The Sock Diary

This the last time...

2006-04-09T22:23:00.000+01:00

...I'll post this as a non-dad. Tomorrow, bright and early, we're off to see the nice man with the scalpel who will hand us our recalcitrant child.

To explain: sprog is due next week, but has managed to get itself in a tizzy, ending up with it's head up in Mrs Sock's ribs and feet down below, dancing a tap dance and keeping us up at night. Apparently this is a Flex Breech position, and is more dodgey than (the pretty dodgey) Extended Breech position and normal head-down position to have a natural labour. The big problem is the umbilical can be delivered first, which a big no-no in the general scheme of things, so we've decided to go for an elective caesarian.

Looking forward to it, for two reasons. I'll have a damn good excuse to show everyone the pram we got. It's well cool (blimey, that's probably really unhip and a "Dad" thing to say), Phil and Ted's Most Excellent Buggy Company :) I chose it cos of the name, cos it sounds great, and then worked on selling it to Mrs Sock with the "features". I am that shallow. Yes, prams have features. I'm damn sure the pram companies can see the fathers coming. "I believe my pram's faster than yours cos mine's a Ferrari red one".

Oh yeah, and the other reason I'm looking forward to it? I can stop thinking "This'll be the last time I before I'm a dad", which is as annoying as that song (probably "Frankie... do you remember me? Frankie....") which gets stuck in your head and goes round and round and you really want to clout the idiot that mentioned it. Sorry about that.

And we're going to be parents... that's a bit scary. The old butterflies in the tummy the day before an interview have nothing on the butterflies the day before meeting your first born. Wish us luck. It's last time you can, before I'm a dad.

Geotagging Photos

2006-03-27T23:14:00.000+01:00

You can now geotag your photos. Geotagging allows mapping software such as Google Earth or Google Maps to plot photograph locations. It also allows photos from similar locations to be easily be grouped and viewed.

You can geotag photos on Flickr as below or you can do it on Zooomr (I know) using google maps. Zooomr is the new kid on the block, but I like it better than Flickr. Can't tell you exactly why, just feels nicer to me. Anyway, here's how to geotag on flickr:

Zonetag Geocoding for Flickr - GPS Review

Manually tagging the photo can also be done if you know the exact GPS coordinates by using the geobloggers GPS tagging format. Example:

“geo:lat=45.1241” and “geo:lon=-71.2397″

PayPal to launch SMS payments service

2006-03-24T09:28:00.000Z

Finextra: PayPal to launch SMS payments service. Useful - for bloggers, podcasters, music artists, etc, etc.

Best Day Ever?

2006-02-26T16:27:00.000Z

Here's a list of great things that happened yesterday:

My sister passed her driving test

Ipswich Town won 2-0

Naaaaaaaaaaa-rich got tonked, at home, 1-4

My wee bro had tickets to Murrayfield for the Calcutta Cup

Scotland WON THE CALCUTTA CUP! Whoo-hoo! And there was much rejoicing.

My not-quite-so-wee bro went to the International Film Festival as Press for his podcast

My dear lady wife and I released our first geocache on an unsuspecting world

I should have done the lottery. I'd have cleaned up.

Technorati Tags: geocaching, podcast, calcuttacup, malkingtovies, norwichcity, tractorboys, sixnations

Kerr-azy Senseo madness Part 2

2006-02-05T18:15:00.000Z

Don't do it. Do not place teabags in your senseo. It tastes like shit. I'm pretty damn sure anyone with tastebuds wouldn't recommend it.

Coffee's still pretty fine though. Got fed up with the cac coffee at work and bought another senseo for the desk. Stomach ulcer time :)

Technorati Tags: senseo, coffee, tea

Kerr-azy Senseo madness

2006-01-21T22:03:00.000Z

** On a side note i tried a tea bag in this machine to see what i got. I got the best cup of tea i ever tasted, but im not sure the manufactures would reccommend this.

Amazon.co.uk: Customer Reviews Kitchen Home: Philips HD7810/60 Senseo Coffee Machine - Black with Douwe Egberts

Excellent. Tomorrow's entertainment is dialled in.

Technorati Tags: senseo, coffee, tea

Technorati Tags: senseo, coffee, tea

Moisturiser Warmer?

2005-12-29T11:20:00.000Z

Sock's Wife, now six months pregnant, has requested (demanded actually, must remember it's all my fault) a "bump moisturising cream" warmer. Apparently putting on bump moisturiser is always unpleasant as it's damn cold. My initial reaction, unverbalised, was "bung it on the radiator for five mins pre application", but am starting to have vague thoughts of thermos flasks....

Being pregnant is weird, but mainly fun.

technorati tags: pregnant, moisturiser, pregnancy

Eolas ActiveX type-sort-of-Patent

2005-12-15T15:46:00.000Z

Of course, there's another possibility. Microsoft and other browser manufacturers could accept the ruling, and license the technology from Eolas, which would avoid all this clicking and recoding. But by making this announcement, Microsoft has let us know that it doesn't care about how much work you have to do, nor does it care about the millions of users who will be inconvenienced by the changes.

In the Eolas Patent Lawsuit, Users Lose

The article outlines the problem and the various solutions, including painting M$ as the villian of the piece (in this case they're not), but misses out the obvious: Software patents are pants. Laws surrounding software patents are rooted in the previous (and existing) patent law that applies to objects (real world objects, things you can feel). The obvious solution is get the law binned and start from scratch (in both the USA and Europe initially) and work out:

Whether we need software patents (or a derivative of patents)
Whether the current copyright laws handle real life to a level required by the common man/woman. Not the "level" (excuse to print money) by corporates with huge budgets and lawyers to employ, but You and me.

technorati tags: corporate, liberty, copyright, patent, eoloas

Wow. The Damned Rock

2005-12-01T01:03:00.000Z

Wow. The Damned Rock
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

Jeez. The Damned rock. See them live. Seriously good shit. Captain Sensible, although apparently a 'wanker' according to the crowd, is also holding the whole bag together.

Bummer is, I'm going to break my vow about not buying anymore ascap/riaa/etc music cos I need the anthology... And so do you. Trust me on this.

Sorry about the picture, but that is really The Damned performing Eloise (which is a cover according to my mate who sorted the tickets, shocker). Pants mobile phone photo. But so cool to blog from a concert. And I'm buzzed by these guys, big style.

The wankers in the other side of me seem to be here to critisize. ' It's like the '79 show' etc.' Five mins, then I'll probably get thumped :)

Further Damned

2005-11-30T23:31:00.000Z

There's a small girl from Tokyo dressed as a chicken on stage with Captaij Sensible. I do not know why. It still rocks.

Priest Idol - Church Lite: cringeworthy name

2005-11-28T23:22:00.000Z

Priest Idol, the Channel 4 documentary about a priest taking on a parish with 11 parishioners and graffittied church and how he turned round with the help of an advertising company and Jimmy Cricket (among others). The result was Church Lite: a cringeworthy name, but, possibly, you are reading this, and maybe other posts to do with God and the Church, because of it.

It's got me and load of other non-churchgoers looking around these sites and being exposed to the Church and God's words (and some unbelievably narrow-minded comments). It's also got at least 40 more people into a church on a fairly regular basis (60 last week according to the chat forum after the last show).

However light the Word of God is being expounded by Fr McCaskill (and that was deliberately, almost brutally, removed from the documentary wherever possible, so we don't know), that's an infinite percentage more word-of-god-calories than any of these people were getting before. Isn't that good? Isn't that to be celebrated? If someone has even been exposed to a little catechism, and they remember it and possibly factor it into their approach to life? Even if they don't come back that's one or two steps on the road.

Moving on. Some great commenting out there. This was my favourite, and catches the essence of quite a few sites "holier than thou" attitude.

Deuteronomy 4 v 16a says "Don't make idols of ANYTHING..." I'm sorry but like everything else a priest should not be made an idol of.

open book: Priest Idol

Objecting to the use of "idol" in this context (actually in any context it seems) as a religious argument? What an unbelievably (intended) facile tack! Words change their meaning over time (except in French for a while). Check out the etymology of the word "idol". It hasn't had purely the meaning of "false god" since 1591 if not earlier. Rather amusingly in this context Bartleby.com suggests idol could be defined as

Something visible but without substance.

The American HeritageÂ® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

Also:

The English expression to idolize persons, objects or qualities is to hold them in very high regard....

Idol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indeed Wikipedia also mentions that it is used, not meaning "false god", by philosophers Plato and Aristotle (although unlikely it was in English :). I'm pretty sure Deuteronomy wasn't written in English originally.

The Bible has been updated and manipulated since it started. Compare Mark and Luke - don't they have differing agenda there, but with the same story? Isn't that PR? Luke wrote his gospel in 70 AD, never met Jesus, probably didn't even meet any of the apostles. He wrote it as an easier pill to swallow for the Church among the Gentiles. Any way you read the New Testament, wasn't Jesus an out and out radical, outraging the Pharisees and inflaming the Sadducees on an almost daily basis during his ministry? He did radical things like had scummy fishermen friends, pointed out women were worth consideration and cripples shouldn't be excluded or treated as unclean and punished by God for their, or their parents, sins. He was way whackier, and radical, and downright annoying to the establishment, in his context than Father McCaskill is here. The Establishment killed him to shut him up. Is Father McCaskill's triumph going to be damned with faint praise, logic chopping, and back-biting?

I think many of the comments out there malign good, honest Christians who want to spread the Gospel. "Church Lite" is not my cup o'char either, but if it's not for you, fine, but don't bash other people for trying to get the Word of God out there and not being educated the same way as you or holding the same opinions.... Just occurred to me, I'm slagging off people with different opinions to myself - well, it's my blog and they started it, so nerr :)

We are expecting our first child, and are having a real problem working out what to do about Christening and religious education for our child, if anything. I am a very lapsed Catholic and my wife is a relatively non-practising CofE. This programme showed us some options, discussed other approaches, and reminded us both that what we got from our Churches when we were young (apart from indelible guilt for me, thanks guys) was a sense of community, of doing unto others as you would have done, good role models, true altruism (there was also some collosal hypocrisy, but maybe the good outweighs the bad). Very difficult to get as a child (and an adult :) anywhere else, at least in this country I believe.

***Rant mode=off***

technorati tags: church_lite, McCaskill, Priest_Idol, Church, God

Winamp plug-in for iPod

2005-11-27T16:08:00.000Z

Just found this. Very handy I'd guess. Esp for people with an ipod they want to use at work and at home.

...I really like the open-source ml_pod plugin for Winamp.It is especially nice if your audio library is larger than your iPod, you can easily move files back and forth between the iPod and your PC. Rather than syncing the entire library, you just send what you want, and it takes care of detecting dups for you....

Steve Jobs Ruined My Thanksgiving (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Also anapod looks like worth a look.

These are both PC solutions. I'll have a lok round for mac solutions later. Good to know can get away from iTunes if I want to though. Esp as I'm hoping for a lovely new one for Christmas (very unlikely, but I live in hope).

technorati tags: ipod, itunes, winamp, ml_pod, anapod

Get Your Video Onto the Ipod Video

2005-11-24T12:15:00.000Z

From mark Pilgrim via Dave Winer:

Mark Pilgrim wrote an excellent tutorial for Mac users explaining how to rip a DVD for viewing on an iPod. I tried it out last night, it works. Thanks! Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Scripting News: 11/24/2005

technorati tags: ipod, video

Useful if you have a phone that plays MP3s (and a Mac)

2005-11-18T23:03:00.000Z

Like the look of this:

SyncTunes is a small application that can copy tracks from an iTunes playlist and downloaded iTunes podcasts to a mounted volume (e.g. such as a SD card in a card reader, or a PDA's expansion card using Missing Sync).

SyncTunes 1.3.2 – Mac OS X – VersionTracker

If you use Smart playlists in iTunes, be aware that this util updates the last played date and the play count while transferring the files to the card. Unfortunately, that would hit me quite hard as I use ipodder and Smart Playlists to serve up fresh podcasts I haven't listened to, and I haven't marked not to play (I rate them with 1 star).

Impeaching Dubya

2005-11-08T13:42:00.000Z

Wow.

Press release: "By a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq."

Scripting News: 11/4/2005

technorati tags: impeach, dubya

The Dutch RIAA are going to "shutdown podcasters"

2005-11-08T10:50:00.000Z

Adam Curry has some disturbing news. The Dutch equivalent of the RIAA have been "cease and desisting" Adam for sometime now.

Adam has been contacted by several Dutch representatives of international music services tell him "hey, this file's on your server, it's licensed music, get it off there."

DSC 275 - Shownotes

He heard last week that they're going to "shutdown podcasters" (quote from the podcast) through the law in Holland (which is a bit different from most other places apparently, and even easier for corporate world to subvert).

The kicker is that this kind of action could filter relatively easily into a European Directive and affect the rest the countries in the EU, allegedly (IANAL).

These guys are full-on change averse. They're Charles Handy's frog getting boiled. Podcasting could drive music sales with mash-ups and golden oldies re-introducing old tunes to your life, new artists being promoted, driving the long-tail, etc, etc. But hell, big business, big dickheads.

So, the solution? Podsafe music, and nothing but podsafe music. I'm not buying any more RIAA affiliated music (or their equivalents from whichever country). I'm going to check out the Accident Hash podcast and start getting music from the podsafe music network and see how that goes. I'm sure there are other podsafe networks out there.

technorati tags: podsafe, EU, RIAA, DSC, podcasting

I-Remote control you

2005-10-27T11:19:00.000+01:00

Scary tech, cool for gaming, bit el-dodge as a weapon or Ipod plug-in:

I
felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right
whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced
— mistakenly — that this was the only way to maintain my balance.

Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans

Technorati Tags: tech, weapons, gaming, ipod

Time for sale on eBay?

2005-10-26T21:17:00.000+01:00

I was listening to an IT conversations podcast from OSCON by Paul Graham today. He was talking about what business can learn from Open Source. His most hard hitting comment was that business should learn to invest in people rather than paying them to do a 9-5/8-7/whatever prescribed job. People enjoy doing what they're good at and want to do, rarely do they enjoy what they're told to do. If people are not enjoying themslves, they tend to be less productive, etc. If you have a partner, maybe kids, a mortgage, packing it all in and doing what you like (and getting a VC to finance it) may be a little daunting.

"a consultant could auction their time on ebay"

Talking to a friend last night, he mentioned he had this idea which may or may not be cool. He suggested that a consultant could auction their time on ebay. A consultant or group could offer their time and expertise, maybe a 40 hours over two weeks in December, or the opportunity for people to invest in something they are building for general release. A Sourceforge project could get some funding for rackspace, or bandwidth with the promise of kudos, or maybe profits from consultancy on the new project.

All the feedback and payment solutions are already in place. Excellent consultants or groups get good feedback and commensurate increase in their reserve price and crap consultants are unmasked. Buyers know what they're getting from previous feedback, links to CVs and maybe LinkedIn detail, and consultants get invested in. They may be doing a project the client requires, or doing a project they've always wanted to do, with a number of people investing in it.

It could work for other industries other than IT. What about looking on ebay for your plumber? With all the feedback, you'll be able to check whether they're any good, turn up when they say they will, etc. You could bid on time slots during the day and evening.

I know there maybe a number of practical problems to overcome to get this working, but with the rise in home working, nearly ubiquitous broadband, and PayPal, I reckon it's a probable goer. More and more people are downsizing, or carefully thinking about downsizing, and this kind of departure from the normal way of working is an option to keep in the industry of your choice without the usual employer - employee relationship and the costs associated with that for both parties. It's speed short-term contracting. e-contracting? i-contracting? Someone will call it the i-con :)

Of course, I haven't got the guts to do it myself, and I'm quite enjoying my job at the moment, but I reckon I know a few people who might give it a go in their spare time. The question is: will any potential employers or investors be up for it?

I think it's a damn good idea.

Technorati Tags: consultancy, ebay, homeworking

Skype needs upgrading

2005-10-26T12:35:00.000+01:00

Skype has some problems. Nothing a quick upgrade (Help...Check for updates...) won't fix in about 2 mins. Suggest you do it soon as though.

Security
researchers have identified two groups of potentially serious security
vulnerabilities involving Skype, the popular VoIP client software. Both
create a means for hackers to run hostile code on systems running
vulnerable versions of Skype. Skype has issued patches for the
"critical" security bugs.

Scramble to fix Skype security bug | The Register

Technorati Tags: skype, security, vulnerabilities

Adam Curry's boots?

2005-10-23T22:35:00.000+01:00

A friend of the family died recently and somehow I have ended up inheriting his brown leather and sheepskin boots (with steelies, oh yes). They're... just what I always wanted, very warm.

Anyway, it occurred to me that they look like a match for Adam Curry's jacket in Camoby's (isn't that Kosso/Blugg from the Bluggcast?) photo.

The boots

Adam and the jacket

Technorati Tags: clothes, adam curry, Podcast

Beeb asks for pictures

2005-10-23T12:39:00.000+01:00

After the problems in Birmingham last night, I noticed the BBC was asking for pictures.

Do you have any pictures of the clashes? If so, you can send them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk

BBC NEWS | England | West Midlands | Plea for calm after city clashes

I had a quick look around at SkyNews and ITN, but no-one else appears to be. Looks like the Beeb has learned a lesson from the 7/7 attacks and the pictures and video coming from mobile phones, but the others appear to have missed it. Weird. Maybe they assume people will come to them, rather than being asked.

Technorati Tags: news, birmingham, mobile

Just how much data can we store online?

2005-10-22T21:44:00.000+01:00

...the potential Gmail storage obligation [will be] 404 million gigabytes or about 400 petabytes

PBS | I, Cringely . October 20, 2005 - Seeing Is Believing

Cringely reckons there's going to be an Energy Crisis surrounding free storage space on the net. If his figures are right (I have no reason to distrust them), a rethink may be order, or quantum computing (had to link to that one, cos of the cat. I love that example) and storage better be ready real soon now.

Technorati Tags: google, gmail, web 2.0, quantum

Got The Postal Service album... finally

2005-10-22T21:04:00.000+01:00

If you haven't heard The Postal Service - Such Great Heights then listen to it here (mp3). Even if you're tempted to stop before the chorus, don't. It's a grower that captures you with the hook in the chorus. Once you've heard it once, you'll probably love it. The album is called Give Up.

I first heard it from the IndieFeed Electronica channel at the beginning of March. Quality.

Partner of the Week

2005-10-22T17:54:00.000+01:00

A bit of background: The gorgeous SocksWife is fifteen weeks pregnant. Hurrah! I am a very proud man.

So I'm sitting at my desk, playing around with some sound files and Flock, generally minding my own business, when I hear "Ow, I hurt myself" from the kitchen. Patter of medium sized feet in the study direction. I turn round, expecting the usual bleeding/bruised finger from some incalcitrant piece of kitchenware, but no. The beautiful one is standing, with her swelling (and lovely) tummy exposed, blood pouring from just beside her belly ring... and a pair of longnose pilers in her hand. I nearly pissed myself laughing.

She explained she was trying to get the belly ring out before her tummy got too big (she is fiercely independant, and had assessed this operation as "no risk"), and would I, after I had stopped being so unfeeling, mind helping so she wouldn't disembowel herself. Two pairs of pliers, some GT 85, much hilarity, and ten minutes later, she is piercing free and will, I have no doubt, be proud winner of this weeks Partner of the Week Award from my workplace.

Technorati Tags: diy, pregnancy, piercing

Google drops Gmail address in UK

2005-10-19T09:43:00.000+01:00

Not as bad as it sounds for those us with gmail addresses. The BBC reports that @googlemail.com coming to an email address near you due to trademark infringements. That's gotta hurt. Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue the way @gmail.com does. Google are a bit annoyed by the sounds of things.

Update at 14:28 from SlashDot

Google Earth: Security Risk?

2005-10-14T23:19:00.000+01:00

The Register reports the results of Black Helicopters competition for people to find black helicopters on Google Maps and Google Earth. Some quality pictures, possibly of things various govts would rather weren't available.

Pod Racing

2005-10-04T11:29:00.000+01:00

From the BBC: X-Prize man launches rocket race. Excellent. Hopefully there'll be overtaking, unlike F1 :)

Dress Like Darth

2005-10-03T13:36:00.000+01:00

The Register shows us how to dress up as Darth Vader (for a mere US$799). If you've got that dough lying about, you know you want to.

Anti-blog Rant

2005-10-01T16:23:00.000+01:00

If these words were people, I would embrace their genocide. Brilliant rant. Worth a read. Check "E-nable" if you don't read any of the rest of it.

My Wee Bro

2005-09-18T20:37:00.000+01:00

He's off to Uni. According to my parents, it was as tough as ever it was to drop off a sibling somewhere we've never been. My bro walked into the sunrise (it was early, feck off, Yul) without looking back. Fair play to him.

I was second sib to go, even though I was the eldest sib. I took a couple of years out (until I realised I was going to get paid fuck all unless I did a degree). I stood there as they left, and a tear dropped, embarassing though it be. I wasn't the only one that shed, 'cept it turned out I was the only one in my halls doing a science course... the rest were actors and sensitives. Arse.

Anyway, it hurt, even though, at the time, I wanted to be as far away as poss from the fogies. I kinda started to realise how much they actually mattered while I was away for those four years, pretty much starting when the car left the car park in year one. Sad, but true.

Anyway, youngest, but, annoyingly, tallest, bro: have a great time, don't let anyone grind you down, and get on a train if you feel like cac. Nipping down the metal road to see a sister/brother/good buddy is a mental health day, same as we all take from time to time.

Don't tell the employer, but I know a number of people from our place who've taken a few mental health days. Reality strikes, an' ain't it a bitch sometimes?

If I'm in time, don't despair about the book list prices. I know many of us threw our hands in the air when we saw the cost of the book list and just spent the budget on beer, but you can get most of the list on the cheap off the fourth years, or off ebay. You can also get an awful lot of beer if you don't involved with rounds.

It takes at least four weeks to get an idea who the group(s) are, and which one or two you're in (trust me, you probably can't afford more than two groups). The guys you meet first week are probably limited potential except for exposure at the Union. If one lasts as a mate you like spending time with past week four you are a jammy shite.

After week four when your posse is relatively sorted, suggest everyone chips in a tenner to a kitty at three pint intervals. You are almost guaranteed there will be someone trustworthy in the group. This will be the one whom everyone agrees should take care of the kitty. Try to make sure it's not you as you will be rich, but paranoid, by year four. Our kitty handler (ahem) is rich, married, and has a nervous tic which has given him a arthritic shoulder in the last couple of years.

Or I could shut up.

Eye Of The Storm

2005-09-17T19:06:00.000+01:00

I like this guy. He has been in and around New Orleans during and since katrina. The blog has excellent pictures and commentary.

New Ipod Nano

2005-09-11T16:14:00.000+01:00

New ipod. It's really small. It's very good looking. It's got a colour screen. And it's available as 2Gb or 4Gb.

Dunno how much it's going to cost, but I do like the look of it.

My 3G 40Gb ipod has become the main home and car music machine. We use the dock and some nice connectors to play into the amplifier at home, and a CarDock FM in the car, which works really well, with no leads to faff with, although I believe it's illegal in the UK, but we wouldn't use it there, on no, not us, no way.

We have two Shuffles. She-who-is-gorgeous uses hers in the workshop and kitchin with external powered speakers. She has a playlist which hooks in any Robbie Williams tracks not played in the last week, and fills the rest with highly rated other stuff. The only kicker is the Shuffle doesn't seem to update the last played date. Slightly annoying.

My Shuffle loads 300Mb of unplayed podcasts (caught by ipodder) longer than 1 min, mosr recently downloaded first, and fills whatever remains up to 800Mb with highly rated random selection. The other 200Mb is for a Firefox instance and carrying data. The only thing that bugs me about this setup is no screen on the Shuffle (standard Shuffle complaint I guess). On the other hand, the Shuffle is so small and light, I'd rather carry it than the 3G ipod most of the time.

The nano looks like it might be best of both worlds, small, full ipod functionality (last played date), screen, and gorgeous looking as well.

FT.com - Podcasters make easy listening

2005-08-31T17:25:00.000+01:00

From FT.com:

The other potential source of revenue is from subscription charges. The BBC, for example, is currently mapping out a strategy for new media such as podcasting. Simon Nelson, controller of BBC radio and interactive music, says he has been astonished by the level of interest in the BBC’s downloadable audio content. Twenty programmes provide podcast subscriptions. Mr Nelson says the BBC might in the future charge for content that is more than seven days old or develop other such premium services.

Hey, I paid for that already with my licence fee. Fork off with your subscription charge Mr Nelson. It's my media. Cheeky toerag.

Comment Spam

2005-08-30T19:04:00.000+01:00

I've been resoundingly comment spammed today, so, with a little regret, I've turned on comment word verification, so anyone commenting will have to enter a word displayed to them in a picture. Apparently that foxes the comment spammers. Bloody nuisances. Not content with frying everyone's email, they're moving onto to attacking social software. The really annoying thing is that it must be worthwhile for them to do. My line of attack will be to never use a site, whomever it is, who has paid these leeches to spam people. The roll of honour so far:

www.a d v a n c e t a ct i c s.com

e x e r c i s e - e q u i p m e n t . e a a 4 7.com

www.d i a m o n d - e n g a g e m e n t - r i n g s.info

h e r p e s - z o v i r a x.com

www.W e C l o s e Y o u r S a l e s F o r Y o u.com

www.1 s t - i n - r a w - f o o d - d i e t.com

www.d e s k t o p p c s.ca

www.y e l l o w t r a v e l.info

www.b e s t p o k e r h a n d.com

www.p r o j e c t o r r e n t a l.info

www.n o r m i s m.org

www.b u g d o c t o r.com

www.m a r o c p u b.com

I might bung this into an opml doc and keep it online somewhere. Maybe we can get something going where we have a distributed opml reference to spammer paying sods. Might be useful in some way.

'Til the next time, keep safe.

Space Elevator Cable?

2005-08-30T14:59:00.000+01:00

The Register reports that diamond is no longer the hardest material on earth.

A gigapascal is equal to about 10,000 atmospheres. The new material is harder by 490,000 atmospheres than diamond, which can handle 4,420,000 atmospheres. So it's pretty strong then. I wonder if "isothermal bulk modulus", the way hardness is measured, deals with tensile strength. I suppose at the very least it is a serious indicator.

A Space Elevator might be a step nearer then as this material sounds like carbon nanotubes to me.

Podcast Auditing

2005-08-25T08:58:00.000+01:00

AdJab reports that Arbitron are going to audit podcasts. I looked up the Portable People Meter and it's actually a device the consumer carries around, plugged into their MP3 player, which detects human inaudible tones in the audio stream and logs the info in those tones. The participants then upload the data from PPM to Arbitron.

It's the same old, same old of having a random set of volunteers (skewing the results immediately I would hazard a guess (IANAS:)) logging what they're listening to/watching. Just a whizzy new device ("the size of a small cell phone") that doesn't reply on people writing things down, just carrying it around. If it helps podcasting, then great.

A podsafe appeal

2005-08-20T16:47:00.000+01:00

Here's a thing: I have somehow ended up being the guy who has to produce a podcast for a brother. It's going to be a podcast book. The books written; most of the it is now recorded; and I need to sort some soundbeds, an intro, etc. How this happened I do not know, as I am about as musically and acoustically talented as a fish. Anyone got any suggestions? Listening to a couple of "podio"(?!) books off itunes, I think I need some podsafe music, of the dance and hard house genres, and any suggestions of how to clean up (really) dirty audio would also be extremely helpful.

TIA.

I have joined a new country

2005-08-14T11:16:00.000+01:00

King Danny has invited anyone who can get through the rigorous (not) citizenship test to join his new, as yet un-named, country on Citizens Required. It's an offshoot from the BBC2 show "How to Build Your Own Country". Currently our, as yet un-named, country has just over 20,000 citizens. Way bigger than the Vatican, although King Danny's flat in Bow is probably not going to have the customs capacity to get everyone in for a few weeks.

The national anthem is brilliant. So much less stuffy than any current ones, and offically endorsed by the state too, unlike the British National Anthem which seems to hhave originated as a ditty that the Scots liked to sing after a good punch-up (and to be honest hasn't moved on much since except the English like it too;).

Yet another thing that the Scots sorted out for everyone (I admit that the US Navy was probably a step too far).

I suppose I should tag this, but I'm bored with tags.

Euromillions winner 'in hiding'

2005-07-31T23:08:00.000+01:00

Euromillions winner 'in hiding' after winning 77 million quid. She's "devastated" apparently. Er, really? "Devastated" might not be the word. "Over the moon", "chuffed as peanuts", "shocked", "stunned", "a freaked out" - all phrases I might associate with winning 77m quid. "Devastated" makes me think why the hell did you buy the ticket if you were going to be gutted about winning? Good luck to her anyway. Hopefully she'll buy the person who commented a dictionary :)

Origin of CTRL-ALT-DELETE

2005-07-31T15:36:00.000+01:00

MilkandCookies - Origin of CTRL-ALT-DELETE. Amusing clip of where crtl-alt-delete came from. Bit of a dig against Bill gates. Found on Everything Is Interesting

Things you can do with RSS

2005-07-31T01:41:00.000+01:00

Is this the best resource ever for explaining and exploring RSS?Tim Yang Wiki. Quality. Being subscribed to for regular review.

lastminute.comedy Podcast

2005-07-27T22:10:00.000+01:00

I was listening to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code podcast earlier this month (I think it was this one), and he put out an appeal for comedians to join him at Podshow. Having the email of Paulyb at lastminute.comedy, I emailed him suggesting it might not be a bad idea to get in contact with Adam. Unfortunately Paul had no idea what podcasting is, even after my (less than cogent) explanation. I explained again, he went and had a strong whiskey and a lie down and talked to some guys at his radio station. The result, in spite of my inept explanations, is the Punky podcast feed! First episode now available by subscribing to the feed or here (mp3 file).

I had to post as I am inordinately chuffed about it, even though I did almost nothing apart from confuse an already confused comedian with funny hair.

Good on you Paulyb. Hope it goes well.

Come to think of it, I still have no idea whether he talked to Adam :).

Update: link on the site to Paul's Damn Announcement.

Excellent Podcast on Future of the Net

2005-07-26T21:33:00.000+01:00

Inspiring podcast presentation on ITConversations by Adam Bosworth from Google.

iPod Shuffle

2005-07-25T22:46:00.000+01:00

SocksWife wanted something to play music in garage (the workshop: partition is finished, lathe is on order, workbench is in, elcetrician has wired it up, my DIY isn't that bad I suppose). So it was five mins on Amazon and, me being a sucker for gorgeous tech, she now has a Shuffle and a PodGear Shuffle Station for her delectation and delight.

London Bombs - Again?

2005-07-21T13:24:00.000+01:00

Sky is reporting explosions at three tube stations. Sheperds Bush, Warren Street, and the Oval. Hopefully, this is not happening again.

A series of incidents have been reported near Warren Street, Oval and Shepherd's Bush stations on the London Underground.... Smoke was seen coming from a train.

london bombs

Anniversary of Apollo 11 Moon Landing

2005-07-20T14:48:00.000+01:00

So check out Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites. I recommend zooming in on one of the launch sites all the way. The faq is pretty cool too.

He ain't heavy - Andes mountain stylee

2005-07-18T17:40:00.000+01:00

Sitting in a waiting room, being "soothed" by Andes Mountain music (pan pipes I think) accompanied by a schizophrenic(sp?) guitar (think Santana after a night out wirh Slash). the current tune is "He ain't heavy, he's my brother", sans vocals, thank goodness. I'd rather not be soothed I think.

Monitoring Technologies Put Developers in an Ethical Hotseat

2005-07-18T17:22:00.000+01:00

Devx has an article called Monitoring Technologies Put Developers in an Ethical Hotseat:

So, when you're asked to build monitoring applications that you know will be used to spy on employees, just say no. They can't do it without you. Refuse to build such applications until sufficient legal restrictions are in place to limit companies' monitoring capabilities to appropriate business uses. The power is in your hands. Use it wisely.

This is a thought provoking article. Asking whether a developer should develop monitoring systems and applications that will be used against all employees as it is easier to monitor everyone, and not just selected people. The state of law in both the UK and the US regulates governments monitoring and use of personal data, but nothing much regulates a companys use of employee data, extracted from their emails, RFIDs, web browsing, etc.

Rather predictably I think one shouldn't compromise here, and I hope that I'd refuse should the day ever come, but one of my older and wiser friends pointed out that when it is a choice between keeping your job (and paying your mortgage, etc) and doing some nefarious software that goes against the grain, "principles are fine but fear is the key". Horrible, but true in many cases.

Has the Pope banned Harry Potter?

2005-07-17T18:39:00.000+01:00

Short answer: NO.

There seems to be some confusion about this. The Vatican says no, but the media seems to have interpreted a letter from Ratzinger (pre-popedom) as a denunciation of the Harry Potter books.

The Times Online:

"It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly," [Ratzinger] wrote.

However, in an interview on Vatican radio (transcript from CatholicInsider.com, thanks Father Roderick) Monseigneur Peter Fleetwood, apart from backing up J.K. Rowling's creation as pretty good thing, suggests the letter in which Ratzinger allegedly denounced Potter as dangerous, is basically a form letter, tweaked by a sub-ordinate, in answer to a bit of a mad lady (my interpretation of his words) from Germany (maybe the Jesuits have a form letter for answering mad tract senders, they probably get a lot :).

I was asked once in a press-conference in the Vatican whether I thought the witchcraft and magic in Harry Potter was a bad thing, and I said to the people present: 'did anyone in this room grow up without stories about witches and fairies and magic and spells and mystery and so on and so forth?', and everyone seemed to agree that none of us had grown up without those things. And then I said: 'did it make us into enemies of the faith, or enemies of God, or enemies of the Church?' And people seemed to say: 'no, no'. And I said: 'well, I can't see any problem with Harry Potter, because, really, all the stories are about the victory of good over evil'.

I was sent a letter from a lady in Germany who claimed to have written to the then cardinal Ratzinger, saying that she thought Harry Potter was a bad thing.... The letter back, which I suspect was written by an assistant of the then cardinal Ratzinger in his office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, suggested that there was a subtle seduction in the books. What that subtle seduction was, was not specified, which makes me think it was a generic answer.... [The lady] had written a book on these subjects and so the Cardinal's signature was at the bottom of the letter, suggesting she should send me [her] book.

I think it's pretty much a media fabrication that the Pope thinks Harry Potter should be banned, with quotes taken out of context to sell papers and create hype and hysteria where there would be little or none.

Further links: CNN.com, NZCity, bellaciao

Tags: harry potter, ratzinger, pope, Catholic

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2005-07-16T19:19:00.000+01:00

Finished it. Wow. What a story! J.K. Rowling is back on form, after the slight disappointment of the Order of the Phoenix. There was something a bit... Dirty Dozen about Order of the Phoenix. I hesitate to use the word about a story about wizards, but there was something unrealistic about it. I had trouble suspending my disbelief for the last half of the book.

The Half Blood Prince sweeps all that away, and kicks butt. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I seriously recommend you buy, beg, or borrow a copy and read it. Anyone who says they don't think they'll like reading a kids book should just read it. It's not a kids book, it's an everyone book.

Thanks Ms Rowling. Nice job.

harry potter

The New Harry Potter

2005-07-16T09:27:00.000+01:00

The New Harry Potter
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has arrived (8:30 am is an

ungodly hour to be woken up by the postman on a Saturday :). I have had

to promise SocksWife I'll get another copy for her if it takes me

longer than the end of today to finish it. Best carry on then.

Sid Invented iTunes.. D'oh!

2005-07-15T16:39:00.000+01:00

Sid's FishNet. This is a great article/reminisce. Stick with him. It gets better.

David James 'back in Rover talks'

2005-07-15T12:50:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS | Business | David James 'back in Rover talks'. Would be good if MG can be resurrected in some way, and even better if production, even if massively reduced, could remain in this country, and I think only David James' bid would ensure this.

BBC - UK 'embraces digital technology'

2005-07-14T09:52:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS - UK 'embraces digital technology':

...And as digital radio continues to grow in popularity, both AM and FM listening has declined.

And as podcasting continues to grow in popularity.... :)

Two minutes silence on 14 July 2005 at 12:00 BST

2005-07-14T09:39:00.000+01:00

Tags: London Bombings

IMAX Tour of the International Space Station

2005-07-14T09:23:00.000+01:00

RedNova News - Tour the International Space Station with IMAX. Tempting to go see (as long as it hasn't got whooshing noises like Star Trek doors closing). They're also doing a DVD.

Another boring bomb alert

2005-07-13T23:05:00.000+01:00

Another boring bomb alert
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

So we're at KX, waiting to leave and the driver comes on the tannoy thingy, "don't think you're getting home tonight. I'll get you as far as I can but you're not going all the way" (I kid you not, drivers of trains have to have a certain levity, otherwise they'd go nuts). Suspect package on the line. Joy.

So I'm a bit bored sitting on trains going nowhere, and phone my bro, can I crash at his place in London? Not a problem. View of the Thames, bus journey into work tomorrow. Ah, it's a tough life.... Missing SocksWife though. He's got Sky Plus. I'm going against the "nothing Murdock" grain and watching the Simpsons. Brilliant.

Edited 14-Jul-05 to clear typos (was moblogged and fingers were fat :)

Invasion of the Podcast People

2005-07-13T14:34:00.000+01:00

Peter Lewis - Invasion of the Podcast People - FORTUNE. Excellent article for those needing an "authority" comment on podcasting (favourably ;). Found it on Dave Winer's blog.

Howstuffworks "How the Future Force Warrior Will Work"

2005-07-13T09:31:00.000+01:00

Howstuffworks "How the Future Force Warrior Will Work". From a purely techy point of view, this is fantastic (in all senses of the word). This how I wanted my Action Man to be when I was kid. It sounds like pure sci-fi. Keill Radnor territory.

They talk about making the solider a "more stable weapons platform", think Alien 2 (or maybe 3, must watch them again) and Ripley in the exoskelton, add a Hellfire missile or two (I know, it's air-to-ground, but they'll prob have James Bond jet packs working by then). That'll reduce the length of the Kill Chain then.

No idea how the technorati thing. Opps.

mollten: BNP take advantage of the london bombings

2005-07-12T15:50:00.000+01:00

Molten reports the BNP are taking advantage of the london bombings. This is reprehensible. Preaching hatred and FUD to further their own objectives. I'm all for free speech, and I'll defend their right to free speech, but they're still scum in my book.

(First go at technorati tags, so may look weird)
Tags: London Bombings

Wikipedia Timelapse Movie

2005-07-12T09:25:00.000+01:00

Found this timelapse movie of the changes on the wikipedia page for the London Bombings on The Last Minute. It's amazing. Disturbing point too when some posts a flame about Muslims. Brainless idiot whoever that was.

The music is well chosen too. Funnily enough I was listening to the same song (one off 100th Window - Massive Attack) on the way in. I actually checked my headphones to make sure I'd put on the PC ones and not the ipod ones.

everything is interesting: It was Always Going to Happen

2005-07-12T00:05:00.000+01:00

Dan has a thought provoking post at everything is interesting. I felt the need to comment and did.

I did miss out that I did support the war in Iraq initially too, until I realised I'd been lied to a grand scale, which was around the time David Kelly committed suicide (my post, 2nd para). Admittedly, much of my family had tried to convince me of this before the war, but I thought they were wrong, and pinko lefties pacifists, etc. Anyway, from a purely selfish point of view, I was furious I had been conned, and vowed to do my damndest never to be conned again. Bloggers (Technorati, podcasters, etc) + the papers + Medialens + the beeb and the links generated from them all help me find out a lot of the background in big issues, before making a way more informed decision that was ever able to before.

RSS in China

2005-07-11T23:48:00.000+01:00

From Dave Winer's Scripting News. The official Chinese government newspaper, in English, on your RSS reader.

London Bombings Virus Alert

2005-07-11T13:41:00.000+01:00

mollten: Londonbombings Virus Alert. The writer is an arsewipe, but we knew that already. As per usual, never run any attached files from your email.

Someone is paying this guy to distribute their adverts (spam) on the zombie network he can create from people loading this Trojan. If people knew the depths to which these people will sink to peddle their wares, maybe they wouldn't make it worth anyone's while to spam, meaning these people wouldn't get paid for doing this. Sigh.

Terrorism can't change our way of life

2005-07-09T21:06:00.000+01:00

All my sympathy and best wishes to those who lost relatives and friends, and to those who were injured. You're all heroes.

Blair and the Queen have said "terrorism can't change our way of life" (I think Bush said something too, but he muffed it up). Even after Thursday, I will continue pointing that out Blair's and Bush's "War on Terror" is wrong. Otherwise the terrorists have changed my way of life, haven't they?

So: Unfortunately, Blair is "tossing bombs at innocent people", and we, as the British electorate did not chuck the bomb tosser out at the last election, more's the pity.

Not that I think that would have stopped the terrorists, whether they're fundamentalists of the remains of the IRA, the Middle East, or Nether Uppingly. They just want destruction and latch onto a cause to justify it in their twisted little minds. The bottom line is, London has been expecting, and has had, terrorist attacks for the last 30 years. We all just get on with it. We'll mourn our dead, maybe feel a bit shakey for a couple of days, be glad it's the weekend and we didn't get on that train, maybe have a couple of pints, or a jug of Pimms if it's nice day, feel bad for the victims. Nothing's changed. Your "cause" has not advanced. We still go to work, we still all get on with it, situation normal. So be afraid Mr Terrorist (assuming you're still alive and weren't the incompetent who blew himself up by accident). The wheels of British justice are grinding your way. They ain't pretty, but they're pretty implacable. We will prosecute you under British Law when you are caught and you will have a long time in prison with no-one to talk to and no chance of reprieve, no glorious death for The Cause (whatever it is), just obscurity and boredom. The innocents you maimed and murdered are heroes, you are toejam. Actually, you're less relevant than that, but I'm not feeling very inventive today.

St Paul’s | clagnut/blog

2005-07-09T20:18:00.000+01:00

St Paul’s | clagnut/blog. Good post. Short but hits the spot quite effectively.

So thanks then, terrorists. You’ve just succeeded in bringing the families of millions of Londoners that bit closer together, giving them an increased love of their city and an enhanced appreciation of their way of life. You might have destroyed the lives of several hundred people, but – and this is stating the bloody obvious you fuckwits – you’ve achieved nothing.

Pfff: Surviving a Terrorist Attack: What a difference a day makes.

2005-07-09T20:08:00.000+01:00

Pfff: Surviving a Terrorist Attack: What a difference a day makes. Wow. This guy is pretty cool.

weaselbitch: Yesterday my train exploded...

2005-07-09T20:01:00.000+01:00

weaselbitch: Yesterday my train exploded...

Cause for Concern (kevininpudong.blog-city.com)

2005-07-09T19:55:00.000+01:00

Cause for Concern (kevininpudong.blog-city.com). Not good.

Excellent post from Nero Fiddled

2005-07-08T13:33:00.000+01:00

There's a Connection Here. Cogent argument for education, not the war-on-terror.

Got it from a PubSub feed targetted at the London bombs.

Izzy Mo's blog

2005-07-08T08:53:00.000+01:00

Izzy Mo's blog.

Flickr: London Bomb Blasts

2005-07-07T18:23:00.000+01:00

Flickr: London Bomb Blasts.

Home now

2005-07-07T18:15:00.000+01:00

Another selfish post. Is this the right way to think. Who knows? I don't.

Got home OK by cadging a lift from a friend out east, then up the M11 and then cadging another lift with another friend from there. Unlikely to go in tomorrow. Will be VPNed into work from home.

Didn't really think about how close I'd been to the Aldgate one until I walked in a saw SocksWife, standing infront of the telly, watching the body count rise, crying. I got a big hug. She asked what time I'd got to Aldgate, about 9am. Glad I couldn't be bothered to queue for a coffee at KX like usual.

One of my wee bro's took the Victoria line and walked from Oxford Circus to work on a whim this morning. He normally takes the Picadilly from Kings Cross.

Technology really helped out. Pretty much the whole family knew the rest of the family was OK in about 1/2 hour with email. The mobiles were out most of the time as the companies were prioritising emergency services calls.

I remember the Kings Cross fire. I was a kid then. My dad went through KX tube ten minutes before it happened, same time every day as I remember it. Of course we didn't have mobile phones then and the public ones were a waste of time. It took him a while to get in contact. I remember not really worrying as Ma was calm as you like. If she was cool, everything was cool. Now I wonder how difficult that must have been to keep up.

How many people won't be going home to their loved ones tonight? My thoughts are with them and their families.

A sample of posts about the Bombs and the Victims

2005-07-07T18:04:00.000+01:00

Grabbed most of these from Technorati. Must find out about that properly.

Politics from Left to Right: Josh Trevino: The Bloody Seventh

Where is the love?

London we are with you

Wikipedia

I hope everyone takes a deep breath before talking about revenge. Vengance breeds vengence.

33 confirmed dead

2005-07-07T16:10:00.000+01:00

.. probably more. Bastards.

Trains from Kings Cross

2005-07-07T14:29:00.000+01:00

Looks like the army has finished with the main lines. Hope this is useful to someone: "Trains running from Finsbury Park every half hour up to Welwyn and then change to Cambridge / Peterborough trains from there."

Aldgate sealed off

2005-07-07T13:05:00.000+01:00

Aldgate sealed off
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

Weird out here. Not many people around. those that are look really annoyed. The road's sealed off. Just photographers and tv crew, with a helicopter circling round. I just hope there aren't anymore bombs around London. All this death and destruction to make a point.

The rollcall of friends is continuing, everyone we've got hold of is OK so far.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parttimesock/24233412/

Updated with correct picture link (I posted twice by accident cos my Plam wigged out on me).

Railway Stations Shut - Conginency Plan?

2005-07-07T11:46:00.000+01:00

This the current rumour, but apparently all the main railway stations are shut, and trains up the line are not running as the army is using them to move kit and personnel into London.

Not sure how any of us are getting home tonight. Ah well, at least no-one I know (so far) had been involved in the actual incidents, although it was pretty close run thing for some.

All the hotels in the City are booked solid for tonight.

Casualty rates are rising. Terrorists are gits.

Sky news website is timing out

2005-07-07T10:34:00.000+01:00

Must be the load. They're reporting a lot faster than the BBC I understand.

Further to the Explosions

2005-07-07T10:25:00.000+01:00

One of my friends was at Kings Cross an hour and a half ago. He says "a load of alarms went off and people started piling out of the station with soot all over them".

Sky are reporting a lot of casualties. Something has also happened at Old Street tube. British Transport Police are treating it as a major incident.

We're backing up all our servers.

Explosions in London

2005-07-07T10:19:00.000+01:00

Sky News : Explosion At Liverpool Street Station. Loosk like it might be terrorist attacks. Apparently a bus has blown up, Edgeware Road Station is out with people trapped in the tunnels on two trains, Algate east has casulaties, Liverpool Street has casualties, and Kings Cross has people "wandering about with soot on them". The entire tube network is shutdown.

Hopefully no-one has been badly hurt, although one person is reported as being very ill. From a purely selfish point of view, thank goodness I went through Liverpool Street ten minutes before it happened whatever it is. I really hope it's not a terrorist attack.

Overheard in the street

2005-07-06T18:18:00.000+01:00

Heard an Aussie guy on the phone saying "They're going nuts about the Olympics over here. I guess they're not used to winning." Harsh.....

London gets Olympics

2005-07-06T13:41:00.000+01:00

Nuts. This is going to be embarassing. Based on the list of public infrastructure failures ("delayed projects" sorry) that this country has, chances of getting it right are very minimal. Also, a lot of lottery and govt money targetted at grassroots sports is going to be diverted to this huge public project. Net result will be less money at the grassroots, so less kids can get involved.

On the plus side, the politicians' excuses will be great, and we may have a good underground system by about 2020.

All that is Apple is not good

2005-07-03T16:00:00.000+01:00

Geek News Central is reporting that Apple have mangled the RSS for podcasts, and Dave Winer says the implementation is funky (among other things). Bad call Apple. Sugggest you fix it quickly.

Apple also seem to be caching some of the podcasts, which is good news for people's bandwidth bills, but doing wrongly or half-arsed is not good news for podcasting. It could piss off the first main-stream adopters from iTunes and blow it. Again, Apple, please fix it quickly.

Central Park... Suffolk

2005-07-03T15:19:00.000+01:00

Central Park... Suffolk
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

Not quite the same as New York, but a valiant effort.

Cool, and Green way to get around the country

2005-07-01T19:44:00.000+01:00

hippyshopper has found a brilliant web site that arranges car-sharing trips to anywhere anyone's going.

NASA Tests a Solar Sail

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

Universe Today - Audio: NASA Tests a Solar Sail. Brilliant. I've subscribed to the podcast feed. I think I heard about a Russian one launched from a submarine that failed last week. Yep, here it is.

Pirates of Outer Space can have schooners and clippers now :)

More about the Grokster Case

2005-07-01T09:33:00.000+01:00

Cameron linked to my post, and has some interesting comments. cameron reilly: The Grokster Case put into perspective.

Diebold axes 300 jobs; cuts profit forecast

2005-07-01T08:52:00.000+01:00

Diebold axes 300 jobs; cuts profit forecast. It couldn't happen to a nicer company.

iTunes 4.9 with PodCatcher built in

2005-06-30T14:16:00.000+01:00

Download iTunes. Get it. Get it now. Click on Podcasts and search for Dave Winer, subscribe to Morning Coffee Notes, then search on Adam Curry, and subscribe to the Daily Source Code. You are now listening to the best in truly independent broadcasting. Here endeth the lesson.

Well, actually, it could carry on if you like:) I'll post a list of my podcatcher subscriptions when I get in tonight.

More about Allofmp3

2005-06-28T19:12:00.000+01:00

After this post, I did a little surfing and talking to others. It really is looking as though they're legit. The druid has done some digging which is worth reading (great minds think alike :). The payment method, which used to be Paypal, but they stopped because they were leant on allegedly, is WebMoney or Yandex.Money, both of which are DTI approved, again, allegedly I haven't checked.

Me mate Dave has signed up and paid $10 to see what he can get. He hasn't been declared bankrupt yet, and I'll find out how he did and listen to some of the download results tomorrow.

Looking good so far.

Shock news: gun makers guilty of encouraging gun crime

2005-06-27T23:55:00.000+01:00

...oh, hang on a minute, got that wrong. No, no, sorry... just substitute "software companies" and "piracy" for "gun makers" and "gun crime" and you have the Supreme Court ruling on file-sharing software companies today.

It'll never happen to Smith and Wesson.

Corporate lobbying seems to win in law over the little guys. At least 50% of the people I know use BitTorrent for non-piracy activities, and most of the ones that do download a bit of music or a film go and buy if they like it. They wouldn't have bought it if they hadn't tried it (that's what I like about the allofmp3.com model, 8 cents a track makes it trivial to legally try something. Can the RIAA and the MPAA et al see that? No, despite the fact they've just had the most profitable year in history (again), and have had help pointing them at their various failings and how to exercise the Long Tail).

Are there counter arguments? Probably, loads. But I bet they're not made by the guy or guy-ess who's expected to suck it all up, and watch/listen to what's available in the top ten today. No, those counter arguments will almost definitely be made by the those with a vested interest (or Murdock readers: What do you want to believe today?
).

Thank God we're in Britain and we have honest law-makers... cough, cough (sorry about the non-direct link, but can't find a permalink, the article is The Downing Street Memo - part 1).

Allofmp3 review

2005-06-27T22:56:00.000+01:00

Eye-opening review on Allofmp3, an mp3 site I'd heard of but was loath to go anywhere near as it sounded too good to be true. Apparently it isn't Russian Mafia, getting ready to sell our IPs to CIA (or something), it's legit, legal, above board, and a cracking business model. RIAA take note. You can't stop progress, love will find a way, and other cliches.

Just gotta check who museekster are to make sure they're legit ;)

Further on the DocuWiki

2005-06-27T20:37:00.000+01:00

Further to my post about Dokuwiki. It took awhile to get installed, what with having to get php running on an old apache 1.3 installation, and sendmail is just never going to work on windows for me, but I've got a test bed up and running and it's brilliant. The security features are pretty cool, so I can secure it if I want to (which defeats the purpose of a wiki on the inkernet, but is damn useful at work).

It also has almost wysiwyg formatting on the page edits, rather than the users having to remember the (admittedly very simple) formatting tags. Very pleased. Will porbably roll it out at work too. Result. Thanks Splitbrain.

Jedi Council Forums - British Vader

2005-06-27T14:37:00.000+01:00

Jedi Council Forums - British Vader. An excellent English/British, Yank/American discussion, kicked off by a comment about David Prowse's interesting Darth Vader voice (if you haven't seen the clip where you hear his voice coming from Darth Vader, you're missing out). I can't get "Now Oi am the maaaster" out of my head.

Baby Diner

2005-06-26T23:08:00.000+01:00

Baby Diner
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

A friend's wee boy peruses the menu.

Lightsaber duel

2005-06-24T18:15:00.000+01:00

Lightsaber duel
Originally uploaded by partTimeSock.

Went camping last w/e with some of the lads. We had some glowsticks and they look damn fine in a photo (do I get an award for most gratuitious use of moblogging from the pub?).

The Wiki implementation I've been looking for?

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

I have had a damn good idea (I think) for website, which would be best served by a wiki. I have setup a number of wikis at work for various areas which use the usemod implementation, which works well, is pretty damn simple, is in perl so I can hack it if necessary, and non-IT bods seem to understand it's syntax pretty quickly and use it (which is always the acid test)... but. But what? I dunno really. It's lovely and simple, but really takes some looking after to keep it looking clean, even after adding the CSS hacks. And it's a bit limited in some formatting and linking.

I was hunting back through the blog because I remembered someone mentioning on a comment a wiki I rather liked the look of (and the content, but that's not the issue right now).

DokuWiki is the wiki implementation it uses and it's gorgeous. The syntax is slightly heavier than usemod, but seems way more powerful too, which is what I want. It's done in PHP, which means I'll have to have a look at installing it into Apache, and whether I need to be able to hack it. From all accounts PHP is simliar to Perl, and very powerful too. Looking forward to it.

Installing OSes

2005-06-24T00:08:00.000+01:00

What I really want on all the OS installs, Windows, Linux, Mac, etc, is not "Time to complete" but "Time to next interaction". Or both. Time to next interaction is useful because it tells me if I have enough time to go for a smoke, or build a small log cabin, or something. Time to completion is useless as you're guaranteed to walk away at 17 mins and 30 secs, come back ten mins later and see a dialog up asking for your inside leg measurement and your great-grandmother's maiden name, with "Time to Completion" stuck on 17mins 25 secs. (Moved from previous post, to post in it's own right.)

Building PCs

2005-06-23T23:27:00.000+01:00

It's my bro's birthday tomorrow and (among other things) I'm rebuilding a spare PC I have for him to go to uni with (assuming he passes his A's :s). Got to the point I'm installing XP. I really hate it. I really want to put Linux on there, but I know he won't use it and can't currently run his iPod Shuffle with it (I don't think he can anyway). I'm being sly and installing OpenOffice instead of Office (not that I have a spare licence for Office anyway). Unless anyone gives him a password protected M$ Office file, he won't notice the diff I don't think. Foot in the door. Catch 'em young I say.