Symphony. I remember riding the wave of hype before it’s first launch, back when Movable Type was still the daddy and WordPress didn’t kill your server every time you got a link from digg. But then the bombshell struck and I found out that it would be $60 for a blog engine, I price I couldn’t and wouldn’t pay. So I left symphony and focused on making my own blog engine, which admittedly turned out alright-ish, if a bit lacking in the features department. Continue reading »

Technology. If you solely listened to the media you’d believe it was going to be the death of us; muscle clad cyborgs sent back in time, global pandemics created by corrupt governments and god knows what else. Saying that, at least the end of the world looks cool. Hence my recent run of ‘techno-doom’ inspired books, the latest of which is Nano by John Robert Marlow. Continue reading »

I hate iTunes. It’s official, I can’t stand it; the way it looks, the way it works, everything about it just drives me nuts. But I told myself this post wouldn’t just be a rant, so I’m going to take it nice and slowly and work through my problems. I have to start off by saying that I only have two apple products, one being my beautiful iPod video and the other been iTunes. It’s not that I hate Macs, it’s just I don’t like the way they look or work, call it been a windows child since I was 5, or my few experiences all been negative (and by experiences I don’t mean two minutes on it before giving up, I’ve spent days on Macs along with UNIX, Linux and other OSs). Continue reading »

While attending a housewarming party for a friend’s family, I was passed this letter printed in the local newspaper:

Today we mourn the passing of an old and dear friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years.

No-one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered for having cultivated such valuable lessons as “life isn’t always fair”, and “maybe it was my fault”.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults are in charge, not children). His health began to deteriorate rapidly after reports were published about a six-year-old boy who had been charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate. A subsequent report that a teacher had been fired for reprimanding an unruly student sadly hastened his decline.

Things went from bad to worse when new laws were enacted that required schools to obtain parental consent to administer paracetamol, sun lotion or sticking plasters but were not permitted to inform parents when their under-age daughters were pregnant or wanted an abortion. He finally lost the will to live when the courts decided it was illegal to defend oneself from a burglar in one’s own home, but it was perfectly acceptable for that burglar to sue the victim for assault.

Common Sense’s parents, Truth and Trust, pre-deceased him, as did his daughter, Discretion, along with his sons, Responsibility and Reason. He is survived by his three step-brothers, I know my Rights, Someone else is to Blame and I’m a Victim.

Written by Peder Nielsen in the Malvern Gazette, August 11th 2006

Umm, yeah, so I got a bit bored last night waiting for Screenwipe on BBC4 (which is fucking hilarious by the way) so I ended up perusing through Apple’s collection of trailers. I could wait until I get more info or actually go out and see the films on release, but instead I’m going to jot down my impressions of each trailer along with a rating of how likely I am to go and actually see it. Continue reading »

Half Life. First time I played it was many years ago now, but it was simply the best gaming experience I’d ever had or have had since. The levels, story, everything was just brilliant. Recently I’ve been going through my old back catalogue of steam games, replaying all the old classics like blue shift, opposing force etc etc. However, once that was done I was at a loss, I wanted another single player mod (very rare now, they all seem to be multiplayer). I wanted a new and fresh storyline, I wanted to have that feeling again I did when I played the original. Then I remembered Minerva, my current favourite single player mod for Half Life 2. However it wasn’t this that sparked my memory, it was the fact that it had a predecessor for HL1 that I had never tried. So I downloaded Someplace Else and fired it up. Continue reading »

Just a very short post explaining my recent comment spam problems. If you’ve read the previous entry you’ll no doubt know I went on a two week holiday only to come back to 800 spam messages. Not nice. So I set about trying to do something to stop this. Possible ideas included CAPTCHAs, using the askimet service, but in the end I settled for a solution made by a very clever friend called Neo-Geek. His system entails only a very small checkbox that is automatically ticked when a visitor starts writing but a normal spam bot would leave un-ticked. Simplicity in itself.

I’ve yet to see how this plays out, whether it will stop the spam permanently, but until then, here’s to you Neo. *raises glass*

So I’ve just back from two weeks in sunny North Devon, well sunny for most of the time, this is Britain after all. Forgetting the 800+ comment spams I received in my absence (I have got to do something about that), it was an enjoyable holiday in a beautiful part of the English countryside. Of course, just because I was returning to my Neanderthal roots, camping and all, doesn’t mean I couldn’t bring a bit of entertainment with me. Movies, books and a laptop make the free time much more enjoyable than just sunbathing (or sitting in a tent listening to the rain). So here is my review of all that I took on holiday, and if you want to actually see what I did then just check out my flickr sets (almost 250 photos). Continue reading »

I know, it sounds like a bit of a weird coupling, but I’ve been meaning to start learning AJAX for a while now and well, my ongoing code-system desperately needed some TLC. Continue reading »

I know it’s already half way through June but I made a new wallpaper today so decided to put it up. As usual the thumbnail links to a bigger image and here is the link to Flickr (with notes).