Coffee Help Needed
I'm currently addicted to Monsoon Malabar coffee, be it from Wittards
or Taylors.
It's a wonderfully rich, earthy coffee which tackles waking me up in the
morning as well as it keeps me going in the afternoon. However, it's not
Fair Trade: although both Wittards and Taylors claim their coffee is
ethically sourced
they do separate Fair Trade branded products.
So, the help. Can anyone name a Fair Trade source of Monsoon Malabar, or something similar?
NP: Creating Patterns, 4 Hero
Daily Mail Science
I just received my weekly A Worm's Eye View, the editorial which comes with The Guardian's news round-up service. I may disagree with the author, Andrew Brown, on several issues (specifically he doesn't think Linux is any good, but at least he uses OO.o), but he is often right on the mark.
Guardian readers can have little idea how dreadful the general coverage of science stories is in the British press. All distinction vanishes between chemists, social scientists, particle physicists, snail taxonomists, people who chop the heads of little chickens with giant scissors - they're all "scientists".
All 'scientists' have one task. The Daily Mail subscribes to a radically simplified version of the atomic theory and everyone else tries to follow. According to this theory everything in the world is made from two kinds of basic substance: those that cure cancer, and those that cause it. The job of a scientist is to go through the world classifying everything into one category or the other. Every time something is identified as made of one sort of atom or the other, we have a story, preferably a scandal.
NP: Cafe Del Mar Volume 1
Sound Juicer "Hell Is Round The Corner Where I Shelter" 2.9.92
Sound Juicer "Hell Is Round The Corner Where I Shelter" 2.9.92 is out, also known as Release Candidate 1. Give this a good hammering, please.
- Depend on nautilus-burn >= 2.9
- Set the profile key to a sensible default
- Unselect the profile combo when no profile is selected in GConf
- Use gi18n.h (Crispin Flowerday)
- Use the new GTK+ about dialog (CF)
- Display the output format in the profile chooser (Raj Madhan)
- Quit correctly (RM)
- Updated README
I've been really bad at crediting translators, so I'll credit everyone who translated since 0.6 and will try and keep this up. Thanks everyone!
Adam Weinberger (en_CA), Ankit Patel (gu), Arafat Medini (ar), Christian Rose (sv), Christophe Fergeau (fr), David Lodge (en_GB), Duarte Loreto (pt), Elian Myftiu (sq), Emrah Unal (tr), Francesco Marletta (it), Francisco Javier F. Serrador (es), Funda Wang (zh_CN), Gnome PL Team (pl), Hendrik Brandt (de), Jordi Mallach (ca), Kjartan Maraas (nb), Kjartan Maraas (no), Laszlo Dvornik (hu), Leonid Kanter (ru), Martin Willemoes Hansen (da), Maxim Dziumanenko (uk), Miloslav Trmac (cs), Nikos Charonitakis (el), Priit Laes (et), Rajeev Shrestha (ne), Raphael Higino (pt_BR), Takeshi AIHANA (ja), Tino Meinen (nl), Tommi Vainikainen (fi), Vladimir Petkov (bg), Young-Ho Cha (ko), Žygimantas Beručka (lt)
As usual the tarball is here, but it is also available on the GNOME FTP server. I've not done Debian Sarge packages yet as it needs GNOME 2.9, but Sebastien is usually very quick with Ubuntu Hoary packages.
NP: The Private Press, DJ Shadow
Bag Man
Just call me The Bag Man. Last weekend we bought some decent Samsonite suitcases, and today both my new camera case, a Lowepro Nova 3, and my new general bag from Timbuk2 (it's one of these, but customised slightly) arrived.
Bags rock! Especially bags in cool colours with nice details like nets and chunky zips and pockets...
NP: Buena Vista Social Club
New Lens
Last week Hubert mentioned the new EOS-350D (very interesting improvement to the 300D) which I knew about already, and the new EF-S 60mm f/2.8 macro lens which I missed. Nice lens, I'm sure it will be way out of my budget but I want one anyway: sticking two close-up filters on a 50mm isn't quite the right way to do good macro work. Nice to see Canon introduce more EF-S lenses, EF lenses work fine but thanks to the 1.6x multiplier they sometimes just feel wrong. The competition is also hotting up, with Sigma producing a 30mm f/1.4 (price TBD) and a 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 (~£230). The 30mm would become a nice replacement for my 50mm f/1.8 which became an 80mm with DSLR, and the 18-125mm seems like a good compact general purpose to tele lens.
NP: Feed Me Weird Things, Squarepusher
Debian Documentation in Yelp Love Shocker
Today I started asking Shaun about hacking on Yelp again, with an aim of adding support for reading the Debian doc-base index files. Just as I started to understand what I needed to do, Thom pointed out that if I installed the Ubuntu doc-base package it would Just Work, as they generate OMF at install-time.
This is totally excellent news and I hope that Thom finds the time to take this upstream into Sid so we can have it in Sarge. Being able to use Yelp to read all of the documentation I've got installed on my machine is wonderful, and far more enjoyable than using a web browser and searching around /usr/share/doc. Requisite screenie:
Thom rocks my world!
NP: Greatest Hits, Toots and the Maytals
No More Hunting in T Minus 3 Hours
As of midnight tonight the barbaric "hobby" of fox hunting is finally banned in England, so the news was saturated with outside broadcasts from a mix of resigned last-ever hunts and determined last-legal hunts. The resigned people have cunning alternatives involving artifical fox scent and running around in the woods for a day, which seems like it would work just as well without the scent and dogs; and the defiant people are telling the world about all of the loopholes they've found and that no amount of prison and fining will stop them hunting foxes with dogs.
What strange people. So far the best argument for hunting foxes is that it's "an age-old tradition" (the argument about keeping fox numbers under control as they are pests doesn't really work with me, when many weekends they don't actually kill any foxes), so I presume these are the same people who want to bring back public hanging, slavery, child beating, no voting for women, and other "age-old traditions" which have been recently stopped.
Most amusing were the people moaning about the changes to their lives after the ban. Future circulation of Horse and Hound is unpredicable (unless it turns into an underground hunting magazine, Foxx 'n' Hounz), shops selling hunting gear have seen a 90% drop in sales, but the most amusing (in a dark way) was the man who claimed he'd have to shoot all 90 of his hounds and he doesn't want to. I'm pretty sure there is a better solution to surplus dogs: giving away/selling them as pets maybe (assuming they don't chase and kill other animals, like domestic cats), or even selling them to people in other countries where fox hunting is practised. I hear the south of France is getting ready for a boom in fox hunting from British people, and frankly they are welcome to them.
NP: Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis
London Nights
On Saturday, after spending an hour of hell in Debenhams buying two suitcases, we went down to St Paul's Cathedral with our camera. The sun had just set and as I was taking the camera out of my bag, they turned the floodlights on.
From St Paul's it is a pretty short walk to the Millennium Bridge, but as ever I couldn't remember the route and ended up taking the scenic route, including an overpass, to find the river. Luckily heading south through any path available from St Paul's will reach the Thames at some point, so we reached the Millennium Bridge,
By now the chill was starting to get to our extremities (like thighs and necks), so we headed back to St Paul's tube station along a path I can't find the name of anywhere.
After a nightmare journey (St Pauls to Tower Bridge in the cold, without using the Circle or District lines, anyone?) we made it to the Liberty Bounds for a drink (or two) and dinner. There were photos of the skyline and the Tower of London, but they were terrible so are not appearing here!
New Music
Last week I was very, very, bad and spent a while at the Second Sounds web site, basically working from A and going through to Z. £40 and a few days later, a pile of CDs turned up:
- 100th Window, Massive Attack
- Vehicles and Animals, Athlete
- Out Of Season, Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man
- The Very Best Of, The Eagles
- Dub Fever, King Tubby
- Gorillaz, Gorillaz
- Remedies, Herbaliser
Ahem. I best find more space in the CD rack...
Sound Juicer "So Said The Preacher Man" 2.9.91
This is quite a late release announcement, but I'm sure nobody will mind. Now that Sound Juicer is in GNOME 2.10 Desktop, I've started to track the GNOME version numbers. There were also some other changes:
- Link to nautilus-burn instead of copying libbacon
- HIGify and use GtkFileChooserButton in the Preferences dialog
- Use gnome-open instead of Nautilus when opening directories
- Ensure the pipeline is not running when an error occurs
- Make the code more likely to compile with gcc 2.95
- Update README
- Write empty strings, not NULL, to GConf
As usual the tarball is here, but it is also available on the GNOME FTP server. I've not done Debian packages yet as it needs GNOME 2.9, but there are packages in Ubuntu Hoary.
NP: Dub Fever, King Tubby
Sound Juicer Wiki and Bug Smashing
As Sound Juicer will be part of the Desktop release in GNOME 2.10, I quickly knocked up a page on the GNOME Wiki listing my priorities for the next stage of development. Simultaneously I hit Bugzilla, closing about 15 bugs. Finally back down to under 50 bugs!
Desk From Hell
Now that I'm working for Opened
Hand from home I mostly work with my laptop sitting on the sofa, with
a few cushions to support my back. This isn't a bad working position as
I'm comfortable and it means I'm in the right place for my speakers, so
get to listen to loud music. Fast-forward a month or so: Vicky left
Peason and is looking for another job, whicih involves lots of time on the
other computer searching for jobs, writing letters, filling in forms, etc.
This is a good thing as it justifies Eddie's existance: previously his
entire reason to exist was as a backup for my data and to play Half-Life 2
on. This is also a bad thing: Vicky is
This is some strange use of the word "tidy" I'd never heard before, it started with a fluffy pen monster thing appearing, followed by voiles (thin curtains apparently) on the window, and finally flowers by the monitor. She appeared to notice my expression of shock and horror at this point and finished it off my putting a pink, furry, cushion on the chair, which was hastily removed. I note that the rest is still there, and doesn't show any sign of moving.
Maybe it's time I "tidy" the front room with chunkier speaker wire, a new subwoofer, and a pile of trashy men magazines?
NP: O, Damien Rice
Sound Juicer "Where Beer Does Flow And Men Do Chunder" 0.6.0
Sound Juicer "Where Beer Does Flow And Men Do Chunder" 0.6.0 is available -- download the tarball here. Debian packages available in my repository shortly and may be buildable for Sid when GTK+ 2.6 is in (tomorrow I'd say).
This is the first release in the 0.6 series. It's a bit rough, but please file any crashes you find in it. In particular, you can only encode to Ogg Vorbis and FLAC unless you create new audio profiles. However, it will hopefully morph into Sound Juicer 2.10.0 rapidly and be part of the Desktop release.
- Now uses Audio Profiles for encoding
- Expanded metadata tags
- HAL-enabled builds actually compile
- Time remaining calculations actually work (hondaguru@earthlink.net)
- Handle filename conversion failures (Frederic Crozat)
- Handle empty results from MusicBrainz (FC)
- Disable Select/Deselect All when extracting (Raj Madhan)
- Don't crash at startup when there is no profile defined (RM)
- Handle unset audio profile keys (RM)
- Ensure Select/Deselect All reflect the state of the selections (Nirmal Kumar)
- Warn the user if they try and exit whilst ripping (RM)
- The Close button is the default when extracting is complete
NP: 100th Window, Massive Attack
F[bleep]ing Censors
My weekly Cineworld email just arrived, with the cinema times for the upcoming week. This entry caught my eye:
Ocean's Twelve (12A)
(contains one audible and some bleeped uses of strong language)
some bleeped uses of strong language? Pardon? Surely if the language is too strong for a 12A, the solution is to make it a 15? Apparently not, so we get the film ruined with inappropriate bleeps.
Update: many people have informed me that this is intentional bleeping for comedic effect in a single scene, so that's okay then.
NP: Do You Want More?!!!??!, The Roots
Nepal
In five weeks time we're off to India and Nepal for a two week holiday, which promises to be an amazing experience. Well, that is assuming we can actually get into Nepal...
This morning the King sacked the government and declared a national emergency in the conflict against the Maoist rebels, who want to change from constitutional monarchy to a communist republic. There is no communications, no air travel, and in general it's not a great place to be (official government statement) at the moment.
Balls, balls, and thrice balls. Hopefully Nepal will stabilise with amazing speed, but I think it's time we check the insurance terms and conditions.
NP: Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits
