I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!
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 week beginning September 3, 2006
➠ September 8, 2006
BBC - Press Office - An all-star cast to appear in BBC ONE's Jekyll
Bugger me backwards, this sounds good. A modernised retelling of Jekyll and Hyde, written by Steven Moffat of Press Gang, Coupling, and Three of the best new episodes of Doctor Who fame. Hooray for the BBC!
‘Beatrice Sank’
The Beatrice Letters, the latest book in the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, includes not just letters of correspondance, but also letters of the alphanumeric variety.
By punching them out of the book and rearranging them, we're left with another obtuse clue which raises more questions than it answers. Much like the rest of the excellent, excellent, mind-twisting book.
I cannot freaking wait until The End, to be released on Friday the 13th October.
Amazon.com Unbox Video
There’s an instant discount of $1.99 on your first purchase, so you can kick the tyres and download a TV show episode for free. And yes, the DRM they use is strippable using FairPlay4WM.
➠ September 7, 2006
Geek to Live: Tech support with UltraVNC SingleClick - Lifehacker
UltraVNC (my preferred VNC server/client for Windows) has a nifty “single-click”-ish deployment method you can send to someone to control their PC. Requires text-file wrangling and firewall-hole-poking, so it’s not going to clobber CoPilot just yet, but it could be handy.
➠ September 6, 2006
➠ September 5, 2006
RoboGEO: Map Your Photos
Software to merge the timestamps on your photos with the route file from your GPS to automagically geocode your photos ready for Flickr.
Exit 25MPH
Just discovered that when I use ZoneTag with my GPS whilst driving, it not only tags the photo with "driving", but also the speed at which I was going.
Which was 65mph when I took the photo of this road sign, apparently.
‘New Hampshire Boring’
Refreshingly honest, but it really feels like the New Hampshire tourist board isn't even trying anymore.
➠ September 4, 2006
Flickr: Explore your geotagged photos on a Map
My photos from our Scotland trip, overlaid onto a map of Scotland. Hooray for Flickry goodness.
Amazon.com: 75-Watt Dimmable Spiral Compact Fluorescent, Uses only 23-Watts
Turns out you can get energy-saving lightbulbs which work with dimmer switches. Who knew! They’re pricey, but I’m getting some to see how they do.
FairUse4WM - a WM/DRM removal program
I’ve finally had a chance to test this with files downloaded from Napster and Rhapsody’s subscription services, and it does what it says on the tin. The question of interest: If this could be chained to a transcoder that automagically converted downloads to MP3s that can be played on an iPod, would it cause more customers to sign up for PlaysForSure providers, and damage sales at the iTunes Music Store?
REAPER - Rapid Environment for Audio Prototyping and Efficient Recording | Cockos Incorporated
Shareware Windows multitrack audio editor from Justin Frankel and co.
Site24x7
Website uptime-monitoring tool. Also graphs response-times which could make for interesting reading. Doesn’t require any authorization, so you can track your competitors’ sites too.
cabel.name: Multiplayer Game Of The Year
Cabel reviews the Nike+ shoe+iPod combo. Sounds like the kind of thing that might get me moving, like the Sportbrain of olde.
How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World? One. And You're Looking At It.
Walmart are making a huge push to get people buying the low-energy spiral bulbs. I’ve been using them since we moved house and I spent far too many hours wandering the aisles of Home Depot while Joy chose paint colours. The only place we still use incandescent bulbs is in the lamps attached to dimmers.
➠ September 3, 2006
Highland Cows
On the way south from Inverness, Joy finally managed to spot some Highland Cows. She hopped out with the camera, and I discovered that she likes cows the same way I like penguins.
The Kransky Sisters: Overload
The Kransky Sisters’ show “We Don’t Have Husbands” was the best thing I caught at the Fringe. Here’s a small taster of their wonderful character-driven comedy — a cover of the Sugababes song “Overload”.
Ricky Gervais - Microsoft 1 - Google Video
Ricky Gervais (in character as David Brent) and Stephen Merchant make a “training” film for Microsoft.
The Saucepot - the rime of the ancient mariner
Zabs + chums coin a great new sexual term, the “ancient mariner”. Get your clam chowder ready.
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.