Ξ February 24th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
After a day or so’s use of it, I think I’ll come back to it once it reach 0.5+. It’s a fantastic concept but it’s still far too early days to have it as an every day software item. The list of things that need doing isn’t small:
No obvious way to configure a proxy, takes ages to search large music collections, iffy media centre and album:file association, only basic playback commands, small player lacks functions like transparency and don’t flick between small and large player quickly because it doesn’t like it. Resource hog is an understatement: try 50odd meg just playing an album of mp3s and 120meg for playing a podcast. You can ONLY play sound and finally I seem to have made it irreversibly crash whenever I load the program now, so it’s coming off.
It’s a fantastic concept and I prefer some bits to winamp but needs a lot done.
Ξ February 22nd, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I grabbed the Dragonforce album, Inhumane Rampage from Virgin the other day for a tenner whilst in town, and it’s thoroughly entertaining on a level of humour intermingled with sheer astonishment. The speed at which these guys play is just insane. Speed metal combined with power ballad lyrics make it the funniest thing I’ve listened to in a long time. I’ve got to find when they’re touring the UK and go see them.
Yesterday I grabbed an advanced copy of, Placebo: Meds from a mate and am lovin’ that ‘n all. It’s typical Placebo, yet, still fresh. Maybe because the last time I popped in Black Market Music for a whirl was back when I was a teen, so it feels good to go back to my musical youth a bit whilst not feeling as though it’s all too much of the same. My favourite tracks are definitely Meds and Pierrot the Clown. The former for sheer Placebo classic-ness, and the latter because it’s a great sound, slightly acoustic, great lyrics and the fact it reminds me of Yakitate Japan.
I’ve got fed up of winamp, after many-a-year of using it since 2.2-something and downloaded Songbird 0.1 instead. Despite it’s early beta-ness it seems to work very well and is pretty damn stable, at least, on this machine. I’ve yet to stick it on my main rig and have it catalogue my 180gig of music. Winamp crippled itself after that, and I refuse to install iTunes after seeing how invasive it is on my brothers machine. Having said that, Songbird isn’t that great using nearly 20% CPU and nearly 45meg of ram with just two albums queued to play.
Ξ February 20th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Everything’s changed and now I have a dot net with my name on it after finding it far cheaper to renew than a .co.uk. Now I have to go find every form online where I have bindibadgi.co.uk and stick in richardswinburne.net instead. See you in a few weeks then.
Ξ February 12th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
Ive only been properly driving for a couple of weeks now, racking up around 1k miles already on the M4/M40/M25 mostly, but still in that short time I’ve noticed loads of stupid things other people do. It is so true that you dont start to properly learn until after you pass your test, and it also makes me wonder what those who’ve been driving for years or those who drive tens of thousands of miles a year see when they’re out on the road. They must be able to write a encyclopedia’s worth of driving errors by others (and themselves).
If it’s not some old woman with a BMW that has dodgy electrics so her brake lights flick on and off, it’s some other guy in the left-hand lane speeding up and then slamming on his brakes repetitively behind another car when the road around him isn’t exactly filled with traffic. Or, crazy ass bikers, swerving in and out of traffic or people slamming on their breaks as they notice, just early enough, a mobile speed camera van on the bridge overhead. This was just in the last two days mind; I’ve forgotten what’s happened these last two weeks.
To top it off though, last night took the award for “psychopath of the month”. It was about 9:45 in the evening, driving down the M4 just past Swindon on a second of motorway that has no additional lighting from overhead. You see lights to your right from the oncoming traffic but they flick on and off as the light passes behind metal poles in the central reservation. Yet, one set of lights to our right didn’t, and it was a lot closer than the rest. Someone was driving on the wrong side of the motorway, a lane away from us, belting it in the opposite direction. My father and I did a double as we both tried to see what was now happening behind us with the traffic that was following. Bearing in mind, we were still doing a continuing along at 60ish at this point when we passed through a couple of cars on the hard shoulder and another end on in the central reservation with it’s nose pointing into the fast lane.
Surreal was an understatement.
Luckily, because of the time of day the traffic was sufficiently light enough for most people to be in the left or middle lanes of the 3 lane motorway, but god knows how the police managed to stop him going down the wrong side. It’s not like they could follow, or coerced him to pull over from the other side. Having said all that, I’ve no idea if he hit anyone behind us. I cannot even conceive what it would be like to hit an oncoming vehicle at 70mph, when they’re doing in excess of 70 themselves.
And people complain about public transport, heh.
EDIT: Just heard on the news: apparently it was some 69 y/o guy who just lost it, turned around and decided to go the other way. Miracuously noone else was injured despite the fact he got 10 miles down the wrong way, and the police only managed to stop him several miles after he passed us. The only casualty was the guys wife, 37, who was so paralysed with fear that it took four police officers to remove her from the car and put her in the ambulance. The police managed to translate to the guy to pull over and instead he just stopped his car in the central lane, got out and waved his lisence at them shouting “I have a driving lisence”.
Methinks divorce and a good dose of lithium is on the papers.
Ξ February 10th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I know why I haven’t read it before now; because each book costs in excess of £20, but it wasn’t until reading it I that see how it’s ~£23 well spent. For starters the book is nearly 400 pages of gorgeously drawn animation with fantastic attention to detail. The story exceeds the movie in leaps and bounds and draws you into Otomo’s universe in a far greater depth of understanding and character development. If you enjoyed the movie, you’ll enjoy the manga.
Raising the cash for 4 more books (Vol. 3-6) at ~£20 a pop isn’t easy. But having said that, I’d spend a few hundred quid on computer or hardware without a second thought?!
Hopefully Dark Horse still have some of the larger books still in stock (or someone on Ebay has them), as they are supposedly reprinting the Akira mangas in a smaller format, which will screw up the look of my bookshelf if that happens.
OT: Being 23 is no different from 22, just that I’m now closer to being a quarter of a century old. Urgh.
Ξ February 8th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ |
I downloaded the trailer for the Mai-HiMe/Otome movie yesterday, and despite the fact it possibly ruined the ending of Otome, I have to admit that I didn’t see what they have in store from a mile off.
*Tentative spoiler warning*
http://doremi.theanimeconnection.net/
Basically I thought HiMe and Otome were completely different, alternative universes based upon the same underlying story, I didn’t realise they intended a “super final uber battle overlap” in the movie where characters from both series link up in various ways. I’m not the sort of fan that will go read into a series or download the manga, so maybe other people already knew this by reading anime sites or whatever, but it struck me as something that’s really quite ingenious and well planned. Despite the fact I’m not a huge fan of either series, I’m quite looking forward to seeing how the movie turns out… sometime next year, for us, at least.
Bleach Fans! FMA Fans!
Grab yourself the music videos for L’Arc~en~Ciel, but more importantly, Younha at Blizzard Crush.
http://blizzardcrush.blogspot.com/
Why is her piano playing and assertively feminine voice so attractive?
