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Playing with some new macro lenses on a sunny afternoon (between turning burgers and sausages on a short-notice BBQ – with luck the first of many of the year!). The grass and a bush waiting for it’s foliage to return seemed like as good a thing as any to experiment with.
Of the two posts yesterday the coverage of my 2 minute Uncle Bens rice gathered 50% of the days traffic with my posting about the proposed UK Broadband tax gathering a mere 5%.
Speaks volumes to what The Internet holds important methinks 
Comments, thoughts?
The BBC, among others, are reporting today that a proposed tax of 50p (0.5 GBP) per month to be levied against any (presumably residential) fixed telephone line has been deemed unfair by MPs.
Oddly it seems the MPs have gotten this one right, in my opinion at least. This tax would be used to fund ‘ultra-fast’ broadband along the lines that is already seen in more technologically advanced countries. Problem is that ISPs, along with all communications companies operating in the UK, are lazy and greedy. Why shell out for better infrastructure when they can still sell poor quality horrifyingly limited connections over copper-wire?
Better communications infrastructure is badly needed in the UK but tax is not the way to pay for it. Government intervention is needed to kick the ISPs up their ethernet and force them to pay to for the upgraded. ”BUT” I hear you cry “then they’ll pass on the charges to us!” – quite right! Problem is this: if the Government via tax were to foot the bill they’d still charge us more for their “improved and faster service, because we care about providing the best facilities possible”. So anyone paying for their internet connections will be stung – but if improvements were to be funded by tax we’d be stung twice >__<
Comments, thoughts?
Gotten very hungry but also pretty busy and lunch isn’t till around 1:30pm for me today… Uncle Ben to the rescue! I jot these words as his 2 minute rice delight spins in the microwave to bring warm happy food to my belly. Way better than Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. All he ever did was give advice and get killed. Uncle Ben gives good rice.
*ping* Yush! Now to feast. Then to look forward to mixed grill times tonight. It’s a good food day.
Old Goat Holidays covers three great little holiday hide-aways for a break in the Yorshire Dales. Great for some fresh air, quite, good walking, fantastic scenery. Not so great if you’re wanting an all-action loud-music chaos-a-thon holiday but who wants those all the time, I ask you! Certainly not me.
We stayed at The Piggery which has been kitted out with an amazing bed, a surprising array of facilities for it’s size, and a great shower. Had a great hamper of treats waiting for us on our arrival too – local cheese, sausages and bacon, home made jam and chutney, bliss! After a cosey night we spent a day walking to Aysgarth Falls (a long-winded not quite always on the path route 
) and back for another cosey evening in.
Combined with the brilliantly friendly and helpful owners it makes for a good break to get away, stop and relax for while.
The view from The Piggery
The Piggery
Awesome hamper times 
A new member of the ‘cookies family is up and kicking – ShutterCookies.co.uk
I’ll be using ShutterCookies to build a photography portfolio with only what I’d deem to be finished photos rather than general snapperings There shall still be photo postings of a more general nature on SpaceCookies all the same.
Also I’ve been playing with some anti-spam Wordpress plugins and am happy to say that commenting is alive and kicking on both SpaceCookies and ShutterCookies without the need to register or sign in
That’s all for now, ‘night
Spotify has been a boon to me, giving me free access to all sorts of music I would otherwise have had to steal via Bit Torrent never heard. So on the off-chance that what I’ve stumbled upon or been recommended might also be of interest to others here’s some albums I’ve been enjoying recently. The links link to Spotify so click and listen away!
 First up: Rotersand: Random Is Resistance. Hailing from Germany this chunk of EBM (Electronic Body Music) has a great beat, heavy bass, fantastic synth melodies and good lead male vocals. If you liked the more melodic Trance music of old it’s well worth a listen. Not as heavy and indiscriminately noisy-for-the-sake-of-noise as some EBM so… I like it ^_^ |
 Hadouken: For The Masses makes the second highlight for today. Rule of thumb: If you like The Prodigy you’ll like this. A kind of rave – guitars – rock mash up. Powerful, pacey, GREAT driving music (pay attention to your speedo if you do listen while driving). Full of adrenalin. |
 Last up for today is Does It Offend You Yeah?: You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into. Spotify recommended this to me after listening to Hadouken but it’s far more varied than their brand of electro-rave. While still fundamentally electronic there is a greater use of real-world instruments and vocals. For example, We Are Rockstars is messy dirty electronica in contrast to Dawn Of The Dead being more of a radio-friendly song.
Varied and nice anyway, bit calmer than the above two albums in places so can be a good change of pace. |
Thoughts? Opinions? Suggestions of your own? Let me know
…then when I woke up it was raining outside! See, who says dreams don’t come true Some might say I dreamt about the raining because I heard it in my sleep but what if the rain happened because it heard ME dreamining about it?
Posted by Wordmobi
I get a lot of emails with long-winded speeches in the footer about how terrible it is to print the email that’s just been sent – think of the trees wasted! There’s two problems with this (ignoring that wasting paper is actually good for the environment – higher demand for paper = more trees planted to meet demand):
Firstly that adding all this at the bottom of the email wastes more paper in the event that the message *is* printed.
Secondly that adding all this to the base of each email adds to the amount of hard drive space required to store the message on mail servers. Hard drives use power to run, the more data there is to be stored the more hard drives are required. The more hard drives that are required the more power will be used.
On a side point all this including the body of the email you’re replying to has the same impact.
I know it seems petty but if people are going whine about printing emails at least be brief about it!
Thoughts, comments?
A little more snow appeared over night – still impeding many methods of transport, but the day appears to have calmed a little as it’s worn on. Despite what the weather folk say I expect the snow to be less of a problem the next few days. Shall retract that if I’m wrong
Anyway guess what! I took more photos! What a surprise! A house over the road made for a nice sunset pic as Sol beat it’s retreat.
A few posts ago I threw up a photo of the clothes line at the back of my place with some ice on it and a fence with some pretty dustings on it. Well, here’s an update to how snowed under those same two scenes are today along with a couple of other generic pretty snow-scenes.
A nearby lake suffered some snow and ice – it’s residents looked like they needed some company
There was a very real risk that the snow, pretty though it is, was going to scupper my Christmas movement plots. Thankfully I was able to escape my street and make it to the clearer less-iced-over main roads Have had a couple of, how shall I put it…, interesting driving moments – mostly involving hills and Science. More specifically the aspects of Science dealing with gravity, momentum and friction (or lack-thereof). Anyway, bygones. None of my motion-based missions have resulted in slipping and falling or myself or myself contained within a car so all it well I’m where I’m supposed to be for Christmas now so time to chill. In celebration of this I post up three more pics from the snowy time all from today.
It’s been wonderfully snowy the last few days. Good times! It’s involved a couple of terrifying driving moments though. The hill at the end of road here is kinda steep but suddenly gets even steeper right at the top. Lost traction for a few mortifying moments earlier today. Think I’ll be leaving well alone next time it’s like that. Could make getting work tomorrow (well, this morning as I’ve scheduled this post to go live tomorrow) interesting O_0 Anyway here’s some photos of the nice snow and ice times.
Behold! Snow morning Shiny sunrise too today. Managed to brave the elements to get to work (thanks to Fish’s excellent driving services).
Clickety click the teeny picture there to see the full-size version.
So very cold that all the frost on the lid of my car was stood up!
Clickety click to see the pic in a little more detail. Nearly gone through an entire bottle of de-icer on just two frosty mornings. Think it’s time to figure out where my ice scraper and gloves have landed.
It’s a stark contrast to the chaos of Average Urban Cityscape. Christmas in your standard city, such as Leeds, is not a fun affair. People dash around in a stress-fuelled panic hurriedly gathering tributes they think their loved ones will enjoy / tolerate / feign enjoyment of and tat for those they may feel obliged to purchase for (co-workers, bosses, teachers and the like) yet they do not actually enjoy this.
I remember the hunting of suitable items to present as a token of love and or affection and or respect to people that were important enough being a fun a joyous thing. Well, a fun thing. Well… a thing. Point being it wasn’t the madness it is now. It just isn’t possible to *feel* Christmas in your average city centre / shopping establishmentarianism. Step away from the traditional hives of commerce and forced smiles, however, and a shining beacon of Seasons Joy emerges.
Sherwood Center Parcs has snow machines, twinkly lights wrapping around the trees, white wire-framed models of reindeer, elaborate trees and swans all equally lit (lit, I think, with lights although they might just be glowing with Christmassy Joy). There are real reindeer next to the house that Father Christmas is preparing to voyage the world bringing gifts and joy while simultaneously answering children’s letters and even greeting them personally – the man is nothing short of a Legend. All the people are smiling, the children are bursting with grins and bouncing with excitement. Everyone is being pleasant – even with strangers! I kid you not. I was taking a picture of the Village Square looking all nice and lit up and get this… people saw what I was doing and actually waited for me to be done before walking in-front of the camera. Bliss
Of course I am painfully aware that once I leave here later today I shall be leaving behind some of the Christmassy feeling I have gathered up but it genuinely makes me happy to know that there is at least one place, away from the mess of the obligations of Christmas, the stress of tribute acquisition, the headache of planning travelling around to see as many people as possible, where Christmas and the feeling that goes with it have been saved.
It’s amazing how difficult a morning routine involving black socks.
The idea having many black socks it intended to make the waking-up-going-to-work process that little bit easier – when you’ve got to leave a 8.30am and sleep until 8.07am every second counts. Diving out of bed and into the shower provides enough wake-up-power to the mind to enable what I like to think of as ‘getting dressed’ One of the earlier, but critical, steps in this process is the Donning Of Socks.
The sock draw opens to reveal a murky black cottony sea. A hand dives in and clutches at fabric blindly, pulling free a lonesome foot-glove. That’s the easy part. Assuming this first step has yielded a satisfactory article (not too many holes, not too thin, not too much like leggings) then The Mission begins. You must understand… not all black socks are alike. Some are longer, some are stretchier, some have a thin white line across the toes. It is paramount that two socks of the same ilk be Chosen to adorn the feet of a day. There have been occasions where the mixing of dissimilar black socks has been the only option open (save going sock-less which tends to lead to blisters and the such) and these experiences teach that, ultimately, once the initial horror of sullying your feet with such mis-matchery has subsided there is no real difference. In the panic of Morning Routine however the Donning Of Socks remains an important ritual to get right.
My housemate got a shiny 42″ HD tellybob. Originally we were going to go halves then two things happened: his parents offered to put towards as Christmas pressy and I got all nay-sayer about HD.
Thing is… now it’s here… and it’s a bit shiny. Still got my awesome Sony trinitron old-style telly in the lounge for my Wii and when I want to watch a DVD & The Shiny is in use (& because in a house with two gamer geeks being able to fire up more than one console at a time Is worthwhile). The Xbox 360 looks immediately better – suddenly there’s details before unseen *gasp*. DVD up-scaler does a fine job of making standard-deff video looks very good and there’s still a plot to hook my lappy up to it
May have to dig up the HD version of Transformers movie for a watch… Could see that being pretty nice.
So, in short, I deal myself a slice of Humble Pie and admit that it is’ in fact, pretty good stuff this HD lark.
Posted by Wordmobi
Tis a cold lunchtime, the summer is a dimly lit memory hiding in the uncharted dark waters of the attic of my mind where only ghouls and characters from 80s kid-flicks dare to roam. Must be Christmas time. Oh.. Wait.. I think I’m wrong there. A glance at a calendar tells me that November is still very much with us and here to stay, for the time being at least.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s time to don red pixie hats, swill eggnog and embarrass yourself infront of the Boss though. The shops have the christmas gifts and decorations out and some terrible *terrible* people at The Merion Centre in Leeds saw fit to put all the lights, decorations and tree up in their shopping centre.
For me it’s ruined Christmas for now. The coming of the German Christmas Market on Millenniuum square brings me some Christmas cheer, and a litre of fine Germanic beer will only help, but until December has solidly taken root it’ll be ba-humbug from me. Which means everyone can expect their gifts and cards to be a touch on the late-side
Posted by Wordmobi
Over the years there have been a great many technical terms bandied around. Many of these have come into popular use – many of even the least technical people will understand what an Ethernet port is now – and often this has served (much to the disgruntlement of the techie elitist types, or Nerds as they are commonly known) to improve understanding of all this computer jiggery-pokery that seems to prevalent in our daily lives now. (More …)
I mean it’s getting quite fuzzy around the face area now. If I’m honest I can’t actually remember when I had a trim around the chops… must have been over a week ago.
I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big an issue and I suppose it’s keeping my face a little warmer in these colder mornings but I suppose the scruffiness should be tamed. Once again left it too long for the electrical shaverizer so to the mega-fusion-multi-blade it shall be.
I’m sure shaving isn’t really as exciting as Gillette tell me it is.
Mr Johnnio Martinez grabbed a breezy 30 points for a terrifying picture of David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff posing with wrinkly puppies.
Joe H. posted an ARGHkived gurn to achieve 15 points but did anyone else follow up with a more impressive gurn for a bonus 10 points?
Nope! Bonus 10 to Joe H. then, a well earned 25 in all.
Mr Martinez gains another 24 simply for asking for them and Jen gets 12 because she also took up the offer of a free 12 points.
Read on for the current rankings.
(More …)
The amazing awesomeness of awesome noodles should never be underestimated.
There are, of course, many fine varieties of noodle – the cup noodle, the ramen noodle, the soba noodle, the instant noodle – which are all awesome in their own way. This way is commonly known as “awesome”.
I frequently enjoy instant noodles – the Ko-Lee noodles, Kimchi, Mr Noodle (or Noodle-san as many, i.e. me, affectionately call them), and enjoy ramen and such noodles from fine noodle-based establishments in Leeds (Fuji Hiro, Little Tokyo – never ever Wagamama).
From this I conclude that noodles are awesome.
Karl earned a smoooooooooth 10 points for correctly knowing that I devoured Chicken flavour Ko-Lee noodles.
Paul netted himself 5 points for calling SHENANIGANS!!! on Karl.
Paul T: 5
Alun: 35
Tiggs: 10
Jonny Mc: 20
Marc: 50
Gareth: 8
Ruth: 60
Fish: 35
Elric: 12
Joe B.: 10
Caroline: 70
Karl: 75
Johnnio Martinez: 80
Aimee: 100
I’ve been collecting a run of how many points people I know have. These points can be gained from answering questions, making impressive film / culture references or from high quality belches ^_^
The totals are currently as follows – the latest points went to Johnnio Martinez for correctly informing me that it was Narwhals that stop Cthulu eating me.
Alun: 35
Tiggs: 10
Jonny Mc: 20
Marc: 50
Gareth: 8
Ruth: 60
Karl: 65
Fish: 35
Elric: 12
Joe B.: 10
Caroline: 70
Johnnio Martinez: 80
Aimee: 100
Simon Says 'Use Google Chrome'
Namely the feature I’ve been waiting for… bookmark synchronisation! Great days I eagerly downloaded the dev version (up to version 4 already, crickey) and with great gusto I hammered in my login details and waited with baited (is that even the right spelling in this context? meh) breath for my Google Bookmarks to stream down.
And I waited.
And waited.
Waited some more…
Nothing. Oh. Suppose it must just sync between chrome and other instances of chrome. That’s still cool but was a bit of an anticlimax. But wait… the story doesn’t end here!
Enter @chronarion! The fellow seemed to be interested in tails of bookmark fail, being involved in Chrome development an’ all. His words of wisdom told me that sadly Chrome does not sync with Google Bookmarks (which kinda makes sense – Google Bookmarks sucks.. sorry Google, it’s true). Oh woe was me, for how will I now access my bookmarks when not on one my own machines?! FEAR NOT, said @chronarion (disclaimer: not actually a quote), FOR SALVATION… is at hand. Turns out your Chrome bookmarks are also synced up rather nicely to Google Docs for web-based access where-ever you are.
Well pleased. So export my Google Bookmarks I did, import them to Chrome I continues, and gasped I concluded as I watched with glee at my Google Docs as it filled up with my bookmarks.
The only real down-side I’ve found so far is that you cannot edit your bookmarks within Google Docs but given the highly beta nature of the Chrome dev branch I really don’t feel like complaining about it.
On a side point Chrome (well, Chromium to be accurate) for Mac is feeling more and more stable – I’m now using it side by side with Firefox as my two main browsers. Bookmark sync isn’t enabled in the Mac version at the moment but expect it’ll appear soon.
Keep up the good work Google ^_^
Note: to enable bookmark sync under Windows make sure you’re on at least version 4 of Chrome (FileHippo are always up to date) then follow the easy instructions here. Enjoy!
Lots of gadgets make for disaster-proofing
The Tomtom app for the iPhone appears to have appeared in Americaland for $99.99. Tomtom app for the iPhone (or any GPS enabled phone for that matter) seems like an obvious win in terms of usefulness and carting around less clutter but the price point seems… well a little out of sync with my idea of reality. That said my idea of reality is far removed from that of the iPhone Brigade. For me having one all singing all dancing does *everything* device is great… but ultimately a fail. So there you are, merrily chattering away on your iPhone (in the event that the call actually connected), uploading your freshly shot videos to youtube, geotagging your auto-focused snaps, emailing your friends, Twittering to everyone else, now using the Tomtom app to get to wherever it is your going when DONK…
…the unthinkable…
it a) breaks b) runs out of battery c) you foolishly destroy it escaping from a hoard of rampaging chickens who have momentarily mistaken your for the Hero of Time.
Well now you’re screwed. How will you take photos of this exciting place you’ve come to? How will you tell people on twitter how awesome it is? More importantly… how will you get home??
I have my man-bag, laden with many exciting colourful badges as it is, in which I cart around work iPhone, personal Sony Ericsson phone, digi cam, sat nav, occasionally an EeePC, MP3 player, USB pen drive – none of these things are crazy heavy or excessively bulky but it does pretty much guarantee that at no point am I truly knacked by one device keeling over.
On a side thought $99.99 is far too much for a Tomtom app for iPhone – for the benefit of everything in one device I can see the temptation but for the issue of battery life (without car charger of course), risk of one device failure and that Tomtom have zero hardware cost and next to nothing distribution cost it all smacks of taking advantage of the iPhone crowd’s “oooh look at me and what the walled garden of my iPhone can do” attitude.
Aimee is discussing. 
Aimeeeeeeeeeeee are discussing.