External

Piranha fish found in Chichester sewer as water company pleads ‘only flush poo, paper and pee’

From: Piranha fish found in Chichester sewer as water company pleads ‘only flush poo, paper and pee’:

The flesh-eating creature was found by a startled member of staff at Southern Water who was carrying out checks at the West Sussex treatment works.

The South-American river predator, which normally hunt in packs, can rip flesh to shreds in a matter of seconds.

Filed under WTF!  Flesh eating fish (albeit a dead one), in the UK, in the sewer (no doubt with the crocodiles and the clown from IT!). #shudder

Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs

From: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs From 2020, Replacing Intel

Apple Inc. is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the plans.

This doesn’t surprise me, and could work out well (hell Apple have done this before coming from PowerPC), I would expect the first models to be a low end / thin MacBook, mayhap the replacement for the MacBook Air which seems to be being strung out forever!

The BBC says it’s being squeezed out by Netflix and Amazon

The BBC says it’s being squeezed out by Netflix and Amazon:

Their business models and huge budgets mean we are increasingly being squeezed out of an ever more competitive environment. British creativity and British content are now under real threat.

No brit wants to see an establishment like the Beeb squeeze out and suffer, but just ask Blockbuster Video and Toys’R’Us, you have to change with the times.

But, the BBC and iPlayer have good content, and one thing that Netflix and Amazon are proving is that people are prepared to pay for content, so there is a market?

Xamarin announce UrhoSharp 3D Framework version 1.8

From: https://blog.xamarin.com/…

 

Been a while coming but Xamarin have pushed version 1.8 of Urhosharp, the .net binding to the Urho 3D engine.  This allows use across iOS, Android, MacOS and Windows applications.  Looking forward to giving this a play, especially the ARKit and ARCore Augmented Reality options for mobile.

Add Languages to Your Xamarin Apps with Multilingual App Toolkit

From: Add Languages to Your Xamarin Apps with Multilingual App Toolkit | Xamarin Blog

One of the things that near every mobile, desktop and web developer takes for granted is the words that their creation outputs.  Don’t get me wrong, most developers can spend their entire careers not having to worry about localisation, and they can just throw local language words into the system as needed and move on.

But what if you don’t always have local audience, simple things like the word ‘Submit’ on the button need to be translated, quick win might be to copy the UI Views and then change the words, but what for your next locale, and the next, what happens if the client decides to reword that, yo have to change it, four times, five, six …… Arrrrrgghh, unmanageable.

This can be a challenge with only one or two additional languages, but becomes daunting very quickly as more languages are added.

Enter localisation, and a solution for C# and Xamarin Mobile Apps is the Multilingual App Toolkit (MAT) Sure, it requires some thought and effort to setup, and definitely one that’s easier from the off that implementing mid project, but once in place it’s really easy to add a new language to your application.

Read the full article over at the Xamarin Blogs and decide for yourself.

Wirelessly deploying to an iOS to tvOS device

Feel my pain, we have an Apple TV in the office which runs a dashboard app that we knocked up, however the physical device is in the roof space, behind the TV, and about 10m of cable run from my Mac, the motivators to ‘do a quick update’ are low.

One thing most developers consistently do during app development is deploy to a testing device. One main drawback during this process is the struggle to find a cable, connect it to a computer, plug it into a device, and then finally deploy the app.

Looking forward to trying this, see how it works in reality, ask again later!

Full Article At: Lose the Cables: Make Deploying to an iOS or tvOS Device Easier | Xamarin Blog

Nigel Owens On What Referees Are Set To Clamp Down On For The Six Nations

Hmm, cracking down on things, like;

We will be stronger on crooked feeds at the scrum…

Pretty sure the rest of us in grass roots land do that every weekend, how about;

If someone charges into a ruck, leading with the shoulder and strikes the head it is pretty much always a red card…

Yup, that one’s in the laws of the game too.  The other points have merit, but just goes to prove there’s still a secret law book for the elite game that differs from the one I’m given!

 

Nigel Owens On What Referees Are Set To Clamp Down On For The Six Nations:

Gone nuts? >> Nutella ‘riots’ spread across French supermarkets

I know the kids love it, but face it it’s basically brown, flavoured vegetable oil, always thought the French had better culinary tastes than this, filing under WTF!

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Nutella ‘riots’ spread across French supermarkets – BBC News:

Camels banned from Saudi beauty contest over Botox – BBC News

Every day the world get’s a little bit weirder, but I think this takes the biscuit!

Twelve prized camels have been disqualified from a beauty contest in Saudi Arabia after their owners tried to tweak their good looks with Botox.

Camels banned from Saudi beauty contest over Botox – BBC News:

weMessage promises to bring iMessage to Android, uses Mac as server

I get that iMessage has become one of those platform hooks for iOS and iPhone, use it all the time, and probably the best of all Apple’s hooks, but is there actually a need for this on Android.  Android users, you tell me, are you missing out?

According to the app’s website, weMessage delivers full iMessage support to Android handsets “without reverse engineering or exploits,” a feat many developers have attempted to reproduce over the years to varying levels of success.

weMessage promises to bring iMessage to Android, uses Mac as server: