Status-Q

A very quick tip today...

Everyone uses cut, copy and paste - we've all become so used to the clipboard metaphor that it's pretty automatic. Most clipboard systems have a big limitation, though - they only store one thing at a time.

If you're like me, you're often in the middle of moving chunks of text around in web pages, or copying URLs into email messages, and then get interrupted by an IM message asking for someone's phone number. You copy & paste the number from your address book and then want to go back to where you were before... but you've overwritten the contents of your clipboard.

This is why you need a 'clipboard history' utility. If you use one, this will all be obvious to you, but if not, go and get one now. Tools like Quicksilver and Launchbar (my favourite) have them built-in, or you can use a simpler standalone utility like JumpCut or Clyppan - they can all basically do the same thing in this regard: they give you one more keystroke to learn as an alternative to 'paste', which, rather than simply pasting the last thing you copied, gives you a menu of the last few things and lets you select one. Some will paste it directly for you, others will put it in the clipboard so you can paste it yourself.

You may want to hunt around for a utility that feels right for you. I like speed and simplicity, and with Launchbar I can just pop up the list, cursor-down a couple of times and then hit return to paste in that big chunk of text I was working on before I was so rudely interrupted. It's very slick. Launchbar costs money (but does a great deal more for you as well).

It may take a while for the clipboard history idea to become instinctive, but once it has, you won't want to be without it. Besides, you've been doing cut and paste for a long time now. Isn't it time you graduated to the next level?

Very good news this afternoon from DisplayLink!

They have released a nice, simple, Open Source library for driving their USB Display devices. It's available under the LGPL, which means you can link against it in a variety of ways.

The hope is that this will allow a large range of USB host devices - phones, embedded systems, netbooks, routers - to drive large displays, without the need for a conventional graphics chip.

We started DisplayLink with its roots firmly in the Open Source world, and it's great to see the company contributing back to the community.

The library and documentation can be found at displaylink.org, and the press release is here.

Congrats to all involved!

If you're entering a URL in the iPhone/iPod Touch's web browser, there's a handy '.com' key to save typing. It can be used to enter other domains too.

But when you're entering email addresses, there's no such shortcut. Except that there is. It's hidden away. Just press and hold the '.' key.

(If you like this hint, you might also like this one)

Some pics from this afternoon’s walk around Isleham.

The cat is a few years old. The priory behind, about a millennium.

Flutter by.

Wall-eyed.

This used to be a railway cutting, but no longer. Cars can’t go there either. But pedestrians can find a way…

(These are on Flickr – you can click them for different sizes and for others in the set. As with most of my photos recently, they’re geotagged, so Flickr can show you where they are on a map if you should happen to be curious!)

Just heard a delightful programme on BBC Radio 4: When Real Women Wore Minis and Real Men Drove Them, about the making of The Italian Job, forty years ago.

Catch it while it's on iPlayer... even hearing the clips from the soundtrack can't fail to make me smile...

Quite fun, though.

My Mac Book Pro has a new baby brother. It's a Dell Mini 9 on which, thanks to the instructions here, I was able to install Mac OS X.

I already had a properly-licensed copy of the OS, in so far as any operation like this could be properly-licensed. I ordered the Dell with 2G RAM, an improved webcam, a larger (16GB) SSD and a bluetooth module. Total cost: £277. Including VAT. And shipping. Oh, and a nice carrying case.

As soon as you pick the device up, you can tell from the construction that it's not an Apple. But my first solid-state 'Mac' runs the OS really quite nicely. I had a vague idea that Apple software was only licensed to run on Apple-badged products, so I fixed that too:

However, there was one downside to the bargain special price I got from Dell. After ordering, I discovered that some varieties of this machine, such as those purchased from PCWorld or from Vodafone, have a 3G modem and a slot for a SIM. This doesn't have it, and it would have been really quite nice. But then I might not have got some of the other upgrades, and since everything else, including a 3G connection via Bluetooth to my phone, seems to work fine, I'm really very happy.