This will give you a live button on your Firefox bookmarks toolbar that will update with the latest bid value. Firefox checks every 30 minutes, this can be changed by modifying the browser.microsummary.updateInterval setting in your about:config.

• Install the microsummary generator, you require a version of Firefox that is 2.0 or newer (Firefox 3.0 works wonders)
• Go to any auction page on Trade Me.
• Click the Star in the address bar, and then click on it again once more (not a double-click). Firefox 2.0 users, go to Bookmarks » Add Bookmark
• Click on the drop arrow next to the Name, and select the new Live Title.
  
• Also, change its folder to the Bookmarks Toolbar.
• You are done.

Let me know of any problems.

Final day to donate!

Clearly there is still some more work to be done, however it is trucking away. Getting a MacBook to continue development on away from my desk has encouraged me to get the client to set itself up (before it was using a database I had created in Visual Studio, and hard coded in). The scroll bar is presenting some quirks, which is unfortunate, but hopefully will get those sussed. It is pretty runnable, it sits in the task tray and even shows notifications (they’re nice and animated).

The Catch Up window is the whole reason why I’ve been making this Twitter client. It’s one thing that has bugged me, if you are away for any period of time and you are among a pretty chatty bunch of Twitterers, you tend to miss out on stuff. Catch up breaks it down in easily digestible pieces. The above is a very early form, and will be expanded upon (like, removing the “s” from “tweets” when there is only one).

I’m guessing after fixing some of the hitches I could get a preview release rolled out, however there are no promises that one will come soon. Development is already rather glacial.

Oh, and I ran the Twitter client through the Mono migration tool to see if there would be any problems in porting it to the Mac. So far so good, there are some P/Invoke methods required for the Notifications window, but I’m sure I can replace that with Growl.

This year however, I’m going to do it. This will be the first time I would have grown out some facial hair since I was… hmm would be since I was 14 now (when there wasn’t enough to shave but enough to be noticeable). Movember 2008 will have the money go towards the Cancer Society to help research prostate cancer, and the Mental Health Foundation for their Out of the Blue campaign.

So this is where you come in. While I’ll be growing the Mo, you guys can donate to it in two ways:

1. You can go to my MoSpace to see how I am going and donate via credit card.
2. You can write a cheque out to “Movember Donations Account”, referencing my registration number 1762121 and post it to,
   Movember
   PO Box 12 708
   Wellington 6144

If you are growing a Mo yourself, let me know and I’ll sponsor you back, MoBro to MoBro.

If you are growing a Mo, but haven’t registered, you still can at the official Movember website.

So the photo is my clean shaven self. Stay tuned for the results.

• Sponsor now!

Yeah, there is nothing special about it yet. It’s showing tweets. Woo. All in good time though…

I do need a good name for it first.

I have more fun tapping – it doesn’t require me to push down, and also doesn’t require me to move my hand. You could call it lazy, but I call it genius. Yet, even though we’ve had this “tap to click” motion for some time in Windows/Linux land, the Macbooks took their sweet time. I don’t remember when they started having the tap, but I do remember for a long time trying to use a Macbook without the feature. (I’ve had too many people point out my ill-informed lies.)

Once Apple did have the tap, they took it one further and added the two-finger tap. Oh man, now I don’t even have to move my hand when I want to do a right-click! I can just tap the pad using two fingers.

But “took it one further” insinuates they took a small step, but no, they took a leap and allowed you scroll through things just by swiping those two fingers across the pad. No longer do you have hotzones that you have to swipe your finger in, now you have the whole track pad.

I just had a play with the new Macbooks, the ones that have no button. You can still click for those moments when your mind flips, and it works very well (as if the button was there). You can even do a right-click by setting a hotzone. But, why do that when you have the two-finger tap? Then you have the two-finger scroll. The new Macbooks added the three-finger navigation (it goes back when you swipe your three fingers to the left, forward when you swipe to the right). Then there are four finger swipes. I’ll admit, these are a bit of a stretch. You swipe up with your four fingers to show the desktop (it was like swiping away all my windows). You swipe down to show all the windows (it was like bringing them in). It all worked, magically. The application switch though was awful. You swiped with your four fingers left or right to bring up the Alt-Tab switch. It just wasn’t as magical as the Expose switch.

I’m quite excited in getting one of these. People may think I’ve gone crazy (I was once an Apple hater), but these things look nice and decently spec’d. I might manage to get one before the year is out, if not early next year. The play also took away my fears of the shiny screen (it isn’t as shiny as it is made out to be), which is good.

Spore
Was fun until I realised that the games from Creature to Civilisation phase are way too simple and I was doing the same thing, making friends or enemies via pretty similar means. The Limited Edition guide book put it as not wanting to make the game too complex. I think they could’ve easily pushed the envelope, got a bit more gameplay out of the thing, and players still getting it. Maybe they think that Sims players are all idiots? I don’t know. I played it constantly over the weekend it was released, and was disappointed by the Space phase with its crazily high prices for anything that was remotely awesome. Haven’t played since. Well, I loaded it up and tried to patch it, but the patch downloaded so slowly that I forgot about it and turned the computer off. Why do you force me to only patch through the game Maxis (the EA Downloader thing does not work).

WipEout HD
This thing is awesome. Super-slick graphics, silky smooth frame rates so you never miss a beat. Pretty much everything you can expect out of a futuristic anti-grav racer. And boy is it challenging. One thing I’m finding a bit disappointing is that online doesn’t seem to have many AUS games. Ah well, it is otherwise a pretty thrilling game.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Finally went out and bought this game. It’s fun and slightly challenging. I’m impressed by the number of headshots I’m getting considering there is no auto-aim. Oh and the graphics are the best I’ve seen. And it’s a year old. It’s pretty crazy how it looks like a pre-rendered movie, but it isn’t. Not quite finished yet though.

The next game I’m really looking forward to is LittleBigPlanet. Apparently this one is definitely living up to the hype based on beta tester feedback. Of note, Fable II is also being released at the same time. Two epic games, both exclusive to one platform (LittleBigPlanet is PS3 exclusive, Fable II being Xbox 360 exclusive) and, here’s the kicker, Media Molecule was founded by ex-Lionhead devs.