Category: geekage

Linkage for March 2006

Stuff that’s proved handy/fun/vaguely interesting recently.

Bubblr
Add speech bubbles to photos from flickr. Tell little stories, then save them and e-mail them to friends.
Carson workshops podcast
MP3s of the talks from the Future of Web Apps thing. I’m particularly interested in Tom Coates’ and Cal Henderson’s talks, since I’m working on a large-ish image archive at the moment. All the talks are worth listening to. Why no MP3 from the Adobe/Macromedia guy?
The more-or-less complete Boiled in Lead
Gypsy violins. Electric guitars. Long hair. Tattoos. How can you go wrong with that combination? I was going through a box of old CDs that I haven’t listened to for years. I found four discs by Boiled in Lead – mementos of my time living in the Midwest. The early stuff is mostly English folk and Irish reels. Later stuff brings in Eastern European, Turkish and African tunes – even a venture into Thai music. The sort of band that could say “we found a kaen in a shop, so we sat down and recorded something with it”. Good stuff.
More trees and hierarchies in SQL
One of those articles I keep going back to, so I thought it worth mentioning. Plus it’s something to read if you find yourself stuck with insomnia in the middle of the night. Current project involves pictures classified with keywords along the lines of “crime: piracy” or “water transport: sailing vessel: pirate ship” so I’m parsing the text and using the adjacency table model to store it in a relational database.
Decommissioned FA2 Sea Harrier
We have a new toy at work. I wish we could let people sit in the cockpit and pretend to fly it. It would be like those little rides you find outside supermarkets. But larger. And with air-to-air missiles.
Royal Observatory circa. 2002
My first ever venture into CSS layouts. Since merged into the table-based Maritime Museum site but preserved by the magic of the Wayback Machine. It brings a nostalgic tear to my eye. I wish I’d pushed harder on sticking with tableless layouts too. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Oh look, one of those meme thingies

Welcome to the 2005 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy this entire blog entry and paste it onto a new blog entry that you’ll post. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then publish! Leave a comment if you do this.The theory is that you will learn a lot of little (random) things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

What time did you get up this morning?
8:30am
Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds. James Bond has taught me that you can build orbiting death ray lasers with diamonds. How many weapons of mass destruction can you build with a set of pearls, huh?
What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
The beat that my heart skipped
What is your favourite TV show?
Scrubs
What do you usually have for breakfast?
Toast, delicious toast. With a mug of tea.
Favourite cuisine?
Not sure. Thai, probably.
What food do you dislike?
Anchovies. Marmite too.
What is your favourite CD at the moment?
Mogwai, Government Commissions. last.fm says I’m listening to yo la tengo a lot.
Morning or night person?
What are these mornings of which you speak?
Favourite sandwich?
BLT
What characteristic do you despise?
Arrogance.
Favourite item of clothing?
New red chucks. Second place goes to the old red chucks.
If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?
Madrid.
What colour is your bathroom?
White with an old red carpet I ought to replace one day.
Favourite brand of clothing?
Huh?
Where would you retire to?
The Caribbean (like that’s going to happen, but hey, why not?)
What was your most memorable birthday?
I can only remember the last one, and then only vaguely. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Favourite sport to watch?
Cricket’s nice to have on in the background. I don’t have the patience to sit still and watch anything for 90 minutes or more.
Who do you least expect to complete this?
The two people who actually read it.
Person you expect to complete it first?
Huh?
Person who is least busy?
See above.
When is your birthday?
28th June
What is your shoe size?
9
Pets?
None.
Any new and exciting news you’d like to share with us?
Sadly, no, my life is dull.
What did you want to be when you were little?
Astronaut? I’m not sure.
What is your favourite flower?
Flowers are girly. (ok, I like carnations).
What date on the calendar are you looking forward to?
Christmas!
One word to describe the person who you snaffled this from?
Hoopy.

Back (in black)

I’ve revived this site, after almost a year. It started attracting an awful lot of comment spam, and trackback spam, so I turned off comments and stopped updating it until I’d figured out what to do about spam. Then MT 3.2 came along, with built-in filtering and I got broadband. So I thought, “Why not revive eat your greens?” Indeed. Just need to decide what to do with it now.

Useful stuff that’s come up in the last 12 months:

My flickr account
All new digital photos are being posted there, rather than here. A few old ones are going up too, as I find them on various hard drives scattered about the place. Older photos are still on this site
Joe Clark’s accessibility workshop
“The discussion between Joe and the audience on the subject of real practical issues was most helpful”. Yes indeedy.
Smart playlists in iTunes
Handy guide from Andy Budd on creating playlists from other playlists. My iPod is up to 4,500 songs now, so it’s useful to program it to play songs I rarely listen to.
The War of the Worlds, from Dark Horse Comics.
A serialisation of the original Victorian novel. Updated every Friday.
Live Music Archive
Too much Grateful Dead for my taste, but I’ve downloaded a Camper van Beethoven show from 1988 and shows by the Handsome Family and fIREHOSE.