Here’s my video blog post from Seesmic today.
And before anyone comments: yes, I know that I showed the navigation example on Opera 9.5 and not Internet Explorer. Trust me, it works on IE too!
Archive for June, 2008
A successful day
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Photos
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
My Mum holding me in early 1972. Scanned from a positive film.
There’s a scene in the film Bruce Almighty where Bruce’s girlfriend complains that Bruce has no interest in her current relationship-oriented project of collating an album of shared photographs.
Well that very same project was what Jane and I got up to yesterday … only it was our photos we used not ones of Jim Carey and Jennifer Aniston.
Over the course of far-too-many-hours we sorted through two filled-to-overflowing filing boxes of photographs and firmly filed more than half of them away in photograph albums (Boots have a two-for-one offer on just now).
We’ve still got about 800 photos left to album-ize, but at least most of them are now sorted.
In celebration of the really terrible photos I found — which now fill two and a half mini albums of their own — I’ve started a new blog to share them with the world: My rubbish photos.
Jiig-Cal and BBC Scotland
Thursday, June 19th, 2008This is a Seesmic post that I made this evening about an email I got from BBC Scotland about this blog post from 2005: My JIIG-CAL results from 1985.
According to the BBC journalist who contacted me “the story will be up on the website from first thing on Friday morning and there should also be a piece on Reporting Scotland tomorrow night.”
So check it out on BBC Scotland tomorrow at 18:30 … obviously if you’re living in Scotland that is; maybe they’ll do a BBC iPlayer kind of thing too, I dunno.
Update
The story is now on the BBC News Scotland website: The computer that predicted the future, although the link to my blog is currently broken — I’m sure the BBC Web boffins will fix that soon though.
Firebug bug
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Today I spotted a bug with Firebug 1.2.0b3 in Firefox 3.0. Here’s what I posted to the Firebug Google Group:
I’ve just upgraded to Firefox 3.0 (on Windows XP Pro) and have installed Firebug 1.2.0b3 but I’m having an issue with Firebug not responding once it has been opened in its own window. My colleague is experiencing the same issue, which we can repeat again and again, (which is reassuring that it’s not just me).
The issue seems to (sort of) resolve itself once the page has been refreshed (either in Firefox or Firebug), but this is certainly different behaviour from Firebug in Firefox 2.0.x.
Here’s what we do:
- Right-click on a page element and select “Inspect Element” from the context menu.
- Firebug opens in a panel at the bottom of the Firefox window.
- As expected the HTML tab is selected and if I hover over the tag elements in the left-hand pane it highlights those elements on the web page within Firefox. I can also open or close the various nodes by clicking on the [+] and [-] buttons.
- Now if I click the red icon at the right of the Firebug panel to “Open Firebug in New Window” the Firebug panel ‘leaps’ out of Firefox and appears in its own window, however, the functionality described above is now disabled: hovering over the HTML elements in the Firebug HTML pane no longer highlights anything within Firefox, and the [+] and [-] node buttons are now unresponsive. What does still work, however, is the bar beneath the menu bar in Firebug, the bar that begins: “Inspect Edit |”.
- If I then refresh the page in Firefox the functionality in Firebug is restored. Similarly, if I select View > Reload in Firebug.
- Now if I close the Firebug window, and then begin again by right-clicking something on the page and select “Inspect Element” Firebug opens in a panel at the bottom of the Firefox window but now everything is ‘frozen’ in the HTML panel again until I refresh the Firefox page. Clicking on the [+] and [-] node buttons do nothing. The issue is not resolved if I open Firebug in its own window by clicking on the Firebug button on the toolbar, either.
This appears to me to be a bug.
Within 30 minutes I got a response:
Probably a bug, we don’t usually use the open-in-own-window ourselves so we break it sometimes without knowing.
So I’ve logged it on the Google Code fbug bug list: Issue 823: Firebug 1.2.0b3 unresponsive in Firefox 3 when opened in own window.
I do hope that it gets fixed soon, as I use that feature all the time. Such are the benefits of having three monitors at work, and two at home.
My Seesmic debut
Thursday, June 19th, 2008Today I made my internet debut on Seesmic: the video conversation website.
I remember someone leaving a comment ages ago when they heard my voice on an MP3 file saying that it kind of freaked them out to hear me because up until then I’d just been an anonymous stranger behind the written word. Well, now you get pictures too! I hope it’s not too upsetting for you.
I was quite unsure about whether I’d enjoy it or not. What would I have to say? Would I want to join in any conversations? But to be honest it was great. It was easy and people were really friendly.
The embedded video above was my Seesmic debut. I introduced myself and a bit like wandering into a room of strangers before long someone said hi and we got chatting. Except that both of us were sitting at home looking into a webcam.
Seesmic simplicity
The Seesmic software is tremendously easy to use. Once you’ve logged in all you have to do the first time is make sure that the camera, microphone and speaker settings are assigned to the devices you want them to be set to and then you simply click on record and get chatting. It couldn’t be simpler.
Recording directly to the website makes it so much easier to use than say YouTube where you need to record to a particular video format, upload that file to the website, which then takes time to convert to Flash format, and eventually view a couple of hours later. Seesmic is almost instant; it’s great.
The only issue is that after watching Seesmic videos it seems to mess up my audio playback settings and my MP3s then sound like they’re being played by a chipmunk band!
Nothing that a quick mode change on my soundcard doesn’t fix, but I’d like to prevent that if possible. It’ll be to do with a change in bitrate or something, but it sure is annoying.
What’s the point?
It’s like video blogging, I think — you can start new threads or leave comments. But unlike a blog where you type you just chat. It’s far more personal, you can really show your personality, your gestures are obvious and, of course, you can wear odd hats too!
WW2 tunnel on WWW
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
Photograph from Unseen Jersey
I remember as a child one of my ambitions was to dig a full-size World War I trench in the front garden. Understandably my parents wouldn’t let me, and to be honest I really didn’t have the energy or drive to do it regardless. Instead, I went back to creating a life-size replica of the flight deck of a Boeing 747, using cardboard boxes and the lids from toothpaste tubes.
Thinking about it now, it really wouldn’t have been much fun just having one trench. Two trenches would have been much more fun. Still, somewhere in the back of my mind I really wish I’d done it: it would have certainly have been a unique feature when Mum came to sell the house last year.
This is an attractive extended cottage which is ideally located for the town centre. The property is surrounded by its own cottage style garden, has spacious well laid-out rooms, offers ample storage and good family living space, is bright and cheery and benefits from gas-fired central heating and double-glazing. Particularly attractive are the two full-size, authentic WWI-style trenches in the front garden!
German Bunker in my Garden blog
So it was with some delight that I stumbled upon this blog today: German Bunker in my Garden.
Seemingly CY88 from the Pistonheads.com website bought a house in an old quarry in Jersey about five years ago and the previous owners told them that there was a tunnel (big enough to drive into) built by the Germans during WWII hidden in the garden.
The previous owner’s father had seemingly buried the entrance to it during redevelopments, but not before filling it with stuff that had been lying around the property. Which, it would turn out, included a couple of British WWII rifles!
So, earlier this month CY88 went a diggin’:
People visiting this blog from Pistonheads.com may recall that in the “Secret Room” thread in early 2008, I said that I thought I had a Nazi bunker buried in my garden. Well, since then I decided to get off my backside and excavate it.
The German Bunker in my Garden documents the excavation and subsequent finds. It’s really rather good, and (probably) even better than the recent Indiana Jones movie! Well worth keeping an eye on.
The Strepsils Strike Back
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
While watching Star Wars Episode V “The Empire Strikes Back” the other day I noticed for the first time that the Rebel commanders on Hoth all have little packets of Strepsils throat lozenges pinned to their jackets.
I guess if I lived and worked in that sort of climate I’d do the same. Good thinking Rebels!