rashbre central

Tuesday, 14 March 2006

hack

I started up my pristine iMac yesterday and it figured out there was wi-fi in the area, logged itself onto the internet, downloaded my identity, configured the email and updated all the software without me doing anything. Almost magical.

And although it has an Intel processor, it works just like my PowerBook (including Photoshop Elements and Office 2004) with the added capability of a bigger screen and extra speed. Great.

However, a little later, a facility I've never needed before popped up - The Console - a really technical thing. It turns out that someone was trying to hack past my firewalls and have a look around. The system had repelled everything but wanted to tell me anyway. So, as a service to "Dave" and any other hackers, here is part of my old password and, yes, I have changed it.

Tag: hackers, security, memetic firewall

Monday, 13 March 2006

handful of dust

Annoyingly, a graphics card on a PC suddenly stopped working during the weekend in the middle of a music session. I won't explain here how we knew it was the card, suffice it to say the computer was still working, but somewhat in the dark. So we shut it down and pulled out the card from the back.

Yeuk. It was covered in a thick layer of dust.

Now the unconventional repair technique, which I don't recommend to the faint hearted. We held the card under running hot water. The dust was washed away. We dried it on a kitchen towel and briefly spun the little fan by hand. Put it back and ta-da! it was working again. Remember water and electricity don't mix. Don't try this at home.

Tag: PC, graphics card, PC repair

Milk

The lads at GuitarGAS were recording Badge by Cream during the weekend. By way of amusement, here's my quick synth-based bosh of the same tune done Sunday afternoon.

Yes, its fake drums and guitars, liberties with the tune and an extra swirly keyboard but call it artistic licence. l look forward to their upcoming version!

For proper music visit Christina's site and browse.

Tag: music, synthesizer, Cream, midi, guitar, lunacy

Sunday, 12 March 2006

tough act

I've been watching the tiny snowdrops pushing their way through the soil and then becoming small pretty flowers. I've also been meaning to take a photo of them, but rather than showing them as small and delicate, I thought this would show them as tough flowers that can break through cold wintry soil and survive through some of the roughest parts of the UK weather. So here they are, the early signs of spring, even on a still grey day in March.

Tag: photo, snowdrop, march

Kremed?

British doughnuts come in two main types - with a hole in the middle and with jam in the middle. The ones with jam always explode unmercifully onto clothes. Main places to buy them are cake shops, seaside stalls and supermarkets. They always taste best when they are fresh and warm. Oh yes and have about a zillion calories.

Recently, there has been a new visitor to the UK shores in the form of Krispy Kreme. From a quiet beginning tucked quietly into a few shadowy parts of mainline train stations, they are now marching across the country. I noticed the large square boxes containing a dozen beginning to show up in more locations. Now will this be another McDonald, Starbucks style takeover, or will they stay quietly augmenting the traditional British doughnuts?

Whoa! Stop the Press!
Kenju just told me about the Krispy Kreme Wedding Cakes in Southern State USA!! I've checked it out and its all true. I shall need to readjust my sense of reality again!

Tag: doughnut, donut, wedding cake

Friday, 10 March 2006

trashy story

Sometimes the UK becomes famous for little excuses give by officials when something goes wrong. Two memorable ones from the railways for delays have been "leaves on the rails" and "wrong kind of snow".

Now we have "wrong kind of rubbish".

There's a dispute going on at the moment where someone threw some rubbish into a bin in the street and is now in dispute with the local council because it was 'the wrong kind of rubbish'. He had thrown away a carrier bag containing some household food items as well as two items of junkmail. The officials traced the man from the junkmail and claim that it was inappropriate use of the bin and had taken up too much space. It was in an area where, apparently, there is often litter on the ground. The council was being interviewed on mainstream radio this morning and they were explaining that the bin was meant to take smaller items than the carrier bag and its content.

I wonder if this is the first case of someone being challenged for USING a rubbish bin in the street to dispose of rubbish? Or is it the wrong kind of rubbish?

Tag: UK, tabloid, rubbish

Thursday, 9 March 2006

Thursday Thirteen (V14.0)

1. I thought I'd change the Thursday Thirteen icon this week.
2. My car is finally fixed. Today was its third visit to the service bay and now even the locks work properly.
3. I'm helping make a Christina Nott dance track at the moment. All synths and beeps;
4. Have had my first chocolate creme egg of the season;
5. Amazed today to see the company that was robbed recently of £53m have just had another robbery. This time only one million - the van was rammed by a farm tractor. But last year 800 cash vans were attacked in the UK.
6. Still editing my novel. Its harder than writing it the first time. Something about whether one is a 'completer/finisher'.
7. Have driven from home to work in daylight for the first time his year.
8. Found some doritos dated November 2005. Wondering if they are still edible. They look all right.
9. Heard Christina's track on Bailrigg fm. First radio play and its only a demo!
10. Amused to see Julie in ticket frenzy for some concerts later in the year.
11. Is still my favourite number;
12. Realised I have not updated my voicemail message since Monday. I normally change it every day.
13. Bought a great Billy Bragg music collection 'Volume 1' bit havn't had time to listen to it yet. Strange things happen.

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
Leanne, Chickadee, Judy, Raehan, Janne, Andrea, cq, amanda, venus, elle, mar
(leave a comment, I'll add you here!)

Get Leanne's Thursday Thirteen code here!
Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! Leave your link as a comment and I will link to you and you can continue the chain!

Tag: Thursday Thirteen

Wednesday, 8 March 2006

Guitar Practice with a Fender GDEC Amp and Midi files

I'm gradually learning a few chords on the guitar and steal shamelessly from the ideas on GuitarGAS. The amplifier I use is a Fender GDEC, which allows rhythms to be generated automatically, and this makes the practice experience more interesting and more fun.

The amp has three main ways to generate the rhythms : by pressing some buttons on it, by connecting an external unit to play through it (like a CD player), or by sending it MIDI sequences. I thought it would be useful to collect some common guitar track practice Midi files and I've stored them across in my iDisk file on .mac. These tracks play the tunes indicated, but without the main guitar part.

Being midi format, the files are very small and can be reconstructed to use different instruments and sound types if you have a sequencer such as Garageband, Logic, Sonar or similar. They mainly play directly on a PC or Mac, but the sound will be limited by the quality of the sound card. Quite a few of them have guitar tablature describing the chords too.

Here's a list.

If you are learning guitar, feel free to click here to download a few and have a play.

Tag: music, guitar, gdec, fender, midi, tabs

a lesson in branding

Thank you netchick, for this entertaining video.

Tuesday, 7 March 2006

Tom Waits for no man

You say you want a revolution? weh-hell - the Tom Waits group on last.fm is having one! I'm a member of that group (Mr Waits is a favourite singer/songwriter of mine) and the fans are revolting.

The group is very quiet, there's no group picture and the current leader of the group, DarklyDoug, seems to no longer by an active Last.FM user, in that his profile say "last played a track in May 2004.

Yes, there are other groups specialising in Tom Waits. However, wouldn't it be sad if the group named after the man himself is a ghost-ship! In an attempt to prevent this from happening, there has been a call to revolution.

The aim of the revolution is to force elections for a new leader and, lets face it, almost any leader would be better than one who does not participate for over eighteen months. So, you now have the opportunity to join a revolution (before 15 Mar 06)!

And update cos this old post gets a few hits checkout this about Tom Waits from May 2008

Monday, 6 March 2006

Something to get your teeth into

Someone in the UK has just done some calculations about the average value of a tooth fairy tooth. Its around £1.24 or just over two US dollars. Apparently it has been quietly creeping up, along with the average income of a ten year old which is now around £800 per annum (thats around $1,400). The thing with the tooth fairy money is its now worth around £20 million per year, which is quite a lot of bars of chocolate.

Some people see the tooth fairy as a sweet little creature like the one above, yet I envisage someone who is a bit of a bruiser. Must be something to do with the pain. Or something about when darkness falls.

Want to email the tooth fairy, or play some toothsome games? bite here. And to hear how Horrid Henry got on, see here.

Tag: teeth, tooth fairy, dentist

Sunday, 5 March 2006

snow mo

I've been in Regents Street, London today having all the excitement of buying a replacement battery for Julie's Powerbook. The Apple store has an almost pornographic amount of new stuff now, with the new Mac Book Pros, intel iMacs and even the rather strange new iSpeakers.

London was bright and sunny, but the phone call from Mel in the snows of Cumbria asked if I could 'pretty please' add a copy of a Video Blog entry onto my German web host so that it work well with Christina's site.

Its a great Vlog of Mel & John & Co in the snow of the Lake District and so I agreed, as long as I could also post it here (click to view). A fun video and nice tune too!

If you enjoy it, a spin across to Adam at the Common People to drop a comment would be nice.

Tag: snow, Lake District, vlog, video