Saturday, May 28, 2005

Rio Cidade Maravilhosa

After going thought my old family albums, I found this book from my parents 1980 trip to Rio.

It was falling apart so I decided to scan the pages.

You can see the whole thing here

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

A Gamers Manifesto



All I have to say is that I agree with every word.

Next for BitTorrent: Search



"The new search engine takes that dynamic into account. It resembles Google in operation, with a simple interface and results ranked by an automated process. But unlike a general web search, the BitTorrent web crawler interacts with each torrent behind the scenes to determine the number of nodes downloading and uploading through it. That lets the search engine order its results by the throughput of each torrent."

The Future of Television



There's a great tong in check look at the future of TV By Conan O'Brien, of Newsweek,

"To begin, the trend toward larger and larger televisions will continue as screens double in size every 18 months. Televisions will eventually grow so large that families will be forced to watch TV from outside their homes, peering in through the window. Random wolf attacks will make viewing more dangerous.

And, just as televisions grow larger and more complicated, so will remote controls. In fact, changing channels will soon require people to literally jump from button to button. Trying to change the channel while simultaneously lowering the volume will require two people and will frequently lead to kinky sex."
For a more serious look at the future of TV there is 4 page article by By Steven Levy also of Newsweek. Which takes a more practical look at TV.

"Start with the hardware. Ever notice that no one uses the term "TV set" anymore? That's because people can watch on anything from a traditional box in the den to their computer, to a screen on the seat back of a JetBlue plane."
Both have something to ad in their own way, I have one thought thou, more and more people are point to TV on demand as the next big thing in TV. But what if the next big thing in TV was the off Switch?

I my self since getting a Meg pipe, watch TV less and less, I can not even say I watch the programs I actual want to see. They are ether on in the middle of the day or late at night when I am thinking about going to bed, but end up blogging instead.

I know I could get TIVO, but in the UK the only way to do that is to get sky, I don't need 800+ channels of TV. I also don't agree with paying over £480 ($920 USD) a year for TV full of adds.

Ok so we all have to pay for the BBC, but there are no adds on the BBC it's the only money they get, that and selling stuff to the USA, Well selling Idea's to the USA as Americans will not watch British TV so it all has to be remade in America, by people who have no idea what made the UK one such a hit in the 1st place.

We all know hover that SKY makes millions every year from other add related source's and football income. So the only reason to charge for watching is greed.

When you think about it, which most people don't £480 a year is 50% of a months wages for your average man and woman. 50%! Just to watch TV that's 1/24th of you salary to watch TV. With lots and lots of adverts and sponsorship of program's.

before we get back to the point, just one more side point. Something I was thinking about the other day and if I don't say now never will.

When this great new future comes and all TV is on line and no one buys TV's because we all use are Meg computers or mobile phones or watch on the side of the toaster.

How is the TV licenses going to work?

If I don't own an out and out TV but watch TV on my PC thought a tuner or just dll it in a torrent, or watch in on my phone. Technical I don't have a TV, so don't need a TV license, ok so I may still need one for the tuner in my PC, but what happens in 20 or 15 years times where you don't need a tuner.

what happens when we Finley get rid of BT and every one can get cheap fast BB, and we stream are TV over the net?

Is every one in the UK going to have sign up for a BBC account, and be given their own user name and password?

How are they going to deal with multiple computers in the same home?

More importantly will the BBC survive, Some people may not like being forced to pay the BBC, but think about this.

We all now the big companies keep prices high by agreeing not to sell their products cheap, at the moment in the UK if your selling news you have to compete with the best news service in the world and its 100% free.

The New York times may have decided that the US market may bare the weight of a subscription service, but I doubt the UK one will. Why would you pay to get access to the times archive, when you can not link to it you can not share it with your friends. When you can just link to the BBC web site for free, any one can see it any where in the world.

We are constantly talking about the renewal off the BBC's charter for the TV license and the will they wont they get it.

Let's face they are going to get it the BBC is the thing in Britain we can be proud of the trains are crap the NHS is crap, and a 12 year old could knife you in the street and be sent on a two week holiday to Africa for punishment.

The BBC is safe for now, the real question is, in are ever Americanized UK with Tony Blair at the helm. Can the BBC survive the internet?

Big business is slowly becoming more and more powerfully in the EU, you only have to look at the length Microsoft went too to get the EU to take up the European patent directive, they bought Ireland.

How long can the BBC stand against it's rivals, such as sky? How long can it justify it's existence in a ratings driven world?, where the views are so frangmented?

coming back to the point of the off switch in a round about way, when we do all turn off are TV's are we going to be turning on are Phone/TV or are we going to be doing something else?

Has the internet brought about a shift from passive viewing to active participation?

After all you only have too look at the popularity of programs such as big brother and survivor to see how popular interaction is.

For I do not believe it is the fact that reality TV is popular for it's reality persay more, for it's interactivity. Where we the audience get to fee like we have some control over the program that it belongs to us.

And with this new understanding, that what we actual want is to be more active how long before we all realize that TV is not the answer and turn off TV's and start interacting with real people in the real world over bits of plastic?

Take a look at the internet, especially in the USA, what's the one thing that all big community's eventually end up doing?

They make the move from the net to the real world, and have a con (conference) even minor web sites seem to have con's these day's.

Are we really satisfied with interacting with a computer? Or is it human interaction that we are all after in the end?

Sunday, May 22, 2005

B3ta



When I have nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, I like nothing better than looking at obscene logo's.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Learn to Dance with Napoleon Dynomite



This little Flash offering on Albino Blacksheep. Lets you dance along with Napoleon, with a choice from nine different tracks, including Harder Better Fast - Daft punk and the Star Wars theme. With helpful arrows showing you how to move your body, you too will be able to dance.

Halo Art



Just found this on flickr and thoguht I would share it with you.

sickboy Pro User says:

From what I remember reading in the local paper the guys who painted this mural were unfamiliar with the game and composed the piece from stills in game mags or something like that. Its been awhile and my memory is hazy.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Das Keyboard



Das Keyboard is an enhanced 104-key USB PC keyboard equiped with 100% blank keys mounted on precision and individually weighted key switches.
I have to say i love the idea of the Das Keyboard, but at $79.95 USD I dont think I will be getting one any time soon.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Icon War

Icon war is fun, if some what limited imagination of what would happens when you turn off your monitor and leave your PC on.

Monday, May 16, 2005

HYPERDISTRIBUTION



Is the 1st part of a series on piracy and the way in which bit torrent (or what ever the tool of the day is) and the internet, are effecting not only the way in which we watch television but are attitudes towards television.

"October 18th, 2004 is the day TV died. That evening, British satellite broadcaster SkyOne — part of NEWS Corp's BSkyB satellite broadcasting service — ran the premiere episode of the re-visioned 70s camp classic Battlestar Galactica. (That episode, "33," is one of the best hours of drama ever written for television.) The production costs for Battlestar Galactica were underwritten by two broadcast partners: SkyOne in the UK, and the SciFi Channel in the USA. SciFi Channel programers had decided to wait until January 2005 (a slow month for American television) to begin airing the series, so three months would elapse between the airing of "33" in the UK, and its airing in the US. Or so it was thought."

Relaying heavily on the example of BattleStar Galactica, the 1st well none reverse of the piracy stream from the USA to the UK. That I have every know off in my 15 years on the net. If you are interested in this sort of thing its well worth the read

Sunday, May 15, 2005

The Long Tail



UFO?



Is it UFO? I don't know but that's the question being asked you can see the original google image here. The debate still wages on, But some how I think it's question we will never no the actual answer to.

REJECTED 'LOVE IS..' COMICS



The good people syndicating 'Love Is..' comics recently ran a contest where fans of the long-running strip could submit their own takes on this time-honored classic. This was taken by some to mean that there was an interest in changing or at least shifting the sensibility of the comic, one of the great one-panel strips in cartooning history.

This notion was mistaken. In fact, contained herein are some stabs that very narrowly skirted legal action.

LOL, I don't think there was ever a competition but if there was we should have them more often.

Sprol



Sprol is a planetary sightseeing blog. Visit some of the worst places in the world via satellite imagery. Our mission is to use space imaging to show people the visual macroscopic effects of our decisions and behavior. Since previous generations have not had the advantage of this viewpoint it is our responsibility to use it wisely.
I have to say I like the idea behind sprol, let's face it most of these "Eye saw's" are hidden out of site, and no one ever gets to find out what goes on there. Never mind see the consequence's of the choice of location or the environmental implications.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Google For MP3



I had tried playing round with this my self, after reading breakingwindows how too.

The only problem being it is slow and complicated, and involved lots of copy and past.

Well now there is a much, much easier way, smacki.com has a page up where you can just type, your artist or track in a box and it will do everything for you, how good is that!

Monday, May 09, 2005

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Completing The Look



Some of you may remember the XP to MAC desktop how too, I did a while back, At the time the best skin you could get for winamp was the Ipod skin.

That was until now, Winamp has been buggin me to upgrade for age's now but I always so no, I like to know what these auto updates do before I let them alter my PC.

any way while rooting round the winamp site I found a skin to make winamp look like OSX. It complete the OSX look far better than the ipod make do skin.

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Ipod Vending Machine



How cool is this, We never get these in the UK, but then again it would not last five min in the uk.

Speaking of ipod's I cheaked my freeipoduk status to see that at last some one else has completed two offers.

I now have 100 referals under me, But these are the few that matter...

  • 46867) - registered - 2/2 completed offers*
  • 52903) - registered - 2/2 completed offers*
  • 76097) - registered - 2/2 completed offers*
  • 32647) - registered - 1/2 completed offers*
  • 44504) - registered - 1/2 completed offers*
  • 66840) - registered - 1/2 completed offers*
  • 68150) - registered - 1/2 completed offers*


  • Now all I need is two of them 4 to complete and I should have a mini soon :)

    Wednesday, May 04, 2005

    Adactio Elsewhere

    A Meme worthy of linkage,

    Adactio Elsewhere

    Is a great new idea, taking advantage of the trend to make public API's Jeremy Keith. Has made use of the Flickr, Amazon, Del.icio.us and upcoming API.

    I quite like the idea of linking all these things together, and having your information displayed upon your own site rather than forcing visitors to go round 5 or 6 sites to find out information about you, but still allowing me to take advantage of the data entry tools made available on the original site.

    Too Picky



    Once I updated this site every day, some times 7 or 8 times a day, Now I find that I am updating once a week if that.

    It's not that I stopped going thought the 1st 50 links on the blog dex, it's not that I stopped reading 25 articles a night, Ok so I don't update on the weekend but I let my self have that off now I am back in work.

    Ok so decent meme's are have thin on the ground for the last 6 or 7 weeks now, but that is not it. I think after spending 4 months searching out good meme's. I have become hardened to new ideas and have high standards, I must admit that some times I read stuff and say "once I would have linked to this, Now it's not worthy".

    I think really it comes down to a more fundamental change blogger was always crappy and problematic, It was not till other blogger user's told me about the problems that they where having with blogger that a noticed or cared it was not till every blog I read was slagging off blogger. That I even gave it a second thought, but now every time I think about posting all I can think about is, is it going to be worth it spend 20 - 25 min's writing a something only to hit publish and have blogger crap out.

    Let's face it, it's not like it takes 25 min to wright most of my peaces but by the time you have spent 15 min trying to sort out blogger and do the republish your entire blog thing to get it to work again. It's just such and arduous chore now, where as in the passed I never noticed and never cared. Now If I even thing about blogger all I can think about is losing half my life, just to make one post.

    Maybe it's time to jump ship.....



    (Just one last grip why the Fuck when using the blogger spell checker. Does it not have the word Blog or blogger in the dictonary?)