Skin Of Stars

Leaving blogger behind

2008-03-06T23:34:00.001Z

I've decided to leave blogger behind and set up a Wordpress blog on my own webspace.

If you are not redirected automatically the please click: skinofstars.com/blog

Lovely Margate

2008-02-08T01:17:00.000Z

Hey, just wanted to highlight an article in Kent Online that my friend Jay linked me to. Its about a pair of local artists who are trying to bring a little love to Margate this Valentines Day. The main reason I'm bringing this up is that I know the work of one of them, Selina Tolfree, and I very much like what she does. Because of that I'm urging you all to hunt out her work where you can (I'll try to update with links at some point) and have a look for yourselves.

The machine is us/ing us

2008-02-02T22:11:00.000Z

Very interesting and well made video about (cue buzzword) web 2.0

SimCity for all

2008-01-19T20:16:00.000Z

Those lovely guys at EA have open-sourced the SimCity code for use on OLPC, except the actual name SimCity, which we must now call Micropolis. I'm afraid to say that it's only available for Linux at the moment but I'm sure its only a matter of time till someone ports it to Windows.

For the time being the .deb can be found here:
http://www.getdeb.net/app.php?name=Micropolis

Or you could build it from source for your own nix system from here:
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/

Making your own webdev environment on Ubuntu desktop

2008-01-01T23:36:00.000Z

These machines aren't all fun fun fun, sometimes you have to use them for some more serious work. In this post I'm going to tell you how to make your own php/mysql web development environment on your own Ubuntu desktop. Once you've done this you won't need to keep uploading files to your server just to check if something works.

Firstly I'd like to point to the post that originally helped me do this at webmasterview.com.

Now, time to open up our trusty terminal. It is possible to do this through synaptics, but its quicker to do it like this:

First thing is to install mysql for databases on our machine. Copy this bit of code into your terminal:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Next we need apache2 as our webserver. Here is the code:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Then we need to get php:

sudo apt-get install php5

There are our three basic components. Now we need to hook them together:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

and

sudo apt-get install php5-mysql

Now that's just grand. We've now got all the elements that we need to serve files to the net. The thing is, we're only doing this so we can work on stuff at home, in which case what we're really looking for is an easier way to do so. What we need to do is have a public_html folder in our user directory. Perhaps now would be a good time to do that. The next step is making that work on the webserver we've just installed. Run this snip of code:

sudo a2enmod userdir

Then restart apache:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

You should now be able to reach your home folder via http://localhost/~yourusername/

Finally we want to be able to administer our mysql databases. Though there are many good tools for doing this I still go back to the web based phpMyAdmin. Apart from the fact that it's highly automated (which suits me just fine) it's also a very common program to find on your paid hosting, so would also be very familiar when you go live. For the quick and dirty way of getting it up and running, download phpMyAdmin and extract to your public_html folder. Personally I rename it to something a little easier. Then rename the file within from config.example.inc.php to config.inc.php and within that file put something in the blowfish_secret field. Then all you have to do is navigate your browser to something like http://localhost/~yourusername/phpMyAdmin

os freefall

2008-01-01T23:23:00.000Z

Its got to that time of the month where I have to reinstall my operating system. I can't blame the system, it is each and every time, without fail, my fault. I can't help but keep tinkering and playing with them till they fail on me. I remember when I first started playing with the things I would have to reinstall before I'd even finished the first install! At least now here are often months between.

I thought this time I might get out of my comfort zone for a bit. I decided to install the new fedora 8. I will be totally honest now and admit that it lasted on my machine for two days before I switched back to ubuntu. The problem wasn't with fedora per say, I could see almost immediately that this was a far more stable operating system with many of the features I like built in straight out the box. It clearly benefits from the good breeding of Red Hat. The problem I have is that I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination and fedora is clearly built for people who have some idea what they are doing. From what I found there seemed to be very little documentation for novices and to be honest I don't have the time for that sort of learning curve.

So here is what seems to have happened. I have acquired the same disinterest in learning a new operating system that my Windows using counterparts have always had. I hope this doesn't stick.

End of semester 2.1

2007-12-20T16:27:00.000Z

Just finished my final exam (computer networks) for this semester of my second year. That should mean I'm exactly half way through, not sure I am though. Unfortunately I feel that I did terribly this semester, including this exam, and I'm kinda woried that it will mean I'm going to have to add an extra semester onto my course. Still, we'll see, I may yet be able to pull it back. Otherwise, I'm pretty glad this bit is over. The last few months have been a real struggle and I'm looking forward to coming home for an all be it brief period of time.

So now it is time to go have a few ales. I'm gonna try to hold back tonight as tomorrow is my birthday and we're planning a raucous affair. I'm in Wales for Christmas but will be spending NYE in Thanet, most probably at the Lido, where I hope to catch up with some old friends. I'm a little sad to say this may be one of my last trips back since the family home is now up for sale with the intention of leaving the area. One can't help but feel a little loss at the thought of not returning to an area where I spent so many of my formative years but its difficult to imagine that I would return without a family home there. I guess some people flee from the nest, others are pushed and some just have the nest taken away while they're not looking.

The ongoing saga of the iPlayer

2007-12-19T23:09:00.000Z

Oh, what a treat... and just in time for Christmas! I am very pleased to find that the BBC has finally indulged my fetish for organic software by releasing a flash streaming version of their iPlayer.

Though of course flash isn't homespun in itself, it is cross platform compatible and so both myself and all those other 'nix and Mac users out there can watch the last seven days of BBC content without the need for any of that Windows tosh! Not a Vista in sight! I need never miss another episode of Cash In The Attic again. Hurrah!

Where has all the art gone?

2007-12-03T20:08:00.000Z

Not only has Arts and Elbows not posted -in several months, but I've also noted that the IOTA website has been taken over by cybersquaters, with the last record I can find (thanks to the waybackmachine) is in April. Whats going on?

BBC iPlayer

2007-11-18T22:19:00.000Z

In a follow-up to my previous post regarding the incompatibility of the new BBC iPlayer I recently found an interview on backstage.bbc in which the developers of the iPlayer and representatives from the Open Source Consotium and the Open Rights Group discuss this very topic. It would seem that the general consensus is that release of the iPlayer to be bound to one operating system was in many ways a demonstration of the problems with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and thankfully just a stepping stone to more open access, initially through streaming and then hopefully to more open access.

Interestingly enough the developers pointed out that it is only a very small piece of the whole delivery system that was written in a proprietary format, namely the bit that goes on your computer. Over 90% of the system is running on Solaris with many of the developers using Debian based systems.

Ok Tony, off you go....

Some other neat GIMP tricks

2007-11-12T13:06:00.000Z

Found a page with some neat GIMP tricks for photo manipulation.

Linux Focus, GIMP Manipulation.

Don't be worried by the Linux Focus part, it's just where the article was written and is just as relevant for Windows versions.

Brush me down

2007-11-06T23:19:00.000Z

I'm in the process of building an arty website for one of my modules. Truth be told, almost every other one of my modules includes building a website but this one is quite nice as I get to have some fun with it... infact the website ones are always more fun, certainly more fun than computer networks or social research theory. Anyway, I digress, the point here is the arty bits.

Now, I'm not so great at art, the best I can draw is a stick man and certainly not like Lowry did! I'm not even that fantastic at using art packages (my preference being the GIMP). Still, with design you always need to use a graphics package so I do my best to wing it. Luckily I have assistance in the form of resources from deviantArt, so I thought I'd share this little trick.

I always go for the GIMP brushes, but there are brushes for other package, like PhotoShop. Firstly you need to find them. You go to deviantArt.com, then click categories in the top left-ish, then pick resources from the droplist, then application resources then, in my case, GIMP brushes. You can then just browse through them finding ones you like and downloading them.

To add them to GIMP go to the GIMP's programs folder (its a hidden folder in your home/user for linux so press ctrl+h to see it, you windows boys will have to look for yourself but I presume it's in Program Files) open it, then open brushes, then just paste them in from the zips.

Hey presto, you're an instant artist!

Every Little Helps

2007-10-23T22:22:00.000+01:00

Ubuntu coming to a Tesco near you.

http://linkpot.net/kidnap/
http://linkpot.net/chastened/

Its hard to go back

2007-10-16T22:31:00.000+01:00

For one of my school projects I have to write programs for Microsoft (R) Windows (TM). I know that this makes sense, lets be honest its in most peoples homes. The problem I have is that I didn't have it in my home. I've been using Ubuntu (a linux thing) on all my machines for more than six months now and have barely touched anything with Windows since. So, I knew that a new version of Ubuntu was coming out on Thursday so yesterday I decided to wipe my laptop and replace it with Windows XP in order to make school a little easier (I'll also get more BBC content, as a bonus). And here is where the problems started...

Correct drivers were not included. Why is this something the the OSS boys do so well with so little help yet a company with so much money for research do so badly? I mean, the drivers were available on the internet, I just couldn't get on the internet to find them because the first set of drivers I needed were network drivers! Even when I used other machines I found the documentation was atrocious. I got that annoyed with it I had to give my computer to someone else to fix before I started beating it.

I'm not saying life's a beach as soon as you go open source, infact its far from it. To be honest, my other problems were things that I would have just been used to before. Things like programs organised by manufacturer rather than what they do. Maybe this is why its hard to go back, you get used to something and you're happy. Its like trying to revive an old relationship I guess, lets be honest, you broke up for a reason.

So in a couple of days Windows will be partitioned off and placed in a back corner of my machine. I'm not going to completely delete it this time but I'm afraid to say I can never embrace it again.

Live and evil

2007-10-03T15:51:00.000+01:00

Lying in bed with my thoughts I have stumbled across a problem. It looks like this:

revel - lever
team - meat
nib - bin
tip - pit
real - lear
made - edam
desserts - stressed

What are they?

Now, I know that they are palindromes when placed together, what I want to know is the name of a word that changes its meaning when reversed. If you know the answer then for the sake of my sanity please post it in a comment. Also, I'd be interested to see any others that you can come up with.

Why Facebook has Jumped The Shark

2007-09-24T22:56:00.000+01:00

Today Eastcliff Richard and I became 'friends'. I think this is a familiar expression in the world of social networking. In this instance it was on probably the most highly publicised site of recent months, Facebook. This has got me thinking a little more about a site which I once thought was pretty neat but I now avoid like Margate!

I like to think of myself as an early adopter. I certainly try to be, signing up to many new social webservices before anyone else has signed up and as such unlikely there being any point in being there. With Facebook I'd tried to sign up a couple of years ago but you needed a uni email so I couldn't. When I came to Oxford though it was just at the start of the Facebook wave so naturally I signed my name on the dotted line.

I'd spent some time in the garish environment of MySpace for a few years (the de facto social site of Thanet rock) and so enjoyed the simplicity of Facebook. It had plain white pages, minimally organised small photos, a wall, some groups and the occasional poke. It was simple and I thanked it for that.

Then at the same time as the wave of new uni kids they opened up registration to the site to anyone with an email address. Now we get all the guys who are using it at uni telling their friends back home to come join and things started to snowball. As of today Facebook is now in the top ten global Alexa ranked sites. Its still not caught Myspace but its not got much further to go and if the rate that my new friend requests come in I doubt it will be much longer.

So here is where I think the problem lies. Facebook was successful because it differed from Myspace. It did offer a more peaceful approach to social networking but now they have opened up the site to third party applications, the likes of Zombie Biters, Booze Mailers, Super Pokers and any other stupid thing you can think of. Here is where the problem of being open to anyone with an email comes in. These applications are further propagated by people who are wasting away their work day. Now when I go to a users page I struggle to find their wall for all the other trash that's littered over it. Infact, I can't even use my own inbox without having to spend half an hour clearing it of stupid invites.

Facebook may not yet have reached user saturation, but it is certainly reaching the end of its usability. It makes me wonder what site will be the next big thing, its certainly time to start looking out for it. Hopefuly people will come back to blogs and forums, at least they have some substance and in many cases proved sustainabilty.

First day back to school...

2007-09-24T08:12:00.000+01:00

And the heavens opened. Does the summer really have to end so abruptly?

Underground

2007-08-23T01:32:00.000+01:00

I'd always wanted to see what an underground map would look like and the other day I remembered whilst infront of the computer. Now, the one I have below is not totally accurate insofar as exactly where the tubes are laid, but it is more so as far as the stations sit.

This map was generated as part of the London Underground geographic maps project by software written by ed g2s and James D. Forrester utilising GPS data.

You may want to see the large version.

remember

2007-08-20T23:26:00.000+01:00

My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets.

Large Image

Compiz Fusion

2007-08-15T19:13:00.000+01:00

I doubt many of you will have heard of Compiz or its one time rival Beryl. These are add-ons for Linux desktops which, though they have their advantages for making your computer more productive, are very much fancy eye-candy. Basically, whenever my friends ask why I use nix I show them some Compiz features, they then exclaim how cool they are and ask how to make their computer do that. They can't of course because they use archaic operating systems.

Anyway, I digress. Compiz is a window composting manager project (you'll see what I mean when you watch the film) which had some infighting, a common thing in open source communities where everyone has the right to say their piece. A group split to go form the Beryl project. Now, though Beryl was often the more exciting project, I preferred Compiz for its stability.

Since then the two groups have decided to re-merge, thus pooling their knowledge and avoiding doubling their work. I'll admit that I was skeptical about what the result would be, would Compiz stop being stable? Would Beryl become less exciting? The following video shows that Compiz Fusion (as the joint project is now known) has certainly become even more exciting than Beryl was alone. I'm now looking forward to installing it to see if its still as stable, even on my cheap integrated graphics card.

Finally

2007-08-08T15:28:00.000+01:00

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. :)

BBC in bed with MS

2007-06-26T17:25:00.000+01:00

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?

The wrong trousers

2007-06-26T04:27:00.000+01:00

An American judge losses his 54 million dollar court case over suing a dry cleaners for lost trousers.... wtf?!

A bit of giffing

2007-06-25T01:38:00.000+01:00

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.

Result time

2007-06-12T01:18:00.000+01:00

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.

Shhh

2007-06-08T16:59:00.000+01:00

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!

Thats my name!!!

2007-03-28T01:00:00.000+01:00

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 there

2007-02-19T14:58:00.000Z

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.

Take care.

mmmm, cooked breakfast

2007-01-27T10:04:00.000Z

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!

Boy Projects

2007-01-20T23:40:00.000Z

I'm back in Oxford now and to be honest I'm glad. It was nice to be in Thanet, see old friends, that sort of thing but I'm eager to get on with learning. I didn't really do much more than drink and watch TV in Thanet, being home makes me instantly lazy. I had three boy projects that I wanted to do in my month off...

1. Re-build the Manston Garden Club website. I knocked a really shaky one together a year or so ago and I was never impressed in the slightest with it. I always thought it looked like one of those 'welcome to my webpage' sites (google it). This project I did based on wordpress and its kinda ok now. If you like you can see it at manstongardenclub.co.uk

2. Re-skin and re-organise oonagi. It looks awful at the moment; cluttered, not very user friendly and lots of pointless pages. I have now done most of the design on a test site but I'm still some way from sorting it enough to go live. It will still be based on the e107 system with changes being almost entirely cosmetic. This should give the least jolt to the users who have already been through many changes on the site over the past seven years.

3. ~~Develop Thanet Blog List~~ Build a geographically specific collectively edited news site. Basically a reddit/digg/newsvine for Thanet, as well as being portable to other areas. This will probably be based on a system like Pligg but unfortunately I can't get it to work on my current webhost (they are a little backwards on the technology side) and am going to have to buy more webspace elsewhere. I don't have enough money till February so you'll have to wait I'm afraid. The idea came out of some brainstorming for the new Blog List build. As there were so many new blogs popping up I thought that the current approach, just posting them as blog entries, was restrictive. My 'vision' was that everyone adds new blogs and every gets to vote on whether its and good or not This should help filter out the one-post-wonders as well as letting the average reader quickly find the authoritative blogs. Even better, I wanted the user to have the possibility of having their own account where they can have feeds from their favourites, a little like netvibes, thus saving time from visiting all blogs as well as being able to see at a glance whether there are any new posts. Alas, I couldn't really get it together and quite frankly its not my project any more anyway. I think its current new design is pretty cool and it wouldn't be difficult to get a latest entry feed page on it with all the blogs listed.

So I managed about one and a half out of three projects. Thats not a very good ratio in my eyes. Lots of thoughts, lots of talk but not enough action. At least I'm more productive here in Oxford so hopefully we'll see some more results shortly.

The unicorn gadget

2007-01-10T07:30:00.000Z

There are some dreamed of gadgets that hold a mythical status. The king of these unicorns of the gadget world has been the much dreamed of iPhone. Everyone knew exactly what it was to be called were this ever to be made, the rumour of the iPhone has been bouncing round for few years now but Apple chief, Steve Jobs, has always denied that they were working on it. Yet yesterday during his keynote speech at MacWorld he announced the long fabled iPhone (I thought he might mention it at the last MacWorld in 2006). I guess it was obvious that it was coming, the market is steamrolling its way towards an integrated in-pocket solution. Another indicator was that Apple had made deals with Motorola previously on the ROKR phone. The clincher for me was when I heard that Kevin Rose (Digg.com) had said it was coming on his Diggnation podcast (warning; beer swilling geek millionaires). His prediction of a video iPod nano, which was much derided, was spot on the money. Its also worth noting that the news of the iPhone almost gave Digg its own digg-effect with what is now pushing close to 20,000 votes on the product's announcement.

I'm not normally an Apple fan; DRM, closed source built on open source, etc. Aside from that they have always seemed to have an army of brand faithful evangelists which isn't really my bag. But the iPhone is worth sitting up for and paying some attention. For my money, having a full HTML browser is exactly what I've wanted from a phone, so I may end up buying an Apple product after all. This really does look like its going to be the sparkling unicorn that you only hear of in myths.

For a full breakdown of what is going to be on offer, check this engadget article.

I had a religious experience

2007-01-09T04:27:00.000Z

Whilst at work the other day I met many of the members of the Global Generation Church. They do alot of work in the area with the community, infact it is their primary goal as a church. This may be related to the fact that this is a very young organisation (over 30 and you stand out) and so they want to make an impact on the community and get more members, or perhaps they are just good people. They certainly shook my view as to what a church is like, these guys weren't middle England style baking competitions and tea with vicar. Hell, they don't even have a vicar to lead the flock, the task is taken on by a team of shepherds who are as much leading themselves as others.

So is this a good thing? Should it be down to a church to provide youth clubs as well as providing advice on drug use and sexual health? Is it because of the gaping hole in public services that these groups feel compelled to set up these services or is it because organisations like Global Generation set up these services that our elected bodies feel they now don't have to deal with these social issues?

Meeting these guys gave me a new found respect and hope for Christian organisations but in my mind it still raises some troubling questions about society.

Pt 1/2

2007-01-04T21:37:00.000Z

My recent general lack of internet has severely severed what I am able to do on my Christmas projects. Our house in Manston sits outside the Thanet wired broadband catchment area. Of course there is always a workaround. For us the answer is wireless broadband beamed in through a toaster styled receiver attached to the side of the house from up near the Uni campus. We were with a company called SoBroadband from Rainham but alas they went into some kind of liquidifidation and was subsequently taken over by VFast from Ashford. They all seem very nice so we don't really mind that their temporary transmitter (put up for Christmas) keeps being blown down by the high winds we've been having of late.
projects, broadband, sobroadband, vfast, manston

Christmas was turned out well considering. It was my first without my father and his brother, both having died earlier in 2006, assuming I've not mentioned it before. We went down to that side of the family in Dorset and frankly it was generally pretty good fun. My cousins are all come of drinking age and so it was a good fun starting from almost as soon as I arrived. Just got to get them to move off the lager onto some good ales.
christmas, family, dorset

Friday the 29th of December was showtime at the Lido, Margate. Evil Elvis were playing with support from Black Static Transmission rinsing out a Christmas set in the last Plan9 show of the year. 'This is almost like Christmas with the family' I explained to my friend Danny as I talked him into coming. 'Your not sure that you really want to go but you know your going to have awesome fun when you get there'. He succumb, but frankly I think he was lured by the Elvis, a now almost annual event of \m/Rock\m/ and Roll. I played in the 2000/2001 NYE show and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the first. Anyway, loads of others made the same pilgrimage and a very cool night was had by all with lots of drinking and dancing. Even Danny had came out grinning, if not a little worse for wear which meant we had to get out the taxi a little early (if thats not the mark of a good night, I don't know what is?!)
evilelvis, blackstatictransmission, plan9, lido, margate

Pt 2/2

2007-01-04T21:27:00.000Z

Two days later and its New Years Eve and I was working. I'll admit that this was a night that I wasn't looking forward to. I always feel this night of all nights is the biggest of disappointing nights of the year. There again, I think I can just be a misery sometimes, which was something I did well on this night. I did have some fun though, there were nine of us working upstairs around one till, a night of continual weaving but sooo busy that the evening flies. I like work to be busy :). This bar dance was set to a soundtrack of the Sharpees who played better than the last time I saw them, though I have to admit they are still not one of my favourites. In all honesty though it would have to be one hell of a band for me to have a covers band as one of my favourites... and at least they didn't play Mustang Sally! The shift finished at some ungodly hour, so we went on to a party in Margate in the home of **On The Rag zine**. It was a house gig but unfortunately we missed the bands, new boys 'Cubs' and one of my favourite locals 'We Are Carnivores', due to time. Shame really, I would have put up with the bleeding eardrums you get in house gigs for those two.
nye, newyearseve, work, sharpees, cubs, wearecarnivores, ontherag, ramsgate, margate

I recieved a letter from the court service... fear.. had they really found me?! I slowly opened the envolope and pulled out the pink paper... jury duty! Wuh?! How terribly exciting, though I have had to defer though due to school... erm, not sure I can talk about that, if not then I'll just edit this post ^^
juryservice

Luckily I'm getting a good few shifts while I'm here, lots of last min calls but thats fine by me. One of my more recent shifts has been real relaxed but I'm starting to be aware of a necessity of a more appropriate part time job. Not sure exactly what that is at the moment but its certainly something I need to think about. Answers to 'life, the universe and everything' on a postcard to 42 Hitchikers Way...
work, career,

Well there is a summary of the past few weeks in an entry that probably takes as long to read. Hopefully once our interwebulation connection is rectified I can summarise my return to Thanet in more bitsize pieces.

2006-12-24T03:44:00.000Z

I spent time in Ramsgate today (Saturday). You really can't get much more bizarre than that town. My vision of the place had been blurred. I always thought of Ramsgate as a cool town on the coast but today I was reminded otherwise.

I was a lost puppy, a fish out of water, an old cat in an old town.. I drifted down Ramsgate highstreet today. Drawn as I was to Argos at the top of the street for some last minute Chrsitmas shoppping (I'm a boy). I headed on down the highstreet just to check out what Ramsgte had tuned into in the weeks that had passed.

To be honest, I didn't expect much change. I had always thought of Ramsgate as a cool town but you know, I think I always saw it at the wrong time. At night the harbour is really something else, but during the day the town truly lacks something that other towns have. I think that its called jaw muscles... This really is a town of slack jaw locals who consider themselves observant when they spot JJB sport between the cheep watch and the phone unlocking market stalls. Don't get me wrong, I do have faith in this town but there is something wrong at the moment / About the only shops that are opening are sports clothing. I see a Sports World has opened up where Courts was and very busy it was too. I can believe it must be good business to keep chavs clothed.

SO back to Argos Christmas shopping and while there I immediately turned into an old man. The poor man beside me was hassled buy our dear chav, his space personally invaded. They were cocks but they left. Here is where the old man thing comes in: "these kids think they own the high street", "hanging round in their gangs", "all I want to know is where the parents are"... I'm almost speechless... I take a quick mental note and see that we are only young men... medium age of thirty... I fill my slip out for the laminater (a Christmas present) and head away with those words ringing... "I blame the parents".

This place is truly a village. I knew I could go out tonight. Get dropped at somewhere like Churchills, meet someone there and go on to an endless night of drinking and non stop meeting people I know... Tonight the highlight???... Alex Glinn. He is an aspiring sound man who's dedication and ambition no-one can fault. He's was working on that local Bob Hoskins film which has become Ruby Blue. I give noted respect out because he is really someone who is doing what he can to get out of the expected Thanet life, especially in such a demanding industry as media.

Ok, I'm back in Thanet for a month. I have six days of gallivanting round the country. I have degree of necessity to head down country to Dorset to spend much needed Christmas time with Family. After that, apart from a possible three days in Wales, I'm spending a time in Thanet and I will record a memoir of my time. As a little end of post bonus; I'm hoping to leave a treat for Thanet before I leave.

2006-12-21T03:48:00.000Z

mmm, Thanet ale

2006-12-15T18:26:00.000Z

I've been told off for not blogging much of late.

2006-11-08T19:37:00.000Z

I remember how low I felt during the 2004 American elections. I knew Bush was going to win and because world affairs are so tied up in American policy, I knew the dark times were going to continue. Now I can't help but feel good at seeing the loss of The House to the Democrats and (as I write this) the Senate hanging in the balance with it also likely to go to the left, unless of course the Republicans can manage another of their legal comebacks.

Even better though is the recent announcement that Donald Rumsfeld, the warmonger himself, is going to stand down in face of the defeats. So not only is Bush going to be a lame duck with some seriously clipped wings but perhaps the guiltiest party in such fiascos as the Abu Ghraib cover-ups is out, out, out! I think I can see some light at the end of this dark tunnel.

I think I'll also mention that others that I have spoken to tend not to know the difference between the two parties, or simply can't remember who's which. I came up with this simple mnemonic:
Democrats - Greece created democracies where they discussed the meaning of life and were generally quite liberal, though the boys had a tendency to sleep with other boys.
Republican - Rome created the republic where they beat the rest of the world into submission and perhaps built Europe's 'greatest' empire, suffered from bit of religious militancy.

2006-11-07T09:57:00.000Z

I'm terrible at saving numbers in my phone, mainly because my phone is so awkward to use, but normally because I think 'I'll do it later'. Surely it would be better if each phone had its own ID that the user sets which when you call someone it comes up as you ID/name. This avoids all those confused times of asking who it is when you don't recognise the number, or in some peoples cases, not answering at all.
That is all.

2006-11-04T12:01:00.000Z

Got far, far too drunk last night and I'm suffering now. Hell of a party though, we got the dancefloor packed and everybody was going wild. Pretty good going for a quiet campus on the hill. :)

2006-11-03T15:09:00.000Z

Tonight is my long deserved break. Tonight (all be it a bit late) is our Halloween party. Halloween is my absolute favourite festival of the year. It includes fancy dress, goth overtones and none of the pressure of Christmas or New Years. Of course, I'm not really likely to get a real break as I'll inevitably be sorting decorations, working the door and having to answer all sorts of questions even though its not me organising this party... Don't get me wrong though, I love this kind of stuff. I'd be miffed if I was just sitting in the corner all the time and not being involved.

Collaboration not competition... Jeez, I'm such an OS geek sometimes.

It looks like I'm now going to be sitting on two academic committees as a student representative. Firstly, the Quality Assurance Standards Committee; this is where we discuss possible future courses and ensure that they meet an acceptable standard. Secondly, the Learning, Teaching and Taught Programmes Committee; where the actual standard of teaching is assessed as well as the methods used. I felt that these two were so intertwined that I should probably sit on both.

Ok, enough of this, to the party. Also, as a party worker I get free drinks and we have new ale on that I'm looking forward to trying. Thankfully we are moving out of the summer pale season, which I was becoming a little sick of, this looks like a nice amber type, hope it tastes as good as it looks.

p.s. This Firefox2 has an awesome inbuilt spell checker for forms, I recommend the upgrade. Just need a good grammar checker now. You will all soon be forced to upgrade to IE7 soon anyway which is bloated and ugly, Get Firefox2.

2006-11-01T23:20:00.000Z

About time for a blog post I guess. Not that I'm forcing myself, I just feel like these are now more letters home. Perhaps I will get more readers where I am, but with the million plus blogs that are available I hardly feel I have enough to say to go out looking for them.

I am now a student rep for my course. I put my name down to be a school rep, only five of us, but I lost in the election. It was hardly surprising though, seeing as I did zero campaigning. The person who won was the one who went round the blocks telling people that there was even an election on and should vote for them. I'm totally happy with the outcome, I have so much work to do and with all the extra events organising that I do for the SU bar I don't really have the time to take on extra responsibility.

I was shocked to see one of my current favourite bands, The Knife, played on the TV tonight, all be it in the background of some drama scene. I know not what programme it was, I don't even have a TV myself, just it was on in the pub. Funnily enough, most of you will know the band, all be it indirectly. The sony bravia advert with the bouncing balls had music from Jose Gonzales. Well, that was actually a cover of The Knife. I'm happy to say that I went down to London the other week to seem. I got soooo excited and had so much fun I was jumping around for ages after :)

Anyway, here is Heartbeats by The Knife for all to enjoy (updated to better sound quality):

2006-10-17T23:52:00.000+01:00

Cripes, I almost forgot. Blog my day.

Today I had a lecture in Structured Programming. We examined the use of FOR, WHILE and REPEAT loops in the pascal language. Not very exciting really, but it was a step in learning.

I had a problem with my bus on the way home, we have alot of bus problems here. They are normally several hours late and have a tendency to make you miss lectures (unless your determined like me and arrive hours early). Today though I was waiting to get on my bus home when I turned to speak to a fella next to me. I turned back to see the doors closing. I taped the door and the driver just waved at me and drove off! Talk about adding insult to injury!

Otherwise, I ran around for the evening collecting names for tomorrows pool comp in the SU bar. Since I organised it I'm going to take on the role of referee. I hope to get some white gloves and a bow tie. ^_^

2006-10-17T08:08:00.000+01:00

Today is the day to blog. In an attempt to take a snapshot in time, the National Trust is asking that everone blog a littel about their day. I'll come back later to do mine, for now here is the beeb link.

2006-10-16T17:10:00.000+01:00

Thought I might talk a little about the changes I have made to my blog. The new layout is pretty obvious, I went for the ultra minimalist theme as thats just what I like to see on webpages. The new tagline, In the City Of Spires, is a (misquoted, should be Dreaming Spires) description of Oxford by a poet called Matthew Arnold in a poem where he harks back to his days of studying in the city:

'That sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not summer for beauty's heightening'

I have had a little adjustment to the left hand column. For the time being there are all the usual Thanet blog links, but I suspect that I will also change those in time, no rush though. I have adjusted a section to what is now called buttons, seeing as all the cool kid blogs have them. I've included the obligitory 'get firefox' button, as really everyone should. The bird at the top is called the songbird. It is a music player based on the same engines as the firefox browser. Its still in developmental stages so not recommend as a replacemnt for your current player (yet) but is good fun to use and a great way to search for and listen to music on the net.

There is also a particularily interesting button on there for anyone who wants to just read all their favourite webpages in a glance, thats netvibes. Netvibes is essentially a web rss reader, but it has many other cool tricks under its belt. I will be honest, its through netvibes that I now read everyones blogs and has been the case for some time. It informs me when there is a new post on any one of a number of blogs I have listed on it and gives me the ability to read the post without ever having to visit the blog. It saves lots of time and effort. If there is something I want to comment on then a handy link is provided to the post. Alas, I can't see Tony's pics on it, but I have always had trouble with his feed, so thats nothing new for me.

Below the button section we have my del.icio.us tags. Del.icio.us is a service that I use to bookmark webpages that I find interesting or useful. It is also possible for others to view those bookmarks I make. Tags are simply the categories that those links come under.

2006-10-04T16:53:00.000+01:00

A terribly interesting thing I came across by a site called Maps Of War. The animation looks at the war thats been raging in the middle east for the last 5000 years.

2006-10-02T01:47:00.000+01:00

I live in a campus called Harcourt Hill which has suffered severe under-representation within the student union. Tonight I have worked with a lady called Hannah and done some maths.

Harcourt represents 15% of (max)2600 students that live on campus. That is four whole weeks (28 days) out of twenty seven of contribution that we deserve from all societies within the university.

Why do I point this out? Because while speaking with a Rock Society representative I was laughed at when I asked what events we would be getting at Harcourt Hill. My first reaction was to simply create events that mocked the society (which I have paid money to join) but I now intened to approach them, as well as other societies, demanding representation. Lets hope this doesn't become a mockery in what is supposed to be a democratic organisation.

2006-10-01T23:36:00.000+01:00

Is there a point to blogging? I think there is perhaps even a beauty to it. It is an opportunity to express yourself with added bonus that people may actually hear your words. It makes such a difference to ranting to your walls, which instantly absorb and forget. The words hang in the air for others to view for months, or even years down the line. Though you can be sure that you are only remember you by the last thing you utter. I remember posting a youtube of myself doing diablo work on here and one of the comments I recieved was the statment 'not sure if your into girls or boys' (I paraphrase), yet only a couple of posts earlier I was talking about my g/f (girlfriend in J17 talk). Its like the classic, people replying to forum threads with the words 'I couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing, so I just read the last post'.

None the less, blogging is a very personal and in its own way very satisfying thing. You say what you want to get of your chest and damn the rest. I type because it makes me happy, not because it make you happy.

2006-09-30T14:44:00.000+01:00

Oh my god! Webcameron, you have got to be kidding. The latest propaganda tool from the conservatives is the 'personal' video blog of their illustrious leader. Extra homely realism is provided with him washing up and background screaming children. I'm sure there was always an unspoken rule of not using your kids as political tools, but this man is really pulling out all the stops. They've clearly tried to stop it from seeming to be a propoganda by branding the whole thing in pink, but the videos are so obviously staged. Little clipped references to recycling, etc. This is clearly aimed at the YouTube generation, but frankly its all a little sickening, especially when you think about the amount of time and money that must have gone into the programming and building of it. Its not based at blogger, thats for sure. He goes on about how 'shaky' it all is (cue cameraman wobble, or is that cameronman) and to top it off with true web2.0 aspirations, its not just called webcameron, its Webcameron BETA! I mean, really, does he think we were born last week?

2006-09-27T16:00:00.000+01:00

I've been having problems with the painfully slow internet service we have here in halls. I've been trying to download a personal copy of delphi from the manufacturers (free for educational), but my download speed is the sort of rate I haven't seen since 28k dial-up! The main problem with this is that it has a tendancy to pause for long periods and then timeout. Thats not something you want on a 50mb file thats halfway there. So being the very frustrated bunny I am I decide to grab it on a torrent. Though this is normally a very effective method for picking up large files it makes little difference here. Well, there is one difference I found it makes. It gets you banned from the halls network. I had to remove all p2p software I had on my machine before they would let me back on! I was only doing it for educational purposes!

Seems I'm not the only person who has been having problems though. My neighbour has found that with the continual connection his computer is turning itself back on in the middle of the night. I said I wasn't sure why but I found out today from one of my lecturers. It seems microsoft will remotely switch your computer back on to gather information in its own time. The cheek of it!

2006-09-26T23:25:00.000+01:00

Thanet Life seems to be under threat. If you are a Thanetian and want to have your own say in a well read local site on local matters, then please go there with an open mind and volunteer your services.

Thanks
Kevin

2006-09-26T19:15:00.000+01:00

Today has pretty much been my first lecture. I had one yesterday in human communication, but frankly that was a condesending insult, so I will just count this one. Today I learnt my first bit of the pascal coding language and wrote my first program. To be honest, i didn't really feel like I had learnt it as it was more copying than anything, but its a start.

The main problem I have had though is getting a copy of delphi (the programming enviroment) for myself. I finally managed to pick one up on this thread via polish site. Still setting it up at the moment, but all seems fine. I really wanted to have a version that worked in a linux enviroment, but it seems they stopped developing that some time ago, so I guess I will have to leave that and come back to the tux when I move on to C & Unix in the next semester.

I will say though, its great to be learning again, even if alot of it goes over my head :)

2006-09-21T03:18:00.000+01:00

This week has been damn crazy. I seem to be missing loads of messages by leaving the msnm on, so if I've missed you, I'm sorry. I'm having to follow two programmes doing the combined, so when I see the guys from the comp soc, I don't know as I'm mainly based in Harcourt. I'll have to just leave notes on the wiki or something for now.

So far as the Thanet crew goes, I guess its time I was removed from the Thanet Blog List. Hopefully whoever runs that will note this, as well as the guys who are commenting themselves in on the primary listing post.

Get back soon I hope.
Kevin

2006-09-19T21:00:00.000+01:00

Thought I'd give my blog the overhaul since my life is experiencing the same. I'm now staying at Harcourt Halls at the Westminster Institute at Oxford Brookes. Its still freshers week at the moment so not a lot of studying is going on. On the other hand, a hell of a lot of drinking is going on. I've only discovered one local ale so far called Village Idiot. The brewer is a Wychwood spinoff and the beer is a classic summer pale. I'm sure with a bit of hunting I'll find some more. Though I've picked up the freshers vibe I'm not strictly following the classic fresher trail for this town. I'm not doing all the set evening activities and I've no intention of going to the fresher ball. Instead I've found myself in a group of older, though perhaps not wiser students and we've been hitting local bars and clubs. Tonight though is maybe going to be a bit quieter with a casual night at the campus student union bar. I'll come back later and tell of the probably more serious aspects of academia and my intened covert operation of sneaking into Oxford University proper to check out the more affluent side (I hear their halls are furnished with antiques).

2006-09-13T23:59:00.000+01:00

I was recently lucky enough to have a private invitation to the Gadds brewery. I knows the guys from my time at the pub (finished that today, whoop!) and after they heard me banging on about their stout they said I could come up and see their place at work. I learnt alot about brewing while I was there and got a far better understanding of not only the methods for brewing ales but also the ale industry as a whole.

It wasn't all work work work though. They were decent enough to give me and my accomplice Jay a taste of their latest batch of East Kent Pale Ale (EKPA) from their own private bar (The Rams Head) and I'm happy to say thet it was delightfull. We sat outside and chatted about all sorts. A thoroughly nice afternoon and my thanks to Eddie and Ian for being such good hosts.

2006-09-13T23:12:00.000+01:00

I no longer run Thanet Blog List. After my recent possible bias in the comments of this site I felt I needed to hand it over straight away. It has been given to another and I will not name them. They intend to develop the idea and I hope it becomes an even more usefull resource.

This Saturday I will no longer be a Thanet blogger. I expect I will keep blogging for the same reasons I started in the first place. I will probably even change my subheading :) I also expect to continue reading others, you've been fun. Hope it doesn't get too much more political (vote anyone but tory, hehe) and you all remember that life is supposed to be fun. Perhaps I'll also point out for the sake of sillyness, has anyone else noticed that Ramsgate Tourettes and Eastcliff Richard have taken a break at the same time?

Thank you Thanet, its been emotional.

2006-09-09T01:44:00.000+01:00

A couple of posts back I stated that Eddie was a stout pusher... but I love him for it. The reason I said this was as simple as the statement. While I was at the jazz festival on Ramsgate seafront the other week I went to the Gadds tent to get myself another beer, but he had run out. What he did offer me though was two small unmarked bottles from some boxes he kept behind him. I asked how much to which he replied "on me". Difficult to say no to that! I guessed this was a new product that he was testing the ground with. I poured it, tasted it and found it to be the divine nectar. This dark 7% wonder was the kind of drink you only dream of! At that point I concluded that what he was doing was getting us hooked before releasing it to the public. The method certainly worked on me, I was left dreaming on when I could next get my grubby mits on some more.

Tonight I saw Eddie and quickly asked him where I could get more of his magic juice. His reply was simple; I can't. Stunned horror. Dear God, why? As it turned out, this was a test run they did to check the setup of their equipment in its new location a couple of months prior. They didn't want to do a brew that they'd feel bad not being able to sell (eg No.3), so Ian came up with the idea of a stout. Brilliant, but not 'commercially viable'.

So now I'm not sure what is worse. To have tasted it and know that I will never taste it again or, if things had been different, to never have tasted it at all. So, no longer do I love him for being a pusher, I now believe him to be a cruel cruel man!

2006-09-08T00:13:00.001+01:00

Seems I got somewhat busted in the BBC Kent article on bloggers as the man behind the Thanet Blog List. Many of the more savy would have guessed anyway, but its really out now, so I guess its time to discuss it.

I started the list in reaction to Cliff Richard saying he was quiting the scene after a spat with the doctor. I was concerned that there wouldn't be the central point for bloggers to rally around. I also had issues with the links being removed from peoples blogs due to personal issues. I felt the best way to resolve this was an independent list that would link anyone regardless, trusting the reader to decide what was hot and what was not.

Now we come to the problem. Not only is it not very independent now that its clear its me, but I am leaving Thanet and so feel I will have less time to hunt down local blogs.

We have a few possible solutions here:
a) Kevin continues as is and only adds blogs when he checks thanetbloglist@yahoo.co.uk once every few months.
b) Some other person contacts Kevin saying they will take good care of it and will remain impartial.
c) I tell you all the login and password for the blog and you can all add stuff when you find it. Kevin (or someone) hangs onto the email to reset any abuses with a password reset.

I personally like the third option as I'm a community thinking kinda guy, but I can see its problems.

This is up to you guys to call it as its really your list.

2006-09-01T16:25:00.000+01:00

Sorry, i know our local papers have the general difficulty of being able to tell their arse from their elbows, but this really is taking the biscuit! Just a couple of weeks ago they were praising a trader in Arlington shopping arcade in Margate for recruiting a group of graffiti artists to produce some quality work on the boarded up shops. Now they showing the same graffiti and calling it disgraceful! Do they have any idea what they are talking about or do they really assume that we won't remember what they said last week? Personally, I think its the local presses fickle attitudes to local events and issues that is the disgrace of this area.

2006-08-29T03:21:00.000+01:00

eddie is a stout pusher... but i love him for it.

2006-08-28T03:23:00.000+01:00

I don't seem to do this very often, maybe time for a bit of an update.

Summer for me is pretty much over now, but it was a good one. I took just over a week off work for folk week (yes, the whole week and yes, I know the words to the clarence the dragon song) where I plyed my way through many beers. It wasn't the best year, bit of a washout at first, but it was still very good. I even managed to get in some fireclub passing going on the beach on the wednesday. I normally do alot of cicus type stuff at folk week, but I didn't so much this year. Probably got my yearly fix doing a circus workshop for Manston village fete a couple of weeks before.

Much of my folkweek was taken up with flyering for a gig I was holding on the Sunday in Westgate which was called the Thanet Rocks End Of Summer Bash. Thanet Rocks being the recent tagline for oonagi... probably drop that a bit now as its been hammered pretty hard. Anyway, the idea of the gig was to have a bit of a festival of local original music. We had seven local bands and artists doing their own thing and all the money we made went to charity. We raised around £375 for Thanet Mind, whoop! Thats the summary, if you want to know all the trials and tribulations that went into it, plus a rundown of the day then a full write-up on The Gig 06 link at the top of oonagi. Right at the moment I'm working on a mini-site bonus feature of a DVD thats being made of the day. We'll be selling them in the hope of raising a bit more money for the aforementioned worthy charity.

Other than that I'm preparing to go to uni in september. Oxford Brookes to study computers and culture for three years. This has raised a concern with my role in oonagi. I do so much work on the site that I'm a bit worried at having to let it go. I'll still help out but I'm not going to be local, which is one of the fundamentals of oonagi.

Ok, see you again in.... who knows \m/(^_^)\m/

2006-08-20T00:43:00.000+01:00

This is a video of me.

2006-08-08T16:47:00.000+01:00

Admin authentication is starting to annoy me. I can understand in some cases with the blogs, but frankly, the admin can just delete the posts anyway, so why bother. What really annoys me is when it's supposed to be on a social site outside of blogger. Why should the admin tick off each post? Its not the dark ages of the internet anymore, so why do small site owners still not trust the users to say something sensible. Frankly, I find it very off putting and it discourages input. I am one of the 1% who creates content, but I'm not going to if you don't trust what I have to say.

2006-08-02T19:04:00.000+01:00

The Wikipedia articles of Ramsgate and Margate have been recommended for the Wikipedia CD Selection. At the moment, the seclection only has just over 2000 atricles on it. So it's pretty neat for our local towns to be chosen out of 1,291,557 english language articles (02/08/06).

The problem is that the articles need more work. I know Adem of the Big Blog has been doing some work on the Ramsgate page, posting a gallery, etc. But the two articles need alot more work. For example, the Ramsgate article states Gary Pallister as the most notable resident (he played for Middlesbrough once), yet totally neglects to mention Van Gough.

Please visit the pages and do what you can to help.

2006-07-31T01:02:00.000+01:00

This has been a good weekend. I started Thursday at the 50th Moon On A Stick gig. It was a neat collection of music from far and near. I also got to check out one of the acts (Neverest Songs) that's going to be playing at my Thanet Rocks gig on the 20th of August at the Westgate pavilion. Also playing will be one of the big blogs friends, Black Primra. I have told Alex McNally's secretary about the gig. Perhaps he'll give it a feature or any mention. I'll be honest, I crave attention from the Thanet Crimes.

Whilst I nipped for a packet of smokes I saw and recognised the Man Eating Sausage. I bothered him for a while, but I'll leave that there as he has talked about the chance meeting. He did tell me one interesting thing though, I hope that he doesn't mind me mentioning, that he uses voice recognition software and talks at his computer to write blog posts. What an ingenious idea. He did also mention that he wasn't sure if i was an anonymous poster. I'm not. My name is Kevin Carmody and I live in Manston.

On Saturday I ran a juggling workshop for Manston fun day. I had some huge help from my friends Danny and Luce and from my girlfriend Rebeka. It was huge amounts of fun, though we were treated a little like a creche.

And today was the Ramsgate carnival...... erm ....... err ...... great!

Ok, here are a couple of web treats:
Type 'failure' into google and hit 'I'm feeling lucky'.
And...
A note of word verification.

2006-07-26T20:20:00.000+01:00

I found an interesting article on the amount of people that actually participate in web content:

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | What is the 1% rule?

The summary would be something like this. For every hundred people who view a social site (eg wikipedia, blogger etc), 1 will create content, 10 will comment or add content, 89 wil just read. I hope this makes those of you who worry about the lack of comments or input on your blogs makes you feel a little better.

So, like Lucy Mail said in this blog post, don't worry about the fly catching audience, just power on

2006-07-26T02:16:00.000+01:00

I'm upset. Someone smashed a cup on my car which caused a dent in the bonnet. Then I noticed that the most of the passenger side had been keyed. Why? I was parked sensibly outside the Regency in Ramsgate. I hadn't done anything wrong. There was no need. :(

Also noted today that Gannet College blog got mentioned in the Thanet Times. Though looking at the screen shot they had as a pic I noted there was some serious issues with the way their computers display web pages. None the less though, the local papers must be spending time on the thanetbloglist to find it, so carefull what you say people. You are being watched.

2006-07-14T02:42:00.000+01:00

Chavs win the battle, rock wins the war.

The absolute disapointment. I wander home in the most drunken fashion tonight. Swaying from side to side all the way from the harbour to Manston... which is a long old walk. I'd already been to Margate, to the Qubar tonight. Watched some pretty downbeat rock. Could do with some more of that upbeat disco dancing feel... but that only really happens at the Lido and I'm a bit old for that now. What I noticed throughout the night though was the distinct lack of chavs. Perhaps we should be honest and say it as it is... chavs is now just a middle class word for poor. When I was a youngster, about a decade or so ago, back when we were using the word 'chav', it was a real statement of something we feared. No-one ever called themselves a chav, it was just the word we used for those who used to beat down on us rockers. btw, if you ever wondered where the word came from... it was at the time a verb; 'to chav' = 'to steal'. We considered them thieves so we called them chavs, it was their own word! No matter what they come up with now, that was what it meant when we were using it 14years ago.

Anyway, they didn't tuck their socks in their trousers then... though they probably did wear b-ball caps! Still, this is all meaningless now. Some how, dispite their numbers, they lost. They won the war, in so far as they won noteriety in becoming the infamous 'chavs', but they lost overall. Who wants to be a 'chav'? If your not being mocked, your being labelled as poor. I'm sorry, but I think thats what chav has become, a label for those who we think of as coming out of some housing estate. So dispite ourselves, the rockers won overall. Rock is hip again and there is little we can do about it.

2006-07-09T17:07:00.000+01:00

Well, first things first. We have a new/old blogger on the circuit. Ram Skate Raider has stated his/her own blog where we can expext a contemptuous view of Thanet and all around.

Ok, with that out the way I'll give you all some bigger news. There is a Manston Parish Council public meeting being held this Thursday with with a heavy emphasis on the highway aspects of the new housing estate thats to be built at Westwood Cross. This new estate is going to seriously impact on Thanet. Probably one of the biggest impacts is going to be the increased load on the already clogged roads in the area, especially the carpark we call Haine Road. Attending the meeting will be a senior officer of East Kent Highways. Also attending will be Charles Hibberd, County Councillor and as an extra treat, probably Roger Gale amongst others. I also expect Ladyboy to avoid this like the plague as there will be constituants present and God forbid he'd be around them without a photo-op showing him in a good light.

If you want to attend (there were around 70 people at the last), it will begin at 7pm at the Hoverspeed Club in Manston. This is your chance to come and say your thing and experience first hand what it's like to be flatly ignored by those who's wages you pay for out of your taxes.

2006-07-05T17:33:00.000+01:00

myspace, myspace... oh god, myspace

I've never been the biggest fan of myspace, as anyone who's had to listen to me would know. Still, it is THE biggest social networking site on the internet with over 85million 'users'. So in view of this I've finally given in and set up an oonagi myspace. If you want to visit it you can, the URL is myspace.com/thanetrocks. A friend of ours is doing a zine of the local scene called Thanet Rocks. As this is also the tagline for oonagi it only seemed sensible that we combined forces, so this myspace thing is a combo of the two. We're also planning on a load of story sharing between the site and the zine. Paper and online, how about that for coverage and appealing to all sorts. A thought, there really should be a Thanet Times/Gazunder website.

2006-06-30T01:25:00.000+01:00

The Marxmen

My g/f came down from East Gringstead to visit me yesterday. It was great to see her and as a treat I took her on a Marxist tour of Ramsgate as run by Simon Mores(?) who is running the Magical Marxist exhibition up at IOTA. I really never knew how much time Marx spent in Ramsgate. About ten visits in all and a couple more than that by Engles. We did have a fun time... well, I did.. my poor girl puts up with all sorts for me. The tour itself was wittily called Land Marx and finished at the Churchills for a quiz called Top Marx. We even got Karl Marx masks to wear at the end. I'd hoped to pick up all the information for the quiz on the tour (plus a bit of skim reading before hand) but it didn't actually have anything to do with Marxism. Shame really as I don't know anything about Coronation Street. Still, he was a question writer for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, so I can't really complain.

Don't know how we finally did in the quiz. At half way we were third, but we left before the end to go to Balmoral in Broadstairs to try and catch some of the acoustic stuff that was going on there (a real jolly jaunt around Thanet). Shame really as I noticed a note behind the bar stating a £30 drinks tally for the winning team.... unused. Could that have been my £30 worth of drinks that I've missed out on by leaving?

Btw, I'm using a blogger plugin on my linux here that despite having a field for the 'title' of a post, doesn't actually fill it in, but rather puts it as the first line of the post.

Dropping off the radar

2006-06-27T17:27:00.000+01:00

I seem to have dropped of the local blogging radar of late. The circuit seems a little rife with attitude at the moment and isn't the same one that I joined a couple of months ago. It's nice to have some of the more prolific writers back but it would be even nicer if everyone got along with each other better. Due to the increased level of writing I'm now only able to get around a few of them now. Especially seeing as I also have to continue the work on oonagi and the local original music scene in general. This also means alot of time spent on myspac. I sometimes feel like I need more than one kevin at a time to spread around the place and do everything that I want to do.

Football

2006-06-25T02:02:00.000+01:00

Sunday the 25th of June is the biggest event in this years football calendar. We will be holding the interband 5-a-side football tournament in Dane Park Margate. This is the sixth year of this event and has become the original music scenes biggest community day. Of course, this year it seems to have ended up clashing with another football game of some kind or another which all sorts of people are banging on about. So we are going to have to hammer through our event quick smart so people can go watch TV! Would you believe it??!? Most of the time people don't care about football, but when they hear the Ecuador are playing they get all excited. Curious. Anyway, I best sleep as I have to be up at some ungodly hour, like 9am! Btw, I've got my laptop back now, so am a happy Kevin again.

rock star

2006-06-21T16:46:00.000+01:00

I often dream that when I grow up I'll become a rock star. As time passes on though it seems less and less likely to happen. I came close to it this week though after I was asked to play as bassist in a currently running project for a young lad called Henry Johnson. Henry is playing the Eastcliff bandstand this Saturday along with some other bands which include ex-members of Primal Scream, Brand New Heavies as well as various other top quality professional musicians. While still pre-twenties, Henry's talents were spotted by a local musician who offered to musically direct an album for him as well as sort out gigs (you can hear the drummer in the project talk about it on oonagi webcast 5).

So how did I end up being involved? Well, frankly they were at the eleventh hour and didn't have a bassist. I certainly wasn't the best person for the job being out of a band for several years, but I was there when they needed someone bad. The problem now though is that I can't seem to get the time off work... and neither can the drummer. That's the whole rhythm section they lost and we only knew yesterday. Still, the music is fantastic and I think it may sound even better in a stripped down fashion. Looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer till I become a rock star though.

Right, on to the next machine

2006-06-19T22:38:00.000+01:00

Well, since the demise of my laptop (a tear begins to form) I have had to move back to my old computer as continued use of my mums wasn't going to go down to well. The problem with my old machine is that it was a bit used and abused. Though still a fine piece of equipment with a more than adequate 2ghz processor, the big dell symbol always made me want to give it a hard time. So here is what I have done to it now to get it up and running... I've installed ubuntu linux on it. The poor thing, I've installed and re-installed various operating systems on it over time. Still, if I'm to achieve my goal of uber-web-geek I have to get to grips with what 80% of the internet is run on.

I've used GNU/Linux systems before but have always run into problems with them. This is probably the biggest issue that the open source community faces, thats noobs like myself continualy hit stumbling blocks each time we try to install it. There are linux based systems out there that do detect everything without a problem, but they tend to be live versions (boot and run off a CD without installation) like knoppix. It's a shame the installable versions versions so often require you to be tech savvy.

This is what I found to be so good with ubuntu. It has had no problems thus far with the install. It even detected my TFT monitor without an issue, which commercial versions like Suse9.2 failed to do. I guess I'll have to see what happens over time, nothing is fullproof.

Where am I?!

2006-06-18T03:42:00.000+01:00

Sorry guys, not been around much of late so I've not been blogging or reading others much.

It's been a hell of a week. I've been visiting family in Wales. They have a beautiful B&B on the side of a mountain near Barmouth overlooking Cardigan Bay. It's nice to just hide away sometimes. I stopped off at the girlfriends in East Grinstead on the way back. She's been stressing about her upcoming exams for her masters, so I thought I'd try to help her chill out. Alas, she's a stressed bunny so I'd like you to all send her calming thoughts.

I lost my phone while I was there. On a bus between there and Crawley. I called it a few times, but it was hung up a few times and then switched off. It didn't take me long to put two and two together and come up with a crime report number and barring the phone. As it turned out though, a nice young skate lad had found it but just couldn't answer it as he was at work. We arranged to meet up and I now have my blocked phone back.

When I got home I discovered the wireless in the house had broken, so I couldn't access the internet from my laptop.. my pride and joy. I didn't have time to mess around, I tried a quick wireless fix (turn everything on and off) but it wasn't happening so I chucked the top into my bag and headed out to my favorite public hotspot to check my mail before I went to The Boss album release party that night.

I bought their album. I nodded my head to some tunes. The gig was cool. Hung out with my fellow geologist Jay where we talked geeky about things like css, ajax and Second Life. Life was sweet as we moved on to Broadstairs for late night hacky sack on the pier. I slept well that night.

I woke up the following (Saturday) morning and had a bit of time to sort out my wifi before I had to go to work for an 11 hour stint. I got out my laptop and... Horror struck. The screen was horrifically shattered and black 'ink' oozed outwards from every crack. It was ruined and I was crushed. I sat dazed, induced by the sense of loss at what had become a close and well modded friend. Appalled at the knowledge that I have no insurance since canceling it a few months back.

I couldn't help but have a look at my now defunct policy to see how much I was missing out. The policy didn't cover cracked screens, or theft, or anything from the looks of it. Memories came back as to why I cancelled the most pointless insurance I'd ever seen. I looked on the internet to see if I could find the cost of a replacement screen but for some reason or other I couldn't find my model anywhere. I gave in and dropped it round at the local friendly computer shop safe in the knowledge that they'll make my wallet a good £200 lighter. What a crappy day.

So how do you cheer someone up? I'll tell you now, if the person serving you doesn't seem to be too happy do not demand that they smile. The best you will get is a snear.

I'll tell you what cheered me up. A local band called Waterhorse. They play such pretty music. By the end of the shift I felt almost relaxed and the 11 hours (all be it at minimum wage) will go some way towards the new screen and at least the phone is covered by insurance. I guess it will all be ok afterall.

Feaky moment of the week

2006-06-11T23:27:00.000+01:00

I was reminded of a blog called Boing Boing by the Flying Doctor today. This lead me on a merry maze through the internet till I came across a very bizarre post that I thought I'd share:

SWAPATORIUM: Faces

The point raised in the post was that this fella acquired slides of these girls, many of them with numbers written on their foreheads. He posted the picture in the hope that someone would solve the mystery.

I'm not convinced by some of the suggestions for the reason of this, but it's interesting to wonder. The set of pictures themselves are a little on the weird side.

I want valid!!!

2006-06-09T16:54:00.000+01:00

I'm still stewing over not being valid. Word on the blogger circuit is that it is nigh on impossible to make your site valid without some serious grubby code work above and beyond the call of duty. For a start, the toolbar at the top of every blog is invalid (this is why sometimes it looks funny if your overloading you're browser)! I can remove it (that's advice that is given), but I don't want to! It's useful! ok... That's enough exclamations for one post.

Even the basic templates aren't valid. Google (who own blogger) should bloody well be more professional than this. Even the template that I am using now was designed by a worker at Google and it's riddled with errors. Invalidation means frustration. It's one of the main things that slows a web page down because it means the browser has to fix the problems in encounters on a page before it can display it.

It seems once you (well, me) start down this road of validation obsession, which covers others sites too, continued returning to the validator at W3C becomes tiresome. You want to be able to check validation of pages you come across on the fly. Here is where favelets (sic) come in. These little beauties are like clever bookmarks which you hit when you want to do something with the page you're on.

Here is the W3C validator favelet page.
Here are some other favelets, like translators.

Anyhows, now my exams have finished I'll spend some time cleaning this blog up and probably telling you all about the troubles I'll be having along the way.

Copyrighting my blog

2006-06-09T16:30:00.000+01:00

Actually, I think it would be better to say that I'm copylefting my blog. While reading my Technology Guardian from yesterday I was reminded of a certain gentleman called Lawrence Lessig who set up the CreativeCommons.org. Because I can, I'll copy + paste what they say on their site:

Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of freedoms and protections for authors, artists, and educators. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach. We're a nonprofit organization. All of our tools are free.

The basic jist of it is this: you can do whatever you want with the work I do on this blog, modify it, make money from it, whatever. So long as you promise to share your derivatives (that's my only stipulation). You'll find some way down on the right hand side a license to this effect as well as on this post. I know it's unlikely that anyone would, but if you do you don't have to feel bad for stealing my trash. We have also had one of these on oonagi for some time, lest you want to use any and abuse info from that.

In other Thanet blogger news, I see that Lucy Mail of Ramsgate now has her own blog, at long last. This blog has the funniest title/sub-title combination I've seen for some time and has tickled me, so I'm compelled to add it to the links to the right.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 England & Wales License.

Web is links

2006-06-07T19:08:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure how comfortable I feel at the moment in positioning myself as the Thanet Bloggers geek guru after reading a resume like this. Still, I've made my bed and never let it be said that I'm not one to lie in it.

As laid out by the internets founding father, Tim Berners-Lee, the web is so called because of the use of links. Rather than having to go to a central repository of indexed information we find our way following links placed on sites. Not everything shows up on front page Google, so we follow these little alleys and at times we find gems.

I've seen a few of my fellow bloggers here having problems with links. It's easy enough for most of us to make links in our posts. A case of highlighting the text we want as a link, clicking the little world with a chain next to the T with a colour pallete in the create post window and cutting and pasting the address from the address bar into the pop-up. More info here.

The problem most people seem to have is putting links into the blogs sidebar. There is no quick easy way with this. You're going to have to get down and dirty with the code you find on your template page. Near the bottom of this code you'll find the links you already have on the side, they say things like 'edit me' or 'google news'. All you have to do is replace these with similar like information for your own links. Just make sure you re-publish your entire blog. Anyhows, the good people of blogger have provided instructions for this.

Funny though. When I first started all this blogging it seemed we all tended to just add any local blogging link. Now there are a few more of us it's giving us the choice to be a bit pickier, if we want. I would certainly feel uncomfortable removing a link once I had one. Funny really, despite the webs percieved anonymity, you don't want to hurt peoples feelings, no matter what you think of them. Hmm, risky topic this, think I'll move on.

My point of writing this is that I feel if we have our own webspace, like the blog, we should be providing links to stuff we like, or not. Things we find usefull, or even pointless. But for the sake of being able to find things we would of anyway, we should link. I guess thats why I like sites like del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site.

Here, I've banged on about links now so I'll give you one that you would never have searched for: Ian's 17 steps

Am I valid?

2006-06-06T21:13:00.000+01:00

The straight answer is no, on this blog I'm not. I've been playing with the W3C's validator tool. Mainly for oonagi as it makes a difference to how high you appear on a search engines results (we call this Search Engine Optimisation, SEO). It's taken me a bit, but I've managed to make oonagi valid all bar one warning (though this isn't an error, so I'm still valid). My feed from Arts & Elbows. This is all down to the ampersand in his title. Still, I've asked him if he wouldn't mind terribly fixing it and then it'll be all good. On this blog I have 56 errors, maybe I'll sort it out when I have more time on my hands as it's good practice. I'm not as bad as Thanet Life though, with 443. It's no biggy and I'm not too worried, even the big guns don't bother. Today the BBC had 37 errors and yahoo have 253!

Snailpace asked that I post some instructions to turn comments in blogs on to help out The Angina Monologues, but it seems that in not getting help from us he's getting his friends daughter to visit. I wouldn't want to deprive the poor old boy of that pleasure as well as confusing him with my technobabble.

Tuesday Hangover

2006-06-06T12:26:00.000+01:00

It's been a few days since I last posted. Lifes been a bit hectic. Had to go to Dorset for family functions, but I won't depress you with tales of that. I may as well say about seeing some hill down that way which I found while sneaking round some back streets. I just thought it was neat but as it turned out it was used in some hovis advert. I had no idea, but my sister insisted. She then pointed out a large fiberglass loaf of hovis. The street was so pretty, it didn't need that sort of trash.

Yesterday I had my first of three exams this year (assuming I don't have to re-sit any). Many of us celebrated by excessive drinking. I was done for by about five in the afternoon. Still, it was a nice day so we headed down to the Westgate gardens, downtown Canterbury. There was a few guys there with the spinning/circus stuff. I had a go on the poi, where I only whacked myself in the nuts a couple of times. Then had a bash on the juggling clubs for the first time in about 8 months. Surprised I could still do a few tricks. To be honest though, I was far to drunk for all that kind of thing. So I headed home with a little help from South East trains and was asleep in bed by 10pm. Very early for me, the night owl that I am.

Anyway, thats enough about my silly day. What usefull webness shall I come up with today. Ok, my sister got herself an mp3 plaer yesterday, so I'll go along those lines. If you've got windows media player and your ripping your music tracks to your computer it does it by default to a file type called Windows Media Audio (files end in *.wma). Though pretty well used, this isn't a universal format. So not all your mp3 players will be able to play it. If you want to save them as .mp3 then the update thing on windows media player 9 asks you to pay for the mp3 codex (thats the thing that does the conversion). You can get round this by just downloading windows media player 10 for free.

I've been naked all day!

2006-06-01T21:46:00.000+01:00

Eek! It's like when you're having a dream where you're in a public place without any clothes on. I kept trying to say 'look again', as if they'd be there next time, but nope, stripped bare.

Of course this isn't a dream, it's the internet. Though I'm sure many other parallels could be found, I'll leave it there. My internet nakedness today has been my lack of a cascading Style Sheet (CSS). Where as once upon a time all webpage were made from HyperText Markup Language (HTML), laying the page out with things like tables. Today they are normally a combination of HTML files and CSS files. The HTML holds all the things like headlines, text, links and suchlike. CSS deals with the layout and the style. This means that if, for example, you are visually impaired, you can have your browser just show the text, without and confusing graphics, or even just use a Braille reader.

The problem I had today? My CSS file was held on google servers somewhere and it wasn't being called to action for some reason or other. My solution? I'm now hosting the CSS file on my own webspace at oonagi. Thanks Mr Snailspace sir for pointing this problem out.

If your still just seeing the text only version, then try holding shift and clicking refresh. Doing this does a full reload rather than reloading with some of the temporary files on your computer.

Also, I've removed the link to thelrsessions.blogspot.com to the right as they don't a) update and b) don't have the HTML file, thus, no content, which is poor.

While bouncing around the local blognet I spotted a neat chart on one of the sites which displays all mentions of 'thanet' on the blogosphere. I liked it so I added it to mine too.

The Angina Monologues

2006-06-01T16:21:00.000+01:00

I'm doing an open post here in a vain hope that it may be spotted by the author of the blog by the title we see above. Though I know it unlikely to be spotted due to techy the nature of my blog, I'll try anyway. If you want to visit it, just click here.

The blog name is excellent, especially considering the demographic. He (I thought it to be a she at first, considering the title) was an Eastcliff Richard fan, but lost his way after the link was removed from the doctors site. I know I'm still linked, for now. Anyway, I wish the writer the best of luck and hope they keep writing. Unfortunately I can't tell them directly as they currently have the comments and all forms of contact turned off.

My night with Bob Hoskins

2006-06-01T15:43:00.000+01:00

Or not, as the case may be. I was at the wrap party last night for the thanet film Ruby Red Chequer which stars Bob Hoskins. For those of you that don't often grace the red carpet, a wrap party is a celebration of the end of filming. Alas, Bob wasn't at it as he was off filming elsewhere, but that didn't stop the party. Each guest was given free drink tickets but the organisers neglected to inform them that these were only for certain drinks, which meant some angry punters. I've never seen so many people complain about free drinks. Anyway, everyone seemed to get very drunk and did seem to be having fun, in that 'trendy gliterati' style. There was a fella going round doing card tricks who was very good, though I like to be fooled by those things. He also got a lady to lay on a table while he cleft her in twain with a power saw. People made speeches, smoked cigars and generally slapped each others backs in congratulations. Though I guess that's what it's like at these feature film shindigs and as they are locals who put it together I can only say good luck and I hope it does well. btw, I did already meet Bob.

Browser Wars

2006-05-30T17:23:00.000+01:00

I've done what all self-obsessive types (read blogger) do and I've been checking my stats. The first thing I couldn't help but notice is the gradual drop off in visitors since my all time high of hosting the Eastcliff Richard news with link from his site. That's fine, I never expected to get as high a rating as him anyhows and at that time the whole blogger network was on fire. We've calmed down alot now (in some cases almost stopped) but the stats still reveal some other interesting figures. btw, if you do have your own blog, the guys I'm using are pretty neat for tracking your hit counts.

The thing that I found most interesting is the relatively high proportion of Firefox users who visit this blog. The internet average is approx 80% Internet Explorer, 15% Firefox, 5% other - probably made up mainly as a combination of Mac users or whichever browser the odd Linux user prefers e.g. Konquerer. On this blog the average daily rates see-saw 50-50 between IE and Firefox. I expect this is because bloggers are a little more tech savvy than the average web user.

As I've said before, firefox is uber cool, but it's not the only alternative browser out there. Another good one for PC users is Opera. I used this a bit before firefox came out, but the free version (what's the point in paying when you already have a free one with IE) always had built in banner ads. I really do hate banner ads. Opera has now removed these, probably funded by is expansion into the handheld markets. Your likely to be using an opera based browser if ever you use the net on your mobile (a good use of net on the mobile is Windows Live Hotmail, which means you can email through WAP, you could even email your blog post with the auto email publish tool on blogger).

So I've been trying out Opera for the PC. It has some very neat functions. Firstly, it's has a very clean and minimal interface which means a large viewing window. It has the tabbed browsing which we all love about Firefox, but it deals with it differently. It saves the history of tabs from when you last closed it, which is neat. Opera also has RSS built in. Infact, it is a very good browser, but it's not as easy to modify as Firefox. Another major problem is that man of the new ajax sites don't support it (see the webmail webmail webmail post) so alas, though I will say it's better than IE6, it's not as good as Firefox.

Here I am, banging on about Firefox, Firefox, Firefox. But you can't keep an old dog like IE down. Enter IE7 beta. The first thing I'll say is... "what a firefox rip off", even down to the re-styled logo. The boys at Microsoft have clearly seen that the are seriously lagging in the browser department. The new explorer is neat, they've included tabbed browsing (hurrah!) and they have also now included RSS feeds capability. The RSS has been approached differently though, rather than headlines with links that you get in FF, it's a separate page which loads the whole feed like in Opera (you can get a FF extension that does the same if you like). Also included is the little search-bar in the top right which is an invaluable tool on the fox which makes the return to IE6 all the more difficult. So IE7 is a huge leap for the explorer range but will not be shipped as standard till the release of Windows Vista, which will be next year for us home users. Though of course they will hold a degree of browser market share due to users lacking the technical knowledge to change and of course those who fear change, I think that more people are getting tech savvy.

Considering the gap of 5 years between version releases, I find it difficult to think that a monolith like Microsoft will be able to keep up with smaller browser developers like Mozilla's Firefox, as has been shown with Microsoft's ambivalence to browser improvements since beating Netscape in the original browser war and subsequently being caught with their trousers down. But Microsoft is resilient, though they don't have the advantage of being able to employ their bullying techniques, they have shown time after time that they are an irresistible force. We shall have to wait and see what the outcome of this new browser war is.

Some linkage:

Firefox download - http://mozilla.com/products/firefox

Internet Explorer7 beta download - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx

Opera download - http://www.opera.com/

Some fun stuff on the net

2006-05-29T13:30:00.000+01:00

I've been with the girlfriend for the past few days and we've been looking around at some fun stuff on the net. We started with something a friend of mine from college told me about called Hard Gay from Japan. Here is a YouTube link (I won't embed it, though you can do that with anything from YouTube). It's pretty crazy what they can get away with over there. Hoooo!

From that I took her to some old classics that everyone should check out at some point. Many of these are flash, but you'll get the links at each site if your missing the nessecary flash plugin.

badger badger badger - One very addictive song, part of the weebles collection.
angry alien - Bunnies re-enact films in thirty seconds.
salad fingers - Disturbed cartoon series.
rather good - Rather good videos

Thats about as much as we got through as I've got her addicted to myspace now and she has to make regular checks on that. Anyhows, I've gotta roll as I've revision to do.

New Government Tagging System

2006-05-27T17:05:00.000+01:00

The word on the street is that there is a new government tagging system that's been put into place to help other motorists spot bad drivers. Apparently the new system will involve drivers who have been spotted as being a potential hazard being required to have a flag attached to the side of their car. The government directive has chosen the well known St Georges cross flag as the primary marker to be used so as to be clearly identifiable. Particularity bad drivers will be required to have two flags. So if you see anyone with these tags attached to their car, be sure to steer clear.

Never happy with what I've got... a Google post.

2006-05-25T22:34:00.000+01:00

Google offer some great services. They have expanded well out of the remit of a plain search engine, but it's still their search engine service that I like to use most.

I like to have a google account and one of the neatest parts of that is the alternative homepage. If you have a google account then try this - http://google.co.uk/ig

Once you're there and signed in you can modify what is included on the page. Try something like this: Top left click 'add content', a little sidebar slides open. You can modify what sort of jazzy stuff you want displayed. Then you could try something like this: in the little sidebar copy and paste this into the input field that says 'search by site or feed' - http://artsandelbows.blogspot.com//atom.xml

Then as if by magic, there are the latest headlines from your favourite local arts blog on your customisable page. You can do that with any of the local blogs as well as any other site that has a RSS/XML feed. Oh yes, google.co.uk/ig is set as my homepage with a couple of my favourite feeds. Web at a glance.

So here is what I'm not happy with. I can do all sorts of funky stuff like that, but why can't I add my favourite google searches to this page like the images or froogle ones that are default? How hard is that going to be for them magic webcoders at google? My main searches are google scholar and google books. Why do I have to go to the 'more...' section every time and pick it out of a list?

Webmail Webmail Webmail

2006-05-25T18:36:00.000+01:00

Further to the last post about Windows Live Mail v Gmail.

I know many people like to use POP and IMAP email through a client like MSOutlook or Thunderbird. Of course I've used these myself and see many advantages, quick loads, offline reading etc. but there are huge advantages in using webmail. Thanks to always-on broadband, most of us have a constant internet, so we no longer need to quickly connect and collect. The long suffering problem for webmail though has been slow loading of pages for each and every message you want to look at. But thats been changing thanks to the new services being provided by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and their implementation of AJAX scripting. I wanted to get a good look around these new webmail services what the best is.

I started my webmail days with the then wonderful hotmail (I guess it was AOL, but they suck, so I try to forget about that). I've now been wooed away by Gmail (google mail) thanks in large to super smooth loading, simplicity and nearly 3GB of storage. There are also firefox extensions and other apps whereby you can use all this space as online storage thanks to a good third-party API implementation. This 'beta' has been spreading on invitation only for quite a while now and is proving very popular.

So hotmail have countered with Windows Live Mail - you have to click the 'try beta' by the title at sign-in. They didn't support firefox at first, then they did, now they don't again. Most of you will still be using Internet Explorer (God help us!) so this won't be too much of a problem, but even in IE it still uses up to much header space with banner ads. This means the whole email package is squeezed into the bottom half of the screen. They also fill up the right side with banner ads, this is all leaving little space for the serious business of email. Still, it does feel like using outlook express and is fast.

So the third contender for the crown is yahoo!. I've signed up with these guys a few times before, this time to use their messenger service (please o' webgod, when do we get a universal messenger?) but as always with them I've found the whole experience heavily ad laden. The whole 'beta' webmail experience though was a hell of a lot better than Windows Live. They even have they neat, if not pointless function of dragging and dropping emails into the trash. Also, it all works fine in firefox! All in all, it's not too shabby.

Conclusion as to which is the best? Gmail by a head and shoulders. It has so many more innovative functions, eg grouping replied to emails, tagging rather then putting emails in folders, integrated googletalk. Also, the discreet text ads that you hardly notice and certainly don't interfere make Gmail a winner.

If you want a gmail invitation, just mail me through my profile and I'll send you one.

Gimme some skin

2006-05-25T01:17:00.000+01:00

With the wave of new bloggers, welcome all, I've noticed that we are getting some serious skin/theme repetition. So I've made a little effort and got myself a new one to which I made some minor mods. Hope it isn't too difficult for anyone to look at or read from.

Elsewhere on the circuit, seems someone has had the neat idea of listing all the local blogs in one independent spot. So if you haven't already, get yourself over to Thanet Blog List and see if there are any you have missed.

BTW, in case you wondered, we failed miserably at the quiz on every round except Harry Potter. Though it did seem that everyone there has read the books except me, so we weren't the exception.

End of an era

2006-05-24T14:47:00.000+01:00

Thats right homies, it's come to an end. Tonight is the last quiz night at the Churchills, the coolest night in town where you'll find all the cats. This week all the rounds were picked by lasts weeks teams, so will include such topics as WWE, Harry Potter, Quantum Physics and my personal favourite Corronation Street.... actually, I don't know anything about any of them but I do like the real ales! It'll be a damn fun night and if your the worse one there, they give you chocolate! whoop!

The scoop nobody wants

2006-05-24T00:10:00.000+01:00

Sorry to say guys, but I have the scoop that nobody wants but we kinda expected. Eastcliff Richard has quit. I've been in email contact with Eastcliff Richard and he's detailed a list of reasons why. Here it is in his own words:

Kevin asks,
"Whats happening dear fellow? You have closed down your blog."

Richards reply,
"Several reasons dear fellow:

1. I'm having a prolonged sulk. Er, no, that's not it.
Let's start again.

1. Things have got out of hand recently, and I'm not
happy with the turn of events. The blog was meant to
be satire and humour, not argy-bargy, and all I was
hoping to do was have a bit of fun, and maybe make one
or two serious points by sugaring the pill. If other
people found it amusing too, all well and good.

I'm afraid I mishandled the Ram Skate business with
our precious Dr Moores. It's very hard to get 'tone of
voice' across in the written word. I was trying to
keep the debate on a banter level, clearly I failed,
and now everyone seems to have ended up with a bad
case of sense of humour failure.

2. When I started ECR I was genuinely hoping that
other, more alternative blogs would spring up, and
that's happened, which is great. I think it's about
time for me to hand over the baton.

3. There's been such a clamour of people wanting to
know who I am, or who think they know who I am, that
people are pointing the finger at anyone and everyone.
The kind of stupid but scathing nonsense I write is
generally best served up anonymously, there'd be
little point if someone actually did find out who I
am, so I'm getting out while the going's good!
Besides, I wouldn't want to wake up one morning and
find my cliff top mansion burnt down, would I? There
are people like that around here, as I'm sure you
know.

4. TDC is letting Thanet down badly, it could be so
much better (go get 'em, Tony!). Sorry, that's not a
reason, just a political point.

So there it is, the party's over, but it was good, if
a little odd, while it lasted. Good luck with Skin of
Stars, do keep me abreast of hair developments so that
I can recognise you if I ever wander over to
********** for a pint of the Gaddfather's finest.

Please feel free to publish this if you want
(hopefully a bit of a scoop for you). Remember, don't
let the b*st*rds grind you down! I did, and now my
legs are teeny tiny stumps.

Yours

ECR

P.S Sorry about all that Michael Caine stuff when you
had your flash mob. At least you took it in the spirit
it was meant!"

Well there you go fellow bloggers. That's the scoop nobody wanted but alas we have.
Let us keep on blogging, I know I certainly will.

So long Eastcliff Richard. It's been fun.

Please come back, all is forgiven.

2006-05-23T17:29:00.000+01:00

Eastcliff seems to have sunk into silence. His blog is now sub-titled 'Closed due to unexplained fire'.
The blog comments have been turned off. The word on the circuit is that he's thrown in the towel. This is a dispointing outcome to the furore over over the last week or so. Eastcliff has inspired many new bloggers, including me. His blog provided a central point for these new bloggers and frankly the much needed comical relief from all the dull bloggists, again including me. I wonder how well this new breed would do without that. Lets hope this is only a temporary haetus and we can get back on with the serious buisness of ridiculing Thanet.

On that note, I'll introduce a new blogger who is probably the youngest yet at 17.
margatedobson.blogspot.com

A sweet musical find

2006-05-23T16:44:00.000+01:00

The nice thing about doing oonagi is that whenever gigs come up and I'm putting together the info I have to listen to all the music. There is so much music around now that is so accessible that it's difficult to know where to start. Or infact, you may just get total music apathy and refuse to listen to anything but your Elvis collection.

So in putting stuff together this week I came across Peggy Sue & The Pirates that are going to be playing the Lido this week. I know everyone is pirate mad at the moment, so it was only going to be a matter of time till a name like this came along. The music though is stripped down cool. A couple of girls doing their vocal thing with some rhythmic guitar backing. I like it lots. Music doesn't have to be complicated to be cool, musicians don't have to rip the fastest solo on the planet or create the most obscure song structure to be cool ("I love that timing drop from 13/9 to 7/8, maaaan"). Check out PS&thePirates to see what I mean.

If your looking for new music in your own vein, then there is a great site called pandora.com. This is party of the Musical Genome Project. You just enter and artist or a song and it'll play you stuff from other bands that you may like. It's very good, though it does only let you try a limited number of searches (or stations, as they call it) before you have to sign up. Sign up is free but you must be located in the US. A quick search through wikipedia for US zip codes is a good work around for this. I think I located myself somewhere in Alaska.

Happy hunting.

Homeless Charity Event Marred By Image

2006-05-23T03:32:00.000+01:00

Cripes, the Scrine Foundation (a local homelessness charity) seem to have got themselves in a bit of controversy over the flyer for an upcoming event at the Pharmacy Gallery, Margate. The charity is normally sooo careful with their associations, but they seem to have been caught out a bit here with upset at unnecessary depictions of Nazi subjected humiliations. This is a shame to been caught out like this as it's such a worthy charity that deserves all the help and support it can get.

More details of event with the original post and discussion @ Arts & Elbows

A drunken Monday

2006-05-23T02:05:00.000+01:00

I went round to Bills tonight. I've known him since I was brought to Thanet from Coedpoeth and was placed in Christ Church junior, which was then on Royal Road but is now on London Road. We went to secondary school together and is probably the person I've known longest. Tonight we jammed. He's got a new electronic drum kit rigged up through his computer which, which I actually managed to play some beats on! Of course, the playing got worse and worse the more beers we drank, though I noticed how much more I grooved.

We spent time wandering through the wiki funny vandalism list. I only found it while doing the previous blog-post and I've found it terribly addictive. Through this I found an article on the geek language leet eg my name: k3v1n c4rm0dy. Bill was stunned that I didn't know what this is, he can be so geeky sometimes. The thing that I thought is was very useful for is coming up with passwords. I often use phrases for passwords which include numbers, eg 5greenbottles, but it's nice to have a good technique that avoids actual words which is vulnerable to a brute force password scan, see my googlepages link to see a screeny of the result of this type of attack.

Winky

2006-05-21T22:56:00.000+01:00

I'm sure all those of you who use the internet on a regular basis must know wikipedia. The online encyclopedia that is written and moderated by it's users. I'll admit to being a bit of a community obsessive, so the concept of wikipedia suits me just fine. As I'm sure we've all heard though, wikipedia has been having some problems, most famously of which is vandalism. Though this has always been a possible problem, it comes to light more and more as the reason people don't use it. It's a shame as the site self moderates well, with most mis-information being reverted within 2mins (IBM research, 2002).

Alas the more people that use the site, the more bad elements there will be. Earlier this year the Capitol Hill servers had to be banned during an investigation to profile adjustments of public figures. The UK parliament servers also had to be similarily investigated for such profile grooming. Infact, profiles are probably the most vandalised pages on wikipedia, along with the entry on cheese. There was a recently famous example in which two radio one DJs vandalised each others profiles on air, I don't think that is a good example to set. There is a list of funny vandalisms that have been kept for interests sake and there is also list of regular vandalised pages, if you want to know whats most likely to be dodgy

Still, my faith remains. When me and my ma hit the Telegraph Saturday general knowledge crossword and get stuck, the first port of call is always wikipedia (or winky, as my aunty calls it). Pages that are almost invariably safe are the scientific and technology pages. I doubt anyone but the geeks look at those pages, so that keeps me happy. Another page thats safe? My article I did on Manston village earlier this year. More than you ever wanted to know about a small village in the ass-end of Thanet

Blogger Comments

2006-05-21T17:38:00.000+01:00

Geeks aren't dumb and on blogger they have found a very useful tool to improve their own sites Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The tool is that many bloggers, like myself, allow un-verified anonymous comments. All the geeks have to do is write a little bot that goes round to all these sites posting comments like 'your blog is the coolest I've every seen >>'. The little angle brackets look nice and innocuous don't they? They are links to a site. Maybe the site the link points to has malicious script on it (the ones I've included just go to oonagi, so it's safe). More likely it's just a link. Here is where the SEO comes in. The more people that link to your site, the higher it ranks on search engines. So what are we supposed to do? The last thing I and many others want to do is make people log in to comment. Blogger does provide you with a tool of your own though. Word verification on comments. A funny little graphic where you just have to re-type the words. I'm afraid that's what I've had to do. It's an annoyance, but alas a necessary one.

Second Saturday

2006-05-20T16:17:00.000+01:00

The end of the first week of my new blog. Been an interesting experience bouncing round these blogger networks. Made a nice change from the immaturity myspace. Went to the girlfriends in East Grinstead last night, made her get a myspace, you can find it here and ask her to be your friend if your so inclined. For all it's annoyances, everyone has a myspace so it's a bit silly to avoid it. It's like saying 'we never needed roads before', well, kinda like that. Of course, it's mainly filled with under 25s and the under 25s at heart. The blogger networks seem to be more old dudes (could do with some dudettes) and I'm not sure exactly which catagory I'm fitting in these days... actually, I've been alot happier blogging than myspacing, so I think I know which one I am.

The oonagi webcast 5 was the first to recieve a vote on the site... 1 star out of 10. Not too hot but what the hell, I ain't gonna let others negativity get me down. Alas, one thing that will slow me down is the essay due in on Monday and the huge amounts of revision I have to do for my exams coming up in June. Think I'm gonna try to re-focus with an image makeover, out with the mo-ho and goatee, in with the..... grade one I expect.