I play, you play, we all play with iPlayer

The iPlayer is the best thing to come out of British television for a long long time, along with Dr Who!

I use the iPlayer almost every day, generally just catching up on TV that I don’t watch when it airs. I also used the radio iPlayer almost every day to listen to my favourite radio shows.

Today, the BBC launched a new iPlayer interface in beta, combining both television and radio. I was really looking forward to being able to listen to the radio catch-up on my iPhone in bed through the new iPlayer beta, and whilst this is no problem using my computer, I didn’t realise that the programmes are encoded in Real player format, obviously meaning my iPhone is a no-go. I have sent a feature request into the BBC for this, I really hope others do the same.

 

Otherwise, I really like the new interface. The ‘recently watched’ section is extremely useful, recording what shows have been accessed recently and updating those with new episodes as they become available. There are also RSS feeds available now for certain streams of programs.

I encourage you to try it out if you haven’t already done so. I realise this post sounds like a promotion, I don’t work for (or have anything to do with) the BBC

“Religion is no more the parent of morality than an incubator is the mother of a chicken.”

 

Chicken update!!! We have a couple of chickens in the garden that we keep as pets, just chuck them some food every day and out pops an egg – fantastic isn’t it!?

A few weeks ago, we made a visit to Penistone market and ended up coming home with 10 fertilised eggs. Anywhoo, to cut a long story short, they hatched today! Three this morning and another a couple of hours ago plus another chicken trying to make its way through the shell. 

It’s really fun to watch them stumble around for a couple of hours after hatching, trying to get their feet and then just randomly dropping to sleep whilst walking around. Anywhoo, above is a shot of the first chick hatched, quickly brought in front of the iSight to take a quick snap before being put back to sleep with the rest. Bless him, his first Mac experience!!

Bye for now.

Click to identify song

I remember a couple of years ago a mobile-phone service that was being hyped at the time. The idea was that you held your phone up to a music source, and it texted you back the artist and song name, of course the disadvantage was that it cost quite a bit. I’m sure that service is still out there somewhere, but I found a free alternative today whilst trying to cheat (sshhh) on a radio competition.

Tunatic is a free piece of software for your Mac or PC that uses your computer’s built in microphone (or external one) to listen to a track and then give you the artist and song name.

I found it quite fun to play around with this morning, it picked up most tracks as I was randomly shuffling through radio stations. It did tend to get stuck on tracks that weren’t exactly mainstream however, for example it correctly analysed Duffy’s new single Warwick Avenue but couldn’t identify Bonnie Tyler’s I Need A Hero (it was playing on Magic).

Either way, it’s a fun app and will entertain you at least for a half hour, chucking as many tracks as you can at it to try and fool it. You can also help out with improving Tunatic’s database of songs, if you please, by downloading Tunalyzer (Mac only). An app that scans your music library and sends track info back to it’s servers, helping other Tunatic users with their song indentifying.

Best of all, it’s free.

Andrew.

Coming to you in 2.1 surround sound

I love my iMac, I really do. But, as many people agree, it’s speakers are pretty poor. They’re great for computer sounds, online videos and the odd music track but when it comes to volume and clarity I felt I needed something more. I’ve been putting off buying a pair of speakers for some time. I, like many other Mac users, like things to be minimalist and I cannot stand cluttered desks, therefore I wanted speakers which not only sounded great but looked great too. As of last week, I’d narrowed my options down to two. Based on the reviews of various sites (primarily iLounge), these were;

• JBL Creature II
• Harman/Kardon Soundsticks II

I opted for the Soundsticks based on reviews of it’s sound quality (I actually think the Creature looks a bit better) compared to it’s price. I’ve never really bought speakers before so I thought £100 was a bit on the high side, but….WOW!!! I don’t regret spending it one little bit. They’re awesome!

The set comes with two ’satellite’ speakers as well as a subwoofer. The sound they produce is fantastic, the base is fantastic and spoken word also sounds great (I listen to a lot of radio talk show podcasts). I do have a couple of gripes, there is no dedicated on/off switch either on the speakers or on the base, the only way to fully turn them off is to unplug them. This hasn’t really caused me any problems but we’ll see about that tonight when I try to get to sleep with the blue light of the sub glowing.

Also, reviews have complained that there is not treble dial, I don’t reckon this will be too much of a problem because I’ve already tested the sound with music/audio I regularly but again, we’ll see about that.

A really cool feature is the click-wheel like volume controls. Touch (or hold) on the +/- metal plates, and the volume changes accordingly. There’s a really quick video of that below.

I’m really glad I paid a bit more for these speakers, they sound great and look awesome too. I’ll leave the last word to iLounge,

“They look great, sound great, and won’t kill your wallet.”

Andrew

Of Dæmons, Hedge Trimmers and Jailbreaking

How are you all? Enjoy the nice weather last week? Exams going okay? Sound off in the comments.

These past few weeks have been pretty hectic for me, not to mention stressful. It’s exam time at uni, and I’ve found that I actually needed to do some revision for these (unlike GCSE and most A-Levels), so much of my time over the past month has been spent doing just that. With twitter and Dr Pepper to keep me company, I’ve managed to get through it and only have one exam left next week before the Summer, which is ridiculously long (though I’m not complaining). 

I actually made a start on my reading list these past couple of weeks. I bought and read the first part of His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman, read that in a couple of days and am now onto the second part. I seem to have been in a cave in regards to this series as everyone else seems to have read it many years ago. I understand why though because they’re brilliantly written. (I reckon my Dæmon would settle as a cat).

Once again, last week the Booth family had a medical emergency of fantastic proportions. I came home from uni last Thursday to find that my sister was in hospital with half of her right index finger hanging off. To put a long story short, hedge trimmers + fingers = lots of blood. Luckily, things weren’t as bad as they seemed and after a quick operation to re-attach the cut finger it’s healing fine. She had some kind of small metal rod put into her finger to help the break in the bone heal, which is being removed in a months time – after which full functionality should return.

Jailbreaking. If you follow any kind of technology blog you’ll know what it is. If not, I provide this link for your delectation. As some of you may know, I bought an iPhone a while back and I’ve been playing with the idea of jailbreaking it for some time now. The main thing putting me off was that if something went wrong, Apple wouldn’t help me fix it and that would be a lot of money down the drain. But, after watching the latest episode of GeekBrief I took the plunge. The process was relatively painless but afterwards I wonder why I did it in the first place. The only good/useful app I found is one called Twinkle (a Twitter client), but I’ve always liked using Hahlo (a web-app) in the past. So, last night, I un-jailbroke my iPhone through a restore. A very pointless process all round.

It’s 00:20 so I really should be in  bed by now, so goodnight!

Andrew.

The Big Read

Howdy y’all!

I was reading the blog of one of my twitter contacts the other day (his twitter page, his blog). He has a mission to do 40 things before he turns 40.

I loved the idea, and wanted to do something like this myself. I didn’t want to draw up a list of things to do because knowing me and my laziness I’d never do them, so I thought I’d play to my hobbies/strengths. I love reading. But since I started uni I have been reading less and less. The last book I read was 1984 by George Orwell (great book by the way, highly recommend it), and that was almost a month ago. And so, I’m setting myself a reading challenge.

I remembered watching a series of programs a few years ago on the BBC called The Big Read. Basically, it was a competition to find the most popular books in the UK. So, for my challenge I’ve set myself the task of reading these 100 books, that topped the chart in the BBC’s Big Read.

I have no idea how long its going to take me to do this, but I’m determined to do it. Looking down the list I see some titles that send me to sleep just thinking about them, and others that I would never dream of buying (Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson for example, number 98. How did that even get into the top 100?!?) 

Counting the novels I’ve already read takes me to 86 books. I don’t think I’m going to read them in order, we’ll see. I’ll post again tomorrow when I decide how long it’s going to take me to read them all and in what order. 

Bye for now,

Andrew.

P.S. Does anyone want to join me? We could have our own little online book club!

Of Kids TV, Chinese Takeaway and that fantastic thing called Twitter

Its Sunday 13th April 2008, about 6 months since my last blog post. 

Dear God, when looking at it like that time seems to have floooooown by. I’ve been meaning to update for quite a few week now but the idea seems to have past as soon as I thought of it.

This week seems to have been quite chaotic for me and for many people I know, don’t know why but people seem to be rushing around, stressed, tense and up to their eyeballs in work. The totally crap weather doesn’t seem to be helping either. Hearing today about the tragic death of Mark Speight got me thinking about the ‘good old days’ of children’s television in the early 90s. I used to watch CBBC every day after school (a choice which seemed odd to many of my friends as the majority of them liked to watch CITV, I thought I was cool because of this ) Either way, both channels provided great programs and something which gets me annoyed nowadays, great presenters in between shows. If you switch on CBBC or ITV after school days now, you’ll see that CITV has practically disappeared and CBBC doesn’t use live segway presenters like it used to do. I suppose its all down to the huge number of kids channels on sky etc which we didn’t really have access to when I was younger.

Digressing only slightly, I’ve decided to start following some new TV shows. I’d recorded Chuck (Virgin 1 – Mondays 10pm) earlier this week and with Dr Who, Britain’s Got Talent and Pushing Daisies on TV last night, I was set for the night. I ordered a Chinese (food, not a person of said nationality), and enjoyed the night. It was chicken in chili and black bean sauce with egg fried rice, if anyone is interested.

Twitter. Wow. Social networking is all the rage these days. I’ve dabbled in it and have had a look at what most sites have to offer. The only one I ever settled with was MySpace a few years ago, but I’ve lost interest in that now and don’t use it whatsoever.

Recently I discovered Twitter. I could try and explain it to you but if you don’t know the service already, I’d probably explain it very poorly. So, I’ll let this video do the talking. If you decide you want to sign up, and I ask that you at least try it before dismissing it, you can follow me here.

Bye for now,

Andrew.

Mark Speight, R.I.P

Of first impressions, barcode scanners and The Gregmeister

Right now, it’s 11pm, I’m home for the weekend and enjoying my bed, so I thought I’d give a quick update as I’ve been a bit busy this last week to bother updating.

Uni Life is much more different than I expected. I thought with me being a total antisocialite, that I would crawl up in my room and sway to the sound of everyone else having fun.
Granted, I’m still not one for going out at night and attending all the Freshers events, but I have found that it is easier to talk to people than I thought. I’ve met a few people from withing my course who I hope will become better friends as time goes on.

Registration was also relatively painless. I only queued for about half an hour, and got a shiny new student card (with a really bad photo on!). To get into the library on campus and other services at the uni, you have to scan the barcode that is printed on the card. So I thought, now I have one, Ill check out the library, check my emails etc whilst I was there.
I spent about five minutes rotating my card in every way possible on this damn barcode scanner so the doors would open, before a woman came out and told me (with a grin on her face) that my card isnt actually active yet. Never mind, eh. She let me in regardless which was nice of her.

There are some rather random teachers/lecturers at the business school. The ones which I’ve met all seem crazy (in a good way). The Gregmeister, as she will now be called, makes terrible jokes and Benson (my Accounting lecturer) tells his students where to get the cheapest booze in town.

I miss Taylor!

Claire pointed out today that freedom at uni is a weird thing. After being at Wath with forbidden corridors, one way systems and Taylor on the gates; being able to walk around in and out of random buildings with a coffee in one hand seems surreal (once again in a good way). I was in the Biological sciences building the other day for a talk and i saw a stuffed badger on display, next to a vole, several whale bones and a pickled mouse.

Thats it for today. Once again, I realise this post should really be in my @Uni blog, but I think I may combine the two for the time being.

Nighty night.

Andrew
(missing you all)

Of Second Life, boring days and Paris Hilton

I have been amazingly bored today, one of those days where the boredom overcomes any willingness to actually do something. So, today all I’ve done is sat on the settee with my computer watching TV and movies.

After finishing my cheese and bacon omlette (I’m trying new food ideas for uni), and the second movie of the day, The Island, I switched over to Sky News to see what was happening in the world.
Well, apart from Alastair Darling and the twitching of his ridiculously black eyebrows – mostly nothing. It did mention a new feature they have in which they broadcast certain interviews via a computer chat room thingy, called Second Life.

I’ve heard of Second Life before this, but never tried it, so I downloaded a copy, created an account and…… well, that was about it really. Call me a complete dunce, but I had no idea what to do apart from walk around this empty space with nobody else there. So, after wasting time doing that, I uninstalled it.

Paris Hilton. Yes, you know her. Whether you love her or hate her – something everyone has in common is that you most certainly will have an opinion of her. What I admire about the woman is how she has gone through life having absolutely no discernable talent whatsoever, and still managing to be one of the richest. But, my overwhelming opinion of her being a complete slitch (slut/bitch, like it?) supercedes that.

Why mention her? Well, I read this quote today from Dave Grohl (who I now absolutely respect as being a ‘good guy’), which is so blunt, yet true, it made me laugh;

“She’s a total, raging, disgusting, rich, lazy party slut. I pray that my daughter will not turn out like her.
“Paris is f**king lame, she’s more offensive to me than anything.”

Thats it for now.

Anyone watch Skins? Is it any good, I might watch it tonight.

Andrew

Quote from here.

Of Pre-planned brain damage, multiple baths and slippers

I never could get the hang of Mondays.

I’ve just finished watching a film, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. It’s fantastically amazing. Basically, it involves wiping someones mind of a past relationship with a new technology, and because the protagonists mind is being erased throughout the film, there is no clear time line to the film, and whilst that does leave you confused at some points – it’s fantastic, if you haven’t seen it – buy it! One of the best films I’ve ever seen, it’s so surreal. It poses the question, if such a technology did exist, how can we be sure that the brain wont find another way of keeping your memory?

I want blue hair.

If you could have something erased, would you? What would it be?

I had a bath this morning, almost as soon as I got up. Five minutes ago, I was in the process of running another one – have I lost my mind?

Or at least a blue wig.

I found some slippers that I own earlier today. I like slippers but I get the feeling it’s an old man thing.

Like the logo thingy? –> I can’t use Photoshop so I just spent about a minute putting it together in OpenOffice Draw. The image isn’t mine, but it is royalty free.

This made me laugh.

Andrew