I’m having terrible writers block at the moment. Nothing seems to be worth blogging about, or maybe it’s just one of those moods i’m in. I’ll see if I can muster a random shitz entry.

Wordpress was upgraded to 2.1 the other day.  Installation was easy but I did end up with a phantom CSS link in the header of my pages causing my site to appear half empty in some browsers.  Very odd and took a while to track down.  Also one of my favourite plugins, flickr photo album doesn’t appear to be compatible yet.   Also, 2.1 has a much improved rich text box for writing posts, you can now quickly flip between “visual” and “code” using 2 tabs along the top.  Unfortunately i’ve run into a couple of bugs, I couldn’t just this second edit the picture properties to left alignment, the update/OK button did nothing.  Had to edit it manually in the code view.

My Wii wrist strap replacements arrived last week, wow that sure has taken a long time.  They’re only the 2nd gen straps with the slightly thicker string.  Not the 3rd gen that look like they’ve gone mouldy.

Speaking of Wii, the news channel has been turned on, was Friday, or was it Thursday? Anypoop, it’s totally of no use to me, I read all the news I need on my comp.  Still, it’s a pretty glossy affair, I especially like the globe view, it’s like the globe on the weather channel, and you browse to a country to see if there is any news relevant to there.  If you tilt the globe you see the article stack up as pieces of paper, so you can see visually where places have a large number of stories.

I’m not doing too badly in my resurrected career in warcraft.  Got my blood elf priest to lvl 25 so far.

I recommend the new shins LP, it’s a real beauty.

And thats all the weather

The not so mighty mighty mouse is bothering me again.

Well, I say again, it’s actually been none-stop.  The scroll nipple is the single most whacked piece of engineering i’ve ever known.  Oh, actually it’s the second most whacked, the most whacked is the side buttons, which only trigger when you don’t want them to.  But, i’ve disabled them and learned to ignore that they ever existed.  So the side buttons don’t bother me.

Back to the nipple, it’s only ever worked for me for a few days at a time, it either refuses to scroll upwards, or downwards.  And i’ve got 2 of these mice, the first i bought myself, the 2nd came gratis of the iMac and they have both gone the same way.

I’ve tried plying the nipple with isopropyl and massaging it in.  (god I hope that sentence isn’t taken out of context.)  It does help, but it isn’t long before the nipple has another spasm. (Again.)

The genius part of this whacked engineering is that you can’t even get into it to fix the fudged design.  The whole thing is glue up, but I was so pissed that I took a stanley knife to it, made a bit of a mess of that skirting hoopla but apart from that getting in is just a case of prizing things apart.  It took a while and when I got in I was greeted by some screws (the first) encasing the criminal element.  And damn!  I couldn’t find a screw driver suitable for the smallness.  Ugh, I should have known!

I’d buy a different mouse but I cannot find any available in this country that meet my strict criteria…

• Must be white and suite the apple keyboard
• Must be wired
• Must not be any bigger than apple’s effort (my hands are petit and I also like to rest my wrist on the pad and just jiggle the mouse with my fingers).
• A scroller that does horizontal is desired but not necessary.
• It musn’t cost more than 35 quid.

It’s tricky!

I’ve awoken early and cannot get back to sleep, so i’m supping from a grande espressso and eating pringles whilst watching the season 1 dvd of arrested development.  It all makes sense.

I’ve just remembered something that pissed me off yesterday whilst listening to the podcasts.  Are IT journalists small minded because during one of the twit podcasts (might have been macbreak) one of the hosts mentioned that his house in seattle had had a tree blown on to it by the high winds and leo lepote quipped something along the lines of “yup, the media isn’t reporting this like they did katrina because it’s only effecting white guy execs sipping latte’s.”  I can’t even begin to explain how ugly that comment is on so many levels.

Then later on he said to this english guy who joins the show via skype or some such befuddling contraption “so are you off to drink some warm beer?” and the english guys all “warm beer?  why would I drink warm beer?”  and leo wasn’t even joking, he really believes you still get warm beer in english pubs. So small minded.  Gosh, you’d have to go back at least to the 70’s and those hand pumped taps that required an olympics weight lifter to pour from for the warm yuck.

Wooohoooooo.

OK so it’s a beta, but still, I don’t mind quirk’s when it finally doesn’t take 5 hours to load and have rosetta use up all my RAM.  Good days are here to stay.  As they say in New Zealand.

The happy people at Project Susan* have asked me to list my favourite podcasts**.  So here they are, Video ones are in bold and best first.

1. Buzz Out Loud – 2 Gals and a guy chit chat about the days tech news, they usually pick the best stuff, and beat me to coming across them in my RSS feeds.  They always seem to have so much fun doing it too.
2. Mark Kermodes Film Reviews – My favouritist film reviewer in the whole world, I don’t always agree with him, I love plenty of films he doesn’t like.  But he’s like a walking film encyclopaedia and he’s totally passionate.
3. BBC Radio NewsPod – Rather like a best-of BBC radio 4 and BBC radio 5 from the last 24 hours.  The scope of this podcast is truely mind-blowing and it must take a freaking age to compile.
4. Photoshop TV – The presenters can be deeply irritating, and it’s full of nervous laughter but they do some great demo’s and i’ve learnt tons from them.
5. Adam & Joe XFM Podcast – Their XFM show minus the music.  True comic geniuses I swear I’m nearly puking from laughing so much by the end of a show.
6. Russel Brand – Seems you either love him or hate him.  I guess that means I love him?  Sorry.  Like the Adam & Joe one this is his weekly BBC 6Music show, minus the music.  For some reason Noel Gallagher seems to be on every episode via the phone.
7. Channel Frederator - A weekly compendium of animated shorts.  Occasionally they are rather inspirational.
8. Today Lead Interviews – Today is the breakfast time news and discussion show on Radio 4.  This is the main interviews from the days broadcast.
9. The Movie Review with Kevin Stobo – Movie reviews by a hyperactive twit who I swear must be related to Joey from Friends.  Still, kinda like the guy.  Dunno why.
10. Rocketboom – Sort of random thing, how else would you explain it?
11. Adam & Joe Coca-Cola New Music Something or Other - This is a new one, they probably started this because their XFM show is off air for the time being.  It’s sponsored by coca-cola and they talk about music and listen to some unsigned bands and stuff.
12. National Geographic Video Shorts – Random shorties of a national geographic nature.
13. ScobleShow – Twerp scoble goes around talking to tech pioneers.
14. ReFrederator – A version of Frederator which show a single classic cartoon each day.  Things like Popeye and Betty Boop.  Usually I’ll skip past it but it’s worth keeping for the occasionally prehistoric black and white affair that can be truely bizarre and whaaa?  I love stuff that makes me go Whaaa?
15. TrailerCast.tv – Just movie trailors, like the ones apple host, but they’re pushed to you.
16. Boing Boing Boing – I guess this is interesting, but since starting the podcast I’ve actually gone off the boing boing people a bit.  I’ve found them to be surprisingly narrow-minded and insulting.
17. AtomFilms To Go – Podcast from the short film service.  Bit disappointed about the selection so far. Haven’t been subbed for long so time will tell if it gets better.
18. MacBreak Weekly – Folk talk about mac stuff.  They reallly ought to shorten the shows, its only weekily but a show goes on for soooo lonnnng.
19. Woody’s Movie Review – Irreverent movie reviews done for laughs.
20. Screencasts Online – Does a tutorial on an app or web app.
21. NASACast Video – Can’t remember how good this is.
22. Strong Bad Emails – Daft. I don’t remember subscribing to this.

There are others, but I can’t be bothered to add them, got a bit bored compiling the list.
* Who?

** A lie

Not at all sure what to write about so I think i’ll write about how allay cats love to play hop-scotch.

The nights are drawing in terribly now, i was staring out my window at 5pm at a moonlit night and it was way depressing. It’s deadly silent too. Scary.

Ordered a (Product) Red* iPod nano, nike+ sensor doodar and nike+ armband yesterday, hazaaaar. My joy was quickly soured however when the order gave me an estimated despatch date of the 23rd of october. That’s like 3 weeks away! So hopped around in a strop, cursing Apple for releasing these things when they can’t even fulfil a days worth of orders so they really ought to call it a pre-order. But I just, like 5 minutes ago received a despatch confirmation off them! Wooohoo! Now that’s what you call a pessimistic despatch date.

The Nike+ Armband is freeking ugly by the looks of the picture but as far as I can work out, when you’re using the nike sensor it’s either the ugly faux leather armband where you can’t even see the screen, or you run with it in your hand, getting in a tangle no doubt. Because the sensor stops it from fitting into the slinky little apple made armband and it’s using the same socket as the lanyard thing so that’s out of the question too. Bit of a nuisanse that.

I’ve forgotten to add the first letter style to the new theme, I like having a chunky first letter. All Olde English. Oh heck. Ah well. I was going to quickly write some things I’ve been meaning to blog but all of a suddenly my mind has gone blank. I discovered a bottle of nicely chilled white wine rather too early in the day…. Not to mention the Leffe. Oh Jez I think I’m an alchoholic.

Eddie does a good Che Guevara.. My newly found obsession with photography is getting more expensive. I now have the DSLR, the kit 14-45mm lens, a tripod and from today a remote control so that I can take pictures on the tripod without risking shaking the camera when pressing the shutter release. The next purchase will be a 45-150mm lens. And then maybe even a macro. Crikey. Well, I say expensive but I’m still a tight arse, I saved a fiver, yes 5 square pounds by purchasing the remote second hand on Ebay. I’m slightly regretting being so stingy though because I’m not finding it to be terribly reliable. I dunno if the battery is running low or what, but I doubt that because it’s supposed to last 5 years and an obscene amount of uses before the battery fails. Hmm, I suppose it’s possible it has been pressed continuously during transit or storage. Also, the zoom and exposure buttons don’t do anything, only the shutter button, I don’t need them though so I don’t care about this. Also, it didn’t come with the instructions and I had to scour the t’internet for a PDF.

KDE on Mac. Someone, or some people have ported KDE, and the QT foundation to Mac OS X. This is more than just an X11 recompile and I’m quite excited about the possiblities. When you launch one of the KDE apps it fits in really well with the Mac environment, the app’s icon is displayed in the Dock as it should be and the app’s menu bar correctly uses the mac’s at the top of the screen rather than being contained within the window. This is a great step in the right direction for a true cross-platform GUI, and one that doesn’t rely on some smelly, slow interperated language. I think this was it but now i’m not entirely sure because i tried it a week or so ago and forgot to note the URL. Sorry Susan.
Tesco Office. Tesco, the UK’s #1 supermarket, a shop which makes me shudder… is going to be selling it’s own branded cut-price software, including an Office clone and some anti-virus security bundle. When I first heard about this I thought oooooh I bet it’s OpenOffice, that’ll do the open source crowd some great PR. Unfortunately it isn’t, Tesco’s Office is going to be based on Ability Office, which as far as I can tell is a Windows only wanky shameful MS Office rip-off.

Saturday I went to a very nice restaurant in Leeds called Bibi’s, its a very popular place which has been a staple of Leeds dining since forever, it has a 40’s style décor and you always expect Agnatha Christie to be writing a Periot there, it’s quite kitsch really but the food is yummy-woo.  I had snails in a strange pie and then sea-bass for mains.  Something i’m discovering increasingly apparent however is that the more expensive the restaurant the worse the food is for your heath, especially mine.  They stick tons of butter in everything and so afterwards I feel like i have a soccer ball in my gut and now i’ve been bitten by a skin flair up, I feel like i’m being tickled by a thousand fingers all over.

All this inner bickering, backstabbing within the Labour party has got to be the more tedious and boring of all government crisis. Is there any wonder poeple have been turned off politics in droves?

Personally I would prefer to see Gordon Brown lead us rather than Blair, but when?  Who the heck cares!  Actually I dunno why but I kinda like Brown, it’s just a feeling i’ve always had in my waters, not really based on anything.

I’m not sure what “When Harry Met Larry” is going to take the form of; an animation or a comic strip, i dunno but I’m gonna do it, I am I am I am. Actually I can’t be bothered, can someone else do it for me? Hey, maybe it will be a game!

Come to think of it, maybe I should set up a production company, and deck the place out with palm tree’s and soup dispensers. It’s an idea isn’t it. Hmm.