We Saw a Chicken …

Author: scruss

  • the fabulous thunderbird

    I really like what Thunderbird does when you type a word like “attachment” or “attached” in a message:

  • Clive’s C5 for the 2010s

    It’s got one fewer wheels than the C5 (which, stap me, appeared a quarter century ago) but it does look like a proper recumbent:

    While the Sinclair Research X-1 does look quite nifty, I worry about the “Reserve now for £100, pay the rest on delivery next year” terms. It’ll probably turn up at the end of 2012 with a wobbly RAM expansion, and needing a firmware upgrade before it can turn left.

  • ecofont: somebody drilled out a font

    Ecofont claims to help you save ink (and not mass, like drilled out bike bits). The approach is the same:

    Both of my printers have ink-saving settings that avoid this horror. Plus, y’know, with print to PDF, who wants paper?

  • Viviv – Passing Away 2010

    Viviv – Passing Away 2010.

  • for perfect hotel sleeping …

    • ensure that the ventilation system sounds like an idling Morris Minor
    • insist that the alarm clock has a brightly-backlit display that won’t turn off, and is curved, so light will leak out no matter what you block it with
    • smoke alarms must have a flashing LED bright enough to cause retinal POV trails.

    Yes, Downers Grove Doubletree Guest Suites, I’m talking about you.

  • for all your powdered abe lincoln needs

    Squee! I have the expanded CD of Major Organ and the Adding Machine — plus it has the DVD of the movie. Wheeee!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0sFwn7Lfgg

  • Flattr doesn’t work for me

    So my six month experiment with Flattr has come to an end. In short, my revenue was a measly €0.42 for €2/month payment. Not worth it.

    Flattr was just too much hassle. I’d want it to be able to add pages from an RSS feed, but instead, every page had to be added manually. It wouldn’t even spider your sites to index content. You had to go to the site to find new things to read (I’ve never found a Flattr badge in the wild), and it is really difficult to filter by language and keywords. Worst of all, you have to remember to click on at least one thing a month, otherwise your payment would disappear down a black hole.

    Here’s my payment/revenue breakdown:

    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-10-31    		 €-1.70
    Flattr earnings -> revenue
    2010-10-10    		 €0.09
    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-09-30    		 €-2.00
    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-08-31    		 €-2.00
    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-07-31    		 €-2.00
    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-06-30    		 €-2.00
    Flattr earnings -> revenue
    2010-06-10    		 €0.33
    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-05-31    		 €-2.00
    Flattr earnings -> revenue
    2010-05-10
    Means -> Monthly Flattr amount
    2010-05-04    		 €-0.44
    PayPal -> means
    2010-05-02    		 €12.14

    And here’s what was actually clicked:

    Period Thing Clicks Revenue
    2010-05 We Saw a Chicken … 1 €0.20
    2010-05 Numpty’s Progress 1 €0.13
    2010-09 Numpty’s Progress 1 €0.09

    My blogs might be a bit, um, niche, but I’d expected to have at least broken even.

  • Why I didn’t vote for George Smitherman

    I didn’t vote for George Smitherman because I fundamentally disagree with the secret deal he initiated with the Korean consortium (including Samsung and Kepco). A feed-in tariff is all about equal access to the right to connect. The consortium, with its guaranteed grid capacity, sidesteps this equal access.

    To make things worse, the consortium may have access to a price adder on top of the FiT prices. This is supposed to recognize the consortium’s expertise in the supply chain, and its consequential creation of jobs through local manufacturing.  There are many other companies — some of which actually have supply chain experience in the renewable energy sector — who would bring the same number of jobs for the same number of megawatts.

    So, ixnay on the Ithermansmay for that. There’s no way I’d vote for the glistening oaf (a phrase coined by Catherine after seeing this picture), so Joe Pantalone it was.  Joey Pants’ campaign was, well, a bit pants, but he was the most appropriate of the candidates.

  • Test-riding the Bixi

    BIXI Toronto had a demo station outside MEC today. They had a few slightly beat-up (I suspect, ex Montreal) bikes on display at a station and for test riding.

    I checked out one the bikes for a ten minute test ride. For such a solid bike, I was impressed with its swiftness. You won’t find yourself hopping curbs, but the big smooth tyres roll fast.

    The bike’s pretty sensible, with a fully guarded chain, guards, dynamo lights and a front carrier.

    A clever bash guard protects the hub gear settings

    The pointy nose at the front locks into the Bixi station:

    All the controls are where you’d expect them:

    And a graduated seatpost for us tall forgetful types:

    The one thing I was disappointed with was the brakes. My bike has similar Shimano units. They’re a bit gentle, but they do stop you. The ones on the loaner bike brought back memories of trying to stop in the rain on my steel-rimmed paperboy bike.

    Still, I’m really looking forward to Bixi arriving in the city next year.

  • Aye. Halloween. SCOTTISH

    BBC News – ‘Neepi lantern’ tradition under threat.

  • the name of my band will be the radiological accident in tammiku

  • now that’s a loaf

    Been discovering the joys of Poondy Bread, the nearby Sri Lankan bakery. Their bread is awesome, with a great egg crust and a challah-like sweetness.

    But this loaf takes the cake. Two colossal slices. As big as your head.

  • And this is why I hate the music industry

    Copyright Info: The Star Spangled Banner

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    Under certain circumstances, you may dispute this copyright claim. These are:

    • if the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
    • if you believe your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
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    I need more information. I want to learn more about the dispute process.

    Please take a few minutes to visit our Help Center section on Policy and Copyright Guidelines, where you can learn more about copyright law and our Content Identification Service.

  • autumnal

  • … that our fries were still there

    Following on from this, here’s another anthem performed by the Five Guys and the Arduino Micro Cup Orchestra:

    Converted from a midi file found at American and Patriotic Midi Music (unsurprising caution: autoplay midi music therein) to RTTL using MIDI to RTTL.

    If you just want the source, here it is:

    star-spang:d=4,o=5,b=80:2p,8f.,16d,a#4,d,f,2a#,8d.6,16c6,a#,d,e,2f,8f,8f,d.6,8c6,a#,2a,8g,8a,a#,a#,f,d,a#4,8f.,16d,a#4,d,f,2a#,8d.6,16c6,a#,d,e,2f,8f,8f,d.6,8c6,a#,2a,8g,8a,a#,a#,f,d,a#4,8d6,8d6,d6,d#6,f6,2f6,8d#6,8d6,c6,d6,d#6,2d#6,d#6,d.6,8c6,a#,2a,8g,8a,a#,d,e,2f,f,a#,a#,8a#,8a,g,g,g,c6,8d#6,8d6,8c6,8a#,a#,a,8f,8f,a#.,8c6,8d6,8d#6,2f6,8a#,8c6,d.6,8d#6,c6,1a#

  • abstract lot fabric

    Well, I liked it …

  • Hester the Moonlight Deer

    Catherine and I made a shadowbox using my Springfield deer photo: Hester the Moonlight Deer.

  • emusic canada changes its pricing

    What with the sad loss of Wild East Compact Sounds this summer, my sources of music are now limited. eMusic, bless ’em, have been my source of indie stuff since about 2003. They were cheap, had a fixed price per download, and carried a raft of indie stuff and no major label tat.

    Not much longer; got this in my inbox:

    So, yeah, the full announcement: major label content, minimum 49¢/track, and variable pricing. Exactly all the reasons I wouldn’t want to use them. Good call, eMusic, for a battered-about subscriber since 2003.

    I was initially confused by the pricing. I pay 36¢/track, so I couldn’t see how their promise that “your monthly payments will not change and you will still be able to download the same number of tracks available today, if not more, depending upon your current plan“. Then I see their new menu:

    So basically they’re crediting me with a fake $4.48 a month (oh wait; “30 days”, not a month; they so want you to forget to download stuff by making the cycle date change) so I can still get my 35 downloads. Since they hint that there will now be variable pricing, I’ll bet the new stuff will be >49¢, so I really won’t be able to download as many per month after all.

    They’re saying that the new pricing will allow them to do a bunch of fun stuff:

    We’re also committed to making eMusic a better member experience. We recently rolled out improvements to Browse and Search pages. And we’re hard at work on a host of new features and enhancements including a music locker, which should allow you to stream your music collection from any desktop or mobile device. In addition, improvements to eMusic’s social features, to better connect you with our editors, other members, artists, labels and your friends, are also in the works. We’ve sketched out an ambitious slate, and it will take a little while to get there. We hope you’ll continue on the journey with us.

    I don’t want all that social fluff. The MP3s work just fine on any mobile device, so streaming them just adds more crud. I want fixed price downloads, not some half-assed music locker. Where, oh where is Frank Hecker and swindleeeee when you need them?

  • … we stand in line for thee

    A little bit of silliness for Thanksgiving:

    This took almost no time to put together. The “speaker” is a Tim Hortons cup with a cheap piezo glued to the base. What makes the Arduino sing is the Tone Library running its RTTTL demo sketch, with the anthem itself pasted in from a rather old Nokia Ringtones library.

    Update: Here’s the code, such as it is. It’s just the Tone/examples/RTTTL code with the tune data pasted in. I’d been programming Arduino for about a year, so that was a semi-major achievement for me:

    OCanada-RTTTL-200701a.zipDownload

    It’s nice to revisit old code and find it was written by a friend, Brett Hagman of Rogue Robotics.

  • late bloomer

    I guess I must’ve dropped a sunflower seed earlier in the summer. So now we have a sunflower blooming in the back garden in October. Not many bees around.