Or why some things just don’t age well at all…

On a recent Internet trawl I happened upon this.

That’s right kiddies. Glen Michael’s Cavalcade.

Wow.

I don’t know how long it’s going to available on that link so enjoy it while you can.

This particular episode, one I’m sure I remember (although I would have been seven at the time and I can barely remember what happened last week…), has The Krankies, The Priesthill Puppet Group and the usual selection of quality cartoons.

I recommend that everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) checks this out.

BigAl

I spent some quality time with BBC’s iPlayer this evening catching up with The Apprentice, the only real reason to pay a license fee.

And I happened to notice that the volume control goes up to 11.

Aye, very good you Spinal Tap loving freaks..

BigAl

Those of you with long memories (pun intended) may remember me talking about Elephants Dream, a short cartoon built in Blender, the open source 3d modelling software.

Well - they’ve just released the trailer for their latest project, now named “Big Buck Bunny”, and it looks _stunning_. Hopefully it will also be slightly less mad than ED, which was madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of this year’s Mr Madman competition.

Enjoy.

Big Buck Bunny - Official Trailer from Andy Goralczyk on Vimeo.

(as with Jono’s post, bonus points for recognising the reference in the title)

mrBen

I have a MyMiniCity.

It’s here.

For reasons that remain unexplainable, it has become relatively important to myself, Ruthy and mrBen, that the city grows and continues to grow.

So every day (more or less) without fail, we go to the site and help the city grow. There are a handful of others we have managed to con into sparing precious seconds of their online existence to helping us build what is realistically a waste of bandwidth.

Nevertheless, we come to you, the dedicated followers of JediMoose, to help our city grow…

Why should you do this?

Well, do you really have anything better to do?

BigAl

Another good idea ™ from the stables of the ‘Moose. Actually - this probably isn’t all that original, but I wanted to post it online anyway.

I’d really like to see an online groceries shopping system which, rather than being tied to a supermarket, was tied into the local butchers, bakers, grocers, fishmongers, etc in your area (based on your postcode). The idea being that the suppliers subscribe to you, and the consumers do too, and you link them together in a single website that acts like a supermarket.

mrBen

For the last 3 years now, I’ve endeavoured to relisten to the entire back catalogue of LugRadio episodes in the run up to the awesome LugRadio Live. Last year, I got caught a bit short, but I wrote a little program to keep track of my listening.

This year, I’ve started a lot earlier (144 days to go), but I thought I should add something to the script. So I’ve included listening times to it. Hurrah. Or Something.

Enjoy!

Notes:

1. The % are still based on number of shows, not on listening times. So sue me.
2. The code for the original is still at http://mrben.jedimoose.org/listener.html - when I get around to it I’ll post the updated code (which is even uglier

mrBen

* Apparently this analogy is not, and has never been, accurate.

This one’s for Edgy.

BigAl

Found this video - a really nice explanation of the principles of the Creative Commons licensing - if you are a writer, musician, artist, or other creative-type then this is something you should know about.

Via LivingOS.

mrBen

Not sure if I should be happy or sad about this result

43

[edit]Did this one too
87% Geek[/edit]

mrBen

I’ve decided to set up a new (Web 2.0 BETA) website. It’ll be called CompareTheConfusedElephantMoneyMarket.com and will be a useful site to help you choose between the many options you have for insurance price comparison websites.

I’m kidding, of course, but I know I’m not the only one who’s fed up of the enormous amount of advertising coming from websites that claim to be “unique”.

(Note - this is the beginning of an upcoming rant about the advertising industry)

mrBen

Linkpot hit 1000 links created over the weekend. That’s all despite the fact that I’ve still not done any of the huge upgrades on my list of things to add.

Thanks especially to all the guys on #lugradio for their bug testing, feature requests and continued usage.

mrBen

LugRadio Season 5 hits the internet today, with a new website design, and 2 new presenters. Looking forward to another season of insightful commentary (or perhaps an “endless stream of sub-par knob gags”) on Linux, Open Source, the Global Intarweb and other such geekery.

mrBen

Much as I disapprove of embedding YouTube videos in blogs, I couldn’t resist.

BigAl

Or, if you’re not expecting much, it’s exactly as good as you think.

(This isn’t an in depth review of the game and you’d do better looking elsewhere for that.  This is just a personal grump about it.)

I had a 14-day trial key for the Star Wars online experience from another SW game I had. The key had been unused since I bought that other game as I’m already playing Guild Wars and that nicely fills my online gaming needs.  That, and there’s no monthly fee to GW which cheers me up no end.

But last week I had some free time and I decided to fire up SW: Galaxies and give it a go.
And after faffing around with the account setup on Sony’s website (which seemed to take an age), I finally got the client downloaded and everything setup.

Once I was in the character setup I reviewed the choices, all the ususal Star Wars fare, and settled on Jedi.  A no-brainer really.

I then spent the rest of that afternoon idly hacking at bad guys and doing the usual quest/experience point gathering that you’d expect from any good role-playing game.  And that’s all I’ve done with it.

It’s an alright game but despite its Star Wars link, it doesn’t really seem to have anything really exceptional going for it.  The player experience was, well… blah.  After playing Star Wars RPGs like Knights Of The Old Republic (and Cheezy, I’d like it back please) you can’t help but get the impression that they could have tried harder.

BigAl

Thought it was probably time that I laid out some of my initial thoughts of the Nokia N800 that I won at LugRadio Live. I don’t have any pictures / screenshots at the moment, but I promise I’ll get some up soon.

Background

It’s possible that I get some of these technical details a bit wrong - apologies in advance
The Nokia N800 is an “internet tablet” - it’s not a mobile phone, or a PDA. If anything, it’s more like a very small laptop. It runs on Linux, using the Hildon desktop, based on Gtk. It has built in wifi and bluetooth, and a beautiful screen. It even has stereo speakers. It has 2 SD Card slots, now compatible with SD cards up to 8GB in size. I believe both of these are hot-swappable. It comes with a web browser, googletalk for IM, and video conferencing with the built-in webcam, plus a media player, and a few other apps. It supports input via a stylus, or using your finger. It connects to your PC via USB, but doesn’t have any syncing software, nor does it charge over USB. There is a stereo headphone jack that also supports a headphone+microphone set on a single jack.

Some Thoughts

The screen is beautiful. It really is. It’s really crisp and bright. The wifi is good quality, and it has become my tool of choice for small bits of web surfing while at home. The clever bit of software that detects if you’re using the stylus or your thumb and displays different menus/keyboard is an inspired piece of work, although if I was doing a lot of typing I’d probably need to get some sort of bluetooth keyboard.
Being basically a Linux PC makes this a massively versatile device. There is tonnes of software available, and most of it is free. I have a few good tidbits installed:

• Maemo Mapper - a free bit of mapping software that can download maps from various sources, including Google Maps and Open Streetmap. If I had a bluetooth GPS and the flite voice software, it could even be a sat nav unit.
• SCUMMVM - for playing old LucasArts games. Great fun! (I am most of the way through Flight of the Amazon Queen thanks to my commute
• Terminal/SSH - surprisingly useful
• AisleRiot - Solitaire with knobs on

There are, however, 3 big things I dislike about the device:

• The N800’s predecessor, the N770, had a hard cover to protect it - the N800 only has a little cloth sleeve which, while being some protection from scratches, etc, wouldn’t stop the screen getting cracked in an impact.
• The battery life is quite poor - even on my short commute usage, in standby for the rest of the day and night, I probably need to charge every 1.5 days. This is very dependent on how much you use wireless, I believe. And it has got better with the latest firmware. However, it’s really a problem considering that:
• You can’t charge the device through the USB port. This was a real plus of my previous media player. Being able to plug in at work (plugging in non-tested devices to the main sockets is prohibited) was a great benefit.

The other thing that I need to get sorted out is Bluetooth networking - the N800 doesn’t support the wireless setup at work, so I’d like to be able to connect through the bluetooth on my laptop, but this is not part of the default setup, which is a shame.

All-in-all, this is an amazing little device. I have lots of things I still want to try on it (installing Django, play with GPS, install a calendar and syncing, etc), but I think it will be a faithful friend for a long while.

mrBen

Back on May 8th I began my LugRadio listening marathon. Well - 49 days and 80 shows later, and I’m finished (apart from the to-be-released-on-Monday Season 4 Episode 22). It’s been an interesting experience, cramming it all in in such a short space of time, but I’ve enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.

Roll on LugRadio Live (10 days and counting)

mrBen

Sometimes you come across a cool new thing, and you wonder whether or not everybody else already knows about them, but never bothered to say. Well - I’m going to say, but if you know about it already, keep quiet

I’ve been playing with ‘PuTTY Tray’ for the past couple of days. Almost every geek worth their salt know about PuTTY - the definitive SSH client for Windows (yes, I know it’s on other systems, and supports other protocols, but I reckon 99% of people use it for SSH on Windows). PuTTY Tray is basically PuTTY, with a few extra features. 2 of these are really (_really_) useful - it does proper URL highlighting, so you can click on a URL rather than copy and paster, and it does session reconnection after standby.

Anyway - give it a try - it imports all your existing PuTTY settings, so there’s no overhead to trying it out. Get it from http://www.xs4all.nl/~whaa/putty/

mrBen

Well - having posted only 48 hours ago about my QuickURL, and thanks to lots of prompting and suggestions from the guys on the #lugradio IRC channel, I now have LinkPot.net, for all your URL shrinking needs!

Finding a good, available, domain name was hard, but hopefully linkpot.net is simple enough to remember. I’ve made some changes, and I’ve a load more to make, but I welcome any comments or suggestions for improvements to the site. There is a proper design in the works too.

Oh, and big thanks to kNo`, who helped me sort out a Django upgrade and fixing a problem with the NSFW tagging.

mrBen

TinyURL is great. It’s a wonderful service that replaces a really, really long URL, with an itty-bitty URL. For those of us who live online in IM, IRC and forums, it makes life a lot easier.

But. (There’s always a but)

It’s a bit crap for people who talk on the phone, or who present podcasts. So I present my latest technology demo, QuickURL, which creates tiny URLs with real words. (It’s currently limited to the 24,143 words in the dictionary between 4 and 7 characters long, but this is just a demo ). Admittedly, the rest of the url is a bit of a pain, but I reckon that quickurl.com/codfish/ (should I buy the domain) is better in conversation than tinyurl.com/?ahd73h

mrBen

A good proportion of you will be reading this site via a webpage that is powered by the Planet Planet aggregation software. Now, I’m told that Planet Venus is a better aggregator, but I have no real plans to change.

However, I do have vague plans to change the way it works. As part of my LugRadio marathon (status) I got to an episode where they complain, legitimately, that many planets are simply overrun with posts that are not particularly relevant for the topic. However, as the conversation continues (and the subsequent conversation on hashlugradio) it becomes obvious that there is a great deal of subjectivity of what people want to read on a planet site.

So - here’s the plan for “Galaxy Galaxy” (bigger and better than Planet Planet ) - we create a (thoroughly web 2.0) set of tools that allows for a very customisable planet-type system. This has a number of elements and features:

• Key to this will be plugins for blogging software that provide feeds of the categories/tags that are used on that site
• Likewise the blogging software will need to provide feeds for each of the categories - Wordpress already does this
• The “GG” site will be set up to subscribe to particular sites (as they are now) but also which categories are subscribed by default
• Individual readers will be able to select/deselect which categories they actually do want to have feeds from, via a whizzy Ajax-style interface
• Choices will remain persistent (probably through cookies - we don’t really want logins…)

OK - so this may not be a new idea. In fact, it may not even be a good idea. But I would like to hear from anyone who’s interested in developing it

mrBen