Microsoft Flames Apple, Fails

The Register - Microsoft Flames Apple, Fails

This needs to be read. Apple Tax!? Seriously Redmond.

The worst laptop ever.

Presenting the Macbook fail. The laptop that fails so hard it will make you sick.

Basically its an old powerbook, with the screen removed (hacked off). This machine is instead pluged into an CRT monitor so old and fat its positively leaking eyeball melting radiation.

This work of art is packing around 600Mhz of sweet processing power, and a whole 512Mb of ram.

FAIL

E71

Just got offered the nokia E71, and its pretty good. Battery that asts more than a day, quick interface, FREAKING MMS, you can actually send stuff over bluetooth. Y'know, things any phone can do.

The new iPhone had better match this. If not I'm put off the idea forever. And it better have a autofocusing camera.... Makes such a difference. Try taking that on an iPhone.

Basically, the iphone is a crap phone. Pretty good ipod, and like, toy, but as a phone for calling + texting and stuff, it sucks

April Fools Roundup

Alpine Ledgend - Xbox, move over Guitar Hero

Guardian to move on to twitter. - "Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters"

CADIE - Google is taken over by "buggy" artificial intelligence.

Flights to Mars - Expedia

And my personal favorite

Qualcomm - Wolf-Pigeon:

Oh and Youtube have made video's play upside-down. Just add "&flip=1" to the end of the URL.

The iPhone OS is too broken

Just want to highlight why the i-OS is still not good enough. I know I'm fussy, but whatever. To create a more complete phone, install cydia, and install the following:

• Notifier - displays text message, email, voicemail, missed call notifications in the menu bar. Just like every single other phone on the market.
• MyBattery - simply displays how much battery you have left, in %
• iBluetooth - send photos + files over bluetooth
• Lockdown - My essential application, locks applications (text messages, eBay, anything else)

And, to do things which apple should have done from the very begining, try

• WeatherIcon - updates the weather icon with the action weather
• LiveClock - makes the clock real, it works, it ticks, it tocks

Second MacBook has died

I'm posting this from my iPod because my laptop has just broken. Some of you may know that my first laptop, a white MacBook, was recently broken too. And now my blackbook has gone. I'm seriously fucked off. Apple need to concentrate less on new software and more on building good quality hardware, or I'm buying a fucking PC. I'm not even joking, I'm sick and tired of this, and it has to stop.

...

Hello All

Hello everyone! Well, I suppose I should introduce myself: My name is Ben and I live in Hereford. I'm (just about) 16 years of age and go to the Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School. I will be coming to Hereford Sixth Form in September where I will be studying Computing, Business, Physics and Politics. My main hobby is flying! I am currently training towards my PPL (Private Pilots License) and have 15.5 hours logged in a Cessna 152. I will be taking my Air Law exam very soon and that means that I will also be going solo in the near future!
So, what I want to talk about today is more to do with flying but there is a huge element of tech involved.

On the weekend I did something quite amazing: I flew in a Boeing 737-300 Classic "ZFT" simulator. (ZFT stands for Zero Flight Training. This means that the pilots do all of their type training in the simulator, and don’t actually fly the real thing until they have passengers (or cargo) in the back!) The simulator itself costs around £20milion and so it is very similar in price to the real aircraft, but considering the amount of training that goes on in this sim, it doesn’t surprise me!

I signed up for a shared "Future Pilot Program" flight with Virtual Aviation (www.virtualaviation.com) which included half an hour of briefing, two hours in the sim with three other people (so 30mins on the controls) and then another half hour de-brief. This package in total cost £450 ish - which, to be honest, I thought was a great deal!

I arrived at BMI, London Heathrow at 11:45 bang on time but was told that I was over an hour early. After much confusion the nice people told me that there was a mix-up and I had actually been upgraded to a singular course, which meant I would get only one hour in the sim, however I would have the controls for that full hour! This course was worth £650 ish and I was being upgraded free of charge!

I had just sat down and started to make myself comfy whilst waiting for my turn when one of the pilots approached me. He said that, because I had been upgraded, there was actually space on the course I was originally meant to be on! He then said that, because I was so early, it would be fine for me to go on both courses!

In total I ended up flying a massive £1100 worth in the sim and paid only £450! Now that’s a bargain by anyone’s standards!

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the simulator at BMI and I would strongly recommend it to any other pilot, or aircraft enthusiast! The 737 is a real man's aircraft and requires you to be quite physical at times. She was generally a joy to fly, and a huge difference from my usual C152s!

Thanks,
Ben Bishop

eBay seriously kicks ass

The laptop was mine already, but... 5 G5's anyone?

iPhoto '09: Faces...

Don't worry, I didn't really die. I fell asleep and woke up days later during the post-mortem.

Afro Ninja - Movie!?

Okay, we all remember Afro Ninja. The guy with the nun-chucks who backflips and fails. If you don't, hit up on this link right now.

Mark Hicks , the star of the Youtube video is a Hollywood stunt actor, who has doubled for many actors including Chris Tucker and Marla Gibbs, is now creating a feature film based on the short clip. Afro Ninja - Destiny!

I've rememebered!

Tried explaining this to Tommey - but found it now!

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/addressbook

Crazy Monkey Men

This is frankly an amazing and highly refined state of unison between both body and mind. This is also absolutely nuts.

"You f***ing piece of log im gonna scream and hit you with my belt untill you die"

A lot of fun would ensue upon dubbing this monkey madness.

Whats the point?

Arduino Synth

A granular synthesis engine using the Arduino platform. Note the stylish gaffetape casing.

Project thanks to these guys

Oh, and while we are at it

flickr.com/photos/alexburgess/

From new to old

Firstly - brand new gripe with blogger... You can't reorder the photos? I was going to do this post REALLY pro, but it looks like that's not going to happen.

New camera in the post today - yay! Well, not really 'new' - its an olympus OM-30 from 1982 (... So I guess 26 years old). Got a wicked ass lense for it - completely retro, you 'pull out' to zoom.

Anyway, new camera to play around with.

My hangman completely sucks

..... Yeahhhhhhhhh....

Gentlemen, your attention please...

Do you enjoy elrevert's wonderful contributions to this blog?

Do you love the content at www.youtube.com/elrevert ?

Do you have more money than sense?

If the answers to the above questions are "YES!" then don't hesitate, click this button, and give something back! After all, as god is my witness, I deserve it!

My Android Cupcake

Quartz Composer - VJing Potential

The other day i stumbled across Quartz Composer. For those of you who don't know, this is a modular programming interface that lets you manipulate images/videos etc. It makes good use of Apples core image and video libraries, which would otherwise remain rather intimidating technologies for the casual programmer to harness.

After a few hours of playing around, adding filters to my iSight, and creating flashy screen-savers i decided to create a simple composition to wish my father happy birthday. All went smoothly and it was received well by the said recipient.

However, this got me thinking. Recently, DJM was complaining about how expensive VJing software is, and how taxing the programs are on the computers memory and storage space. If-someone was to code a new VJing software for Mac, which made use of all these free, built in and very powerful OSX technologies. The resultant program would be relatively small and could be priced quite modestly (or just for free).

When i get good enough at programming, i might be giving this a try.

Quartz composer is free with Xcode. 

Design Flaws

I don't really know where this is going, but I might as well try to write something. After seeing Elrevert write something, I knew I must.

My topic is the human body. There are many people (who are mostly religious) who would have you believe that the human body is the perfect one, no faults whatsoever. How could anybody believe this?

It is quite extraordinary for something like the human body to survive as long as it has. There are so many weak points it is hard to account for them all. A simple knock to the head in a sensitve spot can kill you. A pinch of a pressure point can have you unconscious for hours. Falling on a slightly jagged rock the wrong way has the potential to a) create a hole in you, and b) really hurt. And that's just on the outside.

Inside there's no end of absolute rubbish going on, some of it also potentially fatal. A small clot in the bloodstream for example. There is no point in the appendix. Humans have not eaten grass for thousands of years (probably), yet everyone has one of these timebombs in them at birth, waiting to burst. Evolution has a lot to answer for. Why didn't we get rid of this and keep something good, like gills perhaps.

Think of all the other useless stuff. Easily blocked airways. Sweat. This one is borderline ridiculous. The scientific explanation for sweat is that it is meant to cool you down. Does it? Has anybody ever thought 'Thank goodness I'm sweating.' No, you take a drink because you're losing precious bodily fluid, and you'll feel terrible if you don't rehydrate. And excretion is riddled with faults. Couldn't excretion be converted in a way so that all extraneous waste was boiled, removed of colour and released odourlessly as a gas through the pores instead of sweat perhaps? Honestly...

I can only conclude that I have no real way of finishing this well, but I felt some of these things needed saying and that if only our body was better designed, think where we could be now. Presumably not living in danger of the (very real) threat of dying of an infected papercut.

Feeding your mac coffee, even while the lid is closed

For full information on this, make sure you go to http://alexburgess.wordpress.com

But, have you ever found yourself wanting to close the lid of your macbook/macbook pro, while listening to music, torrenting, etc?

Well, the answer is called insomniaX. Well, nearly....

InsomniaX carried horrible, leopard-unfriendly icons in the menu bar. Not any longer, because now there is

INSOMNIAX - Kitty cat edition.

I loved the app, but hated the icons, so I had a little fiddle and changed them to cats.

Have fun!

... Oh - and download from http://www.wobblemation.co.uk/InsomniaX%20-%20with%20Kitty%20icons.zip

Humble readers of this blog, I have a question...

Have you ever felt a sudden urge to rip off your ears and beat yourself to death with them?

While this may seem like a strange idea at first, I believe it to be one of the few constructs of the human psyche to provide us with an instant (well, a slow and painful) relief from a noise so unthinkable, so paralytically horrifying that it hurts my tender, fragile eardrums just thinking about it. I am talking of course, about R&B sensation, Akon.

While some members of the Kielder may actually know what repeatedly smashing yourself with your ears feels like, I can assume that most of you don't. Well, in fact, you do. All you have to do is tune your DAB Digital Radio to BBC Radio 1XTRA, and wait for around the same length of time you do when listening to Kerrang, for "Rockstar" by Nickelback to unwelcomely knock on your door in the dead of night, sodden from head to toe, dying from the relatively unknown disease overplayedsclerosis (symptoms include a sudden and devastating loss of popularity), and you will inevitably hear the sound of a true R&B visionary cloud your senses with brilliance...

"I wanna make love right now now now, I wanna make love right now now now, I wanna make love right now now now, I wanna make love right now now now, I wanna make love right now now now, I wanna make love right now now now..."

That's right ladies and gentlemen, we are in the presence of genius. One man, one man stands alone (when I say alone, I actually mean surrounded by thousands of others) in his writing and composing talent bracket. One man has defied the odds to produce another multi-platinum selling album containing nothing but pure, unadulterated CRAP, which for some reason makes 14 year old girls across the globe want to "bop" up and down clubs all night screaming this shit into the ears of innocent, music loving people like you and me. It isn't fair, and I've had enough of it. 

I have one question. Why? Why is it that these retarded piss-heads enjoy listening to this rubbish? It can't be because of the melodic, thumping baseline and mind-numbingly repetitive synth. And it can't be because of the original, varied lyrics (note the sarcasm) discussed earlier. With these two reasons ruled out, I have come to the conclusion that people who enjoy this kind of music must be too wankered to either give a fuck, or understand that any sound is entering their ears at all. Or remember their own name, for that matter.

You think people downing shots all night every night next to the nearest speaker blaring out 1XTRA, "bopping" to Akon is unlikely? Well, so do I, but if you can think of any other reason why anyone would torture themselves by listening this complete and utter donkey dick, I'd like to hear it.

Over and out.

Hello

This is John, but you can call me Russ.

I have been asked to contribute to this blog, and am perfectly happy to when the feeling takes me. I may not be consistant, reliable, punctual or good, but I will be there.

Thank you,
John Russ

Speed up spotlight

Finding spotlight a little unresponsive? Just installed vista via bootcamp (or any other NTFS OS)? 

Go to spotlight preferences > privacy. Then add 'untitled' (or whatever your bootcamp drive is).

This will lose you the ability to search your windows partition, but who wants to anyway?

Movies

Like big-budget action blockbusters? Look no further than 2009.

- Watchmen
- Terminator: Salvation
- Transformers 2
- Star Trek

Gay quote of the day award goes to....

PGREEN !

For wanting to do up a double decker bus and call it the "Dudemobile"... Xzibit style.

Landyachtz B-Ride - A Newbies Review

I have recently aquired a longboard. For those of you who dont know, longboards are like a skateboard, but longer. For those of you who are ignorent enough to not know what a skateboard is, think: plank with wheels.

Longboards are used for general skating/crusing/commuting/downhill. As a result, their size and style vary greatly.

The board i have, the Landyachtz B-Ride, is actualy massive, even for a longboard (its 1.5 meters long).

Upon skating it i learnt several things.

The B-Ride loves smooth open tarmack

The B-Ride loves going fast and smooth

The B-Ride doesnt like grass

The B-Ride really doesnt like mud

The B-Ride throws a paddy on ice
The B-Ride also doesnt care for curbs

My head doesn't care for hedges or walls.

Having said that, the B-Ride is actualy awsome, skating on it is a breeze. You would expect such a big board to handle like a tank. However, the revenge trucks turn in a rather different way to normal trucks and as a result it handles like a much smaller board.

Having just used it to commute to college today, my legs hurt a little. But my jorney time was cut by about half.

In conclusion i absolutely love this board, all i need to do know is pony up some more money to finish paying its previos owner.

Reading and Leeds - Week 2

So these are my updated predictions based on a further 6-and-a-half days of headliner speculation. Despite the announcement of a new album and a "summer tour", Green Day stay below the bubble line due to speculation from eFestivals that they were initially going to sign for the festival but the deal fell through at the last minute.

Obviously, the stunning revival of Blink 182 has propelled them from 10th to 3rd, and many (some reluctantly) are now dusting off their baggy jeans and lip rings in preparation. Arctic Monkeys and Kings of Leon both remain strong favorites.

Don't forget to check the official festival website for the latest rumors and updates.

EDIT: Apologies, I did an update on another website 2 days ago, which is why the position changes don't make sense when looking at last weeks. Oh well, what the fuck are you going to do, kill me?! No, so shut up! Yeah!

Seen Eurotrip?

If you've seen thee film Eurotrip you know the song "Scotty doesn't know". (Or rather "Scottish doesn't know ... if your Aylestone 08 leavers)

Well i've decided there should be a song called
"Tommy does know"

Had to be said.

Festivals, festivals, festivals. Any self-respecting music fan loves them. Yes, I know that the summer rockfests are a fare distance away yet, but the rumors have started to fly around as is almost always the case around this time of year, especially for the Reading and Leeds Festival 2009. 

As myself, James and Matt are planning to attend this year, I have been spending quite a bit of time trawling through the many forums, and have come up with a fairly accurate prediction concerning the Headliners. This list will be updated each week, based on solid new information that manages to reach me through the acres of bullshit swirling around out there.

Obviously this is just speculation (I'd like to think relatively well-informed speculation), and the rankings will change each week as explained earlier. Bands like Slipknot and Lostprophets are almost dead certs to be playing, but they are lower down on this list as they are unlikely to headline. Oasis and Blink 182, however, are both very unlikely to appear in any form, especially since one of them is split. Some rumors suggest otherwise, however, so I have included them.

Movie Hybrids

X Men 3 : Batman Begins
Happy Feet : The Return Of the King
March Of The Penguins : The Empire Strikes Back

Somone please make these films.

Snow!

Yay, it snowed, just had a snowball fight and i cant feel my fingers. Hurts to type.

In Europe a lil snow doesn't do much. But here in Hereford a few inches will bring the entire transport system to a dismal halt. Its a bit silly. Then again, i cant complain about the lack of college.

Mmmmmm snow.

ME ! ...and..umm... ME again ! YAY!

Hey yet another new addition to the blog.
Im Matt, 17,Hereford UK, 6th form college.

Well not much for me to say here except Im going to try and keep my posts about music, games (both PC & Consoles...... PC > Consoles :) and anything else which takes my fancy.

Also yes I play guitar and make short films.

One more thing...
INNERPARTYSYSTEM Live is the most intense and amazing experience of anyone's life so far. Right next to your fist orgasm which like INNERPARTYSYSTEM is over too soon...

More about the gig soon + pictures and a video.

My first useful + informative post

OK, firstly, for the useful bit.
Go here : http://alexburgess.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/retro-toaster-screensaver/

And download the screensaver. It will be the best thing to happen to you, since you realized how to torrent.

And now the informative bit.
Does anyone get any blogger bugs with safari? For example, I'm having to use firefox to write this, because I can't paste anything into the box without it appearing somewhere at the bottom. And I have to double click on the 'insert images' to get the pop up to open. And it always seems to fail to publish.

Oh - and a big one. That red box, is meant to be a animated gif... Does blogger not support gif's?

That is all

Big computing

My living room is getting a new carpet...

So the TV is mine for a week! Wippee!

Music!

Hey hey. Shameless self promotion.

Check out the band i am part of. Good wholesome music

Support local music.

Oh, and at some point i may post some of my solo efforts at electronic music. Maybe

About Me...?

Hi im richard an i'm new to the HardWired crew

Soooooo... About Me...

Heya my name is Richard but some of you may know me as QleQ if u play alota CoD. Im 15 and live in the land of sex and drugs (holland =D).

Basically im gonna be introducing you into the 1337 world of gaming which these mac lovers wont know anything about (i hate Macs) For the record im into FPS and MMOs i like all the CoD editions except the french made CoD5 i like CnC ZH and WoW (which has a bad reputation but try it b4 u hate it...)

Man! Stuff sounds gay when you write it down... Oh and ppl who play FPS on consoles are fags

No one will care.... But whatever.

Yes, I married my memory card.

... I hate the blogger photo upload tool...