Sebastien Tellier - "Divine"

France this year, bit the bullet, and actually entered a decent tune into the Eurovision song contest - Sebastien Tellier's "Divine", which is produced by one half of Daft Punk.
In any case, the Eastern European countries all voted for each other, which resulted in some instantly forgettable Russian entry winning.


Anyway, here's the video:

Daft Obama

Adam Freeland at Coachella, California, April 2008

Reatek R8168 on Hardy

Here's a script and instructions on how to Fix R8168 on Hardy

Westport to Dublin

Normally a journey of 3 hours, here's Westport to Dublin in only 10 minutes




hat tip: Damian Mulley

Google AppEngine

Today I got my Google AppEngine application approved by Google. Great stuff - now I've got to start brushing up on Python.

On the downside ,I'm out of work because of the credit crunch - they've announced massive layoffs where I work.

Google Appengine

Introducing Google Appengine

Google Earth update

Google Earth update to imagery in 86 countries.

April Fool roundup

Google Australia introduces gDay and MATE technology
Flying penguins filmed by the BBC
YouTube rickrolls
Scientists create human bear pig chimera
Gmail custom time
Google announces Project Virgle
Seaside for Java
Google Calendar WakeUp Kit

Ordb

Via ITwire.com

A database of open relay email servers, provided until late 2006 as a voluntary service to help email administrators block spam, has suddenly re-activated but is returning every address queried as being on its blacklist.

Administrators of email systems should have stopped querying the database (relays.ordb.org) in December 2006 when it shut down, but some failed to do so. That was no problem until today, queries were simply rejected, but now the address of any email server presented is being returned as an open relay. This results in the querying system rejecting all incoming mails from that server.

Linkdump

Create online mini-cities
Your city grows based on the amount of clickthrus
Blogoscopia
Google Blogoscoped mini city
Google Trends as a meme tracker
Shell Fu
Bash one liners
The death and life
of the American Newspaper
Every South Park episode - uncensored, free and legit
SugarCRM 5.1 upcoming features
Was the Death Star attack an inside job?
mysql --i-am-a-dummy

Making an iso image of a cd (Ubuntu)

To make an iso image of a cd in Ubuntu Gutsy, put the cd in the drive. Open up a terminal
and cd to the directory where you want the iso image to be copied to on your hard drive.

Then type:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cd.iso # for cdrom

This will create an iso image called "cd.iso" in your current directory.

For a DVD just type:
dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso

Lorenzo Lamas

Lorenzo Lamas is currently at no.1 in google trends.

Linkdump

Best Hate Mail Ever - with Victorian era hate at the end
Django vs ASP.NET MVC
Game Programming with D
Chryp - php blogging engine
WikiLeaks on insider trading at JP Morgan
How to pull off a Rickroll in real life
Deliberate foreclosure
Crash of 1929 timeline
5 hours of cable news = 1 minute of science coverage
Kottke is ten years old
Google Docs clippy easter egg
Retro sabotage - parodies of retro video games
March updates on Google Earth/Maps

Titanic in 5 Seconds

The Matrix versus Carl Sagan

"Ever wondered if scientist Carl Sagan and Agent Smith from The Matrix might be the same person somehow? I redubbed a scene from the Matrix to prove the point!"

New Towns Added to Google Streetview

Salt Lake City
Ogden, Utah
Helby city, Utah
Payson, Utah
Kansas city
Boise,Idaho

Gateway ML3108 - XP drivers

If you are downgrading your Gateway ML3108 laptop from Vista to XP you'll need XP drivers.

They are all listed over here.

Skype fonts too big after KDE4 install?

On Ubuntu Gutsy, if you have installed KDE 4.0, as per this page on Kubuntu.org, you might notice that in Gnome , your Skype font is much too large.

The solution is to

sudo apt-get qt4-qtconfig

then, from the terminal , type

/usr/bin/qtconfig-qt4

You will notice that the QT window has fonts about the same size as the big Skype ones. Change them using the QT Config interface, select File -> Save.

Your Skype fonts will then be back to something more normal in Gnome.

Ubuntu Gutsy - installing Compiz Snow effect

UPDATE: this post is out of date. Please look elsewhere on installing the Snow plugin

Create a compiz subdirectory in your home folder

mkdir ~/compiz

Install the packages required for compiling compiz plugins

sudo apt-get install compiz-bcop compiz-dev build-essential libxcomposite-dev libpng12-dev libsm-dev libxrandr-dev libxdamage-dev libxinerama-dev libstartup-notification0-dev libgconf2-dev librsvg2-dev libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libgnome-desktop-dev x11proto-scrnsaver-dev libxss-dev libxslt1-dev libtool

Download Snow

wget -O ~/compiz/snow.tar.gz 'http://gitweb.opencompositing.org/?p=fusion/plugins/snow;
a=snapshot;h=01d0ff6ec71dae4699bc990e0114569c8ad4e083'

Extract , make , and install

cd ~/compiz/
tar -xvzf snow.tar.gz
cd snow
make
make install

Restart XOrg (logout/login).




Source:13 Compiz plugins for Ubuntu Gutsy

Freecom Musicpal

Over the weekend I bought a Freecom Musicpal internet radio from PC World. In terms of form factor it's light and small enough to fit on your kitchen windowsill. Installation was a breeze - all I had to do was enter my WEP key once - inputted by turning the dials to select letters - and I was onboard.

The Musicpal comes with a lifetimes subscription to Vtuner, and currently has approximately around 4,000 radio stations to choose from, under every genre imaginable. At present only mp3 streams are supported, but Freecom have said that they are currently working on Windows Media (wma) stream support. Expect that to be offered in any future firmware updates. ( In "settings", there's an update option to update the firmware)

Soundwise, the speaker isn't of enormous high quality, but for a kitchen radio its perfectly adequate.

Why go for an internet radio? Well, for starters , you don't need to power up a laptop. Plus the choice of thousands of stations means that you wont be short of choices of even the most eclectic music. This afternoon , for example, while preparing the Sunday dinner, we went from Irish trad to German Schlager, with a dose of Congolese dancehall ,Senegalese guitar-folk and a blast of Austrian classical, plus some cheesy French pop. Your listening habits are definitely changed with such a device, and it's a must-have if you are sick of the usual 24x7 commercial radio. And since it's now residing in our kitchen, and has an extremely easy to use interface, our musical exploration of the world is only starting. And once Freecom offer WMA support in a future update, the stations available will expand to thousands more.

I bought it for £79.99 in PC World , but no doubt it's probably cheaper online. Another thing to bear in mind as well , when it comes to learning a language - once you have one of these radios in your kitchen, it makes it so much easier to tune into a French, German, Spanish etc language station - and just having that in the background is a great aid to getting familiar with how a language is pronounced and spoken.

As part of making the Internet pervasive in consumer devices, the Internet Radio is a very interesting first step - I would expect it to be built-in to hi-fi systems in the future. But for now, to get a taste of the future, get hold of one of these devices. Your listening habits will change forever.

Important sidenote: You MUST have wifi enabled in your home for the Musicpal to work. However, it does have a standard network socket at the back if you prefer to run a network cable to it.