Ancestor

Oh my goodness, the Ancestor podcast is very good. If you like audiobooks, give it a listen, I doubt you'll be disappointed. Earthcore is damn good as well, by the same author.

Videora

Had a nasty bug on Friday, spent most of the day in bed. Clare had it Saturday, we're just praying the kids don't get it now.

Someone gave me some nice tools for converting DVD's onto your iPod video. First one is a DVD decrypter that rips your DVD's, although, looking at the website, they might have been busted, I'm sure there are others available (if not, let me know). The second is Videora which compresses the video to MPEG4 so you can put it on your iPod.

Works pretty well really, I've put some episodes of 24 on mine.

Desperation

There was a story on BBC Radio2, although I haven't been able to find any websites reporting it. A music shop (Jones Music) in Macclesfield is being sued by The Performance Rights Society for performance rights of customers playing guitars in their shop!! They must force customers to play their own music or buy a performance licence, they have chosen to go to court instead. How desperate is that.... I was humming a Doors song this morning, I expect to get a bill from EMI in the morning.

Webb and Mitchell ... or should that be the other way around....?

Is it a coincidence that David Mitchell and Robert Webb have both appeared on Have I Got News For You on BBC1 recently, not long after this announcement?

iPodtastic

Well, I've finally done it ... bought an iPod.

My old Creative Lab's 10GB player finally bought it at the weekend when I dropped it. The disk still works, the battery or connections must be damaged; it works when connected to the mains, but not on the battery. I could have tried to get it fixed, but it's probably not worth it and the battery has been a continual problem for about 18 months; I think it will make a good backup drive now.
The iPod is the black 30GB video model and so far I'm very happy with it. It's such a pleasure to use, just superb build quality and design. The video capability is nice to have, but my primary use is in the car. At the moment I'm still using a casette adaptor, but I'm hoping to get something more sophisticated when I get my new car.

Which reminds me, I bought a Golf 1.8 at the weekend for £500, a family friend was selling it and it's bridging the gap until we find a new one (the Golf isn't econominal enough for me)

Curried Wiki

It's only fair that I point to Adam Curry's response to the Wiki accusations. Essentially, he claims he didn't intend to remove all the stuff he removed and he got frustrated whilst editing and gave up. I guess it lost some of his text, something most of us have experienced when using forms in webpages; this can be very frustrating, which is why I always write in a text editor first (even what I'm typing now) in case the webpage times out or I lose connection or something. I don't really think he should have left it in the state he left it, it would have been better to go back to the previous version. I think Dave Winer raised some interesting points; this scandal proves that Wiki's, whilst useful, should be taken with a pinch of salt - use them for reference, but confirm details elsewhere.

Firefox

In case you haven't already, don't forget to download Firefox 1.5 - the tabs are now dragable (so you don't need the extension anymore, which is nice) and there's a del.ico.us extension which melds nicely in.

Does anyone know where I can find a Firefox mug? They don't have any in the Mozilla Store and I can't find them anywhere else. A google search did turn up a broken link, which indicates they may have been available at one time.

Hiding the truth

I'm a dedicated listener of the Daily Source Code and this really surprises me.

I have friends and family who change history like this, not just conveniently forgetting mistakes (who could blame people for that) but actually making up lies to cover things up they're not very proud of. I find this very irritating, how Dave Winer keeps his cool I'll never know.

tasty ... delicious

I'm tired of being at work and wanting a bookmark that's on my home PC and vice versa, so I've started using del.ico.us for managing my bookmarks - that's work bookmarks, personal bookmards, any in between, they're all going in there - so far so good. From now on Firefox will only have my Bookmarks Toolbar - for very regularly visited sites, like mail, Rojo, etc...

Pull my finger

http://www.misternicehands.com/

Hours (well, minutes) of amusement, make sure your sound is turned on, thanks to Dave Winer for the link.