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  • And so another weekend is done.

    And a good time was had by all. Yesterday we went off to Magdalen college to have a wander around the grounds. However we got there about 11:30, and it didn’t open to the public until 1. No matter, we instead moved onto the Botanic Gardens across the road. Gorgeous day for it. Some fascinating things to see there.

    Lime tree

    We had a good wander around there. Looks good now, will look even more beautiful in a few months, and I reckon we’ll probably go and see for ourselves.

    Well-crafted area

    After that, we carried on into town, went to the fishmongers, and got some fish for the purposes of making this:

    Finished plate of sushi

    Which was rather tasty, if I do say so myself. Plus some scallops which I spiced, and served with some noodles.  Whilst I was preparing all that, I had a call from my friend J, and we met him for a few pints at the Black Swan, where a pleasant evening was had by all. And on the way home we got to see the post-eclipse moon. Rather good fun all round.

  • The proverbial quiet weekend

    So this week is intended to be quiet. Our main aims are to decide on a hotel for our NYC trip (we’ve made a shortlist of five, and will be inviting all the hotels to compete in a Pop Idol style showdown for our affections. Well either that or going with the one we really like because we can get a room there). After that, well, I’ve never done a proper tour round a University since I came here, so we are going to have a walk into town, and stop off in the grounds of one of them for a good wander round, obviously taking the opportunity to wind Mrsfb up by stopping and taking photographs every 15 seconds. And then I’m cooking some sushi and an as-yet-unchosen fish dish, possibly involving scallops.

    There may well be a bike ride on Sunday too if it stays at all reasonable (I am definitely a fair-weather cyclist). I do need to start getting out on some little treks on the bike to get back into it. Oh and finally I may brave the garden for a little tidy up (i.e. start the massive amound of tidying there is to do).

  • Sushi Master

    Well not quite, but my sushi the other night was, if I do say so myself, bloody fantastic. When I tried it not long after preparation, it wasn’t all that. It tasted too seaweedy, which is not a taste you want in particular. I didn’t realise what it really needed was fridge time. The next evening we had some as a starter, and it tasted great, and bar my clumsy presentation looked like they should. So I’ve bought more stuff for sushi last night, including a bamboo mat (which I did have, but I think I cut it up to use for something else, some project or idea I really can’t remember). With bamboo mat I may yet attain perfection!

    Also starting to plan seriously for upgrading my computer at home. It is coming on for four years old now, has done sterling service, but is getting slow. I am not getting rid of it, but it can be a fileserver now, whilst I build a new computer. Decided to build my own from scratch again, I hopefully have a case coming from a friend that looks promising, have settled on an Intel Duo Core processor at the centre of the machine, which then helps you focus on which other elements you want to add in. I think graphics card is the toughest choice now, as I really don’t know how much I am willing to spend on that. You can easily spend the cost of a new Xbox 360 just on a graphics card should you chose, but I think I’d rather get something up to date but mid-range. I also this time need to take account of wanting to run Linux as my operating system of choice, I have been using Ubuntu for about 3 months now on all my machines, and I can’t see me going back to Windows now. Just so much cleaner and easier.

  • New York here we come!

    We have booked our tickets for New York last night. Very excited, now need to sort a hotel, and start figuring out what we get up to for a week. In fact we’ve got quite a few ideas already, but we need to decide on what we want to do most of all, and work around those. I’d kind of like to do an event or two, go to a gig or a show on Broadway, something like that. Living the dream!

    Will gladly take any New York suggestions in the comments, all ideas greatfully received.

    While I’m here, can I give a quick plug to my new site Wrestling with Consciousness. If you like wrestling, you’ll like it, if you don’t, then well, you won’t.

  • Using Brightside in Ubuntu

    A simple little app today, Brightside. What this does is to allow you to traverse your desktops in Ubuntu Edgy by mouse, so that you can use the mouse to scroll from one virtual desktop to the next. A colleague introduced me to this years ago on a Linux install, and I couldn’t find it on any others since, until today. I’m now back to the setup I had then, where I have 4 desktops in a square shape, and move around them by mouse. It also allows you to define custom actions for moving the mouse into corners of the screen, so now if I move the mouse to the top left the screensaver starts, if I move it to bottom left it mutes what is playing. Very nice features. Simple install:

    sudo apt-get install brightside

    Once it is installed, go to System > Preferences > Screen Actions to set up as you wish.

  • The Thick of It USA

    I’ve just been reading over at TV Squad that Christopher Guest is going to direct an American version of The Thick of it, one of my favourite comedy shows of recent years. I’m sure, knowing Guest, it will be pretty good, but why not set him off doing a political comedy on his own? Stop nicking our ideas! This is a long-standing tradition, but it is picking up speed again at the moment, with The Office in its third season, The IT Crowd in production, and probably versions of everything from the past twenty years from Father Ted USA down to My Hero being pitched to US studios. We’ve got precious enough good ideas of our own. What I don’t understand it why the American TV companies can’t possibly risk showing the original version. Well I do, but I know deep down that America loves good comedy, and don’t need it focus-grouped into blandness. Just like we wouldn’t have got ever nuance of Tanner 88, but many of us loved it, in it’s natural state The Thick of It is stunning comedy, and would be much loved given a chance. Don’t get me wrong, I liked The Office USA for instance (in no small part due to Steve Carrell), but again, he could have made any role of that nature his own. Let’s keep our own ideas separate, and enjoy twice the creativity.

  • Captcha – How very annoying

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    I’m sure I must not be the only one whose heart sinks a little whenever I see a Captcha box on a form. The above example is taken from the signup for a hotmail account. I understand the reason of protecting against automated applications for servers, but they are hard to read, often cause you to have to input entire forms against, and rate about -20000 on the useability front, particularly for users with sight disabilities. The sooner they are gone the better.

  • Of sushi and suchlike

    Have been making sushi for the first time tonight. Harder than it seems, should be just rice and rolling in my book, but there seemed to be several little stages in the instructions I had, and it was quite the faff. Still, I’ve got my first two long rolls cut, so after a couple of test portions I’ve got lunch for tomorrow, and a starter for dinner tomorrow. They seem to come out bigger than I’m used to, but I don’t have a bamboo mat to roll with, so I don’t think I was prepared to risk getting them tighter without splitting. Will report back soon with how they tasted having been chilled. Also discovered the joys of wasabi peanuts tonight. They are hot. Damn hot.

    I’ve also bought some new trainers for cycling, sort of a combination of trainer and hiking boot. Possibly the most comfy shoes I’ve had in a while, will post a photo of them soon, would highly recommend them.

  • Crackdown – Xbox 360 (mini-review)

    You get to be a super-hero, jump amazing heights up, down, and across buildings. Everything is done at your own pace, charge dead ahead and take down bosses, or build yourself up, and sneak about more. It looks great in its cel-shading glory, basically, what is not to love?

  • A virtual marketplace for us all

    I’ve been playing Phantasy Star Universe this week, and I finally had enough money to open my own store. This is a place where I can sell the items I find in the game to other players, and also items I have made myself (you do this by combining items you’ve found). Now what surprised me was the volume of players looking at my shop almost as soon as I had started selling. It is constant, there is a very lively business to be made selling on there.

    This got me thinking, what if I could design my own items, say on my pc, upload them to their servers, then sell them myself on there. Or even better, if I could sell them myself in Xbox Live, for money rather than the messata I get in Phantasy Star Universe.

    Now this isn’t rocket science in gaming terms, pretty much this sort of model is what is ultimately supposed to happen with Xbox Live and the Playstation 3 version of Live. Even then though, it is a very closed system.

    And it shouldn’t be. I want to be able to sell pretty much anything, virtual or real, from any location I chose. If I made music say, it would be great if I could sell it easily directly from this blog. If I made t-shirts, or sold something on ebay, I should be able to drop it into a post, or onto the sidebar on the right there, and let people know about it. Equally, anywhere I’ve got a profile, say on Xbox Live, or BTPodshow, or Myspace, I should be able to offer my things for sale.

    Ideally, I’d also like the option to trade services as well. Maybe I could get some credits for setting up a blog for someone, then use them to buy hosting for another project somewhere, topping it up with a bit of cash if need be.

    I think this is something that Google are probably most likely to be closest too, but are still some way from. I think if I was going to do it, I’d be able to take advantage of the APIs for many existing services, wrap them all together under one blanket service. I’d probably go with Paypal for now, but I’d want an overall account structure in there including the opportunity to barter services as well. I can just see clearer now the possibility of a massively intertwinned virtual marketplace, where everyone is a buyer and seller. Just as blogging has started to change how news works, maybe easily accessible virtual shops will change retail even further, the social networking spin on the groundwork laid by Amazon et al.

    There is a service starting to approach this, Zlio, who allow you to set up a shop and integrate it with your site. It draws in “stock” from other online retailers, allowing you to mix and match a shop out of them. You can’t unfortunately sell your own items with them yet, althought they do state they will permit this soon. And there may be a UK version of the site in the offing soon, so check back in a little bit.