Richard's Notes

Looks like I lost the bet.

I am pleased to report that VirtualBox 3.1.4 was released on the 12th February 2010. Download your copy now.

As viewers of Drop the Dead Donkey would know, Dave Charnley would run a book on anything. (Yes, I am watching the Series 5 DVDs at the moment. I wish I could remember Gus Hedges’ management double-speak so that I could use it at work. Yes, I know, I digress.)

It’s my turn to run a book. The bet? How much longer will VirtualBox be actively developed?

(Now do you get the reference to the DNS term “TTL”? )

Have you noticed that since mid-December 2009 there have been no public releases of VirtualBox? Between September 2009 and December 2009 there was frantic development activity which resulted in quite a number of releases, culminating in version 3.1.2. I’ve been using VirtualBox since version 2.x was first released. I have used both Linux and Mac as the host OS and have had Windows, Linux and *BSD guest OSes running successfully. For me, VirtualBox has just worked. It’s been great.

But now, I’m having second thoughts about running VirtualBox. I’m suspicious of Oracle’s intentions towards VirtualBox and other Sun sponsored Open Source projects. I won’t be surprised if Oracle announces that it will cease to sponsor further VirtualBox, MySQL and OpenOffice.org development.

Oh, my bet? Due to the lack of obvious development activity, I fear that active development has already ceased.

What’s your bet?

Henry pointed me to How To Capture a Screen Shot with Mac OS X. It’s a great little reference.

Here in Australia, we use metric paper sizes. Typically, we use A4.

Have you ever noticed that Firefox for Mac doesn’t remember your default page size setting after an upgrade? In my case, every time I upgrade Firefox for Mac, I have to click on File->Page Setup… to display the Page Setup dialogue box …

All I do then is click OK to reconfigure Firefox. If I don’t reconfigure Firefox, it seems to think that the default page size is Letter, causing the headers and footers to be printed in the wrong position relative to the edge of the sheet of paper.

The moral of this short story is — if you use a default page size other than Letter, reconfigure your Firefox for Mac’s Page Setup each and every time you upgrade.

Webcams. There’s more webcams than you can imagine on the shelves at the local computer store. But which one will work with my Mac Mini?

After doing some research of my own and asking my brother which webcam he uses with his Mac, I found out how many webcams are made to work with the Mac. Care to guess how many webcams I could choose from? The answer is one. That’s right, there’s just one webcam which is made to work with the Mac. It’s the Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac. Luckily for me, Officeworks had the webcam at a more reasonable price, so I bought one.

The picture quality is great. I’m suitably impressed. The camera also has a built-in microphone which I haven’t had a chance to try yet.

What I would like to learn is how to make the webcam zoom in and out. I’ve discovered a programme named CamTwist which allows you to introduce various video effects into your video stream while using Chat and Skype. With any luck, CamTwist will allow me to zoom in so that video callers don’t have to see the whole messy room in which I keep my Mac Mini.