Lets go Live

Technorati Tags: Live Writer , Live Mail , Microsoft

I've been using Windows Live Messenger for a while now, along with Live OneCare as my security software. I have to say it is pretty good stuff, amazingly Microsoft have come up with good products! Today I tried 2 more offerings. Namely Live Mail and Live Writer.

Live Mail is simply an Outlook Express replacement. I say simply but it isn't wonderfully simple. It is not bad to set up but the interface is not wonderful.

That said it is quite clean, it does work and it is fast. My one major grouch is that message rules are complicated to setup. Well not complicated just a little long winded. Also there is no calendar included which is a big problem for me (as I use the one in Outlook quite a bit).

An 8/10 for the effort would be fair. At least it beats OE into the ground :)

Live Writer on the other hand is another matter. Quite simply a stunning piece of software. I'm using it to write this blog at the moment and it's working well. Writer is a blogger program that connects to just about any blog you can imagine and lets you post to them in a WYSIWYG way. sweet.

My only annoyance with it is that it keeps putting <p> tags in every time I hit enter and a few other html annoyances. Not a huge problem but it could be cleaner.

But it has a spell checker, it has the ability to insert media (although the attempt above inserting from Screencast didn't go so well) and it has lots of features. One useful one is the ability to live preview your post as if it were published. If nothing else it might make me make a few more posts :P

So 9 or even 10 out of 10 for writer.

So a couple of highly recommended programs there - give them a go. Microsoft's Live Network seems to be working out ok!!

Of Beowulf

We are just sorting out our 3rd year degree projects at the moment. Somehow I think I've managed to convince them to let me loose on the departments 80 CPU Beowulf cluster (basically a load of fast PC's networked together into a BEAST!! :P).

The main focus of the project will be to create a parallel calculations algorithm to convert some slow serial calculations into fast parallel ones (or something like that).,

I'm well excited, mostly because it means I get to play with a powerful cluster (under supervision sadly :P) as well as do some cool research into an area I'm enthusiastic about. I'm finally excited about the course again!

I'll keep posting updates with how it's going :)

The Beach

The Beach is one of my fav films - not least because of DiCaprio, who is a great actor - but I have never read the book... until now!

About halfway through and it's yet again one of those cases where the book is so much better even than the film. The Beach film was good, gritty and cool - the book goes a step[ beyond and makes you find something in yourself. It's style is so easy to read too and you really relate the main character (well I do).
Definitely recommended!

And at the same time I have been listening to the "Revelations" album by Audioslave. Very very good. I've never been into them before but they have an edginess that is fresh and nice. "The Curse" from the "Out of Exile" album is especially good :)

OpenSource capitalism

I was in WHSmiths today and saw a £7.50 magazine called "OpenOffice.org" (a one off - like you get now and again).

It had a cover disk with OO on it as well as tutorials and several plugins. And then it had about 25-30 pages of info about OO plus 15 ish pages of advertising / other stuff.

At first I was a bit annoyed that people are milking an open source project for their own gains (quickly replaced with disgruntlement that I hadn't thought of it first!!). Ok so they are writing the tutorials and compiling the disk but that cant cost much (I could write similar content in a couple of days and so could most of us here I should think!). The publishers must be making quite a packet out of it - and it's not as if the info isn't available (probably better written and more concise) online!

But then I thought a bit more and I realised that although it was blatant capitalism it could have a good effect. The mag was aimed at mid level computer users - or active learners - and so was massively raising the profile of OO. This has got to be a good thing right? I mean it basically means an open source piece of software is now marketable / commercial - aka mainstream.

There were 5 mags in the store I was in. Which means Smiths expected to sell at least that many. I've no idea how many WHSmiths stores there are or even if they rolled the mag to all of them (lets assume they did) but there must be a good 10,000 copies potentially to be sold... and that's not accounting for other shops either (well maybe it is! I'm just plucking numbers out of nowhere). Whatever the figures they amount to quite a large number of (potential converts).

Regardless it is a very high profile position to be in (what would happen if a FireFox mag was done??).

Any thoughts? Is it good having free software in a high profile position? Or will it have no real promotion effect and is it just a blatant rip-off money making scheme?

Unpacking is NOT FUN

I've been unpacking for 2 1/2 days now and it is crap :( I do about half an hrs worth then get bored and do something else!

I need organisation - if anyone has any please email it to me....

There will be some techie postings soon - just as soon as I get settled into the flat again :)

Why am I not psychic (and other rants!)

Since Saturday this week has NOT gone well.
1) Apparently the ability to read minds is required nowadays :( which is not good as it is something I'm never any good at! Yes the ability to telepathically know what someone wants / thinks is essential to surviving in our modern and oh so lovely world (sarcasm.... beautiful). I have a couple of perfect examples where my uselessness in this field recently stood out (and which I am blatantly not gonna share on so public a blog - find my private ones for that ;)). SO as a short plea for anyone sending silent messages to me - I CANT HEAR YOU. Nothing beats dropping me a line you know ;)

2) In other news my legs are falling off - or at least it feels the fuck like it. Apparently -playing American football after 3 months of no exercise is a BAD idea :(

3) And to cap it all I am missing most of freshers week stuck at home :( - although I managed to weasel out of flying to canada with a friend I still cant get back to Leeds till Wednesday.

Maybe next week will be better! :)

Xcitement - ish.....

I was planning to be in LA for the advanced screening of this next week! Will Swarm Atheist Action guy) organised a debate and then a protest outside.. I was hoping to get into the debate (he offered me a stage seat) and try and dissuade people from demonstrating. It's not exactly fair really.

People seem to be clashing over these issues more and more recently and that's not a good thing. Lets just get on with being ourselves right!?

Ok so the film is horrific (trust me you will be sick when you see the propaganda in it) and simply just trying to make money from a sensitive and easily railroaded issue, but that's obvious to anyone that watches it so hopefully it shouldn't "make it big".

Why people do this sort of thing is beyond me (and I am sure even religious supporters will agree the whole film is just a waste of time).

Sadly though I probably won't be there :( getting flights is proving impossible at the moment and I cant face a third round trip in as many weeks. I'm hoping a simple email to Will will (haha) suffice instead.

I doubt anyone would have listened to me - atheists just love a good fight :( :(

(My already low opinion of Stein has plummeted too - he should stick to trying to be funny.)

How not to go get a tan on a beach

It's easy to do. My measly tan from a day on an Italian beach is already fading! On the positive side Italy is great (and now my second favorite country!) - best of all was the food mmmmmm.

The most crazy thing though was the traveling - we spent well over 30hrs traveling there and back in total. Which is pretty insane. I pretty much never want to see a coach / plane / train seat ever again (catching a train home on Sunday will be FUN :()

One other good thing that came out of the trip though was a crazy plan to do a road trip around the US next year..... It's a nice idea but I'm not 100% sure about it yet. I really do have my sites set on some other places I want to visit (Tibet, Japan, Sout Africa, New Zealand, Chile....). As it stands it looks like those or the US :( tough choice.

God vs Dawkins

Today I started work on my new book "Dawkins vs God" subline: "The greatest battle of all: Religion and free Science". Despite the title I hope it is going to be an objective book as possible - although I feel the ultimate conclusions will be drawn in favor of Dawkins I hope it will be without his passion (which tends to cloud his points) and with a fresh "2 sides of the coin" approach.

The way I am going to present the book is to deal with the arguments against Dawkins' book "The God delusion" (of which there are many) and try and objectively weight them against Dawkins' own ideas.

Heres an excerpt from the opening:

"Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion caused a massive stir in many social (and political) circles. Not least in those of the atheists (who finally have a banner to which they can rally) and religious believers (who attacked his ideas with similar vociferation and vigor). The book caused open debate and controversy across the world as it addressed one of our final modern taboos: that of Religion as a concept rather than truth.

Where Dawkins strength lies (and ultimately his weakness) is in the passion with which he writes, his firm beliefs are flooded into the pages of The God delusion with incredible conviction. Sadly, whilst this moves many people, it flies in the face of the very concepts and beliefs he would have people follow - that of objective scientific reason. Certainly there is much of this reason in his books, but, unlike such tomes as "The Blind Watchmaker", Dawkins' latest effort instead attempts to beat religion at it's own game - in moving hearts and minds. Whilst this approach will appeal to many (and rightly so) to some it seems less likable. In this book I hope I can address (albeit more briefly) the same themes as Dawkins in a more objective and staunchly scientific way.

The main focus of the book will be on debunkers of The God Delusion. Those people who have taken Dawkins ideas and reasoned why they are wrong (often as passionately as Dawkins first puts them). Even now at the start I believe my (hopefully) objective conclusion will be in favor of Dawkins but do not let that fact put you off as a reader. Instead consider the hard facts and evidence I lay out here - I will endeavor not to present wild assertions, passionate speech or rude put downs - and form your own conclusions.

I am not deeply learned in the specific teachings of religion and their scriptures - in that sense I will hope to steer away from specifically dealing with text and scriptures which I may misinterpret. Instead I will try and look at ideas that people have drawn in The God Delusion and in the answering (pro-religious) texts and present it as fairly as possible.

I look on this as a laymans book - not steeped in learned teachings, throwing out deeply meaningful quotes or dealing with complex religious and scientific ideas. Instead it is a book that presents common and layman interpretations of all those 3 things (widely debated by more learned men than you or me) in a way that will hopefully bode well for weighing them against one another."

I hope that is a good start and I hope I can complete it in a meaningful timescale! The research for the first chapter alone has already taken up a huge amount of time!!

Believe in thyself

Great film quote: "I have dreamed a dream and now that dream is gone"
It's by Morpheus is The Matrix:Reloaded and is totally nothing to do with the topic of this post - but the idea behind it is. As humans what do we crave, truely? Notice, affection, desire, acceptance. The last one is always tough, many people are different in our world and having the bottle to accept and understand them is hard.

I would say very few people understand or accept me - one of my greatest and oldest friends the other day told me she would never really understand who I was. So that leaves me without one of the things we crave.

How do we deal with a situation like this? My way is to lose myself in a world of anger and danger - the cracking underground. If any of you have ventured to some of the darker parts of the Web you will understand what I mean, out there are people with real real hate for all sorts of things. People, nations, countries all sorts. If you are able to handle that sort of pain and anger and not be drawn in yourself (think very carefully about it) then I would advise you trying to find your way there. It can be quite invigorating.

Anyway back to the topic proper. I've been thinking long and hard about what the friend said (as I am apt to do) and decided it was probably all right that people do not understand me. I mean isn't it better to be who you wish to be than to play to the desires of your peers? I think it is.

The ultimate truth is that we are shaped by the people we see around us - there are very few people at the moment I want to be shaped by, this Emo streak is surfacing again in me and like before I do like it. I've received quite a few emails recently from people who have begun to feel the same thing - the next step they say is to think "what is the point".. I refuse to go that far (I know some of you are and I don't advise it, you will hurt more people than you think you can save) but I can se where they are coming from.

At the end of the day (and the end of this diatribe) you should understand one thing: you are the only one who understands you! Not the friends who think they do (or think they don't) or the lovers who cry for you, or the religious who pray for your soul, or the bastards who play with your life like a toy. If there is only one thing you can take from my posts take this.

------

This week I've also been getting lots of emails from people talking about being scared. I don't wish to be harsh (and so far I have not been after nearly 3 years of posting here week in week out)but believe me you don't know the meaning of the word. Have any of you ever had a gun held to your head, been kicked in the balls, beaten and told you will be killed? I know people who have (I've had the gun at the head before) and they can tell you real fear. What you need to do is over come any fear, once you accept something you are scared of then you can face it - faced my gun with coolness and calmness because I was not afraid of the consequences, or at least I new the only consequence of showing fear was severe pain. So take your time to think about what you are really scared of and you will be fine - I promise :)

Your gonna love this

I keep forgetting about this place... gah. This week I've decided to spend the week doing 1 crazy thing every day - up until next Monday (after that I have exams so meh). Today I bought a new computer - for £400 :( which isn't so much crazy as stupid but there you go. I'm not sure what tomorrow brings but I'm a bit scared. There is an aim at the end of this - a couple of things I'm building myself up into doing :) but they will take a big dare to myself so this was a small(ish) start.

The question is how far can I go, ok so I have an idea of how far that is but I want to try and explore this. The further we can push ourselves the greater the reward - we'll I don't totally believe that but it will do for now.

If I achieve anything decent I'll be sure to let my 'public' ;) know...

In other news people have been moaning about my Facebook status's and how cryptic they are. If your bothering to read this and your a Facebook friend (lucky you :P) then the whole fun is trying to work out what the hell I'm on about. It's like MSN status's; they can be a great way of getting across a subtle message without just blurting it around. I try and write stuff that means something and relates to how I'm feeling.

Ok so it's a bit crazy I agree, but if you didn't like crazy then you wouldn't be a (Facebook) friend right?? :)

Da Lone Streak

I got told tonight I was getting hung up on a girl... pretty annoying when that happens (not an expert I promise) I find. Truth is its probably true. There is a girl, I do like her but I don't think anything's gonna happen - either because I don't have the words or she doesn't have the feelings (still not sure which though). In a way now I am going along with the idea for the kicks, as well as the feelings. Regardless for the moment I cant let her drop.

Admitting that last line about kicks to myself made me realise something; I still haven't changed. I promised I would (a long time ago) leave off being a loner and a thinker and become a social and people person. Its a tough change, really tough. When your on you own stuff is os easy, you are the most interesting person there, you are right etc. etc. Being the highly educated, highly considered and highly opinionated person I am being a loner sits well with my personality.

I have changed alot though, I have a friend who thinks much the same way as I do but is still up for a good discussion about it. I just can't get on with people who don't stimulate or interest me any more.

Which leads me back to the first point, being hung up on a girl. Ok so I can't let her drop just yet but the friends evidence was the fact I nnever really go out with 'the lads' anymore and never really tried to 'pull' anyone. But the truth is it is the lone streak shining out still - very few people stimulate or interest me at the moment, the few that do I am already at the stage of closeness where it doens matter or I just know them from online. Im not sure if I am happy with this situation or not, probably a bit of both. If nothing else it gives me a chance to bitch (and to write a page of self indulgent pap like this :))

Dare to dream

All of us have done it - many times. Dream of that girl, the promotion, that life you could have. Call it fantasy or ambition whatever - we've all been there. I get it alot when I work late into the night - or as tonight AVOID work late into the night. I've been sat here for several hours supposedly writing a website that was meant to be finished weeks ago. I like to listen to quite dark music while I work, to blot out the noise and distractions. Stuff like Linkin Park, Creed, Within Temptation and so on.

I just caught myself sat staring contemplatively at my laptop screen - with the same song on repeat over and over again - dreaming. I think sometimes it's good to get lost in those fantasies. Mine usually consist of heroics, secrets, betrayals and war - kinda reflecting the music I'm listening to :) The moral? Dare to dream, it is worth it. But (and this is where I'm going to go against what your mother would tell you) don't forget that truly anything IS possible if you try hard enough. She will say yes, you will be the hero, you can save lives, destroy bad men, save the world. But only if you never give up.

Of course in the true spirit of hypocrisy I do it all the time (pretty much every day in one case) which either puts me in the perfect position to preach this or makes me a stuck up prick (please don't tell me which ;-) )

Oh and that song? One of the finest ever written. "Easier to Run" by Linkin Park. Look to the lyrics:

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

We are sent into this life to be trialled, if you face up to it you can do anything

(PS I hate 4am..)

Back 2 Leeds

Short post today. Firstly because Im off out to dinner in about 30 seconds and secondly because I have a hangover :( drank WAY too much last night so I am sworn off booze.. maybe

I moved back up to Leeds yesterday which was pretty frentic - and was greeted upon opening the door by a dead rat. Lovely. My mother went ape shit over it..

I've been listening to the Frays début album again today. I bought it a while back but never really listened to it. Second time of listening it is VERY VERY good. Rich and varied and a great addition to any collection.

That's it for now. Food time!

The Myspace invasion

I've been away for nearly a week with no internet and it has been HELL :) I got back to a flood of emails from people I forgot to tell I was away... so 80+ of them to go through in a second. Luckily my gaming clan hasn't exploded again in the last week so most of it is mundane business type stuff.

The time away has let me catch up on some reading, which is one good thing I suppose. I've been looking through 2 good references on Javascript and CSS to brush up on my skills. I've also been reading the latest .net magazine.

Which leads me to the crux of this post. The mag runs a regular feature with 3 designers competing to design a website - this week for it was a website for an MP. The thing that got me was that one designer used Myspace. I get his point about it begin such an essential advertising tool nowadays but I disagree it can be a legitimate base for a full website. At the most it is a separate interfacing tool to a different genre of people or at the least a backup web presence.

Regardless I think using it as a base for a site design in a 'competition' can hardly be legitimised! To me it shows a lack of vision and expertise.

However it seems this is the way people are going nowadays - using reams of similar templates and designs to reel out mounds of boring faceless sites.

"Got the sexual frustration..."

Before you start nodding sagely the title is a song lyric from a fantastically cool band called Arcaica - punk rock to the extreme (the song is called sex on a hot tin roof and is worth a listen). No I am one of those apparently weird breed of men (and probably women too) who don't simply live for sex - it's so boring how the topic of conversation in a group of men always ends up on that topic.... ANYWAY...

My own oddities aside I just read a really funny sex related group on Facebook. Te group was something like "Top things men should not do in bed to women". Some of the stuff was pretty funny and scarily true (considering it was written by a teenage girl who - lets face it - was mostly making it up). That sentence was ever so slightly pretentious considering I am only 2 years senior but ah well :). Regardless the funniest bit was one guys response - to post a list for women to consider. It was very tongue in cheek and highly rude dealing with threesomes, anal and hand jobs - you get the picture (some good tips there as well though girls ;)).

The interesting thing was actually the responses. Ranging from outraged women, through outraged blokes (at the women), some guys with posts like 'yeh suck my dick bitch' and the level headed sensible people who realised it was a joke. The really interesting one was a girl who made the point "all you girlies outraged at the idea of anal first should try it and then stop pretending you represent the whole female sect". Its a fair point (a similar one was made by a guy soon after) and one that shows up alot about peoples image of sex. The poster of that last message seemed a very sexually open person and talked about exploring new things - she seemed a rarity in the entire thread, the women defaulted to "ugh" and the men to the nodding "uh huh.. (but we've never dared try it..)".

Its not just the topic of sex - people have such strict boundaries regarding all sorts of things. And it's really annoying! Going back to sex, people will say hey I hate anal - what they mean is I'm scared of trying it and don't know who I can trust to try it with. Did that kind of attitude invent the light bulb????

Ok so I'm not trying to say lets get back to the hippy idea of free love and stuff like that but why not explore your boundaries rather than just set them! When you reach something you don't like, stop... I mean I've never eaten snake but I'm not going to tell you I don't like it! I don't like the idea but if I get the chance I will try it - I might miss out on something really good otherwise.

Ultimately my point is we have got REALLY boring as people (leaving the sex aside here and looking more generally). Lets stop being prude, uptight, scared and sensible and go mad a bit. I have some friends who go half way there and their the most fun people I know!!! It can't hurt really can it?
Were not monkeys any more.

I'm going to start posting blogs a bit more too (and send the personal stuff to blogger too) seeing as this is getting a bit of interest beyond the occasional good tutorial. So look out for some more regular snippets and personal stuff alongside the usual PHP / deisgn stuff :)

The real beginning

I hope

Things begin & things end

I can save myself I hope

Restaurants should be banned

Today I went for a great curry with some mates. About £7, bring your own beer, traditional Indian fare! Actually I had to wait ten minutes after everyone else to get my Rogan Josh as they 'forgot' about me! Seriously restaurants need to be banned. Still, can't complain. It was cheap and tasted gorgeous.

On the more positive side it was only 2 minutes walk from our flat. My friends had a 20 minute walk to get home, and it's freezing tonight. *evil laugh* In fairness last year they used to live as close in to Leeds centre as I do now whilst I lived nearly 5 miles out. The times they laughed over me (and Dom) walking home (well smiled to themselves then!) makes up for the times I am ribbing them this year :)

Exams!!!!

I had the first 2 exams today! The first was OK (control systems) as I remembered most of the Laplace transforms (ugh!) and the rest was common sense. Maths was harder. The first half was vector calculus which is really tough stuff. But fortunately the second half was A-level standard statistics (or at least could be solved by those methods) so that kinda rescued it.

These exams are worth 20% of the marks for each module this semester so 60% plus would be a good marker and take the heat off in January.

Tomorrow I have programming (easy), embedded systems (simple) and Electromagnetism (*cries*). I hate that last one - really it's physics not Electronics. I sit through the lectures and it seems like a foreign language. Those first 2 are great though, my type of 'bespoke' electronics. Programming I find especially easy, I tend to soak up these computer languages and my good knowledge of PHP really helped with this module!

I say, Extraordinary film!

I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen again tonight, with Sean Connery starring in it! (he really is the best Bond) not bad but a little corny :) although I found out too that it is based on a comic book series so I might have to check that out - though Wikipedia does say it's very different to the film..

People seem not to like the film incidentally, I really don't know why. Sure it's corny and the special effects look a bit archaic at times but it's a wonderful romp through 1899 Europe! The only let down is the ending (from when Venice gets bombed onwards) which isn't so much weak as predictable and drab. They could have pepped it up a bit!

At least the bitter end is suitably tear jerking!

And tomorrow?

Tomorrow I will have to get my flatmates to clear up the flat. I went away for the weekend (3 days) and they 'trashed the place. Tonight one sloped off out with some mates and the other went to his (apparently not but blatantly so :) ) girlfriends house. Tomorrow they won't escape....

Today I have been...

... Watching - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
... downloading - District 13 (interesting looking French action film)
... buying - A card for my Mum's 50th!
... hating - My flat being a complete mess (not my fault)

DirectX the 'fight' to Vista

Interesting thread on the Micro Mart forums today. I guess it was started by this Inquirer article rumouring that DirectX9.0L was to be a version of DX10 for XP (remember DX10 will be Vista only). Even before the retraction got 'printed' here I was dubious about this - really it was too good to be true that Microsoft would allow the exclusivity of Vista for modern gaming to be blown away like that.

Rather I remembered that when the DX10 specifications were announced it was mentioned the DX9 would be emulated through the new API - and I guess this is essentially what is going on here. This is an upgraded version of 9.0c to go with Vista. And it seems that the only reason it got made was to support the fancy aero features of the new OS!!!

Isn't that a little odd? Why not make it DX10 compatible? sigh..

Another good point raised later on in the thread is that OpenGL was not initially going to be supported in Vista! Now I'm not a Microsoft fan or hater but that does sound like bad manners! And if the EU is kicking up a fuss over Mediaplayer being included then surely making Vista solely use DX10 over OpenGL over games is even worse - yet no-one seems to have really said much about it.

Although maybe I missed that argument a while back :) Apparently it will be included now..

Too fast for it's own good!

I watched the third "Too Fast too Furious" film, Tokyo Drift, today. It was shit. The other 2 are pretty good, fairly original stories and hard 'n' fast car action! In this one we have new characters (which is a load of BS) and a really really pointless story of bad kid gone good etc etc.

I nearly cried! Although the love interest (she was hot!) kept my attention long enough to finish the film.

In a film about cars there were hardly any cars and NO car talk!!!! That says it all really...

(Incidentally this is about the first time I've posted twice in a row. Lets hope I can keep it up.)

Today I have been...

... watching - The fast and the furious 3: Tokyo Drift