Month: February 2004

Project is currently dead. Will not be back.

Had a quick look around my xbox bookmarks and found out that the Dreamix project is now dead. I was quite shocked at this because it had so much going for it a while back. Oh well we shall see if Xbox media centre moves into the area of PVR's.

I am however very interested in Xlink messager which creates a tunnel between two or more? xboxes so they can play games together or share media?

Also found Xbox tribe and xbins today which is useful for finding compiled versions of xbmp and xbmc. And I've been following a thread about HD Windows media on the Xbox. I tried to get the Matrix revolutions high defination version working on my xbox along time ago and I also had huge syncing and fps problems. But as some one said what do you expect for a 733mhz machine. Not even my 1.33mhz laptop can play it correctly, saying that the xbox has a much beefer graphics card. Also reminds me to look for a Matroska dll for xbmplayer.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Joining up, the obvious choice

I'm starting to question the reasons why I decided to give each year group I teach a blog. If you check out the 1st year interaction blog you can clearly see lots of useful information and ideas. Its also been used as a general notice board at the moment for arrangements and planning. Which is fine, just interesting to see happening. Those who dont blog are either not that bothered and usually dont turn up to my lessons too much or dont have a easily available blogger.
Have a look at the 2nd year interaction blog and its windy city. Very few posts and little in the way of interest, no offense to HarryT or Paulo of course. So i'm thinking join them up. It would be trivial to do, as all blogs are stored on the filesystem as text files. The hardest part would be arranging categories and telling everyone the new xmlrpc address. I could redirect everything else though. Or even with the intiative of people.rave.ac.uk – I could finally offload the blogs to a real place?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

The Freedom of Information Act

Been working hard at college on the Freedom of information site. Its now coming close to completion, its a shame because I had a few things I needed to do to make it a complete job.

  1. Unlimited OPML transformation – so you can click on each outline and go down a level, only seen it done using Javascript not standard XHTML and CSS
  2. Word ML to XHTML – Microsoft's own XSL transformation is pretty good but first up only works on the Beta 2 of Word ML and its bloody HUGE
  3. Word ML to PDF – Chris was planning to do this with XSL-FO, but we couldnt even imagine the nightmare to do it. Plus you can now buy one which does it

Ideally I would have liked to done something like this. But it wasnt going to happen… The main crutux of the matter is that no matter what happens the xml which word or anything turns out will be nasty only because the staff have no idea how to create well structured office documents.

Been reading Practical RDF as well by the way, liking XML/RDF cant wait to get something I can use it for.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Hacking the Library

XML.com has made some changes it would seem. With the topics ranging from managing personal media collections to XMLTV. Should be interesting to see the results of the changes, as they were doing quite well already. Maybe the webservices.xml.com will be more business like.

XML is well on its way to becoming a mature, ubiquitous technology. The pace of standardization has not slowed, but the time where applications took a back seat to new core technologies is coming to an end. At XML.com we want to focus more on the application space, particularly personal information management, a vibrant area of XML application development. To that end, today Kendall Clark begins a new column, “Hacking the Library”, which will focus on problems of personal information, especially those related to the digital media lifestyle.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Mob-Blogging from another view

Aibos view of living room

Ok I'm sorry but sometimes I read about the progress of mobblogging and i'm not exactly as thrilled as I when I first heard about it. But this is a whole different matter. I'm loving the idea. Instead of mobblogging yourself, why not let your robot dog do the hard work. And it makes so much sense, cant believe people havent thought about it before. Whuffie takes most of the photos.

welcome to the world's first and only “roblog”. currently, a sony aibo robot dog and a er1 / tablet pc based robot post automatically to this site throughout the day, and once and awhile a human (phillip m. torrone) does as well. roomba to be added this weekend.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Reasons why blojsom is the way forward

Blojsom

Blojsom uses the Atom API – which has caused a huge divide in the community. Alongside the older blogger and metaweblog API's. So its pretty much forward looking. I havent spent enough time looking at it but there seems to be a few good applications already, even if there only demos.

People have started writing plugins – Yeah its not exactly the moveabletype community but you know what its the start of things? By the way, has every mac user gone nuts for ecto? And I need to try out NetNewsWire's Atom beta.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

return of thebroken.org

Props to hersheycub for the broken.org picture

The guys at the broken have a new release of there popular hacking cross jackass online show.

We kick it off with Windows password hash extraction and cracking. Also learn the basics of modding the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube. Plus, Ramzi’s back with a mission: impossible self-destructing laptop. And we sit down with Kevin Mitnick to find out what life is like for a hacker in prison.

Nice, cant beat that for 30mins.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Recommend reading for the Richard Stallman lecture

Keep on forgetting to send people who ask different questions about the stallman lecture this bunch of links. Well hopefully just look at my blog will do now. 

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.html

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Tolerable Raining (letting it rain) mix

I've done a very long and new mix. So look out for it soon on the site. For those interested, heres the rough playlist. Please note that the mix is longer than a CD even a 80min CD. So the only way to hear the full thing is online…

// Let it Rain - 4 Strings
// Let The Light Shine In - Darren Tate vs. Jono Grant
// Sincere (pulser remix) - Firewall
// Turn Out The Lights (Hiver and Hammer Mix) - M.I.K.E
// 1998 (gouryella mix) - Binary Finary
// Planet - Mauro Picotto
// Obsession (Frank Biazzi Remix) - DJ Tiesto vs. Junkie XL
// Rheinkraft - Oliver Klein
// Interstate Emperors - Jeffed
// Flight 643 (original mix) - Tiesto
// Return to Cali (push remix) - Mauro Picotto
// Indigo - Ferry Corsten
// Please save me (Push remix) - Sunscreem vs Push
// Galaxia (Solar Stone Remix) - Lost Witness
// Gamemaster 2003 (Michael Woods Remix) - Lost Tribe
// Seven Cities (V-One's Living Cities Remix) - Solarstone
// When Things Go Wrong(2003 Remix) - Airwave
// Elevation - Darren Tate
// Children (tilt's courtyard mix) - Robert Miles
// The Legacy - Push
// Let It Rain (Radio Edit) - 4 Strings

Listen to the whole mix at 40k at the mixes page. Its long but very enjoyable…Arron, why would I want to put my music on DVD? I could easily create visuals and stream them along with the mix. Remember think network not optical storage. Kind of reminds me of my idea for digital vjing and djing. Maybe I'll explain when i got more time.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Preparing for Stallman

Miles sent a few of us, an article to get us ready for Stallman. A Radical Theory of Property. I've also been reading the Open sources book again, to get a full grip of stallmans thoughts on different matters. I'm also going to bid for the Free as in Freedom book on amazon soon as I get paid again. I believe theres no need to invest in the selected essays book because there all online at GNU.org. Really looking forward to the lecture…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

VideoForum 2004

Went today to the videoforum 2004. Wasnt as varied as last years, but there were some highlights.

Oplayo.com, the first company to do streaming video over 2.5g. The interesting thing is that it will work with almost any colour Java or Symbian phone. Which there are about 10 million in the UK now, I believe? Note funding for Oplayo is from Siemans and Nokia. Hummm… Anyway it works and works quite well with about 12secs to download a 1-2min clip they claim? Flix is a company which make a living off the Oplayo technology, they usually charge around 2 pounds per stream. Which works out to be 50 percent to Flix, 20 – 6 percent for the content creator or owner and then 17.5 percent for the operater. They also say the user GRPS charge should only cost 5 – 10 pence and the 2 pounds will be charged to the users phone bill. Oh they use MVQ video codec for there streams. And there is a kind of directory wml page interface available for use too.

The AMD 64 laptop from Packard Bell
The whole complete range of AMD 64's

In the sound section I found a nice GNU/Linux audio project called Augnula. Its made for Redhat and Debian but will work on most Linux boxes. It just a matter of getting the hardware to support the software.
Talking about Linux, I passed by the AMD stand and got a spookly but nice light up green AMD pen. But finally got my hands on a AMD 64 Laptop and saw a 4 CPU Operton server running. Wow it was pumping out hot air, plus it needed 3 PSU's to keep it stable! Not for desktop use I'm sure. Interesting thing is that all the laptops out there at the moment are standard desktop AMD 64 chips not the AMD 64 Mobile chip, so they dont last as long on battery, even though the chips have a neat power saving feature. Also the AMD 64 regular chips will change to 939 pin and the Operton to 940 pin in the near future. At the moment the regular chips are using 736 pin or something like that. So who knows what will happen to the FX range?

Someone on the Kaoss pad messing with the pad
Someone on the Kaoss pad messing with selectors

On the hardware front I finally got to play with a Korg Kaoss Pad. If you've never had a play its well worth having a go. Too expensive for me, but one funky tool. Specially now it does audio and video effects… Thing also worth mentioing is the Alesis Fx's. The Air Fx and Air synths allow you to control them without touching them, you basicly wave your hand over the top of it to control it. And it works really well. Almost as good as the Kaoss pad. While the ModFX's are very cheap FX tools which can be chained together to make a complete setup. Considered buying one if I was that much into making music just to play with while out and about. There very cute too… Didnt see the Pioneer DVJ-x1 though…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]