Google Reader

For my RSS feeds I used Bloglines for quite a while but I switched over to Google Reader some time back now. I still like Bloglines neatness and compactness but I like the integration of Google Reader with other Google things I use. It also has some pretty good features in it's own right too, of course.

One particularly neat feature (for someone like me who runs a directory web-site featuring new sites regularly) is a really easy way to highlight more sites of interest than I would normally have time to do. Using Google Reader it's just plain simple to tag and share an item of note - I've integrated this into the Black Stump What's New page - you'll see it positioned just below this weeks new sites. Click on the Read More link for another page with (not surprisingly) more information about each post. You can go directly to each post also if you wish.

I hope this is of value to you - I know I'm a bit of a Google tragic (although I still use Yahoo Mail in preference to Google Mail for general use) - I just think they're pretty damn good at most of what they do!

Happy Surfing!

(note I've also put the link to the Google Reader sites in the side bar of this blog so you don't have to go via The Black Stump site if you don't want to - it's just there on the right)

...and, uh, oh yeah, there's an RSS feed available too....here

Get Smart

Managed to get hold of the DVD Set of the entire series of Get Smart. I loved this show when I watched it in the sixties and seventies but it's been a while. This series was really big in Australia and most kids my school knew most of the dialog. (after all, the episodes got repeated to death in afternoon TV slot but got butchered to death). I'm really looking to forward to watching them in sequence and in entirety!

What puzzles me (would you believe it?) is they have only been released via the Time Life website and they'll only ship to USA addresses. What the....!! Lucky I have some friends in the good old USofA to send it down under! But, don't despair fellow Aussies - it appears that it will be available in Australia in February via Time Life Australia - pricing and box configuration unknown but supposedly the same content as released in the US.

This set is superb. Yeah, talk about the corny (but o-so-funny) dialog and the often repeated (but highly anticipated) lines and jokes. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon are even better than I remembered. And let's not forget The Chief. The DVD set has been re-mastered and looks sensational on wide screen TV. Sadly, Don Adams passed away in 2005, but "#99" lives on and gives a lot of the intro commentaries to the episodes on the DVD set.

Brilliant. Yup, I've concluded this is my favourite TV show of all time. I'm up to Episode 20 already, I have 118 to go...would you believe it ?

...and Loving it! (sorry about that, Chief!)

VHS to DVD

Summer holidays are here, time to clean up the house and get rid of all the accumulated rubbish one (or, more precisely, one's family) collects over a year or two. Rummaging through lots of old home Videos (that's not the rubbish, by the way, to me anyway) I decided it was time to save all this stuff on new media before the VHS tapes disintegrate.

Surprisingly easy these days and, happily to report, all my VHS tapes going back to 1987 were still OK - I'm sure they left a bit of dust and residue behind but it all looked Ok when played back on DVD. The end result is a new library of home DVDs (and a backup copy) and the original VHS tapes which I've now packed away with the Master DVDs and stored in a constant temperature environment.

What did I need to do the job ? Not a computer, that's for sure! I experimented in the past with Video Capture boards and Studio software but it takes waaaay too long to render bulk amounts of tapes. At the start of this exercise I briefly flirted again with this stuff but still, no thanks.

Moved on to a combo VHS/DVD recorder - a Panasonic ES35V to be precise - as the name suggests it has both functions in the same box - incredibly, this machine could not do the job for me. I say incredibly because I'm thinking its probably one of main reasons anyone would buy this type of machine - but you can't edit the tapes as you copy them! What a load of hooey. Now, I'm not suggesting anything wrong with Panasonic here, folks. I've been using Panasonic VCRs from when they first came out (was it in 1979?) and they've always worked extremely reliably - anyway, the lack of the edit feature was a major downer but probably "mea culpa" for not researching this up front - don't assume...

Bit the bullet and bought a dedicated DVD recorder - this time a Panasonic DMR-EH55 attached to an existing SJ400 Panasonic VCR - could have used the ES35V but my wife already stole that for her use elsewhere in the house. The EH55 has 160GB which is ample storage space (bit more than 640K anyway).

After cabling machines together (easy) play video in VCR, hit record on DVD and edit away. I finished up loading all the tapes on the DVD recorder (they're all still on it), carved them up a bit further and hi-speed copied them onto 8x or 16x DVDs. You just need to get everything in the sequence you want and copy as close to (but under) 2 hours worth of viewing. 2 hours is the limit if you want roughly the same quality on a standard (non Dual layer) DVD.

Quality is good and because of the hi-speed transfer I was able to make a backup copy very quickly as well.

Just do it before it's too late. The Black Stump Guides page has few more good sites for tips on Digital editing. See also the DVD section.

Happy copying!

2006 Lists and Rankings - Does nothing happen on December 31?

The world seems to have gone mad this year with list and rankings of just about everything - some of the yearly "review and recap" sites I've been listing on the BlackStump News page for the last 6 or 7 years. But now, too many! So I'm going to list them here instead.

Here goes...

ResourceShelf Archive for Year End Wrap-Ups

TIME Person of the Year

Top Movies (U.S.) of 2006 & Year End Motion Picture Box Office Reports (International)

Another List of Lists

Year in Review 2006 Quizzes

The Panda Software virus yearbook 2006

Top American TV Moments of 2006

50 best Defense Tech posts of 2006

BoingBoing's most-trafficked posts of 2006 (and all time)

Worst Vlogs of 2006

Search Bloggers On Their Most Popular Posts & Stats For 2006

The 10 Best Books of 2006

Billboard 2006 Year in Music

Top Search Terms Of The Year (Google, AOL, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN)

Ask.com Top Searches of 2006

I'm sure there'll be many more (after all, it's only December 30 - does nothing ever happen on December 31???)

To finish this thread here's another list of lists from Bob Drudge at Refdesk

Happy 2007!

Pete

PS ...and for those interested in the Bushfires...some still burn, although many were doused when we had a wonderfully cold and wet Christmas. But the season is still young and we have another 3-4 months of severe fire alert weather.

Zoho Wiki, Bushfires and Warnie

I wrote about Zoho some time back in June and again in October.

Worth mentioning them again, not only because they produce excellent - and mostly free - goodies, but they just launched their latest offering, a Wiki. Free, of course!

An update on the Bushfires - they continue unabated - over two weeks now and some 750,000 hectares burnt out. Look in the previous couple of posts for the sites to look at for up-to-date info. And another hot one today, 35C.

Still no rain, and moving to Level 3 water restrictions in Melbourne on January 1 (which basically means water can be used outside for only 8 hours per week and no lawns watered etc). Some sports are shutting down mid-season as grounds are too hard and dry and cricket pitches can't be watered.

Speaking on cricket, it must be noted that Australia just won The Ashes back from England - "the" most important cricket trophy worldwide - and the bad news today that Aussie Legends Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath are retiring. Bummer!

Keep 'em spinning Warnie!

Bushfires still raging in Victoria

Well, here we are a week later, the fires are still burning and not much rain in sight.

The NASA Earth Observatory has some photos from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

Keep on hoping!

Bushfires continued

The mercury hit 38C yesterday and peaked at a bit above 42C in Melbourne today - the fires are still burning.

Here's another site from the Department of Sustainability and Environment showing the Statewide Fire Situation map.

And here is Today's Fire Update.

Here is an historic Bushfires Photo Gallery and a few photos of the current fires.

The weather is cooler tomorrow, 20C, but will it rain ??

Bush Fires in Victoria

* Photo courtesy Skynews

Some of you will know that I live in Nillumbik Shire which is a semi-rural area in the city of Melbourne, state of Victoria in Australia.

Melbourne is generally well known for its skittish weather as it is situated at the southern end of mainland Australia (hence, winds from the desert/outback north are damn hot and winds from the icy Antarctic south are damn cold) and wind changes bring huge variations in weather conditions. One of most common jokes is that if you don't like the weather, then just wait half an hour!

Anyway, we in Melbourne (and Victoria, and lots of Australia) are in the grips of probably one of the worst droughts in history. Bad enough are the growing water restrictions due to the falling water storage levels, but right now it's the bush fires which are the major concern. Huge fires are already burning and today its predicted to hit 37C in Melbourne and higher in country areas.

The Country Fire Authority site has a lot of information and a summary page of current fires. You can also keep up to date via Google News.

Unfortunately (in this context), summer has just commenced and what we are currently experiencing may occasionally have happened in the past towards the end of summer every couple of years - what lies ahead over the next 3-4 months has the potential to be quite horrific. Ugly.

Good luck everyone, be prepared!

Photosynth Technology Preview

This one might worth a peek - something new from the Microsoft Labs - Photosynth. It's a technology preview which they reckon is a few steps short of a beta - so...up to you if you think it's worth the effort!

As they say it's a...
"...taste of the newest - and, we hope, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.
In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor."

Have Fun!

Trawling around for New Sites

Been trawling around the RSS feeds with Google Reader - a lot of new sites I find go directly into the Black Stump directory but there are too many reasonable sites out there for me to add. So here's a selection of sites that didn't quite get there but are certainly worthy of a peek...

The BigBands Database
Internet Resources in Music
Photos: The best of Google Earth
Collarity Search
Space Audio
Cheat Sheet Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, LaTeX, Ruby
Google Earth and Geography Awareness Week 2006
Browser Wars: Internet Explorer 7
Dorkbot ...people doing strange things with electricity
Monster of the Milky Way
and finally for now...
101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived

Have Fun!

Inventions YouTube and PodMailer

Lots of news lately about YouTube and its purchase by Google. Seems like a lot of people are worried by this. As a matter of coincidence (?), YouTube has been named by Time as the best invention of 2006.

Another interesting site you may like to check out, but not about inventions per-se, is the cutely named Cocktail Party Physics which is well worth a wander thru.

To round off this little ramble is a neat little app, PodMailer, which allows you to share files by e-mail - regardless of their size - without clogging your inbox.

In case you didn't know, the Black Stump also has a list of invention related sites for your perusal.

Happy Inventing!

Flying and Invisibility

Having flown in and out of Hong Kong many times in the past, I just loved this little entry in the Humour Cafe. I recall the first time I flew into Kaitak and saw people seemingly only a few metres away working at desks in buildings! Some fantastic photos there and the new airport and landing is nothing by comparison. Just the view of Hong Kong Island as you landed was super spectacular.

Couple of other articles recently about invisibility. This one appeared in the New York Times and there is another article from Discover about "How to Build an Invisibility Cloak" - hmmm, what's next? The human Teleport ? Been waiting for that ever since I latched onto the BBC series Blake's 7 many moons ago. Gotta save a load of jetlag!

Stay well!

No Vegemite for You!

The US has banned good old Vegemite ??? I don't like the stuff personally but it's a bit of an Aussie institution - Ok, you lot can keep your McDonalds and KFC within your own borders!

Vegemite is banned because it contains folate which is Ok to put on your cereal but, no no no, not on your toast, brother.

They have to be kidding...everyone knows this stuff is great for fixing holes in asphalt!

More New Sites

Here are a few extra new sites I've stumbled across recently...no theme, just a random ramble!

2.0 Websites
A Boat Show on the Internet
Ainu-English Word List
Anousheh Ansari Space Blog
Death Education
Atomic Bomb: Decision
Become Shopping
NIST-F1 Cesium Fountain Clock
Charlie Chan
Top 10 College Pranks
Planet Audio Australia
The 1421 Myth Exposed
Cruise Critic

Enjoy!

Software - Eudora Zoho Google Virtual PC

Seems like a whole raft of neat software announcements have been made lately - the first was the announcement of Google Docs & Spreadsheets which is a combo job of the Google Spreadsheet and (the ex) Writely. I still find the Google Spreadsheet a bit rudimentary but it has got better over time - if only they'd support a nice red colour for negative values I could almost use it.

Next was Zoho which I mentioned back in June. Looks like Zoho Single Sign On is On - take a look-see, you won't be disappointed with the range of options and things to fiddle with!

Next I read about the news from Qualcomm about Eudora - I'm a huge Eudora fan, have used it since day dot and now it appears it's going Open Source and Free of Charge sometime in 2007. Here's the FAQ.

Lastly, one of software technologies I'm interested in from a big computing point of view, but haven't really embraced personally as yet, is Virtualisation. Microsoft have just announced the Virtual PC 2007 Beta Program which I might take a peek at sometime - it also comes with Vista support now as both host and guest.

Happy Downloading!

HTML Validation and Flash EMBED tag

EMBED, Google video and html validation......a trail littered with one-way streets and dead-ends...

I decided to give Google Video a go on my site. All pretty easy - just view a video in Google Video and click on the "embed html" button and there's your code. Just insert that into your webpage and you're all done....or so I thought!

First problem - I ran the W3C HTML validator and, of course, it bombed out on the EMBED statement. Ok, off to Google and run a search on embed and html validation - up pops a couple of likely looking sites - the first by J.J.SOLARI details a way to include the EMBED into the HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD - must have been having a bad hair day, but I couldn't get the damn thing to work for me - gave up, rationalised my decision by saying I didn't want to butcher the standard anyway.

Ok, back to Google again....

This time I find a forum which basically says "don't use EMBED, use OBJECT instead and your page will validate nicely". Yup, I did, and yup, it did. But...now Firefox downloads the goddam video whether the user wants to run it or not - and I couldn't find any way to stop that happening. So, I don't want to annoy the 11% of my visitors who use Firefox by artificially loading (unwanted) videos and bumping up their transfer rates...so back to the drawing board yet again.

I gave up trying to Validate via W3C - I use CSE HTML Validator across my site before running the W3C validator anyway, so any page with video on it will be validated with that. A small concession to "purity" but I can sleep at night knowing my pages are valid but I'm also not ticking people off! I also had to include the following metatag to keep the validator happy with the generated EMBED code:

meta content="text/css" equiv="Content-Style-Type"

Oh well, what's a few more lost hours lost spent gnashing and cursing at the keyboard!

Happy EMBEDding!

Free Spyware and Antivirus Programs

Featuring two sites today, Grisoft.com and Grc.com.

Grisoft.com features both free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. Not much else to say - go for it.

The GRC site features many tools and utilities that are really useful as well. In particular, check out Shields Up! and the Freeware page which has loads of goodies.

That lot should keep you busy for another week!

September 20 - Lying Camera

Someone once told the camera never lied - and like most people, I don't like most photos that are taken of me....and make up your own mind what that means.

Two sites that may be of interest - check the HP Slimming Photo camera ! Hey, way to diet folks!

...and here's a whole bunch more lying photos!

Gotta fly and get me a HP R967...cya

September 15 - Mixture

Thrill-riders? ... the Segway to my latest blog entries is Segway Stumbles in Europe and Glitch Leads to Segway Recall. Ooh-ah, expensive way to possibly hurt yourself!

Be careful ! - Phishing exploit sort of via Google.

Would you believe it ? Finally Get Smart is almost here!

..and Pirate Pete sez talk like him on September 19! Yohoho...

Avast me hearties!

September 6 - Word

Be on the lookout for nasty Word documents in the next few days. Here is an FAQ on this issue.

More info in these sites:
Trojan.Mdropper.Q
Trojan.Mdropper.Q / Email Attachment Practices
Security Focus
Secunia


Happy Blocking!