May 30, 2001
I realised today (or I guess more accurately yesterday now) that blogvoices was not running at the moment. We've been thinking for a while about creating bulletin boards for other areas of the site, so people can post back about their travels in the countries we've been to, or can agree or disagree about our gadget reviews. So, tonight we've been adding that functionality. At the moment it only runs from the blog and gadget pages. Soon we hope to get it running off more parts of the site. We've used some XML based Perl freeware software - XML Board. So, now all the comments are stored on our server, and we're no longer forced to deal with any delays/unreliabilities of getting to an externally hosted board. We've rescued the comments from blogvoices and imported them as a starting point.
Take a look at our blog discussions or the gadget discussions boards.
Posted by Jane at 12:01 AM
Shed building
From
Posted by Jane at 6:42 PMto
in just 4 or 5 hours. Fantastic or what! Rich's Dad had bought a shed, and we offered to help him build it. It all went pretty smoothly, no injuries, no parts missing (although we did head off to the DIY store for a few extra bits and pieces). The rest of the pictures can be viewed in here
May 29, 2001
Travel Blog
I've noticed that in the blogger.com Blogs of Note section recently there have been a couple of travel blogs. These are people who are using blogger to update their web sites during their travels. This is a great idea, and blogger provides a really good interface for this.
Some travel blogs I've looked at:
- The Strange California Journey
- Greg's Appalachian Hike
- Tina's Travel's through New Zealand, Australia, China and Southeast Asia
Posted by Jane at 4:06 PM
May 20, 2001
Big Brother 2
Well, Big Brother started again in the UK on Friday, and I'm kind of hooked again. Not sufficiently hooked so that I watch it on E4 for 20 hours a day or whatever, but enough to check the site out from time to time. I only got interested in the first Big Brother at the time when Nasty Nick got kicked out, and I think I was a bit spoilt as that was way more interesting than the current programmes are. However, it is early days yet. It is very obvious (well to me anyway) that Channel 4 are definitely trying to spice things up a bit with this series, building a "den", putting in a "table dancer" etc and I guess only time will tell whether anything happens or not.
Posted by Jane at 3:39 PM
May 17, 2001
Jungle Book Groove Party - dancemat challenge
Earlier this year, we bought a copy of Jungle Book Groove Party for the Playstation. This is a fantastic game, you have to dance around on the dance mat in time with the music following the arrows on the screen. Some friends came around for dinner a few months ago, and immediately went out and bought the game themselves.
Yesterday, we had the "Dance Mat Challenge". The game comes with a few 2 player options, and so we tried them out at their house. One of the options is the head to head match, no big surprises here, both players get to choose a character and then they dance against each other. There was one surprise though, at the point where in the normal game you get a rest, here you get a "Dance Sprint" where you make as many contacts with the mat as you can to score more points. The other game we played was the team game, which was really hard. If one player missed a contact, then the arrow moves over to the other players stack. This was really funny to watch, as the more contacts were missed, the more the boys laughed, and the more they missed.
An excellent game and pretty good exercise too
Posted by Jane at 2:20 PM
Glamour magazine
A new magazine was launched in the UK a couple of months ago. No big deal, new magazines are launched all the time. What's different about it is it's size. Instead of the usual size it's about A5 - only slightly wider than a book. This is a fantastic idea in my opinion. It makes them even more transportable on tubes, trains, planes etc. I read the April edition (I think) and I have to admit that it was "just another women's magazine" but, if I was looking for something to read on my way to work or similar it would probably be one of my first choices.
Posted by Jane at 1:18 PM
May 16, 2001
Leyton Orient 2 - 0 Hull City
So, we lost 2-1 on aggregate. I wish I could say we were hard done too but, in all honesty I can't. We played poorly in the first half - we seemed to be playing far too defensively. We looked a lot better in the second half and created a couple of good chances. Orient were the better team but I think they are going to be hard pushed to beat Blackpool in the final at Cardiff.
The atmosphere wasn't as good as I'd hoped - we were on the terraces and had no roof to help magnify our sound. Shame. I have little voice left so I know I did my bit. The Orient only seemed to have one song "Orient, Orient" - a bit like the Skol lager song. At least we had some variety to offer - including singing "One song, you've only got one song".
It's dissapointing to lose out but when I think back to how close we were to losing the club completely I don't feel quite so bad. Next season let's do it properly and get automatic promotion.
And so, instead of heading for Cardiff on the 26th, it looks like we'll be on shed building duty - helping Rich's Dad. Somehow this doesn't have quite the same appeal.
Labels: hull city
Posted by Jane at 6:43 AM
May 15, 2001
Leyton Orient v Hull City
Tonight, Hull are playing the 2nd leg of the Play off semi finals at Brisbane Road, London. Hull won the first leg 1-0 so we go into this match with a slight, very slight, advantage. It is the first time Hull have been in the Play Offs and I'm feeling nervous. I'm just waiting to start the journey and it's a weird feeling. 3000 Hull supporters are expected, and I'm sure we're going to make some noise and support out team the best we can. We've had such a strange season that we're all really proud of what the team has achieved whatever the result.
Theoretically a live broadcast from the Radio Humberside commentary should be available here. C'mon you Tigers!
Labels: hull city
Posted by Jane at 5:35 PM
May 12, 2001
Extreme in Ealing
Saturday, Ealing, London: a day out in the park on what must be close to the hottest day of the year so far.
The excuse: a free extreme day organized by the local government, where we could try out various extreme sports. It turned out to be dominated by kids, but hey... we invited the New Scientist web team over, we had fun and discovered that Cathy rules at shooting because she was taught to shoot at school in France.
The end of the day was spent drinking, chatting, and playing football in another park, followed by great tapas at La Siesta. Mmmm... great tapas, and enough veggie options to keep Ash happy.
As you'd expect, there are eyemodule photos.
[oh, BTW, this blog is late because we've come to rely on JPEG Wizard to trim the fat from our images, and the site was down for a day or two]
Posted by Richard at 9:48 PM
Happy 70th Birthday Dad
Posted by Jane at 8:35 AM
May 08, 2001New toy for Jane
It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I had a nice long think about what I wanted. I decided that, with the hopeful move to Brighton, a portable MP3 player would be a really cool gift. So, we started researching them, and there are SO many to choose from. All with different features, some have radio, some have 64MB, some have 96MB, one has 128MB. I decided that I didn't want one of the "burn MP3s to CD" versions, as they are quite large (a good idea for the car, but not for lugging around). Some of the other cool ones, mainly due to their size, were the Panasonic e-wear models and the Sony ones. Both of these, however, record the mp3s into their own format. So, despite them coming with a usb connector, it could still take 20 minutes to copy the songs across. I didn't like the idea of storing songs in yet another format, and so looked around a bit more.
We ended up decided on a SoundsGood springboard module that fits into the handspring visor. The module itself it small, and fits snugly into the visor springboard port. It has 64MB onboard, uses a USB connector (just the standard cradle) and comes with a desktop application for putting music onto it. It seems to take about 5 minutes to transfer the 64MB across, which I think is pretty reasonable. It also comes with a registered version of musicmatch. We also got the EnergyClip battery pack. This is the bit that swung it for me really. This takes one AA battery and the module just slips into it. So, you can carry your music around without the visor. You don't get an LCD display or anything particularly pretty but it's functional and means that you don't have to carry the visor with you to listen to music.
Because it only has 64MB, I'm busy converting some of my favourite tracks to a lower bps rate (96) working on the theory that whilst sitting on a tube or train, the loss of sound quality isn't going to worry me so much. However, I'm looking for a better way to convert them as doing it one album at a time is going to get pretty boring.
A review will appear on the gadgets review page when I get around to it
Update: 20 May 2001 The 2 reviews are now available - Sounds Good MP3 player and Energy Clip
Posted by Jane at 7:57 AM
- mp3 players
you need a 1 GB micro-drive to plug into a m0r3 l333t0 device like jocke's new 64
MB iPaq :-(...(bastard has a better one than me now)
http://www.janeandrichard.co.uk/blog/archive/2001_05_01_index.xml#3599629
Posted by Joe on 2001-05-13 22:35:20
May 02, 2001
This weekend I purchased some helium from Balloon works (Kew, UK) to inflate the Flying Saucer that the New Sci people gave me as a leaving gift (see blog#3307474).
Under the balloon hangs the turbofan unit: two fans you power forward or back independently with a remote control. You add putty to the fan unit to give the saucer neutral buoyancy (or as close to it as you can get).
The first instinct is to go full throttle and send the saucer across the room as fast as possible, and then send it into a high speed spin. After that it's more interesting... you use small bursts of fan power and then watch how the saucer reacts, another small burst of power to adjust the saucer.. and so on... until it reaches some goal (buzzing the dog, trying to get the saucer round a slalom course, etc etc).
It's fun. More pictures to follow.
Posted by Richard at 9:56 AM
May 01, 2001
Want to buy a flat?
Fingers crossed, we're off to Brighton (coastal UK town), so our flat in London is for sale.
I've put the full estate agent's details on-line (direct from Word, so sorry for the layout).
Posted by Richard at 5:13 PM
Hull City are in the play-offs
After a turbulent season, Hull City have made it into the 3rd division play-offs. This evening's game at Southend was a draw which was sufficient to ensure we will finish in one of the 4 play-off spots. The official Hull City website states that Brighton will go through as champions, Chesterfield will be promoted despite the recent FA enquiry and so will Cardiff. Hull and Hartlepool are definitely in the play-offs.
So, it's going to be a nail-biting end to a nail-biting season but at least this time for the right reasons. Of course, we're almost certain to make it through to the play-off final. Why you ask? Well, Hull City have never been to Wembley. This year is the first that the play-off finals won't be at Wembley (whilst it's being rebuilt), so of course we'll make it to the final and have to go to the Milennium stadium in Cardiff
But, should the play-offs really happen? Is this a fair way to decide the 4th team to be promoted? Should the team who come 4th in the league automatically go up? I don't know but as I said before, it will make it an exciting end to the season for this Hull supporter.
Labels: hull city
Posted by Jane at 9:06 PM
On Saturday evening there was a rainbow over Ealing. It looked really beautiful next to the blossoming tree. So, I took a photo of it. I wasn't sure whereabouts on the site to display it, so I figured I'd just include it as a blog.
Posted by Jane at 8:53 PM
