george & tony

Recently unearthed a project from second year of uni, wherein we had to edit together found footage to make a doc about George W. Bush's trip to the province the year previous (2004). This was the result, which I've just added to the Youtube channel and the mediatree showcase - cause it's not bad as an editing demo at least!

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a new power is rising, part ii

We got broadband. I've already used nearly 10% of the monthly limit getting through a backlog of updates and downloads I've been saving for the occasion. Considering we're in the back end of nowhere, it's bloomin' quick at 7 megs. Good times.

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twittering on

Always kinda liked Twitter, even though simultaneously considering it completely useless. Well, I might actually use it now after discovering that a little-known robot makes it completely Skype compatible - and therefore completely eliminating the need for running an extra application if you couldn't be arsed logging on to yet another web-based app - as my previous diatribe against Google Reader et al has already indicated, I like things to be possible in as few clicks as possible.

I don't know if this means I will actually use twitter now - I still think facebook updates are, for me, a more-viewed version of the same thing (not as public, but people who might actually be interested - you never know - will see them!) But at least, if the notion grabs me, it might be a whole lot quicker.

Find the article about the quick setup for twitter for skype here.

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a new power is rising

Something I honestly thought would never happen is about to begin... the homestead here is going broadband. Honestly, we had the internet before most people around here, back when Dixon's Freeserve existed (before it became Wanadoo, and we were still using it, and Orange, when we're not) was the ISP of choice, when men were men... etc. and everyone thought downloading Buck Rodgers via Napster in less an hour was about as cool as it could get.

Anyhoo, for the last few years my mum was cranking along on BT Surftime 24/7, an anytime dial-up provision which sufficed without being particularly, you know, useful. And this was fine until I moved home as a bankrupt postgraduate. For a while I never got round to it, and after the half way mark I assumed/hoped/prayed that I'd be independent again by the end of the year (I love my mum; I love my family; not such a fan my best friend being a dog, out here in the wilderness. A particularly hapless mutt, at that.) But now, despite the fact I'm hoping to move out in the next couple of weeks - heard it here first - we are, in fact, finally going hitech with BT's Option 1.

Option 1 you scream? 10GB download limit? It's my mum, folks. She downloads some stuff off TeacherTube, fights with my little sister about her (my sister's) inability to use her own e-mail address when buying crap, and that's about it. In fact, here's the thing: so far, BT have been - wait for it - rather good.

Had a live chat with an adviser when purchasing, and am assured that the stuff will be delivered tomorrow, and activated tomorrow night. Nothing has gone wrong. I know it will. I know I'll open the box tomorrow, and there'll be a severe absence of, you know, an ethernet cable or something fundamental like that. But until then, my blissful ignorance leads me to say that so far, so good.

But I'm itching for it to be otherwise just so I can moan...

mind the pregap

OK, so maybe I'm a bit slow. Pregaps are something I was vaguely aware of, but never really bothered to understand. My bad. Having now read up on them, I spent the last hour or so raiding my CD collection, and finding some absolute gems of hidden tracks from some great artists. A quick hook-up through the desk to Garageband, and I'm up a load of new, easily accessible mp3s.

Favourites so far include the original demo of "9 crimes" on 9, wherein it sounds like Damien Rice does all the bashing and backing vocals himself, based around a much harder and edgier guitar riff - much better to me than the piano-based single. Another great one is "I Just Can't Get Through To Myself", a snappy two minute wonder from David Gray on White Ladder. Do yourself a favour, find out what the hell I'm talking about on wikipedia and then get stuck in. Happy hunting!

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pirates of the underage-tween

I have never seen High School Musical. All I know about Miley Cyrus is that she takes her clothes off for money. I know who Hilary Duff is, in fact I have an .mp3 by her. But I still don't care about whoever it is she's verbally sparring with. And until a couple of days ago, I didn't really care about the existence of the Jonas Brothers, other than Russell Brand acted the gype and they didn't even have the decency to set the lawyers on him. (I'm one of those people who looks at the poor English folk with their Jimmy Carrs and their Russell Brands, and then shake my head and mutter 'cause they still don't get what funny actually means.)

But suddenly, I am enraged. Dumbfounded. For it would appear that these Jonas boys have been plundering the beloved Busted's back-catalogue (yes, that's right, BELOVED) and recycling their hits as their own to stadiums full of small children! And not even that - the Disney folks have got to work and cleaned up the lyrics - check out year 3000... there used to be triple-breasted women in this song, and Michael Jackson! But no more...

When you take MJ out, you might as well pack it in...

streams of joy

"This is the app that lets me drink straight from the Internet firehose, and I couldn't live without it." - Cory Doctorow [Boing Boing]

Having been consistently irritated by the way I get at all the RSS feeds I like to follow, I threw in the towel with all previous attempts at a fulfilling relationship today and went a-hunting. And with immense success. Was playing with Flock for a while and its built-in reader, which I still reckon is a nice concept if a bit messy. I also could never find myself enamoured with web-based readers, such as Google Reader which Dave only yesterday tried to rope me into.

Happiness, it turns out, appears to come in the form of the frankly-gorgeous NewsNetWire, a free Mac stand-alone utility, that already I find myself horrendously attracted to. It's sleek, it's slimline, and more importantly, it works. Really, really well. Download it now and pack all others in, children, the king of readers/aggregators has landed and I can't believe I only came across it today.

It also has an iPhone version, and yes, some plug-ins for Outlook etc. so that those backward Windows users can join in to. Check out the selection here. Then do yourself a favour and download the lot.

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life reflecting art reflecting life

A long time ago I remarked upon the similarity between the current US election and that of season seven in TV's (and possible man's) greatest achievement - The West Wing. The BBC's online review magazine have picked up on the story, and although I didn't realise it it seems that, at least in the Santos-Obama case, the similarity was entirely accidental. Particularly if you've seen the DNC episode where Santos gets the nomination (in the fictional contest) and compare it to Obama's infamous speech as a relative unknown in 2004, that's pretty easy to believe. On the other side of the aisle, the Vinick-McCain axis is a bit more of a coincidence, it would see. Although I would be perfectly happy with Alda's character as President (integrity, charisma, rationale), whereas McCain (slander, pander, and the charisma of the Black Hole of Calcutta) still gives me the willies.

Read the full article here.

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educate yourselves first

Another bit of slander by the McCain campaign, this one caught by fact-checking journalists before it even aired:
McCain's latest low blow.

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shiny

Booted up our monstrous Dell desktop (machine of a thousand faults, don't buy one unless you have a thing for talking to people in call centres) to try out the Windows-only Beta of Google's much-hyped Chrome browser. On first look, it's a bit underwelming, being basically Firefox 3 with the Flock 2 startup page. It's very tidy and all, but that's really the only improvement on open-source browsers; i was really expecting little gizmos such as a RSS signal or something similar to Flock.

But then again, sleek and minimal puts it in Safari's range, and that's the market it's probably aiming for. Still, I wonder once the buzz dies will all the techies quietly remove it from their docks, or does it have enough to make it the default? Maybe the lack of bells and whistles will be what sells it after all.

never gonna give you up...

Neal already mentioned this in a comment down below, but i laughed and thought it was worthy of note...

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addendum

For anyone bored by the last couple of posts (how that could be possible eludes me)... I just stuck in the last episode of West Wing Season One, and cackled a bit when President Bartlet announced his plans for relaxing - and thus feels your pain, dear readers:

Bartlet : I am excited about it. You come to the end of a long day, you sit back, you open a beer, you watch a sporting event.That's what men do.
Charlie: Girl's softball.
Bartlet : If that's what's on, then that's what they watch. It's either that, or a cricket match between Scotland and Bermuda. Now, I am an educated man, Charlie, but when someone tries to explain cricket to me, all I want to do is hit him in the head with a teapot.

a late night ramble about nothing in particular

SPEAKING of Australian cricket, I've been looking for an excuse to shoehorn in a little nugget of sporting randomness for the last couple of days. There is a large discrepancy with me when it comes to cricket, for although as a rule I loathe the English on all international sporting platforms, be that with ball or on track, I was brought up to make exception for those knights who wield the bat along the chain, waiting for a small leather clad object to come hurtling towards then at up to 150 kph. It was probably just because the Irish were, and still usually are, so duff, but also because the only thing that the English media coverage seems to be not just impartial of, but fun about, is cricket. Perhaps it's mostly because of the type of correspondent who would cover cricket, excluding the Johnny-come-lately-and-rather-sloshed sort that gets drafted in for the ICC World Cup and so on... again, i refer you to the lovely Test Match Special gentlemen.

Of course, as an honourary Pom I am therefore traditionally in hatred of the Aussie side. In truth I quite like them. And thus, a few nights ago I stumbled upon this sporting oddity.

There is always a lot of on-pitch verbals and humour in cricket (let's face it, there's a load of guys standing around a field for most of a day, there's going to be) and one particular item of note came upon me the other day when I was reading up on Chappell's famously disgraceful piece of underarm bowling from 1981. I refer you to wikipedia for more, but basically, it only happened once and it was bloody disgraceful, as far as this correspondent is concerned. Look, there it is, to the right of this very text. Bloody disgraceful. (I'm going to see how much of this I can remember without looking at the wiki cause it'll be funny - for me. Let's face it, I'm the only person still reading this post.)

ANYWAY, the episode goes that with the final ball of the final over of the third ODI between the Aussies and New Zealand in early 1981, New Zealand found themselves needing six runs to tie the match. Now, getting a six in cricket is pretty difficult, as anyone who's ever tried will tell you. (My one effort in school, I distinctly recall, involved a huge swing, a short nip off the end of my bat (which I could bearly lift anyway) and it plopping straight at the feet of someone at near silly point, probably about twenty feet away.) Not only that, but it was definitely a tail ender at the batting end, as I think New Zealand had already lost most of their wickets. But, apparently the captain, one T. Chappell, felt threatened. (Now, HE'S interesting because he was mistakenly given not out in his own innings after the umpire didn't see a catch at deep extra cover or something, where the fielder literally scraped his hands on the ground in order to get low enough to get it - the days before big screen replays.) Anyway, T. Chappell instructed his brother G. Chappell, who was in to bowl, to do something so dastardly, so disgusting, that even the commentator, Mr Richie Benaud (himself, of course, the captain of a very boring Aussie side in the '50's) called it... yes, bloody "disgraceful"!

So he did, he rolled the ball along the ground, an a not-technically-illegal-because-no-one-would-ever-be-a-big-enough-cad-to-do-it act of... well, caddishness. And the rest is history. The sporting world was outraged. Ironically, a New Zealander who threw down his bat and walked off in disgust was the only one censured by the ICC, but there you go.

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The point, however, is that this leads us to the images below. In the first ever Twenty20 game between the two sides in 2005, Glenn McGrath started his final over bowling by feigning an underarm, for which extrovert umpire Billy Bowden (once accused of trying to be a bigger celebrity that the players) whipped out a football-style red card and 'sent him off' - the only time a player has been treated in this style by an umpire upon the field of cricket. Underarm bowling is now banned from limited overs cricket, though I believe still

Despite my rambling story, I thought the pictures were pretty interesting, if only for their randomness.




I can sleep easy now.

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lara lara laffs

Whilst flicking idly down through the channels 'pon my freeview box (as I am prone to do: usually starting from More4, of course, the home of wit and whimsy, and not Dave, as some would purport) I did come across the sight of Alan Shearer. In an England shirt. Getting broken in two by Brian Lara. The former West Indies cricket captain (and excellent lefty number 4, not to mention occasional hero at mid-off... been making up for my lack of TMS - see 'keeping his rod up, so to speak' from yesterday). Shortly followed by former Man Utd hero Jaap Stam. There's something not quite right here, I said to myself. I thought that milk smelt a bit funny, I said to myself...

Of course, it turned out the spectacle in question was the return of SoccerAid, an excellent UNICEF intiative, which has lots of celebrities and aged footballers running around a half-full Wembley as its showpiece. Actually, it was pretty entertaining - both cause Romario couldn't spot the target at a rifle range for blind people, and because the best goal of the match wasn't from Shearer, Sheringham or Di Canio, but rather some french bloke who was in Sex and the City.

Also, everyone's favourite referee Pierluigi Collina came a cropper, had to be stretched off in some pain after falling over himself. Never seen a substitute referee live before. Did I mention Brian Lara was at left-back for the Rest of the World side? As in the guy with the eponymous series of playstation games? Apparently he's pretty handy with a pig's bladder too, you know. Look, there's a picture of him at the top of this article taking the mickey out of Shivnarine Chanderpaul. (It's just after the second test against the Aussies during the autumn tour in 2005. You will of course recall the Hobart test was the one where Lara himself only made 10 before being dismissed lbw by Brett Lee in the first innings, the Aussies winning the contest by nine wickets on the fourth day, I do believe. Chanderpaul can smile now, but he only made 13 in the second innings before going to... you guessed it, Brett Lee. Thankyou, Wisden! Cricket is a game for statisticians...)

ANYWAY I believe you can actually watch the whole thing (SoccerAid, that is, not the 2005 2nd test in Hobart, Australia) back here on ITV's mini-site. It's not often I'd recommend something on ITV, but mind you...

...it's only Brian freakin' Lara!

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pal-in comparison II

Starting to get annoyed with this... It would seem that I do, in fact, share pretty much the same ethos as Sarah Palin on most of the "big Christian questions" - because (as Governor of Alaska, anyway) her stance on them are not completely extremist (as flagged in this Boston Globe article.) Apart from a case of the hitlers on the issue of health benefits for same sex partners. (I don't take issue with her being opposed to it, but she has actively pursued amending the constitution to bar them.)

I still can't come to like her though: (a) The guns, and (b) she's the meaningless VP candidate anyway, both stand between me and any kind of reconciliation to considering the Republicans as anything more conforming to the a faded stereotype. Was watching Larry King yesterday morning, where he ran a clip of John McCain's speech. On the mention of 'government', the crowd would boo each time - because of course, in the pursuit of privacy rights, Republicans are against big government. The fact that Republicans currently ARE that big government that keep invading people is not something that seemed to filter down to knuckle-head level. But there you go.

As a Christian, can I side with the other guys? Or am I obliged to go with the group that answers the faith-based issues closed to my own liking, even if everything else is poles away? I'm constantly struck by the fact that even though the Democrats probably are the more secular party of the two in the USA, so many of their policies conform with how I feel Christians should be called to live. But there you go, I guess.

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keeping his rod up, so to speak

Having got a borrowed iPod hooked up to my car stereo in the last wee while, I haven't been as attentive to the eternally entertaining Test Match Special as I was brought up to be this summer. Some may be bemused as to how listening to cricket cannot be worse than watching it in the first place, but trust me, it's a lot more fun. Between the celebrity commentators and guests, the ridiculously clever ways to sling insults back and forth (whilst staying within Radio 4's mandate!), and the number of ways Phil Tuftnell can come up with to say "yorker", it's basically the audio equivalent of sitting around a table with a lot of middle-aged men taking the piss out of each other. Which is, in fact, what they are usually doing.

One particularly fine example of some on-air corpsing was this quote from Christopher Martin-Jenkins as he attempted to use a fishing analogy and spectacularly failed, with innuendo-laden hilarity ensuing.

who you gonna call?

You've probably heard this already, but still... I swear, if Columbia make this into the nightmare that would be the team getting together to hand over the reins to a new generation of ecto-dodgers, I will cry.

(A team which would no doubt be headed up by Shia LeBoeuf and probably feature at least two of the cast of Heroes, and a geeky girl character who ends up being strangely hot once she puts her jumpsuit on. And an 'adorable' dog ghost. Too far?)

On the other hand, if Murray, Ackroyd, Ramis and Hudson roll back into New York for one last hurrah, then those tears will be tears of recaptured adolescent joy...

Read the Empire Online summary of the news - Columbia plans Ghostbusters 3...

seinfeld plus gates equals...

The script for this ad is so terrible I don't know where to begin. I thought I was alone in this, or maybe it was one of those things (like Alan Carr, Catherine Tate or the entire cast of the original Office) that I just don't get but everyone else insists is so cool, the polar bears gave it an approval of 94%. But thankfully, Darren Waters at the BBC Technology page has vindicated my thinking.

t in the barn line-up

Initial T in the Barn line-up has been unveiled (and already added to.) Check out the mini-site (eyes right!) for more.

blackout bother

The power's just back on after going out for a few hours this evening. Due to the current fault (there's always one) in our alarm system at home, the blackout tripped the backup alarm and so the wailing commenced. After being heavily chastised by my sister, (that makes it sound much politer than it was) for attempting to say I might be able to fix it, I waited for her to storm off and then disabled and dismantled the alarm at a couple of points around the house (after first binding up the offending siren in a rubber glove and parcel tape, does a good job of blocking the airflow.)

The fact that the entire operation took me less than five minutes, and I didn't really know what I was doing until I opened the boxes, is now going to keep me up all night. Think we need to see about a system upgrade... prospective burglars, don't get any ideas.

Ironically, watching the bit in Gangs of New York where Cameron Diaz's character is robbing uptown houses dressed as a maid...

do i play hockey? wellllllllll....

Hockey's back. The Belfast Giants kick off the new EIHL season this Saturday at home to the Cardiff Devils. It's all a bit exciting this year because with a new line-up from the players, backroom staff and even the ownership, many pundits (including the BBC's smallish coverage!) reckon this season could see the Giants back on top after a lacklustre showing last term.

Just as excitingly, Ronan, Dave et al (hopefully including me at some point this year, if I can wriggle my way back in) will this season be broadcasting the webcasts live and completely free from all the home games. To keep it free really depends on keeping the viewing figures up, so from saturday afternoon you can catch all the action from the webcast site. If only for Wayne Hardman's now legendary colour commentary alone (alongside the very capable Nigel Ringland), it'll be brilliant.

Even better, get your backside down for a great night's entertainment at the Odyssey - less than a tenner if you're a student. Check out the fixtures poster above. Also keep an eye on Sky Sports for live coverage of a few of the games throughout the season!

pal-in comparison

The sheen may have come off post-DNC for the Democrat ticket in the US election, but is the resurgent Republican package really worth the earache? I watched Sarah Palin's speech to the RNC earlier in full (something I didn't get to do properly for Barack last week) and was pretty impressed by both her oratory and her ability to not just slander, but downright "make stuff up".

TimesOnline's Hannah Strange has broken down some of the bigger fibs here. It's quite the list for one speech. Earlier this week she also blogged about the discrepancies between McCain (who I still find repulsive, even though I can't quite put my finger on it - and it's not just the corruption and antagonising) and his albeit more appealing VP nominee. Read the big ones here.

t in the barn: blog

The official T in the Barn blog has gone live. Hopefully over the next few weeks you can follow the progress and build-up to the night online... and hopefully that will all be positive!