Happy Birthday Boss

My 'boss' (of sorts) is a whole 40 today. Blimey. He was 24 when we started working together....

Long time that....

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:02:18 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Blogging in Brighton

It seems there's a bit of a ground swell happening around the people in Brighton that blog. Not too revoltionary really, I mean people all over the country have blog meets etc - and have done since it all started - but it's taken until now, and the launch of Brighton Bloggers to get the thing into some sort of order.

It all seemed to kick off with the listings on Virtual Festival a few months back. For some strange reason I hadn't really been thinking about who else in my area throws up their random thoughts on a web page on a regular basis - when you think about it where people are in the world doesn't make too much difference to what you might like to read. Then again, if they happen to be talking about events and situations that could be relevant to you it helps to draw you towards their blogs (is this making any sense yet? Sorry, slow brain day)

All of a sudden I am reminded of the feeling in Brighton when our first local ISP, Pavilion Internet [now owned by Easynet and renamed], started up in 1994. It had a real small community feeling, lots of people on Pavilion got to know each other, there was a lot of mutual assistance given - for example, I was just about the first Mac user to connect to Pavilion properly and so was in a position to help others get their Mac setups working with it too. There were a few technical issues back then which meant it wasn't as easy to connect as it was for PC users, and many a late night was spent with me on one end of a connection and one of the founders of Pavilion - Andy Holyer - on the other end, with us both trying to diagnose just WTF was going on....[it was an issue with MTUs and the slightly shaky 1994 vintage MacTCP IIRC]

So, yeah, reminds me a bit of that time, perhaps the Brighton bloggers getting together will be creating something bigger than the sum of it's parts.

Or perhaps it will just be an excuse to drink a lot whilst having our WiFi-enabled notebooks there to play with? :)

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 8:27:05 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

I could never be a tour guide....

Showing someone around your home town can be strange. It's obvious, I guess, that the things around you become so familiar that you hardly notice them anymore - and it's a shame that happens. It might sound strange to people that don't live in Brighton, but even though I live directly opposite The Royal Pavilion, I hardly notice it anymore - it's only the hoards of tourists constantly taking pictures of it (or these days more likely video taping themselves running around in the Pavilion grounds) that reminds me that it's quite a spectacular landmark...

Currently having lots of fun showing her around all my favourite Brighton haunts (they mostly seem to serve alcohol, hmmmmmmmm)...shame the weather isn't playing ball, but even on a grey, windy day Brighton is a lovely place to wonder around.

I must pay more attention to my home town.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 1:14:54 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Electric 6 Remix

We have just finished a remix for those slightly sideways folks Electric 6. We are rather happy with it. It's the first remix we've done for a while. The last was, I think, the Missy Elliott 'Gossip Folks' thing (looked for a good link, couldn't find one)...

Hearing all the parts of the original track (which I haven't named, you notice, because I don't know if what is to be their new single has been announced yet) brings me to the conclusion that the finished versions you hear on the radio are actually less bonkers that they have the potential to be!

All a bit mad, but in a good way.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:13:57 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Please bring the sun with you.

If anyone happens to be travelling from, say, Manchester to Brighton later today - any chance you could bring some sunshine with you? If it's not actually sunny where you are now, perhaps you could pick some up on the way down? I think a 2 months supply would be about the right amount.

ThankYouVeryMuch.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:56:10 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Another convert to Mac - Welcome!

Hurrah! At last!

A certain person is finally making the move to a Mac (and a cute iBook specifically) - coming over from that nasty Windows thing (Windows 2000 even, which seems to be about the "worst of all worlds" MS operating systems' wise). Much fun will be had helping her set it up and showing what she's been missing all this time (I'm still talking computer-type stuff here, OK?)...

Not quite the first time I've helped someone make The Switch but there's still a sort of 'joy' to be had watching people's faces when you do the whole "No, you don't need to go through all that to just do this" thing over and over again.

iTunes, Safari, iPhoto, iChat AV, Mac OS X generally.

It's a nice place to be!

(see also: Mac Vs PC at The Obvious)

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 8:53:39 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Ah...another broken comments system.

OK, I'll admit that the one good reason I've found for potentially jumping in and installing Moveable Type one day is that you don't have to rely on external servers for your commenting system. I say this as the system used by Radio seems to be FUBAR (again) which not only stops the comments appearing, but also generally trips up the normal loading of the rest of the page....

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:57:55 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Little Camera For Little Pictures

Last Friday I went for a little stroll along the sea front to take some pictures to be used for the top of this very weblog. You can see them up there, look!

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of my little Sony Cybershot U (20) [web page is flash based] - considering it cost less than 200 pounds and is "only" a 2 megapixel camera, it's very useable - in some good sunlight at least.

The pictures were taken with the camera in complete 'auto' mode, I didn't select the specific shooting modes ("Vivid Landscape" etc).

I've put up a quick gallery page for you to have a look at them in more detail, should you so wish. The page is pretty image heavy, be warned....

Best of all, of course, is that the camera comes in 4 different colours! Haha. Though the Sony website only mentions two, it's available in silver, red, black (mine) and blue. How stylish!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 5:42:32 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Apple's iChat AV with USB Webcams

I'm sure this is old old news now, but even so:

The major downside people have found with Apple's new(ish) iChat AV for Mac OS X is that, out of the box, it only supports Firewire/IEE1394 video inputs. (Another might be that it's going to cost $30 for the official 1.0 release, but let's skip that for now!)

Seeing as how, for example, Yahoo Messenger does video chatting with USB cameras (I have it installed here, and for a freebie it works fine in video-only mode) this seems like a bit of a step backwards - then again Apple have the iSight webcam which is, wait for it, a Firewire device. Well well!

Anyhoo, some nice people have got around this specific issue, with a little pile of code called iChat USBCam, and it works a treat!

My little Logitech Notebook Webcam (running with the Macam drivers, the fact that the webcam is listed as 'PC only' on the Logitech page is irrelevant) is now sitting up on top of the Powerbook screen and happily sending video via iChat.

The quality of this little webcam doesn't match up with the Firewire video camera I was using before I set this up, but then it does cost less than 10% of the price and it is running on a much slower interface so I wouldn't expect it to!

Generally lovely though!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 6:35:41 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Wi-Fi On Brighton Beach

Thanks go to the girl for pointing this out:

BBC News: Technology: UK beach gets wireless web (sic).

I spotted a cafe down on the beach front stating it had WiFi access available when wondering around there the other day, but didn't realise we now had a wider service available. Cool!

Now, it just has to stop raining here and I'll be going down there to try it out....

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 2:17:35 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

My Favourite Artist...

...is probably Haring, but everyone knows his stuff by heart, so I thought I'd just bung a link up to Romero Britto instead, as he's less well known but still does great work (man). There's a serigraph by Romero (LA Cat) in my living room and it's staring down at me as I type this....oh....The Power Of The Cat!

And the wooden sculptures......yes, I want one of each please!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:50:09 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Married....With Children (Soon)

Well, a child at least.

Congratulations, Mr Blatant Optimism.

(and now I can breath out after keeping the news under my hat for so long :))

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 6:18:33 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

I Hate Javascript

I really do. Thanks for listening.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:07:37 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Pepper

What is the actual point of pepper?

I'm talking about the black powdery stuff that is added to far too much food, not the vegetable.

You take a perfectly nice food item, you know, some mashed potato or a cornish pasty (examples off the top of my head, or should that be the bottom of my stomach? anyway...) but as you're eating it you discover somebody somewhere has decided the basic ingredients of said same food just aren't quite interesting enough, and so this little explosive substance is added for a bit of a 'kick'.

Please don't. It's horrible. I want to be able to taste my food for what it contains, not have some annoying lingering after-taste (tautology, I know) spoiling the whole experience.

Thank You.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:24:08 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Apologies....

...for the random positioning of the links menu. Well, on Mac IE 5 it's OK, but on Safari 1.0 it's written over the top of the blog text. On Mozilla Mac 1.4 it' s hidden right down at the bottom, as it is in fact in Opera 6.02 also...

Will look into why this is happening (I think I know) tomorrow.

It's far too sunny out there to fix it right now!

UPDATE: OK, kind of fixed for now, but I don't like the menu having to be set as a float:right to get it to show up properly. I like it better butted up close to the main text, will investigate further tomorrow....

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 7:04:52 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Brighton In The Summertime

Ah, Brighton how we love you so when the sun is shining. Spent a lovely lovely weekend with a certain lovely lovely girl wondering around in the most pleasant glow of that big star up there. Yes, we even went on The Pier (blurrgghhhh etc) just for the sheer hell of it. I mean, isn't that one of the things you're supposed to do? Now we done that, though, it means we don't ever have to do it again, which is something of a plus! (though the water-ride thing is fun to watch - the expressions on people's faces are priceless).

Warm sun and wonderful company. More please!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:43:31 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

I'm Back - well, kind of....

"Oh, look Mummy, mm.com is alive again!"

"Don't get your hopes up Son, this has happened before and remember how disappointed you were last time...."

Yes, it's a bit of a shaky restart, have changed from Blogger to Radio so there's some work to do on templates and stuff yet (not to mention the archives, and getting the old Blogger posts over), but one small step at a time...

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:36:02 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []