Amateur Ramblings

Blaques

Yonbeek (Olly) asked me if he could use my perpetually-almost comprehensive pictures of all of the blue plaques in the Leeds postcode area for a university project he was doing. I said yes.

Now he has completed his website. Take a look here.

SnApplication

You'll have maybe noticed a photographic odd one out in my Secret Garden post earlier this week.

The rogue 'vintage' snap was courtesy of Instagram, a photographic iPhone app I just downloaded last week.

I've always liked the look of pictures taken with old or cheap or broken film cameras. This app allows you to take a low resolution digital picture and then select from a number of effects, which give the image the appearance of being caught on a range of cameras.

No? I guess I'd better show you what I mean. Here are some I took at home:

 

 

 

And here are a couple I took in Baildon at the Weekend:

 

Online, there's Webstagram, an affiliated site that allows you to view you pictures, as well as those of your contacts. Yes, there is a social networking element to Instagram. You can link up with friends to see there work, and post your own pictures direct to Twitter, Facebook, et al.

As I mentioned above, the pictures are captured at 72dpi, so don't necessarily lend themselves to being printed at a reasonable size. But overall I'm pleased with my new toy. 

Windows Fail

Via Fail Blog.

Surplus to Requirements

The appointment was narrowed down to Saturday morning. The engineer called at ten to eight to let us know we were his first job of the day and he would be round in a few minutes. Within two hours he was finished, and we had transferred our allegiance from Murdoch to Branson.

We were left with a significant pile of cabling and equipment from our previous set-up that we no longer needed. Just look at the waste!

 

Full Speed Ahead!

Well, 65% to be precise.

That is the amount of bandwidth that is available to us according to Sky. We pay for 20MB but receive only 13MB. The cause is our proximity to the exchange; this is the line trotted out by the broadband providers so it must be true.

Anyway, after two weeks of troubles I seem finally to be able to draw most of the available bandwidth through the ether to my PC. It seems the fault was not with Sky but with my Belkin network adapter, which has disastrously failed in its one role in life.

 

The above graph shows test downloads/uploads conducted over the last few days. The spikes were control tests on Gemma's laptop. Today's early and ever-so slight improvements were from a new but underpowered replacement, and the post 8pm return to form is courtesy of a Netgear adapter.

BTW, even though this wasn't Sky's fault, we decided to leave them anyway. Were moving over to Virgin in a couple of weeks. I trust that this won't cause any further disruptions.

Failband

Just a quick inaugural post from my iPhone to say that our fast-failing broadband has not managed to last out the week.

We called Sky at the weekend and the helpful ladytech diagnosed a faulty filter. She arranged for a replacement to be issue at no charge. Hopefully it will arrive soon and normal service can be resumed.

A Social Network

On the advice of Tom Betts, I set up an account with foursquare.

This is another of those newfangled social networking sites. The aim is to 'check in' to the places you visit. If you are the most frequent visitor you can become the 'mayor' of that location. You earn points by checking in, and depending various criteria including number or frequency of check-ins, you are awarded 'badges'.

 

Of course this is load of nonsense, but nevertheless it is (initially at least) highly addictive and fun. See how less than two weeks in and I am already mayor of five locations, including the prestigious B&M Bargains. The bus stop into town on York Road - consider yourself OWNED!

I'm sure that becoming the mayor of a proper location is a little more difficult, but there are actual rewards to be had. For example, there are 20% food and drink discounts available at most of the city centre Wetherspoons' pubs.

Gooood Evining Madaam.

This is just brilliant (click to enlarge)...

 

I would have though the David Cameron had more important things to do than personally send me an email to confirm that an 'ATM card...has been accredited in my favor'.

Ah well, better go now; I need to start spending those J's.

Paste, Cut, Erase

I love the simplicity of the labelling here.

 

Via Geeks are Sexy.

The Breaking Of The News

Here's how I broke the news on my Facebook page:

 

Thanks to everyone who sent us sympathetic messages.

On a thread over on Gemma's profile, Sarah Jarman's suggested that I should read Emma Kennedy's The Tent, The Bucket And Me. In fact, I started reading this book the night of 'the event'. It is making me audibly chuckle at regular intervals, and is clearly going to be a very funny book. The first chapter describes her first camping holiday at the age of three. I have to say that it was, by a good length, more of a storm-induced disaster than ours.