Posted by maca on August 22, 2008
Porter Wagoner wrote:
Once my world was filled with music sweet and low
When your love was mine and mine alone
Now my world has lost its melody and my world is without music since you’ve left me
Substitute the chic in the song for an mp3 player and you understand how I felt when my Creative Zen MicroPhoto died mid song a few days ago. Maybe it was old age or the particular Metallica song it was playing at the time which caused the hardware failure but numerous reformats and firmware installations (the PMP equivalent of defibrillation) failed to bring her back to life. I managed to transfer bits of 5 or 6 albums and she’ll play these fine but i’m unable to transfer any more music without it crashing.
I got a refurbised Creative Zen to keep me going for now but I miss my Zen MicroPhoto; it was a top class player. I still refuse to buy an iPod though have to admit I like the iPod Touch. But my Creative served me well in the past so i’m sticking with them. The Zen was a disappointing buy for 3 main reasons:
- it feels cheap and plasticy compared to the metal covered Zen Micro Photo
- the button clicks are annoying
- the navigation button is a nuicance; I prefer the touch slider on the Zen MicroPhoto.
Having said that the big clear screen is excellent and sound quality is good so I guess it will keep my going for a while. At least I have music back in my life!
Posted by maca on July 25, 2008
Superidiot rather than superhero. ‘There’s always one!’ as they say.
Posted by maca on July 25, 2008
What do you make of the plans to have passport controls between Ireland and the UK? The planned passport inspections would be for those travelling by air & sea but could also involve checks on people driving to Northern Ireland.
While there are no plans for fixed checkpoints on the border it could mean Southern reg cars could be stopped and possibly searched.
It might give me a good excuse to get out of driving to Ikea again. You have to look for the positives in every situation people!
Posted by maca on July 25, 2008
Sorry, I don’t mean to depress you but these sad stories always get me.
A 50 year old Dutch woman saw her husband (56), son (20) and two daughters (17 & 23) fall to their deaths while climbing on Mont Dolent – part of the Mont Blanc massif; she later had to identify their bodies after Italian mountain rescue workers recovered them from the mountain.
That’s f&&ked up; how could you ever recover from such a tragedy?
Posted by maca on July 21, 2008
Crazy act of the day … Some French guy decided to bring his 4 year old daughter to Italy and for some reason proceeded to beat her head into a monument until he put her into a coma.
Should a man who was apparently “undergoing psychiatric treatment” be allowed to care for a small child? I feel for anyone suffering from mental problems, it’s so much more harder to deal with than a physical disability IMO, but if he was well enough to be allowed to care for a child then he’s well enough to face punishment so forgive me for wishing he’d get a good kicking.
Posted by maca on July 21, 2008
… service will return to normal shortly. By normal I mean a post a month or so.
I can’t believe it’s been a month and a half since I last posted! Doesn’t time just fly when you’re up to your hairy eyeballs??
We just took our first step onto the property ladder. Probably not the best time says you but we figure we’re better off paying our mortgage than someone else’s mortgage. And luckily enough we got in just before banks stopped offering 100% fixed rate mortgages for FTB’s. So these days most of my free time is spent putting together flat pack crap and pondering what to do with our back garden which is a gravel and concrete nighmare.
On top of that I was forced to make the drive to Ikea in Belfast … it’s going to take some time to recover from that trip. I was going to get a “I survived a trip to Ikea” t-shirt but i’m still on a morphine drip so am not quite out of the woods just yet.
Ikea is a scary place; they regularly make staff announcements which sound like the cops: “Code 30 in Textiles”; “Code 30 in Secondary Storage” etc.
A Code 30 is apparently a panic attack, which seems to frequently occur to men in Ikea; a Code 90 is a ‘man down’, the highest level of alert which requires a few hits with a defibrillator and air extraction to the nearest ICU. It’s a hellish place really.
“Annual trip!” says she; ain’t gonna happen!
Posted by maca on June 4, 2008
Cos im 2 lzy 2 typ a msg tdy…
Posted by maca on May 30, 2008
Via Reuters … WOW! A rare uncontacted tribe of Amazon Indians in one of the remotest parts of the rainforest near the border between Brazil and Peru have been photographed from the air. The images released on Thursday showed the tribe’s village and the tribe members painted bright red aiming their bows and arrows at the plane. The pictures are amazing; it’s like looking into the distant past:
Photo (c) survival-international.org
It true what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words; check out these other amazing photos; zoom in on the bottom picture. (URL may change as the site is experiencing serious traffic; i’ll try to catch the change and update).
Can you believe that there are more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide?? Over half of these live in Brazil or Peru. This tribe was photographed to prove their existence in an effort to try to save them as many such tribes are “in grave danger of being forced off their land [through logging], killed and decimated by new diseases”.
It’s amazing to think how different we are from these people; how completely and utterly alien our entire existence is to them. And it’s sad to think how little disregard we have for people like this.
Posted by maca on May 29, 2008
It’s true apparently, Samsung are set to launch the first ever mobile phone which will have an Irish user interface. Good stuff! Still wouldn’t buy a Samsung but hopefully in the not too distant future we may see other mobile phone manufacturers follow suit. Press release below.
Samsung launches first Irish phone
The first ever mobile phone with Irish language menus will be available in Ireland in the summer. Samsung Electronics said today the Tocco phone has more than 44,000 words translated into the Irish language. Three translators, all with degrees in Irish, worked on the project, Samsung said. Country manager of Samsung Gary Twohig said the move was “a direct reflection of the increased popularity in Irish”. “While we won’t necessarily be launching this feature with every new phone, we will be adding it as a premium feature for key launches,” he said. It will be available in Ireland on July 1st.
Dermot Reidy
Vodafone.com
Posted by maca on May 21, 2008
Sitepoint are giving away free copies of their book The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques! The book is available for download in pdf format until June 13th so if you have even the slightest bit of interest in Photoshop, especially if you’re into web design, pop over and grap yourself a copy.
