blog dot org http://blog.org Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:50:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 en hourly 1 Life is good http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/I3l9JJ9IMdY/ http://blog.org/2009/09/life-is-good/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:50:03 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1627 I’m just back from holiday in Brittany where I learned to windsurf - something I didn’t expect to be able to do and indeed something it’s rather un-like me to even want to learn but it makes a contrast to my sedentary recreations during the rest of the year. No pictures, alas - you’ll just have to take my word for it that not only did I figure out how to get up and stay up on the thing but I even figured out how to turn it around which was all the harder for me because I had to un-learn how I expected it to work from when I used to sail in boats.

Current tasks (in no particular order)

  • Figure out what order I should be doing these tasks in ;-)
  • Finish tinkering with my book proposal from my thesis and send it to publishers
  • Finish thesis revisions and return to examiners so I can call myself Dr Brake without embarrassment
  • Prepare for hopefully minor struggle to enable me to release my thesis under Creative Commons instead of copyright (if I manage this I hope it might help push others to do the same)
  • Finish the latest three job applications (getting repetitive strain injury from copying and pasting details from my CV onto application forms has been absorbing much of the last few months)
  • Put together postdoc applications
  • Figure out ways to make Google Apps work in some way approximating an integrated system instead of a grab-bag of miscellaneous services to help the administration of the EU Kids Online project.

Notwithstanding the mini-mountain of tasks described there things are good. I’m rested from the holidays, really enjoying being back on the conference circuit again (Transforming Audiences 2), about to have a job interview, unexpectedly may get funding to go to ICA 2010 in Singapore (I love travel, climate crisis notwithstanding)…

Love to talk more but I’m off to dinner at Les Trois Garcons (paid for by someone else!)

]]> http://blog.org/2009/09/life-is-good/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/09/life-is-good/ How Brits get obese http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/I7L7dOYfxGM/ http://blog.org/2009/07/how-brits-get-obese/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:43:38 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1624 I was thirsty on a long-distance train recently. I wasn’t planning to have a coke when I got to the buffet car but to my surprise it was the cheapest drink - 2/3 the cost of the smoothie ‘healthy option’ - cheaper even than tea. I looked at the health notes - 29% of a whole day’s sugar per serving! Then I looked at the fine print - this single 500ml bottle contained two “servings” thus it was nearly 2/3 of a day’s sugar ration all by itself!!

]]> http://blog.org/2009/07/how-brits-get-obese/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/07/how-brits-get-obese/ Digital drought http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/UWWEvGA9xOM/ http://blog.org/2009/07/digital-drought/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:21:14 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1620 I’ve been doubly digitally deprived of late – I have lost internet access for three days - that was bad enough. But this coincided with the loss of my new iPod Touch. I hadn’t really realised how much I have come to rely on it as a filler of spare moments with (mostly) speech podcasts, snippets of web pages and the odd game. Also as a note taker and organizer that was – crucially - at hand wherever I was.

I would like to say that now that I have been forced to live without continuous distractions I have discovered the pleasures of living in the moment and being fully aware of my surroundings. But in fact I just find the situation frustrating. Perhaps I need a longer period in a media isolation tank – but as a media studies academic it may be that my media addiction just comes with the territory.

]]> http://blog.org/2009/07/digital-drought/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/07/digital-drought/ The Death of a Manifesto - guru Greg Costikyan’s indie games venture dies http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/Iyvvplup1Vs/ http://blog.org/2009/07/the-death-of-a-manifesto-guru-greg-costikyans-indie-games-venture-dies/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:13:44 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1618 My favorite meta-gaming webzine, The Escapist discusses the brief life and the Death of a Manifesto - Manifesto Games, which created by Greg Costikyan to get independent games into the market. The long and short of it is that several mainstream digital download game distributors have also taken to stocking indie games but Manifesto despite its visionary zeal has been unable to make a go of it.

An accompanying article asks “what does indie gaming mean anyway?” echoing arguments about mainstream vs indie art and music that have been discussed for centuries).

]]> http://blog.org/2009/07/the-death-of-a-manifesto-guru-greg-costikyans-indie-games-venture-dies/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/07/the-death-of-a-manifesto-guru-greg-costikyans-indie-games-venture-dies/ From D.R. Brake to Dr Brake… http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/cNP_XhgTKIY/ http://blog.org/2009/06/from-dr-brake-to-dr-brake/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:24:55 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1616 For those of you not following me on Facebook or on twitter (drbrake) I submitted my doctoral thesis back in April and today it was formally examined. I was asked to provide some minor revisions and once I have done so (within the next three months) I will officially become Dr Brake (or Dr D.R. Brake if you like as my forenames are David and Russell). For more on my thesis (which I will also make available online once I have done the revisions) visit my academic publications page.

]]> http://blog.org/2009/06/from-dr-brake-to-dr-brake/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/06/from-dr-brake-to-dr-brake/ New Macbook first impressions http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/Z12JFd7Grpw/ http://blog.org/2009/06/new-macbook-first-impressions/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:44:34 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1612 I replaced my five year old PowerPC-based iBook G4 with a practically identical MacBook last week and I know at least one other reader is contemplating the same thing so here are some impressions and a few problems/requests for help.

Good:

  • As you might expect, I got more storage - 500Gb instead of 80 - which means I can now have all my music and all my pictures and all my movies on one machine instead of having them distributed on different ones.
  • My battery life has gone back up from c. 1hr to supposedly nearly five (as yet untested).
  • Having a built in webcam is pretty entertaining.
  • Making the transition was very easy even though it involved a change of processor architecture as well as a change of machine. Only a few applications broke and almost all the application settings remained intact. I was working on the new machine within a half day of connecting it to the old one.
  • Thanks to a “back to school” offer the new macbook came with a (nearly) free iPod Touch which was significantly better than the first generation one I had in that it includes a volume control and can accept a microphone.

Bad:

  • The down arrow already seems to be coming loose though the machine has not been subjected to any physical stress I can think of.
  • Even with nearly double the RAM (2Gb) and I would have thought several times the raw processing power, the new machine feels very little faster. Moore’s law suggests I should see a 4x speed increase - where is it? One can’t blame The Great Moore’s Law Compensator - the tendency for software to get more and more bloated as processors improve - because I am running the same software I was last week. Are there a lot of non-native applications still on my machine running in emulation? Will I see a dramatic boost if I “top up” to 4Gb of RAM?
  • It’s not noticeably lighter either though I believe it is supposed to be slightly lighter and it is just different enough in shape that I had to buy a new case for it.

Help, please?

  • Adobe AIR seems not to work despite uninstalling and reinstalling it twice so BBC iPlayer and Tweetdeck don’t work either. Any ideas?
  • I installed Windows 7 RC via Bootcamp but none of the games I have installed to date via Steam run - in the case of TF2 I get the “splash screen” and the icon briefly appears in the dock but then it disappears without even an error message. Should I try installing parallels, fusion or one of the other multiple-OS enabling apps and try that? Any other ideas?
  • Any ideas about how I can get my Macbook to recognise the existence of an external monitor when it is running Windows 7? If I do get it to play games I would prefer to play them on my 19″ monitor.
]]> http://blog.org/2009/06/new-macbook-first-impressions/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/06/new-macbook-first-impressions/ Another happy memory of a childhood favourite ruined… http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/ky4QnM62iIQ/ http://blog.org/2009/04/another-happy-memory-of-a-childhood-favourite-ruined/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:09:29 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1609 I still remember finding E.E. “Doc” Smith’s space opera, The Skylark of Space when on holiday with my parents when I was probably no more than 10 - I immediately read it cover to cover and sought out the others in the series. I had forgotten about it for years then noticed it had gone into the public domain so I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg into my iPod Touch and began to read. I was immediately struck by a certain amount of casual racism (not uncommon in 1928) and of course its attitudes toward women were also pretty retrograde. Moreover, with their powerful weapons the heroes seem quite happy to kill off hordes of alien ‘bad guys’ even when they can’t shoot back. The racist and eugenicist undertones became stronger and stronger near the end however. The ‘bad aliens’ are darker skinned than the ‘good’ ones, and I just got to the point where the hero describes the religious system of the good aliens, seemingly without dismay:

they are magnificently developed for their surroundings. They have attained this condition by centuries of weeding out the unfit. They have no hospitals for the feeble-minded or feeble-bodied–abnormal persons are not allowed to live. The same reasoning accounts for their perfect cleanliness, moral and physical. Vice is practically unknown. They believe that clean living and clean thinking are rewarded by the production of a better physical and mental type

Ugh… I didn’t remember that part!

]]> http://blog.org/2009/04/another-happy-memory-of-a-childhood-favourite-ruined/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/04/another-happy-memory-of-a-childhood-favourite-ruined/ Why can’t I get decent free UK TV listings? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/JepOmsMZZGc/ http://blog.org/2009/03/why-cant-i-get-decent-free-uk-tv-listings/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:55:45 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1605 You wouldn’t think it would be too hard to get TV listings that would cover all the freesat channels and provide reviews and ratings, particularly for all the films (I am uneasily aware that lots of films that are not reviewed in the papers and are on obscure satellite channels pass me by unseen). Alas the Radio Times is the leading free contender and a) it doesn’t include a few channels and b) its movies at a glance feature is seriously broken. It used to work really well about two years ago, letting me see a list of only those movies which had 4 or more stars but that feature was lost in a redesign and never renewed. I’ve looked at several other free online options (Onthebox, Yahoo TV guide, TV Guide and TV Easy) but they were even worse. Time Out which I used to buy mainly for the TV listings appears to be cutting down on their listings and in any case doesn’t offer them online.

Digiguide does appear to offer what I am after but it isn’t free (£15 a year) and alas they seem to have put the bulk of their development effort into their Windows offline reader and the Windows PC I have is some distance from my TV. If they offered a similar offline reader tailored for my iPod Touch or Mac I would subscribe like a shot. I might yet end up doing so. But if anyone else is aware of a good free option either available now or on the way I would love to hear about it.

]]> http://blog.org/2009/03/why-cant-i-get-decent-free-uk-tv-listings/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/03/why-cant-i-get-decent-free-uk-tv-listings/ Content overload http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/GWKS290J-LQ/ http://blog.org/2009/03/content-overload/#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:11:42 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1603 Thanks to BBC iPlayer and the increasing number of podcasts available my ability to download interesting stuff is finally outpacing the time available to consume it. My iPod now contains about 48 hours of audio and video material - a mix of (free classic) audiobooks, current affairs and history programs and a number of academic-related feeds, notably Thinking Allowed, Radio Berkman and of course the LSE’s own podcast of its lectures. Unfortunately, in attempting to update the podcasts blogroll on the right I seem to have broken it instead. You can see all of the individual podcasts I subscribe to as they broadcast in reverse chronological order here.

]]> http://blog.org/2009/03/content-overload/feed/ http://blog.org/2009/03/content-overload/ The price premium for bleeding edge tech is unbearable http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogorg/~3/yRfnYRw1r-o/ http://blog.org/2009/03/the-price-premium-for-bleeding-edge-tech-is-unbearable/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:30:22 +0000 David Brake http://blog.org/?p=1598 By way of background, I have been thinking seriously about switching to Freesat (our house can’t receive Freeview). In addition our DVD recorder appears to be dying, and our TV set is at least 22 years old so it surely has to die soon, which would mean going HD. Knowing that HD is the future it seems silly to buy a new device that only played and recorded at standard definition. So logically a box which offers Blu-ray recording and built-in Freesat recording would be a sensible purchase, since both functions would be useful now or in the future. Imagine my delight when I heard that just such a device was about to arrive here - the Panasonic DMR-BS850. So what would I expect to pay for that? Well the Humax Freesat DVR is £300 and a Panasonic Blu-Ray player starts at £180 or so. I’d expect to pay another £100 or so to be able to record onto Blu-Ray as well but I’d also expect a little cost saving for buying everything in a single box. So maybe they’ll charge £550? Nope - it seems Panasonic plans to charge nearly double that sum for their new gadget. Bah!

I guess what I’ll do is buy a Humax box, possibly a cheap replacement DVD recorder (£130) when this one flakes out and wait for my TV to die and for Blu Ray pricing to become rational…

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