Its taken long enough but I am finally back on the net. I thought that with all this high-speed world we were living in the internet wouldn’t have take the better part of a month to sort out. First its problems with how long since you’ve had your phone line, then its that the previous people living here were with another company (hold on, I’m sure I set up a new line!?), then you have to wait for engineers, then you have to wait longer because of floods! All very painful.
A few weeks ago we had our interband football tournament in Dane Park. We’ve been doing it for the past seven years (here is a link to last years football post). I managed to get to the final this year but alas we were beaten by younger, fitter, chavs. Ah well. Just like to say a public thanks to all the lads who helped me organise the event. I’d also like to say a public shame on all those who left litter at the end, not cool.
I was intending to do a rebuke to Tony’s comments on my last blog post, but the moment is somewhat lost. He is right, Linux isn’t the most prevalent desktop system. It is worth noting though that it is by no means a backwater system, for example, Blogger runs on Linux. So its interesting that he was using said system to say that no-one uses it.
Well, its a nice day so I’ll leave you all to it. :)
I’m appalled at a recent BBC decision to release its new online watch again service to Windows only. The problem for me is that I love the BBC normally and I want to consume their content but they always make it so hard for me. I don’t like to consider myself anti-Microsoft but I don’t want to use their software which means that I’m now pretty much stuck with the BBC’s text only content. I’m afraid I’m going to be reduced to just listening to a bit of radio 4 when I’m near a radio. If I have already paid my license fee then why should I also have to buy software from an American company to watch it?
Hmm, wonder if you can use the word gif as an adjective… Anyway, I spent a bit of time today making a simple animation inspired by such things as Noah’s photo everyday for 6 years. Thought it would be nice to do a really simple version with photos I’ve taken of myself over the past 3 years. You can see the result in my avatar, but I’ll reproduce it here in case I change it:
It’s not great but it is pretty easy to do. First things first is to get some appropriate software to put this together. In my case I decided to use the GIMP with the GAP extension (erm, I’m just gonna let you find that). I’m sure there are far more specifically tailored programs but I know how to use the GIMP so it saved me spending time having to get familiar with a new UI.
Step two would be to get a tutorial, which luckily for me I have already read and used before on other projects but will be useful for any of you out there who are thinking a little bit of animation might also be a little bit of fun.
Obviously my attempt at animation isn’t exactly going to get me a job with Disney just yet but it is an interesting little experiment. I’ll also say that I had far better luck when I tried the same thing thing with some photos of my sister. Whereas I have a tendency to only take the odd photo of myself for avatars and the like and make do with the first one or two, my sister is more compelled to take many and then decide which one to use after. So lets string them together and see what we get:
Looks pretty neat eh? Though it may be worth pointing out that she’ll probably kill me for posting this.
It would seem that Peter Checksfield has made a real impact on the local press and people after a skim through Thanets raciest paper, the TT. Now it would seem to me that people do get the most worked up over a bit of nudity
Here are my marks so far for my first year of Uni. Not too bad considering how drunk I was:
Computer Systems - A Multimedia IT Skills - A Human Development and Learning - B+ Human Communication - B+ Communication in Groups - B+ Playing the Game: The Culture of Digital Games. - B Structured Programming - C
It would seem that I’m at my best and my worst when I’m with computers, go figure.
Ok, I’ll break my silence, if for nothing more than the fear that I may soon end on ECRs ‘Where are they now?’ list!
I’ve not ignored Thanet in any way, I take the Thanet Times back to Oxford with me (or get them brought to me!) when I can and keep up with blogging through the wonder of the internet. You know, I found I can be anywhere to read these blogs, not just in Thanet, amazing things these Internets.
I often find that when I see something interesting I think about how I would put it in a blog post, but it would seem I’m now into the habit of not posting. Lets take this example: The other day I was in Margate and was almost knocked over by Sandy Beach who was rounding a corner at high pace away from the town, only to find that when I got to Margate centre the whole town was without power… link perhaps?!
The topic of the moment though does seem to be TBLs birthday. I can hardly believe it to be a year already. That curious, spiraling turning of events that began with turmoil on the blogger circuit to the rise of the blog list. Though for my sins I may have started it, to my better judgment I handed it to Adem who has made it into a truly useful and enjoyable resource… though I must be honest, I cannot stand this Snap preview thing (cue tech tip). If you want to turn it off this is what you have to do: hover over a link to the snappy thing appears, got to options in that pop-up, check the boxes to disable, when it saves reload.
Ok, I’m here for the next month so I’ll probably post again, mainly because I see this as a Thanet blog. After that I’ll probably pull it into my new personal site that I’m planning (see if you can guess the web address ;) ).
For all you Thanet bloggers: Keep up the good work!
I seem to be involved in a bizarre case of identity theft. This is not the usual credit card scam though, oh no. I seem to have been dragged into the seedy underworld of Margaret Withers art. Yikes, I may have even been copyrighted! Oh the humanity!
Hey, hope everyone out there in bloggerland is ok. Life is still fun up here in Oxford. We had proper snow the other week and we all got trapped on the hill we live on, so we had a mass snowball fight with about 50 people. Its nice being on the little campus that the main uni forgets about. We’re like a big family. :)
Thought I’d give nay of you reading this a link to help you get a better understanding as to how Google does it.
Made a nice change today, waking up in the morning. Went down for breakfast, life is that much easier when other people are cooking for you, it is also a good motivator to crawl out my pit in the morning. I thought it was important to make the effort and get up for food today seeing as I have rugby training at 2pm. We have our first match in four weeks and to be honest my laziness over Christmas has raised my own concerns over match fitness. What is the chances of a full time smoker and general layabout being able to run for 80mins. I can see me being sick on the touchline.
I’ve been playing with the new Bloglist and frankly I’m loving what he’s done with it. The Recent Feeds section is awesome and is a great to use in conjunction with netvibes. For example, though I have about 17 Thanet blog feeds on a netvibes page I would never have known that Old Ramsgate and Thanet Underground has been adding new material if it hadn’t been for the Bloglist. I’m not going to add every feed to my netvibes just in case, but the Bloglist does that for us.
In view of this I’ve decided to add the new button that is made available in the promote section. I’ll admit that I wasn’t altogether happy with the code, but frankly I always find something to moan about so I suggest you all use that mental filter now that I’m sure you all use on banner ads for the rest of the web… Actually, if you really don’t like banner ads there is a great Firefox extension that will clean the internet of them for you, its called AdBlock Plus
I’m now getting closer with my oonagi redesign with pretty much only one thing left to do on it, which alas due to my lack of php knowledge I have to place a request to ask someone else to fix for me. Shame really, maybe by the end of this year I’ll know what to do, though by the end of this year all the knowledge will probably be out of date anyway!
