Follow-up to Would you buy Windows 7 because Peter Griffin suggested it? from Mike's blag
Microsoft has pulled out of sponsoring a TV spin-off show of animated comedy Family Guy because of concerns over edgy material.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8329369.stm
Mike Willis
29 Oct 2009 12:34
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For no particularly good reason I've written a Bash(*) script which grabs an image from the University webcam and optionally does stuff to it. Aside from Bash it requires ImageMagick and curl, is located here and works thus:
mike@continuity:~$ ./uow_webcam_grab
uow_webcam_grab - script to grab an image from University of Warwick webcam.
Usage: uow_webcam_grab [options] [filename]
Image format is jpg unless -p is used in which case it's png. .jpg or .png extension automatically added to supplied filename it not specified.
If no filename specified output is written to stdout.
Available options:
-t : Trims image to remove the date stamp.
-h : Halves the width and height of the image. (Can be used multiple times.)
-p : Creates polaroid style snapshot. (Requires ImageMagick 6.3.1-6 or higher.)
-c : Caption for polaroid. (Does nothing if -p not used.)
-g : Converts image to greyscale
-n : Negates the image. (white -> black. yellow -> blue. etc.)
-s : Converts image to sepia like from days of yore. (Requires a version of ImageMagick higher than 5.5.3 but don't know how much higher. Ignored if filesize of retrieved image is less than 40k since that indicates image is mostly black and sepia conversion of such an image looks weird.)
E.g.
mike@continuity:~$ ./uow_webcam_grab -htp -c "$(date)" camgrab_$(date +%F-%H-%M-%S)
creates a png image called camgrab_2009-10-28-20-17-09.png which looks like:
The view from the webcam is not very interesting after dark.
(*) Or maybe it's bash, or BASH. It seems to depend where one looks. Does it matter? Well given that Unix like operating systems on which one would usually use it usually use a case-sensitive file system which would allow the creation of files named bash, Bash and BASH in the same directory on account of how they are different file names then... oh who am I kidding, no, not really.
Mike Willis
28 Oct 2009 20:24
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Tags: Webcam
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Writing about web page http://xkcd.com/654/
Geocities is being closed down today and as a tribute, xkcd has been redesigned in the assault on the eyeballs style of web page design that was all too common in the mid-late 90s. (For modern day equivalent see the typical MySpace page.)
(Don't know how long the redesigned version will be there for but there's screenshots for posterity in the forums.)
Mike Willis
26 Oct 2009 12:37
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Today is one of those days when we're reminded how many things we own have clocks in them and how very few of them automatically shift themselves forwards/backwards an hour at the appropriate time. It's also one of those days when I'm irritated by the fact that no mobile phone I've ever owned has been capable of automatically adjusting itself between GMT and BST. Not even the ones which have had a configuration option the name of which implies that when enabled they will do just that. I also find myself once again wondering how it is that I've failed to be aware of the change over date in advance, only realising it's happened after briefly wondering why the clock in the corner of the monitor I'm currently looking at is an hour out.
Mike Willis
25 Oct 2009 10:16
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This book which attempts to give you an overview of how stuff works, from the Universe at large to down to the cells that comprise your own body. It was recommend to me by a friend and having read some of their copy I bought my own. Overall I enjoyed it, though it was little inconsistent in holding my interest and the author does talk rather a lot about the people who discovered things compared to what they discovered.
The book is not quite as long as it's thickness suggests, at least not the part you want to actually sit and read. The end of it caught me by surprise as there was still a good half centimetre thickness of pages left. Those pages are largely taken up with citations of sources for the myriad of facts contained within the book.
If you want to know more follow the link for a whole bunch of reviews by people with more inclination for writing them than I can currently summon.
Mike Willis
21 Oct 2009 12:56
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Writing about web page http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/14/win7_family_guy/
"We have simplified the PC with Windows 7, and together with FOX, we're simplifying entertainment,"
I've no idea what they think they mean by 'simplifying entertainment' but I'm sure there's a few good anti-FOX jokes in it.
I can't imagine how the result could be anything other than painfully cringe-worthy. It sounds like it ought to be a joke, but it looks horribly real. See also.
Mike Willis
14 Oct 2009 13:00
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Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n5b92/Micro_Men/
Affectionately comic drama about the British home computer boom of the early 1980s.
Or: Adam Curry vs Clive Sinclair. As a piece of drama it's rather poor. As a nostalgia trip back to an era I am just about old enough to vaguely remember, it's rather good. In the early 80s computers home computers were not yet a ubiquitous commodity with profit margins slimmer than the hips of a photoshopped Ralph Lauren model >90% of which all run the same operating system. There were a bunch of different companies all making their own machines which may or may not have some degree of compatibility between them in terms of the programs they could run. I remember having books of BASIC programs that I'd type in to our BBC Micro Model B, sometimes even saving them to tape afterwards. They'd have annotations about the different alterations needed to make them work on various different machines such as the Vic 20, Commodore PET and Dragon 32.
Mike Willis
10 Oct 2009 11:10
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Writing about web page http://en-gb.www.mozilla.com/en-GB/firefox/geolocation/
Mapping an IP address to a physical location is never going to be entirely accurate and that's perfectly understandable. (Also such accuracy would in many cases be undesirable.) Though I hoped, albeit it perhaps naively, without any reason and not for any particular purpose, that Firefox's Geolocation feature would be able to accurately identify the University. We have (I believe) the whole 137.205. block of IP addresses to ourselves which makes us a good sized target, so to speak. Now that I've got around to trying I've found it puts me several miles away. The demo linked above merely indicates Coventry, after some quick further investigation the exact location it thinks I'm at is 52.405837 latitude -1.512661 longitude. Which I'm not. You probably aren't either.
Mike Willis
05 Oct 2009 12:49
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Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n1j8q/Charlie_Brookers_Gameswipe/
Charlie Brooker sets his caustic sights on video games. Expect acerbic comment as he looks at the various genres, how they have changed since their early conception and how the media represents games and gamers. Features interviews with Dara O'Briain, sitcom scribe Graham Linehan and Rab and Ryan from Consolevania.
- Available until: 10:49pm Tuesday 6th October 2009
Mike Willis
01 Oct 2009 13:11
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Mike Willis
29 Sep 2009 12:56
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