I use eMusic’s download manager to handle album downloads from that website, and on one of my computers I haven’t bothered to install Firefox, and instead use Safari. Safari 3.x on OS X Leopard (10.5.x) restricts automatic opening of files downloaded from the internet, which is a bit annoying if you want an application to do its thing without a lot of irritating clicking about. Automatic opening is restricted to “safe” files by default, a setting that can be overridden in Safari preferences, although removing this restriction seems to simply prevent any files from opening automatically at all, which is even more useless. There is a way to work around Safari’s overbearing nannying, though. (more…)
0 comments 2008-07-22 21:54 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff
A Voyage to the Edge of Madness
(With sincere apologies to H. P. Lovecraft.)
It was in the depths of drear winter when I first sought to acquire that dark magic known only through fragments of ancient, incomprehensible legend as Veepee Enn. It is a dread name, and initiates speak of the thousandfold paths to attainment of its secrets, hinting often at some deep unknowable hierarchy through chains of characters concocted to discourage all but the most determined seeker. Lines of impenetrable seeming-nonsense serve to keep the novice from approaching the level of those who control the communications of a galaxy of possibilities, and unless the elect can decipher the meanings of the names of entities such as “The eight-hundred-and-seventy-seventh W, Gee Eee, K the Ninth,” he should abandon any wish he may have to attain true greatness.
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0 comments 2008-03-26 22:45 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff, Rage
The Register is currently running a poll to determine the best science fiction movie quote of all time. Now, one doesn’t expect scientific precision from online polls. It would be unwise to base any real decisions on the outcome of a survey like this. It is accepted that a certain amount of friendly hacking could easily skew the results beyond any sensible measure of accuracy, so one should never take these things seriously. At the very minimum, however, one expects to be able to actually register a vote for one’s choice. It’s the one basic prerequisite of web-gimmicks like this that a vote, once cast, should be counted, but this poll is clearly a great big fat fraud, because no matter how often I try to make the obvious choice for the best quote in that list by a mile*, nothing happens. Indeed, the dissipated hacks at The Register must have something specific against Back To The Future, because they’re only letting it register two (2) votes in total, and it’s languishing at the very bottom of this fraudulent list of lies, beneath such classics as the Jay Leno cameo in Contact. Bah. And where, pray tell, is the button for “1.21 gigawatts!?”
*Not sure what’s going on with the music there, but this was the best clip I could find of Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need… roads.
0 comments 2008-03-03 22:24 Categories: Film, Geek Stuff, Rage
In response to a previously related incident involving the security of our postal delivery arrangements, I recently invested in a Y-Cam Black. I have had suspicions regarding the moral integrity of some of the regular users of the footpath that runs past our house for a while now, but the theft of sixteen Chuck Ds worth of train tickets confirmed them. In an effort to thwart any further attempts at stealing my possessions via this particular method, I moved our postbox inside our front porch, and affixed the Y-Cam Black in a suitable position to monitor both the box and any parcels placed on the floor inside. Triggered by the motion activation feature built into the camera, it uploads still pictures to an FTP server whenever anyone enters the porch. This arrangement allows me to see any activity related to postal deliveries to my property, and, potentially, any criminal efforts on the part of the mentally subnormal, mail-bothering yokels that frequent our lane.
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2 comments 2008-03-01 22:00 Categories: Computers, Consumerism, Geek Stuff, Reviews
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
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
Because I am the sort of person who alphabetises his collections of things for fun, I’ve been using Applescript to help tidy up my iTunes library recently. It’s actually an efficient tool for the job, and not too horrible to work with either once you get used to the syntax; for someone used to C-based languages, a typical statement seems at first glance to have a load of extraneous words and far too little punctuation, but you soon get the hang of it. Thanks to the integration provided by the iTunes dictionary you can assign genres by artist name, split compilation album track names into correct artist and title settings, sort video files as TV shows, and so on, all with a single click (and a few hours reading the docs and writing the code, of course). It’s one of those gratifyingly useless, boring pastimes that dorks like me prefer to the crucially important, fascinating things that normal people do, like playing golf and watching telly and talking about cars and shopping. A normal person would probably just put up with having all their songs in some sort of soul-revolting, multiple-artist-spelling, TV-shows-in-the-movies-section multiple metadata pile-up, but I am not normal, and I will not tolerate such carnage on my own computers. Nor am I willing to spend days typing all that stuff in manually: I’m a geek, not a lunatic. (more…)
5 comments 2008-01-19 23:54 Categories: Computers, Geek Stuff
This is my obligatory Apple fanboy Macworld opinion post. Deluded advocates of other, lesser computer and consumer electronics manufacturers should avert their gaze now. (more…)
0 comments 2008-01-16 13:35 Categories: Computers, Consumerism, Geek Stuff
- Literary event of the year: Kittenwar: The Book. The launch party was brilliant fun, thanks to everyone who turned up.
- Best book about cats not written by me and Fraser: Cat Getting Out of a Bag by Jeffrey Brown. This is a smashing little book, endearing and beautifully observed. Chronicle are clearly the quality cat-book publisher.
- Best book not about cats and not written by me and Fraser: Oystercatchers, by my mate Sue, read it now.
- Album of the year: We Can Create by Maps. Lovely.
- Most overrated album of the year: Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. Am I the only person in the world who thinks this is a load of whiny rubbish? And I liked Funeral, too. Deeply disappointing.
- Best animated feature, and about time too: Futurama - Bender’s Big Score.
- Best computer I have owned to date: 15″ Apple MacBook Pro. Not quite perfect, and Leopard is a bit crashy still, but much nicer than using Windows on some shonky PC.
- Depressing non-event of the year: our house sale. The current state of this almost eight-month long transaction is so fragile that I’m wary of discussing it in public for fear of the remote possibility that our buyers might read what I think of them and take offence, so I’m going to leave it until the sale has fallen through entirely or (unlikely, this) completed before relating the full saga. It’s a cracking story though; the whole experience has led me to believe that English property law needs serious reform, perhaps involving the statutory deployment of stocks and public floggings as deterrent measures for recalcitrant parties.
- Scary number of the year: 30.
That’s about it, see you next year.
5 comments 2007-12-31 14:05 Categories: Animation, Books, Cats, Comics, Computers, Consumerism, Geek Stuff, Kittenwar &c., Music, Personal, Rage