Monday, January 31, 2005

Conference On Global Warming




A conference starting on Tuesday lasting 3 days at the Met Office in Exeter, is mainly about the science. They hope it will lead to a better understanding of methods the world can employ to avoid catastrophic warming. The conference is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

It will try to answer three questions:

  • for different levels of climate change what are the key impacts, for different regions and sectors, and for the world as a whole?
  • what would such levels imply in terms of greenhouse gas stabilisation concentrations and emission pathways required to achieve such levels?
  • what technological options are there for achieving stabilisation of greenhouse gases at different concentrations in the atmosphere, taking into account costs and uncertainties?
Full article




Digital Scenarios For Media




is an interesting article about the future of media in the new digital age. It shares my bleak out look on the future of media on the internet. Well it's bleak if you are trying to make money of media on the net that is.


The Tampon Doll!




I think the name says it all really, why you would ever want one of these I don't know?, what would inspire you to make one I don't know?, why am I posting this I don't know?


An oldie But A Goodie

definitely not safe for work, Brazilian Wax Anyone?

MythTV



For thouse of you who like to build your tivos rather than buy them, you may find the MythTV site of use.

MythTV has the following fetures,

  • You may pause, fast-forward and rewind live Television.
  • You may install multiple video capture cards to record more than one program at a time.
  • You can have multiple servers, each with multiple capture cards in them. All servers are centrally managed and all programs are scheduled by the Master backend.
  • You can have multiple clients (called "frontends" in MythTV parlance), each with a common view of all available programs. Any client can watch any program that was recorded by any of the servers. Clients can be diskless and controlled entirely by a remote control.
  • You may use any combination of standard analog capture card, MPEG-2, MJPEG, DVB or HDTV capture devices. With appropriate hardware, MythTV can control set top boxes, often found in digital cable and satellite TV systems.
  • Program Guide Data in North America is downloaded from Zap2It.com, a subsidiary of Tribune Media Services. This free service is called DataDirect, and provides MythTV almost two weeks of scheduling information. Program Guide Data in other countries is obtained using XMLTV. MythTV uses this information to create a schedule that maximizes the number of programs that can be recorded if you don't have enough tuners.

Tool For Thought




This may intrest any of you that have to alot of reserch to do, steven berlin johnson has writen an artical about his experiances with DevonThink software over on his blog.

Here are his top 3 tips,

1) The DevonThink software does a great job at making semantic connections between documents based on word frequency.

2) I have pre-filtered the results by selecting quotes that interest me, and by archiving my own prose. The signal-to-noise ratio is so high because I've eliminated 99% of the noise on my own.

3) Most of the entries are in a sweet spot where length is concerned: between 50 and 500 words. If I had whole eBooks in there, instead of little clips of text, the tool would be useless.


Sunday, January 30, 2005

ipod Sweets



Ok these have to be the worst ipod case mods I have linked to, If I see you with these I am afraid I will be force to rehome your ipod on grounds of taste no ipod should look like a suck sweet.

These are ipod mods for 5 year olds!

House Prices



I have been wanting to talk about his for a few days but have spent my time thinking about what I wanted to say before hand.

For those of you not in the UK a bit of back story basically in the last 3 or 4 years house prices in the UK have jumped by 60% but mainly in the last 2 years. In the south in London mainly they have risen by even more.

To understand this you have to understand the culture in the UK. Nobody rents everybody buys their house. People in the UK see renting as wasted money, the only people who rent are those who are moving home and have to kill some time to make the sale happen, or the poor and the government is paying their rent for them any way.

Its possible in the UK to get a 100% morage, someone earning twenty thousand pounds a year could probley borrow up to 4 times their salary or if you are a couple 3 & 1/2 times your combined salary.

Altought with the current housing madness that has gripped the country some company's are willing to lend up 10 times your annual salary. As well as new offerings of 130% of the properties value so you can pay of depts too. that's not going any where near the abuse of self certification morgages for the self employed.

compare this to places like Germany where you have to have saved up 40% to 50% of the price of the house your self and they only match your morgae.

The problem is that houses prices are so high that 1St time buyers have been priced out of the market after all never mind the cost of a home you than have all the extra's like solicitors fees and stamp duty. You can add on up to another 15 thousand pounds.

Average-priced homes in 548 out of 597 main UK postal towns were beyond the means of people on average salaries, according to the study for the Halifax Bank.


In fact things have become so bad that 98% of city's in the UK, 1st time buyers have been priced out of the market.

If that is not a warnign that things have become stupid then I don't know what is?

The government this week anoucend a schema where buy essential workers would be able to buy a house and the local housing authority would buy half of the home. This would help 1st time buyers get the feet on the ladder.

unfortunately this over looks two very important points,

One, that when these people come to sell their homes in 5 years time, If house prices keep rising the housing aurtiteys are going to have to find huge some's of money to buy back the other half of the propitry or risk losing housing stock. As most of the homes involved will be coucil houses, and to avoid the council's running low on hosing stock they would have the right to 1st refusal to buy the propitry back.

Two, all this servers to do is to keep the housing market araficliy high by allowing those who would not normally be able to do, to buy homes. So rather than forcing a equalization between demand, availability and price. This policy in fact keeps the housing market artificially thus keeping prices high.

There is only one solution to the UK problems house price crash and for all the market and media saying their will not be one they are only delaying the inevitable.

The low interest rates of the last 5 years of around 4% have lead to an all time high of personal debt. The government may have spent the last year raising interest rates 1/4% at a time to get us to 5%.

That how ever is no where near enuth to stop people bowring more than they should. There are new story's all the time about people who are running up £60 thousand on credit cards and then committing suicide, because they can not copy with the debt.

The market can not sustain this I know lots of 1st time buyers who are waiting for the crash to come before they will consider buying a house.

Think about this, when men used to go out to work and woman stayed at home one salary was enuth to pay the bills and put food on the table. Women then started to work people had more money and people bought more stuff including bigger houses.

Now it takes two salaries just to buy a house never mind any thing else. With 1st time buyers priced out many people are stuck living with their parents. What is going to happen in the future?

Is it going to take 3 salaries to be able to buy a house. Are parents going to have to ask their kids to chip in with the morage so they can all move some where bigger? Is the UK going to end up like Japan, with generation morgaes? and kids living at home until they 30?

Or are we going to have some common sense and let house prices fall for the good of us all?

The UK is after all an island there is only so much space for new homes, or could the UK government and the BBC be league with each to try and sovle the problem another way.

Think about this, I am off work sick at the moment so have nothing better to do than walk the dog and watch TV. The BBC and channel 4 are full of programs about people in the UK who are selling up everything and moving to the EH for a better life.

Could this all be part of some master plan to get the older UK residents to leave the country and thus make room for the new generation?

Could it be even more sinister, The EU population on a whole is growing old what if their where some sort of deal where buy we ship of are aged population to the EU along with all there money. Generating a lot of investment in the EU and jobs as most of these people are only about 30 or 40 and still have to work, most set up some sort of small business.

This would then revamp the EU and make space in the UK.

We in UK take all the young emigrants that we now have room for and need to jobs we wont like pic fruit be doctors and nurses all that sort of stuff.

The south of the UK, Is already full of emigrant so what's a few more, once they have been here a few generations they would have full UK citizenship and be able to move in the EU and repopulate it, but they would be British citizen's which would make them more acetable.



Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms




Now you have excuse to look at porn it's natural. After all we say homosexuality is natural because animals do it, well now animals look at porn too.



In Search Of SEX

This made me laugh, how desperate do you have to be. To complain about the quality of cyber sex, just go out and get a life.

The Obsidian Order: A Very Special Effect




The Obsidian Order: A Very Special Effect


With all the recent talk about the relationship between tradition news media outlets and Bloggers. I think the above link shows bloggers at their best. Using multiple sources to check out the validity of a photograph and its discription.

Many millions will have seen the photograph on TV and excepted it at face value. Where as bloggers have sort out the truth and proved the photograph to be a setup designed to strike fear into the hearts of those how would vote for a free Iraq.

What we need are more Blog's like this and less about My cat, If Bloggers are to be taken seriously, when something like this is discovered it is not enuth to put it on one site. It needs to be published, after all if just said to you go on the internet at randomly to day and find something you did not even know you where looking for in the 1st place, or what you where looking for, you would probably end up at kelkoo or eBay.

So why don't you email your local news corporation to day and let them know about this blog, knowing its a fake may just give someone the courage to go out and vote.

Armor plate for iPod Photo.




Looks cool and that's all I can say as I don't read Japanese. If you want to do this one your going to have to learn to read Japanese or find someone to translate it for you. I also think its going to cost slightly more than the brushed ipod mod.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Free ipods UK Update

Some of you will rember that I signed up for this out of curisty (& Greed) to see what hoops you would have jump though to get your "free" Ipod in the uk.

The offers where all far to complicated and required you to switch phone compaines and such.
This mornign I got an email off freeipods with update offers and there are now some offers you could actual take up. Infact I signed up for one to day and am going to complete the 2nd one later.

As you can see with these new offers you can take up the 2 weeks free trial and the free DVD off time. These would then be your 2 offers you would need to get the ipod mini.

The link's in the top right for any one intrested.


Email Below.

Dear wesley,

Now we have made it easier for you to claim your free iPod mini - by adding five great new sponsored offers.

Remember, to qualify for your free iPod mini you must complete two sponsored offers and refer five friends who do the same.



ScreenSelect - Free 14 day trial


ScreenSelect provides subscribers access to over 25,000 DVD titles. For a flat monthly fee, ScreenSelect subscribers rent as many DVDs as they want, and keep them as long as they want, with three films out at a time. There are no return-by dates, no late charges and no postage fees. DVDs are delivered for free by post.

Qualifying Conditions: Simply complete the 14-day *free* trial.



Time Life - Free CD's


Choose from a great selection of free CD's and pay only £2.99 postage and packing. There is no obligation to buy further titles. Free CD's include classic radio hits, classic rock, Sounds of the sixties, The power of love and The 80s collection.



Lloyds Bank Current Account - £30 welcome gift


Switch to a Lloyds TSB current account and enjoy a great interest rate plus get a £30 welcome gift!

Qualifying Conditions: In order to qualify simply ensure you fully complete the online application form.




Stan James - Free £25 Bet


Open a new betting account with Stan James and receive a free £25 bet (free bet is matched against your initial wager up to a maximum of £25).

Qualifying Conditions: To qualify for this offer you must open a new account and place a bet of at least £5.





Scottish Widows Credit Card


The Scottish Widows Credit Card from Lloyds TSB allows you to adapt your card features to suit your needs - and change them whenever you like. You can adjust your interest rate, your Cashback, and even choose to pay a modest annual fee in return for a lower interest rate. Offers 0% on balance transfers for 6 months. (Made within 6 weeks after account opening. After 6 months Balance Transfers charged at standard purchase rate. Payments applied towards Balance Transfers first.)

Important Note: Only immediate online acceptance of your card application will qualify as one sponsored offer towards your free iPod mini. Should your application be referred for further credit checks then please choose an alternate offer on this page to complete your gift qualification.


The Sex Net



Basically the diagram above shows, who has slept with who in one American high school. All I have to say is dam those kids get around. Look at the top left, if you look closely you can see some of them are with up to 5 or 6 people. In their case it is definitely case of what goes around comes around.

Apple Video?




Well who would have thought it all this interest in video is going to lead some where. That is if you can believe speculation. In this case how ever I can see it being more of a prediction of the future.

After all big business has to catch up with the pirates some day and sell movies on line. Are all the pieces in place yet, not quite after all broadband needs to be faster and cheaper and people would need new computers but in the next 5 to 10 years, if not a lot sooner I can see it happening. If you are interested in the future of media they I would highly recommend this article to you.

The Big Freeze




As I understand it the images are from a winter storm last week in Geneva. The power of nature unleashed. Its a bit like the day after tomorrow, pretty never the less.

The Life Poster




Ever wonder what to do with all those photos you take with that new digital camera you just got. Well here is one idea stick them altogether and make a Life Poster out of them.

For details on how to, just head over to The Mike Matas Blog

Feels Like It should Be In the Simpson's



Byproducts from the massive operation resulted in a dung pile measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet high and 50 feet wide that began burning about two months ago and continues to smolder despite Herculean attempts to douse it.


This reminds me of the Tire fire in the Simpson's.

Friday, January 28, 2005

How Dare You Be Blind!

What a MAD MAD MAD world we live in. This is what the do when you give money away to thou's less fortunate than your self. This is why the police can not track down that youth who robbed your house the other night they are too busy off storming the homes of the blind.

After all take away that dog and there not going any where. I think the person responsible should be sacked.


EDITED FOR TRUTH

I have been informed he was not blind just that the software can be used by the blind.

A Glance Into The Past





A bit of nostalgia, your more likely to run in to someone with a knife these day's, but then again it's still legal to have a walking cain. Altought not cool, but one day you will need one when you hit 70 or 80. So you may as well learn how to defend your self now while you are still young.


State Of the Blog




As some of you may remember I posted about the upcoming conference on blogging and its affect up on the role of traditional media. The notes can be read here.

On a related point this article over on slate.msn.com, compares the over hyped launch off personal video recorders and the way that they where expected to impact upon TV news and cinema. Along with the hype that has been stirred up around blogging.


In any event, I was sitting at my desk in New York on Wednesday night, writing a BarlowSpam, when Skype started to emit the old-fashioned bell tone that signals a request for a voice chat. I looked at the window associated with the request and saw a bunch of Chinese pictograms where the name should be. Some kind of Asian chatspam, I figured, and I ignored it. A few minutes later, it rang again. The name of the caller was "Kitty11_3". There was also a text chat box on the screen, also from kitty11_3 which read, "I need a friend." I was skeptical. I figured that "Kitty," or whomever, was probably looking for "friends" to come see her "relax" in her web-cam equipped "bedroom." But I took the call. A delicate Asian-sounding voice came from someplace in Cyberspace. "Will you talk to me?" she said.

"Why?"

"I want to practice my English."

"Why me?"

"Because your name is John. I think that anybody named John speaks English."

I remained skeptical, but further conversation convinced me that she was telling the truth. She really had no idea who or where I was and had plucked me at random from all the Skype users named John.


I find this more interesting as demonstration of how people are using technology. There are many examples of people using new technology in ways it was never intended to be. The internet is full of innovation. If only we could harness this innovation for bigger and better things, Than stuffing a mini mac in a car so you can watch DVD's.


Waiting For Star Wars



Waiting For Star Wars is a blog by Jeff Tweiten, he is sitting out side Seattle's Cinerama.

There are two ways to look at this ether he has no life or he really likes Star Wars. Some how I don't think he needs to get there 5 months early that is just nut's. Maybe a week or two early but 5 months!

Surely there is some system where buy he could just put his name down on a list. Then turn up on the night and get a ticket. Thou this would not get any publicity for the move or for the cinema. After all you have to wonder how he can make enuth money to take 5 months out of his life.

But then again how much can it cost to feed your self. He has no other bills after all he wont be renting his flat or any of the normal bills.

BBC: 45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz




Nearly half of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz, a poll conducted by the BBC revealed Thursday.


Over on the Jerusalem Post there is an article about the recent BBC poll which revealed that 45% of Britons have never heard of Auschwitz.

Now having done history GCSE I can tell you that does not surprize me I don't remember it ever being talked about the only aspect of the war we where concerned with where the trigger points which started the war.

Now most people don't go on to do History as a GCSE and as I remember at the time we where told that if we failed and had to redo it, then we would have to learn about the war of the rose's as the syllabus was changing.


Colourfields




There is not much to say about this one, Thinking about decorating your house then the colourfields web site could help you decide on what colour to choose.

You select your colour from a colour chart and 12 examples of that colour are shown. In photographs clicking on the images takes you to larger ones like above.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

How Man Have To Die?



So you can fill your SUV with cheap petrol.

Source

One For All Tivo Users



This site will tell you how to make the files into MPEG2, but as the Site says,

FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY! DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE THESE MPEG2 STREAMS OUTSIDE OF YOUR HOUSEHOLD!



I would do as they say unless you want to have the MPAA come a nocking.

Know It All Kids

In my day you used to have to be 13 to be a know it all. now it would seem you only have to be 12. By the time I am 50 you will only have to be 5.

A SCHOOLBOY with a fascination for Poland and wildlife has uncovered several significant errors in the latest — the fifteenth — edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.


I mean come on has he no life to find one mistake ok, but then to sit there and go looking for more and documenting them.

Chimera



Some of you will be up in arms over this, you more than likely voted republican and believe in god thou.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.


If you are all so up tight about giving away your organ's when your dead. Then this type of research must be done. Many people are die'ing every day for the lack of human body parts and something must be done to generate them.

You will not be moaning when you have and RTA and need a new Kidney because there is car door where your old one used to be.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

The Nice Way To




Suggest some one you know slit their wrists. These glycerin soap bars contain REAL razor blade's.
They are a snip at $6 after all how much would you be willing to pay to get rid of that annoying git in your life?

Plus they would look way cool on your wall as they slowly rust.

Many Faces of the Mac Mini



Over on Wired news they have some new uses for the Mac Mini,

Positioned by Apple as an inexpensive impulse buy for Windows switchers, the Mac mini is already being put to a wide array of uses, from a livingroom video recorder to a media center for cars -- and a desktop computer, of course.


There are quite a few good links in the article to sites that give more specific suggestions and how two's. I my self like the car idea the best, after all the size of the mini is perfect to fit in the boot or with bigger cars in the dash. The problem for me with all the home suggestions is you just have to buy to much extra stuff to make them worth while. I just wound not want all the extra wires in the living room. It's bad enuth now as it is.

Polo AD

I dont know how old this is, But it is as close to being none PC as you can get befor you cross the line. I dont think they could ever show it in the sates.

Smallest MP3 Player: MobiBlu DAH-1500





No to sure weather I like the design or not but the DAH-1500 certainly has something.

Boasting a OLED display and sports a 20 hours playback time. It features a FM tuner and the headset plug is also the data connector.

Altought I don't know how many of those 20 hours are going to be repeats. A device that small can not have that much memory it will most certainly be a flash rom of some sort.

There is no information available on the official site and these pics are from I4u.com.

One to watch out for I think lets see what the specs are once you can buy them.

Yahoo gets in on the act





When it rains it pours it looks like google is going to have a fight on it's hands.

Hot on the heals of google's beta video serach. Now yahoo has a video search option too.

Whats next mp3's?

Tokyo Unplugged



I was over on the Flickr Blog (Flickr.com) and they had an article about one of their user's call MATT who took some pictures in Tokyo. Your best going to the site for the full storey all thou the below quote explains it pretty well,

"Wait. Let me get this straight.

A guy from Scotland goes 5490 miles to Tokyo and takes a picture of a girl taking a picture. She turns out to be from England, 413 miles away from him.

Impressive, but not all that weird.

UNTIL!

He posts the picture he took on a Website (in Canada, irrelevantly) and within 6 weeks the girl in the photo finds it?

That is truly amazing."

What was more interesting to me thou was the this gallery linked to in the article (I am the sort of person who leaves no link unclicked (Thank god for Firefox's Tab's). The shots of the local inhabitants of Tokyo are well worth a look. They are, well I don't know what to say, Let's just say there are worth the time to have look at them.

While browsing I found this which I just HAD to post!




Maybe it's the emptiness, or maybe its the contrast of her eyes but it just really stands out.



Turner Compares Fox's Popularity to Hitler



Ted Turner called Fox a propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared Fox News Channel's popularity to Adolf Hitler's popular election to run Germany before World War II.


True

The Thought Project



The Thought Project is an interesting project by Simon Hoegsberg, He stopped 150 strangers at random in Copenhagen, Demark and New York to ask them what they where thinking just before he stopped them.

An interesting insite in to the every day lives of ordinary people, that would have other wise gone unnoticed. Well worth a look if just for the stunning portraits like the one above.

Google Video



Hot on the heals of Google's announcement that they wanted to do get in to VOIP in Great Britain.

Now they want you video too with this new search engine. Watch out Google is out to take over the world one IP at a time!

HOW-TO: Turn your Mac mini into a media center



As I was saying the other week apple is after your living room and that media centers where the way ahead.

So get your selves over to this article on engadget and start your apple media center to day using the apple MAC mini.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Battlestar Galactcia Mod For Homeworld

Well with all the interest in Battlestar Galactica it had to happen at some point every one is talking about BSG based games, like the ps2 one and how they wish there was something more space based.

This got me to thinking about an old mod I was involved with based on BSG for Homeworld by Sierra. Sure enuth after a quick trip to the Relic Forums they are all talking about a new BSG mod for Homeworld 2, which I think would be grate.

I have posted a link to the old mod on the top right in the links section so it stays at the top. I warn you know it's about 5 years old and has about 8 ships some are not fully textured, If at all but I thought I would put it up for any one interested in having a play.

The vipers are in it and work fine along with the Cylon fighters and the Cylon Basestar. There is also the old colonial movers ship which replaces the ion cannon frigate. A Cylon refueling ship, alltought it think was actual from the Colonial fleet.

Just read the readme here are the ships and the slots they take up.
R1 Gemini Freighter Carrier (Needs front texturing)
R1 Mineral ship Resource controller (Needs completely Texturing)
R1 Colonial Movers Ion Cannon Frigate
R1 Vipper

R2 Cylon Raider Light Interceptor
R2 Cylon Raider Heavy Interceptor
R2 Cylon Battle Star Carrier

These are the only two serving screen dumps I have from the old web site. PIC1 PIC2
Both shots are of groups of Basestar's there was more at one point but only pics 17 & 18 seem to still be on my HD.


EDIT ********

I new I had it some where just found the BSG as a seprate zip file will put it up in the links section too.

Quick Round up

6 Link's to fill your day with,

  1. Police hunt poo protesters
  2. What a Drag!
  3. Common sense has much to learn from moonshine
  4. Ukrainian hasn't slept in 20 years
  5. Who's who of Iraqi political parties and lists
  6. Wanted: Fake Moon Dirt


Bush Upsets Canadians




With his 1st international visits bush has managed to go out and insult his next door neighbors. Showing that he has not changed a bit, except now that the American's have reelected him, for some reason he also thinks that this will mean the rest of the world will also go along with what he says .

If they think the Canadians react badly wait till he comes to Europe ofcurse lap dog Blair will do his bidding, but the rest of the European heads of state will not be so kind.

Global Warming

Following on from Global dimming now we are being warned that if we don't act soon, within the next ten years. Then the planet could be suffer irreversible damage beyond repair.

I am sure that like most in the world you want to do some think about this and your government will too. Unless you live in the USA where driving a 27 liter SUV Is more important than the planet.

Artical one

Artical two

Monday, January 24, 2005

Battlestar Galactcia

What a last episode that was! If you missed it or have not seen it yet and dont mind knowing what happens then here is the thred over on the SCFI boards with what happened.

California Governor Not Worthy' To Be Austrian




This makes me laugh primarily because I don't even think of him as being Austrian. He is American through and through maybe if they did kick him out then one day they would let him become president of the USA.

The only people who know of him as Austrian are Austrian's and fans. They just made things worse by pointing out that he still is Austrian, well has dual Citizenship. It would have been far better to just keep quite.

Google To Offer VOIP



Has decide that it not only wants to have total control over the internet but now it wants to get in on the telecoms business to.

Let's face it no one stands a chance how can you charge for something Google is going to do for free and will probably pay for using adwords. Ofcures you will be able to pay for a version without adwords but who is going to do that we are all so used to seeing adwords. We will just learn to ignor them.

what's next Google takes over school?

Last Episode Of Battlestar Galatica




Ok so I could net let it pass without commenting that tonight on sky1 at 8pm the last episode in the 1ST series of Battlestar Galatica will be broadcast. Just don't forget to set those VCR's, Altought I am sure within 6 hours it will be available on the net to download for those who don't live in the UK, as the USA is only up to Episode 3.

As sky is rumored to have put up any where up to 50% of the budget for the show on the condition that it was shown in the UK 1st to combat the internet problem. As so many shows are shown sometimes up to a year in advance in the USA. The core audience in the UK is just going and getting them off the net.

Which is not good for ratings, but when you are a pay TV network it is not good full stop. SG1, Atlantis, Battlestar and many other scifi shows are the main reason many people bother to get sky, as far as they see it why pay up to £40 a month for TV that they can get off the internet advert free up to a year before it is on sky. You may as well pay for Broadband At £15 to £33 a month and get any program as soon as it is broadcast any where in the world.

The only solution to this problem is global release dates for all TV and movies, It is something the internet community has been calling for, for a long time it just makes sense.

Lets face it the industry hypes these films and TV shows for months before they air, Then you get all your movie guide shows telling you the top ten in the USA and their like "well this really cool fill is number one in the USA and it will be out here in 6 months time, But you know if you don't see it people wont talk to you any more and your life will fall apart at the seems.".

So what do they expect people to do but search out a way to see it sooner which is most definitely a possibility on the internet. They only have them selves to blame for getting people all hyped up and saying you must see this now! Then saying but by the way were not going to let you see it for 6 months because you live on the wrong side of the planet.

If you go the official scifi boards they are full of people from the UK posting spoilers about the show, as well as many Americans complying that the show was not shown there 1st. Which is part of the problem American's are so used to getting everything 1st that they just expect it.

We in the rest of the world have long had to put up with spoilers for shows. If you go to the Scifi Boards all the spoilers are marked as such. I can guarantee that if it was shown in the USA 1st this would not be the case.

In the end the industry will have to adapt to a global release date, if they don't people will just continue to pirate, and they will be the ones who suffer in the end.


Sunday, January 23, 2005

Hubble Trouble



This article over on MSNBC would have us believe, that all is lost for poor old Hubble, as the US government is no longer willing to fund Hubble. After all the money they would need to spend on Hubble would probably solve the tsunami disaster relife fund's problems.

Then again Hubble could merely be a pawn in a bigger battle. After all if they don't ask for money for it and then need it. Can you see them saying no to extra funding for it. That way NASA could go buy another toy car to drive round mars after all if your kid's told you they wanted a new remote control car and it was going to cost a couple of million. I think you would be telling them to think again too.




2 4 1

Two quick links for you, the 1st is FatBoySlim's new music video made and directed by a fan.

Worth seeing as the kittens are cute and the production values are low, but best of all the look on fatboy's face at the begining is priceless, you can see he would rather be any where else than doing this. With the crazy cat woman, who even has a cat on her jumper.

2ND the trailer for Tim Burtons new Halloween offering is up the Corpse Bride. Using the same technology as The nightmare before christmass just with a bigger voice cast including Johnny depp.

For Those Who Live In The Red..

how about one of these, now why any one would want to go out of their way just to block one channel like this is beyond me. Just don't watch it, I suppose you could want to stop you kids from watching TV but lets face it most cable systems have a pin block surely you could just block the channel that way.

It's Fox news it's not like it's the devil, but then again the last time I went in to a church I almost burst in to flames.

The wow's Of WOW

News of penny-arcade.com's decision to pull its game of the year award is spreading. The real question is are we expecting to much from WOW's creator blizzard. Are they right to say that are demands, of "all ways on" server's are ridiculous.

Wired news tries to answer this question by comparing World of War Craft to a ADLS and VOIP, but really, don't blizzard only have them selves to blame after all any one of the 13 year olds who play WOW could have told you that, this was going to happen.

The fan base for games based on the Warcraft series of games is huge and blizzard had already been warning that they may not have enuth games for the UK and that people should buy early to make sure they got their copy, while they where only just releasing in the USA.

Now surely if they are expecting to have problems on a tiny ireland like the UK they should have been able to foresee the problems in the USA?


Virus hooks onto CNN headlines

Over on news.com there is a report that there is a new virus out.

A PC virus has started to spread through e-mail, luring potential victims by disguising itself as a headline newsletter from CNN, an antivirus company said Thursday.


Apparently the virus contains CNN news items and clicking on link's will download the virus.

THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO




An interesting map of the USA, for many of us out side of the USA all we see is the RED V Blue state maps. The Urban Archipelago shows the results on county-by-county map which is far more interesting, As is easily seen the blue bits of the map are far smaller than the red.

The Blue is ofcurse the city's and the red is country side, the site features a very long article about why this might be my favorite quote being,

Outside of the city, elitism and snobbery are code words for literacy and complexity. And when the oil dries up, we're not going to be turning to priests for answers--we'll be calling the scientists. And speaking of science: SCIENCE! That's another thing we're for. And reason. And history. All those things that non-urbanists have replaced with their idiotic faith. We're for those.


Not that I can say that I have read the whole thing there is a lot to get throught but if your are an American you may be more willing to make the effort and read all the way through it.

What You'll Wish You'd Know

Is one of those with hindsight pieces about life that you really should read when your 16 but don't find till you are 25, and its far to late. If your 16 I would highly recommend this graduation speech by Paul Graham.

Below is one of my favorite extract's, as I remember being asked the same question many, many time's when I was about to Leave school and I still don't know to day what I want to do.

Altought I think it has become more important in this day and age, to at least have a direction with so many university degrees being so specific in their scope and range.

You could end up having to go back and start over, if your degree is not in the same filed as what you end up deciding, what you want to do is. After all there is no point spending 4 years doing a degree in computers. To then decide you want to be a vet.

I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you're supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.

Angel Light



Troy Hurtubise has done the seemingly impossible with his newest invention and defied all known rules of physics, he says.

The Angel Light—Hurtubise claims the concept came to him in a recurring dream—can reportedly see through walls, as if there was no barrier at all.



This amazing new invention seems have many practical applications, especially in searching for survivors in earth quakes and such, altought the so called Hyde affect will have to be dealt with.

Soon after, Hurtubise discovered the Angel Light had devilish side-effects.

He lost feeling in the finger of the exposed hand and began suffering an overall malaise.

“MIT told me every time I turned it on there must have been splash-back hitting me,” Hurtubise said.

A test on a tank of goldfish was even more disturbing.

“I turned the beam on it and within minutes all the goldfish died,” Hurtubise said.

“That’s when I realized there was a Hyde effect, as in Jekyll and Hyde, and I dismantled the whole thing.”


All thought perhaps the most woring thing of all is that the French seem to be showing gerate interest in this device. You have to wonder why? It could be that they are just looking to shore up support in French Canada, after all there are many in quebec who would love to be part of France.

Then again could you image if they took this device and rather than using it to search for survivors instead enhanced the Hyde effect and turned it into a weapon.

A weapon that can see throughout walls, kill, counteract stealth technology and stopped modern tecnolgy in its tracks. The French weapons industry could do with a boost like that in fact any country's weapons indusrty could.

Being weapons manufactures they are hardly likely to have any moral quarms in the process.


Saturday, January 22, 2005

It's Been Buggin Me All Day

It has, I got my hands on a copy of Kasabian's new, self titled album, Kasabian.

Now I have had it on most of the day, and its been bugging me, the sound is very familiar and I have finaly worked out who they remined me off? kula shaker

I have say its well worth going out and getting your self a copy.


Bloggers Should Be More Responsible

There seems to be a lot lately about bloggers being more responsible with what they post. They are currently being blamed for everything form being corrupt to destroying the printed media.

Some even suggest that bloggers should be the police of other media. Some of these suggestions are ridiculous but do raise interesting questions about the responsibility of bloggers.

After all many bloggs are now more widely read than papers. Why spend an hour or more trying to pick out stories form the BBC website when you can go to one blogg and have all the best stories of the day on one page. Selected by some one who has the same interests as you.

Old media should not try and blame the blogg for there demise but there own inability to adapt to new media, but bloggers are taking note with the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility seminar. Altought what will come of this is any ones guess.


The Saturday Links

Rather than wright 4 separate posts about these websites. I am just going to dump them altogether in one big one.



1ST Bunny Suicide!

Hilarious, ok well while it did not make me laughed out loud, it did make me laugh in my head. Some of deaths take a little longer to work out than others but are well worth it. More of website that makes you go "O yeah".


2ND Exeem

Is now out in beta, what's that you say never heard of Exeem?

Exeem is the new P2P software from the creators of suprnova.org. Suprnova was shut down voluntarily after receiving legal threats from the RIAA. At the time it was the biggest and BEST torrent website on the net.

Started by 16 year old Sloncek from Poland, many mourned at it's loss, but all where assured that it was for the grater good. After all it was not that hard to find Sloncek as the local paper did regard him as a hero and had published a map to his house.

We where promised Exeem and that to stop the RIAA from taking his PC and all the Exeem code, it was better to let go of suprnova to protect the future of the scene.

Now available in open beta go get your self a copy I am sure many in the P2P scene will be going out off there way to make it better than suprnova.org was. After all the Suprnova forum was, formerly the largest Invision Power Board in existence, a community that large does not just disappear.



3RD BBC NEWS

There has been quite a lot in the blog sphere about this mainly by American's. In an effort to teach children in the USA about tolerance and diversity, but for some reason American's, being American's think that the video is some how trying to convert the children over to the dark side and that one of the characters in the video SpongeBob is gay.

The creators of the show denie this but SpongeBob is held as gay icon, as he regularly holds hands with his sidekick Patrick. Which in America is enough to make you a threat to society, as they know it.

Of curse all of this follows on from the contravisty over Tinky Winky in 1999.



4TH Natural Phenomena Named After Frank Zappa


It would appear that scientist's seem to have thing for Frank Zappa. After having a Gene, fish, jellyfish, Mollusc, spider and a planet named after him.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Big 4 alley for the sake of DRM


Sony, Philips, Matsushita and Samsung are coming together for the common good of DRM.

The big four realize along with every one else that if we stick with this disparate cracked sphere of DRM we have at the moment then DRM is doomed to fail.

Their solution is to come together to create a common DRM format that can be used on Multiple devices. They have finally realized that pulling in opposite directions only helps pirates as people want to chose what they do with their data.

After all who is going to download the latest film from the philips media hub if they have a Sony ps4 that they want to play it on. They may wish they could go down the same route as apple and itunes but they have realized that when it comes to home movies that they can not corner the market when it comes to the device, like apple and ipod.

The only choice that these company's have is to alley them selves with each other to try and keep control of the market as it slowly slips out of their fingers like grains of sand in an hour glass.

Ultimately unless there is one grand DRM for all it will never succeed, plus with the advent of the modern PC they are losing control not only of the media but the medium and the platform. Where as once they could reign total control over every part of the process now home PC's provided a loop hole in the system, that they can not close.

Until Microsoft gives them palladium, but even that will not stop the rot, do you think the Chinese are going to stand idle by while the USA creates a system of control that would ultimately give them control over all the PC's on the planet.

If so why are they investing so much in R&D they already have their own 486 processor and I am sure with a threat on their iron grip on power it will not be long till they have faster chips of their own.

Their are already survilists out there, not your michigan militia type stockpiling guns, these survilist are stockpiling PC's without palladium. The bottom of their wardrobe's are full of laptops they are ready for when the internet stop's being a place of free exchange and is renamed Microsoft.NET.

Do not think are government's are going to be their to protect us either they would love the level of control palladium offers. Think about it some one in UK government leaks yet another government dossier, only this time not only is the copy digitally traceable to the source, but they all so have the power to contact Microsoft and say we want to suppress this file.

A Signal would simple be sent out across the net and no palladium crippled PC would open the file in fact if it was on your hard drive it would be deleted. Is this really the world we want to live in?

Using palladium the government would even be able to limit who would be able to print out the file, stopping the paper trail. If you think this sounds bad the UK goverment stopping whistle blowers. Imagine in Africa the atrocities that could be covered up, these would be of far more consequence.

To late we are already there palladium is already in the processors of all the new PC's and slowly but surely is being introduced into the supporting hardware too. Why do think that windows XP force's you to relicence your software if you change a major hard ware component.

In the future image a world where they will not turn on your copy of XP unless all the parts in your PC are palladium crippled too. The EULA that no one reads will have a new paragraph about Microsoft's right to delete what they deem to be illegally content off your hard drive at will.

With a click of your mouse you will give away control over the contents off your hard drive. That is why Microsoft is using it's "partners" to try and stop the uptake of Linux after all once it gets in to council offices it is not long before people, ordinary people start to use it at home.

Imagine if we all used a totally free, totally open operating system how would they make a profit then? How would they control us? What would we do with are new found freedom?



I am back

Just to let you know that the operation went ok.

The hospital was as depressing and under staffed as it was last time I went in. At least this time I was not on the cancer ward with all the dying old men, Now that was truly depressing.

Then again that's the NHS for you, At least we have full medical coverfor free I suppose I could live in the 3rd world or America with you have to have insurance.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Four-week wait for iPod Shuffle



I can not sleep and my eye's are tired so what better thing to do than browsing the web. I came across this on CNN.

Apple has done it again another must have product where demand out strips supply. Ofcurse you would think they would know how many they where going to sell, and so make enuth, but then again apple delivers every last order on time, does not make head lines or generate interest in your product.

Not yet released in the UK for general sale unless up buy from apple by the looks of it. There is a good article over on macworld.com about the pros and cons of the device.

Basically it boils down to a no frills ipod or and alternative for those of you who run. I remember when I had my Mini disc player and went running in the gym I had to put it on the machine next to me to stop the skipping.

For those of you who are considering importing them the USD price is $99 on the apple website which works out at 53.4347 GBP over on www.xe.com which works out cheaper than the current price Amazon has them for £69.00. For now it looks like you could save at most £5 to £10 by importing one.

If your the type that likes to see inside and what makes things work over on apple Matters they have taken one apart. So you don't have too not much to see really but interesting never the less.

Free ipods comes to the UK


At last freeipods.com is now in availbe in the UK. We all now that it works in the USA it's even been on the bbc. The only down fall being that, we live in rip off Britain so we get rip off freeipods.co.uk

For a start it's only an ipod mini, second but most importantly you will be paying for your free ipod in the UK. I signed up last night to see what it is all about.

There is no easy ride with the UK web site. Many of you know about the American site. Sign up for two or three offers keep them for a month and cancel them and the offers are free trial's.

Not so in the UK the offers mainly involve you moving phone companies or signing up for BT broadband. Out of about 12 option's avaible I can only see people actually using 2 or 3 of them. You can applie for the American express Blue card or join one or both of two casinos.

Now it does not stop there you would have to spend £10 on each of the casino web sites before they will send conformation that you have signed up for their offer, or in the case of the credit card spend 500 quid in the 1st year to avoid charges.

Now if I can find 5 people who will sign up with me as there referee and they complete the offers I will do the two casino ones as they are the only ones I can go for as none of the other offers are applicable to me.

I will let you know how it goes or if any one has gone through the process please leave a comment and I will get intouch and maybe you could Wright about your experiences for every one else to read.

I have tried searching for info but you only get 2 pages of result's from google on the UK freeipods and most of them are links to the free ipods page or forum post about it from august.


Naked Blog + Op + 48Hours Down Time

Ok there's a lot to get into this one post so lets get started.

In fact there is so much to get done to day, that I have got straight out of the bath to start this, today is busy, busy , busy. I even have Rammstein on so I must want to get stuff done to day.

There will be no updates of the site after 10pm GMT time tonight for at least 48 hours if not maybe 70 hours. Depending on my my operation goes tomorrow I have to be in hospital at 8AM in the morning. So ofcurse every thing I have been putting off, has to be done today.

Not going in for any thing serious just a Pilonidal Cyst, but this is my 3rd op in year now, over the same thing. Bringing my grand total time off work to about 40 weeks. Unforunalty I am in the minority of cases that start of with a serious infection. I ended up losing a stone in a week and being rushed to hospital for emergency surgery to cut it out of me.

Any way it should be fine this time and I should be home on Friday afternoon, as they only have me down for an over night stay, but last time I bleed so much I was keeped in hospital for an extra day, So we will see what happens this time.

So I have to pack for 2 or 3 days in hospital, clean my room which is mess after walking JD on the beach the other day(JD1, JD2, JD3), there is dried sand every where. My rooms a mess (the pics are off my phone so the quality is not to good),






The mountain of paper work just keep's on coming and that bin needs to go out,



All that ironing still needs doing,



What looks like a black line on the floor in the middle is little mountain of dirt on the floor, I soo need to hover.

Later on befor I go to bed I am going to post about the Free ipods uk web site. For now I have put up a link on the top right for now.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

The new look theme Continued



Isn't the kitty cute, If for some strange reason (unless your a girl, or live in Japan), you too would like a picture of hello kitty on you ipod, there is this How2 over on engadget.com

Brushed ipod



Tired of having the same ipod as every one else?

Then why not head over to the Brushed ipod they have some ideas on how to customize your ipod and best of all they wont void the warranty.

There is even a step by step how2 with pics just click next of the main page to access it.


I must say I much prefer the bronze look above as opposed to this silver one.