Archive for the ‘Things You Find’ Category
Saturday, August 9th, 2008
I know this is quite old news really, but I had not seen this until it was linked on Twitter, so I thought I would blog it on the off chance that some one else hadn’t seen it either.
Essentially all it is three videos of some guy (Matt Harding) who travels round the world recording short clips of him doing a little dance (very badly - his own words), each video has been set to the lyrics sung in a dieing Solomon Islands. in the third, and most recent, video Matt is joined by thousands of people who wanted to dance with him.
It sound really lame when I try and explain it all I can say is watch the videos it is worth it!
“Where the Hell WAS Matt?” - Origional Video
“Where the Hell is Matt?” - Second Video
“Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)” - Third Video
You can read more about him on his website at www.wherethehellismatt.com. There is also a really interesting lecture by Matt in three parts on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
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Friday, August 8th, 2008
I have been using StumbleUpon for a couple of years now, it is a superb way of finding websites that you wish you had known about a long time ago. Once in a while you stumble upon a page that you really wonder how they got there so fast.
I am not sure if this person has underestimated the capacity of the Internet to spread information really quickly or if it is a marketing thing. I have decided to blur out the identifiable information until I can work out which of the above it is.
Update:
Well it seems that I was wrong, unlike some recent events it seems that putting invitations up on the internet and them working their way onto socal network sites dosn’t always end in disaster.
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Thursday, August 7th, 2008
Peacehaven saw a much anticipated thunderstorm last night, I say much antcipated as it has felt very close and muggy all day. It was actually the most impressive storm I have seen whilst living on the south coast, for some reason we don’t get very many over the land on the coast.
It started off with just flashes of lightning and claps of thunder moving closer and closer, then came the rain, when I say rain I mean a torrent of water coming from the sky so much so that gutters and drains were overwhelmed making it all the more impressive. During this time I needed to get from a front door of a friend’s house to a car and the four of us, plus the other people going to other cars got soaked in the few seconds we were out in the rain.
Once in the car it started to rain more, I am glad I am not driving yet because I honestly wouldn’t be happy driving in that amount of rain with the experience I have at the moment, again a reason we are not let loose on the road quickly. A few minutes later the
hail started, this was not just normal pea sized hail this was marble sized hail stones, I got a few pictures. It was one of those days in the year that I really wish I had a camera that I could take more control over the picture, manual focus would be a great start. Also being able to set cameras on tripods and then set it up to take time delays of lightening. Would be very very cool.
The hail and the heavy rain did not last very long, by the time we had travelled the half mile home it was little more than drizzle. The thunder and lightning lasted well into the night, Catherine and I fell asleep with the lightening flickering in the distance.
Update, elsewhere on the net, High Quality (?) Coverage from The Argus.
Posted in Diary, Things You Find | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
I have been meaning to post about this since I first heard about it, and spectacuarly didn’t. As of Tuesday last week www.drhorrible.com was host to the first of three episodes of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The title is great in itself, however as it has been said seeing is believing and honestly if you have enjoyed any of Joss Whedon’s work then you will really love this.
The mini-series covers a snapshot in the lives of Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) the protagonist and his arch-nemisis Captin Hammer (Nathan Fillion of Firefly/Serenity fame). Unusally for Joss Whedon’s work it dosn’t have a strong feminist female character as such, however you will have to watch it to see why that may be!
It is no longer available for free on the web, although US and Canadian iTunes users can download it, international iTunes users have been promised it Soon™ and a DVD and Soundtrack look pomising.
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Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
The SMART .notebook format is simply a zipped set of XML and SVG files, This may be common knowledge but it is certainly the first time I have come across it.
To test it you can create a file in SMART Notebook rename the extension from .notebook to .zip, double click to open, you will be presented with several files named pagen.svg where n is a number, as well as a series of other files and folders including settings.xml, preview.png and metadata.xml.
The XML and SVG files can be edited in notepad, or perhaps more useful for the SVG files in a program such as Inkscape.
Posted in Sys. Admin., Things You Find | No Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Several of my friends and one of my colleagues are presenting their work at the artists open houses as part of the 2008 Brighton Festival. In no particular order other than that of the Fiveways Artists Group trail listing:
Rex Matthews - A colleague of mine.
Deborah Fleming - A friend from church, who is also displaying work with Liz Calmiano and Maureen Hawthorne.
Impressed with how creative everyone is!
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Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Catherine and I have been watching the GOD channel over the past three days, there has been and still is a great outpouring of the holy spirit in Lakeland, Florida, and the GOD channel have been broadcasting it to the world (well most of it).
I don’t know what God is going to do, but I am sure that he is changing lives there in Florida and all over the world through the ministries of the leaders there. It is not without criticism, I don’t know enough about everyone involved to make up my mind, chances are I will never know till I get to meet my Lord face to face.
Posted in My Faith, Things You Find | 9 Comments »
Monday, April 28th, 2008
I am sure that title is going to annoy someone an awful lot, but never mind. Richard Bartle submitted an opinion piece to The Guardian today, and as he puts it in his blog it is “Opinionated”.
I like it! I think it is something I had realised and accepted a long time ago (I was born in 1981) games are part of the norm for me. I learnt to program on a ZX Spectrum when I was 8, what did I write - computer games of course - pong, breakout, Thunderbirds (TV Series), rolling shooters. I even tried to write a Windows like GUI in BASIC (yes it had some serious design flaws). All of that was normal to me.
In case you missed the link above, here is opinion piece:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/28/games.censorship
Posted in Programming, Things You Find | No Comments »
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
I did something today that I have never done, that is rescue a kitten (maybe it was a young cat) from a tree. Initially I was going to leave it, as it is going to have to learn how to get down somehow, then it tried to get down forward and ended up clinging on to the tree. It was quite happy for me to coax it down as I stood below till I could reach down and lift it from the trunk.
Chances are the same kitten will be up another tree in the next few days, maybe its experience today will have taught it a better way to get down in the future, or perhaps just to meow until a kindly stranger comes to the rescue.
Did make me think about how we learn by trying things and making mistakes, I know it has been said over and over again about children being wrapped up in bubble wrap dosn’t help them develop good judgement. I do wonder if we protect our children and indeed ourselves too much by not taking risks when perhaps the reward is only to learn not to take the same risk again.
I am not advocating being reckless or careless in our decisions, just perhaps taking a risk once in a while when we don’t know for sure and, perhaps more importantly, we can’t practicably find out by other means.
Posted in Diary, Things You Find | No Comments »
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Now, I know that the larger monitors of this world have some interesting technological issues to overcome, however I think HP has made one too many sacrifices with this monitor:
w2207h 22 inch WIDESCREEN TFT
For those of you that didn’t spot it:
As pointed out on the E-O forums, the perfect monitor for fleet battles.
Posted in Things You Find | No Comments »
