Twitters...

Over the last few weeks of Twitter usage, I've noticed one thing - those that get it, and those that don't. I've also noticed their usage profile.

Those that get it,  which I will call 'Twitter Swimmers' tend to be those who take a regular active part in the Twittersphere.  We tend to access it throughout the day, tweeting and responding to tweets.  TS's tend to follow lots of people, and hence gain a core of followers from that.   We use different access methods - web, desktop and mobile,  and happily promote it to their friends, colleagues and contacts.

The 'Twitter Dippers' however, tend to sign up,  perhaps post a few tweets, follow a couple of people, then give up wondering what all the fuss is about.   I don't think Twitter has the instant gratification that maybe Facebook instils.  I was a 'TD', dipping my toe in the water, not seeing the point of it.  But then I revisited a month or so later, and now I'm addicted!!!    So anyone in the TD category,  try some of the TS activities,  stick with it for a few weeks,  and you may just get hooked.

Equality & Diversity.

As part of the companies training and development program, its now sending all of its staff on 'Equality & Diversity' training - basically a half day course instructing people not to be sexist, racialist, homophobic e.t.c e.t.c e.t.c,  and if you are subject to such abuse, what you can do about it.  All very noble and worthwhile, if a little obvious, but hey, the company needs to tick its boxes and I don't mind a few soft-skills courses now and again.

The one thing I did enjoy though was a short DVD around segregation and the effects of treating people differently entitled 'A Class Divided'.   Filmed for PBS in 1968, and reworked in 1985, it shows a primary school teacher dividing her class into the blue-eyes and the brown-eyes, and discriminated against one group on the first day,  another on the second day,  and watched what happened to the social dynamic.  I would recommend anyone who has not had E&D training or seen this video as part of that course should watch it @ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/ and really consider what they see.  Its certainly an eye opener (pun intended). 

Birthday Belly Buster..

As part of the Birthday tradition where the celebrator treats his or her fellow colleagues to some excess foodstuffs, so today it became my turn to gift upon them, some lovely lovely breakfast.

All from Busters in Darlaston, THE place for breakfast in the Wednesbury Area.  We've not taken any statistics, but its likely that the BMI of the office has risen several factor points this morning.

 

Twitter in Plain English

So I've found a few nice Youtube Videos explaining Twitter for newbies, and I thought I'd post the links here.

First off,  'Twitter in Plain English' explains what Twitter is.

Next, how to use the Twitter Website

And finally for today, Tweetdeck.

Just a headsup to say non of these video's are my own, but they're really nice how-tos.

Twitter 101, Day 1.

So I seem to be coming across the questions Virgin Twitterers are asking - how does this work, what do I do, what's it all about e.t.c.

So this is day 1 of Twitter School.

1) What the funk is twitter?
Twitter is a social messaging and status system.  It allows you to post short updates about what you're upto, what you've seen that's cool, and what you think about various subjects.

2) What's the point?  I've got Facebospace?
Twitter is a little different MyFaceBo, in that its entirely focused on short updates.  No adding tonnes of crap to your page, you just post text, pictures and links upto 140 characters in length.  Think of it like organising a night out with a Group of Friends.  Everyone can input their thoughts into the 'cloud' and you might get a solution, idea or way forward drop out.  Try it - its addictive.

3) OK, so where do I start?
Well, first off, get yourself a twitter account.  Goto www.twitter.com and sign up.

4) I've done that, what next?
First off, post a few tweets about what you're upto.  

5) I don't know what to tweet about?
Well, first off,  follow a few people to see what they do.  The best approach is to lurk around for a few days and see what gets written, you'll get the idea. 

6) So, who do I follow?
If you've got friends on Twitter, why not add them?  Billy No Mates?  Well, add a few celebrities instead.   Some examples: @wossy (Jonathon Ross, @stephenfry, @scofe (Phil Schofield).  

7) So how do I add a friend?
Two easy ways - either find them on the twitter website by doing a search or entering their twitter address (http://twitter.com/username - e.g. http://twitter.com/digitaldiablo)

OR, in the Text box, type follow user

8) Cool, I can talk to all my favourite celebrities.
Well, maybe.   Bear in mind that some celebs have tens of thousands of followers.  Every comment and thought is massively commented and replied to. Chances are, your tweet will get ignored and get consigned to the bowels of history.  You might get lucky, but don't join twitter just for this.  Join it to give the world an insight into your thoughts, rather than an MSN Messenger type service.  Nothing is more tedious than a page full of @ tweets.  If however you wish to proceed with this foolhardy quest for glory, a 'public' message to someone is posted '@username I love you and want to stalk you'.    You can also private message them with a D username, however this should be discouraged as far as possible, as this negates the point of a social messaging site.

9) How will I know if my favourite celebrity has replied to me? 
Well, you'll see a message back from them saying something like "@yourusername: wow, you really rock and we should meet at the Ivy to discuss this further".  Well, you can party like its 2099.

10) This seems OK, but its a bit annoying having to sit at my computer.
Well, Good News Everyone!  You don't!    You can tweet from your Mobile/iPhone/CrackBerry/WinMo e.t.c e.t.c. e.t.c.  You can also get applications for your PC which can improve your experience.   Just google 'twitter platform' and see what comes up.  You can also see what other users use in their tweets, using the 'from field'.

My favorite is tweetdeck.  It's an Adobe Air application (you don't need to worry), but its a Desktop Application.  You get the tweet window at the top with the commands.  Your tweets in one column,  your direct messages and other replies.  You can also see the most popular topics on Twitter right now with twitscoop and have 'saved searches' to see if anyone is twittering about your favourite subject.

 

And here endeth todays lesson.  Join me for more lessons soon.

Sir, You appear to have dropped your Jaw.

Tomorrows World appears to have arrived!   I paid a visit to a nearby Curry's on Friday evening to see what its flagship store was like (I've not dared to venture after it opened to much hullabaloo in October).  Its all a very nice setup, with 'islands' of products nicely clustered together, a bit like a department store of old.  Amongst the rows of Computers, Printers, Mobiles, MP3 players and washing machine, they have their TV section.  The section is against the back wall, and is wide enough to fit about 50 42" plasma's along it, plus all the floor based ones.  However, their Pièce de résistance centred right in the middle of the display is this:-

Yes, its a 103" Telly!   That's 95" x 55" and with a depth of just 5.6"!   The screen area is 89" wide by 50" high, so that's two 42" plasma's next to each other, and a 50" turned on its side.   This thing is VAST!  It was like a wall and in fact would take up a wall on my house.   Now, I'm used to big pictures - I use a projector to watch movies which is a similar size,   but the crispness, clarity and scale of this behemoth just takes your breath away.  I stood there for about 5 mins looking like a slack jawed yokel admiring this beast of technology.

The only downsides?  Well an RRP of £69,995 and the requirement for a specialist installation team to come and fit it.

If you want to come visit it, be sure to checkout Curry's, J9 Wednesbury or if you have a spare £70k to throw down, visit the Panasonic Website for more tech specs.

Why Twitter Rocks!

I've been speaking with people recently about twitter and its pretty save to say I'm becoming an addict!  I tweet in the morning, tweet at lunch, and tweet in the evenings, and I love seeing what others are upto. 

The applet I use (TweetDeck) has a feature to monitor the most popular words being tweeted on the wire (pun intended), so when I saw the words Hudson, Airplane, Crash, United and Airlines appearing in large words, I knew something had happened.  Those updates started appearing about 1/2hr before the UK news services picked up on the plane crash which, given the seriousness of the incident, I can't believe that not one person expired.  The Pilot - He has Skilllz.   Hero of the Year?  Certainly so far,  but Obama takes his seat in office next week.

WeekEPG Database Structure

So, I've spent some of the weekend figuring out the WeekEPG data structure, based on the files on my dreambox.  Here is a note of my discoveries so far.

Main 'Config' Files.

On my dreambox, the main config files are stored in /etc/ and we have:-

• channels.uk/it - Where the channel listings are stored.  Data format seems to be 
  1;2002;BBC 1 London;101;189d:7fd:2
  Scan Enabled (1=Y); Unknown (but suspect its just a unique id);Channel Name; Assigned Channel Number; ServiceID(in Hex):Transponder:NetworkID (2=Sky).
• Dictionary.uk - Appears to be a translation table from the binary stream into text.
• Themes.uk/it - Theme definition (Kids/Sports e.t.c.)
  THM;0;40;Children
  SUB;1;41;Cartoons
  Type (Main Theme or SUB theme);Whether Listing is a main or sub theme;Theme Unique ID;Theme Name.

Data Files

Stored in /hdd/weekepg (or where you've defined it in the setup).

• titlesx.gep - Stores the program names, titles e.t.c. Note, there can be numerous ones of these.
  1A660416<>1231680600<>201<> Inside the Bermuda Triangle<>3600<>60
  Unique Program ID <> Time of program start (Unix Time) <> Channel Number (from the channel.uk def) <> Program Name <> Length in Minutes <> Theme (from Themes.uk)
• summariesx.gep - Stores more detailed descriptions of the program, including summary description. Note, like titlesx, numerous ones of these.
  728056F<>A free holiday to Boston, New York or Barbados, among others, is yours when you book a featured stay and cruise holiday to Orlando and the Caribbean in this great Sky Travel sale offer. 
  Unique Program ID (matches titlex.gep UID) <> Detailed Description (may include subtite, series link and other information at the end of description.

So that's what I've discovered so far about it.  I'm currently writing a PHP loader to import this data into a MySQL database, so that I can then write a further PHP script to be able to publish XMLTV formatted files for interpretation by MV and MythTV.  WeekEPG rocks, but I prefer the interface with MV, and could really use the data within MythTV for the Freesat Channels.

WeekEPG 3.1b

Note, this was originally published at satellites.co.uk, however all future updates will be posted here first!

This is a short post from me (really for my later reference) on what settings are required for WeekEPG 3.1b to be able to fetch the skyEPG into its repository. Its here because I really messed up my settings, and was only getting now/next data (circa 3000 titles) and no summaries, but with these settings I get 59000+ titles and 57000+ summaries.

My Setup:
DM600 running Gemini 4.50 for that Box, with WeekEPG 3.1b plugin activated.
So:-

Configuring WeekEPG

Make sure you're in Radio Mode, tuned to 'Hip Hop'
The service for Hip Hop for me reads as the following data, but of note, I don't receive any audio:
Provider:BSKYB
Video PID:none
Audio PID:0d2eh (3374d)
PCR PID:0d2eh (3374d)
PMT PID:0132h (306d)
Transport Stream ID: 07d4h
Original Network ID: 0002h
Service ID: 0fd1h
Namespace: 11a0000h
Satellite: 28.2 Sats
Freq: 11777v
FEC:2/3, Symbol Rate 27499.

So Once you're happy you've got the channel set:-
Yellow/WeekEPG.
From the EPG listing, press exit, then Setup.
Settings as follows:-
10 TStart Offs 10 TEnd Offs
0 , Local Time Offset Unticked
Font Size 20/18
Show Current Channel Ticked.
Use Offline Data Ticked.
Offline EPG Storage Path
/hdd/weekepg

Then press RED to choose the channel, and select Hip Hop.
Set Language to UK if necessary.
I would then press Save (blue)
Then back into setup
Finally Green to run the Log, and Yes to Confirm.
It takes about 30 seconds to grab the titles, then perhaps a further minute to grab the Summary Info.
As previously stated, you should get 50,000+ titles. If you've only got 3000 is, and no summaries, somethings not working.
So in summary, it seems that the EPG data is currently being transmitted on this channel, rather than on Sky1, sky News and sky Movies stated elsewhere - at least, thats how it seems on my system.
Hope this helps both myself and someone else.
Now to figure out how to get the WeekEPG data into MV

A series of Unfortunate Events...

This is more of a thread of appreciation than anything else, but needs a bit of background filling.

Last Night going home I suffered a blowout on the motorway.  What happened was the flange or collar on the shock absorber that holds the spring in place appears to have broken, slipped or failed in some other way, causing the spring to drop a few coils down towards the wheel.  This in turn rubbed on the sidewall of the tyre causing it to wear down and eventually pop. 

Anyway,  thinking it was just a burst tyre, I phoned the AA to ask for their assistance (as I understand it, you're not allowed to change the tyre on a motorway) and was advised that they'd be out within the hour.  30 minutes yerman in his yellow van turned up, and had the wheel changed within 10 min's, despite his butt being just inches from the 40-ton trucks going past. 

Well, having got the car back to my office on the space saver (luckily it was thin enough to not rub),  our local company service centre was able to organise a tow truck to come and pick it up, and its now gone off upto Aldridge to get fixed, AND they were able to organise a temporary replacement vehicle.

So really this is just a small note of appreciation to both the AA and Interserve Site Services for their expert assistance in getting things sorted out for me!  Top Job Guys!

A couple of Silly Friday Jokes..

Its a Friday & its joke time.  These courtesy of @stephenfry on twitter.

Q) Whats the first sign of Madness?
A) Suggs coming up your driveway.

and

It seems Suggs is marching against racism and homophobia.  I mean, its just madness gone politically correct.

Windows Live Writer

As I alluded to the other day,  I have found a great new blogging tool from a little software company going by the name of Microsoft (Bah, nothing will ever come of them) called 'Windows Live Writer'.   This software is a free download which is part of the Live Toolset @ get.live.com. 

So, you're probably asking,  what's so good about it?   Well, its basically a MS-Word for blogs, so everything is WYSIWIG.  You can add text, pictures, links, maps and video all from the main edit screen and they will all be automatically uploaded when you post your blog, so no faffing around with uploading and linking.  Its also aware of the style sheets and templates active on your blog, so there's no worry that what you type won't appear correctly when its live.

A useful feature is that you can compose your thoughts 'offline', then publish them when you have a network connection, meaning that as and when 5 minutes allow, you can add a paragraph here and there, and once you're happy, make it live.   Plus, with the spell check feature, your SPAG should be a little better :).

But the killer feature for me is the ability to publish to different blog services.  For example, I have configured my WLW to access my sharepoint blog on mysite, and my external blogspot account meaning that I can publish similar stories to one, either or both.  The only thing that I will have to be careful about is making sure each post is suitable for its target audience, e.g. revealing sensitive corporate information to the outside, or putting profanity on the Internal Site.   However, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, and I try to keep things fairly anonymous anyway.

In conclusion, anyone keeping multiple blogs upto date should checkout this software,  its actually one decent tool to come from the house of Gates.

Flawless Apples?

Good news everyone!   Apple are now selling DRM free tunes via iTunes, bringing them in-line with the other competitors in the industry, notably Amazon and 7digital.  Whilst its not the entire back catalogue yet (8 million tracks, out of 10 million), this is a welcome step towards getting rid of DRM.  However its not a total removal - they're having multi-tiered approach from now on.  The cheapest tracks will still have some DRM, and the more expensive ones won't.  Plus, they will be releasing tracks with iTunes Plus format,  a 256kbps AAC format, presumably for the audiophiles.    Oh yes, and another nice feature, the iPhone will now be allowed to download tracks from iTunes via 3G, rather than just wifi - surely a decent step for Apple into the 21st Century?

At the moment, there still seems to be a fair few ifs and buts, however, I shall watch this one with interest.  Whether existing users will choose to pay the extra 20p PER TRACK to upgrade their existing music to DRM free remains to be seen, but this is defiantly a step forward.  Well Done Apple!

Love Is....

Over the Xmas Break, I fell head over heels for a new Woman.
She's curvy, powerful, shapely, likes to go topless and is adorned in nice bits of bling.

Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to ever enjoy her, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'd really want to, because, like many things put up on a plinth - you'll only ever be disappointed that she doesn't quite live up to expectations. Plus, I'd look like an idiot travelling around with her.






She is the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder (LP560 2009 edition).



Pure Class....

Today's Compilation Pop Pickers.

One thing I really hate about Linux - non-packaged applications which must be self compiled.

I have been coming up against this a lot over the last few weeks, trying to build newer software versions than are found in the repositories.  Unlike Windows, where you can just download and run an executable file with no hassle,  with Linux, you're expected to do some of the hard work yourself.  This has its benefits in that the software is customised and optimised for the specific distribution and libraries that you're using, but has the disadvantages that often, the compilation tool is looking for and expecting certain components, calls or versions.   If your 'make' fails, you have to read through the errors, fix whatever's broken, then try again.  Which is fine if its just one module that needs updating, but more often than not, that module requires a dependency issue resolved, and then the next one has issues and so on and so forth,  ad infinitum it seems.

All this is the reason why I choose distro's with decent package support - Debian based Distro's simply use 'aptitude install packagename' and RedHat Style Distro's use 'yum install packagename'.  Aptitude seems to be a little better at resolving dependencies than Yum, but both seem to do a similar thing.   However,  the issue with the package repositories is that it relies on someone compiling an application for your distribution and confirming that it works, and then submitting it to the repository.  This can lead to significant or non-existent delays between software updates, meaning that for a lot of 'bleeding edge' applications,  a certain amount of hacking, head bashing, blood, sweat and tears is required to get the Penguin to do what you want.

Anyway, Back to trying to work out why ntop 3.3.9 won't recognise lib_pcap properly.  Grrr.  Any idea's anyone?

Windows Live Writer

Wow, two posts in one day!  Well, this is a venture into the unknown, composition wise, as I'm using Windows Live Writer (Get.Live.Com/Writer) to put this together.   Whilst blogger provides some good tools for composing my thoughts, comments, questions and idea's,  its a pain in the butt to synchronise this between my blogspot and my work sharepoint 'my site', which isn't visible to the world as a whole.  Now, I can't test this yet, as I don't have access, but at least I can verify that blogger publishing works OK.

Right, nothing else, but watch this space for more news...

Kodak Crapware.

I know a lot of people have written about this previously, but I wanted to write about it in case anyone missed it.  

The Curse of the Kodak Easyshare Software.

So, when you buy a Kodak Digital Camera (in my case a CX7530), you also get a CD which insists that you MUST install it before you do anything else.  So you do.   And then suddenly your PC becomes all unresponsive, takes 15mins to boot up, and after all that, the EasyShare software is basically a pile of crap bloatware which doesn't really manage your pics all that well.

So you try something like Picasa, which kicks ass!  However, you find that you can't talk directly to the camera, because SleasyShare has taken over.  Even uninstalling doesn't help.

So how to get around it?

Well, first of all, disconnect your camera from the USB.  Then, uninstall the Kodak Software from Add/Remove Programs.

Then, head on over to http://wwwuk.kodak.com/global/en/service/downloads/private/xp_vista_98_ClearUtility.jhtml?pq-path=12361 where you will find a cleaning utility.  Run this, and it will delete any of the CrapWear left on the system.  A quick reboot, and you'll find that all of a sudden, Picasa (and Windows directly) can talk to your camera.