heretic's linkblog of fun

cloudy morning

We had an amazing blanket of clouds over the city one morning this week. This was my view while I made breakfast :)

Labels: photo

blocking Snapshots popups

I hate Snapshots™ popups. Snapshots™ seem very proud of their creation, however I have never seen any possible reason you'd want these intrusive fucking things on your website:

All they do is get in the bloody way. Now, you might think why get angry? just click the handy-dandy little "disable" button! Then you realise the bloody thing doesn't work. The moment you clear cookies, sneeze or look away for five seconds the sods are back.

If you have ad blocking software you might be able to get rid of them that way; but I prefer to get medieval on Snapshots™ arse. I don't want to see them again just because I installed a new browser or something (I do that a bit, I'm a web developer and have at minimum five browsers installed at any one time).

blocking Snapshots™ using the hosts file

Let's block these suckers at the hosts file level. First, find and edit %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts ... Commonly the directory is C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc and hosts is a text file. You may need to edit the properties to turn off "read only" (you can switch it back to read only when you're done).

Once you're in the hosts file, add these lines (of course you can edit the comment to taste):

# fuck off snapshots
127.0.0.1 shots.snap.com
127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com
127.0.0.1 snap.com
127.0.0.1 ixnp.com
127.0.0.1 direct.shots.snap.com

Save the file, happy days. As far as I know this works in Windows XP, Vista, 2000... probably all versions of Windows. The Mac equivalent has to be done on the command line, because apparently Apple thinks inside every GUI-loving Machead there's a UNIX geek trying to get out.

So anyway, get on in to your hosts file and consign Snapshots™ to the oblivion it so richly deserves.

Labels: windows xp

photos

Labels: photos

around the traps

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Giving up my iPod for a Walkman, where a 13yo kid uses an original Walkman for a week. It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser ... I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly.
(funny and CC licensed, too!)
One guy starts a dance party:
Nap Fail | I Can Has Cheezburger?
The watermelon catapult | I Can Has Cheezburger?
I can see no way in which this carefully laid plan could ever fail | I Can Has Cheezburger?

great songs

Voting closed tonight for triple j's hottest 100 of all time, so I thought I'd spend a few minutes farting about putting a vote in.

I don't really expect my taste to be all that much in line with the triple j voting masses, but these things are a bit of fun all the same. I did keep my focus towards the stuff that's less obscure and a bit more likely to actually add to the final result.

The 10 I voted for:

The Cure - A Forest
- How could I not vote for this? :) Although Homesick remains my personal favourite, I think Forest is more influential; loved by more Cure fans. Not to mention the extreme extended versions they legendarily close shows with. I longed to see this live for years and that wish only recently came true.
The Clash - Rock The Casbah
- Had to pick one single song and this was the one that got me into The Clash. A film flip with an armadillo for no apparent reason, musically shows off the fact The Clash could actually play and to top it off this track is a party starter. Seriously, who doesn't like this song?
VNV Nation - Honour 2003
- OK so VNV has a cat's chance in hell of getting anywhere on the list, but Honour 2003 was already nominated so I ran with that. Honour was actually the song that got me into VNV so it's fair enough anyway... :)
Pink Floyd - Learning to fly
- Another "pick one song" situation. I actually got into Momentary Lapse of Reason before other albums. Learning To Fly just grabbed me from the moment that riff slammed out, great guitar lines, the radio chatter samples are perfectly atmospheric during the bridge, it has a glorious flying sensation (appropriately) but somehow a wistful edge.
Coldplay - Clocks
- Lots of personal significance; I associate a a sense of adventure to it - when things are exciting and scary. That might not make sense to anyone else but I'm not inclined to care..
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
- Had to include some Hendrix. A bright flame, a raw talent, influential, iconic... had to include some Hendrix.
DJ Shadow - Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt
- I'm sure this won't be a blip on the scale in the actual voting... but this song is one of the greatest bits of sample based work I've ever heard and is perhaps my favourite DJ Shadow track.
Blues Brothers - Peter Gunn Theme
- One of the most recognisable blues tunes out there, I'd imagine. The driving bassline carries this, while the Blues Brothers recording has some brilliant solos including a sax solo by Blue Lou that I know down to every last grace note.
Dave Brubeck - Take Five
- I was impressed that this was already in the nominated list. Influential for being so musically different, one of the outputs of Brubeck's experimentation with odd time signatures. But particularly inspiring to me as it's not just an experiment, it's simply a great song to listen to. A lot of experimental music is interesting but not especially listenable - there are plenty of "influential" artists out there that people don't actually listen to all that often.
The Doors - The End
- I think this song best illustrates what was great and crazy and weird about The Doors.

Some shortlisted tracks that didn't make it in the final ten:

The Clash - London Calling
VNV Nation - Beloved
Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Snog - Corporate Slave
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
Church, The - Under the Milky Way
U2 - New Year's Day
Nine Inch Nails - Closer
Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
Tool - Forty Six & 2
Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows
Tom Waits - Jockey Full Of Bourbon

...and then I had to stop, as time was short and voting was about to end. Really I could have kept adding songs for hours. Days from now I'm sure I'll still be thinking of things I could have added...

keep left, girl with gun

Labels: photo

photos

IMG_1567.JPG on Flickr (glorious sydney sunrise) then just a couple of days later IMG_1610.JPG on Flickr
new year at the shrine on Flickr
Curve leading the blind on Flick
Sunset over the CBD on Flickr
Devon - Jacobs Ladder - Sidmouth on Flickr

Labels: photos

sunset from the 25th floor

One evening at the office the sunset was so glorious people just stopped to watch.

Shot through dirty double glazing, this doesn't really capture it.

I'm glad I work with people who appreciated the moment.

Labels: photo

around the traps

The World of 100 : Toby Ng Design. Global statistics expressed in terms of the world being a village of 100 people. eg. 7 have computers, 93 do not.
The changing face of everyday design | Art and design | guardian.co.uk: From air steward uniforms to Corn Flakes cereal boxes...how has everyday design evolved over the last half-century?
Harbouring views of a once-great city | Opinion | News.com.au: Scratch the surface of the gorgeous place that is Sydney and you have a city whose beauty is all that is on offer. ... This is, without doubt, the most difficult, expensive and tough Australian city.
Windows 7 to be shipped in Europe without Internet Explorer - Ars Technica: Microsoft has responded to the EU's antitrust investigation into its bundling of its browser with Windows by deciding to ship Windows 7 in Europe without Internet Explorer 8 installed. Realistically MS will just make IE8 an immediate update; OEM machines will probably get IE preinstalled anyway, maybe with Firefox as well. Opera will cop the bad press for daring to initiate the case and ultimately not gain much, really. Google will keep using their own monopoly on search to push out Chrome; and nobody will notice the irony. Anyone who really hates the whole thing should be pissy with the EU, of course.
Photojojo | The Best Free Photos on the Web (Where to Find Them and What to Do With Them)