FofR

A timely electronics rant

2008-02-05T21:35:00.001Z

It's been a short while since my last blog entry; I have been hurriedly coding my monstrous hunk of a new website, Auction Earners. In between frantic key bashing I have also partaken in Christmas festivities, settled in at work (carefully omitting keywords to prevent this being flagged in a Google Alert), turned 23 and grown a little overweight. Who'd have thought that typing was not sufficient daily exercise to keep one healthy? When it gets a little warmer those calories will be burnt off as I take to a regime of sun tanning and cycling.

Now, in taking a break from my still unready ad service, I feel that I need to rant about a couple of things. Come New Year and my splendid get-together come shindig in my flat – (with Tex-Mexican niceties (tacos, enchiladas, dips, chilli con carne) spread among 8), whilst purchasing the tasty treats I decided to embark on a Freeview adventure. Back in November I bought myself a Philips Freeview box (a DTR220, digital terrestrial receiver) for £35. Plugging it into the aerial atop of my flat lead to the discovery of 40 channels, with an almighty 3 of these being viewable (bid up TV, sky three and a radio station), the rest degrading into some sort of glitch-ridden madness. This didn't bother me too much; I took the box back and grabbed my refund from Curry's, one hour after purchase. In late December I picked up my signal booster from Bristol, bought the same box again and hey presto – 40 viewable channels.

It's been a month or so since I got the box, and a number of things have started to annoy me. The main niggle is the constant crashing of the firmware – I'll be merrily flicking through channels and all of a sudden it will turn itself off and on again, experience a control freeze up (the TV signal shall continue but all control is removed – forcing me to switch the unit off and on at the switch) or suddenly cease rendering the background image elements for the EPG and info bar – which again do not return until a reset. Temporary in-viewing problems also include a periodical five to ten seconds of black and white, cross channel interference (particularly annoying if the invading channel has scrolling text) and all on top of the ugly low signal digital pausing and image distortion that occurs during bad weather. The remote control interface is also entirely unintuitive, although it is slick – if I had to give a positive point to this pseudo review.

In conclusion, do not buy the Philips DTR220, it is a hunk of junk with a brand name.

To continue in the same vein, my television comes equipped with a solitary SCART connector. I regularly switch between my Xbox 360, Wii, PC output and Freeview box. This wouldn't be a problem if an affordable yet decent switch-able multi SCART adapter existed. Finding a manual switching device that doesn't use automatic signals to change the display is difficult enough – given that my PC is on all the time this isn't an option. Robert and Dyas do stock one, a 4 connector with push button switch – fantastic. Up until the point you plug it in and get hideous interference between all the SCART channels and incessant screen flickering. Product returned and I'm still looking.

Ideally I would upgrade my 20 inch CRT to a flat screen LCD, but the TV isn't that old and it does its job well enough – except when it comes to Xbox 360 gaming, but that isn't its fault. Of the 4 games I have, only one has legible on-screen text – the others all result in tiny blurred text that is impossible to read – rendering it useless. This is entirely a design flaw – expecting all users to own an LCD is an outrageous assumption that continues to thwart me. Gah!

Ok, electronics rant over, time to get back to fixing some session stuff.

Cursed Week for British Sport

2007-10-21T19:22:00.001+01:00

Last weekend we were revelling in it. England had knocked out France in the Rugby World Cup final and they were on their way to a Saturday show down in Paris with South Africa. Lewis Hamilton was top of the F1 Championship leader board with one race to go and the Scotland and England football teams were minutes away from Euro 2008 qualification.

Come Sunday evening and we've got nothing.

England dramatically lost 2-1 to Russia away from home due to a poor penalty call and some shoddy goal-keeping and defending. Putting qualification out of England's control, and relying on a Russian falter against Israel. Scotland meanwhile left themselves the task of needing to beat Italy at home to qualify, after their torrid display in Georgia, losing 2-0. This all happened on Wednesday. Next up is Saturday, and with thousands of English fans, the rugby team are in Paris for the World Cup Final. Whilst a gallant and brave performance, a demoralising disallowed try and some lack of discipline and BAM, the final is lost. Now our nation's hopes of a great victory fall to the young rookie Lewis Hamilton, with a second place position on the starting grid in Brazil for the last race of the season. Things quickly go wrong as Hamilton falls to the back of the pack with car problems, finishing the race in 7th, resulting in a Raikkonen race and championship win.

It seems I was lucky enough to have the pleasant distraction of going to Leicester for the weekend for Samantha's birthday, drawing me away from such shattering realisations. So whilst England lost - left, right and centre, I merrily drank wine, ate Risotto and sampled fine Hotel Chocolat delights. It seems I was lovingly spared this time around, gifted with a wonderfully relaxing long weekend. On this occasion I am thankful to have missed out on all the sporting commotion.

My New Flat in St Albans

2007-09-13T23:12:00.001+01:00

Here it is. My spangly new flat, complete with computer desk and leather sofa...

... TV, Wii and plant ...

... a table and another sofa thing ...

... door and drawers ...

... bedroom and double bed ...

... a spangly tiled bathroom ...

... and checkered floor for chess ...

... kitchen with microwave, toaster and washing machine ...

... fridge, freezer, cooker ...

... and acres of worktop space ...

... and finally my well constructed desk!

Hoorah!

Amateur Alumni Adventures

2007-09-13T22:56:00.001+01:00

So, recently I graduated, spent some time at home over the dismally wet summer and looked for a job. The job hunting aspect pretty much dominated my time. It started out with two or three phones calls a day from recruitment agencies with a number of roles they thought I might be interested in, including throughout my holiday to Plymouth - everything from Control systems sales to supply chain management - I selected the roles that interested me most to pursue - this transformed into a multitude of interviews and tests. I travelled to London, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Gloucestershire and more, completing no more than 9 separate interviews. These interviews included aptitude tests, intelligence tests, reasoning abilities, problem solving tasks, data analysis tasks, group exercises and other such nasties. For the sake of prosperity, these were with such companies as Unilever, Data Connexion, GE Sensing (they do not refund travel expenses), Smiths Aerospace and Ocado. Both Ocado and Smiths offered me a job, and I opted for the more interesting and superior offer from Ocado, based in Hatfield.

Whilst not looking for jobs or houses I turned on the TV, linked it to an AV output from the PC and watched some X-files or Twin Peaks to fill me up on my mystery-weirdness fix for the year. I am about half way through season 2 of Twin Peaks now. Agent Cooper is my hero. Anyway, moving onwards. With a job confirmed and a start date of September 10th I had 3 weeks to arrange viewings, partake in viewings, make a decision and sort out all the fine print, on a single solitary residence. I arranged six viewings, two in Welwyn Garden City, two in Hatfield and two in St Albans for the bank holiday weekend in August.

I can't be bothered to find pictures of all of them, and to be honest, I want to forget a few of them, they were that awful. In fact the last one we saw needed a light on in every room in order to see anything... this being at 2 pm on a cloudless day with the sun high in the sky. It was also disgusting with a shoddy door, the whole thing was tacked onto the back of a house - they wanted £625 a month for it!

Here is the second best candidate - a one bedroom 'mini' house. This was in walking distance from where I work and was a strong contender at £650 a month. Although in the end we decided the nearby amenities weren't great and living in Hatfield wasn't the nicest of options.

My third arranged viewing for a studio flat in Hatfield fell through, and in that spare hour we roamed the streets of St Albans, popping in every estate agents we came across on London Road. Eventually one such agent had two apartments we could look at straight away, one just (the day before) coming back onto the market after a previous deal had fallen through. The first of these was an atrocious annex in London Colney, it was damp, smelled of wet and was pretty much a shed. We left (the family and Sam) as fast as we possibly could. The second was a one bedroom flat for £725. This was like a breath of fresh air. It was clean, spacious, light, secure, well-appointed and very close to both rail stations, the town centre, a supermarket and retail park, a large park with golf course et al. and a bus route to get into work. It was perfect except for the price. We continued looking at our other appointments - except for one cancelled two-bedroom viewing which nastily clashed with a much needed toilet stop on my part. The flat was always on our minds and at 3pm we decided that I should go for it - and cancelled any further viewings, the extra price was decided reasonable for the distinguished improvements that it offered.

Having settled that matter we spent the afternoon drinking in a nearby pub, watching the football results (which were also amicable). I remember having a lovely large glass of Newcastle Brown Ale, before moving on to Wetherspoons to have Steak for dinner. It was a nice evening all around. We were there for the weekend, so on Sunday we had a picnic in Verulamium Park - right next to my new flat. Crispy fresh baguette, pasta and salad selections and a Mars bar to cap it off. Activities also included "playing catch in the park", buying expensive chilli chocolate, a tour of the lake, excitement over the kiddies water park feature, remote control boats and Ye Olde Fighting Cocks pub. Then we headed back to Bristol, with Sam going north. I would move in on September 3rd, the next Monday.

In the week following I spent some time learning Java, managing my websites and frantically sorting out the huge deposit and one month's rental payment (£1800) to be made available in only four working days (bank holiday issues) in cleared funds! That was a laugh. On the Friday I watched Knocked Up at the cinema with Mum and Stu, post scrumptious Chiquito Lazy Boi starter. I also watched the Bristol Rovers vs. West Ham game on Sky as well as a number of the England vs. India ODI's, including the stunning 8th wicket partnership of 99 runs to seal a win, which we celebrated whilst eating chips on the way back from visiting my Aunt (avec graduation photos).

With only one car the packing needed to be ruthless and precise. Fitting a computer, tv, all the clothes I will need for a number of months, crockery, cooking pans and utensils, duvet and sheets and any additional entertainment I decided to bring was akin to those crazy Christmas toys that involve arranging shapes into a cube.

* Chocolate Muffin Break *

Mum and I arrived in good time via M4 and M25, signed the contracts, picked up the keys and moved in, with Sam quickly behind us with her odds and ends and a much needed set of drawers. Then we set about with the ickle things - arranging internet and phone installation, sorting out water, gas and electricity, television license, finding myself a computer desk, filling my cupboards with food (Sainsbury's is very expensive!), unpacking and making myself feel at home. Mum left the next day, to return to work, it was a sad goodbye, and I had that melancholy feeling all day.

I think that is enough of the tale, I have now been here ten days and obviously the internet has been installed (20mbit, woo!) and once again I have spent too long writing this, it is late and I must go to bed to get up for work tomorrow. All I have left to say is thank you so much to Mum, Sam and Stu - your help was invaluable, I couldn't have done it all without your help.

Now for the academics - My marks

2007-07-19T00:05:00.001+01:00

1st Year (83.4% average)		Credit (CATS)	Mark (%)
ES155	Design and Computer Techniques	15	80
ES156	Professional Studies	15	79
ES157	Mathematics for Engineers	15	82
ES160	Materials and Production	15	82
ES161	Engineering Mechanics	15	81
ES162	Modelling and System Dynamics	15	85
ES163	Electrical and Electronic Systems	15	92
ES164	Fluids and Energy	15	86

2nd Year ( 81.4% average, 20% of degree)		Credit (CATS)	Mark (%)
CG203	Systems and Control	15	85
CG204	Signal Processing and Communications	15	94
ES21J	Analogue Design	15	81
ES21L	Applied Linear Algebra	7.5	92
ES21Q	Design of Measurement Systems	7.5	70
ES21R	Digital Design	15	80
ES21T	Electronic Systems	7.5	79
ES22E	Software Development	15	92
IB229	Starting a Business for Engineers	7.5	58
PX258	ULSI MOS Devices and Technologies	15	70

3rd Year (85% average including 7.5 over CATS, 40% of degree)		Credit (CATS)	Mark (%)
CG351	Digital Signal Processing	15	75
ES316	Analogue and Digital System Design 1	15	91
ES327	Project	30	78
ES335	Communication Systems	15	86
ES372	Automation and Robotics	15	86
ES379	Finance and Accounting	15	88
ES390	VLSI Design 1	15	83
PX317	New Concepts in Electronics	7.5	74

4th Year (89.3% average including 30 over CATS, 40% of degree)		Credit (CATS)	Mark (%)
ES312	Systems Modelling and Simulation	15	85
ES330	Control 1	15	92
ES410	Group Project	30	75
ES425	Engineering Business Management 1	15	76
ES436	Directed Reading for Electronics	15	78
ES462	High Integrity Systems	15	87
LL130	Learning Chinese 1	30	82
PX400	Future Electronics	15	72

Overall Degree calculated as: 86%
First Class Honours

The end of an era

2007-07-18T23:51:00.001+01:00

Well, that's it, done and dusted. University life is now officially over - I am no longer a student. My four years studying a Masters in Electronic Engineering at Warwick University have come to a fruitful end. It's odd thinking of the very first day when I moved into Rootes with my big boxes, going up the stairs for the first time, seeing that awful bright yellow paint, unpacking and chatting with Sam and Kayte for the first time. Good memories.

This final year was spent in Redfern campus accommodation, with old friend Steven and new flatmates Jo, Madhumita and Robert. It has been a great year. Here is a short but happy-memory inducing list. Ten pin bowling - both real and Wii based, massive marathon video game conquests (Burnout Revenge, Katamari, Bomberman, Wii Sports, Red Star), birthday celebrations, the adventures of Bobby Green and Snowy Bob, talkative fridge magnet nonsense, watching Planet Earth, fridge and freezer space mayhem, the rotting celeriac, Madhumita's bell ringing and superstitions, the donkey-film fiasco (and the associated eeyore jokes), New Year celebrations, Christmas decorations, Madhumita's quotes and blue tac sculptures, outings to Zizi's and Piccolini's "I could be a vampire - but you're vegetarian", eating two meals at once in Wetherspoons after Oceans 13, sharing artsy fartsy films with Jo, going on walks around Heronbank (to my secret pond), taking trips to the perfect Arts Centre Cinema (£2.50 student ticket for films such as Zodiac, This is England, Infamous and others), buying bargain £3 DVDs from the now defunct Fopp, juggling in the kitchen (3 ball, 4 ball, mill's mess, 5 on the floor), the faulty Xbox 360 issues, completing that Mars EBM assignment, Future Electronics "big time" and "for sure", kitchen visiting sparrows, woodpeckers, rabbits, squirrels and a single fox, Warwick Art Centre's tuna jacket potatoes with salad garnish, my internet ban and resulting scrubs marathon, basement lab concrete slab testing for hours on end, painful all nighters on 300 page project report and poster, my poor tummy and appendicitis, rewarding revision marathons (and missing the Bristol Rovers promotion), learning mandarin chinese, the lunar eclipse on the night of Steven's birthday meal and wii competition, watching Liverpool knock out Chelsea on HD projectors outside in the garden after feasting on a BBQ, reading Graeme's friday evening "weekend joy" texts and laser/smell of burning eye stories, eating fresh French baguette and Camembert after returning on a long hard bike trip to Tescos, the mounting rust problems my bike suffered as a result of being left outside in the rain, the magpies attacking the bin bags, the "cost-cutter" chime, the incredibly wet summer, playing Frisbee on the green outside, watching films with the TV at the foot of the bed, watching the cleaner rotation as ours was off sick again, building up recyclable skyscrapers in blue bags, playing corridor golf with the plastic golf set and Steven losing his ball under my bed, playing long range corridor darts and skittles, being solemn as Madhumita rushes away for the last time, doing that 1000 piece puzzle on top of my drawers, buying fans and creating custom made wasp nets, seeing Madhumita play Halo, boiling up the kettle and having a nice coffee and croissant breakfast before starting revision, playing Scattergories and LOTR Risk (too geeky?), rearing my grape found caterpillar to a full fledged moth, indoctrinating Sam in the ways of BSG, taking down my posters for the last time, Jo's regular parsnip-carrot and mince meal, Steven's toad in the hole and chips, Roberts plastic cutlery and balloon antics (see: Madhumita's cupboard), Madhumita's smelly night time thing and yoghurts left in the microwave, the 2 for £3 tesco pizzas that got me through, weekend trips to Leicester to visit Sam where we would shop at Fenwicks or on the off chance go to Riley's or cook something wonderful and inspired. And taking pictures for the last time as I pack up the car and prepare to go home.

Music Vision

2007-06-05T16:35:00.001+01:00

I found a stats site that takes Last.fm data to produce a tidy graph showing listening trends over a set period. Here's my resultant PDF from September 2004 until this month, June 2007, with a minimum of 10 plays required to trigger an artist being shown:
My Listening Trends PDF

Preview of my March 2007 listening trend:

The site is called LastGraph and it was built using Processing.

My Own Personal Appendectomy

2007-05-12T22:18:00.001+01:00

Warning, pictures of surgery below (not graphic, because I normally squirm at these things).

Come night time Wednesday 2nd May, my day had gone well, revision was on schedule, I was trying a new mouth wash and all was sweet and well. The hard grind of revision, project work and coursework was under way and uni life was as any hectic third term normally is. I think I'd just released my latest fb2k config that day also. At 5 am I was awoken with awful stomach pains; a horrible gripping feeling as though my digestive sack was being used as a stress ball by an over worked underpaid office employee. I couldn't sleep through it so I grabbed some crackers and made some quick fb2k updates until I felt duly capable of heading back to the land of nod.

Thursday was much the same, only worse. I'd hoped the pain would have left me; maybe it was just me lying awkwardly or some bad sausages from the champions league BBQ. I set about revision as normal, struggling to get anything done, some Ibuprofen helped and I continued through until the afternoon thinking I had past the worst of it. With late afternoon the painkillers rescinded and I was thrown full-whack back into the torment of having my digestive tract deciding it wanted to leave my body by turning itself into a truncheon and beating its way out from the inside. Gaviscon stomach sweets failed, as did all the anti-acids and little tricks like drinking Milk or eating dried foods. With the doctors now shut and at a loss for what to do, I tried to simply just rest, sit back and watch a film - I chose one I wouldn't particularly care if I enjoyed or not (My Super Ex-Girlfriend - don't watch this). By the end of the film my intestinal baton had grown spikes in a stepped up bid to escape. I was bent double and in agony with a stomach pain that hadn't caused sickness. I called NHS Direct (with my mum's advice and diligence in finding a Skype compatible number) and they soon advised me to get myself checked out ASAP, just as a precaution. With the walk-in centre shut it was off to accident and emergency.

My very kind accommodation warden drove my friend and I there where we started to wait. One hour later I saw the triage and enjoyed blood sugar tests, blood pressure tests and the usual check-up mumbo jumbo. With intensifying pain, growing hunger and tiredness the two hour wait to see a doctor was horrible. Mid-wait my official accom' warden, Adam, turned up and swapped shifts, bringing crossword entertainment, although we never completed a single one. Both wardens were especially helpful and I wish to thank them both very much for their efforts and care. At 1am I was called into see the doctor, he prodded me and asked where the pain was, whether I'd been ill, etc. He did a blood test and issued an abdomen X-ray. Half an hour later, lying on my back, I was wheeled into the X-ray room and wheeled back out again moments later.

Lying on a bed had its benefits and coping with the wait was not as bad, though just as painful. It wasn't until 4:30 am that someone came to see me and tell me I was heading to the critical decision unit where a surgeon would later see me. At 5 am they decided to keep me in for the night until next morning's breakfast, see how I was then after some food and take it from there. With this news both my friend (thanks Steven!) and warden were relieved to be able to go home whilst I tried to get whatever kip I could. Come 8 am I was up and ready for brekkie! Whilst the patients around me were being served up Weetabix and porridge an important looking fellow associated with the university (with a number of students around him) informed me that I did indeed have Appendicits and that I would be needing surgery sometime during the day.

Whilst in the process of letting whoever I could know what was going on a bubbly anaesthetist explained the procedure to me and said I would be prep'd for surgery within half an hour. And that was that, before I knew it an IV was being put in, pads stuck on and general anesthetic administered, "You'll be asleep within 20 seconds"... I remember thinking, "I don't feel tired".

That's a traditional appendectomy, I didn't get this done (thank goodness), I was given a modern keyhole laparoscopic surgery which is "minimally invasive", at least this seems to be the case given the size of my wound.

Here's a video of a keyhole appendectomy, not mine I might add:

I woke up at about 12:30pm in the recovery ward, dreamy and blissfully enjoying my deep sleep and distinct lack of pain. About half an hour later I was fully awake and another cheery nurse wheeled me to my ward. As the anaesthetic wore off some pain returned (including a sore throat because of the tubes they had to give me) but I was much more comfortable than before, I was soon happy to see my grandpa, sister and girlfriend shortly followed by Steven and my warden.

My recovery was (mostly) a smooth one. For the duration of my stay the IV remained attached, through which I was fed and administered the necessary antibiotics. 4-hourly pulse, temperature and blood pressure tests were given; my temperature was high each time ( 37.5) and I was given paracetamol to bring it down. The only problem I had was a growingly uncomfortable and soon to be painful feeling which mounted in the hours after surgery; in short I was having problems taking a piss. The nurse suggested I may need a catheter but before getting one did a quick ultrasound to check if my bladder was full, her response upon seeing the result was quite comic and she soon returned tubes in hand. My bladder was so full it was putting enormous amounts of pressure on my back, wound and abdomen, which suffice to say, hurt a lot. The bladder can typically hold 0.6 litres, within 15 minutes of the catheter being added the bag was up to 1.5 litres, and reached 2 litres before the hour mark. Time for the great British pun, "that really takes the piss". A catheter is quite uncomfortable and it dramatically reduces your mobility, even when you're tied down to an IV, its removal was also quite painful. Getting it put in wasn't too bad, but I was probably still seeing the influences of some anaesthetic.

All this took place at the brand new University Hospital (UHCW) outside of Coventry. It really is a beautifully new, clean and impressive place. I particularly enjoyed their bed-entertainment suite, which, for £3.20, gave me 24 hours of freeview digital letting me watch the morning football round-up, some Jeeves and Worcester and quite painfully with stifled laughter "Have I Got News for You".

It's been about a week since my discharge and despite having a busy week, catching up with work, etc., I am making a good recovery.
My stitches are all internal and set to "dissolve" in the next few days, hopefully I'll be right as rain in no time. This is my wound as it stands (oooh skin!) - doesn't look too bad.

That wound is just on the belt line which has meant this past week I've had to wear my trousers like all those hip boxer showing kids do these days.

Improving Google Web History

2007-04-25T17:58:00.001+01:00

I'm loving Web History but I think there are a couple more things I still want to see from it:

A sidebar formatted history page similar to Firefox's existing history but with all the smart features of Google's Web History
A bookmarklet/button to Pause and Un-Pause the Web History with ease
Website thumbnails: I often forget the name of a site but can spot it from a thumbnail
Total number of visits to a particular domain/page, trends for these domains/pages.
Keywords I have used to reach a domain previously.

Google Channels, Google Recommendations

2007-04-20T13:46:00.001+01:00

Back in December 2006 I sent in a reply to Google's "Big Idea Challenge";

What is Google's Next revolutionary product and why? We are looking for final year students and recent graduates who are creative and think differently. By answering the question posed above in the The Big Idea Challenge*, you have the opportunity to impress us and get a job at Google. Your answer can be in any format you choose; this might be a business plan, schematic diagram, presentation, or just some text. The top entrants will be invited to the Googleplex in London to meet the team and talk through their Big Idea.

Google responded with a phone call asking for details and they said they'd send me some information via email, I never heard from them again. With Google's latest spate of recommendation gadgets and their latest product change, "web history" (something I have been waiting for for a while because I was fed up of never being able to search my history - an offline version would be nice and more secure), it seems relevant to post what I submitted.

I called it Google Channels, for lack of better words and to embrace Google's brilliant naming tradition (see: Froogle's death, one of my favourite play on words). This was my pitch:

PDF Summary & Advert for Product

PDF Google Proposal

Google Channels
A free, automated, user specific and editable channel to facilitate the discovery of entertainment on the internet.

The Problem

Finding entertainment is very much a different process to an information search. For information, a user, for the most part, knows what he or she is looking for and creates an appropriate search query to find what they need. For current entertainment search processes, a user must know what they want to read, watch or listen to before beginning their search. This, in many respects, is contrary to the act of discovering fresh entertainment. In mature mediums there exist two paths - one for the acquirement of media and a second for its discovery. Internet search acts predominantly as the former similar to a cinema which shows a film you chose specifically to watch. Examples of the latter are television, radio and libraries; each provides a selection of entertainment services for the discovery of new quality content.

The internet today offers a unique worldwide medium for text, video and audio; it has quickly become the ultimate entertainment, communication and information hub. Google, with aims to organise the world's information, has made great strides in providing tools for finding information fast, and via Gmail and Google Talk (amongst others) online communication is being made easier. With the emergence of flash streaming and legal movie and music downloads it is now the entertainment aspects of the internet that must be addressed by Google. The first steps have already been taken with Google Video and YouTube. I believe Google's next big innovation should be to improve the accessibility and discovery processes for the wealth of quality content available on the internet, to match the second element of Google's aim: to make content universally accessible.

The closest the internet currently has to an entertainment discovery service is "StumbleUpon" a site that allows users to recommend web pages so that readers may stumble through the internet finding its hidden sweet spots. Other undertakings include; The "Venice Project", from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, creators of Skype, which sees their focused efforts in creating a recommendation driven Broadband TV service for quality video content delivery and discovery. Last.fm, a British based company, collates music listened to and generates free customised radio stations for discovery of new music. I believe now is the time for Google to begin developing a service in this field, as internet content begins to escape the confines of the PC box. Last.fm's growing popularity and success is proof that there is a demand.

The Solution

For Google Channels to solve these entertainment search issues it needs to offer two things; first it must deliver interesting content and secondly this must suit the user's tastes. Google already has a head-start with regards to content delivery; its extensive crawl index, video and book libraries present the essence of a solution (though to my knowledge no Google owned music or audio database currently exists). To show content that is relevant, knowledge of the users' tastes must be known and items must be grouped by similarity. Google Sets is already the foundation of these grouping functions - searching for television shows like "Family Guy" and "The Simpsons" yields "South Park" as a top suggestion. Knowledge of the user can be obtained through existing data or by user input.

Creating the Channel

Google's personalized search data can give an accurate portrayal of a user's tastes (e.g. top search terms), as does their rating trends, labelling actions and Google Talk's music trends. Collating this data with similar neighbours and data from Google Sets, a selection of materials matching the user's tastes is produced without needing search. Hence a user-specific recommendations channel is generated, creating the basics for a discovery driven internet service (an extension of the pre-existing personal homepage gadget "Interesting things for you"). With refinements through categorisation this channel can be split into genre specific bands.

The alternative approach is to ask the user for a few things they already enjoy - favourite music artists, websites, television shows and books may be key pointers. Using a grouping structure a list of recommendations can be generated, allowing relevant content from indexes (Books, Google Video, RSS feeds, etc) or established channels to be combined into a personalized channel. As Google Channels evolves the accuracy of recommendations will improve.

Channel Implementation

Implementation becomes the next question; channels may be video, audio or written, or an amalgamation. Video channels may be a generated stream of video not unlike television channels, with one recommended video continuing directly on from the previous - this stream may play live to multiple parties, play from a chosen point (e.g. select first video from a list), be skipped through or downloaded. Music channels may act like those on Last.fm, playing music similar to artists the user already knows, they could also be geared towards podcast discovery or online radio which may then be played in-browser. Reading lists would act much like existing feed aggregation services, however could contain a degree of useful automation and Google Book recommendations to inform users of literature, sites and news that interests them yet lies outside of their confined internet corner.

User Control

User editing adds significant benefits:

· Remove subjects that are uninteresting.

· Actions when viewing channels may include:

· "add similar items to my channel"*,

· "add this item to my channel",

· "add items in this label to my channel",

· "create new channel based on",

· "label item/channel",

· "ban items in this category",

· "ban this item",

· "blog this item/channel",

· "share this item/channel",

· "combine channels",

· "recommend item/channel"

· "invite user to chat"

· "rate this item/channel"

· Recommendations can evolve using rating systems that promote good content and ban bad content.

· Complete control of channel could bring true "internet TV" to life.

* e.g. "add sites similar to Slashdot.org", letting users find domains that match their normal reading materials without the trouble of building a specific search query to find them.

Once channels are created the next logical steps are sharing of channels, channel labels, recommended channels, RSS channel feeds, top channels lists, searchable channels database, public and private channels, embeddable channels, sponsored channels, channel collaboration, Google Talk integration for chat whilst viewing, content databases allowing creators to add their work directly to channels (much like the existing YouTube channels system), exclusive content or subscription channels.

Targeted Advertising

Revenue streams for Google and content creators are also instantly apparent. Google would know the full specifics of the 'now playing' content. Hence incorporation of Google Ads is only a stone's throw away. Video channel features can be interlinked by relevant video ads, and similarly for audio. For incentives to create channels owners may receive payments from a pay per click or impression initiative. The cost of displaying ads on a channel may also be proportional to the number of regular viewers or readers a channel has.

Creators of content (e.g. a television network) may wish to receive more return and have greater control of proceedings; a corporate control panel may be an option. Similarly an advertising control panel may be helpful to large advertising corporations that want to specifically control when and where their ads are shown.

Benefits Elsewhere

Other benefits to Google are the natural categorisation and sorting made by users of channel content, which will not only improve recommendation quality but also add to the usefulness of Google search results; for instance a fuzzy search that returns results matching the users search aims but not necessarily matching their query; particularly helpful for those having trouble refining search terms.

Movie Chronicles Network

2007-04-16T20:53:00.001+01:00

And onto my new online project, I welcome you all to The Movie Chronicles.

Movie Chronicles is a blog (for the lack of a better word) network delivering the latest news updates on a range of in-production movies. Launched in April 2007 the site aims to provide the latest development news from casting decisions, director announcements, latest reviews and release dates. There is no strict method to our choice of movies, and if you want a movie to be tracked feel free to post a request for us to do so. Happy browsing.

The Easter Break

2007-04-13T16:54:00.001+01:00

Alas, I am back from my Easter break, university's final exams beckon me whilst Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet spur me on. My 12,000 word directed reading assignment is almost past me, after submitting it I plan to put it up here and pass it around the net a bit. I have spent too much time on it to have only two parties read it. In fact I'll probably put up PDFs of all my uni work once I am done here. It seems a waste to have many hours of work read and marked by only one person.

Anyway, two Saturdays ago I left in the evening by car from this here Redfern accommodation; leaving my neighbourly rabbits, robins and squirrels for town and terraces. It was the weekend before Easter and I was to watch my local team, Bristol Rovers FC, perform in their first cup final for a long time (the Johnstons Paint trophy) at Cardiff's millennium stadium – the last cup final to be played there. We were against Doncaster; our support turned out 40,000 strong and this was the scene:

After watching the under-teams play their big games and a team warm-up and pyrotechnics display the game started. After 5 minutes we were 2-0 down and out. It stayed that way until half time; with a penalty and fine shot we took it to 2-2 extra time. Sadly our league 2 stamina lead to a mishap and we ended up losing 3-2. Yet it was a most enjoyable day out and the fivelive consensus agreed that Rovers had performed well – the fans were happy. A three hour traffic jam on the way back was however not so fun.

When asked on Monday what we should do I promptly replied, "Absolutely nothing". And that's what I enjoyed doing – I caught the most atrocious 80s super-hero movie on Sky Movies – "Howard the Duck" with Marty's mother from Back to the Future. We played multi-player super monkey ball on the Wii and lay about in the sun reading our novels – I'm still making my way though Kerouac's "On the road". In the evening we turned geeks and played 4 player Lord of the Rings RISK – the incomplete mordor-less version. I take great pride in winning, given my terrible starting position.

On Tuesday we went to Bath for the day, it just so happened that the sunshine went away for a day, much to our disgust. Though walking about the lovely sandstone spa was interesting – if any of you readers should come across the fudge-packer in the fudge shop, please berate him for taunting me with chocolate goodies whilst I was still under the self-inflicted restraints of lent. That night we declared a RISK rematch wherein I came first or second, depending on which rules we used. On this night Liverpool also beat PSV away from home 3-0 – a fine showing.

Sam left for Surrey, and later Kent, on Wednesday morning without her coat. Left with family, cats, book and Wii I made myself at home, spending a couple of hours on some website code and a couple here and there on coursework assignments. The footie that night was not so great; both United and Chelsea had poor champions league showings. Thursday through week was much of the same, sun tanning, book reading, film watching, work writing, cat petting. I cut grass in gardens front and back and watched others plant peas and spray fences with protective brown sludge.

Thursday brought about the Masters Golf tournament at Augusta – what a tough year that proved to be. Not a single player made a 4-day par over the x amount of holes. As I have already said, I was supporting Justin Rose, right up until hole 17 on Sunday – what an unlucky break that was – it's a shame but in the end I was quite happy for Zach Johnson to take away the prize, his second to last shot on the 18^th was a beauty. This spur in golf interest led to a number of Wii golf rounds on Wii sports – I made a personal best of 7 under par playing with my Johnny Depp Mii and making a few very nice eagles. I got taught a couple of nice new tricks too, such as using an iron out of the bunker and driver when faced with trees.

Thursday evening also took me for a meal at Chiquito's to celebrate my sister's 20^th. Those lazy boy rib quesadillas are truly scrumptious. As was the New York baked cheesecake.

On Easter Sunday I welcomed back the taste of chocolate with Thornton's, KitKat and Cadbury's Crème eggs. Now my teeth are rotten. I'm also eating croissants again much to my delight. After a lovely beef roast cooked by my sister I spent the day with my grandparents, watching England lose to Australia in the cricket, studying Chinese and eating delicious home made trifle.

Monday and Tuesday it was back to the garden for more fun filled outside laptop based essay writing. Tuesday evening was graced by Manchester United's 7-1 stomping of Roma, truly an incredible performance. It's hard enough to put seven past a lower league team let alone coming from behind against second-place Serie A Roma that were unbeaten in their previous 20 matches and had conceded only 5 goals in the champions' league tournament. Just wow. Now 3 teams out of 4 left in the competition are English, the top three sides in the Premiership no doubt. There could be a messy Chelsea-United showdown come May – fighting for the league title, playing each other in the FA cup and Champion's League finals.

I don't know if there's much else to talk about – I spent the afternoon with my Grampy on Wednesday talking of the future and the past et al and I came back to Warwick yesterday via the M5 and Tesco. Now I am back home with this as my view:

Making posts with images is now much easier after I created my sweet little small and thumbnail generation script.

Movie Images

2007-04-09T13:40:00.001+01:00

I've recently been working on churning out some dynamically generated PHP images using my personal movies database. This of course has been completed in-between watching Zach Johnson win the Masters (I had my fingers crossed for Justin Rose right up until hole 17) and Manchester United losing to Portsmouth on Saturday. In fact, the majority of time over this Easter period has been spent watching sports - cricket world cup, golf and football - still more to come with Champions League matches tomorrow - what fun! My work can once again be fuelled by chocolate as I have ceremoniously ended lent after having successfully given up chocolate, croissants, pasties, crisps and those tasty iced buns.

Anyway - back to the case in point; the generated images have three modes: a) Show the details for a given IMDB number b) Show details for the top item in a keyword search c) Show my most recently rated film. Upon generation these files get cached, the cache updates once a week for film details and one a day for the rated film. So, here are some fun fun dynamic images:

http://movies.trivialbeing.org/my/rated/rated.png

http://movies.trivialbeing.org/pic/lost in translation.png

My Movies Catalogue

2007-03-29T20:22:00.000+01:00

I was meant to make this blog post last night but I ended up watching Scrubs instead. Then I couldn't make it this morning because I had an oh-so fun directed reading dissertation write-up to continue with and a painstakingly monotonous test procedure to carry out on some newly made sample blocks for my project. Yesterday the results made no sense, today the sensor broke halfway through.

However, I have written my 1800 words today and I am ready to take some time off. So, in-between work and more work I squeezed a little bit of MySQL PHP coding into a new site specifically for my movie collections. The site lists my owned movies and my rated movies (grabs my personal ratings from IMDB - all 400 of them), using the IMDB catalogue number it fetches data such as title, year, director, runtime, rating, plot and poster image automatically. I guess I am bringing the site out of beta by including the link here, check it out:

http://movies.trivialbeing.org/

UK PS3 Launch

2007-03-26T12:01:00.001+01:00

It is here at last it seems. In fact it is perfectly clear that it has arrived - newspapers are filled with ads shouting about the PS3s that they have in stock - get them now! And, on perusing the shopping centres late on Saturday, I noticed that every electronics store outlet from Game-station to HMV and Curry's Digital had large protruding signs announcing "Playstation 3 in stock... hurry". Should I have had £500 to lay down on a system + game I could have bought one from anywhere. Though, if I wanted to buy myself a Wii I would be hard pressed to find one; HMV, Game, et al. had all sold out and many stores still had waiting lists. I'll take my £300 + Wii over a PS3 and Resistance Fall of Man any day, in fact, 4 months later I and my house-mates still avidly play Wii Sports. I do plan to purchase a PS3 (ICO 3, Little Big World), though not for a good 18 months.

Fooblog2000

2007-03-21T11:21:00.001Z

I seem to have failed to note to everyone perusing this site for its foobar-ness that all foobar related posts have now been moved to my new site, Fooblog2000. I'll no longer be posting updates to my configurations here, which are now up to version 0.6 with some very nice new features such as ratings panels and a singles SCPL mode.

With that said, the interim period for the site, i.e. its opening month, has come to an end with quite a razzle dazzle; v0.6 of my configuration made it to the front page of Digg and fooblog consequently succumbed to the effects of lots of visitors. Fooblog uses Dreamhost as its provider which offers 2Tb of bandwidth a month; I had plenty of preparation for such an attack, or at least I thought I did. What I was not prepared for was a catastrophic failure of Wordpress 2.1.2. To save the MySQL databases from too much stress I turned on the advanced WP caching system, however when 2000 people arrived in an hour or so something went wrong and all WP pages failed to load. Due to the stresses of such high traffic volumes I assumed the problem was caused by traffic alone and that it would rectify itself when things calmed down, I put up a temporary page and let it be. However several hours later it was still playing up, it took me a while to track down the problem but in the end deleting the cache fixed everything. It's a shame this happened because the down period of the site occurred during the period the site was on the front page of Digg. Oh well, I will know the fix for next time.

Here's a fun screenshot of the traffic stats:

Overpriced Cinema tickets and an ugly IMDB

2007-02-22T13:00:00.001Z

I love it when Blogger takes six hours to publish a post that I make via email. It fills me to the brim with joyous green radioactive goo, none of that half assed polonium business though. I apologise for my posting frequency in January – my residential campus Internet provider banned me for 28 days due to "suspicious use" which probably constituted using a wireless router to connect my Wii and a weekend uploading blitz that saw me backup 10GB of digital photos to some web space I have.

With no connection to the outside world I found time to complete all sorts of life changing things, from my previous posts it is evident I worked on my foobar designs; I also completed a number of assignments and project work. Life without the Internet wasn't hard, more inconvenient. Scrubs got me through (until I reached the rather unfunny downfall that is season 3… but that's another story).

Anyway, I was going to make this post about something. Yes – the price of cinema tickets these days. I wanted to see Hot Fuzz on Saturday in the Odeon but we thought better of it – no way did we feel that a discounted £6 student ticket was worth it, considering within 12 months the film could be purchased for that amount or less. I hate to think what the full price was. A shining example of the perfect cinema is the local Warwick Arts Centre cinema - £2.50 for a ticket and every sixth film is free. What's more it shows quality art house films, classic cinema and has comfortable homely seats. Even sitting in the very front row for the entirety of Babel I did not feel uncomfortable (the soundtrack for which is immense). So instead we decided to watch Woody Allen's Match Point, a brilliant (and very different to the standard Allen) thriller starring my favourite Scarlett Johansson.

My next point is the internet movie database, more commonly referred to as IMDB. What on earth have they done with their design? It is categorically the messiest and worst redesign since the all-music guide abomination. Huge over sized middle buttons, with an indistinct sidebar and non-fitting page highlight. Did they not realise that Web2.0 was/is a fad? – IMDB was the last staple & successful "web 1.0" site. Now section header images look small and out of place; the cast list is oddly inward shifted; the text is too small; it's not instantly clear what the information you are looking at relates to; nothing matches up; ratings are in a less important page zone and when I vote I need to count the stars. Give the main body some colour – make sections more distinctive, shade cells in tabled information, make the sidebar bigger, put the rating back in the middle of the page… it is that important. Yikes, I am very glad that the former IMDB layout is still online here.

In other news, I bought Okami for PS2 – a very original and interesting video game.

Foobar Code Release Pack Version 0.2

2007-02-20T09:22:00.000Z

Many have asked for this, rather than rush out the first release I spent a while refining the code and commenting the various sections. Hopefully everything will be relatively understandable. All image sources are defined in variables at the top of the code, as are font sizes, colours and alignment variables. Please look at the readme.txt file which contains links and information about the required components, fonts and images. The code is in the new standard .pui format which should be placed in your " C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\foobar2000\PanelsUI" folder and loaded through Foobar2000's PanelsUI preferences dialogue.

The code has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license which allows derivative works. Please do not remove the link back to this website or the copyright information.

Download Version 0.2

I am now openly accepting feature requests and answering questions. NOTE: For Single Column Playlist, Row Height: 17, Group Rows: 5 My Windows Visual Style is Inverso Reborn Balanced and a discussion and link can be found here. A good resource for downloading artist images is http://artists.trivialbeing.org

Components Required

Fonts

Bebas
Calibri - Comes with Windows Vista and cannot be redistributed (but you may find a site that has it)
BigNoodleTitling

PanelsUI - The next step in Foobar aesthetics

2007-02-14T23:37:00.000Z

Terrestrial has done it again, this time it is his third component, PanelsUI . Until now, all foobar menus, toolbars and panels were arranged using ColumnsUI in any desired grid format - these panels were distinguished by irremovable borders that were defined by Window's visual style, much to the distate of budding user interface designers everywhere. PanelsUI offers a clean new approach - using scripts (in the familiar trackinfo mod format) panels themselves can be absolutely positioned and played with. New "persisting variables" or PVARS allow these scripts to store and edit variables in memory using buttons (see function: $button). In combination a slew of exciting new opportunities are possible; tabbed panels without the need for tabs_ui, clickable pop-ups, scripted interaction between trackinfo's, SCPL and PanelsUI, amongst others. To explain in words the potential is proving difficult, so I will show you some early design animations:

Tabbed panels, changed by clicking the buttons on the bottom menu

Pop-up playlist, this appears beneath when thin (as below) and to the side when wide.

A pop-up menu, buttons and control panel

Im sure I will think of some much more advanced uses of this integration in the near future. But for now I think this is exciting enough. For those interested, to get going, the code for tabbed panels in PanelsUI is:

$select($add($getpvar(display.mode),1),
$panel(Option1,Track Display,0,20,%_width%,140,)
,
$panel(Option2,Album list,0,20,%_width%,140,)
,
$panel(Option3,Console,0,20,%_width%,140,)
)
$button2(0,160,0,0,14,14,button text,button text,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:0',)
$button2(14,160,0,0,14,14,button text, button text,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:1',)
$button2(28,160,0,0,14,14, button text,button text ,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:2',)

This simple example (that needs the button text replaced with a $font()text code) is the basis for tabs, clicking the first button shows the track display, the second an album list, third a console.

My Movie Votes List

2007-02-05T17:06:00.000Z

After working on the artist images project, essentially a site that shows you an image of any musical artist you specify, I decided to home my efforts on movies. IMDB has all the movie details you could ever need. Using a similar system I have devised a method (which again will not be made public) to obtain director, poster image, year, run time, plot outline, rating and most importantly title when given an IMDB number (the numbers with which movies are catalogued). On each movie load the information and image is stored or cached respectively.

My first use for this new script is to display my IMDB movie votes on my blog in a neat little package. Recently my votes list was made public by IMDB so I did not have to create a bot to login etc. Scraping the IMDB numbers and my votes from this page has allowed me to enter the movies into my service and create a sexy little list. You can now find this list of 500 movies here: http://fofr.trivialbeing.net/page.php?p=movievotes (or under the "My Movie Ratings" link to the right)

Foobar SCPL Code Fix

2007-02-03T12:09:00.001Z

Just a quick note to say I have cleaned up my SCPL code and fixed all the known bugs, get the latest code here (the old one had a lot of code left over from a previous SCPL, all of which has now been removed):

http://host.trivialbeing.org/up/foobarfixed2.txt

- Fixed the crop issues related to selected and now playing songs
- Made the track title text area adaptive to the width of the window, so it crops only when it needs to
- Stopped album art showing for groups with only 1 track, as in this case the picture is ridiculously small.

Some images:

Foobar SCPL Updates 2

2007-01-30T12:14:00.001Z

Well, it seems I am never satisfied with my foobar designs, so I spent some time last night refining it some more.

I decided to alter my SCPL to make things clearer. The code is here (note, this is a work in progress and the code still looks messy), row height = 17, group rows = 4: GROUP | ITEMS

Some things to note, the album art resizes to an optimum display size, so that albums of three tracks only can have art work displayed without all the other albums suffering from a small display size. The maximum image size is also easily defineable, so with one change I can make all the artwork scale up to 300px. The second image shows how Various Artist albums are handled.

I built the playcounts into a form of hotness rating, so that the more a track is played the deeper orange and brighter the track becomes. The ratings system is separate to this.

Artist Images Update

2007-01-25T18:29:00.000Z

Just posting to inform people of some updates to my newly announced site http://artists.trivialbeing.org. The main landing page when you search for an artist has been spruced up and a fully fledged browse feature which allows you to specify the number of images per page, oldest images, newest images and random images has been implemented here: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/browse.php

Also large images are now available if you append an artist image url with &imgs=large

Foobar Design Refinements

2007-01-25T18:16:00.001Z

I have been working a little bit on my foobar design over the past few days, shifting the artist images into a more prominent position, adding a moody background and spicing up ye olde playlist. Click the images to see them in their crisp full res or visit the images section of this blog to find the wallpaper image. I plan to release the code for this when I am happy with it.

Artist Image Downloader, Service, Script etc.

2007-01-10T16:46:00.001Z

A big feature I wanted to include in my foobar2000 music player was artist images, i.e. pictures of the performers. If I had the images this would be possible using either the track info mod (which I now favour) or the album art panel. The trouble was, unlike album art, there was no service that offered image downloads and the only website that offered a comprehensive artist image database was last.fm. My first approach to this problem was to create a local C script that would, in a very roundabout manner, obtain the artist image url from last.fm and then download it. This proved rather slow and buggy due to various artist names, timeout problems and image creation, yet it sufficed for the majority, leading me to a collection of 2000 artist images which I posted earlier.

Still not happy, I looked into creating a web service, based on hydrogenaudio forums member Chronial's efforts and ultimately we developed an online resource for downloading artist images. I do not plan to make the code public, mainly at Chronial's request. I have created this service here: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=ARTIST where ARTIST is the performer's image you are looking for, for instance:

http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=the microphones
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=radiohead

Images are first sourced from Last.fm before being cached so as not to cause any undue strain on last.fm's servers.

To make things more useful you can append the URL with &outputmode=img,
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie&outputmode=img
and a wrapper of sorts is available via http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/ARTIST.jpg
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/blondie.jpg
which can be used on forums:

or in an artist download script. I use the URL2File command line application with this command:

URL2File http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/%1.jpg C:\artistimages\thumbnails\%1.jpg -o 60
Where %1 is the first parameter passed to the batch file and 60 is a one minute timeout.

Using a custom run component I can call this batch file using foobar and a keyboard shortcut or button; when passing the artist (%artist%) to the batch file you should take care to replace characters that cannot be used in creating windows filenames. Foreign characters work too, as do special characters such as the artist "Why?" or "Wham!".

When using image output, if no artist is found the script returns this image:

With regards to copyright issues, Last.fm's uploading policy states:
Because copyrighted images tend to be very restrictive about where they can be used we ask that you only upload images which are public domain, or that are explicitly licensed for promotional use. There are a number of places you can find images open to public use. First, try to find out if the artist has any promotional pictures on their official homepage (they usually do).

For those without foobar2000, I give an example of an alternative use. I took the recently played tracks RSS feed, played with it a little using magpierss and create a page that shows recent tracks along side artist images, an example can be found here:
http://fofr.trivialbeing.net/page.php?p=nowplaying

Welcome 2007, Year of the Sequel (of a Sequel?)

2007-01-05T19:31:00.001Z

Oceans 13, Shrek 3, Rush Hour 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Bourne Ultimatum, Harry Potter X, Spider-man 3, Evan Almighty, Fantastic Four 2, Hills Have Eyes II, Hostel 2, Die Hard 4, White Noise 2, Young Hannibal. Oh well, at least we can all rely on Michael Bay's Transformers movie to be a steaming pile of crap that isn't a sequel.

Wii Bowling Perfect Score

2007-01-05T18:55:00.001Z

Double,Turkey,...Six Pack...Eight in a Row...11 in a Row... Perfect.

My bowling rating is now 1760.

England win the ashes 5-0

2007-01-05T12:33:00.001Z

What an outcome. Before heading into the 2006 ashes I had a strange feeling that we would do terribly, what with injury woes, no preparation and poor team selections. However come today I can say how truly proud of the England cricket team I am; they pulled through and worked hard to break pass these boundaries to beat Australia hands down in a complete 5-0 white wash! I never thought I would see the day that England could beat Australia so comprehensively in the sport that they have dominated for the past decade. To see England come back from down under with ashes still in hand brings a tear to my eye. They truly have earned those MBEs now, they have done the country proud and let us hope that they can continue to improve their game. It was a little bit hairy in Adelaide, when Australia put on a good score and declared it looked like winning was out of the question, but Pietersen managed to pull off the second fasted 100 ever and we brilliantly grabbed the Aussies by the balls and won the game on the 5th day. My only regrets are that Warne, one of the greatest cricketers of our time, has to retire amidst his team's most dire performance. But let's not get too down, I for one shall be in London next week for the open-top victory parade! Roll on ashes 2009.

The Perfect Stereo

2006-12-29T16:05:00.001Z

My specifications for the perfect stereo have not nearly been matched by any company. Just buying one with bluetooth and USB plug and play will set me back £280. Thus I have set a task for myself: to build my own. This may take 5 years going by my track record but I see it as a feasible effort. So, what are my aims for this ultimate stereo system?

At the moment I use my PC for all of my music, whether it be listening to last.fm stations or mp3s via the highly flexible and brilliant foobar2000. I don't like having to have my pc on to listen to music, especially as it has a tendency to make fan noise, consume power and all the other failings of my four year old PC (which is standing up remarkably well).

Functions I want:

Wireless connectivity to play internet, last.fm stations and send playback statistics to the last.fm service.
Wireless or bluetooth connectivity to quickly sync' newly downloaded files from PC to the stereo's harddrive.
USB Plug and play for mp3 players, etc, built in ipod dock
Bluetooth connectivity to transfer files to my phone and other devices
DAB Digital Radio Tuner, Short range FM output
DVD-Audio, MP3-CD, CD playback and DVD/CD burning capabilities (preferably tray-less for sexiness).
MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG, M4A, AC3, WMA, etc.
A bluetooth remote (possibly using Wii controller)
Tape deck (yeah I still love that analogue fix)
Recording functions
LCD colour display that shows album art, artist image, now playing information and playlist info - essentially what my foobar shows (that's the costly bit and touch screen is only a dream), spectrum analyser.
5.1 surround sound compatibility, Bass and Treble control
100 GB HDD internal and support for external HDDs
Phono and digital audio, headphone jack and microphone plugs
Ideally all running using Foobar2000, but that needs windows et al.

I have a multitude of speakers ready for use, so the system will be designed to work around them.

I am not asking much of myself.

My Top Films of 2006

2006-12-29T14:16:00.000Z

Here's my top 10 list as best as I can remember. All of these films had 2006 UK release dates, some may have come out in 2005 in the states.

1. The Squid and the Whale
2. The Departed
3. Manderlay
4. Children of Men
5. Brick
6. Capote
7. Marie Antoinette
8. The Prestige
9. Superman Returns
10. Pan's Labyrinth

I'm sure a glaring omission will appear to me as soon as I post this. I am ashamed to say I have not yet seen Little Miss Sunshine or Borat.

Wii Opera

2006-12-22T14:31:00.001Z

Ahh, today saw the release of the Wii trial browser powered by Opera; just as I was lamenting the pains of having to use my sisters laptop to check my emails over this holiday season. Even though it is just a trial I am very impressed so far; full support for Gmail and Google Reader AJAX and out of the box Flash support that lets me watch YouTube on the television or load up my Last.fm personal radio station whilst I potter about. Improvements should include tabbed browsing and a box somewhere on the page that says what site or address you are visiting/on for security purposes, but I am sure these are in the works. On pages when the Wii decides it can't cope the page disappears and the main browser page appears in its place without warning - this is my only annoyance so far. I'll hold off on a proper review until the full product is released, however I can say this is a tidy little version to keep us going until then.

The ease and speed with which everything loads on the Wii is also a good point to note, especially after having fallen out with my PSP due to its excessive and ridiculous load times or even my PS2 and Xbox loading times. It makes it very easy just to turn on, play some Wii tennis and then leave, a quick 5 minute game is exactly that, not a quick 5 minute game plus 10 minutes of loading and options screens.

A friend has bought me 1000 wii points to buy some games on the Virtual Console, I think I'll be getting bomberman 93 at some point when I get a few more controllers but until then i'll wait to see what else comes out. I can't wait for Mario Kart 64.

Adventures of a Rotting Celeriac

2006-12-18T19:55:00.001Z

As a good healthy student I purchased myself a rounded, tasty and nutritious Celeriac from Tesco (for those not in the know, this is the base of Celery, the thing we use to do all those kiddy dye experiments). In my halls of residence I have a three shelf cupboard and place fresh veg' on the top and in the middle. These shelves are above my level of sight. Following a week or so I bought some onions, pasta, veg' etc. which began to obscure the turnip like vegetable from view. Come today and I reached to the back to fetch one of the onions needed to make a Con Carne mix, alas it looked wet and a little rotten on one side. No worries, I shall get another onion - this too, despite being fresher, showed the same symptoms. Upon closer inspection I now noticed a yellowy celeriac smegma covering the base of the shelf and dripping down to the lower levels. This brown, gooey yuck reeked of a celery that had traveled the world of Hades and returned via the slums of vegetable purgatory, where all the unwanted Brussel Sprouts are tormented.

Now I grew distressed - this seeping atrocity had infiltrated my pasta reserves, the parsnips, the onions, the malt loaf, the apples, the potatoes and most importantly the dry noodles. These noodles now escaped their packaging; as liquid brought them to life they splayed across the bottom shelf as if worms escaping an apocalypse. It was at this point I rediscovered my gag reflex. The offending Celeriac itself, instead of being a firm and solid spherical object more closely resembled a spongy and disgusting sea creature of the nether world.

It is beyond me how it could have reached that condition, now that everything has been removed it all stinks to a point that is unbearable. Yet I had been happily using the cupboard for many days before without noticing the slightest of problems. Maybe those onions were absorbing the smell, who knows. Anyway, I must dash as I am to play Scattergories.

May the horrors of the Celeriac be now known to you. Have a pleasant evening.

Artist Images

2006-12-14T18:12:00.000Z

Here's a collection of artist images collected from last.fm: Artist Images (1890)

A new Foobar design in the works

2006-12-14T14:39:00.001Z

Terrestrial has updated his track info mod component to allow quick and easy image rotations, upon my request and within an hour of making that request which is quite astonishing. Anyway, these new found super powers enable us to create sexy image reflections which fade out using a simple transparent to black (or whatever colour) PNG overlay. My latest design efforts see a scalable version of this with top left artist images. The artwork itself acts as a Play or Pause button, unless the cover art does not exist, in such a case the button action calls up a Custom Run script Cover Downloader which uses Amazon to find album art images and save them to the audio file directory. Similarly, when artist images do not exist a custom run GetArtistImg script that I created downloads the image and saves it as %artist%.jpg etc. I'm always adding functions and tweaking it so it's not quite done yet, but here are some screenshots:

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

2006-12-12T11:56:00.001Z

On September 15th Nintendo announced the European launch date and price, a short while after the American and Japanese launch information was unveiled. And so, come December 8th the Great British Wii launch occurred amongst quivers of reduced stocks and pre-orders not being satisfied. The biggest problems seemed to occur at Play.com where their 10,000 orders were met with a paltry 700 units. Many people, friends included, are now not receiving theirs until after Christmas. I also ordered from Play but I was lucky enough to place my order within an hour of the price announcement aforementioned and Play.com putting up the product for pre-order. Indeed, my Wii arrived by post on launch day, although I could not pick it up until Saturday. This also coincided with a Chinese exam and the last day of term, suffice to say my brain didn't know what to do - torn between the trials of revision and nerves and tribulations of a child's Christmas eve syndrome. I have now had the Wii for four days and feel I am versed enough to give out my overall impressions thus far.

First impressions: this thing is tiny. Even the Wii-mote and nunchuck are deceptively small. They also feel surprisingly sturdy and there is a definite air of quality about their production. Holding the device is comfortable and enjoyable, pointing is incredibly easy and as precise as I had expected, even after reading some reports that this was not the case. The inner speaker is also excellent, despite quarrels about its quality, I just love hearing the sound of hitting a tennis ball or the thwack as I hit the ball out of the park. Turning on, the Wii-mote was sync'd correctly and it worked right out of the box, as did the automatic CD feed. The blue light only comes on when inputting a disc or turning the Wii on; I'm not sure if this is meant to be the case, I'm not bothered.

I could be a hand model

Connecting the Wii online proved a significant hassle. No Ethernet port lead me to the setup of my old wireless router which I am not currently using in my halls of residence. This itself came with hassles which I wont go into, but suffice to say it took more than an hour to get this PC back up and running. In attempts thereafter to connect the Wii it connected smoothly and downloaded the Wii updates. However when it came to downloading the license agreement for the Shop channel, etc. I received the Wii error code: 220602, associated with DNS propagation issues. Reading discussions online suggested a couple of solutions, my Wii is already next to the router, on channel 11 and had of course been previously connected. Firstly I tried removing encryption from my connection, this did not resolve the problem. Eventually the problem was fixed by some quirky DNS switching solution: opening the manual configuration of DNS addresses for my net connection I swapped the first DNS around with my second (find these out via run CMD > ipconfig/all). This worked and once again I was a happy bunny.

With my order I of course received Wii Sports and I also purchased Zelda: Twilight Princess. To be honest, I haven't played Zelda too much - I have picked up the dog, and fired the eagle at the monkey before catching two fish for the cat to steal but I am still relatively young to the game. My 7 hours clocked up thus far (total play time is shown on the Wii message board along side daily achievements which are interesting to look back on) have mainly been spent playing Wii Sports. I took first to the Tennis, Golf and Bowling which became instant favourites, now I have practiced a little more with Boxing and Baseball I am also enjoying these. My tennis rating is currently sitting pretty at 940, sub-pro whilst my top bowling score is 181. My Fitness age is 28 and I have yet to get that secret 91 pin instant strike.

My expectations for the product were exceptionally high due to hype and all the videos on YouTube, etc. I was positive nothing could live up to them, yet having played for more than 7 hours it most definitely has. Now all I need is a second controller, some Wii shop credit and another multiplayer game or two; it's going to be hard waiting for Mario, Metroid, Trauma Centre and Smash Brothers. Oh how it all costs money and we British are screwed by our 17.5% VAT.

To end this, here's a picture of Sonic enjoying this new toy:

Redmoon, Public "Made for Ads" terminals

2006-12-04T19:56:00.001Z

In a number of public places including a cinema multiplex in Cambridge and Leicester shopping centre (UK) I have come across terminals touting, "Free Public Internet Access" or "Free Internet Zone", these are owned by operator Red Moon Interactive (that I do not hasten to link to). At first sight you may think "fantastic, I can check my mail amidst my hectic Christmas shopping spree" or something just as similar. Approaching the terminal you will be presented with a list of categories, "Automotive", "Computers", "Clothes" etc. and a search box. I wanted to check the release date for a couple of video games not out yet so I typed in my queries and hit go on the touch sensitive screen.

Red Moon states on its page,
"Redmoon Interactive provide free Internet access in Shopping Centres and high footfall locations across the UK through our network of interactive touch screen terminals. Using our service your customers can search the Web or check their Email free of charge without leaving the comfort of your premises."

My results soon appeared, alas I recognise this page structure, it's a "Made for Ads" or "MFA" site. All of the search results, which claim to be genuine, were irrelevant cost-per-click ads that somehow matched a keyword. Attempting to generalize my search in hopes of obtaining some form of relevance brought no luck and only the most general of terms such as "video game" brought any relevance whatsoever. Heading back to the main page I clicked the various categories, a new list of ads pertaining to a specific category appeared in a different colour. Every single link on the terminal took you to an ad, in order that you may find any content you had to click an ad. There is no address bar to confirm the page you are on or to enter a new page. This makes the terminal a potential security risk and rife for phishing scandals that attack the non-savvy Internet users likely to use this "service". Even the email links lead to ads for online email providers.

From my web sleuthing it appears the ads are provided by Overture which is now Yahoo! Search Marketing , and they state: "The move opens up the opportunity for advertisers to reach a more localised audience in the run-up to the launch of Overture's geo-targeted searches. For example, consumers may use the terminals to search for specific services in their local area while out and about. [...] Overture's sponsored links will be returned whenever a user conducts a search via the front screen on any INFO-NET terminal. (2003)"

I wonder, do Yahoo advertisers know that their ads are being used in such a way? Would they wish to be associated with such a company? Do they want people to view their sites in a public place where online purchases are risky and unlikely? Obviously ads for shops within the mall will have some relevance and may lead the shopper to their store, however the advertisers themselves will not see goals or direct purchases online and the value of such ads can never be accurately determined remotely by the advertiser. As for those ads that need web based returns, whether it be click-throughs or sales, any hope of achieving these through such a service is highly unlikely.

My experience with the access points, a rough 20 minute test exploring different avenues of search, as I waited for a film screening, concluded that this is a commercial venture (albeit a clever one) that I could and would not classify as a service. Finding what I wanted proved impossible and knowing that each click would generate a tiny profit for Red Moon with little to no return for the advertiser, as a web advertiser myself, was infuriating. If you add to the mix the non-savvy users that will ignorantly click on all links in frustrated hopes of finding something of importance you get a highly profitable business that further devalues online advertising. Indeed, the less of a service Red Moon provides the more users will return to the search index or "results" to try another site, thusly building a tidy pile of coppers through cost-per-click ads.

If you are looking to install these terminals please take note of this. The inadequacies of the Red Moon terminal to provide a service to its users will be directly proportional to its profits - the longer it takes to find information, the more ads are clicked, the more money is made. Red Moon, as an anonymous provider, has no reputation to maintain with its users; it is those that host the kiosks that will ultimately be faced with the disgruntled surfers and declining respect of its patrons. Once more, the security of this service is questionable.

Woe betide my broken Motorola V220 (and all mobiles)

2006-12-04T16:00:00.001Z

At one and a half years I figured my phone could last at least double that and I wouldn't have to fork out for a snazzy new gizmo for quite a while. I'm not particularly enthusiastic towards mobile phones, yes I am fascinated by their all-in-one capabilities and ongoing improvements (as, after all, I am an electronic engineer) and I would love to have a 7 mega pixel camera, built in digital radio, 4gb hdd, javascript enabled internet, bluetooth and all those other perks but one simple fact remains; I do not use my phone as a telephone enough to warrant a monthly paid contract agreement. Thus I am left with the low end pay as you go options and all the shitty fallouts, or the one off cost of £300 for something high spec.

Because everything is geared towards contracts and the technology is moving along so fast it seems nothing is built to last, this rules out my second option - a £300 price tag is not a worthy investment if it wont last me 2 years, that and I am liable to lose it and phone insurance is a scam. My previous two phones both died a miserable screen-fading Nokia death before their time and all the other in-betweens have had atrocious battery problems; I have yet to lose a phone and I don't drop them - they just are not built to last. And so onto my Motorola story; having abandoned the faulty screened Nokia product lines I ventured towards a new manufacturer, Motorola paying a lowly £40 for the V220 model. I viewed this purchase as an intermediary until high specification models became affordable and I planned for it to last 3 years. Come Saturday afternoon, a windy but relatively warm winter's day in Leicester, my fully charged un-dropped never bashed phone with already defunct camera is sitting quietly in my pocket. Oh, my phone is on vibrate-then-ring, set to loud - I have a missed call that I somehow missed while waiting expectantly for the phone to go off (this happens often). Unlocking the clam I am presented with this:

Pretty colours. My first instinct is to reset, remove battery and SIM, replace and restart. The error continues and this confirms my fears: c'est cassé! All the functions of the phone still seem to work, I can ring people (if I know their number) and change the ring volume, etc, I just cannot see what I am doing. My first guess as to the cause was faulty software - a nasty bug that I could fix if only I could get to that "reset to factory settings" option somehow (why isn't there a button inside to do that?). However I am now thinking it may be due to wear and tear on the clam's hinge which would explain why the camera went first. Ultimately I plan to open this all up and take a look inside, my sister has the same phone that she doesn't use so I can raid it for spare parts, etc.

Considering I have just finished a safety critical systems course where required failure rates are 1 in 100,000 years, this persistent failure of phones within 24 months when no mistreatment has occurred irritates and annoys me to no end. The irony is that I was for a short time over the summer an "honourable Motorolan", i.e. an employee of theirs (somewhat). I guess now I shall move on to Sony Ericsson and then another manufacturer when that model unavoidably fails.

Posterific

2006-11-29T17:57:00.001Z

And so my 35 hour eye-popping 700dpi 6ft by 3ft retina scratching marathon to complete my 4th year poster project presentation has finally ended. It is entitled "CapSense" and thusly covers a "non destructive electrostatic imaging technique for the evaluation of concrete". I am now awaiting it's final print and I hesitantly look forward to seeing its laminated physicality before I and six other group members are quizzed on the content. I would link you to the PDF that took 90 minutes to generate and 10 to open but it is 1.1GB large; sad thing is, I had to create 3 separate PDFs as the first two came out wrong. Purchasing that 512mb of RAM the weekend before was certainly a subliminally good choice as editing kept up a surly 1.9GB of pagefile that would previously have sent my AMD into catatonia.

(The full version is 12960 pixels across and its scalable vectors give my processor its long desired workout, it was beginning to put on some pounds after all those mp3s and spreadsheets.)

The Issues with Blogger in Beta

2006-11-09T18:58:00.000Z

Last night I finally had the opportunity to change over to the new blogger system and it's associated improvements. My main reason for shifting was the inclusion of labels - finally I can categorize my posts and provide easy access to certain topics. The lack of labeling or categorization had tempted me to migrate to Wordpress but alas I have stuck with Blogger and I may make it through this difficult transition period also. My first process lead me to check templates loaded OK and blogs could be fully published as usual. This lead me to a few discoveries:

Upon migration the URL for archives was reset so all updated archives linked to a 404. I quickly fixed this once my server, that has been up and down a bit lately, allowed me back into the FTP.
Previous Post links have stopped working, the conventional tag instead of providing a list of the 10 posts prior to the post being viewed now shows only the ten most recent posts. This makes navigation of the older pages less fluid and to find old posts you need to visit label pages or archive pages with the aim of finding a specific post.
The uploading dialogue for blogger has also been tweaked, it now shows the successfully uploaded files in a list and when errors occurs it tells you them. A nice addition to this would be a suggestion on whether or not to perform a republish based upon the severity of FTP errors. When I see the errors I ask myself whether or not all the files uploaded ok - the last thing I need is a corrupted page that I don't know about. One caveat of this new system is the removal of the percentage uploaded indicator, I like to know how far through the process is and whether or not connectivity is good or bad, taking away the only indication seems wrong to me. Hopefully it is just part of the inevitable blogger beta ftp teething stages.

Moving onwards, once I had confirmed files could be uploaded and my template would not be utterly destroyed I chose to add labels to my posts before publishing the blog again. It is now that I discovered the new template system blogger has developed and is implementing, one in which blog style editing is made easy for those that do not know code, html or css etc. Simple colour picking schemes etc. However in doing this they seem to have completely abandoned the template tag technique which I like to use to fully customize my template design. Backwards compatibility remains yet under my existing html templates I cannot add the new shiny features. Blogger also provides no template tags for these features, instead opting for defined widgets and sections. After publishing I also noticed that labels were automatically appended to the post body in a separate div with the name "blogger-labels". The text "Labels:" cannot be altered in anyway and I have had to use absolutely positioned CSS to shift the labels into the comments bar where I want them and alter the hyperlink format. Here are a few other problems I noted:

Labels with a gap in there name e.g. "My Life" would link to a labels page: "labels/My Life.php" without substituting the space for a '-' character or removing capitalization (e.g. labels/my- life.php)
The labels directory is not customizable and is fixed to the "/labels/" default.
No pagination occurs on the label pages, despite the number of posts - one of my labels has 33 posts and they all load to create a mammoth scrolling fiasco.
When labels have a gap in their name they do not show up in the labels section on the individual post page - I noticed this and tested it to check it had uploaded correctly. All pages that I had applied the label "My Life" to did not show any labels, though others did. I have since changed the label title but it is an issue that needs fixing.

Finally I decided to post something new. The inclusion of a quick switch between html and rich formatting is an excellent addition that is very handy. Posting via a 1280x resolution the blogger post box seems very small. I like a large area to play with and it would be nice if the box could expand to fill the whole screen, much like in Gmail.

The interface is all very fluid and fast, quickly pulling up 160 posts and labeling them was not a daunting task as I had expected. The dashboard makeover also improves usability, I now only need one click to reach certain regularly visited sections.

I now have one plea: Please do not abandon the template tags scheme. I love it and use it successfully to create my blog exactly how I want it. Please maintain these tags and add respective ones so that us power users can continue using blogger and its new features in the same way we always have done. We do not need to utilize simplified template editing techniques and whilst two separate schemes never seem wise I don't know why they cant run side by side - leaving the templates tag as an advanced yet maintained option for those with a little more knowhow.

This is still in beta so I can remain hopeful for changes, it is nice to finally see some changes and I do feel that Blogger is moving in the right direction.

One month to Wii

2006-11-09T11:44:00.001Z

The wait has only just begun, yesterday I had confirmation that the pre-order I made on August 18th (approximately two hours after the announcement of the Wii UK price) would be available at launch, despite "European shortages". My friend who I had hope to play multiplayer with sadly got the opposite letter stating the retailer could not guarantee the console would arrive on time. I also put in an order for Zelda (of course) and I'll likely get a third game before Christmas. Come next week I will be most jealous with the flood of American reviews here there and everywhere whilst I wait another 20 days or so. "It's like Christmas times a thousand".

Video Game Sequels - Let's Remove Features

2006-11-04T19:27:00.000Z

This is just a little rant; I and my house/hall-mate enjoy a good multiplayer game-fest, usually on Friday evenings. We've played through Halo, Halo 2, Serious Sam and Time Splitters on co-op modes and have taken turns on Burnout 3 world tour until we have completed all but a few burning laps (which are boring). Having enjoyed these we decided to pick up Burnout Revenge and Serious Sam II from the local Game station (that's the name of the retailer).

We often commented about the replay modes in Burnout 3 and how fun it was to watch spectacular crashes over and over again and we countlessly wished for the opportunity to save these replays. Come Burnout Revenge, a new take on the old series and a version that is just as fun, exhilarating and enjoyable to play - traffic checking and trick-shotting in particular. First thing we decided to do was open up ye-old crash junction and see if they had added the feature we so dearly wanted. No, they hadn't (see:xbox version) - in fact instead of adding save-able replays they removed the replay function altogether much to our continual and utter dismay (EDIT:In reference to the original xbox version).

We were faced with another disappointment when we loaded up Serious Sam II (which states on the back: 2-6 players) - both multiplayer death match and more importantly two player co-op modes had been removed and all multiplayer had been shifted to xbox live and system link. The game was promptly put back on the shelf and has not been touched since. We do have two Xboxes and system link cables but its rare we ever have multiple copies of one game - and why should we buy a second copy when the first has already disappointed us so?

Now all I ask of Halo 3 is up to 8 player team co-op modes on xbox live, system link and locally (for at least 2 players) and the ability to save replays for everything. I still have faith in you Bungie, even after that appalling end to the one player story mode in Halo 2. Having a group of friends storm a flood riddled covenant guarded base on multiple warthogs and ghosts á la death match would be a video-game dream come true.

Foobar Component Update

2006-11-01T23:22:00.000Z

Terrestrial has made another great update to his single column playlist module for Foobar2000 v0.9. This latest change adds the following functionality:

+ some tweaks to multiple window / multiple playlists
+ added "Playing" playlist selection
+ $fileexists()
+ added NOKEEPASPECT option for images
+ added wildcard support for images
+ added alignment options for images VALIGN-T (vertical align-TOP), VALIGN-B, HALIGN-L, HALIGN-R

I have highlighted the key improvements that I am now making use of. With these new additions images can be stretched to fit a give frame, for example:

$imageabs2(100,100,,,100,100,5,,$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg),NOKEEPASPECT)

This will display an image (finds any .jpg in the song's directory thanks to the new wildcard function - * is the wildcard) and stretch it to fit a 100x100 frame. Expanding upon this using the new fileexists function:

$if($fileexists($replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg)),
$puts(albumMarg,110)
$puts(datax,160)
$imageabs2(100,100,,,100,100,5,,$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg),NOKEEPASPECT)
$imageabs(5,,images/artoverlay-1.png ,)
$drawrect(5,0,100,100,brushcolor-null pencolor-0-0-0)
$drawrect(6,1,98,98,brushcolor-null pencolor-150-150-150)
,
$puts(albumMarg,10)
$puts(datax,60))

This checks that the images is there, if it is it defines a specific margin for later use in positioning of artist, album and trackinfo. It then draws the image, a PNG overlay and some surrounding borders. If the image doesn't exist it defines a different margin so that the song data does not surround an empty space and instead is closer to the left, for example:

Fighting XP's hatred of black themes

2006-11-01T16:16:00.000Z

Finding the elusive perfect black theme for windows XP is nigh impossible. The thwarted erroneous or inconsistent use of SYSCOLORs throughout applications inevitably leads to a mix mash of black on grey (Firefox says grey can only be spelled gray, silly thing), black on black, url-blue on black or many other unavoidable clashes that make using that particular program impossible or painful. Whether it be unchangeable background whites with white text or the fixed black font on the new dark-grey 3D windows there's always a reason to switch back to the eye-ball penetrating white themes. Even Microsoft applications lay foul to this problem - you'd expect proper SYSCOLOR usage here at least:

MSN & Microsoft's Tweak UI

No matter what you do, that black text cannot be fixed, no matter what you do that blue header and frame in MSN cannot be fixed - no tweak will suffice. All black themes face these problems. The only way of fixing such issues I imagine is to apply a custom visual style to each problematic application and the only program that allows this, as far as I am aware is WindowBlinds, which I shudder to use as I like my system resources. This problem extends to browsers wherein web-pages adopt the default color schemes; browsing under the guise of blackness you become aware of the sites that assume everyone uses a black on white setup and the problems in creating an incomplete or ill-defined CSS stylesheet. For example, defining the backgrounds as white but leaving the default text, defining text-color within an input box but not its background color, visa versa, etc. In IE this cannot be fixed remotely and your theme becomes absolutely impossible to tolerate:

But in Firefox this problem can be fixed by overriding default theme values via the UserContent.css file, found here:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\chrome
for a standard installation. I added these settings:

/* Fixes textarea colours */
textarea {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}

/* Fixes input and button colours */
input {
background-color: #eeeeee;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}

/* Fixes dropdown box colours */
select {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
margin: 2px;
}

Which changes the page (and others that rely on default schemes) to look like this:

A significant and usable improvement that allows for an improved and enjoyable browser experience. Note: It seems Firefox defines text-colour default to black and ignores the themes value, so no changes have to be made here. To have a browser working within a black theme becomes a significant benefit and the problems and woes of the few assorted clashes elsewhere become tolerable. Now a beautiful black theme such as Inverso-Reborn-Balanced can be used functionally in day to day life without just looking pretty (screenshot showing Foobar, Explorer and Notepad):

If only more applications allowed complete CSS re-styling of their user interface.

Audio Blog and Flash MP3 Player

2006-10-27T23:46:00.000+01:00

Given my new found web space and bandwidth capabilities I have decided to turn the music section of this blog from a simple "review and list" posting of my favourite albums to a fully fledged mp3 blog with inline flash streamed mp3s and music videos via YouTube. My inspiration for doing this comes from the well versed Spiked Candy for which I am a regular reader.

However the "Radio Blog" flash script used there seems too cumbersome for my liking, so I searched around for an alternative flash streaming audio player. I found two options - both by Jeroen Wijering, the first was very similar to Radio Blog, it has a list of songs and you can choose to play them; whilst very nice and highly customizable it did not suit a post by post situation. So I opted for the second, a concise progress bar which allows colour and size manipulation (but has no text display), perfect for my needs.

To check out this neat little script I suggest reading the latest posts in the Audio / MP3 blog section, I have put up three posts so far including Lulu Jackson's pre-war blues rarity "You're going to leave the old home Jim" and a video of Mohammed Rafi's "Jaan Pechechaan Ho" performed for the Bollywood film Gumnaam.

My satisfaction with this script has also lead me to integrate it into the forums so that any direct link to a file with mp3 extension is parsed to generate an inline playable version and an option to download the track. This modification is amongst the many I have added lately, including the ability to post YouTube and GoogleVideo inline from the reply box. Now I only wish I could somehow apply these to blogger so that I don't have to add the html every time I want to post something dynamic.

Firefox 2.0 - Fix tabs

2006-10-24T21:04:00.000+01:00

The new Firefox release is great, especially the built in and seamlessly integrated spell checker, this should dramatically improve all those poorly spelled posts and web pages we see everywhere. The new glass theme and highlighting is an improvement (in my opinion) and new built in Phishing tools are also a positive development. Other noteworthy features include session saver, and suggestions in the search box. To test this release with regards to the ill-fated memory leak I loaded up a page of 20 or so animated GIFs which previous versions would choke on and die a painful death, the page still saw a large increase in page-file usage and some slow down but after browsing away from the page it all disappeared and I didn't have to restart the browser.

A couple of things I don't like, or maybe I am just not used to, are the changes to tabs. The changes give a fixed minimum width and a horizontal scrollable toolbar when the number of tabs exceed the screen width and also a "Close" icon on each tab. So I thought it would be helpful to state here how to change the tabs back to "the old style" ( i.e. FF 1.x):

Remove Close Button
To remove the close button from each tab and instead place one button in the top right, in the about:config file change browser.tabs.closeButtons to "3"
(For more details see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons ).

Fit More Tabs on the Page
To do this you have to reduce the minimum width of tabs. Once again, using the about:config file change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to a value of your choice. The changes will not be apparent until you restart Firefox.

For the complete run down visit: Mozillazine

$10 Threadless Sale

2006-10-24T10:56:00.000+01:00

Threadless is having another $10 sale on all their t-shirts, but it only lasts another day or so, so be quick.

Other notable online t-shirt retailers:

From Oddica:

Polish up the old Google

2006-10-21T20:34:00.000+01:00

I follow the inner workings of Google frequently through the excellent blogs "Google Blogoscoped" and " InsideGoogle ". I get excited when new google products are announced, when upgrades are implemented and generally every time Google makes my Internet life a little easier. A Gmail and Reader tab lie open continually, I use Google ad products to promote and earn from, I use google bookmarks, search history, personalized homepage, calendar, groups and obviously search. I am sure I have at least dabbled with most other releases also. So I sing my praises where I can, indeed I spent a half hour session with my last boss showing him all the ins and outs of Gmail and all those subtle little features you need someone to showcase.

But then again not everything is perfect in the increasingly large and amorphous world of the GOOG. In general, the spate of recent releases and acquisitions over the last year or so has left Google with an assortment of great and good products that need more dedicated development time and overall integration with other services to become truly useful. It has become increasingly difficult to find or even remember that Google has a suitable method for dealing with a certain enquiry. Google's aim is to organise and make available the world's information - I fail to see how this can be achieved when their own development procedure and release methodologies lead towards an increasingly difficult plane to circumnavigate. It is a white-walled maze -

For all is clean and clear but hidden behind a thousand doors.

The faintest ilk of an integration process between products is apparent in the new blue bar atop of Gmail and other services, a loose link to the other tools you haven't yet used. I will now take this opportunity to list some areas within google products and services that I feel should be addressed, improved or provided, paying particular attention to the idea of focused integration and improved user experience.

The simplest and most effective integration is to provide access to all search services through a single search box. Blog search, News search, Book search, Scholar, Groups, Images, Finance, Video, Froogle, Maps, Code search - they all require you to visit their little section of google. For certain search terms one box results appear suggesting a search using a different tool and the top alternative search links are available for video, images, etc. The recent addition of the pop-up more box is also helpful. But I feel this is not enough.

There is no method to simultaneously search more than one service. This could be addressed using search operators within the search box, for instance:

" Iraq War #blog #news" could search both blog search and news search for results on the Iraq War - or alternatively "searchblog,searchnews:Iraq War"
"Scarlett Johansson #images #video" to search for both videos and images.
"Literary criticism #books #scholar -#normalsearch " a search for literary criticism in books and scholar, excluding normal google search
"all:Johnny Depp" searches all services and provides for example the top result for each with an expandable box that can provide a further 5 results or a list of results similar to normal queries but with an icon indicating which service generated the result and left-aligned thumbnails for images, videos, etc. For instance the list could contain first a link to Depp's IMDB page, secondly a link and thumbnail for the trailer to Pirates of the Caribbean 2, thirdly some images and fourthly a recent blog post.
"media:Buffy the Vampire Slayer" - automatically searches the media services for information (e.g. images, video)
" research:Capacitive Tomography" - automatically searches .edu and .ac.uk sites, scholar, books, wikipedia and other valued resources.
"latest:Halo Movie " - automatically searches news, blogs and sites recently updated.

I think you can quickly see the power of this approach and I haven't even touched upon local searches or finance. Of course the exact implementation is just my speculation, another approach could be a list of check-able boxes. In advanced options you could ask that google automatically search all their services for you (similar to the all: operator) and provide you with relevant results from across the board, based on some algorithm that knows based on your search term which services are most relevant. Of course each of the main search services has their own specific user interface and something that could accommodate them all would be needed, though I am sure it is all possible. Custom and save-able search operators, similar to Yahoo's approach are another option Google has not yet pursued.

Search History, an invaluable tool needs expanding to all of Google's search services also. It is slowly getting there and I imagine in a few months it will be available for most if not all services. Why not expand this service to let users choose what histories they wish to keep and discard? Why not provide a search operator that automatically excludes a search term from the search history ( e.g. #nohistory). With the power of Firefox's extensibility search history could also be expanded to search boxes on domains of a user's choosing. For instance I often want to see what I have searched for on Wikipedia, YouTube or various coding sites. To save terms searched for on any domain would be a powerful tool. Obviously for the sake of privacy and security this should be opt-in by the user and they should retain complete control over the data being stored. Of course this could be expanded to an extension that stores your history online and saves search terms from all sites - but this would generate a slew of privacy fears from the quite right security zealots.

Tools are the second big issue and these should ultimately be integrated. The recent greasemonkey script that puts Reader into Gmail is the clearest and most influential indication of the power of integration. At present I have to login using a hundred different forms to access a hundred different tools that have little to no interoperability. The Reader into gmail approach is a nice idea and one that could be expanded up on:

"Files" - A list of documents related to your google account i.e. those in spreadsheets and docs, groups (files in the new beta), pages and possibly Gmail attachments. The list could indicate permissions, size, file type, last accessed and direct links to editing them online (or an automatic process to edit them locally and re-upload only changes using the Google desktop search client). This could extend to directly editing Gmail attachments without having to download and re-upload to docs. Photos from Picasa and uploaded blogger files could also be included in this list. Each of these files could also be labelled as per the gmail tradition and of course be search-able both for the file and in the file.
"History" - An integration of search history into Gmail that could include terms you have used to search through your mail and "saved searches" that could be quite complex (like the greasemonkey script " save persistent searches")
"Blog" - Post directly to blogger from Gmail without having to send posts via email - I much prefer the editor in Gmail and I generally use it to compose all of my posts. The ability to edit from Gmail would also save me having to login to blogger to correct changes or add after thoughts - especially considering I have Gmail open all the time. Once again a list of previous posts and associated files could be made and use the new blogger-beta labelling system. Add multiple blogs in settings.
"Schedule" - Show calendar inside Gmail - please, please please.
"Links" - A list of hyperlinks that have appeared in emails or multiple emails recently with the option to store them to Google Bookmarks. The number of times I have to search for the email that contained the link to the web page I have forgotten is annoying.
Make all of the above options smart (i.e. don't show blogs if they don't have a blogger account) and give the user the ability to disable them.

Little things:

"Add word to dictionary" option within Gmail rich text editor, though this may be redundant considering the new spellcheck feature coming in Firefox 2.0.
Save advanced search options to account not just locally - I like to see 100 results and have SafeSearch off, this often gets reset.
Use the inline expansion of topics in Reader within Gmail to quickly read new mail as an option and to provide some sort of consistent interface.
Quick add items to calendar using Gmail or Google search boxes (e.g. using calendar:) operator.
Gmail: Use label colour coding as shown by Matt Cutts.
Gmail: Relegate Spam to a label that incoming mail can also be applied to.
Gmail: Export to PDF (and other similar formats in 'docs') for emails.
Gmail: Provide extra security, a search for "password" in gmail should ask the user to input their account password again to ensure Gmail has not been left logged in accidentally.
A session management console. Oops I left myself logged in on a public PC - delete the session remotely to preserve security.
Zeitgeist for email - who has emailed me most, who have I emailed most, most popular email domains, who have I chatted to most, etc.
In Google Reader, let it recognise my own site feed (or let me define this) and if it's blogger provide a link to quickly and efficiently edit the post.

If you have made it to the bottom of this post I applaud you and if there is anything you think I have forgotten or there are features and changes you want to see feel free to leave a note in the comments.

Version 7 "and into the light"

2006-10-19T17:46:00.000+01:00

The site has changed and I would like to dub these edits and improvements an upgrade. The old black and orange layout, shown below, was my first attempt at creating a site completely from CSS, more than a year ago now. This turned out a failure, after hours of messing and continual frustration with the discrepancies between Internet explorer and Firefox and the bastardization of CSS rendering, in desperation I resorted to methods I knew best - tables and those dreaded font tags. This resulted in formatting that was half controlled by a hacked IE-fixing style sheet and half by random style and formatting strings placed sporadically throughout the design. To say the code was messy was an understatement. Another problem became the accessibility of content - all the links to older posts, archives, special pages, my websites and other random articles became obscured, hard to find and ultimately hidden from the reader. Thirdly the site, although looking relatively stylish on a flat screen was almost illegible on a classic CRT. For these reasons, and probably a few others I decided to address my distaste with this blog and fix everything that was once wrong.

My aims were thus to create a clean crisp appearance that looks good on all screens, where links are in visible and logical positions and the separation of posts, content, ads and information is obvious. This was to be brought about using a pure CSS design, no tables - a site that's content can be completely separated from its appearance. I am pretty pleased with the results, my aims have been fulfilled and the style sheet did not have to revert to a single IE fix. The biggest problems I had to overcome were firstly the central positioning of the main table and the right column.

My first attempt at creating the centre-piece was to use an auto-margin on either side of the <div> using margin-left and margin-right, yet Internet explorer doesn't like this in the slightest. I remember having a number of simple margin issues with IE during previous escapades. I switched to the 'all-in-one' definition and defined only the left margin as auto: "margin:0px auto;" and then set the table width to a fixed amount before applying the 'work-around' which is to provide the body element with a "text-align:center", this positions the <div> in the centre of the page from the start. A second text-align is then required within the <div> so that all the text within it is not also centered.

Fixing the column issue has a less elegant solution. In fact the first method was the best, it utilised the float parameter and allowed text to flow around the column once it had ended, the height of the main <div> would adapt to include all the content. However applying my design to blogger prevented this, on each post Blogger adds an irremovable <div> with the style "clear:both" which renders all floating around said element impossible. I imagine this is a security measure to prevent users hiding malicious things, etc. Going back to the drawing-board yielded an absolutely positioned column with margin to get the correct alignment and a restriction on the post <div> to prevent overlap. A new problem presented, by placing the content absolutely the main container would not stretch to encompass the full content, a crude fix for this was to include a minimum-height tag within it. If anyone has some better suggestions on solving this dilemma I am all ears.

Art House Movie Posters

2006-10-06T18:23:00.000+01:00

What do you get when your favourite local art house cinema starts giving away its reserve of original theatrical posters from over the past 10 years? A lot of freakin' awesome and huge posters, that's what. The rest of this blog entry is just one giant boast and a list of pictures. The most impressive of finds was the Welcome to the Dollhouse poster, a rare little Todd Solondz feature from 1996 that is hard enough to find on DVD and the David Lynch/Disney team up in "The Straight Story", the soundtrack for which contains "Lauren's Walking" by Angelo Badalamenti, one of my consistently favourite tracks.

Here we go:

Signs

Note the weights to hold down the poster and prevent it rolling up again - some of these have been rolled in storage for years.

The Machinist (sorry for the blur on this one)

The Woodsman

About Schmidt

Lower City

Memento

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Birth

A pretty shitty Starship Troopers

Broken Flowers

The Squid and the Whale

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Sixth Sense

Requiem for a Dream

Metropolis

Welcome to the Dollhouse

To illustrate how big these posters are the next pictures are of the ones posted on my walls. These were the first posters I found and I haven't changed them for my more favourable films yet:

The Others & Memento

The Straight Story, Doom the Movie (heh), The Talented Mr. Ripley, Corpse Bride

If people have interest in any of these I might be willing to "swap" for a large Ghost World or Lost in Translation (vertical with Scarlett Johansson) poster.

Sozopol - The Bulgarian Adventure!

2006-10-03T23:13:00.000+01:00

Here I am in Bulgaria on our first warm evening (Monday). I have decided to write this blog entry as I go so that at the end of it all I won't have to spend forever trying to recall all the fine little details. My girlfriend and I, who I shall from hereon refer to as Samantha, caught a flight from the over-secure queue riddled Gatwick airport via Thompson holidays, to Bourgas airport - a large city on the black sea coast in Bulgaria. From here we travelled by taxi through thunderous downpours to the old old town of Sozopol (610 BC) and its sprawling new town Harmanite.

Language barriers are high over here, I speak a little French and Sam speaks some German. The local tongue seems to be an odd amalgamation of German, French and Russian - most signs occur both in English and Cyrillic alphabets. This meant that showing our driver where the hotel ( Hotel Diamanti, ***) was - sans address, with a poor map in low light and he, without his glasses, proved difficult. The labyrinthine cobbled streets seemed alien and the destination far away and hidden. When hope was running thin, out of the dark and from nowhere the large Russian "Diamanti" sign affronted us. And so we are here successfully. The amenities are as standard - beds, shower, satellite TV, air conditioning and a balcony with slight sea view.

After a good nights sleep came the crashing sounds of Saturday morning and the dust bin men rattling over the cobbles with their wheelie bins. The weather was still overcast. We set out on our tour of the town; leading north then west (along the top of Sozopol) past the harbour and naval base. Old boats rusted and ye-olde Russian cars rolled by. Many of the buildings here were half built and the area seemed unsightly in the murky weather - suffice to say this wasn't the greatest of places to start. We turned left into the centre of town and proceeded past the market stalls selling jewellery, art work and fake Armani for 5 lv.

***

There's a slight wind at the moment, a boat is chugging past and the Cicadas are singing. The odd glitch sound of a passing bat is common and the light-house on St. Ivan's is booming. The stars are bright and Sam is attempting a fiendish sudoku with a deterministic fervour on her brow whilst chomping on her pen

***

But back to Saturday - our day saw the exploration of central old Sozopol before lunch. Old hanging buildings of wood and panelling aside newer stone houses, similarly overhanging with orange ceramic roof tiles. All the streets are cobbled with a semi circular pattern and they intertwine seemingly at random. The shops give a limited selection of products - there are the cloths and tourist shops alike with bargainous deals, numerous cafes and food outlets - each selling potato crisps, biscuits and alcohol - lots and lots of alcohol. We have in fact not yet located a good source for fresh bread - it seems to be a rarity and we can only find a peculiar rubbery brand.

For lunch we stopped at a horrid food place that can be likened to a British greasy spoons caf'. We had our pizza and chicken for 6.60lv and swiftly returned home. After a nap and a little sort out we headed south and then west towards the first of Sozopol's two beaches. We passed the elderly ladies selling lace and home made Jam (as mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide) and we came to a rocky outcrop where we could get some good panoramic shots of the new-town and bay. In moving south we came across the finer parts of Sozopol and a little alleyway that took us to a cliff side walk which ran via the city wall. Overlooking the bay the views are gorgeous and the aroma of fresh and trodden fruit from overhanging trees paved the way. This took us right along to the beach side and past many tine restaurants that offered a view and the sounds of a crashing sea.

The remainder of the day and for a lot of Sunday we explored "Harmanite", or New Sozopol; its cemented hotels, abandoned building works and tiny summer-only shops (gone since September) gave a quaint but characteristic feel to the town. On the surface it is just an attempt as a tourist sprawl but the obvious distinction between western and east European modern cultures is of some interest where the prosperous and new dwarf the basic and poor. Here we learnt of day trips via a Bulgarian/Russian man too busy running his business to talk to his customers. Sam also met a charming Russian fellow who was happy to have it pointed out that his bag had been left open.

Sunday was overcast again but today the clouds cleared and we awoke to clear skies and a warm sun. Heading into town to catch a minibus day trip to Ropotamo nature reserve and river was our best option. Out friendly driver - a fan of 90s trance music - carried us to the reserve and organized our boat trip with a newly arrived coach party from "Sunny Beach". From here we chugged away at the front of an open-slow moving tourist barge. The guide boasted wolves and wild boars but we saw only wild and rare birds. Herons, Jays and Woodpeckers speckled the riverbanks and many other unnameable ducks and wild fliers graced the route - such as an all blue king fisher variety and large billed brown species. The hill views were astonishing and we were all happy to see the odd random fish fly out of the water. The scenery also reminded me of that seen in Jurassic Park.

We came home past a marshland and withdrawn 5 star hotel that looked overly posh and introverted. Lunchtime saw us eat at the "El Grecco" cafe above the bay - a selection of freshly made dips and tuna canapes. The sun was now hot hot hot and the only thing left to do was spend the day at the beach. To the sea we went with towels and beach mat. The bay here is such that you can walk half way out and still have your head above water (which is of course lovely and warm at this time of year). And so the hours were spent finding shells, chasing crabs, scaring fish and watching stray dogs play with the tide and each other.

The GBP-BLG exchange rate is favourable to the strong pound. At the time of writing £1 is the equivalent of 2.7-2.9 levs, depending where you get them from. Herein Bulgaria the face value of money is the same as in England, that is for 1 unit you could expect to purchase a coke or for 5 units a single course. Thus for a "budget" holiday this is great - we can have 3 meals out a day and buy plenty in between. Our trip to Ropotamo cost us 40lv, only £7.50 each.

And here is a good place to talk about the food! Saturday night we ate at "Panorama St. Ivan" that offered an outside sea view of the island opposite our hotel. We opened our banqueting with a shared dish of shrimp, we snapped back their heads and sucked out their innards whilst rolling them in a hoi-sin like sauce or butter. This was accompanied by a sweet house white wine. For the main course Sam ate a shark fillet steak with salad garnish and I had a Wiener Schnitzel - an odd looking but tasty pork dish with potatoes. All this cost us only £7.50 each.

For the same price on Sunday at the famous "Viatarna Melnitsa" (windmill) restaurant we enjoyed a selection of salty fish h'orde oeuvres including Anchovies. For mains we had a swordfish kebap - onion, mushroom, tomato and olive flavoured fry/stew whilst Sam ate a Veal cutlet. For desert we had a shared ice cream with freshly cooked raspberries - delicious!! For wine we chose the Pomorie chardonnay.

Tonight we ventured to Ksantana - a three tiered custom built house overlooking/hanging the sea. For the staple price of 40lv or £7.50 each we once again ate like kings. Straying away from wine we had a taste of other alcoholic offerings, a Bulgarian beer - Zargorka and a fine chocolate liqueur and whisky cocktail with creme. For starter we had chicken wings and frogs legs before moving onto a Pork fillet and beautifully stewed vegetable mix and a Bulgarian Rabbit casserole. Now it is late and I must sleep so I can carry on with this fine holiday tomorrow

***

Part two and it is now Thursday - the day of Sam's atrocious bad luck. From the sun that came out as we went in, the rain that fell during beach time, the cakes that looked delicious and tasted terrible and the 18:00 boat tour that left without us. At about 14:00 we realized everything we would attempt to do would somehow go wrong (even the game of Pool did!), furthermore we narrowed it down to choices Sam had made. She is now lying next to me recovering from a bad dose of Shellfish. So here is my chance to fill you in.

On Tuesday things were once again blistering hot and beautiful; so as all good British folk would do, we went to the beach again - for the day. Walking in the sea here you are incredibly close to the wildlife (unlike in Britain). Around us we saw jumping fish and sea creatures alike. To round off our sun tanning beach trip we took a ride on a Pedalo for the lowly price of 6lv (£2) per hour. Cycling out of the bay gave us some great views of the coast, including the old Sozopol town-wall and overhanging restaurantation.It also convinced us that taking the slide on the back of the pedalo and swimming in the sea was not the best idea as we encountered a number of jellyfish - both large creamy white and small and clear species. The suns warmth did not hasten and suffice to say we are both now a golden brown - even Sam who has never tanned before in her life. For an early dinner we chose to eat at the 'breme' pectopaht at the tip of the town looking out over the bay - the views were great however the food not so. Our seafood salad, bacon and cheese skewers, grilled veg', button mushrooms, "chicken delight" and chocolate pancake tasted prepared and manufactured - entirely horrid and the only saving point was the below average 27lv price.

Wednesday saw the weather turn for the worse, so the beach was out. This was the day of little shopping trips - liqueurs, wines, chocolate, wooden sculptures, postcards and the GREAT WOODEN SNAKE! For lunch we stopped at a tavern looking place with the word "Mexhana" over the door, there we ate a selection of cold and seasoned salami meats with chips whilst accompanied by two charming cats - two of the many that inhabit Sozopol.

For dinner we chose our restaurant well - we did not want to waste another evening eating terrible food. This time we ate at " Neptun", another old establishment along the Morski-Skali road overlooking the black sea. For starters I had a vegetable risotto and Sam had mussels in garlic, for mains Sam ate the pork kebapches (like sausages) whilst I opted for the recommended "grilled belted bonito" fish. And thus the fish came, it was whole - complete, head tail and all, but most of all it was absolutely delicious. My meal was larger than Sam's so she ordered an extra shrimp shish kebap. For dessert we had fig pancake (freshly made this time) and a nougat ice cream - I ended up eating both. All of this and a bottle of domaine boyar wine cost us 42lv (not 72lv as we misread). For me personally it was the best of the meals so far - it was a gamble that had finally paid off, considering I was particularly wary of the concept of giving someone a whole fish to work through.

***

Part 3 now and here I am on the plane home - writing the final chapter in the Sozopol entry for my blog, on pen and paper that is. I am now amongst the fat and yobbish Brits that come for the sun and cheap booze at Sunny Beach & Golden Sands - they are a delightful bunch, sporting white jogging bottoms, gold jewellery and the latest football strips.

To carry on from where I left off, Thursday evening saw us eat at the recommended fish bar,"Kirik". For starters we opted for the Bulgarian mussel and mustard specialty (after they told us they had no black sea crab) and chicken wings. As Sam was ill and I felt a little under the weather we opted for two non-fish dishes; the mixed grill and meatballs and cheese with sauteed potatoes as mains. Our palettes were moistened by a Traminer white from the Tragovishte province. All this set us back 37lv.

And onto our final day in Bulgaria - it ended as it had began - with rain and lots of it. We stayed in and packed for the morning whilst watching CNN's terrible news coverage and wishing for the BBC. By lunch time we were bored so headed back to "Kirk" to try their infamous fish dishes now that we were feeling better. This time Sam ate the red mullet whilst I opted for the Zargan - a long thin fish with a blue spine. Sam also tried the "buttermilk" drink which she had seen others have, it tasted like some obscure liquid cheese/bitter yogurt and was promptly pushed away. 21.50lv this all costs us and the fish was fantastic.

The rain didn't let up but this didn't deter us from one final shopping tour and photo spree. I have officially been dragged through and around every shop in the old town. When finally my legs gave way we returned to the hotel to finish packing before having a card game of head-to-head Texas hold 'em and a variety of "strip jack naked" incorporating snap and other rules - we dubbed it "Paul wins" three years ago. The kind hotel management let us stay in our room until we need to leave - which is great considering our flight was at 23:45. We paid our dues and booked our taxi before heading out to the "windmill restaurant" for our final Sozopol outing.

Yes, here is ANOTHER paragraph about food - in fact this holiday has been all about REALLY good food, cheap. We ordered some more specialty starters - a serving of caviar and sarmi - vine leaves stuffed with mince meat with a side order of garlic bread. The fun didn't stop there, for our main course we had the fabulous Pork Kawarma that came in a hot pot on a plate of oil which once ignited cooked the food on our table for us and a scrumptious succulent Salmon in honey dish. This came as we overlooked St Ivan's and the distant hills lit up a brilliant burning red as the sun set behind them. For dessert we had the ice cream again. This was one of the greatest meals I have ever eaten and it was the perfect end to our eatery-summer Bulgarian adventure.

I guess I will now sit back and watch the rest of King Kong or do a Sudoku! Oh and here is a girl in a bag on the side of a van:

The New Foobar

2006-08-21T13:40:00.000+01:00

So I have spent some time working with the latest trackinfo_mod beta panel that is available for the latest version of foobar2000 (0.9.3.1). It has the great ability to support PNGs which can be absolutely positioned. I decided to opt for a clear and non-invasive design that can be read at a distance (I hate having to get up from bed to see what song is playing). So I made the artist and title large, the album name a little bigger and then of course a huge album art cover. Of course this makes browsing for songs to play a little difficult so under the browse tab at the bottom there is an auto-hide columns UI playlist and album list panel, as shown in the handy (yet miniaturised for this blog) GIF. To see a full version of my setup click this link: Screenshot

Living in a strange place

2006-08-13T00:12:00.000+01:00

It's late on Saturday night on a deftly cold August eve', my feet feel as if they were ice blocks and I am relatively lonely and bored in an unfamiliar town. Yes, I shall be living out the rest of my summer holiday's working in Cambridge for a little known company entitled "Motorola". Mirah's "Advisory Committee" comforts me as I continue to feel a little disconcerted with respects to my new residence. Upon first look the place may seem plentiful for a brief 7 week stay. The room is of good size and seemingly appropriately furnished; I also have my own shower and cooking area. Yet I am not settled, even after being here a week already. The overall niceness of the place is offset by the oh so subtle horrors, indeed the devil is in the details.

To begin with, my room; it contains an old bureau, a chest of drawers, a new Ikea bed, a new fridge and a few lights. It is a downstairs room looking into the concealed front garden and is of good size. And of course looking around everything is seemingly sound. However, having lived here the slight problems begin to mount. First the little things; the bureau is old and designed for paper and pen usage, it does not accompany a desktop computer well which becomes a particular problem with regards to cables and their routing; the bed's mattress is inset in wood which presents particular difficulties when changing the sheets, this wood extends downwards – so whilst storage space is visible under the bed the border prevents anything from being slid beneath and it's unshapely form prevents a lift and slide technique; the chairs are old and uncomfy, the drawers are light and flimsy and the room is always incredibly dark with a filtered soft light akin to station lighting where shadows become blurry. These are mere physicalities that I can live with.

Continuing on, the door to my room gleefully boasts two large windows providing clear sight into my room and destroying any privacy I may hope to have. They have kindly provided a blind but this does not block out the light at night – the light from the corridor which is permanently lit and relit should I turn it out, the blind also has a slight kink preventing full cover. The room is not sound proofed in the slightest so that every move outside can be heard and visa versa, particularly annoying when a grandfather clock ticks incessantly in my ears at night or when a dog barks in the morn. Furthermore the house has no insulation – the floor is wooden, the windows are old and single glazed and the room is next to the front door – which lets in draughts a plenty. You wouldn't think insulation would be a problem in August but I am very cold and would dread to spend the winter here. Moving onto the shower, situated under the stairs – a power shower yes, but one of those Italian styled hole in the floor jobbies such that using it wets the toilet seat, toilet roll and the entire cavity. To make matters worse the door is garnished with more windows, this time they provide a little diffusion and have pretty colours yet as the shower is directly in front of the door, which is in the corridor downstairs (the main throughway) all privacy is shot to pieces and no anatomical features are left to doubt.

If we carry through to the kitchen – a converted wash room complete with sink, electric cooker and washing machine. The odour of dog water and washing powder is thick and worktop space is minimal. To exacerbate things further the oven door opens in such a difficult manner in a tight arrangement so that if you wish to use it you must present your face to its front so as to slightly grill your nose. There are cats and dogs that are old and miserable, there is no safe place to keep a peddle bike and I cannot get over this unsettling feeling. If this place was actually affordable then maybe I would not be quibbling. The icing on the cake occurred when, as I was watching an X-files episode in my ongoing marathon, all power was lost and everything turned itself off – but only for a brief second. The lights came back on and everything was running again, except for the computer which was still reeling. It all seemed to happen when the fridge clicked on. So I investigated, it turns out the extension cables (as provided) that I have plugged my desktop into and various others that power the lights and fridge all run into one extension under the bed. This extension comes up from the floorboards beneath and powers everything. The plug sockets in the room do not actually work. It's not like I can turn the fridge off when using the computer and visa versa and I need the fridge (which also likes to freeze my salad!). This has happened twice now and it continuously worries me such that I attempt to power manage as best I can – turning on lights only if I have to and using speakers, CD drives and hard-drives conservatively.

At least the family I live with seem quite accommodating, albeit there is a veil of mystery about them. Oh well, rant over, now I will sleep.

The Lost Files - The crossover spin-offs continue

2006-08-04T22:37:00.000+01:00

It seems Lost has proved so popular it now has a second (yes second) spin off crossover special! This time John Locke is joined by FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in an attempt to unearth the deep, shady and supernatural past of the Dharma Initiative; the truth is out there. This was cannot be missed, even if just to watch that dreamy fantastic Mulder one more time. Airs October 27th, possibly.

Exclusive promo shots

Don't buy Dell

2006-07-21T01:32:00.000+01:00

In brief, this should sway you from ever thinking of purchasing a Dell machine.

Woe betide my Dell, (Renata's Blog)

Some quotes:
Tech: When you go around the web -- yes? On your browser program. You can run into bad programs called viruses. And these viruses can cause all the problems you are talking about.
Me: I know what a virus is. I don't have a virus.
Tech: But viruses cause all your problems. You have a virus -- yes?
Me: I do not have a virus. I have a hardware firewall on the router. I have a software firewall on the computer. I have up to date commercial virus protection that updates its definitions on the fly and I have scheduled full system virus scans that run every night at 3 AM. I do not have a virus.
Tech: Well, you know, too much security can cause problems too.

...

The first tech was adamant that the problem was not related to memory, and that there were only three causes for bluescreens: a bad motherboard, a bad hard drive, or software conflicts. She explained, again, that she had just replaced the motherboard and hard drive. "Must be software," the tech said. Exasperated now, my tech explained that she had just replaced the hard drive, so there was no software on the machine. He still insisted it was a software problem and refused to send memory. In fact, he suggested something that I will be writing to Dell about. He actually suggested that she install only one of the four memory modules, close the box, determine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to continue installing Windows and call tech support if I had any more problems! He actually suggested to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, presumably without telling me what had been done.

Engadget: Dell Laptops Exploding...

Dell knew dozens of their laptops had sustained extensive heat damage at least two years before initiating any kind of recall. The source, who is claimed to be someone "close to the company," has said that Dell execs were provided with documents and photographs in 2003 and 2004 showing lappies described as "burned," "melted" and even "scorched."

Veronica Mars, a PSP, a Pirate and some Robots

2006-07-20T11:46:00.000+01:00

Wow it's a hot July day here in Bristol, England. Chances are today will be the hottest July day we have seen for thirty years or so. I have just completed my previously postponed phone interview (which went well) and cut the garden's grass. It's now time to chill out at the PC with a cold beer; time to write something for this blog!

Let's see, I have a few topics to discuss. Firstly my Veronica Mars Season 1 DVD box set arrived in the post, hoorah. I decided to import it from America rather than wait for a toned down featureless region 2 release ("America, America…" – Styx are singing, as if it's some sort of holy land). Well it arrived today, via Germany. My dilemma came in the fact that the DVDs are region 1, NTSC; generally incompatible with all region 2 DVD players, such is my understanding. Well I decided to test them out, planning to rip some region free backups to use with my PC. Upon PC insertion the DVD loaded and played, no region blocking problems. That's odd, so I tried it on the region 2 PAL but NTSC compatible DVD player downstairs, this also worked beautifully. The final and most important test, does it play on the overly secure *will not play copied DVDs* Playstation 2. And yes it did, admittedly it failed on picture quality because it is not NTSC compatible but overall my experiments were a success. So is this Veronica Mars box set meant to be region free? Did they kindly realize that a LOT of Europeans will be importing this after downloading it on the internet? Is it a perfect looking pirate copy? I think and hope not. Such revelations make me a happier boy.

Lot number 2 is a Sony Playstation Portable (PSP). Joystiq is running an article on the PSP and how the DS is seriously killing it. It seems there are no solid PSP titles I really want, potentials yes, but nothing solid. And I hate playing the ones I do have, mainly because I get so impatient waiting for them to load (e.g. GTA, Burnout). The one game I do play and often is Pro Evolution Soccer 2005. The PSP has the potential to be brilliant but Sony has stifled it. These days I only use my PSP for watching movies and TV episodes on the train. Long ago are the days I dreamt of owning a PSP so I could play GTA on the move anywhere anytime, play Sonic 2 emulated on the bus, listen to radio streams using the WiFi on campus et al. Yes I can do all of these things but it takes so long to start them up it's just not worth it, most of the time I can't be bothered. A quick 5 minute game turns into 2 minutes of waiting and then it's pointless. I'd rather read my book or listen to my iPod.

Some complaints of mine:

1. VERY few games support online play! What's the point in Bomberman PSP if it won't play online? I only know one other person with a PSP so the chances of me playing its brilliantly sublime multiplayer are slim.

2. Where are the simple fun games? I want to play Crash Bandicoot on the move (not a shit racer), I want a new 2D sonic game (not a shit 3D racing one), where are the original titles? What's with all the shit racing games?

3. Why does the screen stay on when playing Music!? (Seriously that's just dumb... and they make the album art tiny also). Why can't I play my music during my games? Custom soundtracks are not a new thing - the games that do support them don't even allow mp3s... you have to rip them from your owned CDs. The headphones that Sony provide you with are also shit.

4. Open up some sort of development APIs so that we can use the PSP with the applications we want! Why all this Gestapo crap when it comes to firmware security? What's the big deal? Tighten UMD security and open up the firmware a little for us. Provide some sort of official line which developers can take to provide their own legit PSP applications, for free.

5. The screen is so reflective and shiny I can never see anything on it, even on the highest brightness setting. Only when in the dark does playing become comfortable. When speeding along in a train on a sunny day all I can see is the reflection of my green T-shirt.

Maybe downloadable PS1 games will be its redeemer, yet I am sure they will be coupled with crazy load times. I'd give anything for a cheap opportunity to play FFVII on the move… but I'm sure I will be let down once more. Maybe I should purchase a DS Lite. My main gripe with the DS was its ugliness, size, inability to play videos and the touch screen stylus; thusly I bought a PSP. However the Lite has addressed many of these issues and now I find myself envying those that have the new Mario, Mario Kart, Sonic DS and all the other great and fun portable games which do not suffer appalling load times. PSP = Potential, that is all. Rant Over.

Lot number 3 concerns Hollywood action movies. ("Woo" – Devin Townsend's Idom roars). Two fantastical disappointments I have watched in the past few days. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the ill fated poorly thought out over the top sequel" and "I, Robot". Admittedly it is impossible for Depp and co. to live up to the phenomenal amount of hype surrounding this inevitable blockbuster but this sequel just doesn't cut it as a good movie, yet alone a great one. The plot is messy; the scenes attempt to court a slapstick aura with witty dialogue in a fantastical action packed supernatural pirate world, a la the original. But it fails, at least in my opinion. The stories are uninteresting; Jack Sparrow is criminally underused; there is no sense of voyage – we can go from a to b just like this which in essence defies the point (it's very much all over the place); the great musician yet underappreciated genius of anthem producer extraordinaire Klaus Badelt has been sacrificed for the big name orchestral star Hans Zimmer. Admittedly Hans is great in most of his films but he really didn't suit the Pirates subject, he pillaged the original theme and overly orchestrated the entire movie to generate some sort of pseudo-epic. I doubt the third film will be a threat to the original either, though of course, it will make millions.

Alex Proyas' "I,Robot" is a tiny little gold nugget surrounded by multiple layers of crap. The gold nugget lies in the miniature philosophical elements that make up the film, clearly lifted from the novel, these tidbits are brilliant though of course should not be accredited to the filmmakers. Two films run side by side in I, Robot. The well thought out, philosophical and interesting world of Asimov and the poorly conceived, dreary computer graphics fest that is Proyas' vision. It's almost as if the film alternated between scenes from a butchered Asimov script and scenes from an unbelievable Proyas action plot; at times you can almost see the physical divide between the two conflicting thought processes. Like oil and water; oil is power and action, water is refreshing and invigorating, upon mixing you yield an unmixable mess that is no use to anyone. The only redeeming feature for I, Robot is Will Smith who somehow makes the film a watch-able and enjoyable experience. He makes Proyas' mess look good, I loved him, he was great – without Smith this would just be one giant waste of time.

Now all I have to watch is Superman Returns!
Over and out.

Time for a revamp

2006-07-12T14:31:00.000+01:00

After 18 months or so this place had a solid layer of unpleasant dust covering everything, and not that cool kind of musky dust, the horrible flaky skin stuff. It was about time for a good dust off and rearrangement. Thus I have refined the site and cleaned up many of its buggy aspects including those old ugly looking comments. Simple CSS and HTML tweaks have yielded a few dramatic improvements here and there and for good measure I have introduced a number of new features to my blog. Image and video posts tend to clog up the main opinions blog I have here on the front page so they have been promoted to their own blog categories; [Images] [Video] much like the music section used to be. These will basically be areas for me to post up random images I find, cool videos I have seen and other peculiar tidbits. In addition I have added a desktops page which shows and logs my desktop setups over the years, provided links to my personal "Mega Search" pages that just search a lot of sites at once for my convenience. Links have been updated and now there's a small little search feature should you find yourself lost.

These things always take longer than you expect, now I will go back to reading my book in the sunshine!

My favourite crossover!

2006-07-07T15:30:00.000+01:00

What's this? Veronica Mars and Boon in that famous Lost Mars crossover spin off series. Set prior to the plane crash and after Mars' graduation this spin off yields the perfect blend of sly cunning teen drama with fantastical adult mystery. I hear even "The Others" make an appearance! It really gets my Pulse racing. I hope this show doesn't get cancelled like Firefly, that was an utter disgrace. This sure saves the day now that I have finished watching all those season 2 episodes of Mars and Lost that I saved up throughout the year; it's more fun to watch it all at once. I find waiting 4 weeks for the next episode a little distressing. Go Team!

The Local Sunset

2006-07-03T18:12:00.000+01:00

Weather this imagination

2006-06-12T10:36:00.000+01:00

Ah the pleasantries of waking to the crack of thunder as it reverberates through your house, window panes vibrating in their frames with water pounding – like a monster trying to get in. Briefly beforehand I had been surreptitiously sneaking into an enclosed military air base where a school friend had been enlisted; within this base he fancied an over the top and epic video-game proportioned playground contest involving a 60ft noose and demolition ball. This atmospheric battle would reside within an historic school set amidst the dark skies and opened heavens (a metaphor for the shit being stirred?); it would most certainly lead to his and our expulsion from the base in legendary fashion. The penetrating thunder and prompt exit was in fact legendary, condemning the contest, air base and entire metaphysical realm to that oblivion of the dream never to be resumed.

This unorthodox 8am wake up call now leaves me sitting amongst clear blue skies and another burning hot sun; the mysterious black smoke of festering fork energy has also disappeared into oblivion. Like a murderer on the run it leaves behind only traces of its presence – puddle prints, soaked barbecues swept up in its wake and the sodden and appalled victims of its wrath. Within this humid air of disbelief I plan to return to the highways of America via Kerouac. As this new metaphysical world prepares to embark on a journey down the varicose veins of a mega-state my corporeal terrain fades once more, leaving barely the remnants of a tanning sun apparent across all roads, routes and highways, night and day.

The downfall of this blog

2006-05-28T18:33:00.000+01:00

It seems I have somewhat neglected my blog, my last full non-image post of any real value was back in October – my lovely racism article, if you're lucky you might catch a copy of it by scrolling down this page a little. It seems my time has been spent elsewhere, primarily taken up by my degree; VLSI designs here, Analogue system designs there – an ill fated electronic nose to tout my CV with and a multitude of late nights in the computer room attempting to complete coursework to the best of my abilities. This trend continued right up until last Tuesday when I completed the last exam of my third and penultimate university year. I don't really know what to do with myself and this crazy amount of free time, I am sure it won't last and a bit of sunshine wouldn't go amiss. You see for the last 5 or 6 weeks, following the nerve wracking project presentation to the ever superior dean of engineering and the 16,000 word report associated with it, I have spent each and every day revising—from 9am until 9pm at night, sometimes later, without break or rest. I wrote so much I had RSI before going into the exam hall. Well now those days are over and I am well trained in the arts of digital signal processing, digital and analogue systems design, robotics, finance and accounting, VLSI and digital and analogue communication systems (most of which will be defunct in a few years as the switch to digital is made); or at least I hope the results of the 7 exams will say so. They didn't go as well as I had hoped, you may argue so what, but generally I have been pretty pleased with my exam performance in the past. Maybe it was the change in exam structure that baffled me, this year there's an external examining body coming to check that everything is going well – much like Ofsted but for further education; it is for this reason many lecturers broke out of their well defined mould of predictable exam questions to present confusing and unpolished alternatives in attempts to look good in the eyes of the officials. I shouldn't complain too much, at least the engineers weren't subject to the appalling lecturer strikes that have smitten my friends degrees and graduation – refusing to set exams, mark work or do anything admin related. It's a grave injustice to the hard working student body – the university's customers if you will; months of dissertation struggles traded for an unaccredited degree and covering letter of explanation. It's disgraceful and the university and lecturers ought to settle their battles without involving, disgracing or overly stressing innocent third parties during examination periods.

In other news I have a failed ARM interview and a couple of rejection letters under my belt and still no summer employment, hoorah. Most of my time not spent in education has been devoted to the ongoing and steadily improving indiecult.com website, also mentioned a few posts below and I am off to Venn Festival in Bristol next week in light of that; Vashti Bunyan being a particular highlight for me.

While at home over Easter I made a couple of great discoveries in the attic concerning record players, vinyl, old edition comics and some original D&D. Such beauties include a great electro-jazz 70s piece from Bob Downes and a Morrocan Maghreb at Marrakesh disc, all truly stunning. I'll write a more comprehensive list in the near future but now I must dash to measure my girlfriend's head size and watch X-men 3 at the Apollo.

Desktop April 2006

2006-04-22T13:42:00.000+01:00

Click for large

MP3 Player: Foobar v0.9 with Columns_UI, album art panel, album list panel
For more great setups go here: Hydrogen Audio
Desktop image: Deviant Art

Independent Boom Boom

2006-03-12T16:24:00.000Z

Brought to you from the recesses of the underground, aight.

New Site Launch: Independent Culture (Indiecult.com)

2006-01-14T12:09:00.000Z

http://www.indiecult.com

There are hundreds of review sites and for every niche musical genre there is a hated music review site to accompany it. It is our aim to create a location dedicated to great 'independent culture' without the accompanying subjectivity of reviews and ratings. There will be no 'reviews' as such on this site, nor will there be ratings - placing a piece of original art on a numerical scale alongside everything else is insulting and entirely opinionated. To remove the subjectivity of a medium weighted so entirely by opinions will be difficult but we can try. For this reason all articles are open to public opinion, an article that is an assortment of multiple views will provide you with a rounded and informative resource.

Today sees the official opening of Independent Culture, already we have a dedicated team of writers and editors and there are a huge number of features we still wish to implement on the site. We hope you enjoy your stay.

"Sweeping generalizations from a position of partial ignorance."

New Website: Halo Movie

2005-12-05T01:40:00.000Z

I have released a fantastic new website for your delectations, a site dedicated to the live action adaptation of the Halo franchise.

halomovie.trivialbeing.net

Harry Potter is such a cool guy

2005-11-26T23:49:00.000Z

Go Harry! Go Harry!

I will eat your soul!

Oh my!

Say hello to Harry!

Japanese Import Amelie Poster

2005-10-21T00:57:00.000+01:00

My new japanese Amelie poster is really awesome :)

A fear of being branded racist

2005-10-20T12:18:00.000+01:00

Last Wednesday a fiery and passionate race row took place on BBC Radio 4's Midweek radio broadcast presented by Libby Purves. Joan Rivers became furiously enraged when Darcus Howe announced that the term "black" offended her; Rivers let loose, frenziedly exclaiming, "How dare you call me a racist! How dare you!"

In less dramatic circumstances, my housemate explained to us in a car journey this morning that she found a particular lecture problematic. Not because the content was uninteresting but because she found it difficult to understand the deeply-accented words of her world-renowned Spanish lecturer. As she elucidated her reasoning she profusely and repeatedly said, "I don't want to sound racist but?" My level-headed friend was afraid to express her feelings and thoughts about communication difficulties in lecture theatres for fear of being branded a racist.

We live in a world where we are increasingly told that racism is evil, and that we should continue to fight the causes of and stamp out racism within our society. Each of us is handed a civil responsibility to prevent racially-motivated oppression at all costs. Yet as this responsibility is increasingly forced upon us, we are finding it ever more difficult to speak our minds. We keep our thoughts to ourselves, for heaven forbid we should say something politically incorrect. Describing someone as 'black' has become a political minefield. When pointing out a friend to another we pause to consider our description; should he be identified as Black, African, African-Caribbean, African-American? Who are we to make assumptions about his origins?

This kind of anxiety is all too common in our politically-paranoid society, and is often counter-productive. How can we ever escape racism if we fear the repercussions of calling a black person black?

The situation is not helped by overbearing black anti-racism establishments, which report every potentially racial misdemeanour and specialise in exactly the kind of antagonism that fuels such insecurities. Publications such as weekly newspaper The Voice, billed as 'Britain's Best Black Newspaper' provide an outlet for black communities to express their concerns. Yet in a world of globalisation where cultures have become intertwined, and a society which continually strives to prevent its own segregation, the concept of publications aimed at a singular race appear entirely hypocritical, and fundamentally at odds with such social aspirations. Communities facing racial oppression should have a public outlet to voice their concerns, yet is a newspaper, read solely by a black 'partition', the best medium for this? Imagine the outrage if a service or publication were aimed exclusively at white people. "White News" would be a national scandal, assuredly denounced by the government as racial slur.

It is my belief that different cultural backgrounds provide for multivariate skills and talents. Africans are different to Indians in the same way that East Asians are different to Western Europeans. It is entirely possible that these races of people have disproportionate abilities in an assortment of activities. To ignore such fundamental differences between people is sheer ignorance, for we are each individuals and we are all very different. To use these differences against each other is real racism. Contrary to the common misconception; the practice of racism lies not in acknowledging these differences, but in using them in a demeaning and inhumane manner. To announce that somebody is black is not insulting and it is not racist. Similarly, finding an accented Spaniard's English difficult to interpret is also understandable.

Should you now discover that the author of this piece is indeed black, consider how it would effect your opinion of it. It is the white fear of and the black obsession with the recognition of difference that will forever allow racism to haunt us, even when those who are truly racist are long gone. As Joan Rivers argued, "It is not about black or white, it is about people."

Im Lost on an island with Veronica Mars, what delight!

2005-10-09T19:58:00.000+01:00

I'm quite enjoying just sitting at my computer listening to music, so rather than do nothing productive I have decided to make another blog entry. I have no idea why at the start of each diary-esque entry I must justify myself. Maybe I should take an introspective look at the real me instead; give the ol' cogs a tweak and come out better on the other side.

Lost

Season one of Lost premiered on channel 4 over the summer. My hectic schedule and profound wisdom led me to miss the first four terrestrially aired episodes. I saw clips and heard quotes involving beasts, an island and a guy named Jack; I wrote it off as a Lord of the Flies mimic. When I found all my housemates gathered on the sofas in the dark, faces like those of mannequins as they sat wide eyed in front of our old 14" watching episode six I realised that this was not necessarily the tame US import we so often receive. Through the wonders of the internet I acquired the older episodes and played catch up. This new show was actually interesting, original and entertaining, not to mention an adeptly named character based upon the great "Tabula Rasa" philosopher John Locke. Flashing credits also revealed to me some member of the old Buffy team working on the project which essentially rooted some sort of faith in this show.

In my house of 7 we all have highly varied and diverse tastes, we like different music, films and styles and it is very rare to find something we all equally enjoy (aside from fajitas); Lost is one of those rare things. Each of us seems to draw different inspirations and pleasure from the ongoing instalments and our opinions differ dramatically as to our favourite incidents and whether or not an episode constitutes as good. The absurdity of having a similar television line-up for six months and having to watch a show consistently for half of a year has escaped the American audiences. The mere thought of waiting a massive twenty weeks until the season finale filled our house with terror—our attention spans would drift, we would stray away and good heaven's, we may (all) have to pay for a TV license. Thus we came to a collective decision: I must download all the episodes immediately and watch them as soon as we can. Once again the internet has come through for us, yet organising 7 people to all be in the same place at once when term has started and we all have significant responsibilities and other plans proves extremely difficult. Alas we have only traversed up to "In Translation", episode 17. But we'll get there, oh yes we will and then we can move onto season 2 and start the process all over.

Veronica Mars

Ah yes, the other great American television show I have grown addicted to. This time it is without the support of my housemates or terrestrial television. This show was forcibly inserted into my face via the V-mars goons at Something Awful who felt it their need to advertise through avatars and banners. The intrigue finally got to me at the end of August and I asked the internet ever so nicely to kindly place a copy of UPN's pilot episode into My Documents; and that it did. Thanks Internet. Veronica Mars is one of those shows you can casually watch 10 episodes of without having to stop for water, and after a week I had practically finished. Who killed Lilly Kane? Who attacked Veronica at that party? Why is Logan such an asshole and how does he still manage to be so awesome? All of these could be essay titles for media studies students who have chosen to do something highly practical and academic with their time. They also pertain to the most brilliant and evolving storyline of this great genre breaking teen adventure. The blurb for Veronica Mars makes it sound so incongruous that when described to people it actively turns them away: "A teen girl investigates school mysteries and deals with being a high school outcast while looking for clues as to the murderer of her former best friend in a stereotypical Californian poor vs. rich sunshine city." Yet the characters you would ordinarily expect to be wooden cut-outs: the bully, the drop out, the boyfriend, the father and the bitches all break the boundaries of traditional teen sitcoms, they have issues and they have background stories that aren't stolen from a soap opera brainstorming session.

Herein lies my true Buffy replacement: it makes my laugh, it makes me cry and it is original. I can only hope that season 2 lives up to the ever growing internet fandom that is spreading consistently through word of mouth. UPN does not advertise this show, it had a poor slot in last years schedule and in the UK it is only just starting to air on cable only Living TV yet somehow the season 2 premiere which was pitched in direct competition with season 2 of Lost still managed to draw in over 3.3 million viewers: UPN's highest ever (apparently).

So that's that, after going for a year without television two new fantastic shows have just dropped into my lap.

A time to blog

2005-10-06T14:39:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I actually sat down and wrote something original for my blog; the majority of the content I put up consists of images I like, articles of interest and a very brief commentary by me. I find myself quoting people and stating that I have the very same sentiments without bothering to add something of my own. I am a very opinionated person that wishes to write often, so I am taking this opportunity when I should be in a lecture, to discuss that which is on my mind. I feel the main problem with my writing is that I really need to be in the right mood, sometimes the words just flow in coherent and correct sentences, sometimes I struggle to form a single paraphrase. Before I slept my mind was running with things to type, now my mind is blank once again.

I have taken to reading The Times newspaper every morning, I particularly enjoy the commentaries and their future responses in letters to the editor. I am hoping regular reading and comprehension will engage my brain in the skill that is writing for journalism, much in the same vein that watching "The Space Race" on the BBC will provide me with great insights into Rocket Science; making the occupation of rocket scientist oh so much closer.

"I feel, the more programs I watch about rockets and how they work, the less brains I need to become a Rocket Scientist"

University has begun once again, we are all going through the motions one more time, one year on, 3rd year brainiacs. I realised as I passed the half way point of my degree that much of my time here has been spent wallowing in the misery of too much work, the dullness of the work and often the frustration of being around the same people for too long. It was this revelation that led me to a new scholastic year resolution: I shall get involved and have fun. Last year I was pretty miserable; whether it be due to my cold uninsulated Victorian lounge-bedroom, my severe tooth ache that led to me missing the first two weeks and the associated introductory fresher events or the content lacking course, who knows. As part of this resolution I have vowed to eat healthy, get fit and build my stamina. I'm a regular sufferer of headaches and I am trying to find ways to minimise this pain, I have given up caffeinated drinks, I wear my glasses during lectures and I listen to my iPod at a lower volume all in hopes of having a pain free week--it's probably good to give up caffeine anyway, I hear that I'll feel more awake within a week or so. To replace my daily onslaught of tea and coffee I have switched to Actimel, Fruit Juice and the occasional decaf tea when I just need something warm. I've also given up salty foods such as crisps (chips in the US) which pretty much consist of fat and salt. I can purchase a Fudge, Nutri-grain, Apple, Banana and The Times for £1.

As part of this new year I have joined the Squash sports club and the Poker society. I'm now playing regular squash, 3 games or so, every Tuesday and Thursday night and plan to partake in regular poker tournaments, the most recent one being a welcome back free roll wherein 200 people turned out to play, they expected 40. It was my first time at playing in real life and it was nerve racking yet enjoyable; I didn't play too badly, suffice to say I went out with a very bad hand having received no good playable cards all night.

In recent years I have also been pretty tight fisted with my money, not through greediness, but in light of student debts and the helpfulness of having money there when you need it. Spending money is something I dread doing and if I can do it electronically so it feels as though cash is not leaving my hands then all the better. This is one of the reasons I didn't go out much last year, I didn't want to waste money having fun. Either spend money and have fun or save money and be bored. My philosophy has been severely altered; I repeat that statement to myself in some form or another whenever I consider doing something potentially fun that involves spending money.

Rightyo, I'm leaving now, without having mentioned the drama and great dissatisfaction of not getting to see 2manyDJs and Vitalic live. Here's a footnote to think about:

"Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone"

Make your thanks heard.

Last Weeks Most Listened To Artists

2005-09-26T17:54:00.000+01:00

Jason Forrest
Vashti Bunyan
Paavoharju
Nick Drake
Sufjan Stevens
L'Altra
Kemialliset Ystävät
Three 6 Mafia
Arve Henriksen
The Microphones

Hello, may I take your order?

2005-09-12T22:43:00.000+01:00

"Welcome to der weinerschnitzel may I take your order please?"

"Yeah I want:
Two large cokes, Two large fries
Chili-cheese dog, large Doctor Pepper
Super deluxe, with cheese and tomato"

"You want whale sperm with that?"

>>> NO! <<<

My Student Bedroom

2005-09-09T20:14:00.000+01:00

So, I am in the same house as last year but this time I have been relegated to the smallest bedroom. While this may seem bad, the room is actually the warmest in the house, feels very homely, plush and is just much much nicer.

My workspace, computer and shelves. Note the JS, MySQL and Electronics text books.

My large fitted wardrobe and bedside corner with Godfather framed poster.

The house plant in the corner and an open wardrobe that reveals its technological glories.

An Overview

More of the television and housed Xbox and PS2.

Pimping my foobar, whisky ash tray (I don't smoke) and iPod.

I absolutely despise cables and their assorted messiness. In these photos you should only see a couple, the hundreds of others are quietly and neatly hidden away from view. The one trailing the bottom of the wardrobe is the annoying net connection to the Xbox that wouldn't fit through the drilled hole at the back (inside) where the power enters. It's nice being able to hide away the TV and consoles when they are not being used. The room also has 5.1 surround sound setup with correctly positioned speakers in corners. The small shelf lying behind the screen makes a nice cosy area for connector cables to come through from below (away from view); housing the DVD writer, iPod connections, card reader and such. The screen also doubles as a USB hub. So I am happy.

Finding Art on the High Street

2005-09-07T22:37:00.000+01:00

I have recently moved into my student house for a second year. For my third university scholastic period I shall be graced with the smallest yet plushiest of rooms in the old 3 storey victorian residence. There's limited wall space in this beige-magnolia wall and floored room and rather than cover the walls in a few tacky well known matrix and kill bill posters I thought I would find some interesting art, photography or vintage film posters. I have a couple of large frames already so today I decided to spend some time in town trying to find something worthy to fill them. I have found plenty of art online that I enjoy; Michael Sowa, Thomas Barbey, Brandon Bird, Ron English, Francine Van Hove and assorted others. I often find pictures on the net and think "I would LOVE to have that on my wall". There's a good selection of shops that sell art prints and posters in town (Leamington Spa / Coventry), Athena being one of them.

I spent a good 5 hours at the shops today, mainly looking for some term-time work. But in my travels I visited and perused every art shop I could find. I started at Athena. There was the usual Vetriano collection, black and white cityscape photography, some quirky animal posters, blue washed beach scenes of John Miller, the odd Dali image and whordes of black and white photo prints. These prints showed Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Muhammed Ali and John Travolta doing their stereotypical thing. Four inspirations for the current generation, one has Parkinsons, one is a Scientologist, one was overweight and died from it and the other did nothing but look pretty until she also died. Great. Do I seem bitter about this? Yes I am. In every single shop I went into I was greeted with the exact same art prints, photos and four icons. Sometimes there was the odd Beatles or Al Pacino addition. But in all SEVEN shops I visited there were the same prints and images. Nothing at all remotely interesting, intellectual, brilliant, beautiful or inspiring to me. Seven different shops run by seven different companies stocking exactly the same shit obviously contracted from the same bulk provider. There was not ONE original image in any of these outlets. It's no wonder people are turning to the Internet to purchase all their goods, the high street sells all the same tacky-kitsch stuff conforming to the lowest common denominator for the unrefined masses to decorate their stereotypical lounge or bedrooms with.

Hurricane Fury

2005-09-04T13:02:00.000+01:00

I have found the response to this hurricane truly despicable considering the notice given and the expected devastation. Surely someone should have planned a comprehensive relief effort should the worst happen.

I agree with these statements and couldn't word them any better, so here is a quote from Something Awful:

Rich, myself, Livestock, and probably some of the other writers have been watching the hurricane aftermath with nothing short of dumb shock. There is a disaster going on right now and it is manmade. The disaster is three strangers in Mississippi, together because they're all that's left and alone in a town without buildings, drinking floodwater polluted by corpses, shit and gasoline. The disaster is a woman wading through waist deep streets holding her daughter and wondering why the trucks won't stop to get her out of the city. The disaster is ICU patients dying one after another because diesel didn't flow and order couldn't be kept. It's an uninterrupted chain of personal disasters. It's inept triage on a national scale. It's unbelievable that this is America.

It's hard to comprehend that these repeating images of herds of people without food or water or medical treatment after nearly a week are happening on our soil. They're our fellow citizens and while the politicians, directors, planners and generals congratulate each other at press conferences they are suffering and dying. I have seen some efforts in the media to pressure officials to accept responsibility. None have, because in public office the buck stops nowhere. The only person I have really seen come close to capturing the raw fury of the people trapped in New Orleans or forgotten in Mississippi and Alabama is CNN's Anderson Cooper. He confronted Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu on live TV, chiding her with a voice cracking with emotion that he couldn't believe the politicians were patting each other on the back over a job well done when he just saw rats eating a woman's body in the street of Biloxi. On the Internet I've seen people blatantly placing blame on Bush, FEMA, Congress, the National Guard, and even Homeland Security.

Who is responsible? Who should be blamed? All of them. This is a colossal failure of our government to care for and protect its citizenry on every conceivable level. The heroes are the men and women on the scene doing their utmost to help those in need. Coast Guard rescue workers plucking people to safety and Red Cross workers feeding people from emergency kitchens are heroes. The man who commandeered a bus and got people out of New Orleans when the government was woefully impotent is a hero. The woman who smashed the glass on a convenience store to loot bottled water for fifteen kids who should have been absolutely inundated with supplies by then is a hero. The doctors and nurses hand-bagging ventilator patients 24 hours a day in dark hospitals are heroes. In the ineloquent but true words of the Mayor of New Orleans: "Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country." CNN was better prepared to deal with this disaster than FEMA was.

I am ashamed of my country's government in a universal way right now. Republicans, democrats, opportunists, it doesn't matter; they're all guilty in this situation. In a magical world where justice is actually served most of these people would not have jobs in a month or two. Instead the people without jobs will be the millions who have lost everything and found their government with its back turned. Remember that people are still dying because of this incompetence. Remember that when each and every one of these fools appears on TV for a photo op or complains about "placing blame later," because placing blame now is the only hope America has to change the situation.

In the United Kingdom somebody's head would be taken for this. A great number of politicians would have accepted some ounce of responsibility and in hindsight resigned. It disgusts me that no one can step up and say "I was wrong" or "I should have done more", "It is my fault". The most powerful country in the world is doomed if its leaders and officials are only going to cover their own asses and not solve the nation's problems.

From the BBC:

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American citizens are feeling.

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

Borrowed time

The fitting metaphors relating to the New Orleans debacle are almost too numerous to mention.

First there was an extraordinary complacency, mixed together with what seemed like over-reaction, before the storm.

A genuinely heroic mayor orders a total evacuation of the city the day before Katrina arrives, knowing that for decades now, New Orleans has been living on borrowed time.

The National Guard and federal emergency personnel stay tucked up at home.

The havoc of Katrina had been predicted countless times on a local and federal level - even to the point where it was acknowledged that tens of thousands of the poorest residents would not be able to leave the city in advance.

No official plan was ever put in place for them.

Abandoned to the elements

The famous levees that were breached could have been strengthened and raised at what now seems like a trifling cost of a few billion dollars.

The Bush administration, together with Congress, cut the budgets for flood protection and army engineers, while local politicians failed to generate any enthusiasm for local tax increases.

New Orleans partied-on just hoping for the best, abandoned by anyone in national authority who could have put the money into really protecting the city.

Meanwhile, the poorest were similarly abandoned, as the horrifying images and stories from the Superdome and Convention Center prove.

The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the officers and troops?

The neglect that meant it took five days to get water, food, and medical care to thousands of mainly orderly African-American citizens desperately sheltering in huge downtown buildings of their native city, has been going on historically, for as long as the inadequate levees have been there.

Divided city

I should make a confession at this point: I have been to New Orleans on assignment three times in as many years, and I was smitten by the Big Easy, with its unique charms and temperament.

But behind the elegant intoxicants of the French Quarter, it was clearly a city grotesquely divided on several levels. It has twice the national average poverty rate.

The government approach to such deprivation looked more like thoughtless containment than anything else.

The nightly shootings and drugs-related homicides of recent years pointed to a small but vicious culture of largely black-on-black crime that everyone knew existed, but no-one seemed to have any real answers for.

Again, no-one wanted to pick up the bill or deal with the realities of race relations in the 21st Century.

Too often in the so-called "New South", they still look positively 19th Century.

"Shoot the looters" is good rhetoric, but no lasting solution.

Uneasy paradox

It is astonishing to me that so many Americans seem shocked by the existence of such concentrated poverty and social neglect in their own country.

In the workout room of the condo where I am currently staying in the affluent LA neighbourhood of Santa Monica, an executive and his personal trainer ignored the anguished television reports blaring above their heads on Friday evening.

Either they did not care, or it was somehow too painful to discuss.

When President Bush told "Good Morning America" on Thursday morning that nobody could have "anticipated" the breach of the New Orleans levees, it pointed to not only a remote leader in denial, but a whole political class.

The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week.

Will there be real investment, or just more buck-passing between federal agencies and states?
The country has to choose whether it wants to rebuild the levees and destroyed communities, with no expense spared for the future - or once again brush off that responsibility, and blame the other guy.

Revoked American Independance

2005-08-22T01:24:00.000+01:00

Revoked American Independance

Declaration of Revocation

To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour'; skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters.

You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise."

You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to re-spell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation.

Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary." Using the same thirty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "uhh", "like", and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

Look up "interspersed."

There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary, then you won't have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier).

You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents --- Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles.

While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters.

British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American "football." There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies).

We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005.

You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day."

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call 'French fries' are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat.

Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling "beer" is not actually beer at all, it is lager . From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in the Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or "gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon -- get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by
adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

Stencil my way out of boredom

2005-08-21T00:28:00.000+01:00

My boredom during these holidays has led me to new hobbies that grant me opportunities to be creative. My latest craze is stenciling! On Thursday I went out and bought a can of spray paint, some 100gsm printable card and some other random helpful oddities. I then used my sister's "scribe" as shown below to begin my work. I'm a complete newbie when it comes to this and I plan to do a lot of experimentation in the next few days involving multi colour designs, painting with a roller, using chalk to touch up after painting and different techniques. Below is my second ever stencil of Donnie Darko (the first was merely a proof of concept to check that I wasn't wasting my time on something that would look shit). I spent about an hour or so sorting out the stencil for this one and then I applied a heavy spray painted layer while it was 'tacked down,' that was a mistake, look at the white splodges and how the paint splurged everywhere!

Quick first spray

So next time I went with just a light spray with the finer parts held down from above using small rocks and weighted objects. Didn't turn out too bad and with the edges trimmed would look quite good mounted. I may make some modifications and add a blue hoodie layer to this.

Latest spray

This is my latest effort (below). It took roughly two hours to make the stencil simply because the hair took so long and at times the bridging was hard to conceal. I was being adventurous with this one and purposely chose an image with difficult areas to cut away. This isn't the greatest of stencils to spray due to all the tiny little bits but I tried it anyway. I plan to go out and buy some paint, rollers and coloured card to make this look nice tomorrow.

The reverse side of the stencil

A simple quick spray in the dark in the garage, splurged a bit to give her a nice beard!

The stencil front side up after spraying.

For those wanting to start stenciling, I found this link helpful: Stencil Revolution

A Rosy Outlook

2005-08-08T22:36:00.000+01:00

The summer has been largely uneventful. When people ask what I did I will have to reply with resounding silence. Then I shall listen to all the fabulous and amazing achievements, developments and experiences they have enjoyed.

Recently I was sitting back and trying to rack my brains around a new site I could develop, so I could do something with my free time. I hadn't made a site about anything I was passionate about for a long time. Then it struck me, what am I passionate about? There's nothing I am particularly obsessed with, nothing overtly interests me and I see nothing that fascinates me enough to go out of my way and pursue it. Sure I have interests but there's not one thing that I can say "yeah my life is dedicated to doing that".

I get sudden spouts where I feel I must be creative, write about something, design something, or do something clever. But there's just no something. I'll sit at a canvas and then leave it. I greatly enjoy music and it fascinates me to no end, I do obsessively listen to a lot of odd and enlightening stuff. So why not pursue that? Well I have absolutely no musical talent which rules out all creative aspects.

Maybe I just lack conviction, maybe I will find something or maybe I will forever remain a subjectless critic with an empty gallery of my great shortcomings. Perhaps society has just deluded me into a downward spiral of convoluting boredom, or you could say I was passing the buck. I'll get over it.

The Revolution will not be Terrorised

2005-08-07T16:01:00.000+01:00

War is good for the economy, like cannibalism is nutritious

Bristol born Banksy has been in the news as of late, his art on the Palestine West Bank Barrier has caused quite a stir. He's popping up all over the media.

DanSTC says (and I agree): This in my opinion, is exactly what the *best* kind of art can and should be about. Challenging people's perceptions, and providing a means of commenting on the ludicrousness of real life. The man, Banksy, is a true art-warrior. Absolute genius.

Yahoo Launches Audio Search (impressive)

2005-08-04T12:53:00.000+01:00

Saw this on InsideGoogle,

quote:

Yahoo has apparently decided that, now that they have an ad network targeted at bloggers, it is time for them to release all of their blog-related services in development. As a result, here is Yahoo Audio Search, which can find you podcasts. According to The New York Times, Yahoo claims to have indexed 50 million music, voice and other audio files.

The service will also display links to the online sites where users can pay to download a song. Most major music sites have agreed to send Yahoo lists of their songs and pay a commission on every song sold. The current version of the service has no advertising, but Mr. Horowitz said ads might be added later.

You can refine your searches by music, podcasts or other audio, by song, artist or album, by format (RAM, MP3, MIDI, WMA or AAC) by duration (more or less than a minute), by web & audio services or audio services only, and by major releases or to include alternates, imports, EPs, etc.. Smartly, the podcast results have links to the RSS feeds.

http://audio.search.yahoo.com/

This is an extremely nifty release. Take these example searches and results:
(Purposely testing with lesser known artists)

Venetian Snares: Search
Clicking the artist brings up a discography and list of albums.
Clicking the song gives a list of legal locations for download, cost, quality, format, ability to burn to cd,
Quick links include Y! music link to artist, biographys and reviews.
There is also a matching artists page on the right hand side to give quick access to discographies of searched terms.

From the discography page:
Format: Album Cover, Title (Record Label, Year of Release)
Sort releases by popularity, date and title.
On the right Yahoo automatically searches images, the web and video and displays the first results from each in a single column.
Find CD link under each album links to Yahoo shopping and gives a list of online outlets to purchase the cd.
For more well known artists there are "Similar artist" links also.

Clicking an album cover takes you to the " album browser":
This lets you quickly browse an artists albums. On clicking from the browser you are presented with a tracklisting and all the available legal online download locations for that song.

You can also select your preferred audio service from one of these:

quote:
None
ArtistDirect
AudioLunchbox
BuyMusic.com
dMusic
eMusic
Epitonic
GarageBand
iTunes
Livedownloads
MP34U
MSN Music
Musicmatch
Napster
PassAlong
RealPlayer Music Store
Rhapsody
SoundClick
Yahoo! Music Unlimited

Moving on to Podcasts:
Search for engadget: Engadget Podcast
Notice the last published date and direct link to the RSS feeds.
Here's another podcast search: BBC

There's also an "other audio" option which I have yet to try.

Inside BBC

2005-08-02T14:18:00.000+01:00

Say hello to the latest member of the trivial being network.

Inside BBC: http://bbc.trivialbeing.net

The aim of this site is to document and inform you of the latest innovations, changes, articles and improvements made at the british broadcasting company's (BBC) website and elsewhere. Such as their interactive media player and open source plans.

GET SOME CRUNK IN YO SYSTEM

2005-07-31T03:59:00.000+01:00

GET SOME CRUNK IN YO SYSTEM

Me, dad and the cat chilling in '85

2005-07-29T19:52:00.000+01:00

'sup bro'

Sunset on the Desktop

2005-07-29T00:28:00.000+01:00

Well, at least my computer has some form of style. I opted for a radical makeover and went for BLUE. I think it came out pretty good. Shame about the weather outside, the rain came when Samantha left for Edinburgh and she's gone for the month.

Click for fullsize.

Click for fullsize, shows themed folder, firefox and last.fm standalone player

Attic Treasures and Easy Rider Rare Vintage Posters

2005-07-26T01:52:00.000+01:00

In a bid to clean up parts of the house we decided to rummage through our attic to make space for more boxes of things we don't really need but like to keep. We removed some old boxes and looked through them, most of it was junk. Door handles, screws, locks, metal brackets, paint brushes, wallpaper, broken things and lots of dust. However we did come across a bag containing two large rolls, upon closer inspection they were my Dad's old posters. These posters look pretty darn cool and I'm trying to value them at the moment.

Easy Rider Posters, very rare and vintage:

Black and White, 29" x 51.5", Peter Fonda and "Chopper", in Las Vegas on scene for filming
Poster date: February 16th 1969 (pre-release)

24.5" x 33.5"

25" x 34"

One of the greatest posters I have ever seen at a massive 34" x 51.5"

Jimi Hendrix:

Black Sabbath:

Soft Machine

Random Science Fiction Monthly Posters

This one's pretty cool.

Che Guevara

If you are interested in purchasing any of these, feel free to contact me at kangoophoo NO at SPAM gmail dot com, state how much you are willing to pay also. Most of these posters are in mint or very good condition and have been rolled away in the dark for 20 years.

The irony of banning GTA due to sex

2005-07-25T18:07:00.000+01:00

Inside Firefox:
"Gamestop has decided to stop stocking Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Probably because parents might buy this game for their kids, and it has (shock) sex in it now accessible via a difficult to apply mod (on the PS2 at least). I guess using a prostitute, killing her and taking the money back, massacring pedestrians and stealing things is fine family fun, but consensual sex isn't? For shame, Gamestop. You try and act like you're above this, but instead you show how unenlightened you actually are."

I just read this at InsideFirefox linked to above. I agree completely and think this "hot coffee" mod thing is going a little too far. Although I'm sure the british 18 certificate adequately covers this.

I'll miss my old room

2005-07-25T12:03:00.000+01:00

Tales of Bus Fares and Film Certificates

2005-07-20T20:06:00.000+01:00

About time for another blog entry I feel, something today specifically focused on the lovely new changes made by the BBFC (film classification company in Britain) and the First bus company in Bristol, England.

A few months back I watched one of this year's greatest films, Batman Begins. I thoroughly enjoyed the feature and plan to see it again with my girlfriend at a local IMAX theatre. However, during the more violent and scary aspects of the film my thoughts debated the choice of certification. In Britain, Batman Begins has been rated with the fairly recently created 12A certificate (after the Spider-man violence debacle).

Children under the age of 12 will be able to see a '12A' film at the cinema if they are accompanied by a person of 18 years or over. The adult must watch the film with the child or children and not just pay for the ticket.

This means that a six year old would be allowed in to watch this film. A nagging child desperately wanting to see the latest super hero flick would be the most likely candidate. However, if I were a parent there would be some scenes I would just not want my child to see. For instance the scarecrow and drug induced hallucinations. Most of the violence and battle scenes consisted mostly of quick camera changes and flashes and these didn't bother me. It was more the frightening aspects and themes that some of my twenty something friends were afraid of that bothered me. Introducing drug induced paranoia and scary hallucinations to a young child could really scar(e) them and keep them up at night. I questioned why a simple 12 rating was not used, anyone over the age of 12 would love this movie. Had this film been released in the early nineties a 15 certificate would be guaranteed.

I have now returned from seeing the latest War of the Worlds adaptation by Spielberg. There were no violent scenes, bad language or sex acts in this movie and there were fantastic special effects, combine this with Spielberg and a 12A rating and you'd think this would be a perfect movie for a group of eight year old's and a birthday party. In fact it was a similar combination that led me to take my girlfriend on a date to see this flick. We settled down with our Fanta and chocolate buttons hoping for another fantastic summer blockbuster. We were gravely disappointed (the ending... seriously wtf, Spielberg you douche). I'd read interviews that talked about how 'berg would concentrate on the human and dramatic aspects of an alien invasion and he did exactly that. There may be some spoilers below, so don't read on if you are afraid of me ruining moments. Dysfunctional families, a lazy yet loving father, distraught children faced with death on a massive scale, images of multiple dead bodies flowing down a river, humans being turned to dust, crazy lunatic hitch hikers frantically attacking the only working car resulting in gun shots and murder, insanity and murder for survival, booming sirens and shuddersome aliens, humans being ground into fertilizer and sprayed across fields, complete hopelessness, fear and death. These were the themes of the movie that were incredibly realistic and terrifying, such that my twenty year old date cowered behind her hands for much of the second half of the movie. I was shocked at the brutal reality of parts of the movie and if this was the aim of Spielberg then I applaud him in his success (although all those narrow escapes were ridiculous). Once again my thoughts turned to the rating of this movie. It was 12A. If I were a parent there would be no way I would ever let my son or daughter watch this movie, even if they were over 12. The themes in this motion picture are simply things an eight year old should not be confronted with in the search for entertainment. What were the BBFC thinking? A film certificate should be a guide to parents and in this country also a governed restriction. Five years ago this movie would have been a 15 or even 18 certificate yet today a six year old can see this with his ignorant misinformed parents. By the time I am a parent I'm going to have to watch all the films they might want to see beforehand just in case they are not suitable. Whatever happened to standards?

BBFC and the 12A certificate

Moving on, to another note entirely. Today I travelled into Bristol city centre to enjoy the day in town. In lacking means of transportation we decided to take the "First" bus (badger line). It used to cost £3 for a single during rush hour and £2 off peak. However since June 28th prices have gone up. Now off peak travel costs us £3.60 each and a massive £5 return. A 40 minute bus journey into town and back for two costs us £10. Comparing this to the bus I take to university which takes 50 minutes and costs £1.80 return (each) during peak periods and the coach tickets to London (return) that cost £16.50 then you see that this price is extortionate. Where a short trip to the next suburb used to cost £1 it now costs three. No wonder people don't want to use public transport.

I'm done, stick a fork in me. (Why doesn't blogger create £ signs without the annoying A-hat before it?)

Konfabulator is great!

2005-07-16T00:59:00.000+01:00

I have spent the evening looking for a method of skinning iTunes for windows XP, I'm fed up of the grey scheme and would like the library to take more advantage of the cover art each of my music files has. I really wanted to browse by artist and beneath the artist there would be the album title and cover and to the right a tracklisting / track details. This is what I want for iTunes and I haven't yet found it. However, on my trek across the internet I stumbled upon Konfabulator 2, the stylish, simple and effective widget machine:

What Is Konfabulator?

Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of today's advanced graphics. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Windows XP and Mac OS X.

I decided to install and experiment. Previously I have used rainmeter and samurize clients to display information on my desktop. Such clients have been slightly annoying to position, congifure and match with my current theme. Konfab' comes with several preconfigured widgets for you to use; an analogue clock, CPU monitor, Wifi signal monitor, weather forecasts and various others. I used to have a weather add-on for Rainmeter yet the advanced configuration and work to find the local forecast code number was not worth the hassle of the forecast only showing every 3 reboots. So I tried this aspect first, I entered my home town and country and there it was, the forecast in all it's simple and brilliant glory, directly to my desktop. It also shows the current stage of the moon's cycle and puts temperatures in a METRIC format. Next up, time to browse the third-party widgets (http://www.widgetgallery.com/).

Here I found an iTunes remote that looks like an empty cd jewel case. Upon playing it shows the album cover in the ID3 tag, if not tag exists the widget searches Amazon for an appropriate cover. Upon rolling over the top half a set of controls to change track, etc... appear, rolling over the bottom half brings up the progress bar, track name and artist name. Simple and eloquent. It also has some advanced features such as hiding itself when iTunes is closed, bringing itself to the front upon track change and hotkeys for control. It also has three spearate sizes for album covers, in the screenshot below it's on the middle setting. So here's an image of my current desktop, click for larger.

Optimus (concept) Display Keyboard

2005-07-15T02:20:00.000+01:00

A goon over at forums.somethingawful.com pointed this out to me and I relished the idea of having one of these so much that I decided to make a blog entry about it. At the moment this is only a concept piece, however there are patents pending and from the forums thread their is significant interest in such a product. It is ingenious without a doubt.

The Optimus Keyboard

"Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment."

"Additional block of keys on the left is meant for switching between programs or modes"

Standard keyboard in English, same keyboard different display when playing Quake, showing the controls.

The possibilities of this are endless. So many times I have played video games and forgotten the controls, had difficulty remembering keyboard shortcuts, wanted improved functionality and quick (and obvious) one key commands (I have this to some extent with my MS natural keyboard but you need to remember each button's function). This keyboard can also be sold internationally as it incorporates very easily all the different setups and arrangements of keys and characters, i.e. the Russian or Greek alphabets. It's a simple aid and solution to common key memorization problems, customization and adaptability and it looks incredibly cool. I want one.

Images © 1995–2005

What a load of shit

2005-07-12T13:49:00.000+01:00

In Case of Emergency (ICE)

2005-07-12T13:11:00.000+01:00

I've just read about this on the BBC website and I think it is an excellent idea and should be widely adopted. It is a simple and efficient method of identifying who to call in the case of an emergency.

BBC says:

A campaign encouraging people to store personal details on their mobile phones to help identify victims of accidents and disasters has taken off since the bomb attacks in London.
Users are being urged to enter a number in their phone's memory under the heading ICE - In Case of Emergency.

Paramedics or police would then be able to use it to contact a relative.

The idea is the brainchild of East Anglian Ambulance Service paramedic Bob Brotchie and was launched in May.

This Weeks Listening Chart

2005-07-11T14:07:00.000+01:00

1	The Microphones	32
2	The Arcade Fire	10
3	Idlewild	7
4	RJD2	6
4	Pink Floyd	6
4	Eva Cassidy	6
7	Les Savy Fav	4
7	Moby	4
7	Lightning Bolt	4
7	The Postal Service	4

Bug in Gmail's Rich Text editor

2005-07-09T02:06:00.000+01:00

I was happening to enjoy writing a lovely formatted email one evening and I decided I'd like to include a quote from a website at the end of the email. Gmail's rich text editor is fantastic at interpreting html from the clipboard and it implements all formatting, URLs, images and code. I love this feature and it is extremely handy. In this case I was copying a block of text, however mid sentence there was a small image that was a useful link for the website but was not required in the email. The text-editor added it as expected and I motioned to remove it. However, it wasn't just your standard image linked to web page because upon clicking to delete the icon it proceeded to load the page it linked to... within the rich text editor. The code for the image looked something like this:

<a href=" url"
onclick="{ window.location.href='url that loads'; return false; }"
onmouseover="status='url'; return true;"
onmouseout="status=''; return true;">
<img style="width: 402px; height: 378px;" src="image url" border="0">
</a>

This page that loaded replaced my carefully worded email much to my annoyance yet I grew excited at the prospect of being able to send web pages to friends with ease. My mind was traveling along the lines of,

"If I could exploit this bug, I could create a simple PHP script, render some code for the desired URL and then get the full web page up in the editor which I can then send"

Although these plans were somewhat thwarted when I noticed the SEND and save draft buttons had become completely defunct after rendering the url's html. I've given up re-writing the original email because I'm tired.I should also point out that this bug only occurs in firefox. Make of this what you will. Although I do fear it could open up some security issues such that the loading of malicious html within gmail could pose a serious threat.

The worst of things bring out the best in us

2005-07-07T20:55:00.000+01:00

What an eventful week this has been.

Live8, a global protest and collaboration in an attempt to urge on the G8 leaders to cancel debt, provide increased aid and most importantly to improve trade relationships and give Africa free trade; all in an aim to bid poverty goodbye. Millions upon millions gathered, watched and pledged their support on Saturday to the Live8 cause, the level of participation in this international protest/campaign was unprecedented. Despite uttering of hypocrisy and the usual critics, people rallied to show that they do still care, that they want change and enforce that people can make a difference. With the resources and money we have, there should be no poverty in the democratic and fair countries of Africa and we should do everything possible to combat it. It is from the education and presentation of extreme poverty, hunger, corruption and death that we, as a people, can rally and use our power to influence events. It is from the utmost worst of things that we show our true human spirit in a bid to do good.

And today, London Terrorist attacks, brought the city of London to a stand still. Four underground explosions and a bomb on a double decker bus have left 40 people dead, the city at a stand still and complete disruption to the city. A most terrible and terrifying event aimed at murdering innocent British citizens. I've watched it all unfold throughout the day, from 10am this morning I've watched BBC News 24 and debated on Internet fora as more explosions, deaths and happenings unfold. I've seen Chinooks and Apache helicopters fly over and I've seen the nation's businesses on high alert. The combined, swift and excellent aid services have got the needy to hospitals as fast as humanly possible, locked down central London, taken control and successfully prevented panic and unneeded grief; the people of London have stayed calm. I have nothing but praise for the efforts of the services. But once again, it is this most disastrous of incidents that has brought out the best in us. The stories of good will, support and kindness to others are phenomenal; from people giving free lifts out of congested London and people giving up accommodation to those who need it to the bus services helping to cart the injured to the hospitals, the extra hospital workers and volunteers called in, the nurse that's in London on her day off that goes to the nearest hospital to help out, the builders that hear the news on the radio and all head to donate blood generously and instinctively.

In a world that more and more people are calling uncaring, withdrawn, separated, corrupt and commercial, it is these events that have reinstalled my faith in humanity. We still have it in us to do good, it's just we need something disastrous and horrible to remind us of our capabilities.

Exam Results

2005-07-04T16:16:00.000+01:00

Systems and Control (CG203): 85%
Signal Processing and Communications (CG204): 94%
Analogue Design (ES21J): 81%
Applied Linear Algebra (ES21L): 92% (7.5 cats)
Design of Measurement Systems (ES21Q): 70% (7.5 cats)
Digital Design (ES21R): 80%
Electronic Systems (ES21T): 79%
Software Development (ES22E): 92%
Starting a Business (IB229): 58% (7.5 cats)
ULSI (PX258): 70%

Overall mark is 81.4% a First. Im so happy, I only really did badly in the "Starting a Business" module, a completely coursework assessed module with little to no relevance to engineering. The majority of people I know who took that module got 58%. Im a little angry because I worked so hard for the write-up. But overall I am overjoyed, 94% in the hardest module kicks major ass and reflects the unprecedented amount of work I had to do for it.

Invision Power Board and SDK

2005-07-04T13:51:00.000+01:00

The trivial being forums that I and my co-web host run use the "Invision Power Board". It has served us well and now accommodates over 50,000 posts and 1200 members. An aim for all of my websites is to make them community orientated. This has been fairly difficult with the minimal IPB-site integration I was capable of. However, now I have discovered IPB SDK.

IPB SDK is a library of PHP functions, which will help you develop advanced applications on your site. Integration between your forum and site is essential in the websites of today. IPB already has a great member system, why re-write another one if you can use one member database for both?

I can now use the extensive and growing forums as the central hub to multiple user services, new sites and much much more. Additionally it is free and open source! I have already began incorporating it into my current sites, primarily my Evangelion Live Action site which I have recently redesigned. This new discovery will greatly enhance my future sites and provide highly valuable user interaction and member only sections.

As aforementioned, I decided to redesign the live action website. I really despised the old design, it looked hideous, consumed bandwidth and it was messy, incredibly messy, not only the look but the code running it. I have since completely revamped the site basing it around IPB SDK and a CSS style sheet to replace all the annoying font tags. This is version 4.0 of the site and people have been querying as to what v1-v3 looked like. I only have memories of them myself and I feel sometimes I would like to just glance at them again, for old times sake or something. So, if I ever change the current design (v4), here's an archived picture version of how it looks now:

Video playback in google video

2005-06-28T02:53:00.000+01:00

Well, today I was treated with the pleasant surprise of google video adding fully functional video playing support to their google video service. People have gradually been uploading their videos to google and various television stations have submitted their shows with search able closed captions. Until now this was the extent of the video service, you could see when a show aired, search its script, seen when new shows were going to air and see a simple screen shot taken so far in. All this being pretty useless to someone living in the United Kingdom (although still very cool, I hope for some BBC integration soon). Now however, google video provides video. Google results that have a playable video show up with a little play icon next to them. Upon opening the page there are options to start the video from various 30 second increments, upon clicking, the video plays right there and then in the browser. Now, most in browser video players are fairly bulky, consume considerable resources, load the browser with unneeded hindrances, provide annoying applet controls and require buffering times. However, google video is based upon the popular and utterly fantastic open source "videolan player" open source setup. VLC generally plays all standard codecs with ease and has highly functional streaming options, subtitles, multiple video and audio stream capabilities and much much more (including the option to view a video in ASCII). This google video viewer loads seamlessly, has no nasty button interfaces, does not load the browser or cause over the top cpu usage and has a once click full-screen option (i.e. click the video for fullscreen). The video requires very little buffering time and is of suitable quality and resolution for fullscreen and television playback. I really do love it and I have been playing for the last hour or so.

"The clips play right in the page using the brand new Google Video Viewer, which was created by our engineer Aaron Lee using code from the open source Videolan project. It works great in both Firefox and IE, and we've designed it not to fight with any other video plugins you might have. We're releasing the Windows version first, with Mac coming soon."

Now all this needs is some content, currently the majority of videos are not playable, a nice option would be to search for playable videos only. As this resource grows it should become extremely valuable. Currently only a few providers such as gamespot and greenpeace have running videos on the search, but as more and more videos appear, the ability to search video descriptions and closed captions combined with the 30 second / full video playback options will take precedence over other current Internet services.

"A feature we're especially pleased with is search within a video, which means you will get a result pointing to the precise spot in the video that matches your query. Try looking for sergey brin and you'll see what I mean. There are even more people getting creative with video here. So have fun watching, or shoot your own videos - and keep sending them in!"

Here are some links:
http://video.google.com/video_about.html
Playstation 3 trailers such as Killzone
Google Blog Entry

"Our mission is to organize the world's information, and that includes the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day. Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows."

Current top 50 artists snapshot

2005-06-27T16:07:00.000+01:00

Last generated: June 27, 2005
1	Nick Drake	202
2	Elliott Smith	170
3	The Microphones	112
4	RJD2	93
5	Iron & Wine	91
6	Sage Francis	86
7	Klaus Badelt	85
8	The Arcade Fire	84
9	Nightwish	82
10	Eva Cassidy	72
10	Shining	72
12	Ennio Morricone	71
13	Leonard Cohen	64
13	Simon & Garfunkel	64
15	The Decemberists	61
16	Radiohead	60
17	Pixies	58
17	David Bowie	58
17	2 Many DJ's	58
17	Kenji Kawai	58
21	Air	57
22	Grandaddy	56
22	Venetian Snares	56
24	M83	55
24	The Shins	55
26	Interpol	54
27	Pink Floyd	53
28	Ministry of Sound	52
29	The Beatles	50
29	Ludovico Einaudi	50
31	The Dust Brothers	48
32	65daysofstatic	47
33	Neko Case	46
33	Martin O'Donnell & Michael Salvatori	46
35	Moby	44
36	Penguin Cafe Orchestra	43
36	Strapping Young Lad	43
36	Ted Leo and the Pharmacists	43
39	Tan Dun	42
40	Boards of Canada	41
41	Angelo Badalamenti	37
41	Squirrel Nut Zippers	37
41	R.E.M.	37
44	DJ Shadow	36
45	Steely Dan	35
45	Françoise Hardy	35
47	Queen	34
47	The Prodigy	34
49	Blackalicious	33
49	Les Savy Fav	33

2nd year is over now.

2005-06-24T18:13:00.000+01:00

In a sudden bout of enthusiasm for my blog, I decided to create another journal entry. Yes, once again I am going to talk about my life. Over the past week or so I have gradually included all the old cute-news posts I made from 2003 to the end of last year, in doing so I got quite sentimental, reading about the annoying lady on the bus, the pineapple squash adventure and the start of university. I was also sad that I hadn't kept up my writing and written more about my time at university.

Well, as mentioned in a previous post, I have successfully finished my exams and consequentially my second year at Warwick University. The year started off rather slow, I was learning some basic modules that were overly simple and all things I'd done before, i.e. c++ programming and how a diode works. My lectures were dull; I really had no exciting labs and most of the time I was at my Leamington home playing on Xbox live. I'd travel in for a "starting a business" module and travel home an hour later, a round bus trip lasting 3 hours. As winter approached, some half modules ended and my timetable became even less busy, it really did take the piss how little work I had to do that term.

Side NTL rant:
A lot of my spare time was spent sorting out the Xbox live setup my internet service provider had set me up with (NTL). Essentially, I and my housemate had opted for the Xbox live option at a cost of an extra £2 per month. However, come October and there was no sign of what we were actually purchasing, what was this £2 buying? There was also a £50 setup charge on the first bill pertaining to a console related service. What exactly this was we had no idea. Following a good few hours on the phone and no one at their customer service desk knowing what the fuck, we were still confused. The confusion deepened as an Xbox arrived at the door. NTL sent us an Xbox. Why, we have no idea, we already had an Xbox and only wanted some sort of live package. Back on the phone for another few hours, talking to more people who didn't even know what an Xbox was. I initially said I wanted to send this Xbox back and not pay the £50 for it, so the payment was put into dispute until they received the console back. Then I changed my mind, £50 for an Xbox is a very good deal I thought. So I ring back, and continue asking what this live deal should be offering me, telling them to take the money for the Xbox and various other things I don't particularly remember 9 months on. Well, they then send me a long Ethernet cable, a 3 month magazine subscription and a 12 month Xbox live deal; a deal that I should have originally been given according to an outdated page of their website. In sorting this out I tried contacting their console contact line, the initial press one to go here automated service worked, but the redirects went to unknown numbers and a dead end. In trying to explain this to the standard customer services I was greeted with "it's working, I hear the voice" and other stupid responses that proved these people were obviously not listening to exactly what I was trying to tell them. Needless to say, everyone was getting frustrated. Well, now I am coming to the end of my 9 month NTL contract and despite ringing them 4 times and telling them to take my money, they still haven't and the amount is still apparently in dispute. I don't know, their service is a pile of wank and they cap users to 1.5 GB download per day. But other than that we've had no problems. I wish I could have Blue-yonder in my region.

Well, as Christmas approached, the days got shorter and colder. Our old Victorian seven birth house does not fair particularly well in cold conditions. In fact, at times you could see your breath when breathing inside. We needed radiators on permanently and additional electric heaters just to melt the ice blocks that were our feet. The land-lord had also painted the downstairs bathroom with a non-bathroom paint directly onto the walls. This meant that mould began growing. Not all that delightful and it took the cake when there was a lovely little mushroom sticking out of the corner of the room. This was my house in winter, mouldy, cold and draughty. We gave the land-lord a list of needed fixes for the house over the Christmas period and hoped they would get done, luckily they were and our house was much more pleasant and liveable during the second term.

The first term saw a lot of drama in the house, two housemates split up with their boyfriends from long term relationships, there were family illnesses and it was all very taxing, but we stuck together and carried ourselves through all the problems. Things perked up towards the end and we were happy at our Christmas dinner where, once again, Sam delighted us all with a fantastic meal that was far too large for our tiny wobbly kitchen table. Other noteworthy events were Sam's birthday party in which we crammed into a small Mexican restaurant and ate burritos, our lovely anniversary trip around Leamington park and meal at Thai restaurant.

Well, moving on into term 2, it remained cold and our heaters stayed on constantly. My course introduced me to a new set of modules for the following ten weeks; finally I would be doing some work and something interesting. I also had a few timetabled labs to attend in which I played with microprocessors, breadboards and wrote some simple c++ code for a simple c++ project. My birthday came and went and I turned 20. We all packed together and played ultraviolet ten pin bowling and enjoyed the luxuries of Frankie and Benny's menu. I opted for the steak and also finished off other people's meals while bullying a helium balloon. Sadly my day was cut short when I had to take Sam home via taxi, she'd become violently ill and it was extremely distressing, particularly as there was no obvious reason for it. It was made up for by the prestigious gifts and candlelit meal she prepared for me. We also went bowling and had pizza for Steven's birthday and all was relatively merry in the Tachbrook camp.

Sam's just called me so I'm going to have to cut this blog short. I'll probably carry it on when I next have some free time. This shouldn't be too long away.

MIT physicists create new form of matter

2005-06-24T16:01:00.000+01:00

MIT News Office: "CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated race among physicists: They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity."

"In superfluids, as well as in superconductors, particles move in lockstep. They form one big quantum-mechanical wave," explained Ketterle. "Such a movement allows superconductors to carry electrical currents without resistance."

For those who know not of superfluidity:

Answers.com: Superfluidity is a phase of matter characterised by the complete absence of viscosity. Thus superfluids, placed in a closed loop, can flow endlessly without friction.