WAKE UP INTERNET!!

Strange. But true?

2006-01-22T13:07:00.000Z

This article claims that "mesothelioma lawyers" is the highest paying google ad rank phrase. I wonder if by placing just that phrase on this page I'll notice any glitch in my adsense stats?

Tees barrage

2006-01-15T08:51:00.000Z

Tees barrage
Originally uploaded by James the photographer.

Truth be told, my Dad took this photo.

This blog and podcast is now into version 2.0

2006-01-06T02:35:00.000Z

This blog and podcast is now into version 2.0. Please update your feeds to point here.

Chandler Bing is a Mac geek

2005-12-04T18:28:00.000Z

I guess it's easy to forget how old some of these Friends re-runs are, this is obviously a Macworld magazine cover story on the OS X transition to a NEXT-like UI.

Help!

2005-11-29T10:36:00.000Z

After MONTHS of tinkering and suffering build lock errors, tears and tantrums form fink, I've finally got a fairly stable feeling Gnome window manager working.

Can anyone point me towards any articles on how to hide the Apple desktop icons from the Gnome desktop? (See screenshot)

Thanks.

Sad man on trial

2005-11-28T10:15:00.000Z

Throw the book at the bastard!

Installing iPodLinux on your Nano

2005-11-23T11:03:00.000Z

This blog is a podcast. Paste the above link, in the title, into your chosen podcast aggregator, such as iTunes.

http://opax.swin.edu.au/~reino/nanolinux.htm - How to install iPodLinux on your iPod.

To compile mencoder in the terminal, navigate your way to the folder which contains the source code, downloadable from here...

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html

..and type this:

./configure

Then type:

make

Then type:

make install

Drag and drop the files mencoder and mplayer into the hidden folder /usr/bin/

Then paste this line into terminal:

mencoder -ovc raw -ofps 15 -oac pcm -vf scale=176:-2,expand=176:132,format=bgr16 ipodhack.avi -o out.avi

How my video playback looks:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jimgardner/maccast/video_playback_in_podzilla_on_a_nano.mov

Elgato EyeTV Screen Grabs

2005-11-16T05:19:00.000Z

You can click each of the below screen shots to see the original size.

Microsoft must die video

2005-11-03T22:52:00.000Z

Vista is Tiger, except not out yet and cheeper (as in tasteless)

2005-09-17T01:08:00.000+01:00

The web is abuzz with news of what exactly we can expect in the way of features in Windows Vista, once it's eventually released. One prime source of information is the Microsoft Developer Network, who's faithful staff have the scoop on what's in and what's out of the new OS, as detailed in their daily blogs, vlogs and podcasts... ..sorry, blogcast!

Yes, you heard right - Microsoft have even put an end to the use of the pod word prefix on staff podcasts, insisting instead on them being referred to as blogcasts, PLEASE!

Maybe they feel that acknowledging the existence of an Apple product publicly, in whatever small way, would tip people off as to where all their ideas come from? Well, I've news for you Mr. Gates, we worked that one out years ago.

For just as surely as Windows version 1.0, through to 3.1, 95, 98 and beyond where blatant bastardizations of the Macintosh User Interface, Vista is no exception. From the vector based rendering of all the graphic elements of the desktop space through to the animated shrinking and growing of windows.

They've even thought to allow the animation of such actions to be slowed down, to show off how cool it is to see a window seamlesley vanish into a minimized dock icon, by holding down the Shift key, again exactly like OS X has done for the last 4 to 5 years.

Once in the Dock.. ..sorry, Taskbar, minimized windows can be previewed by floating the mouse over them. Similar in many ways to how the Mac OS Dock handles minimized application windows, although to be fair the demo I saw was base on a programming model which exposes a lot more of the API to developers who want to exploit this feature a lot more than seems to be available for developers of Mac code who want to integrate the Dock in their apps.

Spotlight

Finding a file on your hard drive under Windows XP was a tortuous affair involving animated dogs and 4 or 5 clicks of tiny text boxes. Vista does away with all that and simply presents the user with a find-as-you-type search box, which not only searches within documents for keywords and meta data but also file names, dates and times et cetera. Something in the Mac world known as Spotlight. Is there an echo in here?

No one working on Vista can say for sure what kind of video card you'll need to use these new graphical elements. So it's unlikely early adopters will get to see such enhancements to the UI running on their existing low to mid-spec PC's once Vista is actually released, but things like Spotlight, or whatever they're calling it, should work fine on even modest machine - after all, Google's desktop search for Windows has been doing the same job on XP for about a year now.

What did you expect?

Perhaps in the interest of balance it's only fair to point out that no one, least of all this Mac user, seriously expected Microsoft to ignore the major advantages to workflow that such UI elements as those found in Mac OS give to the user.

After all, no one accused Microsoft being uninventive way back in their early days when DOS unified things like drive letters and eight dot three file name extensions and so on.. ..oh no wait they did! Gary Kildall's CPM did all that and they stole.. ..ahem, reverse engineered it and sold it to IBM as if it was their own - now I remember! Sheesh, the things that slip your mind eh?

Bitter hatred aside

No one can deny XP was infinatly more stable than it's predecessors. The fact is, even Windows 98 was more stable than it's equivalent Mac OS 8 & 9, when it came to multi-threaded memory and processor hungry apps. But things in the Mac world have moved on SO much since then, I honestly don't see how Vista can reclaim some of the high end professionals who've long since gone back to Apple, after a late 1990's flirtation with Windows - nor do I think Vista expects them to come back.

Mac OS's UNIX core is a huge draw of interest for scientific applications, medial research and mid to high end audio and video professionals alike and nothing Vista can do to mimic Mac OS's versatility on the surface can change that.

But the basic fact is, Microsoft design Operating Systems which run on near enough any third party hardware. Fact. And no one is blind to the fact that this therefore makes the range of possible problems which can arise when integrating your OS with different vendor's hardware a development stage headache. That's why Vista is late.

It's also the reason why Microsoft aren't going out on a limb with things like a 3D desktop or some other nice idea which would be truly innovative and engaging - for all these two adjectives are bandied about in the corridors or Microsoft in reference to what, whether you like it or not, will be their most successful product so far.

Such things as a 3D workspace would be very hard to manage, design and re-train the customer to understand. That's why even Apple have yet to attempt anything which drastically moves away from the top-down 2D approach to the desktop workspace. But it would be nice to see at least something in Vista which Microsoft can call their own - just as it would be at least respectful of their grinning faces, as seen in the endless stream of video blogs posted to their channel 9 developer network forum, to stop for a moment and admit that much of what they are doing has already been done, and by the same company who continually shows everyone else the way.

In closing, I thing Steve Jobs put it best when asked about the iPod recently. "80% of any market is amazing by anyone's standards. It just goes to show what real innovation can do when it isn't stifled by an unfair monopoly".

Amen.

An open letter to Steve Jobs

2005-09-15T00:48:00.000+01:00

As posted moments earlier via www.apple.com/feedback

For the attention of Mr. Steve Jobs, and all my friends at Apple.

Microsoft's http://channel9.msdn.com forum really steals the march on anything we have, by way of an interactive community element on our beloved apple.com, for keeping their users and developers informed and up close to the work they are doing.

If I wasn't thousands of miles away, in the north east of England, I'd happily put myself forward to be the man for the job of coordinating an effort to beat them at their own game and produce something bigger and better for Apple. But it seems all I can do is raise my hand, from this distant land where the summer is already over, and try to raise some ideas and share my passion for the only truly usable computers in the world and how, if I where you, I'd improve the web facing aspect of my business.

I've just watched three video clips from the http://channel9.msdn.com forum. The first clip, featuring the Mac business unit, right there in Silicon Valley, showed those poor souls squeezing every last inch of power from their G5's to run Windows applications in Virtual PC. Another clip of Mr. Gates himself, in relaxed mode, talking about the company's future, and another clip of Mr. Ballmer, being his usual animated self, although stopping short of flinging any chairs, had the two men talking openly and frankly about how only Microsoft innovates and how no one else comes close to their level of commitment to the future of computing. Please!

Insulting ignorance and billion dollar personal fortunes aside, it strikes me that the load on apple.com's servers tasked with streaming Quicktime video, in the hours and days following a live event, such as WWDC or the launch of a new product, must give you as good an indication as you could possibly require as to the hunger for Apple news which people around the world have, and their need to hear it right from the horses mouth, on demand.

How amazing would it be then to not only give them that but to do it in a way that literally shows people, who may be either curious about Macintosh or iPod or the history of the company, just how much more sophisticated Apple is than any other business in the world, and how much more care goes into our products than anyone else's? For, when I say I watched video from http://channel9.msdn.com, what I really mean is I had to imagine what the video would have looked like where it playing in Quicktime. Since, naturally you might say, the clips in question where staggered and cheep, in the way only Windows Media Player for Mac "streaming" clips can be.

And that's really my point. As I sit here writing this I am compiling source code in a terminal, downloading huge audio files from my machine at work, wirelessly streaming music to my stereo from iTunes and talking to my friend in Canada via iChat, and I know that, if I wanted to, I could play a Quicktime video or open a web browser or do any one of a thousand other things with no fear of interruption or hinderance, or worse still a fear that my actions might result in data loss or an unrecoverable crash. I'll assume you've realise by now I'm not running Windows, but you don't need me to tell you, of all people, what a tragic and painful experience it would be if I were to ask Windows £0.10p to do any one of the above, let alone all of them at once.

In short, for all we know Macintosh computers are amazing - even astounding compared to their 10 year old predecessors, only the people inside Apple can tell the rest of the world what we are doing to make them even better in the future.

Unfortunately, for all they are exciting and entertaining, the odd Quicktime clip of your good self, Mr. Jobs, every six months or so, simply isn't snappy enough to really drive the message home to those who are waiting with baited breath for Vista that, actually, we already have those "new and innovative features" you're being lead to believe are unique to Windows, and we have had them for some years; that what is yet to come from Apple is truly insanely great, especially in the face of anything close to a similar experience which all seven flavors of bloat-ware Vista might claim to offer and yet fail miserably to deliver to all but the highest configuration of PC.

I thoroughly recommend, neigh strongly advise, you and everyone at Apple to act fast on developing a podcast, blog and video blog orientated community channel, which ordinary users and developers around the world can use to literally show the world how involving and exciting the Mac experience is, and make it easily accessible via easy to access means, such as in the iTunes podcast section and via an RSS feed.

Love, peace and respect to you and your family.

Jim Gardner.

Open source video editing.Or how to make a promo DVD of your band on little or no budget

2005-08-27T11:34:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine recently asked me if I could help him produce a DVD of his band performing so he could use it to further promote the band to theatrical agencies and entertainment managers of various venues around Europe. His band, 4 for 1, are an already successful act on the UK wide cabaret scene and are looking to do even more work overseas.

The footage of their performance, when it is shot, will be done using 3 or 4 mini DV camcorders, syncronised to the audio from a hard disc recorder, routed through the bands existing PA system using a Yamaha 01V digital desk.

Open.

My plan is to use only Apple's iLife '05 and various open source and freeware tools, such as Jahshaka, for animating menus, and FFMpegX, which is a Mac front end for various open source video playback and encode tools, such as mPlayer and Mpeg2enc, to produce the complete product.

Why?
This is not just because I can't afford a copy of Final Cut Pro HD, or any of the other commercial titles dedicated to video editing.

The experiment is to see if a professional and slick, well presented DVD product actually can be produced using only the basic software which bundles with a common-or-garden entry level Mac, aided and abetted by various open source titles, which are increasingly finding themselves being binary compiled for the UNIX based Mac OS (A Darwin and BSD hybrid OS encased in Apple's Aqua interface).

My Set-up and what I'll be using.

A Mac Mini with 512MB RAM, a G4 1.25 GHz PPC Chip running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.2
A Canon MV700 Mini DV camcorder and numerous other begged, borrowed and stolen Mini DV cams (well not stolen, but you get the point).
Garage Band '05 - For audio editing and effects.
iMovie HD - To import and convert the video from Mini DV to a PAL DV (MPEG layer4) Quicktime clip (PAL is the UK colour standard for standard definition & near broadcast quality video)
iDVD - For DVD menus with graphics generated using Jahshaka and Photoshop.
HyperEngine-AV 1.5 - This title used to be quite expensive, for a shareware title. Then, out of the blue, they made it freeware! Nice of them, considering it doesn't really work that well, despite it's excellent interface and controlability, but more on this later.

My one luxury is version 8 CS of Photoshop. No self respecting photographer can be without 'the shop', and I'm no exception. This and the shareware title Graphic Converter, are a solid partnership on 99.9% of Mac owners desktops, so it doesn't feel like a cheat. GC will be used to pull the still images generated using Jahshaka into a Quicktime clip, since Jahshaka does not yet support (a bug free) output to video render engine, for the animations it creates, and is only able (at the time of writing) to output the animation as separate frames in BMP or JPEG format (though I've yet to discover where the settings to use JPEG are located on it's rather odd interface).

HyperEngine-AV 1.5 used to be a commercial title for trackless video editing and now they've decided to make it free. I don't know if this means they have opened the source code up to the community or if they simply no longer support it's development. Whatever the reason, their documentation is vague as to if it is truly a freeware title or if it is merely that you are no longer able to register it and therefor only available in it's un-crippled form to people who previously paid for it and who are now able to continue using it. This would explain why the 'Export Video..' menu causes the application to simply exit without warning and why similarly it is unable to capture video from any attached firewire device without unexpectedly quitting.

Having said that, I'm using a work around to the cripple, which I've detailed in a separate blog entry here below.

Design Brief.

Shoot, edit and produce a retail quality promo DVD of the group 4 for 1 (site currently off-line).

The package will include:

On disc artwork* and glossy insert card and U-card artwork in a CD jewel sized case.
One region free DVD with animated menu's, 30-45 minutes of chapter selectable video and a slideshow band biography.

*Chris from the band owns an on-body laser printer to etch the artwork directly onto the DVD disc. Nice.

The shoot.

Since there are two possible ways in which we can capture the band's performance I will look briefly at the merits of each.

Dummy run.

The first possibility is a location known as the forum, a local arts center who are friends of the band and would provide a stage. The advantage of this is that only the showcase points in the set would need to be performed and the group would have two or three runs at it, to pick the best take. Since there is no audience, cameras can be placed at optimum positions to ensure they capture the whole performance and could even be moved around between takes.

The disadvantage of this set-up would be the lack of realism. The band are selling themselves on being a party entertainment group, and the lack of an audience might stifle their performance and leave the video feeling flat.

At a gig.

The second scenario is one where the group are filmed in their natural environment, at a gig with a live audience. The advantages being that the whole performance is captured and is "for real".

The disadvantage of this set-up is mostly down to the lore of the road, which states, if something's going to go wrong at a gig you can virtually guarantee it'll happen either five minutes before you go on stage, five minutes after you're due to come off stage, always when you least want anything to go wrong.

Despite the obvious pitfalls of operating three of four cameras and recording audio at a gig, for me, this is the preferred method.

Technical problems abound.

The biggest hurdle to overcome is one of synchronization. None of the various bits of gear which are to be used to capture the performance, the hard disc recorder for audio or the camcorders for video, are locked to a common clock. This requires some old school thinking, along the lines of the old clapper board system.

Because the show runs from start to finnish with no need (theoretically at least) to stop recording at any point, it should be possible to use an audio visual cue point which can be thought of as Zero once in the edit stage, even if each of the devices are not started recording at the same time or linked to a common clock or time code.

Presuming there are only three camcorders and one stereo audio track:

All the cameras begin recording and are aligned so they can see the stage.
As the intro music begins to play a light on the stage illuminates.
The frame before the light comes on is point zero on each of the video files, so if played simultaneously, from this point, they would all be in sync.
Because this frame is exactly the same point at which the music begins this is also point zero for the separate audio source, which similarly would play in sync with the video.

However. It can not be taken for granted that each of the cameras record at the same frame rate as each other or, indeed, sample at the same rate as the audio recorder.

Whilst steps can be taken to make sure the audio recorder is sampling at a standard rate of 44.1 or 48kHz @ 16bps, and that similarly the cameras are recording at full frame rate (approx. 24 frames per second) and recording (ultimately unwanted) audio at 44.1 or 48kHz, there is still a drift factor to consider once each of the cameras post process the MPEG track.

It can not be known, at this stage, if each of the cameras use a common algorithm for data storage. Nor can it be taken for granted that even if they do share a similar method for transferring the digital video to DV tape, that by importing this data into iMovie, using a different camera to the one which recorded the data, (my own camera playing data captured on the loaned machines) that this too will not alter the rate at which iMovie judges movement, GOP and interlace et cetera when it captures the PAL DV file.

If something which is detected as a scene change by the MPEG capture codec in iMovie lands between two frames, but the corresponding point in the program on a different camera is detected as a scene change exactly on a frame this will be half a dropped frame. If this is repeated several times a noticeable drift in audio to video, and video to video sync will occur.

Therefore. A fourth camera will be used to record "off mic action" - cut away scenes which can be used as a distraction. These cut away shots do not need to be in sync with the audio, so they can be used to re-sync the video of the band's performance to the audio and dropped-in when needed.

This additional footage does not need to be shot at the same time as the gig. So the minimum amount of cameras needed to realistically cover the event is three.

Budget? What budget?

Two of the three cameras are to be operated by amateur cameramen. Not that I am myself a professional camera man, but I do at least have the advantage of knowing what kind of shots I want my camera to be responsible for. I must also presume that the volunteers are ostensibly unaware of how to shoot a good static frame and I can not presume at this point that they are able to operate functions such as zoom, focus and pan smoothly enough to not miss any on-stage action, so their directions should be clear and well planned before hand.

Of course, attempting to cover every possible scenario without having prior access to the venue where the performance is to be shot is unrealistic. Having said that a little planning never did any harm, so here is a simple plan for camera positioning, a copy of each will be given to the volunteer operator, once more detailed directions can be added.

Cam A: Tripod at mid-rear of venue to the left side of the stage. Panning to rear and side view of the audience and full view of the stage.
Cam B: Tripod at mid-front of the venue to the right side of the stage. Zoomed to fill the canvas with far left side of the stage and pulled out to the side and front view of the audience and panning to side view of the stage.
Cam C: Both handheld and tripod operated by myself at various floating points between cameras A and B, but not in shot of either in the middle rear of the venue.

First things first.

The first part of the project to be completed is the audio. This is for two reasons. The first being that the client requires a separate audio CD, to be made available to fans of the band as well as being mailed out for promotion of the act to agents and theater managers.

The audio is to be recorded on a hard disc recorder with the four vocals and the stereo backing sequence each on separate tracks.

Tracks 1 & 2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6 and 7 & 8 are stereo, dry vocals - direct from the auxiliary send of the PA's mixer. Tracks 9 & 10 are the left side and the right side of the stereo backing sequence.

Each of these stereo tracks are to be imported as AIFF files in to Apple's Garageband, as part of iLife '05, and mixed as if this where an audio only project. Once complete the final stereo mixdown will be used as the audio for the DVD video as well as a separate audio only CD.

Get on with it

Well that's the basic plan. It remains to be seen how well the worlds of freeware and open source, and ultimately where the two meet the Macintosh, will behave with merit or if my dream of starting my own business producing this kind of product for others bands will have to take a back seat until I can afford to buy a Power Macintosh, a time code, a couple of Sony HD Second Mortgage Cams and Final Cut Pro.

Whatever the verdict on the pros and cons of openware video editing, in less than 2 weeks time the audio at least has to be in post production, so wish me luck. I'll post updates on the subject as and when the project moves from stage to stage.

If you find anything I have mentioned helpful or you have any tips on other software I might use please feel free to use the comments box below, it's much appreciated.

HyperEngine-AV 1.5 disabled video export & import workaround.

2005-08-26T13:04:00.000+01:00

I am currently working on an article explaining how I intend to use open source and freeware software to shoot, edit and produce a commercially available promotional DVD for a friend's band.

One of the tools I am using is HyperEngine-AV 1.5. HyperEngine used to be a commercial title until it turned freeware. Presumably this does not mean the source code has become available but that it's developers no longer intend to work on it.

HyperEngine's trackless video editing, on-the-fly filters and Quicktime supported transition effects are great. In fact, if Apple's iMovie learns anything in future revisions, it should be that this is a much more easy to grasp method of video editing "for the rest of us" than the current interface, albeit one which is streets ahead of anything Vista / Longhorn seems to be promising (shudder).

Whatever the reason for HyperEngine turning to a freeware, don't let the 'free' part confuse you. This is actually a crippled version, in that "Video Export.." and "Capture from Firewire Device" are disabled to anyone who is not updating from previous paid for versions, although everything else seems to work just fine.

Annoyingly though the menus for Export and Import are not grayed out, so if you select them the application simply exits without saving the project you are currently working on, despite the fact Save and Save As.. are not disabled. Again, these features presumably work fine for people who upgraded from previous paid-for versions.

I have managed, despite these issues however, to continue using the tool for the said purpose of producing a promo DVD for my mate's band, and here's how:

Export workaround

The ability to render an effect or transition, so it permanently becomes a self contained, none undoable movie, provides for an easy work around to the export disabled cripple of the freeware version.

Edit your clips together as you would want them to play in your finished stand alone clip should Export be available.
Select all the clips on the timeline by either drawing a box around them or using 'Select All'
Apply an effect to the whole movie with no visible effect, such as the 'Brightness / Contrast' filter with zero parameters, so the picture is unchanged.
This enables the "Render Clip" item in the Process menu, which you should select and wait for it to "bounce down" the whole video with the globally applied (Brightness / Contrast) filter, which effectively is doing nothing apart from making a self contained movie of all your previous edits.
Once this is done, Save the project to the desktop and exit HyperEngine.

Select the project icon on the desktop and CTRL click (or right click for none neanderthal Mac users) and open the context menu "Show Package Contents".
Inside the file, the largest of the Quicktime .mov clips is the file you've just "bounced down" of all your edits. You can drag and drop it out of the Package and either convert it to a more universally used format, such as DivX or MPEG4 using any number of tools, such as FFMpegX.

Similarly you can re-import it into either iMovie or back into HyperEngine to work on it further or better yet use FFMpegX to make it a VOB file and VIDEO_TS folder, so it'll play from start to finnish in a stand alone set-top DVD player.

Import workaround

Since none paid for versions of HyperEngine are also 'Movie Capture' disabled, you'll need to use iMovie to import from your firewire device, such as a Mini DV camcorder.

There's no need to 'Share' or Export your clips from iMovie once they are captured. Simply use the above mentioned "Show Package Contents" context menu on your iMovie project file and drag and drop the enclosed Quicktime clips into a new folder, on the desktop for example.

You can then drop these .mov DV clips into HyperEngine and begin editing.

Israel begins Gaza strip pull out

2005-08-17T16:28:00.000+01:00

After almost 35 years of refusal to comply with UN resolutions calling for the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Palestinian owned land, Israel finally began forcibly removing illegal jewish settlers from the Gaza strip Tuesday, 16th of August 2005.

In Neve Dekalim - the largest settlement in the Gaza Strip - almost all the remaining settlers, who at first seemed determined to stay despite the threat of forceable removal, seem now to have moved on relatively peacefully.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon praised the troops for showing "great sensitivity" in the operation.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has formed a working group to co-ordinate the smooth takeover of the settlements once the Israelis leave, which will include representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom has said the success of the plan to pull out from the Gaza strip was down to a determined effort to stamp out terrorism and work closely with Palestinian moderates, who's new leadership he also praised for their determination to come to a peaceful settlement.

In my opinion.

Handing back all the land which was illegally taken from the Palestinians is the only way forward for peace in the whole of the middle east. The less excuses terrorists feel entitled to have for carrying out acts of murder "in the name of islam", the less justification there will be for illegal invasions and occupation of foreign soil by the Americans.

Perhaps once the sticky business of finally compiling with international law is out of the way, Israel can concentrate on answering some other burning questions which have arisen since their tenure began. Not least of which the abduction and questionable conviction of Mordechai Vanunu on conspiracy charges.

Vanunu was the man who single handedly exposed to the world Israel's secret nuclear ambitions and payed the price of 10 years in solitary confinement for simply doing the right thing.

How about the covered up leaks of poisonous chemicals from the Demona nuclear plant where Vanunu worked, which continues to affect the lives of the people who live and work there today.

Or the murder of innocent Palestinian children in a conspiracy to erase future generations of "terrorist". There are many issues still facing Israel which it remains to be seen if the international community has the stomach to ask.

CNN Hit by virus live on air.

2005-08-17T16:13:00.000+01:00

It has to be the must-see video clip of the year so far, though where to download it from is still a mystery to me. CNN Tuesday 17th of August 2005 was hit by a fast spreading worm, which affects Windows (surprise surprise) 2000 and early versions of XP. On-screen ticker news headlines and other lay-over graphics where disrupted and CNN International simulcast CNN America for an hour or so, having been taken off the air entirely due to the virus.

Other news organisations where also hit, including ABC news.

It's a mystery only the history books will provide an answer to future generations of geeks as to why such a tragic and, above all, dumb looking Operating System as Windows should enjoy the dominance it currently holds over the world. The power of marketing and advertising gurus to literally sell a product which is inferior to near free or vastly cheeper alternatives is almost baffling.

Baffling at least until you consider how stupid most people are, choosing to trust received opinion on a product's reliability before using it themselves, as is surly the case in the majority of early Windows adopters who've ever since stuck with the Microsoft way of doing things.

Steve Balmer is satan.

Beer, I'm a fan.

2005-08-12T20:10:00.000+01:00

beermanfan.blogspot.com is new project from the people who brought you wake up radio. Go check it out for yourself, if you're over 18 that is ;)

Well that didn't take long, did it?

2005-08-12T19:46:00.000+01:00

osx86project.org is reporting that successfully installing a "built for Intel" version of Mac OS X on a laptop is as easy as 123. They are demonstrating a PC running VMWare booting into Mac OS, complete with a video clip of the said task taking place and they include a wiki on how to do it yourself.

Welcome to a proper operating system PC fans!

Of course it was only a matter of time before someone did what those of little faith said Apple would probably have made impossible, with a theoretical security chip inside the x86 Apple machines, which are only available to the Apple Developer community until next year when Intel Macs begin shipping to Joe public.

On the up side, at least die hard PC users will have the chance to see for themselves what a real operating system is all about, without having to invest in new hardware to run Mac OS or ditch their Linux or Windows partition.

On the down side I think it's unfortunate that Apple seem to have done little to prevent their precious OS from being able to run illegally. It's almost as if they wanted it to leak out into the beige box world.

Whatever the MacTel transition means, in the long term, for both companies, it seems inevitable that Microsoft will benefit from it all somehow, they always do! Even if it's as simple as releasing a version of Longhorn Vista that runs native on x86 Macs, as they are sure to do.

Tesco Technika DVD 104 region hack

2005-08-09T01:10:00.000+01:00

If you, like me, simply couldn't say no to the Tesco price tag for this all singing all dancing DVD player you'll probably be interested to know you can program it to accept all regions by following the steps below:

First switch the unit on.
Open the tray using the remote "Eject" key
Then press:
Set up.
Then press:
Volume up, volume down, volume up, volume down.
Then press:
The right button (next to "ok" ) until it says "255" on the screen
Then press:
Set up, to exit.
Your dvd player is now region free.

Cool!!

On a more somber note.

2005-08-07T01:39:00.000+01:00

Politicians you feel you can trust are as rare as chicken's teeth these days. But former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who sadly and suddenly died today, was certainly one of the few people in British politics who many agree was just such an honest man.

He resigned from front line politics over his anti-iraq war stance, delivering at the time a resignation speech in the house of commons which won him a standing ovation from his peers on both sides of the house - something he was later asked about on CNN's Larry King Live.

It's always a bit odd when someone who you only "know" from the television passes away, but when it's someone you actually respect it can be an almost personal shock.

My thoughts are with his family and friends, of whom he had many.

"I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted. Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply."

"What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops." - Robin Cook's classic and scathing resignation speech, read it or stream real video of it on the BBC website. Click here

topofthepods.blogspot.com

2005-08-07T01:37:00.000+01:00

Those crazy kids over at topofthepods.blogspot.com recently featured my top 10 on things everyone does with a camcorder. I recommend you listen to their (near) daily show.

Top 10 irrelevant rock & pop stars, or people who are famous by default.

2005-08-03T05:41:00.000+01:00

10. Larry Coryell, jazz guitar legend. Not a name on everyone's lips but it really is better that way. If you're into 1970's jazz fusion you know his name only too well, but do you like him? If the answer is "No", Amen sister! If the answer is "Yes", you probably think the emperors new outfit is Versace.

9. Cozy Powell, drummer. He played with them all. ONCE!

8. Ian Hill, out of Judas Priest. All the syncronised moshing in the world never taught anyone how to play the bass, least of all the man at the back of every Priest gig since they formed, RIGHT at the back.

7. Alex Lifeson, out of Rush. He owns a guitar, he attempts to play it, but he always fails. Something tells me, in the early days, they needed his van.

6. The other two, out of Destiny's Child. You can't remember what they look like and who can blame you. I'll bet Beyonce couldn't believe her luck when she realised, from the thousands of other puppets who auditioned, THEY were her only competition with the men folk. "Get in! I can't fail and no mistake!", she did exclaim.

5. Paul Raymond, guitarist out of the German heavy metal band Michael Schenker Group and UFO. He might have the same name as the chap who publishes Escort, Razzle and Hanging down from behind over 50's, but trust me, he's second only to Roland Rat in the lovable steaks.

4. Peter Criss, drummer out of American rock band Kiss. Google his name. Find his picture, any picture. Look me in the eye and tell me there's nothing to fear. He shouldn't be allowed out!

3. Michael Anthony, out of Van Halen. This bearded, big boned knitwear fan was either really handy in a fight or he knew where to get booze at 4 in the morning. Whatever the reason for him landing the biggest gig in the history of American hair rock, he can't play the bass and he looks like a welder.

2. John Deacon, the bass player out of Queen. Those sad eyes tell of a man who's seen a thousand woman look right past him and right at Freddy. Who's laughing now? Maybe he was just a really nice bloke, with nowhere else to go, and they didn't have the heart to tell him real bass players don't use a plectrum - except for Chris Squire out of prog rock band Yes, he's mint!

1. Benny and Bjorn, out of Abba. Only in the 70's could you wear those outfits without being publicly shunned. OK, so they wrote the songs, but have you ever found yourself staring at Agnetha and thinking, "If she said no, the other one probably would?" Well these two, despite the beard and tash, have had them BOTH! EACH! Repeat after me, THERE IS NO GOD!

Fintan's Top 10 Peripheral Hanna Barbera Cartoon Characters.

2005-07-28T22:02:00.000+01:00

*I asked my mate Fintan to do a top 10 of his choice for the guys over at the wonderful topofthepods.blogspot.com pod cast, and here it is...

After the golden age of cartoons, (1940s Tex Avery, Tom and Jerry etc.) came the age of cheap uniform crap, spearheaded by the drossy output of Hanna Barbera who despite their connections with Tom and Jerry, lowered the bar for all who followed. Even as a small child I was appalled by the recurring background in a Pixie and Dixie chase. I knew even then that no effort had gone into this rubbish. Despite the dubious fodder that represents the majority of their immense body of work, even HB cartoons had their moments and sometimes were funny by accident. Some of the characters were almost memorable, and the finest of these are listed below, in exciting reverse order.

Honorable mentions - there should probably be someone out of Clutch Cargo or The Mighty Mightor included in the list but I'm too young and confused to remember them clearly.

10. Evil Bakaar, out of Arabian Knights. Great bad guy, bearded, threatening, deep voiced, prone to being knocked off flying carpets and the like just when victory seems to be in sight. Ultimately laughed at by all the good guys, even the donkey.

9. Professor Pat Pending, out of Wacky Races. Not only was he really smart but he was really smug too. The Professor definitely deserved more suffering and hardship than he was provided with in this series.

8. Yak Yak, out of Perils Of Penelope Pitstop. Positive thinking abounds with this vertically challenged gangster. As death and dismemberment threaten he laughs his head off in an infectious way.

7. Botch, out of Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch! "Ooh, ooh, Mr. Peevly, Mr. Peevly."

6. Gip, out of The Harlem Globetrotters. He's big, he's thick, he talks slowly, you're glad you're not like him, canned laughter explodes after his every humourless utterance.

5. The General, out of Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines. This cartoon spawned two top ten characters, and you don't ever want a phone call from this one.

4. Hong Kong Phooey out of Scooby's All Star Laff-A-Lympics. I know he had his own show but he was a peripheral character in this forgettable crock. Scatman Crothers was born with the most wonderful voice this side of Casey Kasem. Marvelous to listen to even in a pap cartoon.

3. Scooby-Dum, out of The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Show. Apparently the vocal talents of Daws Butler brought us this cousin of the canine sleuth, who presumably grew up in a rural area (think Deliverance). Why I put him so high in the list and Yak Yak so low I will never know.

2. The Great Gazoo (from the planet Zetox), out of the Flintstones. This character reveals the true indecision behind the creation of this list. Is it written sarcastically or not? I love the character at number 1, he makes me laugh. This one I hate so much I cannot bring myself to detail what I know about him. A parody of the introduction of this loathesome character in the Simpsons was truly brilliant, but hey, the Simpsons is art, the Flintstones is paint. Mind, I loved their cigarette advertisements.

1. Klunk, out of Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines. He's the creator of ingenious Heath Robinson style pigeon catching devices that clearly aren't going to work, and which often telegraph the calamity that will befall the operators once Klunk has explained to them what they are and how they work. His wonderful speech utilises minimum words and maximum sound effects combined with an impressive reshaping and impossible contortion of the face. Klunk doesn't look like he's a hit with the ladies. You know he's going to fall to the ground from a great height. He is inherently funny, like Oliver Hardy, and similarly portly, and similarly destined to chronic mishaps, only craply drawn.

So there you have it. What do you mean, "Why no Goober and the Ghost Chasers?" I could only choose ten you know.

Let's hope Vista works well Apple fans.

2005-07-28T16:37:00.000+01:00

Face facts, my fellow Apple fans. Vista is going to be huge. We all know why of course. I remember the first time I saw Longhorn being demonstrated. The Microsoft geek proudly double clicking a title bar with the shift key held down to slow down it's minimization animation to the foot of the screen to show how smooth the new graphics handling layer is. Of course they don't call it Quartz, anymore than they called Explorer the Finder in Windows 3.1 / 95 / 98 / XP, but a poorly done rip off it remains to be.

I am, however, genuinely hopeful that Vista works really well and is fully functional upon release. Some of the best things about Mac OS for some years now have come about thanks to the "beat this if you can" attitude of it's designers which almost certainly wouldn't have ever been coded where it not for the need to continually beat Microsoft on usability and stability, not that XP made that exactly hard at times.

Take, for example, Safari browser. How much of a pain in the derriere it was to use Internet Explorer on system 8 and 9 and have to admit how much better it was than even IE on Windows itself. Now we have RSS, tabbed browsing, in-line spell checking and a one click download queue. Anyone who thinks that Apple would have done that where it not for a desire to rid Mac OS of IE are mistaken. Alright you could argue FireFox Mozilla forced their hand somewhat, but that's not exactly as stable as it should be and certainly no where near as quick as Safari.

In short, a stable Vista makes for an even better Mac OS in the future and let's be honest about this, once we're all using Intel chips it's going to be easier than ever to literally stand the two OS's side by side and compare reliability and features than ever before.

Features we Mac users need before Vista claims them.

We want to be able to record, edit and feed a podcast with minimal fuss and flounder all from within one application. Sure as eggs is eggs there's a Vista developer somewhere out there working to allow us to do that and we will use it, if we have to.

We want to read encoded attachments, post encoded attachments and manage nntp usenet groups in a freeware application that just works. So far there is nothing anywhere close to being as reliable and feature rich as xnews is for XP on the Mac side, and you can guarantee Luu Tran is working to enable xnews on Vista to run better than ever.

We want Quicktime player to be aware of video and audio clips Video Lan Client and MPlayer have no problem with and say goodbye to the most annoying pop-up box in the world, the one that reads "Quicktime can not handle this type of media" - it's pathetic, on a level even Windows Media Player simply never stoops to.

We want to be able to edit video without having to convert to DV or MPEG 4 first - which can take hours for iMovie to do with a long clip and still doesn't guarantee the audio track will remain in sync. tMPEGenc and VirtualDub for Windows have been putting video editing on the Mac to shame for years and there's no reason to assume Vista versions won't be even better and quicker.

The future

Apple needs to stop assuming everyone knows they are better than Microsoft and start proving it day after day, release after release beyond a shadow of a doubt, three of many doubts as highlighted above. Tiger might have been killer in the face of XP, but for how long it retains the title of King of the interface is dependent on the richest man in the world's company suddenly forgetting how to make products people want to use, competitively priced and compatible with the existing software. Apple's troubles have only just begun.

Wake up radio

2005-07-15T06:49:00.000+01:00

WakeUpRadio with Adam Tandoori. Top tunes from: David Lee Roth - A Little Ain't Enough. Jane's Addiction - Just Because. Ozric Tentacles - Kick Muck 98. Jeff Beck and Terry Bozzio - Slingshot. Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Memoirs of an officer and a gentleman. Manhattan Transfer - Gentleman with a family. NWA - Mushy Peas Mix.

Waking up the internet with the power of pure ignorance, from the mouth of Adam Tandoori, your host and guardian through the world of Prog, Jazz, Funk, Fusion and whatever the fook he feels like playing. Contains strong north east English accent.

Podcast #5

2005-07-13T09:01:00.000+01:00

In this issue: Things I miss about Windows. Real music & business. They came from outer Leeds.

My first 5 months as a Mac user.
The state of play in the modern music industry and it's affect on the future of music.
The latest news appears to indicate that the London suicide bombers where from the north of England.

Please provide feedback on the idea of having a podcast in support of this photography site

Music used in this podcast:
Allan Holdsworth - Tokyo Dream
Buddy Rich Big Band - Space Shuttle
Prince - Kiss
Steve Vai - Answers
Eric Johnson - Are you experienced
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Lila's Dance
Steve Vai's 777 - The Attitude Song.

They came from outer Leeds.

2005-07-13T07:23:00.000+01:00

Of all the places in my country that I'd rather the rest of the world didn't know too much about, Leeds is by far one of the top 5. Not because there is anything wrong with it or it's people in particular, but because it is to glamour and glitz what Julian Clary is to truck driving. Despite this, Leeds is, in fact, one of the leading centers of Information Technology infrastructure in the whole of the United Kingdom and has in recent years gone from having relatively high unemployment to providing a generally better standard of living for it's several thousand inhabitants than it did in the Margaret Thatcher years of government and it is a center of work for several million people in the surrounding towns and cities. But that doesn't change the fact that it's the sort of town I imagine Delaware, in the United States, to be. Functional, in it's own way, but boring and dry in comparison to Las Vegas or Beverly Hills.

Unfortunately for Leeds, and the north of England in particular, it has been put on the world map this week for a truly horrifying reason. It now seems that the suicide bombers who wreaked havoc in the streets of London last week, by attacking the public transport system explosives that killed and injured hundreds, originated from Leeds, and that even more chillingly, these people where entirely well blended in members of the large muslim community, unknown even by their family to have anti-British, anti-muslim beliefs.

Leeds is a town who's racist minority have long had a voice in the form of the political party known as the BNP (British National Party) and the weeks and months to come will be a real test of strength for the moderate, law abiding muslim community in the face of hate fueled antagonism, on the part of the BNP, who will no doubt rally for support amongst knee-jerk reactionary brain donors, for their policy of so-called voluntary repatriation to countries of their father's origin of anyone who has even the slightest none white blood running through their veins.

The coming weeks will also be a test of the police force as to whether they will tolerate the kind of talk we've come to expect from the BNP fueling the almost inevitable back-lash against the muslim community in that area or whether they will finally do what the majority of MP's in parliament and ordinary people in the street have wanted them to do for years and seriously investigate the links between the leadership of the BNP and organised crime and violence.

Whatever happens in the future one thing is clear. There are wandering the streets of your town, my town, everybody's places of work and play in this beautiful United Kingdom of Great Britain, deluded and fanatical men and women who are prepared to die in the name of a perverted version of the peaceful faith of Islam. And for as long as this is the case, none of us are free of blame for the world events which led to their radicalisation, such as the continuing mistreatment of the Palestinian people at the hands of the state sponsored murderers in Israel or the failure to capture and bring to justice Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, 10 years after the massacre of Bosnian Muslims which they presided over in Srebrenica.

Real music & business.

2005-07-10T07:10:00.000+01:00

Now and then

There used to be a time when to even stand a chance of having your band's demo tape so much as listened to by a record company executive the prerequisite of either being able to sing or play an instrument was second only to the band or artist having a sound of their own, something unique which set them apart from any other artist currently vying for the public's attention.

These days, however, just the opposite is true. The more you can dance like, sing like or just plain be like everyone else, the better.

I'm old enough to know that on one level this truism is no more of a threat to real music than Larry Grayson is to rugby union. But on a psychological level are we teaching the children of the generation who's parents grew up on a diet of Motorhead and Madonna sitting comfortably next to each other in the charts that diversity is dead? Have we supplanted a belief in the power of artistic freedom with a dictate that states to be included in the club which supports one kind of music you must exclude yourself from the reaches of another?

Choice

We have watched, for some years now, the music business break down and pigeon hole different types of art into so many sub-genre that the potential for an artist to sell their music is dependent on them occupying one of only a few magic niches. The dominant of these being post 80's ironic nostalgia pop, three chord's and a distortion peddle white, middle-class and therefore angry American punk pop, DJ orientated bastardized Rhythm and Blues and women hating gangster rappers.

Mix and match any of the elements from the above and the limousine to your fifteen minutes awaits. Use your own inspiration and artistic expressions, throw in a little Sly and the Family Stone meets Frank Zappa thread of originality, and you're just as sure to be ignored by the professional criticizers, wording their way through the popular music press like a dose of Andrews salts, just as you are to be sure of being shunned by the purist muso brigade, who think Queen sold out when they started using synthesizers and that Prince was better before he died.

Back in the day

The teen market, which all heavily promoted artists are aimed at, is already well and truly brainwashed into thinking there is such thing as choice by the time they reach the age of consent, and once that threshold is crossed, the line in the sand which was previously only loosely adhered to in the first place, between harmless titillation and out and out pornography, becomes an almost terrifying mine field for concerned parents to negotiate their way through, convinced along the way that they'll find something acceptable, that they are happy for their child's young mind to be influences by, amidst the shitfest of pseudo-angry neu-metal designer hair grease and conflict diamonds bling.

20 years ago, when pop music was a generic term used to describe any style of music which actually sold units retail to the public, it would be wrong to assume this come one come all approach meant the playing field was equal, that all music was given as much of a chance of becoming heard on the radio, regardless of the artist who produced it having bad teeth or the material itself being rock, jazz or insert your own tastes here. In other words, there has always been an inextricable link between image and music. To an artist, who simply wants his or her music heard this has always been a problem, but never more so in the time which has passed since the mid to late 1980's.

It can be no coincidence that the rise of the video star and the fall of the artistic, creative musician, has seen record companies and commercial FM radio stations alike preside over this transition with rising profit margins, thanks to the relatively low expense of promoting an artist by controlled media and marketing versus the pre-80's model which expected the band or artist to tour and self-promote through word of mouth amongst a fan base. Taking a 5 piece band, with roadies, sound crew, lighting and engineers, managers, lawyers and other hangers-on around the country, or even around the world on airplanes and in fleets of expensive trucks, is a lot more of a drain on profits from unit sales than making a video and selling it to a cable TV channel who can guarantee the clip will enjoy a slot alongside Pepsi, Nike, Durex and million other brands who's creators are keen to be associated with the image and more importantly the fan base of the artist.

In the 20 years that have passed since the rise of MTV, which was once a showcase for new talent but is now just another aspirational lifestyle channel, the pop song itself has transformed into being just another vehicle for the idiot in-front of the camera to sell lingerie, perfume, movies and a plethora of additional materials, on sale to anyone who is vulnerable to glitz and glamour and an image which makes them feel as if they are a part of something real, something they can call, ironically, their own.

Just as being a punk was originally about dressing differently and being shocking turned into just another fashion everyone was wearing, its believers all walking around town looking identical and about as shocking as Hank Marvin wearing plaid, so have Eminem, Public Enemy and Metallica each gone from edgy and dangerous to commercially benign in a blink of an advertising executives eye.

Kill yourself.

The late, great Bill Hicks, American comedian and advocate of free speech, free thought and free drugs, once said, "If you're in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. It's the only way to be sure. You're fucking us and you're fucking yourself, kill yourself and the world will be a better place".

The all pervasive, all persuasive command and control wet dreams of record company marketing departments all around the world have transformed even rock and roll itself, once the exclusive domain of the justifiably motivated and artistically challenging, into just another radio friendly commodity, to be traded and exploited for the gain of men in suites.

So I ask you the listener to stop and think about what we are collectively responsible for, ultimately, when the great book of late 20th, early 21st century history of music is written, when it comes to podcasting. Do we want it to be just a footnote? A possible champion of freedom in artistic musical expression which could have brought music back into the arms of the people who love it but who's pioneers and early adopters allowed it to become just another avenue for the men in suites? Or do we care about the power of truly free music enough to say enough is enough. We want our children to know real music has no boundaries, that it requires no other imagery to justify it's existence other than the pictures it conjures in their own imaginations, when they lay there, as we did before the days of MTV, brown bakelite headphones throbbing, to the sound of real music.

Podcast #4

2005-07-10T02:30:00.000+01:00

In this issue: London, business as usual. britcaster.com. Chavs at 5am. Recorded en route to the tab shop, in my Ferrari. Music by It Bites.

Just as New Yorker's spirits couldn't be broken by 911 so Londoners proved themselves to made of the good stuff that makes this the best place in the world to live this week. Tune into a strangely more upbeat style of wakeup podcast, for thoughts on this and more, including that mention.

Things I miss about Windows, or how I wish Mac was even better.

2005-07-10T02:28:00.000+01:00

Start me up

As you already know, I also run a blog and podcasts giving free electric guitar lessons. When I wanted to post links to short Quicktime video clips of my playing the examples given in the lessons, I naturally assumed that choosing the settings marked as "Export for Web" in Apple's iMovie, that these clips would be playable by both Windows users of Quicktime as well as those using it native in Mac OS X once I posted them to the internet. After-all, how much more specific can you be than "Export for Web"? The web part insinuating compatibility. How wrong I was, and how amazed am I yet again that, far from it being a simple matter of Windows users getting it wrong again, that in fact Quicktime relies on different codecs being installed on the Windows side than it does on the Mac.

This highlights a problem in general that I, as a creative user of publishing and authoring software for some 10 to 12 years now, have watched become an increasing problem, despite efforts to address it from all sides of the software development community, that of cross platform compatibility.

Cross platform compatibility

It's no wonder that the very phrase alone conjures up an image of a typical Windows user, happily working together with other Microsoft faithful in the face of everyone else struggling with error messages and submitting yet another bug report form to anonymous hobbyist and long since moved on to other projects Open Source developers. After-all, say what you want about Microsoft, at least when you know you need a free-ware tool to carry out a particular task you're only a couple of clicks away from something that will work. Try the same on Mac OS X or Linux and the all too familiar whittling down process of refining google search criteria to include Mac only download repositories or open source projects who's authors have thought to compile for the Power PC chip and a thousand other tedious work-arounds from running the gauntlet of discussion forums and newsgroups to finally resigning yourself to the fact that, try though they may have done to dispel the old myth that there isn't as much software for the Mac as there is for Windows, Apple have, for the most part, still got a long way to go.

Same old Apple.

NNTP newsgroup readers and posters are one noticeably under served area of Mac software development in particular. While there are a handful of titles, both free and shareware which do a decent job of handling the job of viewing and handling articles and attachments none of them come close to the design and ease of use of a title called xnews, which is written in Delphi by Luu Tran and (so far at least) only compiled for Windows, despite several years pleading of him by the open source community for it's code to be made public and therefore, theoretically at least, portable to other environments.

Xnews is, in fact, one of the few applications I genuinely miss from my days as a Windows XP user. I switched my entire operation to Macintosh with the release of the Mac Mini after salivating for some years at the prospect of finally getting to grips with OS X, convinced as I was from the other side of the fence that many of the flaws in Apple's operating system which originally turned me away from their platform, some 5 or 6 years earlier, must have been ironed out in the intervening years. Sadly, most of the obviously easy to address mistakes which dogged OS 8 and 9 still remain.

It is especially sad for me to see, after living with my decision to switch back to Mac for some months now, that it is still these little things about Mac OS which result in it's annoy-ability factor being so much higher than the all-together more clunky looking and virus riddled Windows XP. You still can't, in Mac OS, resize a window by dragging any one of it's edges, for example. You can't launch a highlighted file by key-pressing 'return / enter'. You can't burn a video to consumer playable DVD format without first converting it to a DV stream so that iDVD can import it and then re-convert it into a DVD file any region free set-top-box DVD player can understand, which results in several hours processing time and a total disk space use in the high 6 or 7's of gigabytes, rather than the low 1 to 2 gigabytes that a similar operation in Windows running Nero Disk Burning tools, or similar, would require. Quicktime Player still only supports a very limited number of video and audio files and still lacks basic playback features in it's freeware state that Windows Media Player has supported for years, such as full screen playback and playlists. OK, there are work-arounds to this and other of it's foibles, such as using a proper video playing software like the open source title VLC. But as a new user I shouldn't have to run the gauntlet of 'How to make it work properly' FAQ's and chat forums to coax basic functionality out of an operating system supposedly designed from the ground up to encourage people away from Microsoft and towards Apple.

The future's bright, the future's Intel.

Mac OS is, as it stands however, still streets ahead of Windows for one reason alone. UNIX. Building an OS on top of such a well supported and open foundation was a master stroke on Apple's part and will remain to be their greatest move in the OS wars for many years to come. It is second only, in fact, to their recent decision to switch from IBM's Power PC chip to Intel's x86 architecture across their entire product line by 2007. Once that transition is complete we, the simple Mac user, can be sure of, at long last, availability of titles and compatibility with our Microsoft chums. Albeit, I'm afraid to admit, because at the very least, Longhorn OS will run as native code on a dual boot system or in a virtual machine under Mac OS X for Intel x86.

Podcast #3

2005-07-09T01:00:00.000+01:00

In this issue: An apology to Adam Curry. Terror in London. Backing track: John Coltrane. Playout: Damn Good, David Lee Roth & Steve Vai.

In the last few days I discovered the following podcasting / blogging sites which might be of interest.

dissidentvox.blogware.com - is well put together intelligent comment from a fellow Brit. Thanks to the fact I was looking for a mash up (which I will play on a future wake up) which http://dissidentvox.blogware.com/blog was hosting, and Google found his site, quite by chance, I also found a link to britcaster.com - a great place for British podcasters to air their feeds.

Terror in London

2005-07-08T00:02:00.000+01:00

My thoughts and sympathies go out to everyone affected by the cowardly attack on London today, Thursday 7th of July 2005.

In an earlier podcast I called into question the validity of Adam Curry as a podcaster and journalist. I listened to his show today which comprised almost entirely of a simple message of love from Stevie Wonder. I apologies to Mr. Curry for making assumptions about his motivation and journalistic integrity in the past. This was a heartfelt and fitting gesture of peace.

So where now?

Well. If this isn't the excuse for imposing similarly draconian laws on the British that the American people have had to suffer for so long that the powers that be have been waiting for, nothing is.

When I say the powers that be, I'm not necessarily referring to Mr. Blair and his cabinet, in a public, open to scrutiny by parliament sense, although he and his unelected behind the scenes advisors undoubtedly make up the numbers in the coalition of the willing Mr. Bush has been building around himself since September the 11th, 2001.

The powers that be I refer to are the people who former American president and former head of the CIA George Bush senior referred to when he said, "We need to build a new world order". The real powers who control the world. The Bilderberg groups of this world. The secret societies who's members comprise of oil billionaires and newspaper owners. The defense contractors who's profit margins depends upon a continuing need for weapons of mass destruction.

Now, before I run away with what is, admittedly, one part received opinion and one part a healthy disrespect for politicians, let me make it clear that I am not against drafting new legislation, or using existing legislation which actually prevents the kind of cowardly and sickening attacks we witnessed in London today, far from it.

What I am against, and justifiably fearful of, is that this will simply serve as another bargaining chip the Bush administration will use to justify the continuation of their drive to impose their will on the rest of the world - or at least the parts of it that have oil and natural resources which powerful lobbyists and billion dollar American businesses want to exploit, in the name of capitalism.

No one could argue that true freedom and democracy isn't preferable to the kind of regimes which are in place in countries such as China, Israel and Zimbabwe, but these aren't the countries on Bush's list of priorities, least of all Israel, who's government deliberately carries out acts of terrorism on their own neighbors every day of the week without so much as even a comment from the white house.

Puppet

On a note of respect, which is I believed still deserved despite so many marks against his name, I have to trust that Tony Blair at least thinks he knows what he is doing by sticking so close to Bush. Politically, and this is something Americans especially might not be aware of, Blair and Bush are on opposite sides of the fence. At least in theory.

Blair is supposed to be the leader of the working man's party and bush's republicans are more aligned to the party of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's conservatives. Blair is more of a Clinton than he is a Bush, at least on paper. But today's events and those acts carried out by terror groups in the past, on British and American interests, have brought these two leaders together under a common will to stamp out terrorism - at least that's the public story.

An underling agenda, I believe, is being carried out by the Bush administration, to which I also have to trust even Tony Blair himself is only partially aware of. Bush's agenda to spread the American way around the world plays right into the hands of religions extremists, of which you can count christian fundamentalists on the American side just as surly as you can so-called islamic terror groups on the other.

The people who benefit from the war on terror are the share holders of the same multi-national corporations who's rape and pillage mentality fuels so much hatred for the west in the first place, so who's in control here? The governments we elect or the companies and corporations our very way of life is defined by in this consume or be consumed society?

Coke is it. Just do it. Because you're worth it.

You want an answer to the ultimate question of "why do these terrorists hate us so much?" Well here's my theory. We have what they want and we ain't in the mood to share it. We want it all to ourselves and now it's too late to simply say to them that we, the ordinary people, didn't mean it to turn out this way. We are just as much a pawn in the game of control as you are. We didn't elect them, they elected themselves.

Why do you trust Bush, Mr. average American voter?
"Well he's strong on terrorists and he's a family man".
NO! You trust Bush because CNN, Fox, NBC and CBS told you to trust him. CBS is a General Electric company. General Electric make weapons of mass destruction for 'our side'. Join the fucking dots!
"Well they attacked us first, they flew a plane into the Pentagon and the world trade centre!"
Yeah? Well where's the wreckage on the lawn in front of the Pentagon? Why was the hole in the side of the Pentagon which was supposedly made by this airplane smaller than the wing span of a 737 but exactly the same size as a bunker buster missile? Why is the head quarters of the biggest military in the world protected by security cameras that don't record major terrorist attacks? Show me the proof that the 9/11 attack on the pentagon wasn't an illusion used to instill fear and I'll show you proof that it was.

*Note. In the documentary "911 In Plane Site", film maker Dave VonKleist presented information which called into question certain aspects of what has generally come to be accepted as the official version of the truth about what happened on the day terrorist stooped to a new low in evil. At the time of watching this film I was skeptical about all but the evidence presented to support the missile attack theory at the Pentagon. However, since the film was released, the former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term, Morgan Reynolds, has commented that the official story about the collapse of the World Trade Centre is "bogus", and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and the adjacent Building No. 7. Which in the film, Mr. VonKleist attempted to demonstrate by highlighting eye whiteness statements, given to news reporters at the time of the twin towers collapse by New York city fire fighters, who recall the smell of cordite, used in controlled explosions, as being unmistakable in the air, and that the buildings appeared to have been "pulled", a term used in the demolition business meaning to bring an unsafe building down in a semi-controlled manner.

Olympics

Only 24 hours prior to suffering the worst act of terrorism on British soil since world war two, London was celebrating having won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics.

I only hope and pray that by the time this celebration of sporting excellence comes to our shores, significant measures have been taken to ensure the freedom and liberty of this great nation's people will be no more dominated by fear of our own leaders ability to control and manipulate, than it is of a fear for the people who think that killing innocent people is acceptable, in any way shape or form.

Say no to I.D. cards. Say yes to freedom.

Podcast Number 2

2005-07-05T11:54:00.000+01:00

In this issue. Live 8 opinions. Adam Curry - pioneer or gobshite? Let's bomb France and news of the official launch of my new free guitar lessons blog.

News and views from a uniquely British point of view.

MP3DownloadHQ.com is a low cost subscription service that helps music lovers sort out how to download music from the Internet safely. A subscription grants you immediate access to reviews, tutorials, tips and experts’ secrets on using and enjoying free Peer-to-Peer Software. A must if you use (or want to know more about) P2P for music, games or movies. A subscription provides a handy and complete resource guide for the online music lover. In addition to prompt e-mail tech help, subscribers also get instant access to thousands of new artists songs compiled by in house music geeks scouring the Internet daily to bring you the latest breaking artists before they go mainstream. Less than $1 month can make finding and enjoying music on the Internet easy, safe, and fun. Join Today, Start Downloading NOW!.

Live 8 in Hyde park. A review and opinion.

2005-07-05T06:47:00.000+01:00

Sir Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, to raise awareness of the up-coming G8 summit between leaders of the worlds richest nations on saturday the 2nd of July, was a stunning success. A success, for me, not just because it reaffirmed my belief that the people who really care about issues of global importance are in the majority but because it proved that it's the vocal minority who propagate the idea that not caring about such things, to the point of being vociferously against them, is cool, when in fact just the opposite is true.

Murdoch is satan

The UK's printed press where falling over themselves to see who could write a pithier brush off of Sir Bob personally, and the aims of the Live 8 organizers in general, on a feverish daily basis leading up to the biggest gig in history. The whole seemingly insurmountable issue of making poverty history has never been one that the British press have handled particularly well, mostly because they tend to get rather drawn in to and bogged down with the side issues raised by the very detractors who stand to lose out the most if the campaign to clean up African politics succeeds.

Robert G. Mugabe himself could hardly have done a better job of dismissing the whole thing as nothing more than a publicity stunt, to boost flagging CD sales, than certain quarters of the philistine British press did in the weeks leading up to the concert.

The great British public, however, voted with their feet and attended in their millions via the BBC's excellent live coverage. Among the many victories of mob-rule over right wing press journalism, that the day had to yield, by far the biggest was the sight and sound of two hundred thousand Londoners booing the French at the start of the main event upon the introduction of the Parisian concert crowd on the big screens scattered around the sun drenched Hyde park. For all we should defend to the death the rights of any nation to say what ever it wants about any other nation, be it negative or otherwise, you simply can't extend these same rights, in the context of the campaign to make poverty history, to a nation who's very E.U. agricultural policy is at the center of the reason why it's virtually impossible for third world farmers to fair-trade with Europe and earn their own way out of poverty. For all there was an unspoken air to the political undercurrent of the event which pointed the finger of responsibility firmly at America, it will be just as much the French who are to blame for the inevitable solve-nothing compromise which will more than likely arise from the G8 talks once they are concluded.

Music makes the people come together

As for the actual music, Madonna, U2, Pink Floyd, The Who, Sting and Sir Paul McCartney where of particular note for their flawless conduct, although it should come as no surprise that they are the very acts who similarly glittered so brightly at the original Live Aid concert. Although the likes of U2 and Madonna were relatively new acts back in 1985, some of the biggest surprise hits at the 2005 re-vamp, weren't even born back in the days when Back to the Future, Top Gun, Tron and Short Circuit where in everybody's pirate video tape collection. Ah yes, the mid 1980's. When a packet of 20 smokes cost less than £3 and you still had change for a packet of chew-its.

Do it for Syd.

This old progressive rock fan's tears of joy could hardly have flowed any more happily at the sight of Jimi Hendrix rising from the dead to perform at the concert than they did at the sight of Roger Waters finally taking his rightful place at the side of his old band mates in a re-formed and, we are led to believe, one off performance of the Pink Floyd. If we are to suppose that they laid their differences aside in the light of their irrelevance, so many years after they caused the break-up, then I would hope the emotion of the event, and the clear fact that they can actually still really do the business on stage together, after all those years apart, might prompt them to at least re-form for a hits tour, if not record new material while they are all still with us. Too many opportunities for classic, original line-up's of super groups have come and been allowed to go again in the past. For the biggest of them all to go the same way as Van Halen would be almost tragic. I just hope they see it that way too.

Of the relative new-comers, touting for the Queen award for biggest surprise of the day, nominees would have to be Razorlight and Velvet Revolver. Razorlight turned on an electric performance and their lead singer could hardly have looked more at home on a stage that represented the largest audience than even The Who had ever played for. Velvet Revolver on the other hand, with the exception of Slash, looked a little out of place, which is exactly why this fan liked them so much, a real contrast to the sometimes overly gushing pro-Bob Geldof acts, like Maria Carey for example, who's use of an African children's choir as a stage prop to cynically reinforce her "African-issue-aware" credentials couldn't have been more painful than if she'd echoed her opinion of the continent as it was when she was asked about it some years ago, where she affirmed the opinion that, and I quote, "Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff."

U.S. and them.

Only time will tell if the leaders of the worlds richest nations are worth the money we spend on putting them in the job of carrying out our demands. My suspicion, for all I do try to be an optimist, is that for all Pink Floyd may be one of Tony Blair's favorite bands, his voice will be a lone one when it comes to asking the real question of whether or not it is morally wrong and intellectually perverse to allow thirty thousand children to die everyday. Not to mention the countless thousands of Zimbabweans who die at the hand of their own president's social cleansing program because they don't live on top of an American oil field. But one thing is for certain. The only way our leaders can continue to be thought of as true leaders, post this weeks G8 summit in Scotland, is if they genuinely do everything they can to place the full weight of the United Nations on the shoulders of the corrupt African nations who's leaders are emboldened by the inaction and baffling complacency of their neighboring African states.

Adam Curry. Web pioneer or gobshite? You decide

2005-07-05T06:10:00.000+01:00

Like millions of other iTunes users who upgraded to version 4.9 for it's integrated podcast features, I rediscovered Adam Curry this week. I say rediscovered because I'd become aware of him way back in the middle of last year, when the BBC first brought the concept of podcasting to my attention.

Having just listened to him for half an hour on topics ranging from podcasting, him getting his pilots license and his narrow minded, ill-informed opinions on the live 8 concert, I'm firmly of the opinion he is irrelevant, and will remain so until he stops podcasting about podcasting, and how it's very future depends on him and starts actually telling us something worth knowing.

The pioneer of podcasting he may come to be recognized as, even lorded over us as, in the future is simply not deserved in light of the web nostaligia for what was hip last week he seems to have the whole of west coast of America convinced is actually important, even vital!

So, I hereby predict within the next year to a year and a half, he'll be as relevant to podcasting as Bill Gates is to open source software development. The analogy being that while it was Windows and Microsoft which dragged the price of the humble PC down to realistic levels in mid to late 1990's, it was this very increase in availability which made the importance for an alternative to the dominant OS all the more pressing.

Similarly, Adam Curry inspires the DJ in us all to sit in a darkened room on a bright sunny day to sit talking to ourselves and pretending, like a bunch of 7 years olds playing the Radio DJ Game, that someone is actually listening - and if they are listening, that they care what we're talking about, not because it's important or vital that podcasting succeeds and our involvement is key to it, but because the net nerd in us all feeds on feeling like we understand the new possibilities, thrown up by the latest trend in information delivery systems.

Just as everybody once laid claim to having the most popular channel on DalNet, who only days after founding it realised it sucked to use the command prompt interface so the majority of start up podcasters will drift back into obscurity. Just as everyone who ever shared a file on Napster spent those nail biting weeks waiting for Lars Ulrich to come knocking on their door demanding his royalties so will the podcasts about how cool it is to be a young, white, middle class student of computing in the bay area realise the banality of their life and move on to the next 'big thing', that further serves to reinforce their faith in all that's narrow and thoughtless (see perfect example).

- - - -

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Let's bomb France!

2005-07-05T02:29:00.000+01:00

BBC News, Monday, 4 July, 2005, 21:45 GMT 22:45 UK:
French President Jacques Chirac is reported to have cracked jokes about British food at a meeting with the German and Russian leaders.

French newspaper Liberation says Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin laughed and joined in the banter.

"One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad," it quotes Mr Chirac as saying, adding "The only thing they (the English) have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease."

A spokesman for Mr Chirac said the report did not reflect "the tone or the content" of the meeting, but stopped short of issuing a categorical denial.

The comments, made within earshot of reporters, come in the run-up to the G8 summit in Scotland later this week.
--
The Bastard! Let's get those tanks rolling boys! Mr. Chirac has clearly never eaten one of my mother's stunning sunday dinners.

I made the mistake of waxing my credit card in the south of France once, and I can safely say it was one of the most traumatic times of my entire life. The people are rude, they never bathe, the food was undercooked and overpriced, the police ignored me when I reported some of my things had been taken from my hotel because they couldn't find anyone who spoke English and, as if that wasn't all bad enough, I was nearly beaten up for having long hair. All in the space of 5 days!

Fuck the French, fuck 'em all.

Preliminairy launch of guitar lessons blog

2005-07-04T05:14:00.000+01:00

Inspired by the ease at which audio can now be shared via iTunes' podcasting feaure I've started a new blog to give guitar lessons for free. I hope I can make enough from google adshare clicks to carry on doing it throughout the coming months, when my study to become a journalist gets into full swing.

Please give me any feedback on the project by using the forum, linked in the main guitar lessons blog page below.

http://electricguitarlessons.blogspot.com/

Looking forward to the French Grand Prix.

2005-07-01T23:44:00.000+01:00

World championship leader Fernando Alonso’s Friday preparations went according to plan at Magny-Cours, on a day when main title rival Kimi Raikkonen picked up a 10-place grid relegation following an engine failure. Alonso was second fastest in the morning practice session and fourth in the afternoon, and was delighted with the feel and behaviour of his Renault.

Kimi Raikkonen’s chances of winning the French Grand Prix suffered a major setback on Friday after his Mercedes engine blew on his first flying lap in the afternoon practice session. The McLaren mechanics will have to install a fresh power unit overnight, costing Raikkonen 10 places on the starting grid.

Let's hope that this grand prix is more action packed than the farce of the American "race" at the Indianapolis motor speedway two weeks previous. Naturally being a Brit all fingers, toes and any other spare appendages will be crossed, in my household at least, for Jensen Button, though it seems likely to be another good race for Alonso.

The second ever wake up internet pod cast will include a full break down of the race as it happens and will include my post race opinion as well as a bunch of other stuff that's been happening in my life since the inaugural voyage of radio Jim, last Wednesday, I hope to pick up a couple of listeners from the recent introduction of podcasts in Apple's iTunes.

Welcome to the first wake up podcast!

2005-06-30T22:30:00.000+01:00

-

wOOt!

My first real podcast! GOD I hope this is cool with everyone who hears it. I don't want to bore anyone.

So what's in it? Well, a bunch of stuff about Formula 1 motor sport, some mac os gripes, some site tips and general hilarity - You've GOT to hear my mum when she doesn't realise the mic is on! You just couldn't script the stuff my mum just pops out with sometimes, it's unreal.

So ya, my first real live podcast. Let me know what you think. jimgardner1973@gmail.com

Paste the URI below into iTunes 4.9 and wake up your internet:
http://wakeupinternet.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I should also say a little bit about how I put this together.
I'm using a Mac Mini, which has no sound card input, least not without using an external USB 2.0 or FireWire connected third party device. My little work around for now, until I buy something better and quicker, is to podcast to my FireWire enabled MiniDV video camera with the lens cap still attached. I imported the video into iMovieHD in Mac OS Tiger, iLife 05 and edited all the audio shenanigans into it from there. Then I 'shared' a custom "Audio Only" quicktime .AIFF file to the desktop and converted it back to an MP3 using ffmpegx.
If anyone has a quicker work around for us Mac Mini users I'd love to hear about it, so mail me! Some kind of freeware tool that can import audio only from a FireWire connected MiniDV camcorder and convert to MP3 on the fly would a dream ticket.
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Coming up in issue #2. A podcast, with accompanying video clips, available right here, within 24 hours of completion of the French grand prix and a LIVE podcast of my race observations as they happen. Should be interesting!!
Also, I'll be putting a bunch of my photos on here soon too, so look out for that.

See ya soon. Jim.

Test phase 1, the hardest part

2005-06-30T15:31:00.000+01:00

I'm guessing, but from what I've heard from some of the fnooks who podcast these days, it's the early days, in fact this one is my first day, which are the hardest. When it comes to getting something up and running you can be sure people are actually going to be able to find and hopefully enjoy listening to the early stages have a pretty tough learning curve, well it seems that way to me anyway.

In fact, for all I am doing this in an attempt to get something out there which actually has something to say about something other than how cool podcasting is, I'm learning a new respect for some of my monotonic, girlfriend-less American chum(p)s out there who've beaten me to this podcasting lark by some months, if not years.

I'm hoping that the introduction of podcasting in Apple's iTunes will yield more plain English guides and how-to's than there are currently out there. As with most things in computing and the internet these days there is an awful lack of understanding as to the fact that much of what programmers, IT students and self confessed geeks take for granted as being easy to understand and get into, if you're interested in staying up-to-date tech wise, is in fact something of a black art - for us mere amateur enthusiasts.

On that point, and how it seems that podcasting, more than any other new development in internet orientated technology is turning people onto something really new in their droves, and coupled with my above mentioned teething troubles, I'd guess that a one or two button - out of the box, turn it on and you're ready to podcast all-in-one new addition to the iPod family is just around the corner. It's been a while since I showed an interest in learning something new in computing and I'm already foreseeing many error messages and failed this and that problems for a few days yet - so heaven help anyone who thinks RSS is some kind of new brand of toothpaste. It seems that if people like me, being as I am in my day time persona a musician and trainee alcoholic, are to take anything from the podcasting phenomena and call our own, it has to become a lot easier to just click and go.

Anyway, that ends the first entry for the blog which I hope to begin podcasting via feedburner from sometime next month, regularly that is, but there may well be more within a week on a test basis.