video kind to TV show
				set unplayed to my_state
				set played count to my_played_count
			end tell
 
		end tell
	end repeat
end tell

The above script iterates over the selected items in iTunes, sequentially deleting them and then re-adding them. Assuming this list of TV Shows is in the correct order, this will ensure all ‘added’ times are sequential and iPod and iPhone synchronization should now proceed as expected.

February took Junko and I to Hanamaki, the home of Miyazawa Kenji, for some rest and relaxation. It proved wonderfully slow and middle-aged place with a little snow remaining from the winter.

Since returning from a second trip to Japan this year, I have now decided that it’s time to leave Symbian (now Nokia) and move to pastures anew. It’s currently unclear where this will lead me but I certainly hope to tidy up a few personal software projects on the way; there are at least a couple of iPhone applications in the works and the Android Dev Phone 1 is sitting patiently on the side.¹

The last few months have been a fairly unsettled and over the last year and a half I have lived in more hotels than I care to consider. For the time being however, I have found myself space with Alan and Mike and enjoying feeling a little more grounded. Cheshunt is a gorgeous little commuter village outside London and the recent weather afforded me a collection of photos².

¹ More details coming soon.

² Anyone looking for photos hosted on MobileMe will be sorely disappointed. After far too long trying to maintain more than one system, I’ve finally given up and given my allegiance to Flickr.

There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes,
With stripings of scarlet or gold,
And you carry away of the treasure that rains
As much as your apron can hold!
So come, little child, cuddle closer to me
In your dainty white nightcap and gown,
And I ‘ll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree
In the garden of Shut-Eye Town.

By Eugene Field

This time — among other things — I was highly amused by this miniature bento comprising entirely of candies.