mr annoying
It’s official, James Blunt is the 4th most annoying thing in the country! Pointless, but good to know.
Welcome to Catch
a story of coffee, music and football
gig dates
For your diary:
Snow Patrol - BIC 26/11
Automatic - Fire Station 27/10
Delays - Opera House 20/09
gallery shiny
There’s a lot of much hyped web technology out there in interweb land right now but even as a software developer, I don’t have a clue what most of them are about, let along know enough to use them. If I’ve been programming at work all day, the last thing I want to do is come home and do the same thing!
Never the less, occasionally something comes along that gets my attention. This short post is about one such thing.
The galleries here on catch are a pretty simple affair. A bit of php and a sprinkling of css creates a grid of thumbnails, all the same size and nicely aligned. (Not that I’m not proud of them being coded from scratch).
Wouldn’t it be nice to have something a little different? A couple of weeks ago, A List Apart described a system for creating magazine style image maps, with images of different layouts and sizes positioned together to fit perfectly. It works using php and dynamic resizing, so it’s a little bandwidth heavy if not cached in some way. Read about the workings in their article, as I won’t go into the maths here.
As a demo, I’ve created a test page which uses the code to display some of the images from my photo section. The script takes a random number of random photos from a selected gallery (so one may appear more than once) and lays them out nicely. Follow the links below and decide whether this could be the next generation of website photo gallery?
Dorset Coast Gallery
Poole Sunset Gallery
Marwell Zoo Gallery
listening to: razorlight
I was always of the belief that you self title your debut album, because it meant that the band name got read out twice as much and it engrained on people’s minds, perhaps I was wrong, perhaps Mr Borrell et al are trying to start again, who knows.
To say I’ve heard and read mixed reviews about this would be an understatement, it’s either really good or so awful that words can’t describe how much you’d rather listen to Ronan’s new version of Iris. I’ll say this, it’s not the greatest album of the year but it’s more than listentoable. Just try not to listen to the words and you’ll be fine. Yes, it’s a bit samey but did you really expect any different?
While Razorlight were last years artic monkeys (here today and gone tomorrow), I don’t believe that the slightly negative feel towards them I get from the general public is necessarily their fault. Yes, my overriding memory of them is of a floundering headline set at last years IOW festival, where they had an hour on stage and only 40 minutes of songs between them, but I don’t think the band organised it themselves. Someone somewhere was clearly lacking a clue. Also, while I don’t know the guy personally and so can’t really comment, the fact that Jonny Borrell comes across as being rather up himself doesn’t do the band any favours.
Rambling rant over, back to the music. At 35 minutes, the album needs to be another 10 minutes longer in my book. At that length, the songs really need to be strong, which while easy to listen to, they’re sadly just not. I’m willing to bet that there are only a few from here that you’ll remember in a couple of months, ‘In the Morning’ and ‘America’ being amongst them. I’d also rather have the version of ‘Kirby’s House’ from the War Child album than the slow version here, but that’s just personal preference.
Conclusion, listentoable, but only for Razorlight fans or people who can’t not buy a new album, the rest of you, approach with caution.
musical notes
In space of a couple of little asides, I give you the following non-related sentences.
Firstly, congratulations to the Guillemots on their Mercury Music Prize nomination. As a band I like, they’ll never win, but then look what happened to the last lot to win, you know the ones. What happened to them? I’m also saddened that the list contains so few albums I own or am likely to buy. The judges obviously got it wrong.
Secondly, Mr Ronan Keating, take your second rate cover of Iris and never let one of your songs grace the radio again. You’ve over stepped the line this time.
Lastly, in an idea blatantly copied from here may I present some sort of mid july summery playlist thing, it’s in no particular order as I had to rush it in order to keep the Mercury news current, sorry bout that.
Razorlight - In the Morning
Guillemots - Annie, Lets not Wait
Captain - Glorious
Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
The Delays - Nearer than heaven
Jim Noir - Eanie Meany
Turin Brakes - Jackinabox
Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
Breaks Co-op - Duets
Furthering this little idea, I might try and get it as an imix on itunes, or on last.fm or something, but not until I decide which.
name on the door
It may be 7 months since I started, but today I finally got a permenant name sign on my office door. It’s like I finally belong!
money for running
Yesterday was BBC’s Sports Relief where for anyone outside the uk who might stumble across this, comedians and sports personalities help to try and raise money to help people in the UK and around the world.
For my small part in this event, I joined 423,000 others in being sponsored to run a mile. Again for those people reading this who don’t know what a mile is, it’s that distance that you think isn’t really very far, but find out it is when you’re running it on a hot Saturday morning. I’ll admit that I hadn’t run that distance for an awful long time before my one practise attempt last Tuesday, but touch wood, I’m not feeling any worse for the experience. I even kept my one red sock on for the rest of the day, though I don’t think many people paid any attention to the guy walking around with odd socks on.
I’d like to say a little thankyou to all the peeps who sponsored me, you know who you are and you’re all good people. Some £12 million got raised (not all by me) which is all jolly good. If you still feel like giving some money, you’ll find this link useful http://www.sportrelief.com/donate/.
Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go sit down for a week.
through the windowpane
I’ve been shamelessly ranting about the Guillemots since last Christmas. Now the waiting is over, it’s time to put up or shut up because the album is out.
The first time I got to listen to ‘through the windowpane’, I was sat in the back of a car, and over the noise of the road and the radio in the front, I could hardly hear anything, even with the trusty iPod turned up to levels that the EU would rather I not be able to access. Not good I thought. Sure, the singles ‘Trains to Brazil’, ‘We’re Here’ and ‘Made-up Love Song #43′ are all there and I’ve previously posted my praise for them, but I was getting worried that there was nothing else.
Lucky for me I was wrong. Just don’t listen to this in the car, especially a noisy car. It’s not your average album, it’s orchestral, it’s atmospheric, it’s best appreciated being played loud on a pair of blinking good speakers.
Tracks like the starter ‘Little Bear’ are simply beautiful. Elsewhere it’s a real mixture, quiet and loud, fast and slow, but it stands out as being what the band wanted to produce, not some record company exec.
Worth listening to. Worth buying. Worth waiting for. That’s all I have to say.
shuttle launch videos
Surely these will get kids interested in science!
dont just switch
This week, Sophos released a report detailing malware trends in the first half of 2006. The tag line on the webpage reads:
“Malware statistics suggest it is time for home users to switch to Macs”
It goes on to reason that this is because the vast majority of malware is written for Windows and that none of the top 10 viruses or virus families can affect Macs. (I’ll use the work virus to cover viruses, trojans, worms etc for simplicity). While they point out that the first virus for OS X was released this February, this was ok, because it failed to spread. Let me address these points if I may:
I’ve got both a Windows PC and a Mac. Do I have a problem with viruses? No. Is this because one is inherently safer than the other? No. Really? Yes. Correct, the vast majority of malware is written for Windows, but is this because OS X is harder to crack? I doubt it, other reports I’ve seen state that Apple has more open security holes and takes longer to close them. Face it, while Windows is the dominant operating system, people will target it. If the roles were switched, so would the target.
So is the Mac invulnerable? No. Sure there are exploits out there (as I’ve already pointed out). Even Mac users can fall for simple phishing schemes, (not technically malware, but I’d put it in the same area). In my opinion, the weak link in the system is the user. Me, or you. Again in my opinion, Mac users are more tech savvy than the average Windows user, they know how to keep themselves safe, it’s not the computer. People will click on that button, or open that email regardless of what machine they’re using. While you couldn’t do without any protection given an experienced user, you would certainly be safer.
So why should Sophos give out this advice? I don’t know. Personally it just doesn’t make sense. The argument is all wrong and it’s all just a little suspicious. Let’s put it this way, would you follow a tyre manufacturers advice about which car to buy? No.
So let me give you some advice. Don’t just buy a mac because you think it’s safer. Definitely don’t take advice on which machine to buy from an anti virus company which seems to have made the recommendation out of the blue and based on bad arguments. Buy a Mac because you want one. Simple. As for protecting yourself, follow these simple tips:
- Get an antivirus product. I use AVG on my pc, and ClamXav on my Mac (yes, I have anti-virus on my mac). Both of these are free.
- Keep your anti-virus updated. Every day if possible or whenever you’re online.
- Get a firewall, Zone Alarm is free and does the job. (Windows only). Windows and Os X do both have firewalls, but I’m against the Microsoft offering.
- Use Windows Defender to check for spyware. (Again Windows only)
- Don’t open emails from people you don’t know or that have stupid subjects (do people really just use ‘hello’).
- Don’t click on popups that you don’t trust (which should be none of them).
- Don’t download and install anything from people you don’t trust.
…and you’ll be fine.
sunset on our dreams
Let’s not dwell on the football, instead enjoy this photo I took of last nights sunset from sandbanks while eating fish and chips after the game. There are more in the photo section.
law 14
It’s been mentioned in the various press that the strictness of some referees at the world cup is having a damaging effect on some games and it’s true that cards have been handed to players more than the water bottles lying around the pitch.
So yesterday me and Si were watching the Germany vs Argentina game, which had just gone to penalties. If you don’t want to know the score, you’re reading the wrong piece because the germans won, but for both penalties that Jens Lehmann saved, it looked like he had moved off his line before the kick was taken. Now I don’t want to seem biased, and without the benefit of a proper set of replays (which aren’t available online as the image above shows) I can’t be sure, but I’ll assume that both keepers were guilty of it.
So for referees which were being hot on the rules, they obviously missed law 14, which states:
The defending goalkeeper: remains on his goal line, facing the kicker, between the goalposts until the ball has been kicked.
Now this is going to seem biased, but for the winning penalty (which is the one I have seen replayed in detail) Lehmann jumps up and down along the goal line then as Cambiasso is running in, he takes a jump forward, a little jump back and then dives backwards to make the save. While it would take a strong official to flag this up, there is a linesman (sorry, referees assistant) on the goal line for this very reason. I’ve seen these decisions made in the league this season, so why it’s being ignored now I don’t know.
You either referee the game to the rules or you don’t, you can’t have it both ways!
(edit, as further evidence see photo 18, the first penalty saved)