Is My Blog Dead???

Multi-Touch Interaction Research

2006-02-10T00:52:00.000+00:00

Everybody has to go watch this video right now. It has some ultra funky stuff on this experimental touch screen, lots of Minority Report kind of actions (no holographic displays, but the interface is there).

Link from Applegeeks

Finding my feet.

2005-12-23T01:43:00.000+00:00

Well. It's been ages since I posted to either blog. Joe posted to his blog a couple times since finishing work, but apart from that we've all been rather poor at this. At the moment I am noting that my brother Joe is leaving the UK to return to Australia and my wife's brother and mum have just left Tokyo (after leaving Australia of course) to come up here for Christmas. Kinda weird and symmetrical. They'll even be arriving in Heathrow around the same time.

I'm just sitting here finishing a drink trying to type and listening to Rufus Wainwright's version of Hallelujah (an old Leonard Cohen song) and the Eels' I need some sleep. Over and over and over. Still not the least productive night I've ever spent.

I've been looking back over the Penny Arcade comics, and I think I can do that kinda thing, maybe not with quite the drawing skill (I'm really pretty poor at that) but I think I can manage something not too bad. I may see if Joe wants to join in too. I'll give getting one up a go in the next week or so. At the very least, if Gabe or Tycho (or Mike or Jerry) want to use one of my comics to make a real one, all it will cost is a Sony Erricson w800i.

I'm actually feeling kinda sad that Joe is going back to Australia. I'm really gonna miss him, even though he's been in London the whole time and I've been a six hour train ride away north. It's been nice having both my brothers on the same side of the globe while I've been up here. So it'll be just a little bit less nice without Joe up here. Speaking of Joe by the way, he's applied for a job at Blizzard, and if for some truly bizarre reason someone from Blizzard reads this, you'd be absolutely crazy not to hire him. If I ever get around to applying, you'd be crazy not to hire me either, but that's another story. Anyway, I am feeling a bit of a weird pang at the notion that he's heading back. I think the UK will be quite poorer for not having him here.

Anyway, it's getting late and my glass is empty so I'm off to bed to dream of the white Christmas I'm not going to get this year. Oh well, maybe next one.

A loss for the world methinks

2005-12-04T18:20:00.000+00:00

Well, I must say that although I may not know much of the little intricacies of such matters, I think that this little piece of news is a bit of a blow for the international community.

Nissan Micra

2005-07-27T17:31:00.000+01:00

Recently I rented a Micra for a weekender away in the borderlands of Scotland. I must say that after getting over the initial disappointment with the rather cheap blocky controls on the dashboard (being a compact rental and a cheap one at that, it's not a fancier model, but it did still have a CD player) it turned out to be a fun little car to drive, so long as you're not that worried about being able to overtake anyone at all on a hill (well, actually I did do that a couple of times, but you really have to work the gears to manage it). So if you have the choice, I'd say that it is an acceptable mini car, until I try a Peugeot 207 or 107 that is...

Reciprocal post

2005-07-27T17:27:00.000+01:00

I got bored, so I decided to do dumb blogging things... enjoy!

Real Spiced Ham

2005-02-10T13:21:00.000+00:00

I'm beginning to regret using ICQ again, I get a constant torrent of spam from it. And it's not unauthorised messages, they can just be ignored. Instead it's all system messages like "Please authorise me" or even more worrying is "This user has added you to their contact list" which actually requires my authorisation, so there must be a hack or a spoof happening there. Today I opened my ICQ at work and saw that I had 30 bogus system messages.

The worst thing is that whenever you go to shut down your PC, ICQ won't quit if you have unanswered messages. Windows will detect that it isn't responding, but won't automatically kill it. So sometimes Paul's laptop can be left on when I thought I shut it down because of some stray ICQ messages. Very annoying, might be a good reason to change IM.

PS2 for travelling

2004-11-23T09:31:00.000+00:00

I'm sure Joe will be pleased to know that PS2 is now portable. Actually I'm sure he already knows and is probably already developing for this platform. For those who don't read slashdot and don't know what I'm talking about Ben Heck hacked together a PS2 with a battery and a screen to take PS2 on the road having already done the same with a SNES. Pretty interesting and ingenuative, wish I had that patience and time.

P.

Thunderbird - Reclaim Your Inbox

2004-11-11T10:46:00.000+00:00

There's also Thunderbird, the Mozilla Project's email client. Version 0.9 was recently released, still a development release but very stable and could easily replace Outlook Express on your machine. Maybe not Outlook since there is no calendar, unless you want to try the Mozilla Calendar extension or even Sunbird (a standalone version which I haven't tried yet).
And if you like all of them, I guess you could download the Mozilla Suite which has them all in one application, plus a couple of extra things. Some people say it's bloat-ware now, I'm not so sure but I don't need the extra features all that much so I just use Firefox (and Thunderbird at work, ain't they grand using open source software in a comercial environment. How cost effective of them ^_^)

Firefox - Rediscover the web

2004-11-10T01:56:00.000+00:00

Woo hoo. I just read that the first official version of my favourite web browser Firefox has been released. I highly recomend this browser over Internet Explorer for many reasons (security being the biggest) even though you do have to put up with the occasional "web site won't work coz it's designed for ie". If you are not using it at the moment GO GET IT NOW.

Nuff said.
Salut.

Peugeot and Citroen to quit WRC after 2005

2004-11-04T13:48:00.000+00:00

Here is a bit of unfortunate news flashing that will no doubt be a bit of a disappointment to Paul (assuming he hasn't already heard). I was under the impression that Peugeot was a reasonably strong competitor in the WRC (don't know about Citroen, but since they are owned by the same company I'd guess they do not so badly themselves) so I'm guessing that this will mean that there will be a slight bit less competition in the upper ranks. First Bush gets back in and now this. What a world...

I've Posted

2004-10-30T15:09:00.000+01:00

Well I really don't know why we need so many blogs, I hardly find the time (or motivation) to post to my own blog. So he we go.

I've been looking up broadband deals so that when Joe and I get a place we can have a decent connection (still need to find a wireless ADSL modem). Well I have found a good site for checking out all the broadband deals (it's like whirlpool in Australia). It's called adslguide and has a pretty extensive list of providers as well as a utility to check if your phone line is already ADSL enabled.

Well happy trails.

Paul.

ICQ status

2004-10-17T13:09:00.000+01:00

Well since Dr Snuggles has added his post re ICQ (and since he seems to be insisting on continuing to use this piece of instant messaging software) I've added ICQ status indicators for our profiles. Well, at least I have added an indicator for my profile and two that I think might be him. I'm not entirely sure what number he actually uses now. If Paul starts actually using ICQ again too, I'll add him on as well. Also, after DrS's comments on his stolen ID, I've added his old ID to see when the cad that stole it is online, although said cad seems to not have show when I'm online set on his web page so it might not work, grrrrrrr.......... Anyway here's hoping that DrS gets his old number back.

Also, since I have added my ICQ status onto the page, it would seem to make sense to start using it again. So I might just reinstall ICQ again which will mean I will be running 3 IMers, kind of. I am currently running Skype with the idea that eventually I will be calling people round the world on their landlines from the internet. Well, one day. I also have Eyeball Chat installed, once more without actually using it properly yet. But that one will be for tele conferencing with Australia, so hopefully that one will actually be useful.

My New Quest ... for now

2004-10-13T23:56:00.000+01:00

I've been using ICQ 4 (Lite edition) to chat with people back home while I'm overseas. I stopped using ICQ some time ago when it became bloatware but now I'm back on the IM bandwagon. The only problem is that my original ICQ number 2006880 (which I always remembered because of the game "688 Attack Sub") has been hijacked by someone and I can't get it back. I've registered a new number with ICQ, but it's near the quarter billion number range. My 2 million number is looking much better, so I've decided to take my brother's advice and try to get it back from ICQ. First emails, then onto more drastic methods later.

Watch this space, this could get ugly

Blogger.com Hear Me!

2004-10-13T01:02:00.000+01:00

Well I'm a little upset that Blogger.com did not take my request more seriously. I told them that the automatic profile template they have does not produce XHTML 1.0 Strict markup yet this is exactly the DTD they specifiy they do support. It's an unclosed <img /> tag (they don't insert the closing '/') and it all boils down to my site not validating. It seems that this site also doesn't validate due to some errant ampersands. So it means I'll have to do some hand coding in the templates so I can rightfully put the XHTML compliant logo on my site. Perhaps Damien will do the same for this one? Eh? EH?

Computers aren't so bad after all

2004-10-12T13:29:00.000+01:00

About a month ago I posted about trying to migrate my email from Mozilla to Thunderbird and it not working quite as I had hoped (I say a month, but that's like 4 posts ago). Well I have now successfully made the transfer, and once again that was like 3 weeks ago. So I thought that I'd post up an update, just in case there actually is a reader out there and that reader is sitting with baited breath for the result of my migration. All done, green light. For the reference of any who may find this looking for a way to migrate themselves, I made a copy of all my folders in a personal folder and moved that whole structure to the thunderbird directories, then I opened thunderbird and copied the mail back to where they should be. Easy. As for the not connecting to my accounts, dunno, but it's working now.

Welcome new posters

2004-09-27T17:13:00.000+01:00

Well, in case there are actually readers out there and in case those supposed readers haven't noticed yet, there are now multiple posters on this blog. That's right, my brother J@s#ph has accepted the mantle of posting on this blog (his is the Dr Snuggles nom de plume, since I'm not sure if he want's his real name broadcast, I've cleverly obfuscated it). Hopefully my other brother Paul will take up the chalange as well and his name will be added to the list of contributers. Then you'd better run for the hills reader, coz I can't be held responsible for all the tripe that will follow (I might be responsible for a third of it, but that's neither here nor there).

All your base are belong to us

2004-09-27T16:54:00.000+01:00

How are you gentlemen !!!

All your base are belong to us.

You are on the way to destruction.

You have no chance to survive make your time.

ha ha ha

New icons

2004-09-12T14:49:00.000+01:00

I've changed the syndication icons on both my sites. I made up my own feedburner logo and my own atom logo. You can see them down on the sidebar of both this and my other site. I did this for a couple of reasons that may or may not make sense to some people.

The first reason, and indeed the reason that sparked the change, was that I had noticed this article on the site of a web developer called Simon Willison (hopefully he isn't so well known in the internet arena that not knowing who he is is a huge faux pas) and basically I agree with him. So rather than using the rather ambiguous XML icon, I made my own RSS feedburner logoed icon. I also made my own atom icon as I couldn't find any in the 20 seconds of looking that I attempted.

The second reason that I made my own is that the real RSS, XML and Atom icons I have seen so far have those 3D style beveled edges, which I intensely dislike. It was one of the first things that I didn't like about the internet, all those beveled edged pictures and tables, eeuugghhh....

So anyway, if anyone wants to steal my versions of these icons, feel free to do so (corporations must contact me to arrange licensing fees though).

Don't you just hate computers sometimes

2004-09-11T09:43:00.000+01:00

Well, once more something has me slightly miffed this morning. Last night I tried to migrate my email from my Mozilla client over to Thunderbird (the Mozilla based dedicated email client) and it's not working. Not only is it not transferring over my old mail folders (worked fine for Annmarie's email, then again I have more accounts and folders and stuff) but Thunderbird can't even seem to access my accounts. I must say that computers are great when they work, but they are damn annoying when they don't. So for the time being I am resigned to using the web client for my email. Not that bad I suppose. I'll give the migration another go later. Cheers all.

Shameless

2004-09-10T17:17:00.000+01:00

Well, I thought that I'd jump into another terrible web habbit and stick a google add link on this site. You should see them on the lower right of the page (unless you've got some kind of add blocker like Norton Internet thinggy).

Does this blog publish???

2004-09-08T16:45:00.000+01:00

What's this all about? Well, just the other day my actual blog was not publishing. So to see if it was something I did to it or if it was the blogger site, I made this one up as a test. Since now everything was working I thought that I might just keep this one for the time being and just post up random stuff.

Cheers all