| Friday 30th September 2005 23:11CDT | → 0 Comments |
ImageMagick just r0cks! Turning a day’s worth of webcam images (which comes to 96 for those who care) into an animated GIF was trivially easy. The command is:
convert -loop 0 -delay 40 *.jpg anim_webcam.gif
The result is here. Beware: it’s 6.5Mb in total so broadband is recommended and don’t blame me if your browser goes boom.
It loops continuously with 0.4s between frames so you might have to wait for every frame to load to experience the full effect.
My only regret is not having tried this earlier in the year when it was lighter for longer. Maybe I’ll set the cam to 5 minute captures to get more juicy raw data.
| Thursday 29th September 2005 18:16CDT | → 0 Comments |
82 year old ‘heckler’ chucked out of Labour conference. Why is anyone surprised over this? Admittedly it would, under normal circumstances, be a non-story but it just speaks volumes about Noo Labour’s authoritarian attitude to dissent and how the leadership is just not to be questioned. Like a good delegate, he should all belt up and do as he’s told.
There are also more worrying signs when the party somehow got the gentleman in question ‘detained’ under anti-terror laws. Pay attention boys and girls - this is the future: every offence being ‘recast’ as a terrorist threat or potential terrorist threat or incitement to the possibility of a terrorist threat or glorifying the incitement of the possibility of a terrorist threat.
| Sunday 25th September 2005 22:27CDT | → 0 Comments |
Yesterday I went to visit Denise, who is currently renting a friend’s cottage in Alton, Hampshire. This is to give her the space to do up her own house for selling purposes. We had a jolly time - lunch in town, some shopping and a visit to the grounds of Alton Abbey, which is a fully working abbey though we didn’t actually see any monks who must have been busy, hiding or on holiday. They even have their own website.
I also set up her shiny new ADSL modem, even though it will shortly be replaced by a wireless equivalent as she seems to have been impressed by my wire-free lifestyle.
| Friday 23rd September 2005 22:22CDT | → 0 Comments |
So much for the webcam - that’s what you get when trying to run in on Windows, for which I can’t find any decent webcam capture-and-upload software.
Welcome to the police state.
| Wednesday 21st September 2005 19:53CDT | → 0 Comments |
The webcam is back, now that I’ve set up my Windows box as a ‘media centre’. It’s in my sitting room connected to the amp and will have my music collection on it, as well as using it to stream radio stations through iTunes amongst other things. Next stage is an inline connection to the amp of my RF speaker system so I can have music in any room. The days of physical media are over - welcome to the days of integrated media appliances!
| Monday 19th September 2005 22:27CDT | → 0 Comments |
One to-be-expected meme that has been picked up by countless blogs is international talk like a pirate day. I’ve been tempted to find out all sites that mention it and add ‘Avast!’ as a single comment - as a sort of ‘meme tracker’ or even a ‘meme wrecker’. Maybe I could use this keyboard.
| Sunday 18th September 2005 18:53CDT | → 0 Comments |
I’ve noticed something from the various leaders’ speeches at the UN 60th World Summit - all the UN’s problems seem to be someone else’s fault. Have said leaders forgotten that the United Nations is very much intergovernmental and very much not greater than the sum of its parts? This summit may go down to failure but only because the larger countries are finding the UN no longer wants to be a vehicle for them to push their own agendas.
Two more examples of how I’m losing faith in BBC news reporting: just about every time the UN summit was discussed on the various news programmes on Radio 4 they always interviewed the US representitives, thus giving the impression the summit would only succeed if the US said so. There were 170 countries represented at the UN this week - what was their position? What was the position of the geographical ‘blocs’ (such as South America or the Middle East?). You’d be hard pressed to hear those views.
Secondly, from The World This Weekend which settled itself at the Lib Dems conference. The interviewer, when talking to Charles Kennedy, kept banging on about whether they were ‘left’ or ‘right’, whether they were a threat to the Tories, etc. Not once were their polices covered. It’s ironic when people complain they don’t know what the Lib Dems stand for - reporting like that does little to inform them.
| Thursday 15th September 2005 20:27CDT | → 0 Comments |
Yesterday was party time at work. More specifically in the evening and to celebrate the company being five years old. It was a formal affair at the office (our lower floor was cleared out) with employees wearing suits as a number of current and former customers had been invited along with various dignitaries such as the deputy mayoress, who made a speech wishing us well.
Apart from champagne, nibbles and a jazz band (but no dancing) the highlight of the evening was a chocolate fountain, which one used to coat sweet delicacies. It had to be seen to be believed and was a great, if fattening, hit.
Something wicked this way comes. The worst, IMHO, must be the proposed dentention of suspects for up to three months. Imagine if that had happened to you - based, undoubtedly, on secret evidence which you weren’t allowed to challenge. Anyone is potentially a suspect, especially as the police have got it so very wrong before. Being arrested would be a terrifying event for anyone but after 2+ months of incarceration, during which you may well have lost your job, your partner/family and probably your friends, your mental state would be in pieces and you may well agree to anything if they promise to let you go (which they wouldn’t, now they can pin something on you). There’s a word for that: torture.
Now, while I await bf’s call, I shall rant about his bank which apparently charges him for receiving money transferred internationally (i.e. from me) even though I’ve also paid a fee. I’ve always had a low opinion of US banking, especially as they make a big deal out of ‘free checking’ despite free banking having been standard here for over fifteen years.
| Sunday 11th September 2005 10:49CDT | → 0 Comments |
As part of the National Heritage Open Day, Daryl and I visited an old WW2 air raid shelter that was built into the remains of Foxenden Quarry (which now contains a car park). There wasn’t a great deal to see, as all beds, equipment, etc. had been removed, but the very idea of it was interesting - especially as it went so deep underground beneath the centre of Guildford. Daryl found the chalk walled passages particularly fascinating.
Pictures of our adventures. Lighting was limited so everyone (there were about fifteen of us) had to bring torches. The flash on my camera gives an entirely false impression - apart from immediately inside the entrance, it was pitch black.
| Friday 9th September 2005 22:26CDT | → 0 Comments |
Waiting for bf to call, so I will ask myself: how much do I hate New Labour? Let me count the ways:
Six civil liberties campaigners have been arrested outside a summit of European ministers on Tyneside. There is a press release from NO2ID:
“If today
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