One of the nice things about OSS is that there's simply TONS of free software available. This is never more true than on Linux (whichever flavour). Ubuntu (my personal fave) is no exception. Recently, I was introduced to a great site for Ubuntu users, Getdeb.net, which is a software portal, basically pointing you to great software for Ubuntu.
Going back to my childhood, i've had a fascination with the stars, planets, galaxies etc., and so it was with great anticipation that I downloaded Celestia, a 3D space simulator.
Basically, this software allows you to travel between the various stellar (and interstellar) objects which make up our universe (well, a little bit of it anyway).What fantastic software! You could spend many hours looking at the various planets / asteroids / comets / stars / galaxies / nebulae etc. etc. etc. (the list is endless)as though you were travelling through space yourself.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Go.. Ricky!
On the subject of Ricky's.... this time not Gervais, but Hatton! Well done, Ricky! Knocking out
Castillo in the fourth is your finest hour, enjoy every minute of your success, a fantastic fight.
It's always nice to see a brit winning something for a change.....
Castillo in the fourth is your finest hour, enjoy every minute of your success, a fantastic fight.
It's always nice to see a brit winning something for a change.....
Flock and the social web
Being an Ubuntu Linux user, i'm a big advocate of Open-Source Software (OSS). As such, I'm a big fan of the Firefox web browser. Being OSS, of course, part of the revolutionary business model of this kind of software is it's ease of being copied, modified, hacked and redistributed as a completely different bit of software (as long as the original licence is still in place of course). Firefox (and other Mozilla technologies) is no different. I recently used the Flock web browser, and am quite impressed. The current version at time of writing is 0.7.14, and is based on firefox, but has various features which facilitates the various social networking services out there, from blogs (indeed, this very blog post was done from within Flock) to social sites such as del.icio.us.
Over and above that, apart from the Ricky Gervais show (read last post), it's been a fairly quiet weekend, went to Mr. Clown's again on Saturday for a couple of hours, and went to a 50th birthday meal (not mine, I hasten to add...) today.
Oh, and the various people who've emailed me on when the new fortean site (StrangeHub.co.uk) will be active (thanks for the interest, by the way!), I'm putting the final touches to it now, so it'll be in the next week or so...
Over and above that, apart from the Ricky Gervais show (read last post), it's been a fairly quiet weekend, went to Mr. Clown's again on Saturday for a couple of hours, and went to a 50th birthday meal (not mine, I hasten to add...) today.
Oh, and the various people who've emailed me on when the new fortean site (StrangeHub.co.uk) will be active (thanks for the interest, by the way!), I'm putting the final touches to it now, so it'll be in the next week or so...
Friday, June 22, 2007
Ricky Gervais
Just (literally, about 20 mins ago) got back from seeing the fantastically funny Ricky Gervais and his "Fame" stand up show at Manchester's M.E.N. Arena. A complete sell-out, about 6000 people, it was another typical example of his amazingly funny talent. Now, to be honest, I don't think it's quite as good as the previous two shows, "Animals" and "Politics", but it was well worth the entrance fee. His unique brand of humour, a mix of political incorrectness and dry observational sharpness, is enthralling especially when he's talking about religion, which is a subject which crops up in a lot of his humour. Snippets such as "I prefer Old-Testament God with the floods and the pestilence whereas New-Testament God is a bit on the wet side" or "Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and if people do believe in God, I don't mind as long as they realise they're wrong", leaves me in no doubt that he is very much in my top 3 of stand-up comics, the other two being Eddie Izzard and, as long time readers of this blog will know, Bill Bailey.
The show starts off with Ricky bursting through the curtains dressed in kingly robes and crown, with a large lit "RICKY" behind him. After that (and explaining how the whole budget went on just that one effect), the show goes along at a good rate, occasionally taking a sip from the handy can of beer which is placed behind the large gold Emmy which is placed on the stage, which actually precipitated a shout from one member of the audience that they couldn't see much of him from where they were, but they were put down once he'd explained that the majority of the show didn't get much more visual than just watching him speak.
One of Ricky Gervais's strengths is just how obviously clever the guy is, but it's often his ramblings about things he doesn't know which is the funniest, such as the oft-said "how did the first human get AIDS, since we know it comes from monkeys?" to which his funny conversation carries on "the human goes to the doctor, doctor tells him he's got AIDS, he asks how he got it.. and is given two reasons... 1) He's been having sexual relations with monkeys, or 2) he's been chopping up monkeys and accidentally cut his finger at the same time", guess which option the human chose to save embarrassment!
His charity work also features prominently in the show, including his AIDS and Cancer benefit gigs in the UK as well as the US, and also there were a few little digs to Dawn French, after her funny sketch in "French and Saunders" ridiculing Ricky Gervais' weight.
Overall, a good show. Not the best he's done (I personally think that accolade goes to "Animals"), but still worth the entrance fee.
The show starts off with Ricky bursting through the curtains dressed in kingly robes and crown, with a large lit "RICKY" behind him. After that (and explaining how the whole budget went on just that one effect), the show goes along at a good rate, occasionally taking a sip from the handy can of beer which is placed behind the large gold Emmy which is placed on the stage, which actually precipitated a shout from one member of the audience that they couldn't see much of him from where they were, but they were put down once he'd explained that the majority of the show didn't get much more visual than just watching him speak.
One of Ricky Gervais's strengths is just how obviously clever the guy is, but it's often his ramblings about things he doesn't know which is the funniest, such as the oft-said "how did the first human get AIDS, since we know it comes from monkeys?" to which his funny conversation carries on "the human goes to the doctor, doctor tells him he's got AIDS, he asks how he got it.. and is given two reasons... 1) He's been having sexual relations with monkeys, or 2) he's been chopping up monkeys and accidentally cut his finger at the same time", guess which option the human chose to save embarrassment!
His charity work also features prominently in the show, including his AIDS and Cancer benefit gigs in the UK as well as the US, and also there were a few little digs to Dawn French, after her funny sketch in "French and Saunders" ridiculing Ricky Gervais' weight.
Overall, a good show. Not the best he's done (I personally think that accolade goes to "Animals"), but still worth the entrance fee.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Post-post telephony upgrade and abdominal exercises...
Well, the internet connection is staying stable, never dropping to below 10.5dB SNR on the router,
definitely looks like i've removed that little gremlin.
I'm currently in a state of abdominal overload (probably not as bad as it sounds!). I've lost quite a bit of weight over the last few months (about 3 stone) on Slimming World (a diet regime I can whole-heartedly recommend, by the way, it's not calorie counting like some other diet regimes, but a "eat as much of the right type of food as you want" diet), but the stomach area still needs a bit of toning (really fancy that washboard six-pack that all the fellas in the movies have...).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was watching the shopping channels about a fortnight ago,
and saw a section on the Ab Lounge XL Pro, a kind of "make sit-ups a lot easier" type device, the effectiveness of which was being extolled by various amazingly fit people ( the kind of people who sit around on sunny beaches all day and look good ). So, a quick google search later, and I found the cheapest option to be Mochea.com.
Another quick entry of the credit card details, and I was ready for my new lifestyle as the new Baywatch lifeguard that gets his pick of the lovely ladies..... (well, almost!).
It arrived about 3 days later, and I've been using it every night for the past 4 days. What an amazing bit of kit! You only need to do about 20 crunches and you really feel it. Anyway, i've got to the point where I'm doing about 150 crunches a night now, and frankly I'm feeling great.
BUT... my stomach muscles feel as though they're going through ten rounds with Ricky Hatton (good luck against Castillo in Los Angeles on 23rd June, Ricky!). Anyway, that's enough of my abdominal escapades....
Nothing much else has happened really. Couldn't get into second life last night, for some reason couldn't connect at all, just hung at the login page. I know that the main grid has had some
login and performance problems recently, but other people seemed to connect ok.. I must have just been unlucky. Managed to connect tonight okay, but wasn't on long.. too busy trying to get a stomach I can wash the towels on... ;-)
Oh well, catch up with you all later.
definitely looks like i've removed that little gremlin.
I'm currently in a state of abdominal overload (probably not as bad as it sounds!). I've lost quite a bit of weight over the last few months (about 3 stone) on Slimming World (a diet regime I can whole-heartedly recommend, by the way, it's not calorie counting like some other diet regimes, but a "eat as much of the right type of food as you want" diet), but the stomach area still needs a bit of toning (really fancy that washboard six-pack that all the fellas in the movies have...).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was watching the shopping channels about a fortnight ago,
and saw a section on the Ab Lounge XL Pro, a kind of "make sit-ups a lot easier" type device, the effectiveness of which was being extolled by various amazingly fit people ( the kind of people who sit around on sunny beaches all day and look good ). So, a quick google search later, and I found the cheapest option to be Mochea.com.
Another quick entry of the credit card details, and I was ready for my new lifestyle as the new Baywatch lifeguard that gets his pick of the lovely ladies..... (well, almost!).
It arrived about 3 days later, and I've been using it every night for the past 4 days. What an amazing bit of kit! You only need to do about 20 crunches and you really feel it. Anyway, i've got to the point where I'm doing about 150 crunches a night now, and frankly I'm feeling great.
BUT... my stomach muscles feel as though they're going through ten rounds with Ricky Hatton (good luck against Castillo in Los Angeles on 23rd June, Ricky!). Anyway, that's enough of my abdominal escapades....
Nothing much else has happened really. Couldn't get into second life last night, for some reason couldn't connect at all, just hung at the login page. I know that the main grid has had some
login and performance problems recently, but other people seemed to connect ok.. I must have just been unlucky. Managed to connect tonight okay, but wasn't on long.. too busy trying to get a stomach I can wash the towels on... ;-)
Oh well, catch up with you all later.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Post-telephony upgrade
Title sounds a little bit pretentious, but who cares?
Anyway, the big upgrade to the internal wiring of the house finished last night (as mentioned in the previous post). Out came the master socket and a new one to replace it, re-did the IDC connections (they needed looking at anyway, they were starting to corrode) and then replaced the extension socket in the study. As mentioned, I can't fault the things I bought from ADSL Nation, the quality is superb, plus, because they're all
pre-filtered, it means I can finally get rid of all the dangly ADSL microfilters (each socket has a phone AND an ADSL jack seperate).
After all this, the router is now showing a SNR (noise margin) of 10.7dB, rather than the previous 6.7dB, which equates to a hell of a lot less noise on the line. Also, it means that the invariable "reboot the router after a while" because of the line errors has gone away....
So, upshot is, I've now got a stable ~15 Meg ADSL2+ connection, for about £20 of upgrade kit (and a bit of my time, of course). At last I can meet my good friends on second life without worrying about disconnections.
Speaking of second life, my avatar's gone through a bit of a change recently, it's gone very vampire / gothic (sort of). Obviously, in real life, i'm a 6'4", blonde haired muscle-bound adonis with perfect vision, so I thought I'd down scale with my avatar and have him 5'9" with glasses, short hair with vampire shoes and white angel wings, absolutely nothing like me in real life (what do you mean, I'm lying?).
On a personal note, as I've mentioned before, I'm a long term member of English Heritage (which fits in nicely with my fortean interests, of course), so we tend to be scooting around the english countryside taking in all the castles / abbeys / historic monuments that this wonderful country has to offer. So, I took the kids to see Beeston Castle, which is about an hours drive from Manchester, or about 10 miles from Chester. What a wonderful heritage site, fantastic views from the inner bailey, and astonishing woodland encompassing the outer bailey and grounds. The castle was originally built around AD1225, but there was a hill fort and settlement there long before that. There was also a "medieval day" on, so the kids learnt how to hit each other (and me) with foam swords.. wonderful.. it means that now I get the same treatment from metal Thomas the Tank Engine's or hard plastic Dora the Explorers. Thanks a bunch, Sir Edward of Chester!
I am going to get around to chronicling our trips to the many heritage sites we've visited, such as Stonehenge and the astonishing Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, along side a new website that I'm developing which will cover fortean subjects as well. This should go live in a few weeks or so, and will be StrangeHub.co.uk.
Anyway, the big upgrade to the internal wiring of the house finished last night (as mentioned in the previous post). Out came the master socket and a new one to replace it, re-did the IDC connections (they needed looking at anyway, they were starting to corrode) and then replaced the extension socket in the study. As mentioned, I can't fault the things I bought from ADSL Nation, the quality is superb, plus, because they're all
pre-filtered, it means I can finally get rid of all the dangly ADSL microfilters (each socket has a phone AND an ADSL jack seperate).
After all this, the router is now showing a SNR (noise margin) of 10.7dB, rather than the previous 6.7dB, which equates to a hell of a lot less noise on the line. Also, it means that the invariable "reboot the router after a while" because of the line errors has gone away....
So, upshot is, I've now got a stable ~15 Meg ADSL2+ connection, for about £20 of upgrade kit (and a bit of my time, of course). At last I can meet my good friends on second life without worrying about disconnections.
Speaking of second life, my avatar's gone through a bit of a change recently, it's gone very vampire / gothic (sort of). Obviously, in real life, i'm a 6'4", blonde haired muscle-bound adonis with perfect vision, so I thought I'd down scale with my avatar and have him 5'9" with glasses, short hair with vampire shoes and white angel wings, absolutely nothing like me in real life (what do you mean, I'm lying?).
On a personal note, as I've mentioned before, I'm a long term member of English Heritage (which fits in nicely with my fortean interests, of course), so we tend to be scooting around the english countryside taking in all the castles / abbeys / historic monuments that this wonderful country has to offer. So, I took the kids to see Beeston Castle, which is about an hours drive from Manchester, or about 10 miles from Chester. What a wonderful heritage site, fantastic views from the inner bailey, and astonishing woodland encompassing the outer bailey and grounds. The castle was originally built around AD1225, but there was a hill fort and settlement there long before that. There was also a "medieval day" on, so the kids learnt how to hit each other (and me) with foam swords.. wonderful.. it means that now I get the same treatment from metal Thomas the Tank Engine's or hard plastic Dora the Explorers. Thanks a bunch, Sir Edward of Chester!
I am going to get around to chronicling our trips to the many heritage sites we've visited, such as Stonehenge and the astonishing Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, along side a new website that I'm developing which will cover fortean subjects as well. This should go live in a few weeks or so, and will be StrangeHub.co.uk.
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