No more vlogs ahoy!!

--- @10:45am

Whoops-a-daisy.
2nd day in a row with going over my daily bandwidth allowance. I think I'll have to take those video files off - sorry people. I doubt it's the people who see it here, but I did make links to them at:
www.thesuburbs.org.uk

...which is a Ben Folds (Five) messageboard website. My post was read 190+ times (with a few of them being myself), so you imagine how many times it may have been downloaded.
I'll put up single files from now on - get rid of these old ones for now.


--- @ 2pm
Supposed to be doing my project research report but have somehow managed to divert from finishing the 'Acknowledgements' page to editing my sausageandmash blog. I think I'm getting the hang of it now. I've put up a new 'Currently reading...' section - might think about doing something else too, but that'll be for later when I want to get distracted from work again.

Also, trying out different posting methods, because I keep editing my posts, so I think that I might stick in '--- @TIME' so that I (and you) can keep track of things on a single post.

Just been reading back on one of my posts, re: moral dilemma on using someone else's wireless:
Wireless hijacking under scrutiny

So no more 'borrowing' of wireless internet then. Mind, we've got our own now - hazzah!



--steven

more vlogs ahoy!!

Apologies to those who tried to access the vlog on the previous post - I changed the URL address. But to make up for it, I've put up three more to total at 4. I've obviously far too much time on my hands. I recommend right-clicking and 'Save As..' for each one (each are about 20MB big).

One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces

Kate

Army

Philosophy


Honestly, I play better at piano :P but was trying too hard are getting them within 3 minutes. (yeah yeah, any excuse will do...)

Enjoy.

my first vlog

I talked previously about vlogs and now here is my very first. My love for Ben Folds (Five) is shown in this video (of many, no doubt). The song is called:
'One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces'. It's the first track from the BFF album 'Whatever and Ever, Amen'. Get yourself the album if you don't own it, it really is one of the best from the group.

Much like katelink.blogspot.com, my footage is shot from a digital camera. I have a Canon Powershot A510 (great compact camera with configurable manual settings, like aperature, shutter speed and manual focus). Unfortunately, I can only take up to 3mins of footage at 320*240 resolution (and 30secs at 640*480), which means that I've had to play like a bat out of hell on this first song (the original song is about 4m30s or so).

However, this time restriction is made up for the fact that the video file format is AVI (uncompressed footage) - so it allows me to do whatever I like with it. Fantastic stuff. However, I thought that playing the song fast (and well) was going to be difficult, but actually finding the best way of presenting turned out to be more annoying.

After much faffing about trying to find the best quality vs. file size, I've finally settled for QuickTime *.mov files - and I highly recommend it to anyone else trying to compress AVI movies. A 50MB AVI (320*240px size) down to 20MB .mov!! Excellent! Well done, Apple/QuickTime.

Enough background story - on with the show. You'll find here (it's best to right-click and Save As...):
One Angry Dwarf

Hope it works. Have fun and give us any feedback at all - good or bad.

Cheers.

vlog - doesn't roll off the tongue like blog...

I was searching around the 'net for some things about Ben Folds (can't get enough of the guy) when I happened upon a fellow blogger on blogspot:

katelink.blogspot.com

So there wasn't exactly a huge amount of BF stuff on her site (just a small video clip), but I found the idea of video-logging, or vlog, very interesting. I was thinking to myself: "I like video editing, it's good fun and I've done some in the past - might give it a go."

And Katelin (I think that's the blogger's name) had pointed out a coupld of other vlog sites, which I proceeded to click into and have a look. I didn't view the videos bar one, and that alone gave me an idea of what people might seeing or are interested in. It wasn't anything fancy, didn't require actors, etc etc, it was basically a blog in video form. Sweet. Well, I've got the tools to do vlogs, so watch out for some in the future - just don't expect them to be any good.


Onto other things, it's been pretty hot and stuffy for the past few days here in London. I bought myself a fan last Monday and have left it on day and night - I don't think if turned it off for more than 10mins. It's kinda helping although more often than not it's moving the hot air around in my room, rather than providing a refreshingly chilling air flow (unless you stand right next to it).

Oh and am going to another Ben Folds concert - Brixton Academy, London, on 13th Dec. 2005 - I've always wanted to see the man play live and this year I get to see him twice - absolutely awesome!! I really can't wait - want to get the early too as it's stalls standing and presumably 'first-come-first-served' for standing nearest the stage. This time, I'm taking my digicam, even if the Brixton Academy website says that they will take all recording devices away. We'll see what we can do... big baggy jumper or something like that...

ummm... played some badminton on Friday - first bit of proper exercise in 5 weeks (I was on travels for three of them, excused myself for one week, and got lazy for another). Was good bit of running about but I really need some new trainers because I kept slipping around - totalling not safe, especially when I want to change directions suddenly - might twist something untwistable. snap!

Can you tell I'm struggling to write anything vaguely interesting? I thought that I should post up something. Aah yes, was thinking about getting a cheap/old iPaq for GPS and wirelessness, but decided against it as it won't be used for anything else - maybe when they get dirt cheap and people are paying the buyers to take them away.
Erm... watched some Ben Folds videos - a load I've not seen before - worth checking out if you're a fan, and even so if you're not - I recommend Riverfest selection in either case:

www.mightyboy.net

Cool - that'll do for now - I think I'll get some tea (it's 12:35am here in UK, so that's tea as in drink, not food). Or seeing as I've a load of bananas that are going off plus I have a carton of custard some place in my room and I've got some cheap-immitation Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, I could make myself ill and combine them all together... O.D. on sugar. Lovely.

Speeding comedy

Was watching 'Comic Strip Presents...' (British TV comedy from 1980s) yesterday and found that one episode called 'Summer School' was filmed on location at Brunel University, West London. I only know that because I'm currently studying there, and so it was quite nice to know a second 'claim to fame' for the university (the first being the film 'A Clockwork Orange').
The episode was about a group of adults living out pre-historic lives in straw-hamlets, etc etc. For those who know Brunel grounds, it was filmed on the concrete quad area next to the Lecture Centre and Refectory/Student Union building.
And they also tried to catch fish in the stream with spears - that was pretty funny too.

Also yesterday (I couldn't think of anything to post yesterday), my travelling friend of 'Round England', Nav, tells me that we did manage to get a speeding ticket, doing 37mph on a 30mph road. We thought that we had got away with it all but alas no. And it happened on the last day of our travels - sod's law.

Just finished watching a Marx brothers film, 'Duck Soup' - I think it's the first Marx brother film that I've watched completely, and boy it was pretty damn funny. The plot was of a new leader (Groucho Marx) causing problems with another leader of another country and starting a war. But it's the comedy that's the thing that you need to look out for - it's all pretty plain and simple comedy, but it's all good.

And now Nav tells me that he has shaved off his beard and the expected untanned chin was not as bad as we thought it would be... possibly. I've not seen it but I'm sure it's fine... yuk yuk yuk :o)

For the first time since I've been back home from travelling England it was actually sunny, albeit for part of the day. So I sat outside and tried to do a super hard So Doku. Keyword being 'tried' as I thought I nearly completed one of the grids but turned out that I had done something wrong and managed to mess it up. And then I couldn't trace my steps back and thus I gave up. Ah well, good waste of an hour or so in the sun.

Geez, I take forever writing a single post - it's nearly been an hour, I suppose it's what happens when you have the TV on... bad TV, sit!

umm... that'll do for now.

stoic londoners indeed

cor blimey guv'nor!! what is going in the world these days. I reckon you all know about it so I won't bored you with the details. I and all those that I know in and around London are good and well (thanks for you concern, JB).

It's not as if bombings haven't happened in England or London before but it all seems quite surreal for some reason. I suppose because it's so close to home (living in the London area, that is) and that I've got a better understanding of the world now than I did before (hardly watched the news many years ago).

But it was good to see that the Londoners were keeping up with the true British tradition of 'stiff upper lip'. At some point during the continuous news, a reporter told of people in fear but the visuals showed a load of people lining up at a bus stop, seemingly uneffected by the event - I thought that was amusing - kind of like, "whatever..."

at 10pm: 38 dead, over 700 injured.

On to more cheerful news, turns out that Nav had picked up a poisonous caterpillar at Lands End (see Round England with a Coolbox blog - Lands End post). I suppose it should have been obvious, really, what with it being brightly coloured. And also, that wasn't a snake that we found in Portland.

I tried out those So Doku puzzles in The Times T2 section today, and I managed to get the first done, then messed up the 2nd and 3rd. The last one (the hardest of all three), I thought I was doing quite well thinking that I made a successful guess at placing the numbers, but I was wrong. I just turns out to be a case of trial and error I reckon (or luck), because I don't see any other way of finding out the correct numbers without going through practically the whole thing. And then it turns into another guess-session when you get to another dead-end.

And I also found out that Ben Folds might be doing another (short) tour in London this coming winter. Will definately have to go see that, although tickets are £30. Mind, I reckon it'll be worth it.

Now going to find out how much my Round England trip cost...

what the?!?

So I'm checking my email and because I've set that thing in blogger to send emails of the comments people make, I get 7 emails in the space of 2-hours. And they are all about how those people found my blog.

Woooo!!! Man, I feel popular!

Other than that, nowt happening. Oh, except the moral dilemma of should I or shouldn't I be using someone else's wireless internet access (short story is that they haven't WEP encrypted access so there's free broadband internet). Of which I'm currently using.

Moral dilemma over? Probably.

So today (or stricly, yesterday), London won the bid for Olympic 2012 - which was a shock to me to be honest. I didn't care for or against it, but we've got it now in 7-years time. East London Stratford will look more beautiful than it could ever dream of (apparently). So either the people of Stratford know this, or have been deeply insulted by the GB Olympic Committee team.
Shares of Belfour Beatty (sp?) go up 4% and a woman claims to have won £900 on a 30-1 bet (that's a £30 bet, right?). Well done to you all.

Oh and found out that I've got Bs for my Masters grades so far - lovely and consistent, and as I've always expected from myself - nothing to fancy otherwise I'll only fall back down.

Why is gammon and bacon not put with the other fresh meat in Tesco (or our local Tesco, anyway)? Why are they two aisles apart? This confused me and I thought that they didn't have any gammon - I was going to cry right there in the store...

True.

Time for a mandarin, I think.

and so it begins...

Hello all,

I'll be assuming that nobody will find my blog in the mass of blogs that are already out there - probably just as well because I won't have anything interesting to say.

I'm surprise one person found (and then continued to read) my previous blog 'round england with a coolbox' - in fact, if that person could tell how and why they found it, that would be most appreciated.

So right, like the tag-line says; it will be colloquial (i.e. expect spelling mistakes), it will be nonsense (i.e. expect ramblings), it will be at its best (i.e. expect crapness). Let's begin...

Today, I sorted out my other blog to get the missing pictures showing. I played 'Landed' and other tunes by Ben Folds on my piano. I played Resident Evil 4 with infinite rocket launcher ammo. I've yet to do any uni work.

Other things have probably happened, but I've got such a bad memory that I've forgotten them already - maybe they weren't of any particular interest. Yeah, I'll stick with that arguement.

Right, can't be bothered with this anymore. Stay tuned and see if it gets any more exciting than this. It'll be pretty difficult, I know, but stranger things have happened.

edit:
oh my god, doesn't this blog look girly in colour? I like the purple writing any stuff, but the BG is horrid - anyone got any ideas?