TMSD Is In Desperate Need Of A Shave…

..or rather, I need a shave, and as it would happen, I’ve lost the cord that makes the razor work. Damn.

So yes. Christmas has come and gone now, and it’s that time of year where I end up thinking “Hey, it won’t be like this again for another year!”

This always happens. And yes, I have just realised how depressing this is beginning to sound. So I shall cut to the chase!

Well, Christmas has been very jolly indeed. Still being of the age where I recieve presents rather than buying them, I am now the proud owner of an Acer 22″ widescreen LCD display. And for those who don’t know what having a 22″er is like, imagine the whole of Canada sitting on your desk. The difference is simply incredible. Even with my shiny newish laptop everything looks so much less cluttered.

Fig.1 The desk, however, is still cluttered.

Now, as I believe I wrote about some months ago, I received a computer from school a while back. It’s now my main Linux computer – for the internet it is seriously good – but it’s always been plagued with a problem. It came fitted with what is quite possibly the worst screen in the world. 1024 x 768 pixels with something that sure as Hell wasn’t truecolour. However, now it has been turned to the side of the desk so I can get to the sockets and now Ubuntu looks smashing in 1680 x 1250.

Of course, I didn’t just receive gifts. I did attempt to buy things in return on my somewhat limited budget, but they unfortunately don’t measure up to a 22″ monitor.

The monitor wasn’t the only thing by a long margin. Next on the list is a shiny (or rather matte) ZEN Stone Plus.

Fig.2 It’s very small indeed.

The ZEN Stone Plus is a particularly groovy MP3 player. Apart from the fact that it looks damn cool, it also has genuinely high build quality and a speaker in the back which doesn’t sound like it’s coming out of a biscuit tin. It also works with music purchased online, which is a definite plus because no-one buys CDs anymore.

I also heard the other day that apparently ripping CDs in the UK is now illegal. How bizzare.

So yes. I haven’t actually got around to buying any music yet so all it has on it are two BBC comedy podcasts.

Fig.3 Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.

I also received this rather excellent TEXET digital photo frame egg. Calling it a frame is a bit of a stretch because the screen is rather small, but it looks pretty and it’s a nice thing to have on my desk.

One rather nifty thing about it is that it doesn’t have a flat bottom. Instead it has a weight rather like an old Weeble toy and is quite fun to knock around.

Well, those were the headliners. There were of course other things, like a WALL-E DVD (Which I insist that you buy) and lots of other little novelty things. I will never lose my 30 cm long Giant Biro.

Oh, and because I got bored and had the camera, here’s a picture of my Wii.

~James

All Trademarks Acknowledged.

xkcd comic is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial licence, by a chap named Randall Munroe, on www.xkcd.com .

TMSD Wishes you a Merry Yule!

We wish you a Good Holiday and a Happy New Year!
-The TMSD Team

Youtube and a nice hot cup of tea

Again, I find myself sifting through the post. Bills, flyers, an invitation to win an espresso machine, and what’s this? Yes, my new CD’s for Ubuntu and Kubuntu Intrepid have arrived. Unfortunately, this is going to be a messy procedure updating the 3 Kubuntu machines as these are the standard disks, not the alternate ones which aren’t available as a free delivery option. This means that, because my internet has an appalling download limit, I can’t download the alternate CD images and I’ll have to do a full re-install on all of them.

This will take a while.

Anyway, to business. What am I going to blather on about today? Well, several things come to mind, but as the general public won’t want to spend ten minutes of their life reading about YouTubeNoobs or that loose floorboard by my right foot – although it’s so interesting I can’t see why they wouldn’t – I won’t.

Actually.

YouTubeNoobs is an interesting topic. So you will now sit and read about them.

It’s a universally acknowledged fact that anyone who comments on a Youtube video looks like a noob. Unfortunately, these people, with their names of “Knifekillarz6663″ and “Wristslitter89″ have spread to pretty much any site with open commenting. Even at TMSD we don’t accept many comments – which sucks because it makes it look like we get even less readers than we actually do – because so many of them are either simply things like “lolz” or they are a long thought out message attempting to say that us at TMSD suck. I’ll put it this way matey, the one who sucks is the one who spends five or ten minutes writing a message which won’t even be read.

Anyways, I’ve come up with my own solution to the YouTubeNoob crisis. Why don’t Youtube simply put a filter that stops any comment with “lol” or “xdddddd” or any variation of the former becoming visible to the public? 98% of Youtube videos are tripe anyway. At least from a public standpoint. When will you people learn that I don’t want to watch a video with some 14 year old American kid ripping off Dr. Ashen whilst fumbling with the sort of webcam that violates eight human rights in it’s construction? I’m sure that I speak for everyone when I say that if you’re on Youtube, you shouldn’t be ripping anyone off.

And puh-lease, give yourself a decent username. Now, I’m sure that making an original name on Youtube is hard and that by now all the good ones must be taken. But come on, surely you can put a bit of effort into it? I’m sorry, but I simply can’t watch a video by a guy who’s username suggests that he’s going to kill everyone followed by “888888889″.

And definately please, do not rip off the Numa Numa guy. He is funny. You are not.

Anyway, I’ve blown off enough steam over that. Plus, food is happening.

-James

 

All Trademarks Acknowledged

TL:DR

After being threatened with death if I didn’t update sharpish, I thought that perhaps now might be the time to finally – FINALLY – write that article that’s been due for two months now.

Internet memes. Now, I’m sure you’re all familiar with them. We’ve all been Rickrolled, we’ve all seen the hampster dance and we’ve all seen Gary Brolsma flailing around, liked it and then thought that Numa Numa 2 was pants. It’s pretty much every internet user’s dream to have the world doing something they created. As far as I can tell, memes are the reason why things like 4Chan – to this day I still have no idea what the hell it is – exists.

I have no plans to check out 4Chan. 98% of internet users say it’s noob heaven and that it must be avoided like the plauge it apparently is.

The other 2%, by the way, were noobs.

Anyway, to business. What’s happened over two months? Well, quite a lot actually. Let’s start with TMSD. In the last few months we’ve been DDOSed – again – and we’ve had about a billion comments which all use words like “Server” and “SQL”. Now, I really don’t care what an SQL is, does, or needs. As long as the internet works, that’s all right with me. Interestingly enough, these comments accuse me of being a bad blogger because I don’t know the technical nitty-gritty of WordPress. That’s ridiculous. That’s like saying a journalist is crap because they don’t know how a printing press works. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the quality of a bloggers posts if they don’t know how long WordPress’ DNS will take to resolve. Whatever a DNS is, anyway. I’ve never been a server nerd – because I’ve never felt the desire to take a functional computer and configure it so it makes no sense – so I’ve stuck with my inordinate amount of desktops and laptops and made a start getting Ubuntu on all of them.

Yes, Ubuntu. I like Ubuntu. Although it’s very much a beginner’s Linux, it has a certain robustness that I just haven’t found anywhere else. Although I’m all for customisation, I haven’t ever tried a ’serious’ Linux because all that would end up with is me making a perfectly good computer into a knackered one. Egh.

Well, I seem to have deviated a bit there. Anyway, back to the news. The site has been doing well, even in my absence, although unfortunately the DDOS has completely humbuggered all my tracking. Things seem to be getting back to normal now, though. Once the 6,000 views moves off the graph it should actually be readable again and I’ll be able to have some reports for you. For now, I can just say that we’re back to the regular 8 hits a day or so. Good ‘n’ jolly.

As for me myself, why, I’m very well, thank you very much. I’ve joined some forums, I’ve obliterated some noobs (both in real life and on the ‘net.) Development on various projects are coming along very nicely, apart from TMC because I’ve somehow managed to lose the MFA – Eugh – and I have a new one to stand in for it in the pipeline. I’m not going to give the game away – literally – but I’m fairly sure it’ll generate a fair bit of  “Ooooooo” from that crowd over at The Daily Click.

I also have joined a new IRC channel over at Esper. Go them.

And I’m out of ideas for a post really. Now you can stop threatening to burn me at the stake.

-James

All trademarks acknowledged.