4. 2010-05-14

    Narrowcasting : Just how demographically targetted can a facebook ad be?

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  5. 2009-11-11

    As usual, beatworm.co.uk is the last site with the news.

    The baby finally came. We have a daughter. She's called Ada. I love middle initials, I enjoy my 'M' so much that I thought she might like one too, so she's Ada May. Her birthday is the 23rd of October. She came one day early.

    Lots of people have spotted the connection to the proto-programmer and feminist icon , or the programming language that took her name. Truth be told, these are excellent associations, but supplementary; the original inspiration came from a pop song I was very taken with. It's got Sufjan Stevens on piano, you know.

    Ada

    These photos are all taken at the "Woah dude, I've got a baby!" and "troops of admiring relatives" ' phases, and are a few weeks old. We're currently at the "Oh bugger, she actually isn't going to sleep for more than 30 minutes in 24 hours" phase, and photo-ops have been pushed far from mind.

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  9. 2010-02-24

    Ocean robot 'plans experiments' : The Gulper AUV, using an embedded software engine called 'T-Rex', can navigate autonomously, and make planning decisions about how best to schedule its task list of experiments.

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  10. 2010-01-23

    That A.C. Newman, he has an enviable work ethic. New TNP album is due May 4th! I presume that's a USA release date.

    Rather excitingly, the recording sessions featured St Vincent , Will Sheff , and slightly less excitingly, the Dap-Kings horns , and Zach Condon . The album title is 'Together'.

    The New Pornographers are due to play this year's Primavera Sound, although I suspect I will be giving it a miss this time around.

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  11. 2009-10-14

    Back at the start of the summer, I went back to Barcelona, for a second visit to the very wonderful Primavera Sound festival. I travelled with the rather pregnant Mrs S., and (Uncle) Danny came along for the latter half of the stay, and also joined us for the festival.

    Barcelona is still a marvellous city, and Primavera is still my favourite rock festival. While we were out there, Barcelona FC won the champions league . I can't pretend that I have any sympathy, interest, or even understanding of football, but I really enjoyed the electric city-wide atmosphere on the day; silent, tense and concentrating, as countless viewers watched the televised match, suddenly punctuated by sighs and unison cheers as chances were missed, and goals won; culminating in the riot of celebration erupting from every door and window onto the streets when the final victory was realised.

    The festival was another success. The personal highlight, for me was the chance to finally see Lightning Bolt , unusually for them, an on-stage performance, that was one of the most exhilarating live shows I have ever seen. Shellac , playing again on the same ATP stage as last year, as good value as always, another chance to see Oneida , and sample some of the "heritage" acts, giving it some legend, like Sonic Youth , Throwing Muses , and Neil Young . A suprisingly energetic Michael Nyman band set in the indoor auditori was an unexpected highlight, as were a couple of new-to-me performances from Andrew Bird , and Gang Gang Dance . I was amused by Sunn O))) , but sadly unable to persuade either of my companions to stay and watch more than ten minutes of their set.

    More disappointing were Marnie Stern , who I'd been looking forward to seeing again, seemed to be suffering from terrible sound and equipment problems, Deerhunter transforming a great album into a weak coldplay-lite live experience, an uninspired and frankly routine Art Brut performance, and a generically dull Jarvis set.

    Barcelona '09

    It turns out that I edited and uploaded my photos to flickr shortly after returning to the UK, but what with all the busying and rushing around re-organising and home renovating, I seem to have forgotten to switch the set to public, at least until now.

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  12. 2010-01-23

    I can't believe it's taken me this long to figure out, but PhotoBooth is amusing for babies.

    Photo on 2010-01-23 at 10.10 #4

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  13. 2009-10-13

    Dodgem Logic : Alan Moore is preparing to launch a new "underground magazine", with a mixture of content, including comics, and an intriguing sounding eight-page swappable insert for "local content"

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  14. 2010-01-22

    Pixel Qi : Amidst all the talk of OLED and speculation about colour e-ink, this modal hybrid display might be quietly revolutionary.

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  19. 2009-10-05

    We have recently had a wood-burning stove installed. With a baby on the way, I understand it's traditional to frantically embark on home improvement. Our house is old and draughty, as homes built around open fireplaces, one in every room, must be. The current central heating isn't very optimised for heat delivery, especially since we removed a good portion of the internal doors, and have yet to get around to replacing them.

    The chimney breast, in what has become the main living room needed some attention, having suffered some water damage long ago, due to leaking. The leaks are gone, but the brickwork and surface plaster were left saturated and continued to deteriorate. Rounding it all off, it was mounted with a bulky, mantelpiece of slate, with ugly pseudo-wood veneer, and filled with garish orange ceramic tiles.

    Installing the stove was a way of addressing these issues simultaneously. When fired up, it should produce a generous heat in the centre of the house, well suited to the original building design and airflow. As part of the installation, we've had the chimney lined, the fireplace and hearth reconstructed, and the chimney breast re-surfaced. We ordered the stove from Kindle in Bristol , and they also managed all the installation work, which only took a couple of days.

    New stove

    The stove is a ClearView Pioneer 400 . A clean-burn design, and the installation is certified for use in smokeless zones, such as Bristol. It's a multi-fuel configuration, which can be used to burn (smokeless) coal as well as firewood. We've built a small log store in the back yard, and filled it with a metre-cubed of sawn firewood.

    Due to the unseasonably hot weather, I've not had too much of a chance to get it up and running, aside from a few test sessions. I'm not yet sure what our practical fuel consumption will resolve to. In my tests, I've so far determined that it is capable of generating a startling amount of heat after just a few hours of operation.

    On a less practical note, it is simply enormous fun having a large burning fire you can fiddle about with, sitting within easy reach. It's very easy to get hypnotised by the thing, when it's burning. I find it considerably more interesting to watch than most things that are on the television.

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  20. 2009-12-26

    GNEVE : An inevitable addition to the available range of of digital video editing tools.

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  21. 2009-10-05

    Life behind glass : Photographer Michael Wolf captures human exhibits in their natural environment of downtown Chicago.

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  23. 2009-08-05

    Beehaus : Urban dwellers are being encouraged to keep bees by Natural England , with the launch of the Beehaus, an new user-friendly urban beehouse design from the firm Omlet .

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  24. 2009-12-12

    There's a handy little command line tool nestled away inside Apple's system WiFi framework.

    Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport

    It doesn't come with a man page, but --help will print a usage guide.


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  27. 2009-08-01

    Electric suicide ants : Colonies of lasius neglectus , the poison-resistant "Asian super ant", whose magnetic compulsion for electricity sources is so strong they can represent a fire hazard, have been identified in the UK for the first time.

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  28. 2009-12-03

    Leopard introduced a number of system level changes to font handling. There's a system daemon, fontd that handles runtime font registration. Some of the new features that are implemented include on-demand font activation, on a per-application basis and system font-protection, which guards against removal or disabling certain fundamental system fonts.

    There's a couple of situations where you might need to interface with the font registry database. Sometimes the system font caches can become garbled, and require a manual flush - before leopard these could be easily found under /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS - now they're squirreled away under /var and managed by fontd. Font protection might stop you from legitimately manipulating certain font files; in a prepress environment you might need to replace one of the magic System protected fonts with a custom version.

    There's a command line utility provided, called ' atsutil ' which offers a user interface to these features. It has a fine man page .

    To purge the font caches, which will fix persistant text rendering problems, you use the command atsutil databases -removeUser

    To display the list of System protected fonts use the command atsutil fontprotection -files .

    To globally disable the font protection feature, use the command atsutil fontprotection -off . Re-enable it with the -on switch.

    Don't remove system protected fonts , unless you are replacing them with a workable substitute.

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  29. 2009-08-01

    1. Obtain S60 smartphone. I'm quite fond of my Nokia E51

      2. Install Python for series 60 on your phone.

      3. On a nearby OS X Leopard notebook, setup a new bluetooth serial port, type RS232. ( System preferences -> Bluetooth -> Advanced ). Call it something like 'Bluetooth-console'. Ensure the Mac is paired with the phone.

      4. In a terminal, run ' screen /dev/tty.Bluetooth-console '

      5. Set your Mac's bluetooth to 'discoverable'

      6. Launch the Python application you've just installed on your phone. Select Options -> Bluetooth Console -> Other. Choose your Mac, and then select the Bluetooth-console serial port as the device.

      7. Meanwhile, back on the Mac: a python shell will start in your screen session after a small delay.

      8. In the python session, " import audio "

      9. In the python session, " audio.say('I never realised my phone had a built-in speech synthesizer') "

      10. Fall over in astonishment.
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  30. 2009-11-20

    marinetraffic.com : for those moments when you find yourself in need of a realtime interactive map of all the transponder-equipped shipping on the seas.

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  32. 2009-11-18

    Executed Offenders : The Texas department of Criminal Justice seemingly publishes the last statements made by all its executed criminals.

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  35. 2009-07-18

    Smiley Squid : This piglet squid has been making waves, because of the arrangement of its pigmentation.

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