DVDon't

We bought a DVD the other day.

Solveig was in Sainsbury's and saw Thomas And The Magic Railroad* was on offer for four quid, so she picked one up for the kids. Upon arrival, she (or more probably Theo) popped it into the DVD player and pressed PLAY. Nothing happened. She ejected it, blew off any dust and had another go. Nowt. Just the dreaded "Loading..." icon in the top right corner of the screen. Cue disappointed kids and the return of Peppa Pig to our screens.

We took it back and exchanged it, assuming the disc was faulty in some way. But the replacement was exactly the same, refusing even to load the disc, let alone actually play. Short of believing there was a batch of discs with a manufacturing defect, I was curious to see if the disc would work in a computer drive, rather than our standard domestic DVD player. So I popped it into a laptop and it worked fine. No other DVDs have ever failed to work in the normal player. Weird.

Figuring that making a copy of something that doesn't actually work wouldn't really be breaking any laws, I set to with ripping it. Obviously it has the latest copy protection; not a massive problem, there are ways and means. Less than an hour later, we have a working copy of the film which runs perfectly in the DVD player and the kids are happy.

But what kind of industry cripples its media so much that a standard domestic player cannot even read it? And isn't that now the opposite of the problem we used to have with CDs, whereby copy-protected discs wouldn't play in PC data drives but were fine in regular audio CD players?

Somebody somewhere needs to have a damned good think...

* dreadful Americanised 'Polar Express'-lite set on Sodor - don't bother :)

Bunch Of Twapps

Having recently bitten the Apple and got an iPhone, I thought I'd bung any old Twitter app (twapp?) on it and be up and running, happily advising the world of the exciting cheese & pickle dilemma which might befall me in Pret of a Tuesday lunchtime.

Not so.

You can plump for Twitterrific, TweetDeck, TwitBird, Tweetie, Twittelator, Echofon (which rather surprisingly doesn't begin with T but was previously called TwitterFon, so that's OK) and a whole host of others which don't appear on the first couple of pages of search results.

But which one?

Reviews abound on the interweb declaring their undying love for each, and slagging off the competition. Perhaps most people just get used to the first one they try and can't be bothered to change. But that's boring, so I'm going to try them all.

Simultaneously.

For a period of two weeks, every time I go to check Twitter on the iPhone, I'm going to use a different one of the above six apps, in strict rotation so they get a similar amount of face time. To be fair, I have installed the free versions of each, so no paid-for functionality can muddy the waters. The settings will be identical and they all support the same photo-sharing and link-shortening services. At the end of the fortnight, I should know which ones I've looked forward to using and been most 'tweetful' (ahem) and to which I've given a little sigh and been as quick as I could.

Maybe there are magic features you can't live without, or perhaps it's all about speed of use and a clean interface, but at the very least I'll have my Twitter app (which I'm sure everyone will then tell me is "the wrong one"...)

Geek out.

Font Of All Knowledge

That nice Mr Andronov pointed me at typekit just now.

Bit of javascript in the of the template, pick a font (or two) and which tags you want to use it and blam! New look for blog (in compatible browsers, obviously, but if you're not using one you should be :) and you can tweak it - live - to your heart's content.

Love it.

Pressing Question

Looks like Blogger has got a bit bored with supporting externally-hosted blogs (like mine) over FTP. According to the press release:

"FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only 0.5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that."

Understandable I suppose, but which way forward? Probably a good opportunity to have a look at Wordpress publishing (I've also got a Tumblr thing running with a feed from here but that's a whole different kettle of ballgames).

However, Solveig's used to the Blogger way so I guess we will port hers to be a Google-hosted 'Custom Domain' - she'll also then get access to the fancy sidebar widgets which might be a boon.

Anyway, between now and mid-March, expect to see some changes around here, not least with the RSS feed, the commenting system and probably the design.

Ah well, any excuse for a tinker :)

Overheard #99

Our database laughs in the face of so-called numerical rules:

"So you're telling me that 1 & 2 are actually 2 & 3 and 1 is now zero? OK..."

Fresh Prince

Now I'm not a massive gamer, but I do remember spending hours of my youth on things like Donkey Kong (on my Dragon32), Jet Set Willy (on a Spectrum borrowed from Guppy's Computer Club in York) and later on, the wonderful Prince Of Persia. The latter is being turned into a blockbuster with Jake Gyllenhaal as we speak and someone recently posted a link to original game designer Jordan Mechner's journals on Twitter:

jordanmechner.com : Old Journals

I can honestly say I haven't been so utterly engrossed for a long time. It's a compelling set of insights into the mindset of a 20-something game designer in the mid-80s, on the cusp of something groundbreaking in the video games world (whilst also harbouring designs on becoming a screenwriter), but also getting to grips with the mundanity of passing his driving test and getting wary landladies to rent him an apartment in San Francisco. He digitizes his little brother running, hanging from walls, swordfighting, etc which forms the basis for the award-winning almost-human (for the time) animation in the game. Imagine being that boy. Wow.

And moments like this:

"But the real breakthrough this week was invisible: I moved a bunch of stuff around so the main game code can use the auxiliary language card. Basically, I’ve just freed up an extra 12K. That gives me some breathing room I’ll sorely need [...] It was a good weekend."

12K = 12,288 bytes = a good weekend :)

Really worth a read.

First person...

...to hack into Peter Mandelson's home internet connection and download an illegal torrent of Transformers 2 using his account, wins a date with Megan Fox.

Get to it, geek squadron.

Made Of People

I quite like this from Flickr:

Flickr! It’s made of people

We’ve launched People in Photos, a new feature that will help put a face to the Flickrverse and enable you to highlight members that you’ve photographed in a whole new way. People in Photos lets you add a member to a photo, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in.

I gather from various sources that being tagged on photos without your knowledge is the thing that people moan about most on Facebook (I wouldn't know, as I flatly refuse to be on Facebook). However, it does seem like Flickr has taken heed of all that and built in a load of personal choices about who can tag you, how you are alerted and removing yourself. You can also prefer to never be tagged if you wish.

So big Twitter/Flickr hook up in 2010, anyone? That would win.

UPDATE: of course, you can tweet your pics direct from Flickr already, you just set it up like publishing to a blog.

BomberChessMan

In a random discussion on Twitter this morning, I got to remembering way-back-when in York, making Probemeister techno with John in his room upstairs at The Spotted Cow. Also living at that hostelry were various members of Shed Seven and John's mate Daz, all of whom were rather partial to a game of chess, which they played fanatically and competitively at all hours of the day and night:

The other major distraction from "actually getting anything done" was a Nintendo SNES which as far as I can remember was always running Super Bomberman 3 in four-player Battle Mode:

I couldn't help thinking they were quite similar and that there would definitely be a market for Chess With Exploding Weapons. Pausing only to scribble that on an envelope, I headed for the Patent Office...

...but then I remembered this:

Curse my metal body!

Overheard #88

Our office is comedy gold, most days:

"Just so you know, there's a server migration in progress"
"Is that some kind of bird?"

It's A Fix(ture)

This is a fascinating insight into the vagaries of the football fixtures calendar.

BBC Sport: Secrets of the fixture computer

Essentially, it's a massive Zebra Puzzle (incorporating the railways, the police, the FSF, bank holidays and horseracing amongst other things) and takes months to complete. For example:

"West Ham are paired with Dagenham and Redbridge. But for reasons of revenue, Southend request they do not play at home on the same day as the Hammers as they believe it impacts upon their attendance."

However:

"Southend are in Essex, as are Colchester, so they cannot play together on the same weekend. Colchester share stewards with Ipswich so those two clubs also request they do not play home games on the same weekend. Transport links dictate Ipswich and Norwich do not play together on the same weekend either. In other words, when West Ham play at home can have an impact on when a club as far away as Norwich (108 miles) play their home fixtures."

As I say, fascinating. Geek out.

Full Chrome

The dev channel of Google Chrome now has F11 fullscreen support, with a neat 'floating' bookmarks bar when you open a new tab. I'd still like to see top-of-screen mouseover pull down all the menu bars, not just the fullscreen toggle tab, but it's much improved:

Oh look, they've also fixed the Blogger picture posting issue (Chrome wasn't sending the BlogID correctly) - bonus!

You Do The Math

As a kind of antithesis of the rap Excel charts, I really like these: All New Math

Lack Of Pirates Causes Global Warming

Favourite xkcd for ages: xkcd: Correlation

Social Schmocial

All true:

A Completely Unscientific
(Yet Accurate)
Look at Social Sites

No further comment; I'm AFK at the moment...

Change 29

Today's change was - and non-geeks can look away now - installing Eeebuntu on my Asus Eee 701 (thanks for the USB drive Mr R, beers on me at the BHT).

So far, excellent; even wireless networking worked out of the box (always often sometimes a sticking point with Linux) and whilst I am more of a KDE man than a Gnome [insert joke here] the OS does appear to be a good fit for the very particular challenges of my - sorry, Freyja's little netbook. Nice.

Back In Your Boxxy

Feel free to ignore this post if you are over the age of fifteen, or have a life, or both. It will make no sense to you. Run away now.

*waits*

OK? Anyone still here? Right then...

The Rise Of Boxxy

The Fall Of Boxxy

The same internet machine that could propel you to the top of the Youtube charts and hand you online fame will happily chew you up and spit you back out just as quickly, with zero remorse or consideration for the consequences. This is the reality of the internet today, this case is not the first, and surely not the last. Catie, at least, well and truly learnt the power of the world wide web. Somehow, I doubt that will be of much consolation to her.

Utterly. Bonkers.

Bin Done Before

This message box always gives me the soft, warm glow of recursive madness:

Do you have a favourite Microsoft message box? Why not keep that to yourself, they might send the men in white coats round (again).

And yes, that is Office 2002.

Yes, seven years ago.

I know, you'd think, wouldn't you?

Yes, in the thrusting financial centre of the City and everything.

But no, apparently not.

How To Watch Football

OK, so I'd rather be actually at the match but this is working pretty well for me today:

uStream.tv + Twitter + Guardian online commentary + BBC live text = one happy Gooner

Of course, we still need to avoid throwing away an early lead for once *sigh*

Change 14

Today's change was updating Google Chrome to Version 2.0 Pre-Beta including auto-complete, full-page zoom, profiles, autoscroll and most excitingly*, experimental Greasemonkey support.

*stop yawning at the back -- it was socks yesterday, give me a break...

Let It Snow

Yeah, silly innit. Never leave me alone with someone else's Javascript and a bottle of Chianti.

Oh, if you are reading this on RSS, that will mean nothing. Try clicking here and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow :)

Kung Pong?

This is great:



Quite what it has to do with a mobile phone is somewhat debatable, but still, nice work :)

Polishing Chrome

I have been trying out the Google Chrome browser, because - well, it's shiny. So far, a resounding, if beta, yes. Simple, clean UI incorporating (aka stealing :) the best bits of functionality from Firefox, Opera and IE, it has made me question nearly all the add-ons I have installed in FF3 which seem to only serve to a) slow it down and b) leak memory all over the shop. Chrome is definitely a (qualified - no Mouse Gestures yet?) win.

However, one of the things I do a lot, other than posting drivel on this blog, is send interesting links to other people. Hang on, where is the Menu toolbar? Where is File > Send Link? It's not even a Right-Click option! Don't panic, Captain Mainwaring...

Google Chrome: Send Link

Nice fix. Thank you!

Particle Me Elmo*

Whilst putting Freyja to bed the other evening, we were just getting to the end of The Gruffalo when she suddenly came out with "Do you know what, Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a particle physicist". OK, she didn't really, but I might have to get her these anyway:

The Particle Zoo: Subatomic Particle Softies

Not bad for a fiver each. Oh, hang on, shocking £/$ exchange rate recalculation coming up, more like £6.50! Personal favourite is the Gluon (closely followed by the ninja-like Neutrinos!)


* oh come on, I thought that was rather good.

Luke, I Am Your Purple Dragon

One for offmessage...

Darth Vader on acid

Girl Turk*

Remember the fuss about Girl Talk's "Feed The Animals" album? Andy Baio at Waxy.org decided to compile the metadata for the various (264!) samples included in all 14 tracks, using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (on-demand scalable workforce) service.

And then made some rather nice graphical charts. I like it a lot.

Mechanical Turk Feeds The Animals

* I cannot claim this one, for shame!

Frok Hedanls

We've all seen the research that says:

It deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae and you can sitll raed it.

Well now you can test it on the interwebs:

Reading Test
Strangely compelling...

Block The Doors*

Oooh, this is just the greatesty thing:

Lego: Death Star

With 'minifigs'...


* and hope they don't have blasters...

Square Arrow Triangle Dance*

So I stumbled across the AMVI theory via Neatorama and it seemed like an interesting idea:

AMVI: Associative Musical Visual Intelligence
"Associative Musical Visual Intelligence is a type of intelligence that's difficult enough to define, let alone test. Many creative people can associate across sensory domains: they "hear" hints of shapes and can "taste" the essense of colors. At its most extreme this phenomenon is called syntesthesia. However, I believe that creative people subconsciously employ elements of syntesthesia every day when attempting to think of things in new ways. This test attempts to measure one's ability to associate musical phrases with abstract shapes and symbols."

So I take the test (disclosure: I do have A level music and Grade 8 flute but at the time of the test I had also sunk a couple of fairly large gins) and get 95% (19 out of 20) which is :



Maybe I'm wasted in investment banking. At the very least, I should pick up the saxophone again :)

* this will mean nothing unless you take the test - in fact, I'd be interested in your scores -> comments please!

Give It A Flickr

Right, after some Holmesian detective work, I have discovered why our Flickr photostream had not updated since the end of March. It turns out that this coincided with us starting to use the Uploadr application (rather than the web interface) which, for reasons I cannot at this moment fathom, does not take your content/privacy preferences from your Account Profile. Why? I don't know - it bothers you for your username to go and grab your tags and sets data, so how hard can it be! Pfft. So it happily sits there defaulting to 'Moderate' (rather than 'Safe') which means that Mr Clapham Omnibus needs to sign up for a Flickr account to view things. Most irritating when you are trying to share your new bundle of joy and that.

Anyway, all of which geekery brings me to say that I have hit the relevant bits with a spanner and there are now loads of pictures of Theo and Freyja (and the odd one or two of the snow) which can be found here:

LondonLightly on Flickr

No login, no guest pass, no hairwash night*

Enjoy.

* that's a private joke for Freyja - she reads this on her Eee, you know...

Recognise Anyone?

Yeah, you know who you are...

Geek Flowchart

What The Qwerty?

This is an astonishing balls-up by Dell:

Try touch typing on this

"Looks normal, right? Look at your own keyboard... notice anything different? Okay, maybe you don't. But try actually typing on this and it all becomes far too apparent. The whole of the bottom row of letters (Z, X, C...) is one too far to the right. The Z should be below and between A and S, not S and D.

You're looking at a brand new Dell Vostro 1310, ordered the day after its released, and delivered on 30th April 2008 in the UK."

Golden Amen

Well how very really jolly interesting. Your actual classic breakbeat building block is a fundamental fractal structure! Coo, well I never, stap me vitals, etc:

Amen Break / Golden Proportion

Junglist massive indeed.

On The Slide

With new floors come new cleaning requirements. And so we really ought to have a pair of these:

Slipper Genie

"Why use a dustmop when you can just clean the floor by walking on it? Microfiber fingers on the soles of these slippers grab dust, dirt, and hair as you walk around. The sole is detachable for cleaning. The drawback is that they only come in a size to fit women’s sizes 6-9, so children, most men, and women with larger feet are exempt from using them."

Drawback??? Heh...

Another In The Series

I really might have to get this:

Fibonacci T-shirt

Geektastic!

404: Post Not Found

Private joke :)

Are You Coming To Bed?

Yet again, xkcd right on the money:

xkcd #386