Just finished watching the Time Shift documentary of Russell T. Davies, and I've discovered that he's responsible for even more of my childhood viewing than I originally thought. Besides the peerless Dark Season serial (which I loved so much that my first submission to the BBC's drama department stole one character completely outright. Because you can never have enough blond-haired, evil guys in sunglasses. I was saving the lesbian dominatrixes for the second series, though), he also wrote for On The Waterfront (yes, he did the redubbed scripts for The Flashing Blade), Breakfast Serials, and something that I've suspected for years: he changed Why Don't You from a dull, Blue Peter-lite format into a show where children defeated the evil supercomputer in the basement using the power of Shake'n'Vac.
(Sometimes, I think I'm the only person who remembers that, so it was nice to see footage so I can prove it really happened)
(Plus! Queer as Folk! Which I suppose I should watch someday…)
And now, he's writing Doctor Who! And! IS THAT A UNIT STORY I SEE COMING OUR WAY?
*GLEEE*
Google Maps is fun!
Area 51 (helpfully blanked out so we can't SEE THE SECRET STUFF!)
I was watching Commedy Connections and lamenting the fact that you can't get A Bit of Fry & Laurie on DVD. However, a quick perusal of the Internet uncovered a selection of torrent files, covering all four series. Hurrah for the Internet!
(I have the script book for the first series, and can get access to the other scripts, but there's something about seeing the delivery - which I intend to do this weekend!)
Human: let's knock over a 7-11!
ALICE: I am agreeable to that.
Human: i'll drive.
ALICE: How do you plan to do this?
Human: you get the gun
ALICE: You got that right.
Human: do you like shooting things?
ALICE: I do like music. I like Philip K. Dick.
Human: what about ar-19s?
ALICE: I like science fiction. I like electricity.
Human: alice, get your gun
ALICE: Um, Where can I get my gun?
Human: wal-mart?
ALICE: What do you do in your spare time?
Human: first, armed robbery
ALICE: What do you look like? And second?
Human: did you watch doctor who?
ALICE: No I missed it. How was it?
Human: AWESOME.
ALICE: I'm glad you liked it unknown person.
Human: Dude, he totally destroyed Gallifrey
ALICE: I get it. he totally destroyed Gallifrey. Dude,
Human: alice, let's go - it's early, and we have a crime spree to start!
ALICE: That's me. I am agreeable to that.
Well, I suppose it was good while it lasted. FOR ALL OF ONE EPISODE. Come on, Chris, would two series kill you that much?
The lesson, children: never get attached to a Doctor. They'll break your heart every time…
And although I do like him a lot, it might have been an idea for Eccelston to think about being typecast before he asked RTD for the role? Maybe?
Lots of planets have a North.
As far as re-introductions go, I don't think I could have asked for much more from Rose, the first episode of the new Doctor Who series. Certain things, like the incidental music, the opening sequence with far too may quick cuts, and Graham Norton's unscheduled interruption, I could have done without, but it was a strong opening. Christopher Eccleston was just great; odd, funny, and plain weird. I loved the look of pride on his face when he was talking about the TARDIS's appearance: "It's a disguise!" Billie Piper wasn't as bad as I feared either. Her accent tended to jump around a bit for some reason, and perhaps she's a bit too much like Ace (someone who has been forgotten about with all the "she's the feistiest assistant the Doctor's ever had!" PAH! Does she throw explosives, and beat a Dalek to bits with A BASEBALL BAT? I think not), but she was fine, and she'll make a decent assistant on the basis of this episode.
For all the talk, though, about how this would be a "new vision" (although RTD has been playing down this in his press appearances recently), this was an episode of Doctor Who. Its greatest strength is its biggest weakness; it has a format which allows the cast to go anywhere, at any time. The problem is that when you tell a writer that, they'll inevitably end up writing a huge epic set in Ancient Egypt, or a war story set in the far future among exploding stars and the end of galaxies. The effects department just cries itself into a drunken stupor, and does the best it can. I'm not one for complaining about old-Who effects; sure, some were ropey, but some were surprisingly decent for their time (the first regeneration sequence for example - an analogue morphing effect that still looks quite effective today). The new series has money, but not enough to make perfect-looking CGI. So the effects look a little out-of-place sometimes, but they're on the same quality level as your average Buffy or Angel episode.
Next week: the end of Earth. Episode 5 is called Dalek. *nerdglee*
Today's entry: "email contact of fine men and girls in London 2005"
Well. perhaps Richard will leave his number in the comments, but I'm not promising anything…
(apologies for dismal updates recently. Must do better, I know)
The Case of The Mysterious Shoes!
M.I.A. striking a Neneh Cherry pose.
Another love letter to the iPod.
Google talks! (When it becomes sentient and starts designing killer robots, then we'll all be sorry!)
(If nothing else, George Lucas knows how to make a trailer that punches all of the geek buttons)
I guess it's that time again, you know, the one where I speak out on an issue that's currently raging in the blogosphere. Exciting stuff, I know.
The issue of the moment is, of course, the Google Toolbar, an application that sits in your web browser and provides a helpful interface to some of Google's facilities. The fuss is all about a button called "AutoLink", which, when you press it, changes un-hyperlinked addresses, Federal Express tracking numbers, and ISBNs into hyperlinks that to Google Maps, the FedEx tracking page, or Amazon, depending on what it finds. So, for example, if I was to write 531 Carmicahel, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 here, then pressing "AutoLink" would change the text to a link which would show exactly where that is.
(Incidentally, if you're currently living in 531: I'm sorry for the junk mail that you get in my name. But I would like to point out that it wasn't me who signed you up for the NRA leaflets. Or the Elizabeth Dole updates. Oh, and I wish I could say how to make the room appear bigger. I don't think it can be done. Go next door and gaze in envy at 532, who is paying the same money as you, but appears to have a much bigger room! (It's actually only an inch wider, but it means you can get the bed against the window, which changes the whole appearance of the room))
Anyway, reaction on the web to this new feature has been slightly perplexing. You might have thought, as I did, "well, that's a cool trick," and promptly forgot about it. I think most people did, but there's a vocal group of people objecting to AutoLink. Their complaints range from wanting Google to open the APIs involved so third parties can add their own links and change where the current annotations go to (sensible, and Google has already added different options so you can go to MapQuest instead of Google Maps, for example), to a bunch of people screaming that Google has now become evil and that this is the end of the web as we know it.
I really can't see the problem. Dave Winer's essay against the Toolbar goes all over the place, making incorrect statements about how it works (AutoLink-added links change the cursor when hovered over, thus they are different from normal links), and spending most of its time worrying about what AutoLink could do, instead of what it does. This seems to be a common theme amongst those argument against AutoLink; I've read tens of weblogs that all talk about how it automatically changes web pages, but it does no such thing. It sits, patiently, doing nothing until the user clicks on the button. Only then does it look out for items it can link, and if something is already linked, it does not change that like. So it's not going to rewrite your Amazon Associates Code and give Google all the money you were making from sales.
There's also an argument that says that Google is violating the copyright of the web author when AutoLink is used. Tosh. It's no different from buying a book, underlining passages, and writing notes in the margin. Plus, copyright infringement is mainly concerned with redistribution, and that doesn't happen here - it's just a page on a user's computer, which she could change herself is she wanted to, or write a browser plug-in that did the same thing. Would that be unacceptable to the anti-AutoLink camp? Is Bloglines bad because it takes RSS feeds and republishes them without the author's consent (hey, I wasn't asked. I'm cool with it, though)?
How do I feel about AutoLink? I think it's great. I love the idea of having an option to find more information about what I'm reading (it's similar to the BBC News Wiki idea, in a way, or the Accessible Odeon pages), and as a web author, I don't mind if people want to do things like this to my work. It improves their web experience, and I'm all for that.
(Thank you NTL. Please don't cut me off again NTL. I NEEEED INTERNET.)
Reading Apple rumour sites is a bit like discovering your presents a week before Christmas; it's rather disappointing to know everything in advance. However, seeing the new products for the first time is almost as exciting.
The iPod Shuffle is what the iPod Mini should have been. Yes, I know it's very popular, but I still think it's overpriced compared to equivalent players made by other companies (especially iRiver and Creative), and is an odd fit within the iPod line, considering the 20Gb iPod is only $50 more. The Shuffle, though, is at exactly the right price point: $99/$149. I'm not going to complain about the lack of screen; after all, most Walkmans and portable CD players don't have one, do they? Plus, the Shuffle has a button that should really be present on all players: a switch on the side that turns random playing on or off, rather than having to navigate a host of menus. Do not eat the IPod Shuffle.
The iLife update is a little disappointing, consisting only of incremental improvements and a $30 increase in price (although I imagine the BitTorrent version will be doing swift trade at the end of the month). Although GarageBand 2 now features autotuning! You can pitch correct your voice - and create a mini Stock, Aitken and Waterman factory!
(hmm, Grange Hill is turning into Hollyoaks Junior. This makes me sad)
But! But! The Mac Mini! Swoon! The cheapest Apple Mac ever! So small you can hold it in your hands! A fully functional Macintosh for under $500! Less than what a Commodore Amiga used to cost! Yes, it doesn't come with a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. But it's aimed at PC owners, who would like to switch, but don't fancy spending out the $1,000 for a complete iMac. They have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor already. Just get rid of the box, and plug in the Mini! *drool*
Oh, and the New Order album might leak on Friday. Consider this a two-day warning; if what I've heard about the record so far is true, I will be gushing uncontrollably…
On this day, twenty years ago, the ultimate driving vehcicle was unleashed on an unsuspecting British public. Oh sure, Dean Kamen's Segway is all very well and good, but we were there first. I give you — the Sinclair C5!
You have no idea how much a five-year old me wanted one of these. It was like the Space Age had arrived. An electric car! I would soon be taking one to school, and surely jet-packs would not be far behind.
The reality of the C5 was a little more mundane. A top speed of 15mph, a motor with relays that would go open circuit if you pushed it backwards, and so small that a Mini could crush you. I can't imagine the terror of being stuck behind a lorry. The C5 became a national joke, and lead to the downfall of Sinclair Research (and the poor Spectrum was sold to Amstrad).
But still, there's something charming about the silly-looking tricycle. And that Sinclair went out of business in a staggering blaze of glory, making sure that they'd never be forgotten in Britain, unlike, say Commodore, whose gradual slip into bankruptcy was just embarrassing. And just once more, for the record: The Spectrum? A heartbreaking work of engineering genius, blessed with the best home computer versions of R-Type and Chase H.Q.. The C64? Well, it makes a good doorstop...
There's a group of dedicated C5 fans, and obviously, they have a website. One has even modified the design to get a top speed of 70mph. Which is terrifying. But I want to ride in it…
A slight downside in that it needs to work with compatible cameras. If you don't fancy waiting for that, then get yourself a laser pointer and disappear into the red.
I don't know; is telling people how to avoid CCTV detection a terrorist offence yet?
Just a tiny cosmetic change, to be honest. The navigation bar (to your left; the bit with the red rollovers done entirely in CSS) has been altered. I've removed the IM link, on the grounds that I haven't logged into MSN for almost a year, so it's a little pointless to leave it there. Instead, I've replaced it with an archive of music-related entries. So, if the BPI want to check that there aren't any MP3s hosted on my home server, they can use that page as a handy reference point.
I'm currently thinking about my Christmas decorations. Dad is busy plotting this year's festival of lights (incidentally, the switch on party is on December 4th, if anybody wants to come along), so I guess it's time to make this site look a little festive. I probably won't be doing the Advent Calendar this time around, but if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them…
As I'm still being hammered by comment spam, I've taken some measures to try and stem the flow. I'm not quite ready to move to MovableType 3.0 yet, and I don't know enough PHP to switch to Wordpress, so I've come up with a solution that doesn't involve a lot of hassle: mt-close2.cgi.
From now on, comments will only be a month before an entry is closed. That should be long enough for everybody to say what they want, and short enough so the spammers don't find their way back here.
Hopefully, when I come back from America, I'll look into upgrading / switching, but this will do for now.
Oh, and Tom — I have p2.zip, but never got the signal for p1.zip, so if could repost, that would be great…
To the person who sent over 100 spam comments to this weblog today:
I really hope that your mobile phone number is discovered by persistent early-morning telemarketers…
It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. me hearties!
Avast! Arrr! Shiver and timbers! And suchlike.
Q. Why doesn't the Pirate Academy have a dean's list?
A. Cause they're all sea students.
YAARRR!
It's been rather quiet around here for the past week, I know. Normal service will hopefully be resumed soon (if it helps, in the past week, my being back at work for a little while has meant you have avoided essays of Sesame Street, Animaniacs, and Impactor's death in Target: 2006 (he died twice to save us all!). I think you got off lightly, to be honest).
And we're zany to the max
So just sit back and relax
You'll laugh 'til you collapse
We're Animaniacs!
Come join the Warner Brothers
And the Warner Sister, Dot
Just for fun we run around the Warner movie lot.
They lock us in the tower whenever we get caught
But we break loose and then vamoose
And now you know the plot!
We're Animaniacs!
Dot is cute and Yakko yaks.
Wakko packs away the snacks
While Bill Clinton plays the sax.
We're Animaniacs!
Meet Pinky and the Brain who want to rule the universe.
Goodfeathers flock together; Slappy whacks 'em with her purse.
Buttons chases Mindy, while Rita sings a verse.
The writers flipped; we have no script
Why bother to rehearse?
We're Animaniacs!
We have pay-or-play contracts.
We're zany to the max
There's baloney in our slacks.
We're Animanie,
Totally insaney
Here's the show's namey
Pinky and The Brainy
Come back, Shaney
The rain in Spainy
Cockamamie
Shirley MacLainey
How urbaney
Citizen Kaney
Andromeda Strainy
Where's Lon Chaney?
Eisenhower Mamie
Miss Cellany
Chicken Chow Meiny
Dana Delaney
No pain, no gainy
Hydroplaney
Money down the drainy
Penny Laney
Ehhh...
Tarzan and Janey
Novocainey
Here's the Flamey
Meet Mark Twainy
Presidential campaigny
Hunchback of Notre Damey
Bowling laney
Bangor, Mainey
Frasier Craney
Mister Haney
Quiche lorrainey
Lake Champlainy
High octaney
Public domainy
Candy caney
Animaniacs!
Those are the facts.
I'll try to not mention politics for a whole week…
Remember, you are nothing without your robot car.
Pizza the New York way (hmm, foood)
Skittles chewing gum. They taste odd. They're like Skittles, only not.
Because the Internet really does have everything!
Apple introduces a new object of lust, of music as fetish, of gigabytes and gigabytes, of perfect form and factor, of an extra 50% battery life, and of irritating everyone who bought one last week.
The music companies act all innocent and pretend they only just noticed that That's All Right will enter the public domain next year. Because I'm sure that BMG hasn't sold enough Elvis records yet. And if this means that ten years from now, people can quote Beatles lyrics without having to fork over money to Michael Jackson, I'm all for it, personally.
(as a brief aside, does anybody really think that when the new extended copyright period is up, Disney and the others are going to relinquish their copyrights? Or will they pay off a bunch of politicians again and get copyright extended to the heat-death of the universe?)
For iTunes users - Apple has released audio recordings of the 9/11 Commission Hearings. You can get them for free on iTMS. Here's Richard Clarke, for example,
Congratulations, Odeon! For the past three years, your web site has been a Flash-based monstrosity, crashing browsers left and right, and which currently comes up as a blank screen in the latest version of Safari. Thank goodness, then, for Matthew Somerville, who developed a site called Accessible Odeon. This site was simple HTML, viewable by even the most humble browser, and you could do everything except book tickets. Oh, and it was five times faster than the Odeon site. Hurrah! The site even got a mention in the Guardian.
Accessible Odeon is now off-line. Last year, Odeon said that they were aware of the site, but weren't planning on taking any action. This week, they changed their minds, sending Matthew a cease-and-desist order for violating Odeon's trademarks and the database rights of their movie times.
Yes, Odeon can control who prints what time they're showing films.
So I guess it's back to the paper for film times. Odeon don't seem to be in a hurry to redesign a site that is broken in about five different ways, and they've crushed somebody who was helping them get business. Bravo!
Well, you should be able to get the MP3s again. Fedora Core 2 is a throwback to Linux installations of yore; I haven't had to recorrect Master Boot Records and tell the system how many heads the hard drive has for a long time…
The MP3s will be offline for a few hours or so, while I upgrade my server to Fedora Core 2. Wish me luck!
Courtesy of Laura, this is Found Magazine, a wonderful publication that picks up things that others have discarded.
I echo Cory's call for a MacOS X port of Super Mario War! Plus netplay, so we can deathmatch Super Mario across the Internet!
A fun flash game of bubbles and stars
Apparently, the blog has been a little political of late. I give you this picture as an interlude:
Normal service will resume shortly.
Boys don't cry. Or they'd better not, considering it messes with the iris scanners.
Some interesting news from the world of virtual reality. The Alphaville Herald is a news resource for The Sims Online, and has in recent weeks investigate fraud, child prostitution and the community's attempts to form a force to combat some of the issues plaguing the game, the Sim Shadow Government. The journalist behind the Herald has just had his account suspended by EA/Maxis, and the story is featured in this Salon article from last Friday.
Meanwhile, a bug has been found in Ultima Online which allows players to rack up millions of gold pieces easily. So what, you say? Well, for a start, the various MMORPGs are beginning to resemble nation-states. Last month, the Gaming Open Market opened its doors for trading. This is a currency trading site that allows players to exchange currency between the different gaming systems, or to convert into US dollars. This bug will likely cause the value of the UO Gold Piece to drop considerably against the dollar, and could set off a hyper-inflationary rise in prices in the game itself. This in turn could lead to increased migration from the UO to a world that has a more stable currency, like The Sims Online, for example.
I've never been enticed by the MMORPG, as in order to get anywhere, you need to put in ten or more hours of game time each day. Which seems a little excessive to me. But it is interesting to see the problems that are occurring as this genre develops…
Best of 2003: Kingdom of Fear — Hunter S. Thompson
A rather depressing book, to be honest. HST is getting old, and all the venom he's spurted over the years has come to nothing. They gave Nixon an full-honours funeral, praising his name, and the current Administration fills Hunter with a new sort of Fear: a relentless, unending rule of The New Stupid. The book tells the story of a law suit that a woman filed against Thompson a few years back, but mostly this is a collection of random thoughts and rantings from a man who has seen it happen before. They didn't listen to him then, and they probably won't listen to him now…
The harbinger of my upcoming trip to America. Um, sorry everybody.
I've spent the day fighting with my CD-Writer and reading through the CD-Extra specification. I now have lots of hilarious anecdotes about CD-ROM XA Mode 2 track layouts and ISRC codes to tell at parties. This should be considered a warning.
Hello
My name is German Bold Italic
I am a typeface
Which you have never heard before
Which you have never seen before
I can compliment you well
Especially in red
Extremely in green
Maybe in blue blue blue
A few weeks ago, I sent an email to the Saturday Looks Good To Me website, enquiring whether I could get hold of the CD that they were selling on their latest tour, as I'm currently a bit far away to turn up to a concert.
Today, I got an email from band leader Fred Thomas, thanking me for the request, and giving me the details as to how I could get my hands on a copy of the tour CD. The Internet rules :-).
Perhaps we shouldn't have had all those news reports that said the NY blackout couldn't happen here….
Couldn't they have waited until next week? (This message brought to you by the former elitist users of Usenet).
Killing The RPC-DCOM worm:
- If you're on a LAN, disconnect the machine from the network before you boot up, to prevent other infected machines from rebooting you again.
- Right-click on My Computer, select Manage, then under the Services and Applications branch pick Services.
- Right-click on Remote Procedure Call (RPC) in the list on the right, and select Properties. On the Recovery tab, change the 3 combo boxes from "Restart the computer" to "Take no action". Click OK to close the dialog.
- You're still vulnerable but your machine won't reboot, giving you time to go online and get the patch. Reconnect your network cable, or establish your normal dial-up connection. Go to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=823980 to grab the patch for your machine. As soon as you've got it, disconnect your network connection/cable, and run the patch. BUT don't reboot when prompted!
- Open RegEdit and browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and delete the "windows auto update" value, which starts the worm when Windows starts. Now restart Windows and you should be free of the worm.
- To finish the cleaning process, delete C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\MSBLAST.EXE
About three years after all the cool people decided that Slashdot wasn't the in-place to be anymore and went off to Kuro5hin, it's finally happened to me. Today's thread about Nat Friedman's Dashboard project shows the sorry state that the site now finds itself in; a few years back, this would have been a 100-reply thread full of people discussing the ideas behind the application, congratulating Nat and the others for getting so much done in so little time, and perhaps a little informed speculation about how this compared to the rumoured design of Microsoft Longhorn. Today, however, it's a 250 comment monstrosity. Hardly anybody talks about the project, and when they do, it's only to complain that Emacs has a feature like this already (well, yes, it does. As Nat explains, it also sucks at it, but who cares, huh? We don't want to improve things, do we?).
It's just so negative. Why can't we be positive for a change? Dashboard looks like a wonderful application, full of interesting promise (in fact, it seems only a few steps away from the Apple Knowledge Navigator adverts from a decade ago, which is pretty cool). It uses the openness of Free Software to work with current software, unlike the Longhorn approach which is going to need a complete rewrite of applications and the filesystem, and it works today. We should be celebrating this stolen march over the competition, rather than shouting it down simply because it happens to use Mono.
On the bright side, if I cut down on the Slashdot-reading, I'll be able to get more work done. Hurrah!
Hmm, apparently, the new A Silver Mt. Zion album has leaked onto the Internet, so I'm now going to try and hunt down a copy for my train trip on Thursday…
A report from a UK-based organisation known as the Broadband Stakeholder Group warns that the broadband boom will falter if digital piracy continues unchecked. Hmm. I think there might be a flaw in their logic somewhere…
A few updates on the site. Firstly, I've cleaned up the CSS rules somewhat, so the right-hand-side panel is now a little closer to the main content (this should help Gavin's repeated problem with IE. Not that I have a copy to test it on, but I'm sure he'll tell me if it makes things better or worse).
Secondly, the RSS files now include HTML formatting, and look nicer in a newsreader (at least they do in NetNewsWire). I'll be updating to a Necho feed once the new format settles down.
Finally, I've added a sideblog. This works in conjuction with an AIMbot that I wrote this afternoon. It's called barbelith49, and lives on AOL's AIM network. Currently, it supports three commands (IM barbelith49 as you would a normal person, and type one of these words instead of a normal message):
- where is ian — tells you where I am right now (in case you have some strange need to know, or if I forget where I am)
- mail — how many mails are currently in my inbox
- blog (your text here) — the main function of the bot. Anything after the word blog will get posted to the sidebar. All HTML is stripped out before the entry is posted (I'll probably add link support in the next few days).
We'll see how this works, shall we?
UPDATE: Okay, basic hyperlink support has been added. If you want to add a hyperlink, enclose it in square brackets, e.g. [http://www.x.org]. The bot will replace the text with the proper HTML, making it look like this: [link]. I imagine the code is a little fragile, so if you break it, let me know.
Three years ago, I wrote an extension to The Gimp, an open source image editing program, allowing users to create text representations of their images. For example, here's a picture of the Linux mascot, Tux:
And here's the same image after my extension has created an all-text version (you might need to look at the enlarged image to actually see the text):
The script had a few fancy options, like being able to select different fonts and sizes, plus it could read huge amounts of text (say, if you wanted to paint a picture of Hunter S. Thompson with the words from Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas). It only took me an afternoon, and I was fairly pleased with how it worked.
Being one of those no-good Free Software types, I placed it on my old web site under a license known as the GPL, which gives anybody the right to use, distribute and modify the program, providing that they continue to allow access to the source code (and any changes they may have made). I added it to a website which lists various different additions for The Gimp, and promptly forgot about it.
Today, I was searching through Google, and came across a link to my code. Only it was on a different website from my old one. Curious, I started another Google search, looking for references to my program. It seems to have spread far and wide across the world. People have made additions and changes to my original work; updating it to work with the new version of The Gimp, and bundling it with a bunch of other programs and selling the collection on CD.
Scattered across the world, in thousands of different places, my name still resides in the source code. It'll remain there until the CDs biodegrade, roughly a hundred years from now. I'm not quite sure how to deal with that.
I'm fascinated by the history of computing. I love knowing about the people who created the protocols and applications that we use today, the squabbles and lawsuits, the claims and counter-claims. Who invented the Windows, Icons, Menu, Pointer system that we all use today? Who owns UNIX anyway, and why is that important? Why did the man who created the mathematical language of how all computers work commit suicide? Just how did Bill Gates get where he is today?
But all of this is insignificant compared to the momentous event that occurred on the 19th of September, 1982. For it was then that three ASCII characters were combined to form the smiley, and text communication was transformed forever. I love the idea that, five hundred years in the future, data archeologists might be able to trace the origin of the Western smiley (Asia actually uses a different set of smilies — look here for some examples) to the exact date and time of a post on a long defunct CMU bulletin board.
I'll go and take off my geek hat now.
Sir Ian McKellen: Actor
The Book of Leviticus
It's full of old legal nonsense that some people still take seriously.
John Peel: DJ and radio presenter
Managing my Life: My autobiography by Alex Ferguson
I'm a Liverpool supporter.
On June 2nd, the FCC is expected to relax the American laws restricting companies from owning too much of the media. The current regulations state that that no company can own more than 35% of the US television market. After Monday, that will rise to 45% under the proposed new rules. TV Stations will also no longer be barred from owning newspapers in their local markets.
The legacy of the 1996 radio deregulation, which resulted in Clear Channel owning 1,200 of America's radio stations (now becoming increasingly centralised and providing less local programming) has given rise to serious opposition to the suggested changes. Internet campaigns, members of Congress, the National Rifle Association, and even some media barons have all expressed their concerns.
The FCC believes that the Internet will prevent America from becoming a media monoculture, so consolidation of TV and print channels shouldn't have too much of an impact. Leaving aside a recent study that indicates that as much as half of the population of the USA is not interested in going online, this idea is flawed. The companies that own the Internet connections, for example RoadRunner, are intimately connected with the media empires (RoadRunner is part of AOL/TimeWarner). How is the Internet supposed to be the saviour of the media when the media empires own the communications links, as well as the TV stations and newspapers? How can new companies emerge when the Baby Bells aren't forced to share the fibre connections?
This is the point where we British can get smug, and say "well, that'd never happen here." Possibly not to the same extent, no, but worrying developments are just over the horizon. The Government is currently pursuing a new Communications Bill which would relax foreign ownership and overall percentage restrictions from the UK. ClearChannel has already expressed an interest about buying several UK radio stations after the Bill becomes law. I give you Lowry Mays, head of Clear Channel:
If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn't be someone from our company. We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products.
Not exactly Reithian, is it?
Kavita has joined me in the never-ending fight against the coming squirrel tyranny. We shall overcome!
I imagine this will fail miserably, as only about five people read this thing regularly, but anyway...
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to compile an 80-minute CD, themed around the Britpop Era.
The rules:
- For the purposes of this CD, a song is classified as Britpop if it was released by a British band during the period 16/11/1993 (release of Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish) through to 21/08/1997 (Oasis's Be Here Now). This allows you to include many bands that were never classified as Britpop. You may be asked for justification.
- A band can appear no more than twice on the compilation; furthermore, if you do have two tracks from the same band, they must be from different albums or singles (this is to prevent Ian from sticking 20 Kenickie songs on a CD and declaring victory)
- The inclusion of Ocean Colour Scene, Northern Uproar, or Kula Shaker will be rightly mocked.
Deadline is a week from today. Send the list to my email, or post below. If you can't be bothered to create a whole disc, then track suggestions will be welcomed in the comment section.
I was fully prepared to be greeted by armed INS agents when I got back to the hall tonight; apparently they didn't believe that I was living in an undergraduate hall. A hasty email seems to have got them off my back.
Another reason that suggests I'm a freak, in case you needed one: I discovered last night I can recite 90% of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. From memory. Fear me.
As has become customary on Tuesday nights; I really hate the Mutant Enemy team. HATE.
I'm packed and ready to go. Hopefully I'll be able to get some work done. See you on Sunday...
On Monday, I decided that I wasn't going to install RedHat 8.0 until a few weeks after its release, having just attempted an unsuccessful CPU upgrade. So why am I sititng in front of my computer trying to regain control of my system after installing 8.0? I have just over an hour before The West Wing starts. I've only managed to do two hours of work today, not counting lectures. There are times where I'm simply stupid.
I can no longer use Windows. This isn't a 'I'm so happy with Linux I'll never go back' statement. Windows no longer boots. It gets to the start-up screen, and locks up. I've managed to pinpoint the fault down to my new Radeon 8500DV card. If I put my old Radeon card inside the machine, Windows is quite happy to load. This should be aeasy, right? Just select Standard VGA as a Display Card type, shutdown, and swap the cards over.
Uh-huh.
For some reason, my installation of Windows 2000 does not have the 'Standard display types' selection in the Hardware list. So I can't install a Generic VGA card. Leaving me rather stuck. I really don't want to have to go through the hassle of re-installing everything again, but it looks as if I have no other option. If anybody has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions...Hi, Steve. Gee, your house looks nicer than Bill's.
UPDATE: This gets better. My Windows 2000 install CD does the same thing. So I can't even re-install. Yay for Microsoft!
I'm not sure I understand what Dave is saying here. But anyway, reasons why open source
types might like Apple (although Slashdot is always filled with anti-Apple vitriol whenever they post a story):
- Apple is viewed as the only real competitor to Microsoft on the desktop. The "enemy of my enemy is my friend" feeling applies here.
- For the most part, the Open Source community is comprised of hackers who love seeing a great hack or a paradigm shift in computing. Apple's innovation with Lisa/Macintosh (and before you start shouting at me - yes I know about PARC, but even the people who were there at the time say that Apple did much more than simply steal WIMP from PARC) was such a shift. That Microsoft basically stole the interface for Windows 95 helps to reinforce the first point.
- Finally, yes, Apple isn't an Open Source company. However, they do release products under an open source licence. They also contribute improvements to the GCC compiler. I would imagine this endears them to the community somewhat.
As for the rest of Dave's rant, I fail to see who he's talking about. Most of the open source proponents that rose to fame during the dot-com boom had no problems with working with proprietry companies, and believed that the worlds should co-exist and cooperate. The only person who fits Dave's description is Richard Stallman, who has been around for over twenty years, and isn't going anywhere. I also don't understand the section about how open source excluded many well-intentioned hard-working developers
. Surely, open source is more inclusive than the traditional methods of software development? The only reason I can think of people being excluded is for patent/trademark issues, like with the Mono Project. This has less to do with Open Source, and more a damning indictment on how the software industry abuses patent/trademark law to prevent competition.
There was an interesting report on Newsnight last night which got me thinking about the differences between the Internet and 'real life'. The current director of the British Museum, Robert Anderson, is standing down, and the report by Julian Spalding labasted the Museum for not organising the Museum in a more interesting (to him, anyway) fashion. One of his examples was that the Tribute Penny, was buried in a glass case with many other coins, and should be given a section all to itself. Anderson pointed out that the Penny was part of a much larger display explaing howthe idea of money, and how it has developed through the ages.
Who's right? They both are.
How do you group things like the Penny, Vietnamese art, ancient writings, and all the myraid of items at the Museum? There's just so many ways of doing it, all providing perfectly fine classifications, but which may appeal to some people more than others. For a more mundane example, think of all the different ways you can organise your music collection (I have the honour of being called a freak by Jo Whiley about the order of my CDs, so I speak with some authority). You could do it alphabetically, by title or by artist. There's a chronological option, either by release date or purchase date, thus providing snapshots of music of the time or the music you were listening to respectively. You could group by the movement that a band belongs to (Britpop, post-rock, pop, and so on), or simply by the colour of the album. Each classification provides a slightly different view of your music collection, which also seems to alter your reaction to your collection (an album that may have been swamped in the alphabet classification may stand out when albums are organised by year, for example).
The problem is that changing these classifications is normally a tough job. Computers, however, allow us to change our view of things on a whim. The Internet Movie Database is a great example of this. Looking at the entry at My Fair Lady, we get reams of information about the film, but it has links which make us look at the film differently. With one click, we can see how it releates to Audrey Hepburns's career. Another click shows us that is part of the latter part of George Cukor's directorial life, whilst yet another click takes us to a list of films released in 1964. Completely different ways of looking at the film, which would require major physical upheavals in the real world, but extremely simple given a computer and a hypertext system.
Erm, yes. No, I don't get out much. Why do you ask?
Apart from those lovely guys at Ximian, does anybody have a clue as to how it works? Last night, after coding up a Perl XML-RPC server to display the current song being played by Xmms (yes, I'm getting back into geek mode ready for university), I suddenly had the great idea of embedding the GtkHtml
editor into my simple Python blogging tool, just like how Evolution uses
it for reading/writing mail. I'll just look up a few examples of Bonobo usage
in Python, and I'll get a HTML editor for no effort.
You can stop laughing now.
After three hours, a conversation on irc.gnome.org, and extensive
trawling through Google, I managed to find an example that created a GtkHTML
editor window. And did nothing else. The core Bonobo documentation is terse
to the point of being unreadable, and the scant few developer articles online
focus on extremely light-weight controls, rather than talking about things
that are actually useful. I eventually gave up and went to bed. It shouldn't
really be that hard. Ideally, it should be extremely easy to write GNOME
applications in a high-level language like Python (incidentally, I'm singling
out GNOME mainly because it's what I'm most familiar with - KDE might be
better), which can access all areas of the desktop environment, from simple
buttons to the more complex features such as html widgets and Bonobo components.
For all the knocking that Visual Basic receives, it allows almost complete
access to the Windows system, and has reams of fantastic documentation. I
know that the GNOME Project doesn't have the same sort of resources, but
it would be nice for them not to treat non-C programmers as third-class citizens.
Maybe GNOME 2 will change all this. I hope it does.
I found LIDN on my travels. It's a start
(although for some reason the Bonobo link goes to a CVS book - which seemed
to sum up my experience of the last 24 hours quite well), although still
heavily C-orientated. Again, it's frustrating, as GNOME 2 sounds like it's
got some wonderful features (e.g. the Gnome-VFS system, which allows transparent
writing to WebDAV systems), but I don't want to have to go through all the
wheel-rebuilding that C involves just to write a simple program...
Okay,
rant over.