The minutae of my life
Mar. 16th, 2003 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luckykaaI don't really talk about me on Livejournal much. Odd that I should have a diary. The thing is, many of the things I might want to say are either dull, or nobody's business but my own. So, this entry is simply going to cover things that amused me at the time. But I don't cover everything. Does anyone really want to know that I had roast Pork today, or that I also had some cider with it? Well, I did. The fact that I got the cider from a farm in Firle is a little more interesting. Those who know me know how I can wax lyrical about the farm shop in Firle.
But truly, this is a treasure trove. There is a whole shop that sells nothing but Cider, Perry, and a few odds and ends like Mead and Real Ale, but that tends to be Sussex produced. They have Cider and Perry from the entire country. So, every time I go to Sussex, I have to make a point of taking a detour to this farm shop. Shame really since it's completely the wrong direction. It's also self service. I ended up giving myself a short measure. Ooops.
On the subject of Mead - A friend of a friend is into medieval history in a big way. I often go there to play board games and eat curry and stuff. We ordered curry, and I asked if theis came with the customary bottle of wine for orders over £10. It did. This pleased me. I was asked if this meant therefore that I would like some. I joked that I would prefer some Mead. Since they'd just bottled 4 gallons of the stuff, I got some Mead.
Doesn't quite go with curry though. I wonder if anyone else has tried that combination.
Met some goths in Watford. No I won't go into why I was in Watford. A wise man once said "many of the things I might want to say are either dull, or nobody's business but my own". Actually it was me and not a wise man at all, but if I can't take my own council then whose can I take? There was a very nice girl there with multi coloured hair. She said the hair was very her. I suggested "Bright and cheerful". This was taken as an insult. I tried "Random". Right on the second guess. Very tactile as well. I now have it on good authority that I give good hugs.
Ogg vorbis - Try it everyone. Better than mp3 in many respects - Geekier, and gives better audio quality. Plus, to encode it under Linux, I simply had to type abcde, and the rest of the job was automated. For a cryptic command line utility, this was pretty damn simple. It ripped the files from the CD, looked up the CD information from a CD database, encoded the files into ogg format, and renamed them logically without any user interaction at all. Sure, there are many tools that can do this in Windows as well, but they seem to only create mp3. I dislike mp3 on ethical grounds - its a patented algorithm. I'm not convinced that you should be allowed to patent an algorithm. The ogg format is freer than free. Why does it take so long to rip a disc though? Must get a new machine. No I don't want a new machine at all. This will happily encode a disc while it's not doing anything else. And they said I wasn't a geek
Had a look for some classical music on Kazaa. I'm impressed by the lack on knowledge of some people. Apparently Ode to Joy was written by Mozart.
And while we're on the subject of blatant piracy, I discovered an organisation that supplies bootleg VCDs and DVD's of 80's classics like Automan and stuff. I'd be tempted, but they seem to be running it as a business. Sigh. I could get Star Fleet and Greatest American hero, but my sense of ethics returns when someone's making money from copyright infringement.
Really ought to get rid of some of this music. I don't really think I want the Spice girls.
Stop upgrading everyone! Speaking as someone who runs Windows 95 and an old version of Linux on a 300MHz machine, I have to say the need to upgrade is overrated.
On the other hand - there can be a reason to upgrade. The reason - Convergence! A friend had a combined PDA, Mobile Phone, mp3 player and digital camera. Also functioned as a watch, calender, and paperweight. Now, normally I'm a little skeptical about these things, but on the other hand, I will usually defend technology. It was when trying to explain why someone could possible need something so complicated that I convinced myself. A camera takes up a pocket. So does a phone. So does a PDA. So does an mp3 player. They all share at least some components (A battery if nothing else), so why not reduce the number of items one needs to carry. Why not combine them all. Even if you're essentially just gluing the things together, it's more conveient than separate components.
Although I would quite like some wearables. I saw some excellent glasses with a built in screen. 800x600 resolution is way better than any pda. Personally, I just want a HUD of my very own. Heartbeat monitor, time, speed, TV schedule warnings Be fun to play with these and come up with some innovating UI design of course. Gestures are the way to go. Motion sensors in the hands would help. Look at your wrist, and the display gives the time. look at the palm of your hand, and it opens something to read. Flick your fingers in the air and you call a cab.
Sigh, looking around I see so many gaps for consumer technology. The television needs to be gutted and reinvented. I did think that everything should be removed from it (By everything, I mean including a tuner). Then I realised that was the wrong way round. Add a Tivo. Add a cable decoder. Add a network connection. Add a wireless connection to arbitrary devices, like a camera, and you're set. Also need to be able to download games, and let people buy them. The whole world wants to move to a rental model. People don't like this. If they buy a book they want to keep it even if they only read it once. The same rule applies to things that we download. The buzzword in 15½ months wil be "ownership", and I reckon the odds are 50/50 that the word will become verbed.
But truly, this is a treasure trove. There is a whole shop that sells nothing but Cider, Perry, and a few odds and ends like Mead and Real Ale, but that tends to be Sussex produced. They have Cider and Perry from the entire country. So, every time I go to Sussex, I have to make a point of taking a detour to this farm shop. Shame really since it's completely the wrong direction. It's also self service. I ended up giving myself a short measure. Ooops.
On the subject of Mead - A friend of a friend is into medieval history in a big way. I often go there to play board games and eat curry and stuff. We ordered curry, and I asked if theis came with the customary bottle of wine for orders over £10. It did. This pleased me. I was asked if this meant therefore that I would like some. I joked that I would prefer some Mead. Since they'd just bottled 4 gallons of the stuff, I got some Mead.
Doesn't quite go with curry though. I wonder if anyone else has tried that combination.
Met some goths in Watford. No I won't go into why I was in Watford. A wise man once said "many of the things I might want to say are either dull, or nobody's business but my own". Actually it was me and not a wise man at all, but if I can't take my own council then whose can I take? There was a very nice girl there with multi coloured hair. She said the hair was very her. I suggested "Bright and cheerful". This was taken as an insult. I tried "Random". Right on the second guess. Very tactile as well. I now have it on good authority that I give good hugs.
Ogg vorbis - Try it everyone. Better than mp3 in many respects - Geekier, and gives better audio quality. Plus, to encode it under Linux, I simply had to type abcde, and the rest of the job was automated. For a cryptic command line utility, this was pretty damn simple. It ripped the files from the CD, looked up the CD information from a CD database, encoded the files into ogg format, and renamed them logically without any user interaction at all. Sure, there are many tools that can do this in Windows as well, but they seem to only create mp3. I dislike mp3 on ethical grounds - its a patented algorithm. I'm not convinced that you should be allowed to patent an algorithm. The ogg format is freer than free. Why does it take so long to rip a disc though? Must get a new machine. No I don't want a new machine at all. This will happily encode a disc while it's not doing anything else. And they said I wasn't a geek
Had a look for some classical music on Kazaa. I'm impressed by the lack on knowledge of some people. Apparently Ode to Joy was written by Mozart.
And while we're on the subject of blatant piracy, I discovered an organisation that supplies bootleg VCDs and DVD's of 80's classics like Automan and stuff. I'd be tempted, but they seem to be running it as a business. Sigh. I could get Star Fleet and Greatest American hero, but my sense of ethics returns when someone's making money from copyright infringement.
Really ought to get rid of some of this music. I don't really think I want the Spice girls.
Stop upgrading everyone! Speaking as someone who runs Windows 95 and an old version of Linux on a 300MHz machine, I have to say the need to upgrade is overrated.
On the other hand - there can be a reason to upgrade. The reason - Convergence! A friend had a combined PDA, Mobile Phone, mp3 player and digital camera. Also functioned as a watch, calender, and paperweight. Now, normally I'm a little skeptical about these things, but on the other hand, I will usually defend technology. It was when trying to explain why someone could possible need something so complicated that I convinced myself. A camera takes up a pocket. So does a phone. So does a PDA. So does an mp3 player. They all share at least some components (A battery if nothing else), so why not reduce the number of items one needs to carry. Why not combine them all. Even if you're essentially just gluing the things together, it's more conveient than separate components.
Although I would quite like some wearables. I saw some excellent glasses with a built in screen. 800x600 resolution is way better than any pda. Personally, I just want a HUD of my very own. Heartbeat monitor, time, speed, TV schedule warnings Be fun to play with these and come up with some innovating UI design of course. Gestures are the way to go. Motion sensors in the hands would help. Look at your wrist, and the display gives the time. look at the palm of your hand, and it opens something to read. Flick your fingers in the air and you call a cab.
Sigh, looking around I see so many gaps for consumer technology. The television needs to be gutted and reinvented. I did think that everything should be removed from it (By everything, I mean including a tuner). Then I realised that was the wrong way round. Add a Tivo. Add a cable decoder. Add a network connection. Add a wireless connection to arbitrary devices, like a camera, and you're set. Also need to be able to download games, and let people buy them. The whole world wants to move to a rental model. People don't like this. If they buy a book they want to keep it even if they only read it once. The same rule applies to things that we download. The buzzword in 15½ months wil be "ownership", and I reckon the odds are 50/50 that the word will become verbed.
