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 2009

➠ October 30, 2009

Obi Wan Lebowski

Obi Wan Lebowski

"These are not the nihilists you're looking for."

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DARPA Network Challenge

This is a perfectly fascinating piece of research. In much the same way as the NSA’s key-cracking competitions helped measure that state of the art in distributed computing, DARPA is running a contest that will help measure how social software and the internet can power a (really) wide area treasure hunt.

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➠ October 28, 2009

Aurora’s Ice Cream

Aurora’s Ice Cream

I love when our designers mark their stuff in the office fridge.

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➠ October 27, 2009

Ironside’s pumpkin

Ironside’s pumpkin

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➠ October 26, 2009

I didn’t know anti-depressants had “street teams”

I didn’t know anti-depressants had “street teams”

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➠ October 25, 2009

25101976

25101976

Thank you to my little sister for the birthday present of a t-shirt that is incomprehensible to Americans.

From Primitive State in Edinburgh.

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Grammar Nerd Corrective Label Pack

I need to get some of these sticker’s. (via jillybee)

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Ten Years in My Life… One Year On

Still a US citizen, married to Joy, living in San Francisco with two bassets. Only thing that has changed was the job.

Yes, this is my low-rent Feltron-style annual report!

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Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)

Thought-provoking video from Merlin Mann. It’s long, but chock-full of food for thought. (Protip: Click through to Vimeo and download the .m4v file from there — it’s the perfect format for copying onto an iPhone)

In particular, the topic of the “Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition” was of great interest to me, as I look back on how I’ve progressed over almost-a-year at Slide, and face the brand new challenge of having direct reports to manage.

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One of those well-known Fish’n’Chips/Japanese crossover restaurants

One of those well-known Fish’n’Chips/Japanese crossover restaurants

You know… The old Teriyaki Chippie.

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➠ October 24, 2009

Enter your Facebook password

Enter your Facebook password

Setting up the Facebook app on Xbox Live.

Rather than the gorgeous OAuth flow used by the Netflix app for the last year (The Xbox displays a six-digit number, you visit the Netflix website on your PC, log-in and enter that number, Tada, everything's linked), the Facebook, Twitter and last.fm apps all require you to fiddle around, entering email addresses and passwords on an on-screen keyboard.

Oh, and remember not to change your password on those services, because you'll need to go through the dance again.

(Particularly like this: "If you can't enter the characters you need here, change your passwords on www.facebook.com")

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Blergh

Blergh

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➠ October 23, 2009

Bag of eyeballs, sir?

Bag of eyeballs, sir?

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My iPhone home screen

My iPhone home screen

The apps I want to get to most often.

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Classic Album Covers stamps

Man, nothing would make me send more letters than being able to put a Screamadelica stamp on the envelope.

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The Congress today had five minutes of worthwhile dialogue - Salon.com

You, along with a democratically-elected representative, can learn about “bills of attainder”

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blog.reddit: Congressman Barney Frank Answers Your Questions

Redditors collaborated and voted on questions, Barney Frank answers them. His answer to the question about the GLBT march is essential viewing.

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➠ October 22, 2009

➠ October 21, 2009

Capuano: A Washington Insider, Unknown At Home

NPR piece on Mike Capuano, my old House representative in Somerville, running for Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. MA residents: Please give him your consideration. “He’s not afraid of being seen as a Washington insider. In fact, he tells the crowd of about 70 people, that’s exactly what they should be looking for in a senator.”

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Free hint to spamming recruiters

Free hint to spamming recruiters

If you can't even be arsed to write an email to me, instead cramming your entire message in piss-poor English into the subject line of the email, I'm not interested in any "opptnys" you may have.

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Gigantomonitor

Gigantomonitor

Got a new 30" monitor on my desk at work. Frankly, I'm scared. 4,096,000 pixels is too much for one man to deal with.

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➠ October 20, 2009

Overload

Overload

Intrigued by noticings. This is my first entry.

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Merlin Mann on HuffPo page layout

“This is a web page that says “Go fuck yourself” in about half a dozen ways. Just wow.”

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➠ October 19, 2009

The smartest thing the Android team ever did

Looking at the screenshots of the forthcoming release of Android, I can’t help but notice one thing.

The typography.

More than anything, what draws my eye and makes it clear that I’m looking at an Android screen, not an iPhone, is the beautifully designed, decidedly not-Helvetica, typeface.

Here’s hoping the Android experience starts to catch up, and surpass, Apple’s. Nothing would make me happier than choosing an Android-based phone next time I want to upgrade.

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➠ October 17, 2009

Charlie Brooker’s hidden message

Charlie Brooker’s hidden message

www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2009/oct/17/charliebrooke...

"The line 'kicking ratings...' was originally a standalone sentence, but got subbed. Puzzle fans! Spot my hidden 'free speech' message." -- @charltonbrooker

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➠ October 16, 2009

Piracy in the App Store

Really interesting stats on jailbreaking and use of cracked iPhone apps.

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➠ October 15, 2009

Archive Team: Under Construction

A collection of of-their-time webpage detrius: The “Under Construction” graphics of geocities.

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McSweeney's Next Incarnation: An Old-Fashioned Broadsheet

“McSweeney’s No. 33 is to be in the form of a daily broadsheet — a big, old-fashioned broadsheet.” Sounds fabulous.

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unix-jun72

The original source for Unix 1st Edition, scanned from a printout, ready to run in a PDP-11 emulator. This fills me with geeklove.

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➠ October 12, 2009

Cat Shit One

I have not the words. Has to be watched to be believed.

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➠ October 11, 2009

JoCo performs Flood (1/9)

When Jonathan Coulton realised that his concert in Chicago would collide with a They Might Be Giants concert, he did the only sensible thing: Together with his support act, learn the whole of “Flood” and perform it.

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➠ October 9, 2009

The two App Stores

Really interesting perspective on the division of customers, developers and apps in the iPhone app store.

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15 Ladies Who Look Better In Mustaches

Michelle Obama? Wicked hot in a moustache.

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Rock Band Coming to iPhone/iPod Touch

Will be interesting to see how this compares to the just-released Tap Tap Revenge 3. TTR3 costs $0.99 and has a fairly weak collection of free songs, and a small but decent music store. Rock Band will come with 20 tracks from bands you’ve heard of, but will likely be in the $10 range.

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➠ October 8, 2009

Night Cheese

My favourite kind of t-shirt: Hilarious to those who get the reference, nonsensical to everyone else.

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➠ October 6, 2009

ESPN 30 for 30

ESPN is producing a series of documentaries about notable, potentially forgotten, moments in recent US sports history. Some of these sound fascinating, and it might be worth recording the whole set, just to become more sports-conversant.

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Glims for Safari

Safari “plug-in” which fixes a bunch of my frustrations since switching from Firefox. This plus ClickToFlash rock my world!

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➠ October 5, 2009

Ever-hopeful

Ever-hopeful

Clyde shows his interest in the meat platter Joy and I shared to celebrate our 6th anniversary.

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Canabalt

Rather ace Flashgame, now available for the iPhone. Interesting sidenote: Reviews in iTunes are rather overwhelmed by their stupid decision to include a review in the app description containing the word “faggotry”.

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➠ October 4, 2009

CupcakeCamp

CupcakeCamp

Yes, that is a piece of bacon in my cupcake!

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Norwegian Wood - No Fun Games

How do you legally release a game based upon a Beatles song without incurring the wrath of Apple Corps? By asking the user to supply their own MP3!

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You’re not going to care about any of this…

… but I’ve spent a Saturday night working on this stuff, so I’m going to share.

I’ve spent the evening getting groovymother.com up and running on a new VPS box from VPSLink.

Of potential interest to other nerds is the fact that the whole shebang is now running Apache-free. The Django app that powers the site runs under the coroutine-tastic Spawning. In front of that, and serving static files, is the still-sexy nginx.

The Spawning processes are started and managed by Supervisor, which also takes care of running and monitoring the jobs that pull in feeds and grab screenshots.

All in all, a tremendously productive, if really rather sad, Saturday night.

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PCalc Prevents iPhone Profanity

Thank gawd at least ONE iPhone developer is Thinking Of The Children!

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➠ October 1, 2009

Corky O’Reilly!

Corky O’Reilly!

It's Kylie!

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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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