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Author Archives: Fordiebianco
Downloading BBC Iplayer Content to your Linux Box
As stated in the past, I am a huge fan of public broadcasting in general and the BBC in particular. While I have been able to watch my favourite documentaries on the flash based online Iplayer, I was always a bit miffed that I wasn’t able to download the shows and watch them in better quality.
Miffed I am no more, thanks to Phil Lewis’s brillant little tool ‘get iplayer’. An easy command line app, it searches and downloads the content that you are interested in and stores it on your HD for your time shifted viewing pleasure.
Installation and handling couldn’t be easier. A wonderful invention and quite timely too!
Republicans’ Rants
I have a new past time. It’s safe, entertaining, funny, does not involve any dangerous substances and only requires a working internet connection: I have started to read the comments under the op-eds in the New York Post. I accidentally stumbled over them after I went out looking for reputable media outlets away from the rabid right-wing blogosphere and the ever so annoying Fox News. What I found was the New York Post, a Murdoch owned red top that comes closely in tone and editorial content to scourge of the British media, The Sun. It’s editorials have an obvious republican slant and represent Murdochs preference in politics and politicians, so it’s a fair representation of middle of the road republican opinion. So, while the op-ed pieces are getting more embittered the further Obama is pulling away in the polls (the latest accuses the republicans for electing the wrong candidate, because McCain is just not conservative enough) and are already quite enlightening, the real fun is to be found in the comments, where Joe Six Pack and the Hockeymums (not my terminology, but the Governor of Alaska’s) let rip. Let’s have some excerpts:
“…If America elects this crowd of bitter, whining, excuse-making, America-hating losers (the Obama team), they will have us on par with the people’s paradise of Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela within years….”
“…GOD BLESS AMERICA, AND SAVE US FROM OBAMA AND ALL THE LEFTIST, LIBERAL DEMOCRATS WHO WOULD DESTROY THIS COUNTRY.”
Here’s one who obviously doesn’t listen to Limbaugh and doesn’t watch Fox News:
“…Are you kidding!!! Every media source in this country is shamefully liberal and democrat. The movie industry, television talk shows, news shows, newspapers, music industry. All shamefully and some obnoxiously biased toward the democrats….”
“…The jackals in the Press pledged their allegience to Obama months ago and don’t care who knows it. They are fellow travelers in the Marxist march to take over the government…”
“…OBAMA, accompanied by the Marxists, Socialists, and his kool-aid drinking believers, are being protected for now, but they will come out of hiding if this Election goes their way. Obama is dangerously inexperienced, yet arrogant in his ignorance, and will change this Country into the so-called Utopia that Socialists have been seeking for 50 years…”
Aren’t they funny? I can happily recommend this lovely way of spending a couple of minutes in front of the computer. The Post and its readers will always provide for a good laugh. And it helps to explain why so many people are still voting Republican: the ‘culturewar’ is very real to these people. They are worried that come January they will wake up in a ‘Socialist Utopia’.
Gosh.
Car sales slump in the UK. Hurray!
Today The Times reports that car sales have been falling by 21% last month, with makers of luxury brands being hit the worst. Am I the only one who is jumping up and down with joy upon this lovely bit of news? Living in the South-East of Britain, I am surrounded by enormous SUV everywhere I go, and the sheer number of cars that are making life miserable in the area is mindboggling. According to You and Yours, that terribly boring consumer affairs magazine on Radio 4, the only cars that are still being sold quite steadily are the small, economic, ecological friendly vehicles a la Citroen 1, Yaris, etc.
I dream of the days when the roads are devoid of Range Rovers, Cayennes, RaVs and other enormous SUVs (that mostly seem to transport one female driver and maybe an additional child) and the roads around where I live and work are quieter, cleaner and safer to bike and walk on. It would be a boon to society, the environment and would improve quality of life immensely.
So, go on and buy a used Smart when you have to acquire your next car. You know it makes sense.
Acer Aspire One instead of EEEpc. Oh well.
Right. Turns out my online supplier of geeky goods actually sold out of the desired EEE. Just as all the other computer retailers around me in the south east of England. So I ordered an Aspire One. To be exact, the Aspire One A150-AB (Why in the world do makers of laptops come up with these weird and seemingy random model numbers?). This baby sports 1 GB ram, a chunky 120GB HD and Linpus Lite, their netbook Linux flavour, a derivative of Fedora 8. That would be another Linux flavour to get used to. Sigh. So one day the nice man from Amazon knocked on my door and brought a small but eagerly awaited package.
The Aspire is undoubtedly attractive and feels better designed and made than the best girlfriend’s first generation EEE. The keyboard and the screen especially are superior to the EEE, and there is a multicard reader that’s coming in handy.
Still compact, but larger than a Star Trek VI mug.
Apart from the multicard reader there’s 3 USB Slots, an external VGA plug, and an additional slot for more SD cards. It boots up in seconds and apart from a mild whirring noise when the little fan is trying to cool Intel’s Atom processor pretty quiet (though not as silent as the girlfriend’s eee).
It’s pleasant on the eye, balances well on my lap and fits perfectly into my work bag. Unfortunately the batttery is completely pish. While watching Little Britain USA (which, btw was rubbish) the battery drained almost cmpletely, and I presume that under full load the battery wouldn’t last longer than an hour. No comparison to my Macbook that would happily run for 5 hours. So no long train journeys or flights to New Zealand in economy class then.
As mentioned before, Acer is selling the One with Linpus lite, a Fedora 8 derivative. This is quite similar in apperance to the EEE’s Xandros flavour, just with worse applications. I have no idea who had the idea of leaving out Skype (it does have a webcam, you know), VLC and Thunderbird and instead use some other unusuable crap. So my first job was to get used to Fedora’s weird package manager, ‘yum’. I now have all the necessary apps installed, and available via XFCE’s ‘advanced menu’, but still have to remove the annoying apps and then edit the desktop file to add the right icons. I am quite happy to do that, but I can see the best girlfriend ever struggling with that task. I have no idea what Acer’s software engineers were smoking when putting the One’s software package together, but here they certainly messed up. Another minus was the lack of the GIMP and the fact that so far my trusty TX1-Powershot is not being recognised by the crappy photomanager.
So, after 3 days with the Aspire, what are the first thoughts?
Well designed hardware that is let down by a crap battery and a software package that is lacking in functionality compared to the EEE’s far superior Xandros flavour. I am pretty sure that very soon Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron will make a guest appearance, but for now I am just happy that I have replaced the Macbook with a credit-crunch model (the Aspire costs exactly a third) and that I can again watch movies and listen to my music.
Messaged from the Outhouse 