Caboose

Here’s a picture from my nice quiet Christmas through in Norfolk:

My parents got me a copy of the Foo Fighters album One By One for Christmas, I was a bit disappointed when I noticed it was a “copy protected” one.

In fact the tiny print on the back says: “It is intended fro use only in standard home CD players and may not play on other devices, especially computer drivers”.

This is completely incorrect, computer CD drives (not “drivers”) comply with the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard, BMG’s protected discs don’t. This is why they don’t have the familiar CD logo, Philips won’t let people use it unless the product complies with the standard.

In fact BMG are producing deliberately faulty products, I reckon they’re probably not “fit for purpose” if they don’t play on CD-DA compatible equipment, it’d be interesting to see what Trading Standards think about it.

Fortunately BMG are rubbish and their copy protection system doesn’t work. I ripped the CD to MP3 this evening, so I’ll be able to listen to it when and where I want to rather than where they think I should.

The point is that I’m not going to distribute the MP3s, I’ve made a copy for my own use. The record companies are using technology and new laws to restrict things we’re currently entitled to do. They seem to be succeeding at the moment on a wave of hysteria and poor journalism (the BBC seem to repeat verbatim anything the record companies PR people come out with).
(more…)

‘Twas the night after Christmas and all though Norfolk not a petrol station was stirring, not even the ones on major roads…

Left my Grandparents house this evening in the car, didn’t have too much fuel left but thought there wouldn’t be any problem filling it up. WRONG! Ended up in Attleborough after discovering that the services on the A11 (the main Norwich-London road) were all closed.

In the end I had to call Direct Line, they sent out a man with a gallon of petrol. That got me most of the way to Newmarket, where I found the first open petrol station on the road.

I know it was all down to laziness on my part and assuming that stuff would be open today and I was really embarassed at having to call out the breakdown guys. On the other hand, it’s only a bank holiday, it’s not like it’s Christmas Day or New Year’s day. It’s the kind of time when people are travelling.

I’m off to stay with my Grandparents in Norfolk over Christmas so I’ll be offline for a few days.

Enjoy the holiday (assuming it is a holiday for you).

Here’s a typical (for the UK at least) seasonal link.

This one’s via kottke.org: *LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS* ChildCare Action Project (CAP) Media Analysis Report MAR22130.

I hadn’t realised that talking trees were offensive to God. I’m quite amazed by quite how easy it is to upset these people. Wonder if we can get them to analyse websites…

Puritanism – The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken, “Sententiae”

Went to see it last night, ended up going to the 11pm showing because all the others were fully booked. This meant it didn’t end until after 2am.

It was worth it though, great battles, fantastic photography and good acting combined to make it a very enjoyable experience. The computer graphics were so good that it was close to impossible to spot them (unlike, for example, Titanic).

I’m struggling to think of bad points. Friends have mentioned that they disliked the way Gimli was made into a comic character, but I think that works well in the context of the film.

As I was wandering back out of the town centre yesterday, having finished my Christmas shopping, I took this photo of Parker’s Piece:

On a slightly techy note I’ve now worked out how to keep the EXIF header when I reformat the pictures for the web, so if you have the right software, you can see what settings my camera used to take the picture.

If anybody else out there has an old HP laptop and is installing Linux on it you might want to have a look at Linux on HP Pavilion 3270 Notebook.

Although mine’s a 3250, it’s almost identical and there’s some good information in there. (In Europe it was sold as an OmniBook XE2.)

Walking back from the pub can be a very pleasant experience. If I had got a taxi tonight I wouldn’t have noticed the faint halo around the full moon, or the (probably unintentional) pattern of coloured curtains at the executive townhouses beside the Carter cycle bridge.

Reminds me of nights walking back from the pub back in Stirling when I would sometimes just stop and look at the stars. Beer seems to do that to me.

Wish I’d had my camera with me, although the pictures would probably look rubbish in the morning.

I found this slightly sinister site today: Geobytes

I’d love to know exactly how they can track my IP address to Cambridge, although I suppose there’s quite a lot of users all appearing to come from NTL’s proxy servers for this area.