Because there’s not much to do in the evenings deep in darkest Yorkshire, I have been entertaining myself recently by installing Debian GNU Linux on a Thecus N2100 NAS box. I used these excellent instructions as a starting point, but there are a few configuration issues left unresolved after following them which can actually be fixed. The contents of this post will mean nothing to just about everyone, but I’m posting it on the off-chance that there might be at least one other individual in the world who might want to use the information contained herein. I’m also quite pleased that I managed to figure it out.
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0 comments 2008-02-22 20:54 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff
Oh dear. Someone at Warner Brothers has obviously been taking lessons from George Lucas on how to really annoy geeks. They’re trying to beat their personal record for dreadful nerd-films by attempting a live action version of Akira. Set in “New Manhattan”. Starring Leonardo Di Caprio. I wish I was joking.
There is a sliver of hope to be taken from the fact that Otomo is being retained as an executive producer, but even he is unlikely to be able to salvage this total non-starter of a project. I predict that this film will redefine the boundaries of celluloid awfulness. I sincerely hope it bombs, because if by some miraculous fluke it succeeds we’ll have a decade or two of even more appalling copycats to endure.
1 comment 2008-02-21 13:34 Categories: Animation, Film, Geek Stuff, Rage
Warning: the following tale contains unsolicited, forthright praise for a large corporate public transport operator. Some readers may experience feelings of dizziness. Do not adjust your browser settings, there is nothing wrong with your computer.
Last weekend an opportunistic individual, I know not whom, somehow managed to abstract a number of envelopes from the locked steel postbox that was until recently bolted to a stake outside our front gate. Said envelopes contained various train tickets for a holiday we had just booked, most of which were tied to specific trains and seat reservations, and were therefore useless to anyone other than me or my wife. One set of tickets, however, booked with National Express East Coast, were valid for use on any off-peak train for a month after the initial booking date. At some point on Saturday morning a helpful passerby found our holiday travel documents scattered around about our gate, gathered them up and replaced them in our postbox, all except the £158.80-worth of open returns to London, which I can only presume are now in the possession of some thieving, Royal Mail-molesting northern pissbiscuit.
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6 comments 2008-02-15 18:22 Categories: Personal, Rage
Jane Eyre is another one of those classics that I should have read before now. It is an entertaining novel of great depth, and worthy of its status. It is also one of those books about which literal acres have been written, so I’m not going to attempt to say anything new about it.
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2 comments 2008-02-14 21:10 Categories: Books, Reviews
Hooray! There’s a new Tindersticks album coming soon. The Hungry Saw will be out in April on Beggars Banquet.
Tindersticks are the best band in the world - shut up you cloth-eared fool, they are - so this makes me very happy indeed. Even though the group appears to have shed no less than half its members in the five years since their last proper offering, Waiting for the Moon, the new preview track is authentic Tindersticks from start to finish. Curiously entitled The Flicker of a Little Girl*, it sounds grand to me, which bodes well for the album. Amongst my friends I know of only two other fans, and far more people who actively dislike them, so I don’t really expect you to share my opinion, but you should give the new song a couple of listens anyway. They’re one of those bands who, precisely because of the idiosyncrasies that put people off initially, inspire quietly lunatic devotion in their fans. It is, I think, well worth making the effort to acquire a taste for their music.
* Sorry if that link doesn’t work properly, I’m unsure of all this newfangled MySpacery.
0 comments 2008-02-13 15:34 Categories: Music
Back in the last millennium I used to spend much of my free time messing about with programs like Cubase and Sound Forge and a selection of analog synth emulators, making agglomerations of sound that could, loosely, be termed music. Making bleepy music is, in fact, what first got me into computers*, and it was ace fun, but I got out of the habit after I started sharing accommodation with human beings whose tastes did not encompass listening to fragments of amateurish breakbeat-based instrumental electronica over and over and over again.
Earlier today, however, I was pleased to rediscover a stack of old CD-Rs containing a multi-volume zip archive from the old Windows 95 PC upon which I composed my masterpieces. For your listening pleasure, then, here are four tracks that I have managed to salvage from the depths of history:
- 24 Feb
- Double
- Corner Case
- 24 Feb (Original Mix)
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0 comments 2008-02-07 18:34 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff, Music, Personal
I’ve had this on my to-read list for years and years, since I read High Fidelity, which must have been in about 1997 or so. The main character in Nick Hornby’s novel cites it as his favourite book, as I recall, and for some reason that stuck with me, and made me think that this must be a definitive work of rock’n'roll literature, and that I must, some day, get round to it. My sister-in-law and her husband bought it for me this Christmas, so I finally have. (more…)
0 comments 2008-02-02 18:10 Categories: Books, Music, Reviews