Google Hack
Posted May 17th, 2007 by roryHere is a way to download media content instead of using p2p networks or bittorrent.
Just copy and paste the following into the google search:
intitle:"index.of" (mp3|mp4|avi) the.music.search -html -htm -php -asp -cf -jsp
Replace the.music.search with the name of the song or artist you require. Make sure you keep the full stops (periods) in the search term.
This is from firedragon and you can view his youtube video here.
Stefans Brasserie - Review
Posted April 22nd, 2007 by roryYesterday evening I took Mandy out to Stéfans Brasserie which is in Westcliff-On-Sea. It was about 15 minutes drive from us. The meal was fairly good, but the service was very slow. It took one hour to get our main courses and with Mandy being pretty tired, because of Freya (she has a cold) that wasn't good. The starters and the desserts were the best thing about the meal.
Starters
Butter Beans Bruschetta Gremolata (wild Roquette, continental parsley and lemon) £5.50 - Good and very garlicky
Seared Peppered Yellow Fin Tuna, Wild Roquette and Vegetable Crisps, Wasabi Paste £5.75 - Excellent: the tuna was a deep red colour, Japanese with a French influence
Mains
Grilled Rib Eye Steak, Pease Pudding and Mature Cheddar Cake, Field Mushrooms and Sherry Sauce £17.95 - Overwhelmed by the sauce, couldn't distinguish the individual flavours
Roasted Barbary Duck Breast, Celeriac Puree, Prune and Cabernet Sauvignon Sauce, Parsnip Crisps £15.50 - Pretty non-descript and a fairly small portion.
Desserts
Lemon Tart, Raspberry Sorbet, Honeyed Mascarpone £5.25 - Good pastry and exquisite lemon flavour. The sorbet was beautiful.
Crème Catalan, Winter Berries Compote £5.75 - Lovely crème brûlée with loads of real vanilla.
We also had the worst seat in the house and I was facing a wall next to the stairs. The ambience was fairly good until they turned on the Barry White which didn't really compliment a French restaurant.
We may try the brasserie again, but this time for lunch.
Feisty Fawn
Posted April 18th, 2007 by rory
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| This is just to let you know that the next version of Ubuntu is out tomorrow (Thursday 19 April) and it's codenamed Feisty Fawn, that's 7.04. Go here to download it or here to have it sent to you for free on a CD.
I think it is really good and ready for practically all users, even if you're not a geek. I have been running it for about 2 weeks whilst it was still in development and apart from some nvidia module mismatches it has performed flawlessly. This won't happen to you if you download it tomorrow. Please give it a try and experience some freedom. Start your exploration of Linux by reading The Open Source Definition and then you could post or read the answers to various question which you can search for on the Linux Questions Forum or the Ubuntu Forum. You can also view the videos about how to install Ubuntu here. |
Playin' with Themes
Posted March 27th, 2007 by roryYou may have noticed the theming of this site has been changing nearly every day. That is because I am trying to find a good theme for my blog. Leave a comment if you have a preference.
This theme is called 'Garamond', the previous one is called 'Glossy Blue' and I will probably try customising a theme called 'Garland'.
MisterHouse
Posted March 24th, 2007 by roryOver the last few days I have started to play with MisterHouse. It's a home automation program (really it's a collection of perl scripts) whereby you can automate your house mainly using X10 technology. I installed it a couple of days ago (not that straightforward) and so far I have the sitting room light coming on at sunrise and then off at 8am. Then it goes on again at 2 hours before sunset. Obviously the sunset time will change throughout the year so the software needs your longitude and latitude to calculate this. MisterHouse has got a cool web interface and has spurred me on to learning how to program in perl. All this home automation is controlled by the computer. If I get hold of a couple of motion sensors I can make the lights come on when someone enters the room. I also have the sounds of Big Ben sounding on the quarter hour - luckily though you can mute it! It also makes extensive use of a text to speech program called festival. This means that you can get it to say what it is doing, eg "It is now sunset so the sitting room lights have been turned on."This morning we all went to the library and I came away with two perl programming books. It looks fairly simple, because there are a lot of existing examples within MisterHouse.
