In the absence of anything interesting to say, thought I’d just post the wallpaper I whipped up tonight in Photoshop, as I’m quite pleased with it.
Also I have been playing Gratuitous Space Battles, and can confirm that it is indeed gratuitous. In a good way.
Good grief, Winamp for Android is awesome. MixZing was certainly clever, but was getting increasingly buggy and frustrating. Winamp runs smooth as anything and has a wonderful interface, yet it’s still in beta! Only thing I miss is being able to swipe on the lockscreen to skip tracks, but that’s a minor quibble. Haven’t yet got the wireless sync to work, but if it does then this moves into killer app territory.
So I installed Winamp on the laptop to try and use wireless sync. Had it scan my library, then popped on the “Top Rated” playlist. Eerily it started playing my favourite songs – from about 2 years ago when I last used Winamp – on a different computer! It must save rating/playcount information in the files I guess. Kind of nice, I haven’t listened to some of these songs in a long time and it’s evoking some serious nostalgia.
Amusingly in my library this is just titled “That Music From the Dancing Car Advert”:
It got me thinking, a lot of music listening history is stored on last.fm. It would be nice to be able to say “take me back to 200X” and cue up a playlist of stuff I was listening to then. Maybe pull up some timely photos from Facebook/Flickr to add to the experience, and some old BBC news headlines. Automatically lower the screen resolution to a suitable level – ok, maybe not that.
Been browsing stock photos (yes, I know, hardly the coolest thing to be doing on a Friday night). There seems to be an entire bizarre sub-genre of businessmen riding things:
Also: best cloud ever!
And yes, this is precisely what Internet shopping looks like:
Ah, my sad neglected blog. See the post title for the reason. Anyway here’s a fun little cover by Skindred – the best Welsh raga metal group around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1cL5J9bW2U
Ok, so I was going to do some in depth analysis of wiki-related things here. But screw that: it’s animated gif time!
Continue reading
Cover songs again. First up, I mentioned Tetrastar’s “Soulja Boy” in a previous post. Well everyone should go to their website and download the free album Songs We Didn’t Write. If Dragonforce, Jonathan Coulton, Modest Mouse, Sparks, and System of a Down cover versions weren’t enough to tempt you, there’s an almost sacrilegious yet strangely brilliant cover of Hallelujah as well. Plus the mindblowing “4 Chord Song”.
Next, the most 80s thing ever (and probably NSFW):
Amanda Lear – Wild Thing
Last, a cover version found in a really odd way. I was listening to the Dandy Warhols 2003 album Welcome to the Monkey House for the first time in ages. At least I was until partway through the opening title track when I noticed the lyrics:
When Michael Jackson dies
We’re covering Blackbird
And won’t it be absurd then
When no one knows what song they just heard
Unless someone on the radio tells them first
So on a whim I googled “dandy warhols blackbird”, and it turns out they kept their promise. And it’s pretty good too:
The Dandy Warhols – Blackbird
The new laptop arrived on Tuesday, and it’s brilliant. Dual core processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard disk – these might not be all that impressive, but after the five year old laptop I was stuck with it runs like a dream to me. And nevermind the specs, my favourite thing about it is that it’s so quiet. I can barely hear the fan at all, so it’s great for watching DVDs – and even the built in speakers aren’t bad for a laptop. The big sharp screen is actually making me wish I’d shelled out for a Blu-Ray model though – and I’ve always been cynical about Blu-Ray!
Of course like the big geek that I am, I’ve been playing with my new toy every chance I get. One of the things I wanted to try, which I wouldn’t even have attempted on the old one, is some POV-Ray. Anyway I had a bit of a bash at it tonight, and it’s surprisingly easy to get nice looking results. Here’s something I whipped up and am using as a new desktop (click to see it full size).
I hate the song in the title of this post. Hate it with a passion. I honestly think it might be the worst song I’ve ever heard, representing all that is terrible about modern music, and made worse by its bizarre popularity and almost omnipresence during 2007.
Well, that goes for the original anyway.
But replace the horrendous steel drums with a beautifully fashioned electronic backing (including almost 8-bit sounds), get a sweet young woman singing the bizarre lyrics, and dress up a dog for the video, and you get this. I couldn’t believe anyone could make this song listenable, let alone loveable, but they have.
And then just the other day I found this. It’s proof of Devo’s sheer awesomeness that they can make Soulja Boy sound good. I honestly can’t stop listening to it.
Well, I can’t believe I’ve been in my new job almost two months. Am really enjoying it too, getting to do all sorts of fun stuff.
Millom is lovely too, but a bit isolated and I’m missing lots of my mates. Finally making the trek back to Manchester tonight though to have a long overdue catch up with at least some of them.
After much woe my broadband is finally set up too. Despite being very upset about what’s been happening on Wikinews, I’ve decided to continue contributing there, in the hopes of turning the tide.
Well for once I have an excuse to keep this post short, as I’m writing it on my phone. I love WordPress.
