Twenty years of research

Twenty years ago this month I moved to Cambridge to start my Ph.D. with Ian McLaren.

Automatic graphic file conversion (OS X)

There's a great command-line tool  for graphic file conversion called sips. For example, to convert all BMP files in the current directory to PNG files placed in a subdirectory you have made called 'pngs', just type:

sips -s format png ./*.bmp --out pngs

Of course, for 1-2 files, using Preview is probably just as quick, but for 10+ files, this can save a lot of time. I think imagemagick can do something similar on Linux, not sure about Windows.

UPDATE: In Linux, use e.g.

mogrify -format png *.jpg
 

Bye Bye Virgin Media

My Virgin Media home broadband was looking a little out-of-date (3.6Mb/s download; 1MBs/s upload), and a 30 minute phone call with them ended with them saying this was the best service they could offer at my address. Kinda ridiculous as I'm in the centre of a city (Plymouth, UK). So, bye bye Virgin, hello BT. The new service kicked in this morning -- 63.6Mb/s download; 18.2MB/s upload ! Not only 18x faster that Virgin, but also 2-6x faster than my WiFi connection at Plymouth University!