April 2007

The BBC news reports from Redditch, Worcestershire that a man and woman have been arrested for stealing a Wifi connection from outside someone else’s house in two separate incidents.

The man arrested at the weekend was cautioned for dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment.

He attracted attention from neighbours in the early morning, as he had put up cardboard around his car windows but the light from his computer could be seen through the back window.

For fucks sake! Even if he was playing his Nintendo DS outside my house in the early hours of the morning I would have shopped him to the pigs - even if he did have cardboard up against the windows of his car!

Hmm, I can hack free wifi but cannot use a better method to disguise my illegal activity, apart from using this co-co pops cereal box anti-detection device I made earlier.

I am all for free wifi, but christ! I would have just blamed Windows XP and it’s ability to pick up that wifi signal from a few streets away when the wind blows in a north-easterly direction on Sundays and sets it as your default connection.

Everybody knows that old excuse…

After getting hold of the Pokemon TCG Rom for the Gameboy Color and running it through VisualBoy Advance, I am finally getting to grips with the rules of the game.

My son(s) own aproximately 500 of the cards (pictured - some of the piles are 10 cards deep and the separate energy cards are not pictured!) almost all donated by their Cousin and Aunty and they have been strewn all over the house and in school coat pockets for the past few months. It feels good to finally get to grips with the theory - and in fact it is pretty simple to learn.  One day we might actually play a game once I can work out exactly how many monster and energy cards go into making up a standard 60 card deck.

I feel quite “into” playing too - i’m sure if I was young again it is definitely something I would be interested in.

I am used to playing (complex) games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Rolemaster and Car Wars - so it really is not rocket science compared to them. You can get a nice animated tutorial on how to play over at the Pokemon Trading Card Game site too, which was’nt there last time I looked.

Now, Yu-Gi-Oh…. thats a whole other kettle of fish!

Insert cop-out late night post here:

I had so much to talk about! A new website idea, birthdays, Pokemon cards… it will have to wait until tomorrow!

There is a program called Belarc Advisor that scans your PC and then reports the information in a nice, neat HTML file so you can upload it to the web for people to help you get rid of spyware and viruses on your Windows PC.

The other benefit of this is that it will also display your software keys for XP and other installed applications.
The other real benefit of this is that it will then allow you to upload said HTML file containing the aforementioned keys to a website of your choice, which then makes it searchable by Google!

So go find some keys for which ever program you want! Just edit the name of the program at the beginning of the search string and you are off!

via Digg

Andrew aka Nez aka Atariboy received a package via Karen at Jumpcut containing a music CD, some chocolate and other goodies.  And all because he sent her some of his Moo-cards recently.

This “random act of kindness” started him thinking about the idea of people sending other people random stuff, and then went and bought a domain name, set up a site on it and started something in a few days - just like that!

Thats the determination I need.

JFDI

Just Fucking Do It!

Nez, you are one of my heroes…

What’s missing from “the internet”?
What’s that site you need but does’nt exist yet?
What are you looking for that you cannot find?
What do people need online?

Those are some of the questions you could ask yourself when brainstorming new business ideas for websites - and generally the answers are quite few. It may have already got to the point where a viable online business is either an extension of an existing offline one, or something that is quite “out there” and web-unique.

I expect most of the good ideas have gone now and people are stuck struggling to monetize existing themes and sites rather than concentrating on new ideas.

I’m stuck too. My goal of generating $10 per day from an online business/website is going no-where at the moment. Using Google Adsense to generate some extra income is all well and good, but it’s not perfect by any means.

Still, at least I am “in there” doing something.

If anyone does think of anything good. let me know!

I found using Garageband to create my little ode to Dare by Gorillaz quite easy and fun.

I have used sample based sequencers before in the past and more complicated packages such as Cubase, Acid Pro and Propellerheads Reason, but Garageband was perfect for what I wanted it to do. Plus, in typical Mac style… “it just worked”.

An idea I had a while ago was to create a website that allowed people to post portions of songs they had created in order for people to download them, add extra tracks, instruments and ideas and then post them back for acceptance and continuation by someone else. Sort of a continuous work in progress type thing.

All Mac machines come with Garageband and a slew of pre-loaded samples to play with. Is anyone interested in trying this idea? I know of at least 2 other people with Macs who also have a modicum of musical talent, so it might not be too hard to get something down. Post a comment to register an interest.

And for the record… no hard trance, dance or techno. Melodic guitar, folk, jazz fusion please!

Oh dear….

It only took me 1 hour and is all my own work … and voice.
Please be gentle with me!

Download

MP3 Version (right click and Save-as) Dare - proof of concept

M4A Version: (right click and Save-as) Dare - proof of concept

In the news today…

The debate rolls on about wether the servicemen and women captured by the Iranians should be allowed to sell the story of their illegal detention to the media. It appears that the Iranians were responsible (allegedly) for capturing the army personnel whilst they were actually not quite, but nearly inside restricted Iranian controlled water-space borders. Trained anti-terrorism FBI dolphins have been dispatched to search for sonar traces left by the vessels to determine the exact position of seizure and report their findings to the whitehouse.

Manchester United have romped home with a 7-1 defeat (8-3 agg) over Roma tonight in the Champions League. Investigations will be carried out by the F.A. and the American Government to ascertain if any Iranians were responsible for the high number of goals. Military action may follow if match fixing or ball tampering is detected.

A cockatoo at a wildlife sanctuary in Nuneaton has spent the last week trying to hatch a bowl of chocolate eggs. The crazy fowl did not want to comment, but animal workers at the sanctuary were playing down fears of al-quaeda involvment with Iranian egg-streamists. Reports that CIA agents collected the bird for rendition were not substantiated.

It’s only a matter of time…