Category: Miscellanea

I recently discovered that my ISP provides handy statistics about the internet traffic to my house. Here, as a historical curiosity, are the figures for 2008:

As background, we don’t make use of P2P for content that the original owners aren’t happy distributing, so I imagine there are heavier users of the net out there. We do use Miro though, so I imagine a fair amount of that traffic is video. The peak in October certainly is (I watched Democracy Now during the US election), and I imagine that was what Jan and Feb were too.

The eagle eyed, or keen, reader might have noticed that most pages on this site have a date on them, often at the bottom of the page. This is automatically generated, and reflects the last time the page changed in any way.

One date, however, I update by hand. On the site’s about page, you will find a copyright notice, together with a year range. This I update manually, once a year.

I’ve considered automating it a few times (it would be trivial) but I like it – as a signal that I’m still maintaining this site, and it is not quietly bitrotting away.

It looks like I’ve done this 14 times now.

Happy New Year!

Many of you will know I have a Mac Mini connected to my TV, to provide internet TV (via Miro) and a PVR for broadcast TV (via Elgato’s eyeTV). Several people I know have similar set ups, and there seem to be three schools of thought for controlling it from the sofa:

• Use the apple remote.
• Use a bluetooth Apple keyboard and mouse.
• Use some non-apple keyboard/trackpad combo.

Of the three, I like the last – there are too many times when a keyboard is needed on OSX to make the first work for me, and trying to find a flat surface for the mouse means the second drives me mad.

So when I set my mini up, I tried to source a suitable keyboard. Here in the UK that seems to be a hit-and-miss affair, with stockists varying each time I looked. When I noticed a wireless USB keyboard intended for a PS3, I snapped it up. It’s by Logitech, and called the Y-RAN77 (snappy!). They don’t seem to make it any more, but amazon lists something similar.

The only remaining problem is that some of the keycaps weren’t resulting in the right character when pressed. Some people prefer that – relying on their typing ‘muscle memory’ to get the right character. I use so many different keyboards, I don’t really have a subconscious recollection of them all, so I used this tool to remap the defaults the mac used to the correct items.

If you also need such a thing (unlikely), the file is here. Just copy it to /Library/Keyboard Layouts, and then pick ‘Logitech Y-RAN77’ from the list of ‘Input Menu’ options in the international prefs pane.