Mechanical Marksy


Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

NIN in the studio? New material soon?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Reznor has just posted some new interesting photos on ninentitled “?”

Last time this happened it was the release of The Slip which was offered as a free download and later purchased digipak.

Sounds like the Halo volumes are back?

Updated: looks like Atticus Ross is back in there too. Perhaps a Ghosts V-IIX?

nin-1
nin-2

Look at this f*%^ing hipster

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Sorry but this has really suddenly annoyed me. Just *everyone* wants to wear the latest in cool and neat desgin, Superdry…

hipsters
Superdry clothing is then new Bench.

They need to go on http://www.latfh.com/

Free PlayStation 3 media server

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

If you own a PS3 and have trouble finding a decent media server, check out ps3MediaServer http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

Apparently it’s supposed to be easy to setup and get running. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but look forward to having a tinker once i get my PS3. One day…

It transcodes MKV and other foreign files to the PS3 in realtime, over wifi or ethernet. You’ve got full control over the video and audio settings too which looks nice.

The best Wishlist system on the internet

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

I’ve been talking with some peoples on to make an Amazon-like wishlist system, but for the whole internet. I thought i had done some investigations but hadn’t searched those dodgy back alleys of the internet. Until i found this:
http://wantz.it/

It’s a wishlist system which lets you bookmark things that you want for birthdays, christmas, or little presents just because. It’s a great system, utilising Delicious, and Twitter – the only thing missing is Facebook integration.

At least i don’t have to go to all the trouble in making the site, although it would have been fun. Thanks a lot Ching.. :)

Check out what i want, and buy me a present for my birthday:
http://marksy.wantz.it/

iTunes desktop controllers

Monday, June 8th, 2009

There are two major players in the iTunes desktop controller arena’s.

I’ve been using Coversutra (with an “extended” demo license) for about a year now and only really use it for displaying the artwork on title on the desktop. I’ve no other use for it. Don’t care about searching, or controlling as iTunes already handles that.

Now, I’ve just noticed that there is a FREE app that does pretty much all of that anyways, and has an easy to skin interface (uses CSS, HTML, JS).

Bowtie £FREE

Coversutra £12

But which one is better?

Swine flu. Please don’t panic.

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Swine flu is the media’s new big sell.

Bird flu, SARs, Chinese Flu, Modified Influenza. These are all pretty much the same thing.

They are variations of the Influenza virus, simply known as The Flu.

In some rare cases (especially in deprived countries such as Mexico where the virus originated), people have died.

Medical advisers have issued a statement asking people who have come down with flu-like symptoms, to stay at home, drink water and take flu tablets. If the symptoms persist, see your doctor.

Pretty much the same as any common sickness.

Let’s not waste our time debating the affects, social implications, ask Hollywood’s actors what their thoughts are, or even blame-war Mexicans. Let’s just move on from this one quickly.

The media loves things like this as it is a source of income for them. If they can get a headline to scare you into buying “information” – then they’ll draw it out as long as they can. Even if the content is nothing more than a headache and runny nose.

link via bbc

In fact this reminds me of a great South Park episode (S07E07):

NZ Internet law to change

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

New Zealand government has proposed a change to the law which citizens must adhere to. Police are asking ISPs to nark on people for downloading copyrighted material. Three strikes and they’ll have their internet disconnected, even if it’s not proven.

This is completely damaging to the internet and is the wrong way around the problem of copyrighted files.

Police should target uploaders, rather than the downloaders.

Who ever uploaded “Movie.avi.torrent” should be prosecuted, not Joe the plumber from Utah.

link via stuff

OS X Sharing/Permissions fail

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

My mate Joel just pole-axed his Mac by changing the permissions to his local disk by envoking “no access” to everyone. After a restart his machine failed to boot OS X.

He thought that his disk was open and being shared on the network. Which is why he wanted to change the permissions.

Please kids, if you want to prevent people accessing your drive from a network, remember to deal with folder/file sharing from the System Preferences pane.

Otherwise you’re in a whole world of trouble.

  1. Tried to boot in Single User Mode, failed to change permissions.
  2. Tried to boot from disc, failed to change permissions.
  3. Tried to archive and install from disc, install failed.
  4. Clean install time.

Can anyone shed light on this? Point 4 is the last measure we don’t want to use.

17 days to go

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Until I’m in…
welly

(image ref: http://www.friars.co.nz/)

Spamsuckers Inc.

Monday, January 12th, 2009

I’ve just been hit by a spammer/data trawler who is posting stuff (on other websites) based on my contact details found in the Contact area. I’ve contacted the websites in question and asked for them to remove them.

If you haven’t already, encode your mailto’s incase some dickhead scriptkiddie is mucking about with your details.