fans.gorillaz.com :: multimedia
The official Gorillaz Fansite has the video for “Feel Good Inc” available for download in Sony PSP format. Now that’s clever. I can imagine a lot of record companies are going to start doing this – offering FREE downloads of pop videos for the PSP because of the promotional impact it will have. Clever stuff.
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Smart pegs keep rain off washing
While this is clever, the designer hasn’t considered the problem of washing already on the line. If you used their “intelligent” pegs, your washing would be locked down while the rains fell. At least with traditional wooden pegs, you can still run in and get the washing in.
My record for getting a full line of washing back into the house in a downpour is currently 1 minutes 24 seconds.
Domesticated, moi? You betcha! 🙂
BBC NEWS | Technology | Sony’s PSP breaks sales records
It’s no surprise the PSP is a success in the UK. FIrstly, it is a great bit of kit (my PSP is currently famous and starring in the current issue of Webuser under the title “Small Object of Desire”) and secondly, Sony launched with 25 top software titles plus a slew of UMD Videos. My only complaint is the cost of the UMD videos – they want up to £21.99 for some titles. For example, Hellboy is £17.99, but in the US I paid $12.99, which is around £7. If Sony dropped the UMD videos to between £5 and £10, then they would be hitting out of the ballpark.
But you don’t need to buy UMD videos when you can convert your existing DVD movies to PSP format. I’ve used a number of video applications but the best of the bunch is PSP Movie Creator. It converts DVDs straight to MP4 format without ripping the disc first. An average title takes about 50 minutes to convert and the results are stunning. Meanwhile, XOOM Movie Maker should be avoided like the plague as it doesn’t actually convert DVDs, it only works with Region free titles which limits the discs you can convert.
This is a new feature on the blog: LEMON WATCH.
Some background – we have a minature lemon tree in our kitchen and it blooms three or four times a year (hard to believe, but it is true) and the blooms produce the most wonderful lemony scent. Unfortunately, in the years that we’ve owned the tree it has only borne fruit once. Well I recently noticed that a new fruit is budding. Most of the buds fall off, but this looks promising. Never fear, loyal reader, I will keep you updated and post more exciting pictures of the devlopment of this little lemon. 😉
…that I met The Missus for our first date. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We arranged to meet at the bus terminal at Stratford Station (no longer there – demolished and replaced with a 21st Century terminus) and have a day out in London town. It was my chance to impress, so I took her on the Docklands Light Railways, which had just been finished, around Canary Wharf, which was still being built and onto Tower Hill. The rest of the day was taken up exploring London and we’ve been exploring ever since.
So I arranged for some roses to be delivered and we had a day out shopping. Many goodies were bought (expensive perfume for her, a replacement wedding ring for him) and we had a great time. It was just like any other day together, really: wonderful.
Me – roughly around the time we started “courting”
Me – after 17 years with The Missus, spirit crushed by the wheels of industry
The Missus with presents
And it was good…
Rise up this mornin’,
Smiled with the risin’ sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin’ sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Singin’: don’t worry ’bout a thing,
’cause every little thing gonna be all right.
OK – so it wasn’t three little birds. It was two. And by the time I got my camera, one of them had flown off. The little blue tits around here are extremely brave and they’ve taken to flying onto our open window frames. A couple of weeks back, I was in the little boy’s room (doing what big boys do) when I reached around for the toilet paper only to see a little blue tit sitting on the window frame staring right at me. Obviously, I didn’t have my camera but it was quite a sight. We both startled each other; he flew off and I left the toilet seat by a couple of inches. Anyway, yesterday, I managed to capture that shot.
In creative news, some recent events have caused me to “get to it”. I sat at the keyboard and began banging out the first 1,500 words of the adventures of Vince Pearl, the protagonist of my latest literary work. It took a little while to get the creative juices flowing again and I might have to re-nose the first chapter, but it is a start. I remember telling someone who asked that I was a writer and explaining that too many writers who say they are writers aren’t actually writing. One of the symptoms of writing is page dodging, where you’ll do anything other than engage with the keyboard. Lately, I have been one of these: a non-writer. Now by a sheer act of willpower, there’s to be no more page dodging for me. I remembered why I wanted to be a writer at 11 years old: because I wanted to tell stories and entertain people. The work I get paid for isn’t entertainment and so I will have to make my own way and fulfill that final ambition (my god, he has ambition).
The novel is called “Dead Rock Star” and is not what you would expect it to be if you take it on face value. Yes, it is about a rock star, yes he dies in second the chapter and yes, there is a murder-mystery element to it (which isn’t revealed until the very last chapter) but it is also meant to be fun and a flight of fantasy. I want it to be serious, daft, funny, sad and pretty fucked-up all at once. The whole thing is in my head and it is just about sitting down and getting it on paper. The great thing is that I am making up a fictional band history, discography, lyrics and everything to go with it, so I am planning to have some fun and get some nods to other rock stars in it. I’m probably barking up the wrong tree, but I am aiming this at young lads, because while we have plenty of “Harry Potter” stuff out there, a good old fashioned yarn with “rawk” in it doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.
I’m hoping I won’t run out of steam, but I told The Missus the entire story over a couple of pints of cider at the pub a few weeks back and she thought the story was “do-able”.
I realised that Movable Type – the content management system I use for this blog thing – had been updated, so being a good drone I installed the update. Hurrah, I got new features and stuff. I also began messing around with the standard templates that came with MT and settled on this little number. OK – it’s not that visually exciting but it means I can do diddley squat and let the system update itself. No more HTML, hurrah!
For my regular visitor, you will be interested to know that you can now leave comments on this weblog. I never had it activated before (the dummy) but now you can use it, so feel free to hurl your abuse.
Yesterday, I managed to blow-up (not literally) The Missus’ computer. I think the heat got to it and it just stopped working. So today, I took it apart, cleared the CMOS and voila it works again. I was worried something had blown before because it wouldn’t boot at all. A night cooling down and clearing the system memory worked wonders. Gee, I am a real PC expert – shame I’m finding it harder to get magazines to commission me some more. The pond is getting smaller while the fish have nowhere to go. It’s a bit like one of those watering holes in the Serengheti – when the dry season comes the fish die because the water evaporates. That’s a bit like being a freelancer at the moment. Of course, it’s probably because I am a bad writer and no-one likes my work. It’s so hard to tell because you get zero feedback. What I do know is that getting work isn’t about what you know, but who you know…and this sucks big time because the people I know aren’t in a position to commission me. Oh well – mustn’t fucking grumble. 🙂
In the garden, Alex returned from under a bush with a little green gritter on his back. Yes – it was a baby grasshopper/cricket. Look –
In the post: Archer McClean’s Mercury – a puzzle game for my Sony PSP, which involves negotiating a blob of mercury around a course. Clever and addictive stuff.