Archive for October, 2008

The joys of the silver screen

// October 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

It’s been an age since I did a meme thingy but I stole this from the Facebook profile of Matt

“SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.”

(more…)

And we’re online

// October 30th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

Finally.

We’ve been given use of a shared, ADSL connection here at the flat – no great shakes but at least good enough for email and web browsing. Of course they couldn’t remember the WEP key but thankfully … it was a WEP key, took approx 10 minutes to break – which is scary when you come to think of it.

Now to setup one of the routers to bridge the connection so we can use it in more places than the corner of the bed room by the window :-)

Who are you?

// October 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

An interesting point raised by Robert Llewellyn in one of his recent Llewtube vids what should we brits refer to ourselves as?

This already difficult question is complicated even further by geographical sub divisions. For example, most Jersey Beans would deny (correctly) being even remotely English and would have a problem being classed as British. Even those for whom the country of origin is in little doubt will often self classify based on their region – Scousers, Geordies etc.

In answer to the question (posed most frequently by Americans oddly enough) “so you’re British” I will almost always reply in the negative. I, for one, am English in the same way that the Scots are Scottish, the Welsh are … well Welsh and the Cornish are … complicated.

So how about you? Are you British, English, A Bean, Geordy, Texan, American, or none of the above … ?

Seeing the Llight

// October 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

or rather hearing The Llight which doesn’t have quite the same ring as a headline.

And what is The Llight? They’re a band, specifically a band in which my cousin Paddy plays bass, sings a bit and no doubt handles all the creative input stuff to boot.

These guys aren’t your run of the mill, back of the pub crooners either. Their sound is modern, upbeat and filled with hypnotic rhythms and classic harmonies. The lyrics are intelligent (a bit rough round the edges in places but give them time) and come straight from the heart without a hint of the self indulgent bollocks that makes up so much of the shite in the charts these days.

Don’t belive me? Check out The Llight’s live session on Radio Stoke’s Subclulture, and then head over to their online store where you can grab a copy of their debut EP Dont’ Let the Bastards Grind You Down for nothing more than 3 quid (which buys you 4 DRM free MP3s of Llightness … Enllightment??? Whatever).

For those of you reading this and thinking – what does Rob know about music I’d remind you that the last band I gave props to before they broke big time were the Arctic Monkeys, with a limited release EP, bought online for a few quid… so get ahead of the curve, jump on the bandwagon and grab that EP … NOW!!!

You can also find them on Facebook & MySpaz.

Seam Carving to resize images

// October 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

Seam Carving is an image resizing technique that Jeremy originally pointed out to me … whilst on the phone … walking … through the rain … to the pub … funny what you remember eh?

When J and I discussed it, Seam Carving was available as a GIMP plugin which meant installing GIMP.

Well now there’s a whole Seam Carving GUI available to make the job that much easier (not that it was that hard in GIMP) so get it out there and carve baby CARVE!

Harry Potter just keeps getting darker

// October 27th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

The trailer for the latest movie in the Harry Potter franchise has hit the interwebs and the series looks like following the books in terms of a continued spiral into dark and depressing narrative:

Sans Interwebs – update

// October 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal, Tech

Well it may not be the ideal but it looks like we might be back online rather sooner than planned thanks to the Wifi offered by the hotel complex.

Whilst it’s still a short term fix it will do for basic browsing and email at home. I still need to find a solution to the bigger issue but I’m sure I can get that sorted.

Hopefully we’ll have the bridge connected on Thursday so we shall see what happens :-)

Trumpets!!!

// October 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

Every so often there are a series of ads, born of creative genius, that are so fundamentally perfect they actually eclipse the original purpose of the medium and become viable entertainment in their own right…

I’m speaking, of course, of the Natural Confectionery Co. advertisements that have been gracing our screens for the past few months. The ads follow a simple enough premise – the sweets / products of the Natural Confectionery Co. are animated in simple stop motion (or in some cases not moving at all) and given voices to produce some very surreal 30 second shorts.

Leaving aside the content, the camera work is superb, in fact now I come to think of it, there is only one ad where the characters actually move. The rest of the scene to provided by camera cuts, zooms and framing.

Then there’s the dialogue, provided by (as yet unknown) actors who may include popular comedians and personalities the characters discuss their existence with the key theme of natural production (no artificial colour or flavourings) being the only common point in the whole series.

If, by some chance, you’ve managed to miss them then please, hop over to YouTube and watch the lot:

Ahahahahahaha … Trumpets!

Sans Interwebs

// October 21st, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

Will this is a pickle. The new flat, by virtue of being part of a Hotel block, has phone lines in all the apartments … which feed straight into a PABX digital switchboard…

The long and short of this is, despite having been assured by the person who showed us around the apartment that internet would not be a problem, is that getting a link to the outside world is proving to be a little problematic.

Not only will I need to get an engineer out to connect the socket direct to the exchange (rather than the switchboard) but I have to get a letter from the holding company of the apartment to authorise said work AND pay the £120 fee to get the work done. I then have to instruct Newtel to move the internet service and wait 2 weeks before it’s actually connected as well as paying a further £50 to move the link.

So £170 and 2 weeks from now I may be online at home again … or I may just move into the office :-)

Moved – mostly

// October 13th, 2008 // No Comments » // Personal

This weekend was one of those … two days with very little time for R&R which ends with the distinct feeling that you need a two day break to recover from it all.

The GGF and I have finally moved into our own place. We’d been considering the move for a while but were finally given the push by our old landlord who decided to perform a spectacular, tires smoking, engine screaming 180o on us being allowed the kittens … and where they go, we go.

After a month or so of searching (the Jersey housing market is a complicated and expensive place at the best of times) and having missed a perfect opportunity in St Ouen due to timing we finally settled on a place in St Peter. Last week saw the GGF moving the contents of wardrobes and kitchens and Saturday was set aside to move “the rest”. The rest consisted of the big stuff, TV, desks, computer, fridge, etc.

Thanks to my family (and their big estate car) and friends (and their van) we managed to get everything in place by Sunday morning and, after much re-arranging and unpacking we actually had somewhere that resembled a house come Sunday evening. The place is not massive which is going to cause me a few issues as I tend to have at least 3 boxes of misc. computer parts and AV equipment kicking around at any given time and these will have to find a home somewhere (and yes, I do use most / all of it at sometime or another) but it is cosy and is the kind of space I can imagine spending some serious quality time over the next few months.

It’s also good to out on our own as, frankly, sharing a flat was fine when at Uni and directly after but it can get a bit irksome when you’re a young professional (allegedly) in a serious (apparently) relationship with 2 bouncy (assuredly) kittens and the prime of your life (hopefully) ahead of you.

So we’re in and truth be told I ache a little today, a fact that will not be improved by playing badminton this evening but at least we’re done and are now well into the 2 week period of not being able to find a flipping thing :-)