Now you should know that I’m moving to Canada in a few weeks from today but what you might not have been aware of is that I’m selling pretty much everything that I own in terms of household contents in The Great Ga-RAJ Sale.

To help you all get a better understanding of the products that I have on offer I thought I’d put together a little video tour of what’s on offer.

Woopra is a great new web analytics package that is currently in private beta. I’m not here to talk about how exciting this fantastic service is, instead I’m here to let you know how to get their application to actually RUN under OS X. It’s not that hard, they’ve just made a little mistake when packing it for the Mac. Lets get to it, but before we do let me just add you must be running OS X 10.5.1+ and a 64bit Intel Mac.

1. Download the Woopra installer. You’ll need to to log into your Woopra account to do this
2. Next run off to Apple’s Developer Connection and download Java SE 6 (currently preview 9). You’ll need an ADC login (which is free) or run Software Update as Apple have just released this as a stable upgrade.

At this point you’d think all you’d have to do is run the Woopra Installer application but if you do that all you get is this stupid message that you don’t have Java 1.6 installed, which as we all know you just did.

To fix this and get everything up and running we need to tell the application that we want it to use the newly installed Java runtime. Just out of interest OS X doesn’t automatically switch to the new version because it’s a preview and not deemed stable. Here’s how you fix the installer…

1. Copy the “Woopra Installer” application from the disk image to your hard drive. If you do not do this you will not be able to edit & save the required files
2. Right (Control Click) on the “Woopra Installer” application
3. Select “Show Package Contents”
4. Open the file “Contents/Info.plist” in your favourite text editor
5. Under the line <key>JVMVersion</key> change <string>1.3+</string> to <string>1.6+</string>
6. That’s it, save the file & launch the installer again

Now you’d think that would be it now wouldn’t you, but no you need to now repeat the process for the installed application, which if you’ve gone for the default location will be in your Applications folder. Once you’ve done all of that (again) you can finally launch “Woopra” and get your fantastic looking web stats!!

Finally!!

You may have noticed the recent addition of the “365 Days” page to the blog, then again you mightn’t have the foggiest and your skills in observation are a tad underdeveloped. Your budding career as a private detective is looking bleak to say the least.

Career aspirations aside, the 365 Days Challenge is a group on flickr that asks its participants to take a portrait of themselves every day for a year. It’s not a particularly ground breaking idea and it’s been done many times before but I must admit it’s pretty good fun to participate in especially when you have a couple of friends (Bacoon, G-Nome) doing the same.

The challenge is really in taking a photo of yourself every day (although I have set a daily reminder on my phone to make sure I do it) but more so it’s making the damn things interesting! Most days I sit down in front of my laptop and start pulling faces at myself until one appears that doesn’t look too much like the days before. One of these days the wind will change and I’ll be stuck like that forever but until then hopefully I can provide some sort of entertainment to the gurning world if not to myself.

• My 365 Days page @ flickr
• 365 Days Pool @ flickr

I’m a public transport user, it’s not something I’m particular proud of, nor ashamed for that matter; after all it’s saving the environment blah, blah, insert tree-hugging-soliloquy-here. The point is, and trust me I am getting to one, is that by being a public transport user you’re privy to some of the world’s more annoying and unhygienic (that’s another story all together) traits.

Lets ignore the fact that talking on your mobile phone whilst in a crowded public place is down right rude, obnoxious and always results in the person talking in excess of ten times the volume of a 747 engine less than a metre from your ear drum for just a second and examine the latest fashion of annoyance by utilizing your phone’s whizz bang speaker phone functionality.

Most phone’s these days have the ability to use them in a “hands-free” mode where the caller’s voice is pumped out for all to hear and the phone’s microphone is turned up a notch to capture your own voice the general idea being that the phone is not right next to your mouth. Makes perfect sense really, the functionality was ideally created so that you could use your phone in your car (legally) even though that too is now counted as illegal in South Australia, requiring your car to be equipped with a completely separate hands free device. What completely bemuses me, and this is where we get to this post actually meaning something, is why people feel the need to use their “speaker phone” in public places? Why would I or anyone else within a hundred feet feel the need to hear both ends of your conversation let alone just your side?!! If you absolutely *have* to take the call turn off the speaker you f@#king moron!

I might add that this isn’t limited to public transport by any means, lately I’ve seen it around every shady corner I turn. It makes no sense, these people hold the phone less than two inches from their mouths to ensure the person on the other end hears them properly so why not exert yourself that little extra and put the bloody thing next to your ear and save the world from your rather boring life. (OK, so that’s harsh, but someone has to make a stand here!)

The only thing more dumb (although slightly less annoying to everyone around you) is seeing people with the older style handsfree kits (you know, the ones that use a cord to attach to your phone and have a microphone about 3/4 of the way up that then leads on to an earpiece) and they have their phone in one hand whilst the other one has the microphone portion of the cord held up to their mouths because the thing cost $5 out of a discount bin and has the listening reach of an 93 year old woman that was born deaf! Unplug the stupid handsfree kit and put the phone up to your head, you’re just as likely to get testicular cancer as you are brain! Grrr!!