foomandoonian’s halfblog

Historical Tweets for more...

I've spent this evening working on a cartoon penguin in Inkscape. I'll release this with a liberal Creative Commons licence and as an SVG when I'm sure I'm happy with it. I've also attached my work in progress for those who may be curious. Any constructive criticism is welcomed. :)

The Shortex one is hilarious. It's not even well implemented. And they've stolen the iconic BBC clock!

(found via Your Site is Valid)

I like public transport in theory, but in practice it's pretty crappy. Last night I got crowded by three loud and stupid teenagers who stank of alcohol and drowned out my podcast with details of their personal lives. This morning I missed the bus, but not because I was late, prompting the following snotty email to Cardiff Bus:

This morning, I arrived at the bus stop five minutes early to catch the 102, only to be told by someone that I had just missed it. I *ran* from my Allensbank Road stop to the stop by the hospital entrance - check on a map if you're not familiar with this route. It's no marathon, but it's far enough!

Fortunately the driver was still at the stop, reading his paper. 'Think of the exercise you got', he remarked sympathetically.

Although this is the first time I have run to the next stop, it is not the first time I have missed a bus because it turned up early. Of course, the bus is regularly late too (I imagine this makes your averages look pretty good).

So, do I have to leave a ten minute window to ensure I catch the bus (at a stop with no shelter), or perhaps could you communicate to your drivers the importance of keeping some kind of schedule?

Sincerely, [etc...]

Fast Dial is a great little Firefox add-on that gives you the speed dial functionality found in Opera. Rather, I should say it was a great add-on. I have just this minute updated to the latest version (2.15) and been greeted by some rather unwelcome modifications:

• An unwanted searchbox has found its way to the top of the page
• A sponsored link has been added in place of one of my shortcuts
• Another tab has been taken up to take me to the User Logos website
• The User Logos search engine has been added, as default, to my search bar

I followed the link from the Firefox add-on page to the official homepage of the project, only to be redirected and have pop-ups thrown at me (blocked, naturally). It seems reasonable to conclude that this add-on has been monetized by a team that didn't know how to do it tastefully and respectfully (or the project was co-opted by the spam mafia!)

Speed Dial is an alternative that I have used before. I prefered Fast Dial for its simplicity, but I guess I will give Speed Dial another look.

Much has already been said about the casting of Matt Smith as the new Doctor. Watch a short interview with him and see what you think. A few highlights excerpted below. I hope my transcribing skills haven't done him any injustice.

On the significance of the role:

It sort of has the... ummm ... the iconic kind of status that Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes or ... and I'm sort of ... taking that on. That's my responsibility. That's exciting ... nervewracking ... exciting ... exciting!

On keeping his new role a secret:

It's like a giant secret. It's hugely significant. Yeah... yeah.'

On the future:

I've got this wonderful sort of journey in front of me where I've got this kind of six months to build this... this... this Timelord. And that's such an exciting prospect because I love that part of being an actor, I love the discovery of it and, uh, the detective bit.

I'm trying to reserve judgement until I see him in action as the Doctor. Hopefully Stephen Moffat and the other producers really can see something in the young actor that I'm missing. I'll tell you this much though - if they give him an emo or 'gofic' costume, I'm out!

Posterous has recently added support for Google Analytics, making the service instantly more valuable. Not that I strictly need this myself, but I do find the stats fascinating.

Sadly though, I just discovered that the blog does lack one important feature I had assumed it would have: RSS feeds for each tag.

Being able to filter content by tag is tremendously useful, and I can already see from my analytics that people do filter my content. The Torchwood tag seems the most popular. I also like being able to filter just the photos. It would be nice to syndicate content in this way.

Taken from the tops of two different 'mountains' near Caerphilly, these are the last pictures taken by me in 2008 (and my first post for 2009). I'd have taken a picture of the first sunrise too, but I actually completely missed the first morning of the year!

Happy 2009...

As I've mentioned here before, Ubuntu Eee, the first OS that I installed on my then-new Asus Eee PC, is having to rebrand itself so it no longer mimics the Ubuntu identity. They kicked off a competition to design a logo and win a snazzy netbook, and now the submissions are all in.

I hope they have the good taste to pick one of the more polished and original concepts. It's obvious which entries are good and which are bad, but some have more subtle problems. For example, many of the logos incorperate a tiny 'e', which instantly makes me think of Internet Explorer - not a positive association! There are others which are quite appealing, but fall very much into web 2.0 cliches, with rounded corners, a glossy plastic sheen and vivid colours.

Many others play with variations on the Ubuntu logo and/or lemons. Some of these are quite clever, but if it's too obvious it seems inappropriate.

I've picked a few of my favourites below:

Today a discussion on the CrunchBang Linux forums started me off exploring the fascinating world of interactive fiction.

Initially I just wanted to get a local copy of the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy text adventure up and running. The download is a ZIP containing a .z3 file. All I needed was Frotz (or another interpreter) and I was up and running. But my investigation had piqued my interest. How do they make these games? Must be easy, right?

Wikipedia lists a few development systems, and I really liked the look of Inform7. The website seemed very up to date and full of good information. Also there were .deb files available, which usually makes installation a complete breeze. Finally, I found a good tutorial on the Linux Journal website (pt1, pt2) which would walk me through the installation and then give me basic tutorial. Sold!

Installation seemed to go smoothly, despite me using a more recent package than the tutorial. Then I launched gnome-inform7, and was greeted by the intro dialog, inviting me to start a new project, reopen the last one, or open an existing one. I optimistically clicked on 'Start a new project', the dialog vanished and...

...Nothing. Bugger.

Turning to The Google soon turned up a bug that seems to be the same, but the 'fix' was to change a line of code in a file that doesn't seem to be on my machine. The other 'solution' seems to be to compile from a later version myself. Of course, it is assumed one should know how to do this. Some more Googling convinces me that I'm in over my head.

I guess my point, if I have one, is that I feel this stuff should be easier. Do I need to be the kind of person who wants to solve this kind of technical problem, constantly, to use Linux succesfully? Because I'd rather have spent the last few hours working on my first interactive masterpiece. Or watching telly.

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Still, at least I discovered the excellent Slingshot!