Tuesday, 24 January 2006

My Squeezebox has arrived!

I've been eyeing off one of these since last year at Borcon in the US when Jason Vokes spoke so glowingly about his. There are other Network Music Players around, but as well as the usual features, this one is just so damn pretty.

Well, finally it arrived yesterday :-)

I'm on holidays from later this week, so am looking forward to getting this set up. Looking forward less to re-ripping all those CD's at higher quality, but it's a small price to pay I guess.

Our Tivo has totally changed how we watch TV, I'm hoping this will have the same effect on how we listen to music. I've got boxes of CD's that I rarely listen to, this will hopefully change that.

And hey, you've got to love a new toy that comes with an SDK :-)

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Wednesday, 16 November 2005

Fairytale of New York

Getting in the mood of the season, so thought I'd post my favourite Christmas song of all time. It was always sure to bring a tear to my eye when played late on a drunken Christmas Eve, probably more so since Kirsty McColl was killed.

Probably one for after the kiddies have gone to bed though

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/thepoguesx12x12x05

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IM Poetry

People have been putting short messages, and even images, in their instant messenger display names for awhile now, but the last week or two is the first time I've seen poetry.

One of my Borland colleagues in China is obviously enjoying autumn in Shanghai as he has been waxing poetic via his IM sign-on name. Yesterday's was my favourite:

"leaves are golden, I drive over them carefully. sky is blue, I drive under it happily" - Dali Xue

Nice one Dali, made me smile all morning.

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Monday, 26 September 2005

This one's going straight into the pool room

I spoke with Matthew Overington, a journalist in Australia, a little while back about Model Driven Development in general, and ECO in particular. The resulting article showed up on BuilderAU back in August.

I wouldn't normally post links to sites that have linked to an article I'm in, but I'm so tickled by this one, I just had to post. The article has been referenced on the Healthy Hair website, specifically on the Hair Loss blog (Who knew there was a blog about hair loss? Why wasn't I told?).

Now the less kind amongst you who know what I look like, will no doubt be able to construct some terribly amusing reason why I'd be on this site. Oh, how we'd laugh! Sorry to spoil it for you, but you'd be wrong. There were no photos in the article. Ha!

My mum will be so proud. I'm not even upset that they messed up the quote. This one's going straight into the pool room.

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Just claiming my blog at Technorati

Technorati Profile

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Tuesday, 20 September 2005

Talkman for Sony PSP

I wonder if this means I can get work to buy me a PSP?

From Wired:

One of the most interesting pieces of PSP software here isn't even a game. Talkman is a voice-based translation system that uses a small microphone that plugs into the PSP's USB port. To make sure that TGS attendees fully experienced the software, bilingual hostesses demonstrated Talkman in a soundproof booth that blocked out the cacophonous show floor.

Although the interface is cartoony -- all the translation is handled through Max, a rather hideously designed purple bird -- the software underneath is sophisticated. First, you pick out a location or theme to the phrases you want to translate -- anything from "hospital" to "restaurant" to "nightlife." Then, you speak into the microphone.

Max spits out a list of phrases he thinks you might be saying. If what you said appears on the list, select it and Max will speak it back in any one of four languages -- Chinese, Korean, English or Japanese. I tried some English and Japanese phrases, and Max recognized most everything perfectly. I'll definitely be picking this up when Sony releases it in Japan on Nov. 17.

Here's another article with a screenshot. Yes, the UI is ugly, but I still want to try it out.

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Tuesday, 6 September 2005

Stop, you had me at 'Vampires in Red Trench Coats'

I was bummed that I missed last year's Animania in Sydney, but I noticed a poster today advertising this year's event in October. 

If you're wondering what the title of this post is about, then you'll just have to check out the site, won't you?

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Friday, 28 January 2005

Attack Analysis

I've always found analysis of attempts to hack systems extremely interesting. I'm not sure if this reflects some miscreant leaning on my part, but I've enjoyed these ever since I read Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll years ago.

I've collected up a few links over the years to these types of articles, such as:

• The Strange Tale of the Denial of Service Attacks Against GRC.COM
• Windows Machines Engaging in Denial of Service Attacks Against GRC.COM
• Distributed Reflection Denial of Service
• How a Criminal Might Infiltrate Your Network

Well, I've just found Robert Hensing's blog where he's been regularly detailing new attacks his team uncovers.

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Tuesday, 2 November 2004

Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence

I didn't quite make it to the cinema release in the US, but GITS2 has its premiere in Sydney next weekend, and I have tickets!

Madman has the details (half way down the page, right hand side), but Director Mamoru Oshii and Producer Mitsuhisa Ishikawa will both be there.

I nearly bought it on DVD in Tokyo two weeks back. I was actually lining up at the register with it in my hand, before I realised that version didn't have English subtitles, let alone an English dub. So, glad I waited to see it on the big screen :-)

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Friday, 30 July 2004

Ghost in the Shell 2 Trailer

Oooohhh!!!

Hang on a sec....

GITS 2 opens in US cinemas on...Sept 17th.

Malcolm leaves US after Borcon...Sept 16th :-(

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Tuesday, 1 June 2004

Newsgator Defaults

This post made me smile. Being the first of the month, I guess a lot of ISP's are sending out bandwidth usage emails. I got one this morning telling me I'd exceeded my allowance in May. I guess that's the downside to Anders and Danny linking to you :-)

That said, after Chee Wee's post, I checked my Newsgator install, and noted it was set to check feeds every 60 minutes! Does anyone except Scoble post this frequently, and even if they do, do I care? So, it's now set to 1440 minutes. I only really get a chance to read these once a day at most anyway.

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Friday, 14 May 2004

Comments and Trackbacks

Finally got around to setting up Comments and Trackbacks via Haloscan, and they seem to be working OK.

Now, let's find out if anybody is actually reading this stuff :-)

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