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This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Entries for February 2005

February 28, 2005

Bookmarklet Builder

Really handy Javascript scruncher-upper for when you’re working on bookmarklets.

Dave Winer’s worst nightmare

In the spirit of the childish foot-stamping that is marking the “debate” around Google’s Autolink toolbar functionality, I now present Dave Winer’s worst nightmare. Drag this bookmarklet onto your toolbar, and hit it every time you read his rantings.

Scripting.com fixer-upper

The code is mostly search-and-replace a webpage, with the following rules at the end:

searchWithinNode(document.body,'Google','the world\'s finest search engine, Google'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'Adam','inventor of podcasting, Adam'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'Scoble','my boyfriend, Scoble'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'wrong','probably correct'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'Dave','Google'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'Winer','Inc.'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'RSS','Atom (and its inferior predecessor, RSS)'); searchWithinNode(document.body,'Bing','Duh');

If I get a free minute, I’ll make it into a Firefox extension so you don’t even need to click the button.

It’s a slippery slope, my friends.

February 27, 2005

Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader: At last, I understand the dangers of Google AutoLink!

Yoz explains precisely why Google’s Autolink feature is SO! DAMNED! EVIL! “A large claxon should sound, the screen should flash, and the user should get a phone call from a Google employee explaining the incredibly ambiguous and possibly-accidental button press.”

February 26, 2005

GeoURL (2.0)

GeoURL is back. Incidentally, adding latitude and longitude to my homepage was indirectly responsible for my current employment!

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Another Hitchhiker’s Trailer

Be still, my beating geek heart.

The UK trailer for the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.

Featuring not only the voice of the book (Stephen Fry) and Marvin (Alan Rickman), but also—I can scarcely believe how much this thrills me—the original theme music from the radio series! Hooray for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop!

(Found on UKNova, mirrored using Coral)

JewelCase

Lovely iTunes plugin, displaying a spinning CD case for the current track.

February 25, 2005

New Toy

New Toy

I treated myself to a new iPod, as I await our tax refund. This replaces the 20Gb 2nd gen one I bought in August 2002. I expect this one to be full within 9 months too.

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Pancake Bunny

Pancake Bunny

A co-worker has this image taped to his door, and helpfully filled me in on the history of Oolong, the performing balancing bunny rabbit.

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February 24, 2005

DELLRumors.com

Tee hee. “The biggest news to report on the DJs is that the Pocket DJs will be released in five new colors… The 5 colors will be: Silver, Chrome, Aluminum, Platinum, and Classic.”

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Observer Blog

The traditional media and the “blogosphere” collide some more. Excellent regular content from the fine folks at The Observer.

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February 23, 2005

Thants

If you don’t know why this script makes me laugh like a ninny, then you’re missing one of the best comedies on TV.

February 22, 2005

MacDevCenter.com: How Paris Got Hacked?

Paris Hilton’s dog responsible for hacking?

last.fm’s list of my top albums

last.fm’s list of my top albums

According to the folks at audioscrobbler.com/ and last.fm/, these are my top albums. Mostly true, although the "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants" in the bottom left is somewhat suspect.

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February 21, 2005

3M Security Glass Ad (Signal vs. Noise)

Fantastic way to generate buzz for something which is essentially dull.

Some printable paper rulers

Very handy today when I couldn’t find a ruler.

Witch

Replacement app-switcher for OSX, which allows you to switch to a specific window. File under: About bluddy time!

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February 20, 2005

Ajax: a New Approach to Web Applications

The XML/XSLT/XmlHttpRequest web-app approach now has a buzzwordy name to throw around in meetings.

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Bitvise Tunnelier

Really interesting looking SSH client for Windows (with easy to use tunnelling abilities), but holy crap, their license is confusing as all hell.

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Slyck News - Napster Does 180

Napster files brief saying that illegal file-sharing networks must be shut down.

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February 19, 2005

TV Whirl - Channel 4 2005

Channel 4’s stunning new branding — The 4 logo made up (for a brief second) of pieces of every day scenery.

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Cannabalistic Muppets

Is anyone else as creeped out as I am by the new Pizza Hut commercial which features Miss Piggy eating pepperoni pizza?

February 18, 2005

Opt-Out Prescreen

Stop the credit agencies from selling your name and address to companies for mailing lists.

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February 17, 2005

Announcing WordPress 1.5

I think I might give WordPress a try some time soon.

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Mesothelioma Litigation

You know what’s really weird? Seing one of your expired domain names used to hawk asbestos lawyers.

The Somerville Gates

Anything New York can do, Somerville can do better.

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SMS Advertising Hits the Streets

SMS-based advertising reaches the US. This billboard has been on the Mass Pike for the last few weeks too.

The Boston Globe: One-hit wonder

Joy appears in the Boston Globe, on the topic of Google Whacking.

February 16, 2005

The Hula Project

Open-source webmail + calendaring project. New from Ximian/Novell. Could be a good competitor for Horde.

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jwz - Hula

Great jwz rant. The software industry misses him.

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February 15, 2005

Love is… Sufficiently Lowly-Set Expectations

Yesterday was St. Valentine’s Day. Joy & I hadn’t talked at all about it. I just remembered last year that we hadn’t done anything for it beyond ordering Mexican takeout. And Joy having a seizure1.

At work, I noticed that a co-worker had a beautifully wrapped box of chocolates on his desk for his wife. My mind paused suddenly to think “Hrmm… hope Joy’s not expecting that.”

Then another co-worker made a comment about stopping for flowers on the way home. “Hrmmm…”, thinks I. “Perhaps Joy’s going to be pissed off that I don’t even have so much as a card.”

So I did what any self-respecting cheap, lazy geek would do. I downloaded the ’“I Choo Choo Choose You” card(deconcept › I Choo Choo Choose You)’:http://blog.deconcept.com/2005/02/02/i-choo-choo-choose-you/, printed it out, signed it, and put it in the pile of Joy’s mail.

She got home, chased the dog for a moment, looked at her mail, saw my card, and hugged me. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I didn’t get you anything.”

Hurrah for Hallmark-shunning wives. Apparently, next year I can get away with less.

1 Not to be confused with our anniversary, which Joy marked by accidentally overdosing on her meds, and spending half an hour puking in the restroom at Jordan’s Furniture. Oh yes, epilepsy makes any occasion special.

February 14, 2005

TiVo Desktop 1.9 released - TiVo Community

Install LAME with the latest TiVo desktop software on your Mac, and you can enjoy your AAC files on your TiVo. About fcuking time too.

Ugandan Discussions: The Covers of Private Eye

Every Private Eye cover. Hurrah for speech bubbles.

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February 13, 2005

Webcam Viewer | HME Apps

Another cool TiVo HME App: Watch “streaming” webcam feeds on your telly. Yay for the San Diego Pandacam!

Flickr/TiVo HME App

View any Flickr photostream on your TiVo. A bit clunky and kludgey at the moment, but great potential.

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February 12, 2005

Google Maps Hacking and Bookmarklets

The “Animate Route” bookmarklets are fabulous.

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February 11, 2005

Chameleon, a feature-rich Bloglines proxy

Awesome use of the Bloglines API to provide a new, smarter interface to your subscriptions.

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MediaGuardian.co.uk | 'Boring old gits to wed'

Daily Star’s headline on “news” of Charles & Camilla’s engagement.

eBay - FleetCenter Naming Rights

Bank of America have decided they don’t want to pay to rename the FleetCenter, so you can buy the naming rights on eBay… for a day.

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February 10, 2005

Backing Blair :: UK General Election 2005

Reduce Labour’s majority at the next election, to give the party the kick up the arse it needs.

The Iconfactory: Litho System

Gorgeously grungey replacement icon set for OSX.

February 9, 2005

flickr graph

Cool visualisation of Flickr buddy networks.

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Epigoon : Feedview

Firefox plugin which makes Atom/RSS feeds less ugly when clicked on. This should be rolled into Firefox itself.

Forthcoming shininess from the BBC

BBC opening up some of their internal toys a la Google Labs?

BBC NEWS | Bus crash fine for Ayrton Senna

“Sheriff David Pender accepted Senna’s name did not reflect the speed he had been doing at the time of the accident.”

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February 8, 2005

Sunset on The Mountain

Sunset on The Mountain

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power point

power point

contribution to the Long Line project: www.flickr.com/groups/longline/

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Flickr Pipe Dream

Wicked awesome cool Flickr project. Create joining tiles, then link ‘em together like Pipe Mania!

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pen

pen

contribution to the Long Line project: www.flickr.com/groups/longline/

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Google Maps

Another boring “it’s been done” problem re-solved in a funky DHTML way by the brains at Google.

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February 7, 2005

Lemon Jelly sticker

Lemon Jelly sticker

"This is our new album. It's not like our old album"

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2001 Election Map of the UK

Gradiated map of British political persuasion. Slightly flawed in that it ignores the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales (Those big patches of Tory Blue in Scotland represent the SNP seats), but gorgeous nonetheless.

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BBC - The Apprentice

The UK version of “The Apprentice” starts up next week.

AdJab: Tabasco ad

Yummiest ad of the Superbowl.

iPod Shuffle RAID

What else would you do with four MP3 players? Play *music* on them?!

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Boing Boing: Shmoo Group exploit: 0wn any domain, no defense exists

Wow, this is a beauty of an exploit. Hyperlinks can lie!

February 6, 2005

Firewallin’

A thoroughly satisfying weekend of hackery—I finally got my home firewall set-up the way I wanted.

Some background: My ADSL is provided by the fantastically forward-thinking and geek-friendly ISP Speakeasy.net. They’re not cheap, but they have smart policies. As an example, I get four static IP addresses for my home network.

In the past I’ve used these by sticking my PCs directly onto the public internet. This has meant that I’ve needed to run software firewalls on each computer, all with different rules and ways of configuring them (Zone Alarm on Windows, Brickhouse on OSX and Firewall Builder on my Linux boxen.) This has been a pain.

But yesterday morning, a brainwave struck me: I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router providing my wireless network. It’s powered by Linux, which means that it’s relatively easy to hack and make more powerful. Surely that could be my firewall.

So a toast, then, to the geniuses behind OpenWRT, a teensy little Linux distribution which sits on the router giving you oodles of room to build. Combined with the Shoreline Firewall running in Proxy ARP mode, I’ve been able to set everything up exactly as I’ve wanted to do for years.

I have to confess that I’ve frightened Joy this weekend, due to my occasional schoolgirl-ish giggles as I hit WhatIsMyIP.com and get the result I hoped for, or see Joy’s shared music pop up in my iTunes for the first time ever. But that’s the price she pays for marrying a complete unashamed spod.

Magical Trevor 2

In case you’ve managed to get the original Magical Trevor tune out of your head, here’s the latest.

Stair navigation avec balloon

Stair navigation avec balloon

Bacon attempts to climb the stairs whilst gripping between his teeth a balloon larger than his stumpy little legs. Lots of fun to watch.

Bacon at his most puppyish

Bacon at his most puppyish

Mr. Dogg manicly rushing around chasing a big balloon, which has already become his new favourite toy. Until it bursts, which it is bound to do in about 5 minutes, the way he's attacking it.

Zach Dirt

Zach Dirt

Our nephew, Zach, in his stylish mullet wig.

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February 5, 2005

Quick question for New Englanders

Is a $471 gas bill for the month of January just the cost of owning a 3-storey house in Somerville, or is there something seriously FUBARed with our heating system?

348 Therms in 30 days seems like a helluva lot, but is that just what I have to look forward to every winter?

Ask Jeeves Buys Bloglines

Bloglines has a new daddy. If true, congrats to Mark + team.

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The Kleptones - From Detroit to J.A.

A full album of quality mash-ups for your downloading and grooving-along-to pleasure.

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February 4, 2005

De-duplicate your iTunes library

I didn’t know iTunes did this. Kewl!

Electoral Commission campaign urges voters to act now

Note to self: I need to get myself registered to vote in the upcoming UK election.

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The Freelance Hairdresser: Machadaynu

“Tony Rudd” from Monday’s “Look Around You” gets remixed. Ace!

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style.org > State of the Union Parsing Tool

Your at-a-glance guide to the “content” of GWB’s speeches. Compare “Saddam” and “Osama” to get an idea of how it works.

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mozdev.org - cookieculler

More complete control over your cookies in Firefox

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AdBlock - Filterset.G

Regularly updated rules list for AdBlock

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Why Napster will be a fully-integrated flop | The Register

Why DRM-powered music rental services are as dead today as they were 3 years ago. (Remember Pressplay?)

“With music and books, the idea is never to have all that is available. You want what’s good. You want quality.”

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February 3, 2005

I Choo Choo Choose You

Send your sweetheart the card that Lisa gave to Ralph Wiggum.

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February 2, 2005

Ballistics - a photoset on Flickr

These are fcuking gorgeous.

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PanicGoods - Nice T-Shirts For The Panic Family.

Beautifully-designed web-store selling beautifully-designed shirts. Make sure and try dragging an item *out* of your cart.

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Tips for Flickr beginners

If you’re not already hooked into the awesome brilliantness of Flickr, here’s some Top Tips to getting going.

Amazon.com: Amazon Prime

For $79, get free 2-day shipping on all purchases at Amazon.com for a year. Strangely tempting.

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February 1, 2005

Unique But Morally Dubious

Unique But Morally Dubious

The oldest T-shirt in my "collection", it was purchased from the short-lived Deadpan Magazine in 1994. Hrmm... Flickr has "Rotate" but no "Flip" control.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.