Rod Begbie

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 October 2007

➠ October 31, 2007

ThinkGeek :: Ambient Forecasting Umbrella

I’ve been fancying getting a “gust buster” umbrella for a while. Getting one with a “Hey! You should bring me along today!” alerting handle sounds even better.

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DecentURL - Making ugly URLs decent

Not so much a URL shortener, as a URL nicener.

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➠ October 30, 2007

Edimax nMax Wireless 802.11n USB

Picked this up for my Mac Mini, and now it’s chugging away speedily on my 802.11n network. Which is good, since it’s going to be the recipients of my Time Machine backups.

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➠ October 29, 2007

Chemistry

CD Purchase: Girls Aloud - Chemistry

Weebl and Bob: Cube

Weebl and Bob do Portal. “Have you been eating cake?”

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3 days to reality - The Boston Globe

Globe article about Startup Weekend Boston, quotes me thusly: “Laptop karate”. I have no recollection as to what the hell that meant.

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➠ October 27, 2007

oink.cd - the number 1 site in the world for waffle recipes

Oink points to Google which points to a blog post which points torrent trackers which point to music.

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The Superest

Cartoonists playing a fun game: Draw a super-hero who’s skills vanquish those of the previous super-hero.

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➠ October 26, 2007

AppleInsider | Apple yanks wireless backup from Leopard last minute

Wow, I hadn’t noticed this had gone.

Digging deeper, it appears that you can only use Time Machine to backup to network drives shared using “Apple File Protocol”, rather than the more common SMB. Glad I have my Drobo hooked up to a Mac Mini, because that’s one of the main reasons I bought it.

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Sound of the Underground

CD Purchase: Girls Aloud - Sound of the Underground

➠ October 25, 2007

Sorry, Google Reader users...

A bug introduced by Google is causing my feed to break their RSS reader. I’ve reported it, so hopefully it will be remedied quickly.

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What Will the Neighbours Say?

CD Purchase: Girls Aloud - What Will the Neighbours Say?

Grey’s Anatomy, Vol. 3

CD Purchase: Original TV Soundtrack - Grey’s Anatomy, Vol. 3

The Smashing Pumpkins - Greatest Hits - Rotten Apples

CD Purchase: The Smashing Pumpkins - The Smashing Pumpkins - Greatest Hits - Rotten Apples

➠ October 24, 2007

“Dear Bike Thief: You Suck!”

“Dear Bike Thief: You Suck!”

Flyer posted to a phone pole in Union Square.

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Flickr: Photos from etchasketchist

Etch-a-Sketch art on Flickr. Some stunningly detailed stuff in here!

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Google Translate: "Sarkozy is chirac"

Google’s new text translation service was created by running machine learning over UN documents. Unfortunately, its “learning” for politicians’ names is.. erm.. “interesting”. Try also “Sarkozy sarkozy sarkozy”

(Since Google will probably fix this, at the moment it translates “Sarkozy is chirac” to “Bush is classless”)

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Good Feedkeeping

I made a couple of tweaks to my Atom feed earlier this week, which regular readers should be made aware of:

  1. In the spirits of saving duplicity, my main feed no longer contains my Flickr photos. If you still want to follow my photos, you should either subscribe to my Flickr photostream feed, or add me as a contact on Flickr and subscribe to your Photos from your contacts feed.
  2. Finally addressing frequent requests, there is now a link within my link posts to the original item—that link being the mini screenshot. Should save you having to click through to my site.

You may now carry on about your business.

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➠ October 23, 2007

Dopplr Blog > In rainbows

Lovely little design detail on Dopplr — Their “logo” changes colour based upon your usage of the site.

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Vista Is Still Plagued by Incompatibilities - Yahoo! News

“Vista has an aroma like [Windows] ME, and I am not interested in getting sick again.” Ooh, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s pretty true. Vista and ME are not dissimilar in their not-worth-the-hassle-of-upgrading-ness.

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DEFENDING THE PIG - OINK CROAKS

Excellent article from a musician about the loss of OiNK. OiNK was run by and for music geeks — I’d be willing to bet that CD purchasing by OiNK members is higher on average than the general population — and primarily acted as the kind of complete music archive that the music industry doesn’t have the skill, inclination or cojones to create themselves.

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BBC NEWS | Huge pirate music site shut down

OiNK is raided. *sigh*. /me expects RIAA letter in 5.. 4.. 3..

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10 Really Useful Flickr Greasemonkey Userscripts

Some of these look wicked handy.

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What I learned about timeshares, and you can, too - alex.moskalyuk

It strikes me that I’ll have some downtime in Vegas when I’m there for CES in January… what better entertainment than heading to a timeshare presentation?

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➠ October 22, 2007

Moonpig Cards

Customizable cards — Fill in the details on the site, and they mail out a great-looking card. Just got one from my sister.

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Drink Responsibly | The Daily Show

Classic Daily Show clip — Steve Carell gets shit-faced drunk in the name of science.

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TNR Online | What the F***?

Fucking excellent article on swearing. “Swearing raises many other puzzles—linguistic, neurobiological, literary, political.”

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Game 7 — An IM conversation

Joy & I watched tonight’s Game 7 in different rooms (Joy upstairs in the bedroom, me downstairs in the living room), but we both had our laptops open, because we’re both massive geeks. Here’s some edited highlights from our IM conversations:

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8:57:00 Joy Begbie: tell us, Dane Cook!
8:57:04 Joy Begbie: how many Octobers are there??
8:57:32 Rod Begbie: Frankly, I am So Fucking Excited about tonight’s game, even my distaste for Dane Cook can’t bring me down.

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9:15:54 Joy Begbie: the commentator just said, “a base hit cuts the lead in half”
9:16:05 Joy Begbie: uh, no… a RUN does that.
9:16:08 Joy Begbie: fuckwad

—

(Mike Lowell catches the ball for a double-play, with runners on 1st and 3rd)

10:54:24 Joy Begbie: heart attack.
10:54:40 Rod Begbie: That was 99% luck, 1% awesomeness.
10:55:09 Joy Begbie: Mike Lowell was involved. There was easily 3% awesomeness.
10:56:02 Joy Begbie: but also a HELL of a lot of luck
10:56:10 Rod Begbie: Especially on Lofton’s base running.
10:56:16 Rod Begbie: That should have been a run-scored.
10:56:19 Joy Begbie: and many thanks to their third base coach for confusing Kenny Lofton

—

(Jacoby Ellsbury makes a great catch in left field)

10:59:51 Rod Begbie: Jacoby would be a good name for a basset hound.
10:59:53 Rod Begbie: I’m just saying.
11:00:01 Rod Begbie: “Jacoby Begbie”

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11:02:47 Rod Begbie: Glimpses of Batshit in the dugout. I miss Batshit.
11:02:58 Joy Begbie: me too
11:22:39 Rod Begbie: Do you think Tito might include Batshit in the world series order, instead of Gagné?

—

(Jonathan Papelbon strikes out two to end the top of the 8th)

11:21:27 Rod Begbie: It was great, looking at the intensity on Papelbons’ face as he walked off the field…
11:21:39 Rod Begbie: Knowing that in about 45 minutes, he’s going to be letting it all out by dancing around like an idiot!

—

(A Fox announcer mentions the MVP award)

11:30:21 Rod Begbie: Who do you think should get MVP?
11:30:22 Joy Begbie: ooh, good question, who will be the MVP?
11:30:26 Joy Begbie: Josh Beckett
11:30:30 Rod Begbie: Almost definitely.
11:31:20 Joy Begbie: Grand slam notwithstanding, there’s nobody else I can think of that has put in such a phenomenal performance
11:31:12 Rod Begbie: No-one is as responsible for the comeback in game 5 as Beckett.
11:31:41 Rod Begbie: It was almost like “Hey! Beckett’s pitching! We’re bound to win this one, so let’s have some fun!”
11:31:52 Rod Begbie: Set the tone for the games back at Fenway.

—

(Dustin Pedroia hits a three-RBI shot off of the Green Monster)

11:43:44 Joy Begbie: I am GRINNING right now.
11:43:49 Rod Begbie: PETEY!
11:43:59 Rod Begbie: He may suck at cribbage….
11:44:04 Rod Begbie: but I’ll take that hit!
11:44:12 Joy Begbie: hot dog!

—

(Cameras show David Ortiz in the dugout, already wearing goggles in preperation for the champagne shower)

11:56:13 Rod Begbie: GET THOSE GOGGLES OFF, PAPI! DON‘T JINX IT!!!!!

—

(Coco Crisp smashes into the bullpen wall, making the catch that finishes the game)

11:57:59 Joy Begbie: SMART defensive move from Tito…
11:58:07 Joy Begbie: ouch
11:58:12 Rod Begbie: So glad that Coco got to make his mark on the game.
11:58:33 Joy Begbie: he is going to feel that later, i think
11:58:47 Rod Begbie: If only we had someone else who could take his place in the lineup…..

—

(The Sox win)

12:02:02 Joy Begbie: that was a DIRTY slo-mo of Tek and Pap
12:02:06 Rod Begbie: I want Papelbon’s crazed star jump as my wallpaper!

—

12:12:09 Rod Begbie: “Is that Papelbon? He’s a little whacko, isn’t he?”
12:12:23 Joy Begbie: ah, such insight
12:12:25 Rod Begbie: Why yes, Fox idiot, yes he is.

—

12:14:28 Rod Begbie: Losing manager doesn’t get a press conference? Looks like they’re interviewing him round the back of a concessions stand!
12:14:46 Joy Begbie: sad, really.
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➠ October 21, 2007

Eddie Izzard / Lego mashups

A handful of Eddie Izzard routines illustrated with Lego. Quality.

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The Polygraph (wallpaper)

The Polygraph (wallpaper)

When I saw the awesomely complicated and old-school looking EEG monitor at Axon Labs, I commented to Mike that I wanted a close-up shot of it for my wallpaper.

He obliged with a shot, which I've trimmed to MacBookPro 1440x900 resolution.

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➠ October 20, 2007

Massachusetts Land Records

Search the complete land-history records (mortgages and deeds) for Massachusetts. Find out how badly your friends and family are in debt!

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➠ October 19, 2007

hpsetdisp.pl

An old hack, rediscovered: Change the “00 READY” message on HP printers. I used variants of this at uni (“00 RAEDY” and “PAPER UPSIDE DOWN” were favourites of mine), and at AnagramOfPanties (in those glorious bubble days, I ran a script which displayed the current stock price on printers).

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3 Fantasy Twitterers: Replies to @CathleenRitt

If you could follow any three possible twitterers, who would you choose? I’d go for @yooouuuk, @sjobs and @bez.

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➠ October 18, 2007

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Official Website

Comedy Central has launched a complete archive of The Daily Show since Jon Stewart took over in 1999. It’s a wee bit wonky (I haven’t had much luck searching for old “Even Stephven” segments), but promising.

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OK/Cancel : Please cancel my Google

This is ace. A random blog entry on OK/Cancel is coming up as the number one hit on Google for “cancel google”. Observe the comments thread, and fear for humanity.

“pollyanna209 wrote: help get google off my computer you have no right pushing google without permission from me i pay the bill for comcast and i want internet explorer back this is rude of you people!”

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➠ October 17, 2007

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters | The Onion

“For a majority of likely voters, meaningless bullshit will be the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for in 2008.”

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➠ October 16, 2007

This License Key Rated R for Strong Coarse Language

The problems with randomly creating strings… “It turns out that one day in the not-too-distant future, our random number generator gets filthy. On that day, one out of every 128 licenses generated will start with the F-bomb.”

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Twitter: Oauth

Blaine at Twitter has implemented OAuth authentication, the first (I believe) live implementation on the web. I hope to have this rolled into Twadget in the next week or two, so I can stop asking for usernames and passwords.

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Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon

CD Purchase: John Lennon - Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon

➠ October 15, 2007

The Elements of Style Illustrated

Grammatical pedantry combined with a cute picture of a basset hound on the cover? IT’S LIKE THEY’RE INSIDE MY HEAD!

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Threadless T-Shirts - Hoody Sale! 25 Dollars for 24 Hours!! TUESDAY ONLY!

Perfectly-timed sale — It’s getting a bit nippy out! Threadless hoodies are dropping from $40 to $25 for one day only. I’m currently deciding which ones I MUST HAVE!

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Bloc 11 Cafe - The Vault

Bloc 11 Cafe - The Vault

The building used to be a bank -- one of the vaults is now a small room with tables & chairs. Didn't test the wi-fi access from there, though.

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Bloc 11 Cafe mug

Bloc 11 Cafe mug

Diesel Fuel from the new cafe in Union Square.

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People Getting Punched Just Before Eating (SNL Digital Short)

I’m mildly ashamed of just how funny I found this. “BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS”

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groovymother.com response times

groovymother.com response times

Looks like switching to a hosted server is already paying off -- Response times for groovymother.com are halved on the new host.

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The Information Freeway :: A map of the planet

Very nifty Google Maps-like tiled-and-draggable front-end to the Open Street Map data. I was surprised how detailed the data was for my neighbourhood, but I guess I shouldn’t have been, given the high geek-density round here.

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➠ October 13, 2007

Popjustice - Kylie - '2 Hearts'

Corky O’Reilly, It’s Kylie! Top new track. As Popjustice put it: “Woo etc.”

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File under “Maybe it’s just me, but…”

File under “Maybe it’s just me, but…”

... given this photo is on the How to File a Claim page of my insurance company, doesn't it suggest that these adorable moppets have been injured, possibly fatally, in a car accident?

Just seems grisly to me.

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A Social Network for Two

Ze Frank lives! A lovely little modern-day love song.

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➠ October 12, 2007

If you can read this…

…then my DNS-fu has worked, and you’re now hitting groovymother.com on its new server, a virtual Linux box running via Xen, hosted by VPSLink.com

For the last 6 years, all my sites have been hosted from my home, at the mercy of my (usually exceptionally-reliable) Speakeasy DSL connection. However, when the whims of BitTorrent take me, it can cause slowdowns, and virtual-server technology now means I can get root on a hosted server for less than the price of a cup of gin a day, so I’m putting my trust in a hosting company’s arms, and seeing how it works out.

(After signing up with VPSLink, I received a recommendation for Slicehost who offer similarly-priced services, so it’s good to know that switching shouldn’t be a problem if VPSLink turns out to suck balls for some reason)

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Rear-ended 2

Rear-ended 2

Luckily, everything seems to have crumpled correctly, so it's just going to be some body-work to get back up to "pristine" condition.

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Rear-ended 1

Rear-ended 1

I was the meat in a car-sandwich this evening. No-one was hurt, so it's mostly just a hassle of dealing with insurance companies.

I feel sorry for the poor bugger who did the rear-ending -- there were four cars involved, so his insurance costs are going to be *brutal* next year.

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Inkling Markets Public Marketplace

I’ve been having lots of fun betting pretend-money and making predictions on sport, politics and technology. There’s still plenty of “money” to be made from fools who think the next revision of the iPhone will be on sale in January!

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Collected

CD Purchase: Massive Attack - Collected

➠ October 11, 2007

Cool Tool: ScanCafe

I’ve been looking for a cost-effective way of converting our wedding photo negatives into digital files for a while, and this looks like it might be the way to go. $0.19 per negative.

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➠ October 10, 2007

Cover art for In Rainbows // journal // hicksdesign

Since the MP3s don’t have any cover-art, Jon Hicks is hosting a “Design your own Radiohead Cover Art” contest. #21 is my favourite so far.

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rsync.net Warrant Canary

Interesting solution to the problem: how can you tell people you’ve been served with a warrant that you’re not to tell people about?

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xkcd - Exploits of a Mom

“Did you really name your son “Robert’); DROP TABLE Students;—” ?”

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➠ October 9, 2007

Jaiku | Google Q&A

Google have bought the Finnish Twitter-a-like Jaiku. I always liked Jaiku’s S60 cellphone software — wonder if this purchase has anything to do with Google’s cellphone ambitions? (And I hope it does better under Google’s roof than Dodgeball did)

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➠ October 8, 2007

Science Museum - Launchball

Addictivating little Impossible-Machine-like physics flashgame from the Science Museum in London.

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Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends

Presentation by Ian Rogers (ex-IUMA and Nullsoft) to music industry folks. “Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us.”

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White Chalk

CD Purchase: PJ Harvey - White Chalk

rentzsch.com: apple's antiCAPSLOCK

The new Apple keyboards have a delay (at the hardware level) to prevent aCCIDENTAL cAPSlOCK.

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Gathering 'Storm' Superworm Poses Grave Threat to PC Nets

Analysis of the “Storm” worm. Cunningly designed to be as undetectable as possible, it’s a frightening vision of what modern malware can be.

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➠ October 6, 2007

Post-home-run Tweets

Post-home-run Tweets

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Manny Being Manny Being Interviewed

Manny Being Manny Being Interviewed

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Jubilation

Jubilation

Seconds after Manny's decisive walk-off home-run.

(I like how arty this shot appears, when really it was just taken before my camera had completely woken up and adjusted to what was going on!)

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➠ October 5, 2007

Helpful Reminder

Helpful Reminder

You have twenty minutes to run, if you want to catch the T home. Stupid 8:30pm starts!

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View from Grandstand 7 Row 12

View from Grandstand 7 Row 12

Not as good as our normal seats (pillars preventing us from seeing home plate or the Pesky Pole very well), but still a fun place to spend an evening.

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The Happy Couple

The Happy Couple

Celebrating 4 years of marriage. Linen and/or silk not pictured.

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➠ October 4, 2007

The Journal of Joe The Peacock. Yay.: An unordered list of thoughts I had during a conference call with a potential client today

“Oh man, I wonder how they’d take it if I unmuted this line for just a second to let them hear how loud I’m laughing at all of this…”

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Even after all this time on the internet, seatbelt fetishes are a new one by me.

This is a weird one — someone is scouring Flickr for photos of women in the back-seats of cars wearing their seatbelt.

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MHD

HD channel from MTV networks, made up of loads of music videos and concerts. Launched on DirecTV this morning, and looks a bit bloody good!

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➠ October 3, 2007

iPhreedom

There have been a lot of posts over the last week about Apple updating the iPhone in such a way that blocks third-party software from being installed.

This may be sacrilegious as a geek who values freedom, but I think it’s worth stating…

The applications that Apple has cruelly denied users from installing on their iPhones… weren’t very good.

1984 theme

Sure, they were cool. The fact that using reverse-engineering, undocumented APIs, and wicked-smarts, folks were able to turn out an IM app or a NES emulator is truly impressive, and a feat which should be applauded.

That said, the “platform”, such as it is, isn’t ready. Applications don’t work terribly well, or consistently. The things I installed that felt the most polished and useful? Were all games and timewasters.

For example what good is an IM app or a Twitter client which stops updating when you switch to another application? Or which gets confused and crash when you lose network connection?

When presented with the choice to upgrade my iPhone to version 1.1.1 (and get a louder speakerphone, the one new feature I really cared about), or to stick with my hacked and customized iPhone, it wasn’t even a contest. I upgraded that evening. And apart from the funky customization of my home screen (pictured), I haven’t really missed the hacks.

Will Apple open up, release an SDK and allow anyone to compile code and deploy to their cellphone? Perhaps. (Will Apple force developers to go through some convoluted approval and/or signing process? More likely). But they won’t do that until the platform of the iPhone is at a stage where the apps you can run will work stunningly well.

And while the locks may have been reinforced with this firmware update, I suspect the ingenuity of the apps created thus far will only strengthen the case within Apple to make a SDK freely available.

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➠ October 1, 2007

BBC NEWS | Adobe challenges word on the web

Congrats to the folks at Virtual Ubiquity. They’ve created a kick-ass application.

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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.

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