Archive for the ‘Imported’ Category

Sir Humphrey “You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don’t want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Do you think they respond to a challenge?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?”

Bernard Woolley: “Oh…well, I suppose I might be.”

Sir Humphrey “Yes or no?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can’t say no to that. So they don’t mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.”

Bernard Woolley: “Is that really what they do?”

Sir Humphrey “Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren’t many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result.”

Bernard Woolley: “How?”

Sir Humphrey “Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Are you worried about the growth of armaments?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?”

Bernard Woolley: “Yes”

Sir Humphrey “There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.”

I got a Spanish translation for Filelight today. It turns out I spelt boundaries wrong in the master translation (which is in US-english). I find this deeply amusing

Filelight is doing really well. I’m quite shocked at how well it’s rated at kde-apps.org, and I can only assume that with time, it will fall from 4th place.

Still the sudden popularity of my work is inspiring me to get on and make a new version. The next version is hopefully going to be good. Real good. Integrating into Konqueror and allowing all the interesting features that people have been suggesting in the forums. I’m looking forward to the work, but am delaying as the first few steps are dull.

Because I have to make Filelight behave as a KPart::BrowserExtension, but in order to do that well I have to rip to shreds the Filelight UI, and being a perfectionist, I refuse to spoil my tight code!

So it’s gunna be tedious work because of my high standards.

Anyway. amaroK is where my time is mostly spent at the moment. It’s yet another media player, but it’s not. It’s really very innovative. If you disagree with that statement now, you should come back in a few months and take another look.

Finally! Oh this makes me so happy and pleased! I have become ever more depresed over the months with the over-capitalisation and over-protectionism of our world and lives. Everyone seems so greedy, so determined to milk every last penny and exploit every last person in the name of progress and profit.

What happened to alturism, culture and community?

Music and immaterial rights have been a subject of discussion for me for some time. To me things that are so easily copied as texts, notes and code should be released under a liberal license for the good of the world. Software typically sells at 90% plus profit because of the amazingly low production costs involved, yet software writers typically try to prevent copying of their work in any form. I acknowledge it is scary to risk the bread on your table, but the current state of copyright enforcement is truely beginning to sicken me.

Thus I present to you Loca Records. A record label that is more interested in people’s freedoms and their artists’ creativity than making ever more money. You can download any of the music of any of their artists for free at the site. You are free to remix and rework the music, and you are entitled to sell your remixes if you so choose.

Loca Records claim they make enough money to stay health and bouyant, and still reinvest into their artists. I can believe that claim; though I also think you have to be extremely clever and dedicated to survive based on CD sales when you also offer the media free of royalty on the web. I hope their business model is succesful as I believe in it’s virtue.

However the realities of business suggest to me this kind of attitude has no place in our modern world. It’s so sad..

It’s been some time, and I thought I’d write. I’ve been free from the monotony of Kodak for some time now, and it was only shortly after leaving that I stopped writing regularly. Frankly I was bored most hours of the day and in need of release, so I vented through my journal. And most satisfying it was.

I know now that normal work is not for me. Given a job that I enjoy I dedicate myself to the task and find it hard to stop until it’s done perfectly. I just need to find such an avenue, I can’t see that avenue being science, maybe I’m wrong. I’m not sure. I just had a really miserable experience at Kodak.

Since then I’ve been programming like crazy. I love it! Filelight is good now, and functionally satisfactory for packaging up and distribution, I have plans though to make the widget generic so it can be used in other software, but currently I’m enjoying coding for amaroK, a media player that could be quite innovative, if our goals continue as planned. But even if that isn’t so and nobody likes it and everybody thinks it’s yet another media player it doesn’t matter because it’s great fun.

I like building things, and engineering solutions. Computers make those two things really easy.

A trully tremendous resource courtesy of Slashdot. Methods that people have used to prevent email address harvesting from the web. I’ve used one of the techniques myself and I’ll be interested to see if it works. As people close to me know, I’ve had many problems with spam recently and I am determined to lower the amounts I get.