by taoski on October 30, 2005
On friday I had my portable heart monitor fitted for 24 hours. Seven different coloured electrodes were attached to various parts of my chest after a student doctor shaved me and dealt me a few lines of his jokey patter. The main device was in a small black zipped bag slung over my shoulder. Not that different from a camera case.
I went straight back to work and hid the device under my shirt. Looking like I was "packing heat" I spent the rest of the day feeling a little odd for having sticky pads all over me - but only had one slight odd heartbeat type symptom at around 12:39 which I noted in the little diary they gave me.
I went and stayed at SwimPig's house, had a few beers and a real coffee at 9pm (which will be noted in the diary too). He took some excellent long exposure shots of me, in my monitor gear, in the garden with a torch. You have to keep your eye on his site. One of the shots may appear soon. Also, my sleep was affected as I normally sleep on my side - so the wife was kept awake by me snoring like a cattle grid.
I will be taking the monitor back tomorrow and will expect to hear the results (if any) sometime soon i suppose.
Technorati Tags: ECG, heart, monitor, ipod, murmur
by taoski on October 27, 2005
As a reformed smoker of over 5 years standing I now feel qualified to speak on this matter with some authority. The UK government has started legislation for a partial smoking ban in UK pubs.
I am not PRO a total ban on smoking in public places - as I will not be able to get my “by proxy” fix of the sweet smell of Old Virginia rolling tobacco wafting over my pint of Guinness whilst I chat.
Smoking is nice. I loved it and I probably would still love it now.
Call me selfish… but I don’t care!
Technorati Tags : smoking, ban, smoking, uk, patricia, hewitt, guinness, pub
by taoski on October 26, 2005
Hot on the heels of my previous posting about the Kubrickr header image generator - and bang on the money after Mr Noxious slated my new header design in favor of the old logo (in a LOST stylie) comes a copy of my photoshop template for the Kubrick "Blue Blob" header.
Made from two layers, you can either customize on top of the "blue blob" or remove it totally for your own "free form" enjoyment. I was starting to think of a new design and made this template to help me. Hope others can benefit from using this too!
Grab the template here
Get the Kubrick for Blogger template here
Technorati Tags: kubrick, template, blogger, kubrickr, photoshop, lost, header
by taoski on October 25, 2005
I hereby announce the passing of my sons first Tamagotchi creature, DJ.
They spent 8 wonderful days together, playing games, shopping and pooing.
He spent time in the bath, played with his Ninja Throwing Stars I bought him after we gambled 9p a time on the slot game and he also had a nice day out wearing his hat we purchased from the fat shop keeper.
His favorite treat was Cupcakes (just like Uber!).
We will miss him… but he has already been replaced by TIFF, a new female creature!
I'm glad we've got two bathrooms!
Technorati Tags : tamagotchi, egg, creature, cupcakes, ninja
by taoski on October 24, 2005
Just found this neat little web based tool to automatically make "Kubrick style" headers for your blog (the template championed by myself and Nick). Images are pulled from Flickr by entering an appropriate tag and then manually cropped to make the JPG which is then downloaded to your PC.
It will never replace spending hours on a tedious multi layered Photoshop/illustrator image (only to find it looks crap at the proper size) but it could be a good way of finding a starting image though.
Not sure why the site will not pull out my Photao tagged images though. Odd.
I still would (eat my own arm for) like a version of the Tao of Mac kubrick slideshow header which is done in Macromedia Flash and pulls random images from Flickr. It just gushes class! Just need some (reliable) webspace i guess.
Found via the Great Flickr Tools collection.
Technorati Tags: flickr, kubrick, template, header, blogger, photao
by taoski on October 20, 2005
Just spotted these two links via my lunchtime Bloglines readings and thought that I would blog them before my phone rang and I forgot my name…
How to find and add media to your iTunes library with del.icio.us - using RSS feeds. Works with MP3, PDF etc..
Subscribe to free del.icio.us videos in iTunes - using keywords like "funny" or "boobies".
Both via the excellent Lifehacker site.
Not tried it yet - but it does look "interesting"!
Technorati Tags: itunes, ipod, apple, ITMS, RSS, del.icio.us, lifehacker, video, mp3, media
by taoski on October 20, 2005
A report yesterday found that on average, the average person spends and average of ?21,000 on music in their lifetime. The Uber-Music-Geek however spends, on average ?44,000 (mostly due to ordering that rare INXS german remix with the japanese cover notes from eBay).
In this modern age, ?21,000 equates to aproximately 30,434 purchases from the iTunes Music Store (based on 69p per track). The Audiophile with their ?44,000 gets a whopping 63,768 purchases from the same store.
With the average size of an MP3 being about 6mb, the iPods for the next generation of tune-heads would need a storage capacity of 200GB (to fit aprox 30,000 songs) and 400GB (to fit aprox 64,000 songs) to enable you to carry your entire lifes music purchases in your pocket.
In realistic terms, we are not too far off these possible capacities.
Come on Apple, sort it out! There's a market hole waiting to be filled!
Just don't make it too heavy! By the time I have purchased (torrented) all my music - i might be a little frail.
Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, storage, music, itunes, ITMS
by taoski on October 19, 2005
For quite some time I have been a champion of the excellent Google GMail service and now use that more regularly than the other (13) email accounts I have.
In the UK, Google's use of the GMail name has been the subject of dispute as another company has already claimed its right to use the GMail name.
So it appears that (for once) Google have given in and will be changing the addresses for the UK users of its service from @Gmail.com to @googlemail.com sometime soon.
Shame really. Its not got the same ring to it.
I still have 100 invites left to give out for GMail… sorry… Googlemail. So if you want one, let me know.
Technorati Tags: gmail, googlemail, google, email, webmail
by taoski on October 19, 2005
After spending all day slaving over my PC at work I then spent several hours bashing away last night at a new logo for my blog. It was all for research purposes though.
I have decided to get to grips with Adobe Illustrator CS2 as I do like the look of vector art. I think it will take some getting used to though. Compared to Photoshop I struggled to get it to do what i wanted and had to export back as a JPG to finish it off. The final image?s detail was totally lost when i converted it across? it looked excellent in Illustrator but crappy and pixelated in Photoshop. More practice needed i think ? if anyone has any tips on this then let me know.
The new Illustrator CS2 version has a great ?Live Trace? feature where you can pull in line drawings you have scanned and it converts them to editable paths. The great thing is that this also works with photos. The eye on the left (which is mine) and the skateboarder (which is not me ? as I am much better!) were both processed using this method ? and i think it looks pretty cool!
I kind of had a thought the other night that I would start trying some illustrations. I would set myself a goal of learning the Adobe Illustrator application, doing some illustrations and selling them ? or having them used/published somewhere within one year. Possibly a tall order seeing as I work on PCs all day and the thought of having to chain myself to the PC all the time when I am at home makes me cringe. At least Illustrator makes it easy to work with imported graphics ? so I could also spend time drawing and making art to scan in to use. Is this a silly idea?
If anyone has some good sites with Illustrator tutorials on then let me know please!
Technorati Tags: adobe, illustrator, adobe illustrator, vector, illustration, logo, live trace, tutorials
by taoski on October 16, 2005
On friday I had my portable heart monitor fitted for 24 hours. Seven different coloured electrodes were attached to various parts of my chest after a student doctor shaved me and dealt me a few lines of his jokey patter. The main device was in a small black zipped bag slung over my shoulder. Not that different from a camera case.
Well, it's not a giant lizard slaying robot and its not a new religion.
