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.
Official Microsoft documentation on how to open the Vista packaging. Because it *needs* documentation.
The Economist has an outstanding US Politics blog. In depth, funny and required reading.
A Modest Proposal supporting the music industry’s calls for ISPs to block filesharing.
Comparing SAT scores with colleges’ most popular books according to Facebook. Guess where the Bible ends up on that scale…
US Gov’t fuel economy site, which lets you upload your information and compare MPGs with others. My 2001 Civic’s giving me 30 MPG, and that seems to be pretty reasonable.
Michel Gondry’s next film involved Jack Black and Mos Def recreating movies amateurishly. Here, Michel Gondry recreates that film’s trailer amateurishly. Genius!
Clyde imploring me to stop taking photos of him. (Since my class yesterday, I've fired off over 100 shots of him -- these were the only two worth sharing!)
Excellently silly melodrama under the guise of photoshop tutorials. Ace!
Caroline Kennedy endorses Obama. “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
Perfect timing, since I’m helping my mum set up iTunes and podcasts on her PC on Sunday afternoon!
Fantastic limited-edition screen prints celebrating the Sox and the Pats. I’m trying to convince Joy that some of these would be dashing on our living room walls.
Made me laugh. Several times.
This looks worth investigating — Continuous integration server that can also monitor other jobs (eg. cron jobs or backups), then serves the results at RSS, email or IM alerts.
Bizarre tale of a plagiarised nature article appearing as dialogue in a trashy paperback romance.
Classic bit of early Hugh Laurie musical brilliance. (Also worth seeking out on YouTube: his version of Hey Jude)
Ashes to Ashes (the 80’s Life on Mars follow-up) is starting the first week of February, and everything about it sounds bloody AMAZING.
“What’s been your favourite scene to film?” “That would have to be when we were on a speed boat going under Tower Bridge carrying machine guns. Say no more.”
If you bought any diamond jewellery between January 1994 and April 2006, you can become part of the class action and apply for a share of De Beers’s settlement. Depending on what you bought (and the number of people who apply for their share), you could get around 30% of the purchase price back!
Yahoo embraces OpenID, acting as a identity provider for now, and promising consumption to come. Unfortunately, it uses the new OpenID 2.0 spec, so I don’t know of a single site where you can use it yet, but hey! It’s a start.
Avoid being Rickroll’d with this anti-rickrolling firefox plugin. A great example of Firefox’s extensions making the internet a safer place to be.
Hard to watch without remembering his interview scenes in Magnolia. “When you’re a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help…”
My SimpleDB account got enabled yesterday, so I’m looking forward to getting stuck into it. This looks like a handy Python library for accessing it (and the other Amazon Web Services)
Awesome upcoming feature from my credit union: Pay in checks by scanning them on my home PC. Hooray for banking becoming less paper-driven.
US Library of Congress + Flickr == FTW! LoC uploads photos from their collection to Flickr, sharing them with the world, then Flickr users can update the metadata, improving their usefulness. Everyone’s a winner.
Cool prototype application by Tom Insam which monitors your foreground application in OS X, and tries to provide you some context by matching it to someone in your Address Book. It’s early days yet, but decidedly cool (and written in Python)
BusySync 2 will synchronize between Google Calendar and iCal in both directions. Unless Apple announce this exact feature at Macworld, I’ll be buying a copy forthwith.
Conference/celebration of internet memery, being put on at the Berkman Center in Cambridge in April. I love the fact that registering to discuss webcomics and LOLCats has resulted in my first ever charge of my credit card by Harvard University.
Been putting off joining the EFF? Now might be a bloody good time to break out your chequebook. Anyone know of a link to the original New Yorker article on which this scare-story is based?
“The Jack Principles is the first set of comprehensive guidelines for designing, writing and performing for an interactive conversation.” Great reading if you’re developing software for humans.
Another social software village I’m a member of: Basset hound owners on Flickr. There’s a great community forming of basset owners commenting on each others’ photos, and here, celebrating the birthday of another Flickrer’s dog!
Great post by Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton. Exactly sums up why Twitter is so lovely: “For a contrived, weird and techy way to communicate, Twitter’s “passive conversation” fosters very natural, gradual relationship-building.”
Fantastic reading: HD-DVD fanboys in denial on Amazon discussion boards.
Desperation play on Toshiba’s part? They’ve dropped the price of their entry-level HD-DVD player to $130, which includes two movies, and a rebate form for five more. Even knowing the format is doomed, this is tempting me.
An interesting way to moderate IRC chat: Only allow unique new sentences to be spoken.
This could be interesting to watch — In my social network, Scrabulous is *the* killer Facebook app. If it were to disappear, would it hurt Facebook?
Thankfully, I was completely unaware that any of these games existed — I had to do a quick search to make sure they were real, and not created purely for the purposes of this article!
Jimmy Carter op-ed piece from The Onion. “You better get down on your hands and knees and kiss Jimmy Carter’s rosy-red Georgia-peach-picking ass and beg me to run your fucking country again, because there’s no way I’m ever gonna come to you fuck-knobs and politely ask you if I might please be a presidential candidate in your precious fuckin’ election.”
The new Squeezebox hardware was one of the best things I saw at CES. The remote is pretty nice, but the best thing is that, like their SlimServer software, the firmware is open-source and Lua-based, so “the community” can write plugins and features for the remote. I predict this’ll be huge.
The Frozen Pea Fund gets a write-up in the Washington Post.
Woot! “The Mole” is coming back in a non-celebrity edition. This makes me: happy!
I won a raffle at the blogger party. Amongst the prizes were $300 in cash and free return flights on Virgin America.
My prize? An Intel flight suit. Apparently, Intel was sponsoring one of those Zero-G parabolic flights, and had some custom flight suits made. Do I get a flight on the vomit comet? Do I bollocks. Just the suit.
Not pictured is the huge Intel logo on the back. Discussions soon turned to the idea of wearing it, heading to the Intel booth on the show floor, and pretending to be booth staff. "Our new processor is smaller than an ant, but can do multiplication almost three times faster than even the most skilled ant."
Oh, and when I was carrying the suit, I felt something papery in one of the pockets. Of course, my first assumption was that there was a crisp $100 bill in there. Nope. Sick bag!
Spotted opposite the Atomic Testing Museum. No idea what makes their coffee "sexy", and frankly scared to find out.
Getting ready for an interview at the NBC News stand
This year’s Beijing olympic games will have the highest TV viewing figures in the US for, let’s say, 10 years, since it’ll be the first summer games shown in high-definition.
Hah! Jeremy Clarkson blusters in his usual ignorantly twattish style that identity theft isn’t a big deal, and to prove his point, lists his bank account details in his newspaper column. Someone took the details and created a direct debit to a charity! `
Bizarre battery-powered cartridge-based contraption that allows you to "smoke" "cigarettes" without technically smoking.
(Rather splendidly, a google search reveals that "NJoy" is also the name of a brand of "personal massagers", so make sure not to get them confused. You might get a funny look if you put a "NJoy Personal Wand" between your lips in public)
Portable boombox-type-thing with remote-controlled score displays, a countdown timer, etc.
It sounds a bit gimmicky and crappy, but it's something I desperately wanted a few years back when doing improv. I could definitely see Theatersports or Comedysportz troupes using it for away gigs.
I ate at Sensi this evening, which has its kitchen in the center of the restaurant, surrounded by walls of glass.
I was treated to the view of the steamer. Anyone who was squeamish about seeing live wriggling lobsters going in, and pink delicious ones coming out would not have had fun.
Greetings from Vegas, or more specifically, Bloghaus.
OK, going to go take over the Bloghaus TV and watch American Gladiators. Laters!
Too true to be funny. (I was particularly pissy that on my flight earlier, the tray table was covered with a huge advertising sticker. I promptly peeled it off. Fucked if I’m going to let someone steal my attention when I’m trapped in a confined space)
electoral-vote.com is back up and running, and tracking polls prior to the primaries. I’m now following it with approximately the intensity I was tracking the AL East in September!
My hotel room window faces onto this glorious sight.
Fantastic photo. Described in Reddit comments as “Beerkakke”
Excellent and timely curmudgeoning by Christopher Hitchens.
Further fuel for my belief that diets are a shitty way to lose weight, and sensible long-term life changes are the only way to do it correctly. (Not for nothing have I gained 30lbs since starting driving to work each day, instead of having to walk a mile to the T stop)
David Cross explains why he did the “Alvin & the Chipmunks” movie that looks so crappy. “I asked the owner if he’d take some of my credibility as payment. He looked at me as if I was an alien with A.I.D.S. speaking some intergalactic gobbledy-goo. I had to patiently explain to this country bumpkin about my indie hipster cred, and I would now like to cash it in.”
by Michael Ian Black (The State, Stella, etc). “Hi! How are you? I hope this letter finds you well. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but I’m the guy who fingered you at sleepaway camp.”
The calendar, and all its complexity and intricacies, are sorted-out by Dave Gorman. About time too.
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.
