It's Amazing! No, It's A Beanbag...

Yep, it's a beanbag alright...

Okay; now I'm not saying that this 'gadget' (it's a beanbag) isn't useful... No, only that perhaps the actual trademarking of "Moviewedge" may be a tad unncessary. (Because it's a beanbag).
The Moviewedge (TM) is a $9.95 solution for propping up your iPhone (much as you could prop it up with, say - a beanbag) in order to watch movies on it.

And because it's so well designed to accommodate different shapes (*alternatively read: "because it's a beanbag"...) it works with a wide variety of portable media devices such as Apple's iPod Touch and iPod Nano, the Sony PSP and Microsoft's Zune; mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone, Samsung Instinct, Blackberry Storm and basically any other device.
A pretty nebulous product spec I'm sure you'll agree. You can only imagine that whichever caveman invented the beanbag is kicking themselves they didn't patent it now...

Here's the feature list as spelled out on the Moviewedge website...
• Holds your device in place on uneven and unsteady surfaces
• Variable viewing angle
• Compatible with almost any case or enclosure your device is in
• Soft microsuede covering perfect for wiping screen
(*Each of these points above can be translated as "it's a beanbag" incidentally.)

Is This The New Quicktime?

This is a screengrab image posted by Feber.se purporting to show the new minimalist interface of the forthcoming version of Quicktime, expected out with Mac OSX 10.6 "Snow Leopard" - very much in line with the basic 'play' interfaces of stuff like iTunes videos.
A nice clean interface like this - plus the rumoured integration of currently paid-for "Pro" features could be a real step forward for QT. Nice.

Quick Tip: Handling Marketing Phone Abuse

Don't know if you, like me, get stupid numbers of calls from every kind of Sales shitwit and Marketing bastard on the planet offering you every kind of special deal you don't want...?
If you're subject to any of this - automated or not - then best get yourself registered with TPS - The Telephone Preference Service where you can register mobiles and home phones to get them on lists to be excluded from all that kind of rage-inducing bollocks.
They reckon you should be fully protected within around 28 days; and you then also have a very specific recourse and warning-off line to tell anyone who bothers you.

There's way too much of this crap getting in the way of a peaceful life nowadays - and short of getting hold of these people's phone numbers and ringing *them* at home instead (which is pretty tempting of course) then this may well be a very good solution.
Gotta be worth a go...

Sony World Photography Awards

Had to post up these... some of the stunning, beautiful and touching entries from the Natural History category in the Sony World Photography Awards...

Bait Ball Symphony #2, by Alexander Safonov, Japan

A Cape gannet diving after fish during the sardine run off the east coast of South Africa.

Waiting for an amber, Motiejus Salkauskas, Lithuania

Amber collecting is an old custom along the Lithuanian coast of the Baltic Sea. Nowadays the custom is rare because the lack of large stones. If collectors are lucky, stones are sold at the local markets as ornaments.

Baby koala, by Lisa Maree Williams, Australia

A joey koala clutches a fake substitute mother at the Australian Wildlife hospital, the largest wildlife hospital in the world, on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.

A Couple Of Safari 4 Interface Hacks

Still loving Safari 4 BETA - although despite the blinding speed, Top Sites and overall Coverflow sexiness etc, those UI tweaks of putting the tabs at the very top of the app, and also losing the progress bar in favour of the little twirly device are really still getting on my tits a stupid amount.
Short of actually just getting over it and chilling out - which I think we all know isn’t going to happen - I should thank Gordon for sending on a couple of Terminal hacks to set these right.

I don’t often use the terminal I must admit - but occasionally it’s a very useful last resort; particularly if you’ve got a hack or command passed on or recommended by a reliable source (and these ones I believe come from MacFixit.com which is pretty much as good as it gets).

So, firstly, you can reinstate the tabs where they used to be by typing / copying this into the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

and the progress bar can be reinstated by typing in / copying this:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO


It’s important to note that the progress bar hack will leave you without the Cancel / Reload button - but if you’re happy to do those with simple keyboard shortcuts (Apple and full-stop for Cancel, Apple and R for Reload) then it’s no great loss.
The progress bar is a very useful piece of UI - it not only indicates activity but shows you what kind of activity is going on (or indeed is NOT going on). If the progress bar is stuck at some point across a web address then this is actually telling you what the problem is. For example if it’s stuck over the http: bit it’s a protocol problem, whilst if it’s over the page name, then it’s a problem with that page or elements on it. Not a lot of people know that.

Hope these are useful and thanks to Gordon and MacFixit for spreading the hacks.

Creativity Is What Should Count On ITunes

Cult of Mac brings news that in an interview with TIME magazine Van Morrison has made clear his intention to withdraw from the iTunes Music Store; giving us the benefit of such dubious bits of wisdom as “I’m not a download artist” (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean...) to explain the curious decision - quite frankly I’d want my offerings everywhere possible in such tough times, especially when it appears that iTMS is operating in a pretty healthy way compared to offline purchasing in general.

What is interesting to me in all this is certainly not Van Morrison himself (who I only really know as a narky old curmudgeon who had the poor judgement to record something with Cliff Richard...) - no, it’s more his general attitude to iTMS in context of his portfolio on the Store.
Go look; he has a bog-standard list of albums.
And that’s it.
That’s his contribution to making iTunes work for him.
Lazy bastard.

If I was a recording artist who was working with iTMS, not only would I work bloody hard to ensure that all albums, singles and any kind of B-sides and bonus-y type stuff was available, I’d also be making sure I used the Store 100% to engage more with fans.
Get all the promo videos out there - and the “making of” videos. Podcasts of course - probably video ones. Why not “digital booklets” (that’s actually just a posh title for PDFs to be honest) of ongoing news and photos, of studio notes and tour diaries? Why not dust off old and rare material and get it out there? Look at digitising old live stuff that’s not worth pressing DVDs of, but which fans would download in a heartbeat? Documentaries, iCals, downloads of the winning entries from special fan-remix challenges? The potential is pretty much as limitless as your imagination.
Which in Van Morrison’s case would appear to be pretty bloody limited indeed.

As far as I can see if you’re not thinking of things like that then you’re a lazy dimwit who doesn’t deserve to succeed on iTMS. It’s a pretty sure sign that Van Morrison certainly should withdraw - I have no idea how far he’d be missed; probably not much so long as “Brown Eyed Girl” is still available on some oldie compilation album somewhere.
He’s as myopic as the record companies still tend to be.
Long live iTunes and all its possibilities for the creative artist.
And while we’re about it, let’s see a few more artists actually getting creative with iTunes...

Go Check Out: Fear Of Bicycles

Cool, brilliantly original improvisational stuff from Hull - including a couple of my old musical collaborators (Ian and Pete) - Fear of Bicycles is - Pete Cox on guitars, FX & loops; Ian Halstead on fretless bass guitar; Martin Hyde on drums/percussion; and Graham Beck on keyboards, Theremin, Stylophone, FX & guitar.

Their Myspace page - with stuff to listen to - is here...

Cyril Highsmith Interview

These are some pages from the sketchbooks of typographer Cyril Highsmith, who's interviewed in the latest MyFonts.com Newsletter, online now here...

Talented guy, interesting thoughts, and some lovely examples of his craft.

Totalitarian Mentalist Of The Week: Jack Straw

(*Jack Straw in his previous role of the Demon Headmaster)

Why would I post this link to an opinion/comment piece by Jack Straw defending his, and his government's stance and record on liberty and civil liberties, when I clearly disagree pretty much 100%?

Good question, and I'm not entirely sure myself. I think it's probably because it's worth reading simply so you can gawp in either admiration at the delusion / mendacity of the man, or feel a hint of sympathy that he is clearly off his rocker and has lost his already feeble grip on reality. Either way, it's a gread read if you're a lover of the Fiction genre...
There's some excellent comments of feedback too - loads of them in fact (hardly surprising given how easy it is to pick apart such awful, patronising bollocks) - though of course, they will doubtless go unanswered.

What with reading that this morning AND all the latest on that other servant of Satan, Sir Fred Goodwin, I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't start working ourselves out of this recession by creating lots of jobs for Gallows Builders.

I'll stop now before that full-blown Anger Stroke hits... ;-)

Safari 4 Beta Is Out And Awesome

Okay - good news for those of you who enjoy surfing the interweb.
There's so much crud out there (and indeed on this very site) and so many sites to follow and organise and look at... well, in its latest version (the BETA release of Safari 4) Apple has delivered its best browser yet to help enrich your web surfing, and to be honest it pisses on pretty much any other browser I've seen too. (yes, that's basically all of them).
Whilst they'd done a couple of things I'm not so keen on - like shifting the tabs to the very top of the navbar, and changing their behaviour a bit - some of the plusses are utterly brilliant.

People will make certain comparisons to Google's Chrome browser with regard to the most obvious new feature; the "Top Sites" screen - but that won't do it justice. Although its starting point is a collection of your most viewed sites (albeit presented in beautiful 3D Aqua-fied glory) the cleverness comes in being able to completely turn this into a beautiful Favourites / Start page by sticking drawing pins into pages you want to keep in a certain place and organising others around them. It also has a nifty little touch of letting you know if pages have been updated by showing them with the top corner folded down and a star showing up.

There's a whole interface lifting going on with "Cover Flow" (Apple's gorgeous way of shoing items by flipping through them, derived from iTunes where the metaphor was flicking through a bunch of album sleeves) being used across so many functions such as searching your History for previously visited sites, bookmarks in general, and also special bookmarks such as a folder of sites associated with people from your address book.

The final thing to recommend it is its speed. This is fast. Really fast. Overall rendering is great and the performance on pages heavy with things like Javascript is nothing short of blistering.
Combine it with Safari Ad Block and you have very probably got the most exquisite browsing experience available.
There's a Windows version too, so give it a try (though given that it will be authored to exploit the structure and processes of Apple's OSX operating system, it's unlikely you'd feel quite the same boost. But it's still a fab browser and deserves a tryout.)

There's a page covering all the features here...
And you can download the Safari 4 Beta here...
*Just bear in mind it IS a beta version. It won't be perfect.

...Although it's pretty bloody close.

2009 Bikesports In iCal

For any of you who may be into motorbike sports (or at least the main world championships in various categories) I've made a bunch of iCals to help keep tabs on all the important dates in 2009. iCal is an application on the Mac, which uses the open .ics calendar format - which means that you can also use these in various Windows and Linux applications such as Microsoft Works (Version 8 or higher), WinDates, Mozilla Calendar, Sunbird and Zimbra.

MotoGP 2009 Calendar
Click here to subscribe in iCal...

CEV Buckler 2009 Calendar
Click here to subscribe in iCal...

SBK: World Superbikes 2009 Calendar
Click here to subscribe in iCal...

BSB: British Superbikes 2009 Calendar
Click here to subscribe in iCal...

World Superstock 1000cc
Click here to subscribe in iCal...


More information about how to use these calendars on Windows PCs here at iCalShare...

Hope they're useful.
Enjoy :-)

gb

Live Performances Of "Music From The Worm Farm"

As the "Music From The Worm Farm" project I did the website for nears its end, I should point out the forthcoming live performance of the project's output.
The performance is at 7 pm on Thursday the 19th of March at the Science Museum's Dana Centre in South Kensington, London. Tickets are free, and a free CD  of work from the residency will be given away.
Click here for full information on the evet...
And click here for the 'Performance" info page on the Worm Music website.
Ongoing notes form composer Keith Johnson can be found here on the Worm Music blog.

Help ARK To Stop Animal Cruelty In Kerala

Many thanks to Debbie for alerting me to the work of ARK - Animal Rescue Kerala having seen some of my holiday pics online featuring beach dogs at Kovalam.
Animal Rescue Kerala not only look after animals and work on sterilisation and anti-rabies programmes, but also campaign against some appalling and institutionalised cruelty and killing by the Keralan state itself.
You can sign their petition here and also make donations via Paypal, and find out about their current news.

There's also a Facebook Group here...

Ask David Cameron...

(*Above: Man of the people David Cameron and the rest of Spandau Ballet)

Brighton & Sussex newspaper The Argus has made a bit of a foolish internet newbie mistake in asking readers to post up questions for Conservative leader David Cameron. So rather than them being able to do some judicious filtering, the whole list just goes online.
The whole article and list of questions is here but as I'm such a nice bloke, I've picked out all the best ones for you...

What does swan taste like?

Why doesn't he need to shave - is it electrolysis?

Who framed Roger Rabbit?

Should Poundland come to Worthing?

Who would win in a fight between a baboon and a badger?

Where are my pants?

Would he go gay for Johnny Depp?

Does he think that Yoda sounds like Miss Piggy?

Would he agree that if Conservatism is the answer it must have been a bloody stupid question?

Could he deck a horse with one punch?

Will o The Wisp... or Rhubarb and Custard?

What are the 39 steps?

Brighton interwebbers I salute you :-)

The Simpsons New Opening Titles For The HD Age

The Simpsons has some new opening titles, firmly rooted in the original titles' DNA but completely updated.
The new opening sequence accompanies the show's transition to High Definition format in Season 20, with the basic outline / storyboard the same but new incidents and characters and references throughout; many referring to previous episodes (for example the items at the supermnarket checkout now include Tomacco and Mister Sparkle...), Marge now actually hits Homer with the car in the driveway sequence, flinging him straight through into the living room - and a key piece of the titles, the TV which carries the main 'created by' credits is now itself a High Definition TV, which closes the entire sequence by falling off the wall.
Watch the clip above and spot all the differences.

There's loads of info about *all* incarnations of the titles including the movie - here on Wikipedia...

Mar i Terra

Got taken to a really cool little place on Friday night...
It's called Mar i Terra and it's on a tiny backstreet near Southwark tube station.
Amazing tapas and amazing wine - not cheap but very very good value considering how excellent it all is - and in cosy, unpretentious surroundings with dead friendly staff.
Top tips: Patatas bravas, Fabada Asturiana (a stew of white Pote beans, chorizo, morcilla and panceta adobada, scented with pimentón), the silky, sweet Jamón Gran Reserva - and a stunner of a red wine; the Paso a Paso, Tinto De La Mancha, 2006. Dammit, even the "basic" plate of bread and olives is superb!
This is one of those times when it's hard to say quite how good a meal was, as there's little chance of people believing you.
But it absolutely is just *that* good...
Will be going back.
A lot.

Light Fantastic

Apologies for nicking the Guardian's headline - it's not laziness, it's just I couldn't think of anything better to describe this.It *is* fantastic.
Artist Michael Bosanko makes these pictures using coloured torches at night... His digital camera stays on a long exposure, ranging from 10 seconds to one hour to create the images against the backdrop of Cardiff, Newport and the Brecon Beacons in south Wales.
There's a set of 11 shots here on the Guardian website...

El Canto Del Loco English Fansite - elcantodelloco.co.uk

More than a couple of times I've used this blog to publish news about Spanish band El Canto Del Loco. Well, I've finally decided that rather than knock out the odd story here (although I'll probably do exactly that anyway...), it would make more sense to actually build a news, info and downloads site about them...
As a result, I've built and launched www.elcantodelloco.co.uk - an El Canto Del Loco fansite in English which aims to spread the word about them to people outside of Spain and to pass on news and info in the English language.
If you or anyone you know likes ECDL or is curious then please do point your browser at the site to keep up with the band and their activities (especially if they ever include activities in the UK, which I desparately hope they will...)

Already the site includes info on all their albums; De personas a personas, Personas, Arriba el telón, Zapatillas, Estados de ánimo, A contracorriente, and El Canto del Loco - plus videoclips, desktop wallpaper, weblinks, news on record sales and info on a cool introductory El Canto Del Loco iMix you can grab from iTunes.

Go see...
Enjoy :-)

Photos From Cape Verde

I've put up a page of holiday snaps from Boa Vista in the Cape Verde Islands here...
A beautiful place, in a barren windswept kind of a way. Vast beaches, volcanic mountains, a desert and mile after mile of scrub and tundra.
It's peaceful and tranquil; really beautiful actually - although the hotel RIU Karamboa turns out to be a huge 750 room monstrosity, soon to be dwarfed by another RIU hotel in the south of the island on the stunning and pristine Santa Monica beach (to be twice the size of the Karamboa apparently, and surely to have a huge impact on the island's landscape, environment and culture).
And although RIU's "News" magazine goes to great lengths (over several pages) to emphasise its environmental commitment, you do have to wonder just a little when they proudly boast, after all the environmental blurb that they built the Karamboa - and I quote this verbatim - "on the very beach where the famous caretta-caretta sea turtles' egg-laying ritual takes place." Ecology rules, eh...?

Scintillation

Not entirely sure what to say about this film - SCINTILLATION - by Xavier Chassaing, except "bloody hell that's cool..."

Watch it, it's beautiful.

See You In A Couple Of Weeks

Push Your MP For Darwin Day

2009 is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his most significant work, On the Origin of the Species. Darwin is clearly one of the truly great and most important British thinkers - and it's good to know that a campaign is underway to make his birthday, 12 February, a national public holiday here in the UK.

An Early Day Motion ( No 377) has been submitted in the House of Commons by Ashok Kumar MP and other MPs are being invited to sign up for it. The motion reads:
"That this House notes the extraordinary achievements of Charles Darwin; notes that 2009 marks both the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of the Species; welcomes proposals for the creation of a Darwin Day in recognition of the ground-breaking work of the British scientist responsible for the theory of evolution by natural selection; and calls for Darwin's birthday, 12 February, to be designated a public holiday in honour of one of the fathers of modern science and one of Britain's greatest, if not the greatest, scientific minds."  

I can think of few better reasons; especially if it helps serve as a nationally sanctioned poke in the eye to all the creationist / intelligent design mentalists out there...
If you want to ask your MP to support this motion but you are not sure who s/he is, go to www.theyworkforyou.com and type in your postcode. Then send the MP a copy of this motion and encourage them to support it.

For further details of Darwin events across the country, go and check out www.darwin200.org & for details about the Darwin exhibition which is running at the Natural History Museum until 19 April, go take a look here.