Codepapacy

The H Handy Size - Help me test...

2010-03-17T13:51:00.003Z

Just an experiment. This is a QR Code for "The H Handy Size" Android app. Do let me know if it works for you. The code is available on Google code and all hints are welcome.

Goodness, that long...

2009-07-06T07:17:00.001+01:00

Goodness, has it been that long since I last posted? I've been kinda busy what with all the editor in chiefing at The H, I seem to have let things slip.

So, let's see what's on the agenda this week.....

1) Waiting for a new Mac Book Pro 17".... (Anyone want to buy a lovingly cared for aluminium Mac Book?)

2) Waiting for a Cusinart grill... Mmmm Bacon

3) Setting up Alfresco 3.2 which is out today, and writing some news about it

4) Going to Online Gaming High Scaling on Thursday

5) Looking forward to Charlie Brookers "You Have Been Watching" on Channel 4 tomorrow....

6) Deciding on something to write, software wise. I've been fiddling about with a "MST3K" library manager, but I think I might turn it into a general "What can I watch" application.

7) Writing something in a long quiet blog

8) Twittering @codepope

9) Oh, and the editor in chiefing thing....

Oh where was I....

2008-11-01T13:21:00.001Z

Spent the morning fighting RS232 connections to the BeagleBoard. No success yet, but getting there. Updating the EEE PC 901's Ubuntu 8.10 Array.org kernel. Generally nerding about a bit. Which is nice.

A metaphor for free software?

2008-08-24T10:24:00.001+01:00

I feel that this tale may serve as a useful metaphor for free software too.

And if you listen to Mark Watson makes the world substantially better... sing along... "Exemplum exemplum, an example from your own life, except in this case it's from a theme park employee, so it's probably a themeparkempluuuum". And if you don't, give it a go.

Ah Drugs Specials....

2008-08-19T13:29:00.001+01:00

This just replaced the "Just Say No" song as the worst drugs special ever.

I want that one... big flash drives...

2008-08-16T11:31:00.001+01:00

I want that one.... 64TB of flash, 64GB of cache... Mmmmm...

A Pondering....

2008-08-10T11:02:00.001+01:00

For the people who think Linux should be referred to as GNU/Linux to properly credit the GNU software used in Linux distributions;

If the attribution of credit is so important, shouldn't the GPL have had an attribution clause?

~~And a supplementary ponder.... Why GNU/Linux and not Linux/GNU?~~ Answer for that found at the gnu site... fair enough... now back to the primary ponder.

What I look for in a phone...

2008-08-09T16:52:00.001+01:00

Oooh I said, a new release of OpenMoko OM2008.8 ....

I wonder..... Looks down page .... Ah Known Issues....

"GSM not working properly after x hours"

Ok... well that can be work....

"Can not make phone call after GSM on/off/on"

Right, well at least we got the source and....

"No Pin-Dialog is showing up and so GSM is not usable at all"

Oh for goodness sake... at least there's the Wifi...

"WiFi can only connect once"

..... Still maybe there's another distro for the OpenMoko eh?

Yes, I've been quiet.... There's a good reason...

2008-08-07T12:08:00.001+01:00

You can see what I'm doing during the day by following Heise Online UK's Open Channel. Look out for some useful, interesting and possibly fun stuff about open source and the community around it coming up on there. And if you think I should be writing about something, drop me a mail on djwm [at] heise-online.co.uk.

It Strikes Me....

2008-08-04T22:53:00.002+01:00

It strikes me that a phone that uses Linux inside but has locked down DRM is a far greater offence than say a phone with a proprietary OS and locked down DRM. I'm reading here about the motorola Linux based phones... But then I am also finding it very hard to track down info on how to develop for those phones. 95% of what I seem to be finding is how to unlock these phones... Which again strikes me with the thought that "hey, wasn't it also some sort of heinous offence to sell a locked phone too?"... Oh my head hurts with all these strikes....

Some people....

2008-07-28T18:47:00.001+01:00

Some people(1) will do anything to justify getting their picture(2) out there...

(1) Ok, me...
(2) Or image that resembles the side of their head.

Well, That Worked

2008-07-27T20:23:00.001+01:00

And it reminds me how really really neat the iPhone app store is.

Posted with LifeCast

Trying Out Lifecast

2008-07-27T20:08:00.001+01:00

Interesting idea, it seems to be a little multichannel diary which you can wire to multiple blogs (or not) which strikes me as simple and .... Well let's see if it posts this first shall we.

Geolocate this post

Posted with LifeCast

Context sensitive trackpad on the iPhone?

2008-07-24T08:58:00.001+01:00

I was thinking, wouldn't it be neat if you could have an app on the iPhone which talks to your Mac and acts like an intelligent trackpad for the Mac?

You could experiment with context sensitive trackpads which change according to the application running on the Mac.

A pope can dream.

Trying out blogging by mail.

2008-07-22T21:31:00.001+01:00

I've been thinking about it, and the lack of a iPhone app to post to
Blogger has lead me to giving mail based blogging a go.

Well, at least that's the theory.

Ah Momus brilliance....

2008-07-17T08:17:00.001+01:00

And there in my feeds this morning, Momus lists the tracks he's doing in a Berlin set. And to top it off, a wonderful bit of Momus on a webcam, performing "The Cheques in the Post"....

Brilliant stuff...

How overegged were the iPhone queue stories?

2008-07-14T09:06:00.001+01:00

Some Guy With A Website demonstrates.

Foxtrot does....

2008-07-13T14:45:00.001+01:00

Foxtrot does Penny Arcade, PvP, xkcd and Joy Of Tech in one.

So close yet....

2008-07-13T14:09:00.001+01:00

So our local constabulary are sending out local crime maps by email to people who are interested. This is good.

They are sending out .Doc files embedded as a link in a .rtf file. You can't open this on a Mac or on Linux and I suspect you'd need Office on Windows for it to work. This is not good.

But, it's a start.

Google undoes a dumb....

2008-07-13T09:43:00.001+01:00

Google Mail had what someone must have thought was a neat behavior. Exchange mail with people and pow, they are added to your contacts. Of course, in real life, that doesn't work. You get a contact list full of crapola addresses, which devalues your contact list which is dumb. So the good news is that is in a future release, Google is getting rid of the dumb. Now, there's "Suggested Contacts" and the ability to pick and choose who becomes your contacts.

And there's another thing to think about.... Is this the start of more controllable contact management for Google's services, making it social networking without the ninjas and spammers? One can hope.

If you don't read my other blog...

2008-07-11T10:12:00.001+01:00

Then you won't know why I've been sighing.

BBQ sauce news....

2008-07-04T18:01:00.001+01:00

BBQ sauce not as effective as tin foil. (via Digg)

Thing I want in monitors....

2008-07-02T08:36:00.001+01:00

Where a monitor has umpteen inputs, and you can switch between the inputs using but a single button to cycle through them, I want a menu which lets me select wether or not I cycle through each input. So on my monitor here which has DVI-1,DVI-2,DisplayPort,HDMI,Component,Svideo,Composite,VGA... I could turn off everything but DVI-1 and HDMI, so rather than 3 and 5 button presses to change input, it would we 1 button press. Come on Mr Monitor maker; I'm really looking at you Mr Dell, make it real eh?

And the "Oh Touché" award goes to....

2008-06-29T12:42:00.001+01:00

And the "Oh Touché" award goes to....

Simon Phipps for his masterful "Pot, Kettle and the required EULA" and his pointing out that it's easy to talk the talk, much much harder to walk the walk.

Awesome - What Sys Admin is All About

2008-06-28T17:19:00.001+01:00

All change at Codepope Towers....

2008-06-27T12:53:00.001+01:00

If you follow my Twittering, you'll know that earlier this week I went to Hannover for a job interview. Well, it appears to have all gone jolly well, and barring hitches, I will be the Open Source Editor for heise-online.co.uk. Well, I say all change; the blogs will still update of course, and I'll still be coding for research (and fun in my off time...) and I'll still be talking about all the things I often talk about.

All praise the archivists....

2008-06-22T11:01:00.001+01:00

Thanks to a friend who did keep the old copies of Personal Computer World from the late 80s and early 90s, I now have scans of the David Evnull columns which were my first writing experience.

Things that have amused me...

My use of the term "freely copyable" because back then there was no term "open source" and the only GPL software of note was GCC and Gnu Emacs. And there was no giving URLs for stuff; I was uploading files to Cix so at least there was somewhere online you could easily download them.

The user interface wars and the arrival of X Windows; Motif vs Open Look... Experience put me off the latter, but Motif never did make it. X Windows on the other hand is firmly ensconced on the Linux desktop and there is really no other alternative.

The Amiga 3000UX... I did give it one heck of a kicking in print for sucking (and being expensive suck).

My column which predicted the ACE initiative would be DOA... which became true faster than the columns went to print.

Oh the memories.... Thanks Adrian!

The Union Jack - Unnecessary noise?

2008-06-20T18:23:00.001+01:00

Mac OS X has a rather nifty international keyboard handling input menu, you can make it appear in the menu bar with a little flag showing what locale you are in.

But when you are in one country, and you use the the input menu to only get at the handy keyboard and character palette utilities (one shows you live, what characters the keyboard generates, great for locating the ™ or å or é, the other lets you browse the unicode character set).... then the flag is a bit noisy; overly colourful and depending on taste, possibly jingoistic.

So, for a fix, may I refer you to this Macworld article which shows you how to directly launch the keyboard and character palette utilities without having the input menu on screen.

But wouldn't it be nice if you could have a "Global citizen" mode on the input menu, so you didn't have the little flag (you could make it appear when you mouse over it)...

And now I'm split cos this....

2008-06-19T18:03:00.001+01:00

...is equally as clever... Requiem's trailer dialog vs Toy Story 2.

Requiem For A Day Off...

2008-06-19T17:55:00.001+01:00

I love messing about with video, the old mashup, one movie to the tune of another, it's fun.

But this... well, take Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream, take Ferris Bullers Day Off... It really shouldn't go together, but Benji Films pulls it off. See for yourself.

Class work.

More Footswitch

2008-06-18T16:36:00.001+01:00

Well, they got back to me, with a promise to look into the console logging, but also, news on what they are doing next which sounds like foot switch heaven. I'm already pencilling in my order for it.

My new toy.... A Footswitch?

2008-06-18T11:51:00.001+01:00

I just got myself a foot-switch. Well, officially it's a "StealthSwitch" for hiding your pr0n or games or Facilebook pages in the office. But it does come with software which just lets you map it to a keystroke. For me, I've mapped it to [SPACE] so that I can have both hands free and page through things like physical manuals and books. Works great in Google Reader. It actually thinks that it is a keyboard, generating up an "all modifiers+5" keystroke which the standalone app they ship with it intercepts and then does whatever action you map it to.

Why does it look like a keyboard? Well, I assume because that way, no drivers are needed for it and on a reasonably set up office machine, you shouldn't have users installing drivers. It's a cunning workaround for that problem. But, I have to say, if it's really a steathy thing then doesn't having this....

sitting in the menu bar kind of give it away. Full marks though for having a Mac application for it though, and bonus marks for it not looking like a Windows app.

Now I can sit back and pretend I'm controlling the browser.... WITH MY MIND!

Update: And minus marks for logging *every* press of the footswitch to the console. Mail despatched to their support.

Motivation 101

2008-06-16T13:23:00.001+01:00

How do you motivate yourself?

My current motivation is Metal Gear Solid 4. My copy of which is firmly in the hands on Nomine, who will only give the game to me when I can show her my code doing what I told her it will do.

Soon, it will be mine.... soon.... um....

Working away....

2008-06-14T15:09:00.001+01:00

So I'm not going to be getting any ADAs for my coding efforts, but I have to admit to becoming quite comfortable with [A fruity company]'s SDK for [fruity company]'s phone. In a couple of days, I should have the first working version of [secret codename] ready to roll, or at least start working through the bugs from me not knowing the real workings of this thing. Hey, I'm not used to managing memory by hand.

World of World of....

2008-06-11T17:13:00.001+01:00

The Onion has the news on World of World of Warcraft. Wow, I've never played World of Warcraft but this could be the expansion pack for me.

Senor Coconut Da Da Da

2008-06-10T18:23:00.001+01:00

Cheesy latin remix of digital classic. Check.
Curious video with the sexy ladies. Check.
Gorilla suits. Check.
Did we check the cheesey. Check.
We have lift off....

(via Boing Boing)

Now that I'd like to see....

2008-06-06T15:09:00.001+01:00

"Sony’s Digital Cinema Auto Calibration (DCAC) simplifies surround sound setup with the push of a button by automatically adjusting speaker frequency, distance and level."

Speakers that move on their own. Cracking stuff Sony.

(Original release here)

Link-o-tron

2008-06-06T12:15:00.001+01:00

Some links (rpt. previously twittered)

Worst solution for Twitters problems to date...

Great Logos of our time

Squirrelfish's logo rocks... just like Squirrelfish does. Nice work Webkit dudes. Up close on the logo here.

Hopefully, people like this will go away now Obama's the nominee.

And finally, sheer brilliance with a Spectrum, a dot matrix printer, a Finlandia TV, an old Scanjet and an array of noisy hard disks in Big Ideas (Don't Get Any).

Best apology of the day....

2008-06-03T10:00:00.001+01:00

In an article on Newsweek, Close but not close enough*, on Clinton's "popular vote" claim, comes the final lines.

"*Changed from "Close--But No Cigar" to avoid the inappropriate (and unintentional, I swear) reference. Apologies to all for my stupid choice of words."

At least it lives on in the URL. Heh.

Aggregating...

2008-05-29T17:25:00.001+01:00

I'm now aggregated at Friendfeed as codepope.... which includes me on twitter as codepope, on Jaiku as codepope... etc, etc. Find it here, for a complete single feed of all my nonsense.

Smooth Criminal with Fred Astaire

2008-05-28T11:17:00.001+01:00

This is a sweet little video mash. I especially like how it credits the movies, directors and choreographers at the end.

(via Boing Boing)

Ok, so some people are thinking about GUIs...

2008-05-27T11:03:00.001+01:00

Here's a neat tweak on the scrollbar concept, Popup Scrollbar Concept, though it strikes me as kinda familiar and I can't exactly put my finger on it. I do note that it does lack absolute repositioning though. But then this is the kind of research that we need to do, especially as in the future we won't know if it's a mouse or a finger manipulating the UI.

Been giving Twhirl a twirl....

2008-05-24T13:47:00.001+01:00

As Twhirl now supports FriendFeed and Twitter, I thought I'd give it a go. And it got me thinking.

The thing that strikes me is how, back when Java was trying to do cross platform look and feels that matched the target platform, people complained it wasn't exactly like the target platform and QED Java sucked. And now we have Air and Silverlight, where the delivered apps look nothing like the target platform, but go for this generic look and feel and... Well, if people were consistent, QED AIR and Silverlight suck.

But they don't. You know what? Cross platform look and feel consistency is now a big red herring. Web applications showed that you could do 90% of what you needed with buttons, buttons, buttons* (and some text fields and scrollers, but mostly buttons). Prettier the button, prettier the layout was, the slicker the web application was. Big buttons, rounded buttons, what turned up was a new design paradigm for applications, rectangular, rounded, and if you can make it translucent, +5 points. And into this world come AIR and Silverlight... same idea; it won't match the targetted platform, but who cares, it speaks a nice simple visual language. Click something, something happens.

Did we just rewind twenty to thirty years of GUI development?

And it goes a little something like this....

2008-05-19T12:57:00.001+01:00

(via Why Thats Delightful)

This is going to be a long four years.....

2008-05-03T09:23:00.001+01:00

Stanley Johnson (Boris's father) on News 24

"I have been amazingly impressed by the determination which he has shown. Number one, he hasn't had a drink for three months. Now if you give up drink for three months, you have to be serious. I mean you have really to be serious about what you are doing."

Oh, that's so reassuring that is. Let's see how Boris wrapped up his acceptance speech.

"Let's get cracking tomorrow, let's have a drink tonight."

On Climate Change and Feedback

2008-05-02T13:10:00.001+01:00

From a conversation with DHM...

DHM: I'm still a bit boggled by the discovery that none of the climate models have any feedback effects in them. They know that raising the temperature of the Siberian permafrost a few degrees will release a LOT of methane, for example, and there are many others associated with melting sea ice and the like but none are included, which I think means we're all about to get a salutory lesson on control theory any year now

Me: I have to say, I wasn't overly boggled by that. The reasoning appears to be that there are no ways of knowing all the feedback effects and counting 'known' ones would leave the model open to being redone every time one was determined. So they go for the baseline...

DHM: The problem to me is that once that's been filtered through the PR dept and the press, the worst-case first-order projection is presented as the worst-possible-case projection

Me: I prefer to think of it as a projection half full of doom than half empty.

An experiment....

2008-05-02T12:10:00.001+01:00

Method

Take a friend with kids and a number of crappy PCs running Windows XP. Plaugued with virii, despite AV controls.

Ask them to try "Ubuntu" and install one machine for them and give them a quick guided tour.

Wait.

Result

Phone call the next day. Friend loves it, so does her children. Installed it on all the other machine herself last night. All machines are "Just so much faster and everything is just there".

Conclusion

Ubuntu Linux... it's what a Mac user like me can recommend to someone who has a crufty PC.

Discuss.

Goodbye Humph....

2008-04-26T07:53:00.001+01:00

Here's a compressed burst of ISIHAC from the South Bank Show.

And here's all the South Bank Show.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

What a great guy... goodbye Humph.

On a bit of a video roll here....

2008-04-25T13:27:00.001+01:00

Oh, and I'd better throw in the Thunderbirds one too

And the Avengers one has emedding disabled so go here for Avengers remix excellence

Ah.... U F O....

2008-04-25T13:10:00.001+01:00

Cracking stuff....

Update... and more....

and more....

"Flood cue! Dive Dive Dive!"

All from the wonderful Power Themes 90....

Who's On First: The Movie....

2008-04-24T08:22:00.001+01:00

FIRST!

2008-04-23T17:24:00.001+01:00

"This" for the day....

2008-04-23T14:48:00.001+01:00

I'd like this on my desktop.

I'd rather not think about how awful this is.

I'm not going for dinner on this.... I like to stretch my legs between courses.

"This" for the day....

2008-04-21T12:42:00.001+01:00

I must not even consider building this.

This is so not on my Amazon Wishlist.

This has left me abruptly deflated.

And finally this reminds me never to ask for a show of hands if you don't know the result in advance.

Just for fun....

2008-04-19T11:09:00.001+01:00

If you read this blog, and have a PS3... do remember to add "codepope" to your PSN friends.

Psystar-k-raving-bonkers....

2008-04-19T08:34:00.001+01:00

Well, you'd have to be bonkers to buy anything from a company who's terms of service are 'Well, you are on your own matey..." and thats before all the other shenanigans.

Natoooopsy...

2008-04-18T14:13:00.001+01:00

And you thought couriers were bad. NATO accidentally supplied arms and food to the Taliban.

New rule time....

2008-04-17T08:41:00.001+01:00

Inspired by this Nokia "concept"*....

Rule: You can't call your whacky rendering a "concept" device if something better designed has appeared in a SciFi TV series.

That is all.

* Rodenberry's Earth Final Conflict had a much nicer device which looked like people could use it.

Inconsolable....

2008-04-16T08:10:00.001+01:00

I was looking for monospaced fonts, after I was reminded that Microsoft had actually made a decent monospaced font with Consola. After some hunting, and a false start finding the original Inconsolas, I found the latest version, with a slashed zero, and my it looks good. Check it out here.

Selected links....

2008-04-14T15:04:00.001+01:00

A tweak on Toshiba's USB... powered when the machine isn't powered up.

An Overheard in New York I'd have loved to overhear.

(Extracted from past twittering)

What's heavier than a dumbbell?

2008-04-14T14:59:00.001+01:00

Easy. A box of weights for a dumbbell. Heavier still? Two boxes of weights for a pair of dumbbells. And don't ask me about my enormous pole. Still, that lot will keep Nomine busy...

Vodafone impressed me....

2008-04-12T10:11:00.001+01:00

Sent them my old E70 for unlocking on Thursday. Back today all unlocked. Jolly quick. I'm impressed. Not with them any more, having got O2/iPhone, but if I had an unlocked iPhone, Vodafone wouldn't be out of the question as a carrier.

FAQ intros...

2008-04-09T10:46:00.001+01:00

From The Blu-Ray Disc site:

FAQ
These are the questions frequently asked, so please refer to them before getting in contact with the Entity.

Hmmm.... The Entity you say....

Long Photography...

2008-04-09T08:07:00.001+01:00

Looks like Flickr has gone for the video thing, which means 90 second long videos. An interesting approach, dodging taking on Gootube head on and playing to the world of cameras with a video option. Quality looks decent enough... let's see how that plays out.

Oooh - Quake3 on an iPod touch....

2008-04-07T18:37:00.001+01:00

Sweet work....

McCain (not Oven Fries)

2008-04-07T18:34:00.001+01:00

What a nice man. Sounds like he's got the right stuff for the presidency.... sorry, I mean, a residency at a Sweary McSwear Swear's Comedy Club.

And in font news...

2008-04-06T07:43:00.001+01:00

Microsoft finally find a use for the font "Comic Blackmail Sans".

When April Fool's leak...

2008-04-04T21:13:00.002+01:00

Ok... I got caught... The mobile plasma story turns out to be a late delivered April Fool. Which is quite a pity as we could do with something different in the mobile display space. Hey ho, back to OLEDs and ePaper and LCDs....

Thinking hard....

2008-04-03T18:19:00.001+01:00

Well, I'm doing my usual thing of hacking code and then going into "This isn't right" rethinking, but I'm trying to push forward. The big mind blocker is making "the app" slick in the hand and until I get it in my hand, simulators don't really crack it.

Anyway, let's see what's been distracting me today....

First up, the news that Panasonic are putting plasma screens in phones which I'll admit is a place I hadn't really expected for anyone to do. The new twist, low power, apparently with the magic enabled by AbleComm's work on headsets. It'll be interesting to see how these pan out in practice.

John Cole's Balloon Juice analyse McCain's new ad and have worked out what the foundation of his policies are.

Oh My! SOOO CUTE but I'm still not getting one... unless it's that cute.

And another thanks to Balloon Juice for Mike Gravel's Helter Skelter... But heck.... I kinda like it as art.

Right, that's enough for the day.

Apparently....

2008-04-02T18:30:00.001+01:00

The most popular thing I've posted here is... a little thing on Windows Se7en. Who knew. Well, apparently Google Analytics knew after a little bit of a sample. Using Analytics on this blog is like using the Large Hadron Collider to crack a nut. Actually, could you crack a nut with the LHC? Maybe that is its real purpose. You can never tell with these physics types.

Now I've tidied up the kipple that was here, time for me to get down to some steady bloggery. On what I don't know yet.

Anyway, that's my blogging quota for the day.

All Change On T'Blog...

2008-03-29T13:27:00.001Z

Twittering is now archived on Codepope Tweeting.

Previous twittering has been archived there and removed from this blog.

Carry on. Regardless.

Interflora Sucks....

2008-02-15T09:15:00.001Z

Placed order for flowers for yesterday..... nothing turned up. Ring Interflora (numerous times) and it's all engaged tones or dead lines. That's shite. That's shite on a stick with a shite topping.

Update: For a more reasoned reasoning of the reasons that Interflora sucks, see Nomine's Just How Wrong Can You Get It

Update+: Interflora are refunding. Still never going to use them again.

Regular readers may note....

2008-01-27T12:44:00.002Z

Regular readers may note that I'm using LoudTwitter to preserve those links and bits that I twitter. Good? Bad? Annoying? Let me know. Or not.....

[ Update : The Loudtwittering has been moved to it's own blog ]

Hmmm

2008-01-14T14:52:00.001Z

~~Guessing LoudTwitter isn't sending the mail then.~~

Well, there we go. Above this, my first LoudTwittered autopost. There'll be more links'n'shit in there in the future, but now you can either sniff my twitter (fnarr) or just wait for a daily posting of the tweets of the day.

iPhone Displays in the UK - Good News/Bad News

2008-01-11T14:39:00.001Z

In the US, AT&T iPhone POS displays use Windows. Cue the pictures of Windows errors on them....

In the UK, it appears O2 use Macs. Yay! Except...

Yes, that's a nice "This Mac was unexpectedly restarted" dialog.

Green Blackmail, New Scientist Style....

2008-01-03T08:45:00.001Z

So, here's a bit of green blackmail from a New Scientist subscription email.

"Not only will you save hassle later on, but you can also help us reduce the number of letters we send you, contributing towards a greener environment."

Uhuh, so, If I don't renew right now, New Scientist are going to send me paper mailings till I do, and I'm the one supposed to feel guilty about the carbon footprint.

I'm surprised it didn't have "Nice planet, shame if anything.... happened... to it". It also lessens the impact when you note this is an email.

Bah! Basshunter's broken....

2008-01-03T08:06:00.001Z

Basshunter did a wonderful track called Boten Ana. How many songs do you know about IRC?

And now it arrives in the UK and.... OMG.... It's been... DEGEEKED....

It's almost a crime. Ah well, at least I have the Basshunter album "LOL <(^^,)>"... And I wish Basshunter great bleepy europop success.

Morning links.....

2007-12-29T09:54:00.001Z

A review of The Rails Way can't wait for my copy to arrive.

iPhone 1.1.3 firmware rumours makes sense, getting ready for the SDK by letting people manage their home screen.

Aw Kitties!

Spooks....

2007-12-21T09:16:00.001Z

Well, thats another series of Spooks wrapped up. If you haven't watched the last episode, look away now...

Ok?

Right....

I enjoy Spooks, but there it has now just established itself as utterly misogynistic.

This series ends with the death of Jo, who despite being a solid staunch strong character goes from 0 to wreck in less than two jump cuts and a fade in. And so yet again a Spooks series ends with a female character dead because they were weak. This just keeps happening. The men are strong and get a million second chances (cf Adam, who should have been retired after the last series as he was a wreck, but oh no, he can manage it). The women are 'apparently strong', but always break. The next series, as soon as a new female character walks on, you will find yourself wondering how she's going to end up dead or disgraced. Take Ros this series, she was a strong, possibly too hard, character, and bish bosh, she's broken by torture, she's off helping Yalta (the chaps who torture her) and it's all down hill from there for her and off she's shuffled to a life of hiding... organised by the chaps.

It's not just this series, this has been happening from the start, from the deep fat fryer in episode one, series one. And it just keeps happening.

It's all so bloody infuriating, as the big arc story in Spooks this series worked really well, but when it comes to the character management, there's a big "Spying's a blokes game, watch us break the little ladies" theme running through.

Read XKCD?

2007-12-18T12:38:00.001Z

Then you may want to watch this.

BBC's iPlayer works* on Mac and Linux

2007-12-13T19:12:00.001Z

Hussah! (and w00t!)

And the volume control goes to 11.

Class work.

* Streaming only. Now about those downloads........

Lost By Translation

2007-11-24T09:41:00.001Z

Lost By Translation.

Bonus link - Why Teller Is So Cool.

Logitech do the right thing...

2007-11-21T14:39:00.001Z

I've just noticed that Logitech have released Logitech Control Center 2.4. In the past LCC has sucked because it installed APE. Well, now thats changed... "Unsanity's Application Enhancer (APE) is no longer installed and needed". Heck, I might even give it a try.

Update: Eyw, read the comments. I'll wait for 2.4.1....

Twitterific defined

2007-11-15T17:57:00.001Z

Twitterific: An application designed to display a nice yellow box over one third of it's UI explaining why Twitter isn't working at the moment. Alledgedly, twitters from your followed folk occasionally leak past this yellow box.

What I'd like in a clock/radio....

2007-11-15T10:35:00.001Z

I like alarm clock/ipod playing/radios. I also like dawn wake-up lamps. But currently my bedside table has both on it. Now this is a tad redundant. I'd prefer just a straight lamp and an alarm clock/radio.

So here's the idea. An alarm clock/radio which had a connection (wired or wireless... I think wireless might be easier, and be easier to make international) to a plug adapter (which would be country specific). You plug your favourite lamp into the adapter and plug it in. You now control your lamps on/off and brightness from the alarm clock/radio. And when the alarm is due to go off, the alarm clock/radio starts ramping up the light brightness half an hour earlier.

Better still, the plug adapters could be sold seperately, and you could "pair" one or two of them to the radio so you could raise the lights on two lamps. And there could be a version for permanant installation in a socket, so you could have a "dawn enabled" socket.

Would you want one?

Touched up

2007-11-10T14:53:00.001Z

Well, this I'd my first posting here with an iPod Touch via wifi and Safari. Neato.

iChat supports "/me"

2007-10-30T09:19:00.001Z

iChat now (apparently undocumented) supports "/me"

/me is happy
/me does a little dance

So when you go to the chemists....

2007-10-30T08:20:00.001Z

You've got a question to ask them... "Are you a Catholic Pharmacist?" because now, there's a good chance your Catholic pharmacist will not be doing their job and instead be trying to apply their "morality" to your life.

"We cannot anesthetize consciences as regards, for example, the effect of certain molecules that have the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo or shortening a person's life"

On the plus side, at least Pope "But I wasn't a Nazi" Benedict XVI has made it explicit, welcome to the "War On Molecules".

Just a warning for Leopard upgraders.... You may have APE even though you never installed it.

2007-10-28T14:52:00.001Z

The following appears to be true... APE screws up the Leopard install. What people may not realise is that they may not know they have APE installed. If you have ever installed Logitech Control Center, then this installs APE. If you uninstall Logitech Control Center, it doesn't get removed. It's why I don't install Logitech Control Center any more, and I bet that a metric shit load of the people getting 'blue screens' are people who've installed Logitech's mouse/keyboard support software.

So, if you are going for an upgrade, if you have Logitech Control Center, uninstall it and manually remove APE... This is the FAQ for APE.

I am integral to the project!

2007-09-28T15:54:00.001+01:00

That's me, in a whole frame or two of the Pet Shop Boys New video.

No2ID are promoting it, and you can see the whole thing here.

So I'm writing code....

2007-09-23T18:56:00.001+01:00

Well, I'm back to writing code, though I'm enjoying working in Ruby on Rails and Netbeans 6.0.

So what am I writing? Well, it's called Libr and the idea is that you can use it to keep track of things that you have loaned to other people. Say you have a book you want to lend to someone, and lets assume that you are 'Adam' and the someone is 'Joe' and you have accounts on Libr already set up. Adam creates a taggle for the book; a taggle has all the essential information about the book and it can generate a taggle code, which you can write/label the physical book with. Adam then goes to his "Borrowers" list which are all the people Adam has a lending relationship with. Adam adds Joe to his list, then goes back to the books taggle and selects lend, and then selects Joe and sets a date when he wants the book back. The taggle is now lent.

When Joe logs in, possibly after being prompted via RSS or email, he can see that Adam has lent him a book. If Joe has the book, then he selects "Confirm", and the book is now a confirmed loan.

A couple of days before the loan period is up, Joe is reminded that the book is due to be returned. He returns the book, and then clicks Return next to the taggle. Adam is notified by email or RSS and can confirm his reciept of the loan.

And that's the basics of Libr.

Lolsocks

2007-09-21T09:50:00.001+01:00

How it feels starting to code a project....

2007-09-07T12:27:00.001+01:00

Remembering Pavarotti and James Brown...

2007-09-06T13:03:00.001+01:00

Links'o'the'day

2007-09-04T10:48:00.001+01:00

Links'o'the'day

2007-09-02T18:41:00.001+01:00

Links'o'the'day

2007-09-01T15:44:00.001+01:00

ClearBlue...

2007-08-26T13:21:00.001+01:00

You've seen the television ad for the ClearBlue pregnancy tester?

"The most advanced technology you will ever pee on".

That bugs me. I keep adding "deliberately".

Not Overheard

2007-08-02T12:32:00.001+01:00

"So like Vista came up and offered 'Revert to last good configuration' so I selected it and it rebooted in Windows 2000"

Safari searching....

2007-07-19T15:55:00.001+01:00

I like searching from the address bar. I liked Sogudi, the plugin for Safari which let you do just that. But it don't work with Safari 3 Beta. So I went hunting and found SafariSIA which doesn't claim to work with Safari 3 but, after a brief try out, I can say, it does appear to work.

And yes, I'm trying Safari 3 again, the 3.0.2 beta seems to have addressed a bunch of issues I had. So here we go again.