Is it the weekend yet? part the first
Here’s something for the weekend. it’s up to you when the weekend starts of course.
For those that like a lyric quiz here’s one with an interesting spin. Basically the word to the song are rearranged into alphabetical order and duplicates removed.
For example I’ll give you the first one for free.
“a and baby be become can come couldn’t fire funeral get girl hesitate higher i if in is it know liar light lose love mire much my night no now on only our pyre say set that the through time to try untrue wallow was we would yeah you”
Answer – Light my fire, by The Doors.
Want more? - here’s the link
There’s 50 to do. I recommend printing it off so you can carry it round with you over the next few days and scribble the answers on the paper. How many can you get? I got 41 out of 50 so far. Can you beat that? Post your scores in the comments below.
I can has cat that codez
Spotted this on the back cover of Computing when it dropped on my desk this morning. Probably nothing new to some but it amused me no end.
LOLCODE is programming language that uses the same LOLspeak as our favourite LOLCAT meme.
For example -
HAI CAN HAS STDIO? I HAS A VAR IM IN YR LOOP UP VAR!!1 IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHX VISIBLE VAR IM OUTTA YR LOOP KTHXBYE
…set a variable, prints it, and then using a loop, increments it by one and repeats until it gets to 10.
Lots more complex stuff including more examples and even implementations over at the http://lolcode.com site.
Plus there’s a handy book from the O’Rly people.
Get a Whistle
Any self respecting Brummie should be aware that Brum is the home of the whistle. Spotted a great article today over at the Music Thing blog about Acme whistles including the legendary Thunderer, the standard FIFA ref’s whistle.
J Hudson are still making Acme Whistles, are still based in Birmingham and have quite a nice website.
Fantastic Collection of Photos of Birmingham from the 50s and 60s
Taken by Phyllis Nicklin who taught Geography at the University of Birmingham in the 50s and 60s. These slides have appeared from time to time on the internet and have resurfaced again. It’s a fine and recommended collection.
Videos on Flickr! OMG! WTF! Get over yourselves.
So Flickr have decided to introduce video sharing and everybody seems to be getting a bit antsy. “Noo!!! they scream” – “Flickr’s for photos, YouTube is for video”, “keep Flickr pure” and other such regressive viewpoints. There’s groups set up like those silly Facebook petition groups you see and the pools for them are full of people displaying a No to Video logo. I’ve had a browse, considered the argument, and dismissed it as nonsense. One post I saw was encouraging people to all add a No to Video logo to their stream because he thought it would be cool to see his “photos from my contacts” page full of them. Don’t know why? I prefer to see interesting images from my contact not a load of sheep all displaying the same childish thing but then perhaps I’m missing the point.
Now I know I might be posting this in the wrong place. This blog isn’t exactly high traffic, but there’s a lot of pitchfork waving going on in those groups and on associated images at the moment and it’s pretty much all a sheeplike mob all going “me too!” so best to leave them to their little tantrums rather that expose my photostream to them. Comments are welcome here.
I see absolutely no problem whatsover with videos on Flickr. I’ve got a YouTube page although I don’t really use it because I do video that much. My opinion of YouTube is that a lot of the content is lo-fi, with low production qualities, filmed on mobiles or ripped from the TV. I think there is some good scope for video on Flickr to be a bit more creative and to take a photographic approach to video. You could perhaps present photos in a rostrum camera style like you see on documentaries that use a lot of photo footage; or perhaps stop frame animation using photos such as an example I saw last year from one of my contacts Moayad. Another use I can see being useful is to create short slideshows of a set of photos for those with very short attention spans.
And if you don’t like it, then just don’t use it. And if you really object perhaps you might want to join the No to Spinning Jennies group I set up.
Plastic Fantastic – The Gevaert Gevalux 144
A couple of months ago I mentioned some cameras that I’d picked up on eBay for a grand total of £6 for 3. The main reason for my purchase was an intriguing plastic camera that I could find very little information about, a Gevaert Gevalux 144.
Well since then I’ve found a bit more, (although Google currently turns up my previous post as the first hit so that’s not much help.)
This page by a camera collector, Brian Rice, has more info and some great shots of the camera, plus the case and flash that came with it. Mine did come with a case but it was one of those hard leather cases in light tan, that are so 60s and 70s and allow you to expose the lens without removing the camera from the case. As can be seen on the top of the camera the flash would be the old style 2-pin flash. I have one of these that came with my Herbert George Imperial (a beautiful camera) but that takes old and probably blindingly dangerous flashbulbs. I’ve got one of the new lomography Diana F+ cameras on order (couldn’t resist, even if I have already got the Diana+) that comes with a modern battery operated flash that I’m hoping will work with the Gevalux and the Imperial. I didn’t know it was a rebadged Ansco Cadet II as seen in this shot over at Wikipedia submitted by Andrew Filer.
So not having any 127 film I ran a 35mm expired Kirkland film through it and the first shots are promising. I chose the Kirkland, as I believe it’s rebadged Agfa and Agfa bought Gevaert in the 60s so it seemed appropriate. Didn’t get many shots out of a film though as it wasn’t like winding on a 35mm loaded Holga or Diana where it’s just a matter of guestimating when you are at the next frame, you also need to have wound enough to cock the shutter. I tend to err on the side of caution and overwind anyway. I got a big box of film stock anyway.
I didn’t tape over the red counter window enough and so have light leaks on there but so what! I like light leaks and I also like sprockets! The lens is surprisingly sharp and doesn’t seem to suffer from too much fall off towards the edges like a lot of the plastics. I tried but failed to get any crazy flare out of it. It doesn’t seem to have any idiosyncratic traits. Nobody is going to look at a photo taken on this and identify the camera like they would with a Lomo or a Holga. So unfortunately I haven’t unearthed a lost gem of the plastic camera world, but equally it’s not a bad camera and I’d certainly use it again for 35mm sprocket stuff. Be nice to get some 127 film to try through it too.
Emergent Game
This sounds like an interesting game and a fun diversion. I heard about this a while back, and it’s been appearing in all the usual places round the Brum blogging scene over the last few days so props to Created In Birmingham and Birmingham: It’s not shit! as usual. Not to steal anything from those august organs but for the benefit of my readers who don’t go there becuase it’s a little local, I’ll blog about it here.
It’s called Emergent and is some sort of forthcoming game/event/art thing concieved by Niki Pugh taking place in Birmingham in the coming months involving social networking technologies such as Twitter which is rapidly approaching some sort of critical mass at the moment. More details I’m sure will emerge in time but for now I think I shall follow the Ludens route and will be sorting out my avatar as instructed. See you in game, although according to the rules you may not know it’s me.
Access to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s storage collection – 5 April 2008
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have a load of stuff not normally on display stored offsite in Nechells. They are having a special open day on Saturday 5 April from 10:00 to 15:00 and are encouraging people to get down there and photograph their stuff (and get it posted to The Big Picture too).
I drive past the place almost every day and didn’t know it was there but I reckon I’ll be along on Saturday to take advantage of the opportunity.
From The Big Picture
Scrobbling from a Nokia N95 to last.fm
You know when you search the whole of the big massive internet looking for something and can’t find it because it simply doesn’t exist? No? just me then. Trouble is I’m not smart enough to make the things I want and have to keep looking until somebody does.
What am I talking about? Let me explain. I’ve long been a fan of and using last.fm to track the music I’ve been listening to. Up until recently I was doing this using the last.fm scrobbler plugin to iTunes which picked up on what I listened to on the computer or my iPod quite nicely. I was also using the last.fm Facebook application and the “what I’m listening to” to share my so-called tastes with my pals on Facebook.
The problem is I have quite an old 3G iPod and I have stopped using the big old desktop PC to sync it via Firewire. Over time my iPod battery has deteriorated significantly and I have already replaced it myself once about 18 months ago now, and it’s already due for another replacement so it won’t hold charge for long enough to actually sync. Also the 3G iPod only charges over firewire and then it’s only over the big hefty 6 pin connector rather than the dinky 4 pin connector my laptop has so I can’t charge whilst I sync anymore. As a result I’ve been manually dumping my music onto my Nokia N95 mobile and downloading podcasts direct to it over WiFi. But I’ve not been able to scrobble what I’ve been listening to through to last.fm and then onto my Facebook. Until now that is……
A chap from Brazil has finally developed an application called ASPY Player that has last.fm scrobbing built in for Series 60 devices such as the N95. He’s up to Beta 3 and it works (although there’s still a few issues). Only trouble is that due to something that I don’t understand about signing applications the .sis file you can download doesn’t work so you have to also download python, install ASPY player to that and run it as a script. Bit tricky to work out what to actually do but this post explains it far better. If it helps anybody else who’s wanting to try this you’ll find there are several versions of the python files available but for a Nokia N95 you want the ones that are for Series 60 3rd Edition.
Off the Rails
I got home this evening to see this on the news so headed back out after tea to take a look for myself and shoot a few photos. A freight train derailed and hit the wall. Parts of it were hanging off the bridge over the Custard Factory in Digbeth. There was nobody much around by the time I got down there, apart from a couple of Police and the chap in charge of getting it cleared up who were all very friendly. They didn’t mind me taking photos as long as I kept back when the crane was moving which was refreshing.
More shots in a set on my flickr.
Edit: Found this by Alex Hughes who works down the Custard Factory via Birmingham: It’s not shit.
