Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Well I had to watch it. If for nothing else than being able to make jokes about the people who rescheduled their entire lives around Big Brother. Not that Big Brother is anything specially, many other shows could and do provide such fixation. But Big Brother was geared for it – almost 24 hour coverage on E4 and complete coverage online allows your live to disappear into the show addication.

Anyway more on the social commentary at some later point in my life. If for some reason you don’t know what the result was and are waiting then you will probably not want to click the more link. Still, I am guessing pretty much everyone will want to know. Of course my mum on holiday will so I am seriously tempted to make something up :D.

I guess deep down we all knew Nardia was going to win – in reality it is not like it was close so the tension built around was false.  If this year has shown us anything though it that it is likely to get eviler, tackier and with more characters in next year until the show finally dies a long and drawn out death.

Hmm, depressing and down beat I know but that’s the truth. I mean there are few shows that end with dignity, either drawn out or on the other side prematurely canceled. Endings like X-Files, Fraiser and to quite an extent Friends are welcome in today’s network executive ruled culture even if it does mean the show ending.

Today has been a pretty slow but I guess productive day. I updated Branch Planet and did a database backup. I also added Leann Rimes lyrics to Lyrics Burger. But anyway the result of this left me with a whole of TV to fill while I worked. So after eating Lunch while watching a classic episode of Frasier, I left Channel 4 on to see what was on.

Anyway the result is it was Without a Trace. I had seen the trailers for it a few days ago and thought, hmm, that seems pretty cool though my understanding of then was it was just an FBI drama about finding people who had run away from home and such. I actually really liked it though.

Today’s episodes (or possibly episode I think it was a double bill but anyway) a guy held up a bookstore with a load of hostages. As usual the cops managed to diffuse the situation and sort everything out though. That’s why I like Law & Order – bad things happen. Whereas in shows like CSI and I am guessing Without a Trace, the cops always win.

Still it still makes for a quite entertaining show.

Well sort of anyway. But an explanation of that later. The important thing is, after only starting to explore RSS this morning, I know have built a working feed for one of my websites, Branch Planet. The sort of refers to the fact that Nerd Federation already has several. But they came with the package, I custom coded this one.

My basic problem was, I didn’t want to, well to be more correct, wasn’t going to update it manually – it had to be done automatically, taking stories from the database. Therefore I needed a server side script with a content header. Thanks to a PHP script and mod_rewrite, it now has a .xml address too!

You can check out the feed at http://www.branchplanet.com/recent.xml. It contains the latest 10 updates with the post date / time, the first 50 words of the story and a link to the full page. So it’s a good job I added that individual news stories page a few days ago.

RSS is here to stay according to Apple so I am happy that I have got into it. I am probably going to do a feed for Worfolk News sometime in the near future. If you are producing a feed, there is a primer by Who Is Hosting This, check it out here.

Well, I managed my quest to find a way to get RSS, and it’s integrated into Firefox too. I went back to that original Firefox plug-in page and found it had been replaced by a link to a new page – http://sage.mozdev.org. After a quick install and figuring out how to use it I was RSS’ing away.

A quick Alt+S brings up the sidebar – I have already added SitePoint.com, M_Branch Yahoo Group, Ask Yahoo, Wired, Slate, News.com, CNet Reviews, BBC News, GameSpot, MSDN and Nerd Federation.

Of course, I realise my use currently is due to the novelty factor which will inevitably die down. How much practical use I will get out of it I do not know, although I would like to think some.

The reason I got RSS was not so much for the practical use, though. I mean sure lots of websites now do RSS which I would find useful but I mainly wanted it to remain at the forefront of technology. I am a nerd after all and I think I should know about these things.

I was thinking about Microsoft Studio and hopped along to MSDN to look at some stuff. The end result is I found a link I had not seen before, a link to MSDN Blogs – http://blogs.msdn.com. I guess deep down we all knew it was only time before Nerd Federation caught on. First the Onion and now MSDN :D.

The end result is though that between writing blogs and making short videos for MSDN’s new website, Channel 9, does anyone at Microsoft actually do any work? If the experience we have had, running Nerd Federation is any guidance, the answer is no. Sure it looks like we are working but really we just post random stuff here and discuss Buffy (occasionally) on BuffyTalk.

Check out this blog on MSDN. The author is Alex Barnett who seems to talk to himself more than I do. Still, maybe it is more a thing aimed at other MSDN developers. After all, few probably understand all the comments and phrases on Nerd Federation other than the other authors of the site. And sometimes, even we are not sure ;).

I guess what I am really trying to say is, when will Robert Hess make a new video for Channel 9?

Of yes, we have a grouping with names and everything now. Like the 3 musketeers or the 3 Amego’s, we all have fancy names that have no meanings and a vague understanding but no more of what we actually do. Making plenty of sense? I knew it would!

There is Joe, aka, rawpulse. But from now on he shall be better known as Snitch Boy. Reporting problems, spam and bad messages to GameSpot earned him points towards his next level and even moderation of some far off Middle Eastern message board.

Then there is Carl, aka, ceon. Still yet to post on Nerd Federation
even though he has an account to do so, Carl eats fast – he can
constume fish and chips like a duck. None of this chewing business,
just straight swallowing. This led to him eating way too many pot
noodles, it’s like an addiction. I thought I was bad with ice pops, but
he just never stops! Therefore he shall herein be known as Pot Noodle
Boy.

Finally we come to me. Despite the fact I have been clean of registering new domains for over 48 hours now, my constant patrols of eBay and RegisterFly’s marketplace have even opened my eyes to the slight possiblity I maybe registering too many. Especially as my dad, who has no idea what domains and websites I have has even begun to question if I have too many domains. Therefore I shall be known as Domain Boy.

Our mission, to rid the world of the evils of non-amatur movies, natzis and all the major world religions. We will not stop until we get a bit tired or the new series of QI begins. We are… well we don’t have a name yet – but we will get one, oh yes, just you wait!

Wow this is depressing. After watching Peter Kay live I neglected to turn the TV off and the enivitable happened. After all, you can’t leave Channel 4 on for over an hour at any time in the day without running into yet more Big Brother.  But there are only 2 days left to go. Well maybe not with all the winner follow up that they are planning this year.

One thing did occur to me to mention however. For all Ben Elton fans, read Dead Famous? Great book, but the point is – Woggle, Kitten?!? I mean wow, Kitten is everything that Woggle was. And Woggle was a complete overblown joke, what kind of television is being produced today?

Moving onto other news, tommorow is the 5th attempt at a gathering – hopefully this time we will actually get stuff sorted. I made a purchase form CafeShops Worfolk Store today which should arrive within 3 weeks hopefully, so I want to delay the start of filming till then – I will post some photos when I get my deliver :D.

Today was the day – Craig was finally going to turn up so we could do a Maze Radio show and have film ideas. And it was backed up more than a string of definatlies thrown at us. And what happens? Carl and Deni fail to show up. The spit roast is being prepared after Carl managed to survive the speaker phone. It’s a killer I tell you.

So what will happen now? Nobody really knows. There is very little productive ideas to come out of todays brainstorm. We went through several ideas including a rockband style documentary on the awesome band Tungston Puppy. There were also brainstorming on horror and crime shows and films which would also be cool.

But where should the production be going? Should be just continue making spoof movies to be hidden within my home made DVD collection or move up to the slightly bigger leagues with movies we can actually show people? There are many questions that surround us.

A key idea may be to bring back Movie Making Forums, which died some times ago with the databases and pretty much everything else being lost. It’s a bit of a pipedream until we can get back into the control of the domain though.

I think the blog title says it all. Here I am trying to write a news story and I am distracted by things like an article describing Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a comedy drama show. I mean, have they even seen the series? Sure it can be funny but there is no way that could ever be classed as a comedy drama.

Check the article out on Kentucky.com. Paragraph 3: what’s with that. Buffy is SF (speculative fiction). You can extend the genre to teen, maybe even stretch it all the way to drama. But comedy drama? Let’s get serious here people.

Speaking of Buffy, we are still looking and hoping for new life. There was talk of a Dawn the Vampire Slayer spinoff – pure rumour as far as anyone could make out. But apparently the Buffy the animated series is back in production so that should be something to look forward to.  Providing it’s pulled of well, but I’m not sure it’s even possible for Joss to do something badly, the original Buffy movie excluded.

As for talking Buffy there is only one place to do it: BuffyTalk.com. I say that not just to plug but because it still is an active community with new posts every day and new members signing up regularly. Including you: do it now!

Currently I consider them both to suck. Let’s start with the weather. We have plans tommorow and something could actually get done – everything is going to plan and then tonight it begins to violently thunder and lightening and now it’s started to rain. Plus I have loads of computer equipment that could get damaged by surges. Luckily my laptop is now producted by a Belkin Surger Master.

As for Nero, all I want to do is backup my files. First of all though when I booted up Nero Express it doesn’t appear to let me switch to CD mode from DVD mode. I would like to see it fit 4GB on my CD. So I finally did it through Smart Start and it keeps crashing.

Hopefully I can get it working and spent tonight doing some quality video encoding. Meh I might just switch my laptop off actually. That way I will actually be able to sleep rather than being kept awake by the less than quite fan. And Nero is still trying to add those files.

My escape is currently Dead Ringers but it only has 8 minutes left and it is either a repeat or they are majorly using old footage. I will go with repeats. There must be some stuff on at 10 but things will not be right again until QI returns.