Summer Daze

Hiromi "Beyond Standard"

Tue, 20 May 2008 09:49:00 +0000

It's not often that I buy a music CD... okay so I never buy music CD's. I prefer to download them as I'm not a fan of having the needless clutter of polycarbonate and printed paper in my room. However, I do make exceptions, exceptions such as when having to buy the CD and then rip it is the only way of getting it however it has to be an artist I have a very strong liking of to warrant this kind of special treatment.

Enter Hiromi, a young Japanese pianist whose style of music is quite unlike anything I have heard before. Often it's described as some form of Jazz/Jazz Fusion with classical influences, though I think you could write a paper on trying to describe her music. Listening to it is the only good explanation in my opinion.

I have become quite obsessed with her music, so much so that she might just be my favourite artist. Generally, I have never been able to decide on a favourite artist because my tastes change often but there are always a small group of artists I listen to fighting for that top spot and Hiromi is certainly one of them. I have collected all of her albums and am so anxious to get my hands on her latest album that I have pre-ordered it.

It's due out on Tuesday, June 10th in America and and Europe (having said that Gemany already has it?). If you are interested in listening to something different listen to some of the samples on her website.

Posted By: Chris
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Nintendo DS or Sony PSP Wifi via Mac

Thu, 15 May 2008 12:17:00 +0000

Today at work during my lunch break I quite fancied a quick go on Mario Kart DS, I have been quite addicted to Mario Kart Wii recently, especially the online play and having a DS and copy of MK at work the only thing I was lacking was a WiFi connection.

I take my Mac to work and connect to the Internet via a wired LAN connection, this leaves my Mac's WiFi card free to use for sharing my Internet connection with my DS. There are a few pitfall's that one can encounter when doing this so this news post is just a quick guide written in the hope that someone else may stumble upon it and find it useful.

I'm using OS X Leopard so things might be a little different if your running a different version of OS X.

Open System Preferences and then Sharing
Select Internet Sharing but do not check the check box, if it is already checked, uncheck it
Open AirPort Options
Give a name for your network in Network Name, this is the name your WiFi network will be broadcast under
The rest of the parameters are options but it's advisable that you add a 128 bit WEP key, find an online WEP Key Generator, generate a 128 bit WEP key and copy and paste it the Password and Confirm Password boxes along with keeping a note of it as you'll need to enter it into your DS soon.
Nearly done with the Mac now, just check the checkbox next to Internet Sharing and choose Start on the following prompt and we are done here.
Fire up your DS with WiFi an enabled game of your choice and find the Nintendo Wifi Connection Setup screen. Your games manual will tell you how to setup a Wifi connection and give you further details of this.
Select the big blue Nintendo Wifi Connection Settings button, select an empty collection slot, either Connection 1, Connection 2 or Connection 3. Select the Search for an Access Point button.
Your DS should list the network you just created on your Mac, you should see it listed under the name you gave it.
Select your network and enter a WEP key if prompted.
Your DS will now try to test your connection settings but will fail, moaning about being unable to obtain an IP address. The Mac has an odd way of dishing these out which is not compatible with quite a few WiFi devices but I digress.
Select ok and then select the connection number you just used, e.g. Connection 1. You should be presented with a list of settings.
Change Auto-obtain an IP Address to No. Under IP Address enter 10.0.2.10 under Subnet Mask enter 255.255.255.0. Under Gateway enter 10.0.2.1 and finally, under Primary DNS enter 10.0.2.1 leaving Secondary DNS blank.
Select the Test Connection button at the top of this settings screen, hopefully it will be successful this time round.
Save your settings, go back to your game and enjoy!

[EDIT] I just tried this again today but with a Sony PSP. The good news is that it works and better still there are less steps. Just follow the steps for setting up Internet connection sharing on your Mac, then setup a wireless network in the normal fashion on your PSP. There are no special configuration options needed

Posted By: Chris
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Not so Unique

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:12:00 +0000

I think by default many of us make the assumption that we have unique qualities, quirks and opinions. Perhaps apart from those who strive to be like the rest of the crowd most of us notice these traits of our character and can become quite fond of them. I'm talking about things like if, for instance, you are the type of person who remembers small details about past conversations and gets satisfaction from recalling them or if you have a particular unusual outlook on something or if a quality such as kindness provokes feelings in certain situations you feel others would not know.

There are many many such things, none of which alone appear to be too unique for others to share but in total you would assume the chances highly unlikely, nearing impossibility to share near every such thing, hundreds of them, with another person.

However, how would you feel if you discovered just that, a person so similar in such respect?

You might once have felt unique and in some ways alone as a character. You would generally expect to share only a few of these quirks of character with others you meet. I find that higher importance is placed on those quirks which you believe to be more unusual and upon finding you share such a thing with another person produce the most surprise and astonishment.

I have been able to discuss many things with such a person and I find it feels as if someone has secretly read my mind. At times some of opinions and conclusions I hear this person has also reached seem unbelievable, I feel like crying "Hey you stole my idea!" when hearing someone tell me of an opinion or idea I too shared yet assumed was so unique that the chances of someone else having it were slim and yet time and time again this is exactly what happens making it seem even more impossible.

This has really made me think about our characters and personalities and what creates them. It's easy to assume that there are so many variables you could throw into the mix that obvious uniqueness is easily obtainable and very similar or same characters are an impossibility, however, what if there was a governing set of characters? Character A, B, C and so on and we all had one of these variations which were responsible for many of thoughts, feelings and opinions. Is a naturally happy person more likely to be positive and because of this reach a certain set of opinions that another naturally happy person may share? What could create such governing characters, genetics? Do we grow into our genetically predefined characters of which there are numerous iterations yet limited ones explaining how it is indeed possible to meet such a like minded person?

I can't answer any such questions of course but they are interesting for me to think about. Certainly, I no longer feel I am the owner of entirely unique thoughts, feelings and opinions and ultimately this is a most pleasant thing - the feeling of being truly understood by someone.

Posted By: Chris
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Tyre Woes

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:59:07 +0000

As you drive your car onto my drive there is quite a pointy square piece of metal which the gate uses as a stopper once closed. The obvious not to do is drive over this with your car and up until yesterday that plan had been working fine. However... lazily turning onto my drive has probably produced many near misses and this eventually a near hit.
I pulled on my drive to be greeted by a loud "psssst". Oh how very annoying for a such a marginal error to have caused a large problem. Fortunately my spare tyre was brand new, I bought it only a few months ago to replace the front tyre which has become rather fond of a screw it found somewhere along the road and has decided to keep it firmly lodged inside it. Any attempt to remove it an the tyre will hiss at you. Anyway, enough digression. I had not got around to replacing the front tyre due to being unable to find the jacking point for the front wheel which according to many searches on the Internet is a pain to find.
However... desperate times forced me to have another luck and discover the very jacking point for the rear wheel which lead me to discover the jacking point for the front wheel also which is indeed handy information.
So the wheel/tyre is all changed and well and now I need to find a place, perhaps later today to get a new tyre and part with some money for the pleasure.

Posted By: Chris
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Cna yuo raed tihs?

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:12:00 +0000

Atefr rdanieg smoteihng psoetd on smoenoes pvriate Mixi bolg I tohghut I wluod sahre it hree.

Atarpenlpy olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can raed txet wetritn in tihs way. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

It wluod seem taht slpeling was not as ipmorantt as I tghuot

Posted By: Chris
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Slicehost, More than Special

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:53:00 +0000

A few blog posts ago I said that Slicehost's service was nothing special but what made it so good is the fact that it did as advertised which is such a rarity with hosts these days.

Well, forget what I said as I was indeed wrong. Slicehost are something special. What has impressed me recently, apart from their wiki, articles, blog and forums is an email I received informing me of server's IP having been blocked for spam by some third-party which it would seem Gmail makes use of. The problem was a simple script error but this is irrelevant, what's impressive is the fact that Slicehost actually send you this email, very helpful!

The slicehost blog button I designed was, to my surprised, featured on the Slicehost Blog. Someone at
Slicehost clearly values community input. Cheers guys

Posted By: Chris
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Great quality from "the Jazz"

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:47:00 +0000

The Jazz is a DAB Jazz radio station broadcasting in the UK. Unfortunately it's plagued by problems, firstly there are adverts on it, a pet hate of mine. Secondly it's DAB the first leap backwards in technology. Maybe monophonic audio steams of low quality MP3 are fine coming out of a 2.4" speaker but when you find yourself needing to hear music in a format that's enjoyable this will not do.

Fortunately I found a solution today. The Jazz broadcast online in a pathetic 32kbps... or do they? It would seem when using Windows Media Player this is indeed the quality you receive. However, using an alternative player in Linux or OS X and I can pick up a much higher quality stream. Unfortunately I can't tell what quality the stream is, only that I can not recognise any encoding artefacts in the stream and I can skip adverts if I let a few minutes buffer first or simply rewind to re-listen to the last song whilst waiting for the adverts to finish. Great stuff

Posted By: Chris
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Bus Conversations

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:53:00 +0000

My car is out of action for this week and possibly Monday too, some problem most likely related too wheel bearings who knows? Anyhow I have been forced to travel on the bus like I did in the "good old days". It's always the case that you never realise how much you like something till it's gone. As humans we have a wonderful tendency to take anything and everything for granted. Well, true to this rule I now find myself realising just how terrible the buses are. Unreliable, annoying stop changes, cold, uncomfortable, no privacy and highly inconvenient. Needless to say I can't wait till my car is fixed.

Whilst travelling on the bus I listen to music for the entire journey. I do this for two reasons, because I enjoy listening to music and because I don't enjoy listening to a commentary of last nights TV programming, football results or general gossip all wrapped up in bountiful swear words and a thick black country accent to further drive one insane. However, two nights ago someone was having a rather different conversation. It must be noted that this is the first time I have ever heard such a conversation on a bus and so I consider it a great rarity.

To my surprise somebody was discussing quantum physics! Upon boarding the bus I had noticed no one that looked the part for discussing such topics. Without trying to offend, the person explaining an area of quantum physics was dressed akin to a factory or building worker. The old adage about judging books by their covers certainly applied here. This fellow was rather articulate too which is what first notified me to the conversation during some mid track silence. I was enthralled by this conversation and promptly switched off my music. I was seriously considering joining in with this fascinating topic when I realised my stop drew near much to my disappointment.

This story should serve as a reminder that in all places and in people of all walks of life can be found the unexpected

Posted By: Chris
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What we are

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:37:00 +0000

Quote:
What we are, that only we can see

- Raplh Waldo Emerson

Posted By: Chris
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Ping me Sideways!

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:55:00 +0000

What ho? A ping!

Following hot on the heals of the toadstool post where I first talked about the new XML-RPC features and the lagging behind post where I first moaned about not having them. Logicfury the software my blog runs on now supports pingbacks.

Primarily I use the one ping to ping them all service Pingomatic to dish out my pings also coupled up with a few default ones just to be sure.

Posted By: Chris
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Slicehost Blog Button

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:50:00 +0000

Have a Slicehost hosted site? Come and steal this button!

What's this all about then? A couple of weeks ago Summer Daze was stealthily moved to a new VPS server. My previous host, JaguarPC, turned out to be not as wonderful as I had hoped, well less than wonderful and more of poor to be fair. Slicehost however are (currently) amazing me with their service. So what's so special about it? Well, nothing to be perfectly honest. It simply does as it claims for once and does it well. A decent VPS for a fair price that you get to customise and setup to your hearts content. A web developers nirvana in other words, well server wise anyway. My actual vision of nirvana has less servers and more girls

Posted By: Chris
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Toadstool

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:08:00 +0000

View Toadstool on flickr

Isn't it great? There was a time when my blog was lagging behind in terms of all this new XML-RPC stuff (a fancy word for being able to post to my blog from various sources and perform a few other tricks). Now I can select one of my pictures from Flickr, hit the blog this button and here is where it all ends up, no messing about.

Ah yes, I almost forgot, enjoy the picture

For those who love the tech speak, Logicfury now supports the Blogger-API (the old one not the Google Data one), MetaWeblog is next on the agenda

Posted By: Chris
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Secret of Life

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:54:45 +0000

Quote:
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
- Horace Walpole

Posted By: Chris
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A thinker

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:40:00 +0000

Quote:
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions -- as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Posted By: Chris
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Ubuntu Effecient Video/DVD Playback

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:30:17 +0000

I have a 900Mhz Pentium M laptop which should be able to run DVD's and other videos with ease using Totem on Ubuntu. After installing all necessary codecs for the default gStreamer backed I found it does not, not only was it inefficient causing high CPU load (when it worked properly) but most of the time it failed to render the videos with my laptops hardware, using software rendering instead causing even higher load pixelation and near unwatchable fullscreen playback.

The fix however was simple, move to the totem xine backend. Here is the one magic line that will do this, install codecs and allow you to watch DVD's.

Code:
sudo aptitude install totem-xine libxine1-plugins

Now my laptop plays back videos with little more than 30% CPU load, the way it should be

Posted By: Chris
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Lagging Behind

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:07:00 +0000

Sometimes I feel like this blog is left behind in the dark ages of the internet, I can't post pictures from flicker my blog because it doesn't support XML-RPC, ping backs don't work and so on. It would be so nice to have these features like so many blogs do, I feel I would be more inspired to blog if this were the case. So why am I not using some online blogging service like Blogger or some blogging software such as Wordpress that already comes with these nice features?

I admit it would be nice to have the "security" that a service such as Blogger provides, I can't imagine it being hacked as easily or to loose the contents of a blog. The problem is, how much can you customise it? Not enough in my case.

I want things to work the way I want them to work, which is anyway I might conceive them to I also want the option to download a database backup of all my data should I wish to move to another system. Such services fall flat on their face here and even with all the benefits they provide are big enough issues for me to steer clear of them. I like to own my data and to tweak every last pixel of my website.

However, I really really want the nice features these blogs provide and the ways in which you can link in services like Flickr with your blog. The solution is simple, I just haven't coded it

Posted By: Chris
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Smooth Japanese Fonts in Ubuntu

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:45:00 +0000

As an Ubuntu Linux user interested in Japanese I frequently find myself viewing Japanese characters, which look appalling by default. With a creation of a file and the pasting of some text you can fix it!

Simply download this file, .fonts.conf and place it in your home directory, logout and login and your Japanese fonts will actually look nice

Posted By: Chris
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Work Desktop

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:34:36 +0000

Just in case you were bored, I thought I'd have a go at making you even more so. Here's a picture of my desktop at work.

Posted By: Chris
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Ubuntu 7.10 ...again

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:55:00 +0000

Okay so my post before last was also about Ubuntu 7.10 but how can I resist posting again? It was released on Thursday and over the weekend I decided to upgrade my desktop PC. So I had already been using it on my PC at work and my laptop and it had impressed me and sure enough it didn't fail to impress me on my main computer. Another flawless and oh so easy installation.

Ubuntu's default selection of software is pretty much bang on perfection. Previously I was a big fan of the Muine media player. I couldn't stand the default Rhythmbox, but as with every new release was tempted to check out what improvements had been made to it. After checking it out I have now stopped using Muine after about 2 years of devotion to that player meaning that now I have one less app to install to reach my perfect desktop setup. Three extra apps I install are Eclipse, mail-notification and Inkscape then I'm done. That's about a five minute task. Unlike Windows where installing every single piece of software takes up 10% of your lifespan I can type "sudo apt-get install eclipse inkscape mail-notification" and I have all the software I need

Ubuntu 7.10 is also the first version of Ubuntu that I haven't had to edit a text based config file for. Graphics card driver installation and configuration is not all point and click GUI work. Even installing eye candy such as Compiz Fusion is simply a config option away, same goes for video codecs.

Everything works and works so well, another great release

Posted By: Chris
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Girl Gamers?

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:54:00 +0000

Yeah, every guy knows they exist but are incredibly rare and elusive right? Like one in a million or something, it's hardly like there's more female gamers than male gamers right... not yet anyway.

Well apparently in Japan, yes there is... sort of. To quote the article "In Japan, the DS has a 53 percent female user base, while the Wii has a 51 percent". Well, the only word to sum that up is "wow". Nintendo have clearly done an excellent job appealing to a wider audience. Of course that's only for Nintendo's products but hey, it shocked me none the less

It's been interesting over the years to see computer/console games go from the realm of the geek to the masses much in the same way computers and the internet have. I'm guessing later on down the line no one will frown upon me for being an adult and buying a console

Source: http://kotaku.com/gaming/japan/women-dominate-nintendo-land-309452.php

Posted By: Chris
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