Having watched the highs and lows of the dotcom bubble, it's interesting to see how things are emerging this time around. I'm closely watching Odeo (blog here) and 24 Hour Laundry. For about five months I've known Diego was involved and he's finally come clean(!) about it. Given the amount of work a double-super-smart guy like Diego has put into the product, it must be something worth the wait.
In the meantime, I'm going to finally understand what the Long Tail is (ahhh, thanks wikipedia!) and try to find someone with cash who wants to fund my ideas. ;-)
Whilst those in the south were enjoying some damp sounds, we here in the north were enjoying incredibly warm and sunny weather. On Saturday I only just managed to prise myself away from sitting outside enjoying a pint to watch Andrew Murray, our new Scottish national hero, lose to David Nalbandian at Wimbledon. Next year we could have a reall winner in contention!
It's been quite a while since I watched a film. Two weekends ago, I caught the most enjoyable and relatively short Run Lola Run. It was the first DVD I bought years ago thanks to the soundtrack having a great track on it (Believe by Frank Potente), and never got around to watching.
The story is pretty simple, but is well put across. Definitely recommended for something slightly different to the norm.
At the other end of the spectrum in terms of film length was The Aviator, which we watched at Jams's home cinema on Saturday. It felt like we were there for several days, but apparently it was just 170 minutes.
The IMDB entry for the film has a user comment that says A curious film in so many ways; it is a truly gorgeous film, great cinematography and editing to keep it as tight as possible but there is something missing at his very heart!. I can certainly see where the comment has come from, although overall I did enjoy watching it. It would have been good if Martin Scorsese has managed to find someone with even a hint of keeping-an-accent skills to play Katharine Hepburn; Cate Blanchett was all over the place, making it somewhat painful to listen to.
Howard Hughes was a very interesting character, and I'm going to pick up a book about him for going on holiday. If you'd like a potted history of the man, there is no better place to start than Wikipedia.
This year's Big Brother has finally kicked into gear for me.
Roberto was evicted last night, following a very close vote between himself and Derek. Based on previous years, I'm guessing Derek will be up for eviction the next few weeks, but will stay in for a while yet. During the week, the house has pretty much split into two camps: one with the 'white' people and one with the 'ethnics', as Makosi put it. There should be *plenty* of fireworks to come.
After last year's evilness of putting two housemates into the bedsit, something along those lines was to be expected again this year. Last night three new potential housemates arrived in Big Brother's Secret Garden. At the moment, they quite literally have nothing. They arrived in their underwear (Eugene has a particularly attractive tan) and have had to forage for their food in the main house. It's going to add a new dimension to the house which should keep things interesting
As of this week I'll be tracking the evictees. For winner right now, I'm picking ... Makosi. It would be fun to select Science, who I do think will go a long way, but he's likely to annoy even his suppoters in the house, I fear.
Last Saturday six of us headed over to the R.E.M. gig at Balloch, on the side of Loch Lomond. By the time we got ourselves organised and over there, the Zutons were on stage ... and we still had all our booze to drink, seeing as you couldn't even take cans into the concert. After some refreshments, we headed in, caught the end of Feeder and managed to get a pretty decent spot just behind the soundboard position but with a pretty decent view of the stage.
A very short while later, the boys were on stage, rocking out I Took Your Name straigh into What's The Frequency Kenneth?. My memory is a little hazy (in general, plus I was far too into the music to care :-D ), but the set flew past far too quickly.
Highlights for me were definitely the (slightly) older tunes: One I Love, Drive, Cuyahoga, Electrolite, Orange Crush & Find The. To me, some of the material from the last album was a little lacking, although in saying that I had only heard it once the night before. Finally seeing R.E.M. live on stage after SO many years of listening to them was incredible. They really did have a lot of energy, and connected well with the crowd.
Speaking of the crowd, it was a weird one. It wasn't quite a festival crowd, but it was certainly more than a normal concert crowd. There were an incredible number of really drunk people, especially young people, and a lot of people for whom R.E.M. being on stage will have been forgotten.
The venue also was not the greatest. Whilst it was cool to be outside in a nice park, anyone behind the soundboard had a broken view, plus there were quite a few trees in the 'arena'. To complete my list of moans, the crowd control at the end of the concert was terrible. Before R.E.M. came on stage, we were told there would be a delay for safety at the end. What this turned into was a lot of slightly inebriated people standing for about 30 minutes to get through one set of gates (for most of that time, with absolutely no movement in the crowd), only to be presented with another set of gates to go through.
Predictably, people started climbing over the 15 foot high fence and others tried to push through it. Eventually the police took away a section of the fence to allow people out, before a serious crush occurred. Rock Steady Security (oh, if ever a name was ironic) really did not win any points on that one, although it may not entirely have been there fault.
Whenever I go to a gig, I always mean to remember or write down the setlist ... but invariably forget. Thanks to Gordon for helping out:
I Took Your Name
Bad Day
What's The Frequency Kenneth?
The One I Love
Wanderlust
Drive
The Outsiders
Cuyahoga
Animal
Leaving New York
Everybody Hurts
Electron Blue
Electrolite
So Fast So Numb
Final Straw
Orange Crush
Walk Unafraid
Losing My Religion
--ENCORE--
Imitation of Life
Great Beyond
Star69
Find the River
I’m Gonna DJ
Man on the Moon
During the day I only took a few pictures, but there are some more on the R.E.M. site (see the live photos section).
Overall, it was wonderful to see a band I've been listening to for over half my life (YIKES!). Next time they tour, I'll defniitely sort tickets now my duck has been broken.
- a comedy Lord of the Rings as animated gif. Thanks, Fergus.
- if you've got stuff you don't need, why not use Freecycle (direct link to Freecycle Edinburgh); you post what you no longer need, then hopefully someone who does need it gets in touch and takes it off your hands. Via this BBC article.
Whilst I did send my dad a proper card for Father's Day, I thought this was pretty funny.
As it has turned out, my overbuying of tickets for friends to see R.E.M. at Balloch on Saturday has left me with two three spare. If you know of anyone who'd like to take them off my hands at face value, please leave a comment or else get in touch.
After seeing R.E.M. play Glasgow Green last night (it helps to have a memorable name like Stewart Little when you call radio competitions) my parents are continuing to stay young with some new technology: a digital video recorder.
One year ago today I passed my driving test. All I wanted to do was hop in a car and go for a drive, but the rental companies quickly put paid to that idea, when they stipulated I needed my licence for one year before they'd even *think* about renting to me (of course, that's different in the States).
Having survived the year without a car apart from occasional times (thank you, Polly!), I have now sent off my application for the Edinburgh City Car Club. The ECCC is kind of like hiring a car, but it works out efficiently to do so for a short period of time, even just a few hours. There are a bunch of locations around the city where a car can be collected from ... including one about two minutes from my flat. I've got no current plans to buy a car, as much as I'd like a fresh set of wheels to zoom about on.
It just feels good to be past the first year. Happy happy!
As part of a corporate fundraising activity, my brother currently has an auction on eBay offering 15 minutes of fame. Really.
Go and check it out so that you can appear on TV in an advert. Go go go.
It's taken WAY too long, but I've finally got a whole load of pictures I had lying on various memory cards uploaded as well as editing some galleries that were online already. There is one last gallery to go, but it's huge and needs some serious editing. For now, enjoy:
- California pictures
- London Marathon pictures
- my birthday
- one quick picture of Robbie & Max (Robbie is my Godson)
You can almost watch this story gather pace as geeks everywhere link to it: Nerds Make Better Lovers. I don't consider myself a geek/nerd, but perhaps I should. All comments from Hazel are banned for this post. ;-))
As I felt last night, there was no new P-series phone announced this morning. It looks like September will be the launch date. :-(
Things are not looking good for the new phone announcements tomorrow, it has to be said. There had been plenty of excitement about the 'P1000' being released, but it now appears that will not be happening until September. :-(
Sources:
Tomorrow morning at 8.30am BST (9.30am CET) really could be a pretty painful start to the week. Thus are the highs and lows of technolust.
According to this site (in Swedish), there will be a P1000 announcement on Monday. This is, approximately, the most exciting (technology) news I've heard in FAR too long.
In additiona to generally beefed up processing power, here's what I'm expecting:
- Wi-Fi
- 3G
- UIQ version 3
- a multi-megapixel camera (I'm thinking 2MP)
- 640x480 screen, with more colours
- rotatable screen, so that landscape mode can be used for browsing
- support for big Memory Stick Duo cards -- I don't think Sony are clever enough yet to step away from them, to the chagrin of many
[Update @ 18.46 GMT]: bonus links: esato thread and the feedster view. Apparently it has the codename of Hermione; I hope that's kept quiet at launch!
Chatzilla has stopped working for me from home, and I simply can't get it to work. Thanks to Erik and Jim, I'm back up and running with a dual solution:
- I've got CGI::IRC to give me Web-based access
- and I've got irssi on my Linux box, so that I can SSH in
The R.E.M. gig at Balloch is going to rock, but it's not the easiest place to get to as there's very limited public transport -- not ideal for 40,000 fans.
After pondering group transport, I did some searching today and got some good travel and transport information for getting to and from the concert. There's also a schedule: gates open at 3pm, first band on at 3.30pm, R.E.M. on at 8.30pm.
The driving option doesn't look hugely palatable, seeing as that means no beers + most likely sitting in traffic queues for hours, on both legs of the journey. If there are still spaces on the bus, I may have to persuade my comrades to take that method ... unless any lovely person is taking a minibus and happens to have a few spare seats...
As always, I like to give something back to the Web, so I updated the thread I found on the murmurs.com fan site.
Every so often a new list of words as used by the kids comes out. Here's the latest list from the BBC. Some of them aren't so new: random & standard have been ... standard in my vocabulary for some time now.
If you're unsure what shizzle speak is actually like, pop something into into Gizoogle (via forevergeek) and you'll soon see.
A friend of a friend, Louise Voss, is a writer with several books already published. However she has hit a small snag with her latest book, Games People Play, in that she has limited resources to promote it.
The email I received describes the book as a romcom/chick-lit/family drama type story with a sporting sideline, and it would be enjoyed by readers into Nick Hornby's work. It's ideal for taking on holiday and reading on the beach, too. [Amazon reviews are here.]
Along with the very small amount of publicity I'm able to offer her here, I came up with the following suggestions:
- serialise the book as a blog, gathering comments along the way. Possibly even micropayments for access to the next chapter
- record the book and get it on to Audible or similar. Ideal for people to take on holiday in an iPod (and we do know you're not going to be able to turn around without seeing one of those on holiday)
- turn the book into an ebook and either offer it directly on her own site or use an aggregator
- turn the book into a series of podcasts, supported by ... adverts in the podcasts?
- ensure her listing is fully up-to-date on amazon.co.uk/.com/.de/...
Don't forget, you can even go into a real-world shop and buy the book straight off the shelf, if you're that way inclined!
OK, so I know I'm way slow on playing with podcasts, but I really am too lazy to download stuff. Tonight was my first play with the Next Big Thing, and it was a perfect night for it.
I was meeting a friend for dinner, which meant I had a 15 minute walk from the office to the restaurant, giving me time to listen to tartanpodcast, a podcast of unsigned Scottish bands made by a guy in Glasgow (I found it here in this BBC article). It was an excellent experience -- new music, which I love, from local bands, in a handy little format!
Thanks to Matt for some pointers, I also grabbed Rob Glaser (Real Networks) on ITConversations and the latest Coverville which just so happens to have an R.E.M. cover on it. Just for good measure, I popped the BBC's Go Digital on there too. Walking home after dinner I fired up my audio player once again and meandered slowly home catching up on the BBC podcast.
From now on, I'm going to be sure to keep a few podcasts ready for listening, as well as my headphones. It's probably worth pointing out that I haven't gone soft and bought an iPod; this is all being done on my phone, with the files transferred (slowly) via Bluetooth. All I need to do now is work out a neat way to implement what Chris is suggesting here using my basic UNIX skills, then I'll have some fresh podcasts each morning. This could be a serious encouragement to get ready for work 20 minutes sooner in order to have time to walk in. This scheme in Glasgow schools could easily be extended to exercise, no?
For those of you even further behind the times than I am (is there anyone?), here are a few handy pointers:
- the BBC explains podcasts, and gives links to their current offerings including documentary archives and the 8.10am interview on Radio4 (man, I grew up with that...)
- PodcastAlley, a directory of podcasts
- ipodder, another directory of podcasts
- ScotPod, Scottish podcasts
[Update at 11.22am GMT]: How on earth could I miss out my fellow Mobitopian and Edinburgher Ewan?!?!? Check out his rock podcasts here. (Apologies, Ewan!)
On Monday night we watched a great programme about the McLibel case, where are postman and a gardener took on, and beat, the might of McDonalds. There's loads of information, including more about the BBC programme, on their site.
It has been almost a year since I last had a McDonalds, and that was just because I wanted to 'Drive-Thru' whilst in the States. After seeing how some of the animals are treated, I will not be back in. My attempts to only eat meat that has come from quality sources will also be increased.
Another thing it made my incredibly aware of was the efforts my parents went to to ensure my siblings and I ate a balanced and healthy diet. Big respect to my mum and dad, especially when they had to satisfy an appetite like mine!
Before Jim pointed it out, I hadn't heard of the Google Web Accelerator, but I don't like what I'm reading. As much as I like Google, it seems like they are trying to control far too much online activity. Beware!
Hazel finished her Race For Life in an extremely respectable 32 minutes on Sunday, especially given the disgusting conditions and the absolute lack of any practice. More to the point, she enjoyed herself, so there is more running planned!
Shauna was also running and has a good update here.
Over the last few months I've been considering secretly signing my parents up for broadband, because whilst they don't use the Web that much, it would make their experience of using it so much more enjoyable. Plus all those pesky Windows updates would come down that much faster and it would let them do other stuff they haven't thought about yet.
Talking to Evans tonight, he was saying he'd changed his connection to a PayAsYouGo version with Metronet. My first port of call whenever anyone tells me about a new ISP is to check against my own ISP, Zen, which continually comes out top of the ratings, on the ADSLguide site. The comparison looks pretty favourable, so if Evans reports back with positive findings, my parents may well be surfing at speed quite shortly. Just don't tell them. ;-)
It seems I may be back in the groove with blogging. It's not like I found a whole lot of time, but I'm just putting more effort in. The subconscious lure of filthy lucre must be stronger than I thought. ;-)
When we were in Hamburg, we stayed at the fabulous 25hours hotel (beware: site has music). It really was a great and very cool place to stay, but it didn't seem that busy, so I've done my bit by providing a review of our stay (my first ever on Tripadvisor). It's finally been posted, after a few days for human review.
In case you missed my travel site recommendations, you simply MUST visit tripadvisor before staying at any hotel. This particular hotel was part of Design Hotels, which will also be a place I visit next time I'm looking for somewhere cool to stay.
dwlt has just launched a service to put your Ta-da Lists on to your own site, formatted styleeee. Nice.
These appeared just after I posted the previous linkage:
- Diego adds his thoughts on Apple's move to x86 (VERY VERY funny)
- Happy Birthday Diego
- Isaack reports on iMuffs, Apple-esque Bluetooth headphones
- little.yellow.different, a great blog I discovered
- Boeing 777-200LR flight test blog
- Rabble has launched, although not in the UK just yet. Russ is excited
- Apple are allegedly about to move to an x86 architecture, also via Russ
- Yagoohoogle is now Twingine. Search both Yahoo! and Google in one easy go
After reading about Russ pocketing a very nice amount of cash via Google AdSense, I decided to have another shot at signing up for the programme myself (the last two times I've been rejected, but I think that was when they were not accepting blogs).
If you're actually reading this on my site, you'll see the lovely ads at the top of this page. I'm going to see if anyone clicks through, and if the content actually turns out to be relevant. Testing is now in progress!
Completely unprompted by me, Hazel has decided to do the Edinburgh Race For Life, this Sunday in Holyrood Park. It's all in aid of Cancer Research, and I know Hazel would love you to stop by and sponsor her if you felt so inclined.
There is a plan for food after the race, so get in touch if you want to join us for lunch. Hazel's pretty fit despite what she says, so the 5km should not take her long. Just give one of us a call after midday and we'll tell you what the script is.
On a related note, if you know anyone looking for a team member for the Edinburgh Marathon one week on Sunday, please leave a comment below.
It's that time of year again for Big Brother to appear on the screen. You can keep up online here and here.
Seeing as I've managed to chop the TV aerial and my repair is only part working ... with the working part excluding both Channel4 and E4, I may have to coerce Fiona into assisting as she did so ably last year.
For dinner last night I knocked up a lamb and bean stew [please note: I obviously multiplied all relevant values by 4 to ensure I actually got a meal that would fill our plates], with mashed potato and fresh green beans after a light starter of crusty bread and sundried tomatoes in olice oil.
It wasn't a great meal, unfortunately. The lamb was tasty, and the beans good ... but the sauce had some strange tastes going on. Time to try something different.
Nice work Bram! Search for torrents straight from the front page of bittorrent.com, saving eight keystrokes compared to using google.
One thing that is immediately apparent when you get back to the UK from Germany (and other continental countries), is how little recycling we do. In Germany (well, my experiences in several major cities) is of recycling at almost all bins, or at least for paper & glass, and full recycling in the home. We're just not digging that here in the UK.
It's going to be an interesting time in Edinburgh! The centre of the city is really very very small, so where a million people would safely go is going to be a real challenge.
Dietmar and Birte's wedding weekend in Eutin and then Hamburg was a huge success. There are a million pictures that will tell the story much better than words can describe, but suffice to say that the Thursday night we arrived there was one of the top five nights of my entire life with a quite legendary group of people I am extremely lucky to be able to call my friends. Quite literally, I almost laughed myself to death.
Anthony just want to Italy and, as always, has reported back with some wonderful pictures.
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