Forza Garibaldi!

Cover of Three Little Pigs recording in New Guinea pidgin (via...

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:04:00 +0100

Cover of Three Little Pigs recording in New Guinea pidgin (via ABC Perth)

Forest fixture calendar 2011-2012

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:29:00 +0100

Every season I put together a google calendar of Forest fixtures so that I can view them easily on my phone. I’ve just done the 2011-2012 one and made it public in case anyone else finds it useful.

It used to be a bit fiddly to add these calendars onto the iPhone (not sure about other devices) but it seems Google now provide a simpler method which looks like it works.

You need to have a Google account for this.

First, log into Google Calendar in a browser:

On the left-hand side, click ‘Add’ and select ‘Add by URL’.

Paste the following into the URL box and click ‘Add Calendar’.

https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/3ti23ib6be3l9l8fulrhhd29eo%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

You should now see thecalendar listed on the left hand side under ‘Other Calendars’ and looking at dates from August you should see fixtures appearing.

At this stage, you are subscribed to the calendar and will see any updates I make to it. I suspect if you have an Android phone then it may just automagically start appearing on your phone but haven’t got one to check.

If you want the fixtures on your iPhone then there is one final step. Visit https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and check the box next to the fixtures calendar (highlighted).

Open your calendar on the iPhone and you should start seeing the fixtures appearing.

All done! Come on You Red’uns!

Shooter

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:05:48 +0000

(via http://everythingyoulovetohate.tumblr.com)

Child labourer

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:49:50 +0000

Stunning photo of a tragic situation.

Photo taken in Newberry, South Carolina in 1908. Taken by Lewis W. Hine.

(via Vintage photographs)

OS X Mail and flight information

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:20:37 +0000

Never noticed this before. I needed to check some flight details I had been emailed and add them to iCal. I wanted to copy the flight number into the notes field in iCal. As I hovered over the number, I realised OS X had recognised the text as a valid flight number. I clicked on it and was presented with:

Clicking on ‘Show flight information’ resulted in the flight status dashboard widget being displayed:

Can’t see me getting massive use out of this—I only make a few flights a year—but thought it a clever bit of integration worth sharing…

Forest radio

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Like a lot of Forest fans—particularly those based a distance from Nottingham—I subscribe to Forest Player. The service is pretty good and worth the few quid a month it costs. I can see extended highlights of matches, interviews, and other news stories. The killer feature though is being able to listen to the BBC Radio Nottingham commentary. This is delivered via Flash which isn’t ideal but an improvement on the horrific DRM’d WMV system they used to use.

There remains one problem though: there is no mobile access to the commentary. I guess it may work for you if you have an Android handset which supports flash but I’m not sure your battery would last a full 90 minutes… This means that whereas I used to have productive Saturday afternoons and found out the result at five o’clock, I am now invariably homebound. My girlfriend isn’t particularly enamoured with this situation. It would be great to at least be able to head out shopping or run errands while listening to Mr Fray excitedly describing the latest Lewis wonder-strike.

Now I can. Instructions follow and are hopefully of interest to someone out there. One thing to point out from the outset—I’m your archetypal Apple fanboi so these instructions are Mac/iPhone specific. All of this is completely do-able using other systems I’m sure and I will mention options as I go along. First up, there are four pieces of software I am using for this:

Nicecast by rougue amoeba on the Mac
TuneIn Radio on the iPhone (also on Android, Blackberry, Palm)
iTeleport on the iPhone
Dyndns service and updater

Nicecast

This application can ‘hijack’ audio from a specific application on your Mac or simply the system audio. It then re-broadcasts this audio on your local network and over the internet. You can listen to the stream using an application which can open the playlist file.

TuneIn Radio

Allows access to thousands of internet radio stations (including those from the BBC and other broadcasters). You can, for example, listen to the match build-up or the often surreal MatchTalk—“Come on you Forest Men!”—simply by finding Radio Nottingham from within the app. As the iPhone doesn’t have a built in tuner I use this app for listening to lots of stations. As mentioned, it looks like it is available for most major mobile platforms.

iTeleport

This is really just a wrapper around VNC with some additional functionality to simplify the process of connecting for those not used to dealing with VNC, IP addresses, ports, &c. You could use any VNC client with a bit of setup. Or if you’re on Windows you could use Remote Desktop (eg. WinAdmin on the iPhone). We need this as you need to be able to access your computer to log in to Forest Player and start the commentary (unless you happen to be at your computer to do this before going out).

Dyndns

This is very much optional but it is free and worth doing. Your home internet connection will occasionally change its IP address (the unique identifier for things on the internet). Dyndns gives you a static address (eg. http://myaddress.dyndns.org) which always points to your current IP address. You will need a small application on your Mac/PC or tell your router to keep Dyndns up-to-date. My Netgear router from Virgin has an option for this. Without Dyndns you will one day attempt to connect to your home computer to get the commentary running and you will find that you can no longer connect as you have been allocated to new IP address.

Here goes!

First thing to do is start up NiceCast and select the source. I’m just selecting ‘System Audio’ as I know I have nothing else running. You can alternatively select the browser you will be using to log in to Forest Player.

You can then set the Name for your broadcast:

Then the quality. I’ve not really tested or played about with this. The quality does not need to be very high I wouldn’t imagine and in order to ease connection over 3G and not use up all of your data allowance I would keep it low.

You are then ready to start broadcasting. Click on ‘Start Broadcast’.

You will see two addresses (Internet and Local). These are your broadcast addresses.

Next up is to get logged in to Forest Player and log in and start the commentary. If you are at your computer still at this point then you can just do what you normally do. If you are out and about then you will need to start up iTeleport (or whichever VNC or Remote Desktop app you use) and connect to the computer. Follow the instructions for whatever you are using. As you will discover, it is a bit fiddly to remote control things using your phone but You only need to click on the radio button for the commentary you want (Forest obviously!) and then fill in the login details. If you can have already loaded the page in your browser then you make things a little easier. A couple of screenshots to give an idea of what this step is like:

If you look at the NiceCast application, you should see the levels bars going up and down. If so, then we’re almost done. On your phone, load up TuneIn Radio. Click on the ‘Web’ tab and enter in the address of the broadcast and hitting go. If you are at home then you can test using the ‘local’ address over wifi, as I have done here:

If you are connecting via 3G or a different wifi network then you should enter the ‘internet’ address instead. If you set up Dyndns then you will replace part of the internet address—for example, http://215.65.87.98:8000/listen.m3u would become http://myaddress.dyndns.org:8000/listen.m3u. Once connected and buffered, you should see something like this and start hearing the commentary on your phone.

The final step is to bookmark the stream for future use.

Finally

The applications I’m using for this are not free. I bought iTeleport a long time ago for a few quid on offer. It is now £15 which is quite a lot. I’m sure there are alternatives which are cheaper.

Nicecast is $40. You can use the trial indefinitely but you are limited to broadcasting sixty minutes at a time. Nicecast is really just a well packaged Icecast server. If you read up about Icecast then you should be able to get the broadcast up and running on Mac, Windows, Linux, &c with not too much work and probably for free.

TuneIn Radio is 59p and amazing at that price. Worth purchasing anyway. Dyndns is free.

Feel free to give me a shout if you have any questions or need some help with this. It’s not exactly straightforward but it isn’t difficult either.

Stuck at a wedding in France? Grumpily eating meatballs in Ikea Croydon? Messrs Fray, McGovern & Chipperfield can be right there with you…

Miles

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:24:48 +0000

Club Elite Anniversary

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:48:01 +0000

Love this set by Ben Rains on Flickr of Cairo, Illinois. Cairo has been in decline as a city for the best part of a century and has a really interesting history. Worth reading up on.

Eric Gill’s busy day

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:23:52 +0000

Made me laugh. A lot. By Tom Gauld.

Herne Hill Velodrome

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:43:00 +0000

A very worthwhile campaign to save the velodrome at Herne Hill. This country has so few cycling facilities still in existence and this one has a great history. With current cuts this is going to be a real struggle but worth supporting. More information at http://www.savethevelodrome.com/

Love the logo too.

Protest

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 13:26:16 +0100

Police uniforms have really deteriorated in the last fifty years.

Another couple of photos from this series by Don McCullin can be found at the Vintage Photographs blog.

Recycling

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:57:31 +0100

Clarion CC

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 23:04:23 +0100

I remember back in the eighties doing 10 mile evening time trials and other rides along with my Dad at a cycling club in Notts. We would cycle out either via Colwick or Radcliffe for the meet. I can’t remember the exact location of the start/finish but there was a lay-by there where everyone would congregate. What I did remember was the name: Clarion.

For some reason, maybe watching the Tour of Britain, the name popped into my head and I decided to look them up. Turns out the Clarion CC has a pretty long and interesting history based in the socialist movement.

There is apparently a London section of the club so I’m going to try and find out the details and see about joining them for a ride.

Cherry flan. Too good looking to pass up. Damn you flan!

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:41:24 +0100

Cherry flan. Too good looking to pass up. Damn you flan!

«Judez» trike from our trip to Normandy this Summer

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:30:44 +0100

«Judez» trike from our trip to Normandy this Summer

Flan, flan, flan, flan

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:08:03 +0100

Having spent a week in Normandy back in July I thought I’d had my annual quota of flan. Most days involved two slices. Not a sustainable habit.

Was in Comptoir Gourmand for lunch today—as pretty much every day—and for the first time I remember they had a freshly prepared flan sitting there just asking to be eaten.

Verdict: Lecker.

I really hope they don’t start producing these daily…

Corinne Day

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:39:04 +0100

Sad news that Corinne Day died this weekend.

Bricklayers Arms, Fitzrovia

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:59:40 +0100

Bricklayers Arms, Fitzrovia

William Klein 1958

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:25:21 +0100

William Klein 1958

Posh Chippy

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:57:50 +0100

There’s been some excitement round these parts—well, in our flat at least—for the last few weeks when we noticed we were getting a fish & chip shop just up the road. Back from holidays and it’s finally opened. It’s called “Oliver’s”. They have a holding page currently but there will presumably be something better in place soon. The shop is next door to the Steeles pub on the lower section of Haverstock Hill.

This being NW3 it’s got more than a whiff of gastropub about it but we weren’t going to let that put us off. We managed to hold out until the weekend as we’ve just come back from a punishing week of butter, cheese, bread, flan & cider in Normandy and needed a few days of clean living.

The plaice (boom boom!) was busy and they had a lot of staff working. All a bit chaotic but everyone was friendly and customers were aware that this is new so were patiently queueing. We went for one haddock, fishcakes, large chips, and two mushy peas. Came to around £13 I think. Not cheap but not too bad.

You can eat in—they’re even licenced—and there are tables out the front. We opted to eat at home. We’re anti-social like that.

Here are the goodies:

The chips were great, the fish was all very fresh and the peas were much better than is normal from the chippy (though not a touch on Victoria Market in Nottingham but I’ve never found anywhere that comes close). Even the batter was well made. I’m really surprised about all of this as I’ve now been in London for a good many years and there are great swathes of it without a chip shop in sight and when you find one they are generally pretty poor. The only possible negative is that the emphasis is squarely on fish. No pies, faggots or saveloys here. They do, however, do deep fried mars bar.

I would definitely recommend Oliver’s if you’re in the area. I really hope they do well. And that I discover some willpower pretty sharpish.