easyweb.co.uk - A Good Thing (tm)

Snow Day

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:37:32 +0000

We've had a fair few snow showers (and howling wind) down here in Co'path, but not enough for the kids to use their sledges (which they got for Christmas 2006 and haven't used yet).

So we headed up into the hills instead, searching for a slope that's close enough to the road, steep enough (but not too steep) and with enough snow to not get stuck in the grass.

Found it (eventually)

Movember - Sponsor Me!

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:02:46 +0000

In common with a bunch of other blokes at the current project, I'm growing a moustache for the month of MOvember, in aid of Prostate Cancer. So do the right thing, and make clicky on the big blue button:

All sponsorships are made directly to The Prostate Cancer Charity which will use the money to fund high quality research into the causes, treatment and impact of prostate cancer and to provide support and information to men and their families.

The Shipping Forecast... With a Beat

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 20:40:42 +0000

As you'll notice if you're watching my latest iTunes music buys, I've just bought The Imagined Village — a set of resettings of traditional English tunes, with the likes of Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and Ben Zephaniah helping out folk stalwarts such as Eliza Carthy.

The results are pretty wonderful, not just because of the music (which has been rather unkindly described as Sitar lines and funky beats grafted on, and frankly is where Scots music was ten years ago with Martin Swan's Mouth Music), but firstly because this project takes up the grand old broadsheet ballad tradition of updating or replacing the words to songs to fit whatever the current situation, and secondly because it's exposing contemporary young(ish — le Bragg is about to be 50) musicians to traditional performing practises.

Anyway, it's very much worth a listen; and if you like your free samples before laying down the cash, here are some video tasters:

The Imagined Village Trailer: A look at the artists and music of The Imagined Village.
Hard Times of Old England Retold: The Imagined Village band perform this track live in The Big Room at Real World prior to their first performance at the WOMAD festival.

Wait a Minute, There's More

They've released Cold, Hailey, Rainy Night as a samplepack, downloadable from RealWorldRemixed, so with Garageband or similar, you can produce your own mixes, which is just what I've done:

Housemoving

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:18:53 +0000

We're on the move next month - having finally sold the current house, we'll be renting a rather nice 4 bedroom house in Cockburnspath, (pronounced Co'path incidentally) which is a few miles along the coast from Dunbar.

While we're there, we'll be looking for a plot to build a house, of which presumably much more later.

Move-in date is set for 21st29th September and we'll be in a caravan for 2 weeks between houses, so I guess we'll be having a joint housewarming/birthday party.

Flash 9 under 64-bit Linux

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:51:03 +0000

If, like me, you've gone out and bought an AMD64-based machine to run Ubuntu (or any other 64-bit distro) on, you'll have discovered that there's no Flash player available. Which is an awful pain when the point of the machine is to be a safe one for the kids to use on the Interwebs, specifically the CBeebies site.

Fortunately, Adobe's John Dowdell pointed out a rather useful wrapper that lets 64-bit Firefox use 32-bit plugins.

Two minutes on Google later, and I'd found a one-click install script for Ubuntu that sorts out nspluginwrapper and installs the Flash9 plugin.

NB it needs to be run for each user, but other than that, is bluddy grate.

JD, my kids thank you.

Nous Partirons En Vacances!

Mon, 21 May 2007 12:27:35 +0000

We're booked with Canvas Holidays, to spend two weeks in Sunny South Brittany.

The interesting thing is that I think this is the same campsite that I went to with Mum and Dad when I was about 13. Although much has changed since then — huge swimming pools with waterslides are now de rigeur.

Now I have to hit the Michel Thomas on the iPod, to refresh my rusty French.

Dry Bed

Thu, 17 May 2007 06:00:57 +0000

Woohoo! Ruaridh, in Big Boy Pants, woke up in a dry bed this morning! I am so proud!

I waked up in a dry bed mommy come see
I waked in a dry bed daddy I did
I woke up in a dry bed w/ dry feet & a dry head
I am a big boy now

Now That's What I Call Getting Involved

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:16:53 +0000

Now we've all seen popstars using their fame for good causes, more often than is right just to ensure they get a wee bit of extra coverage. However, here's something a bit different. For one thing, it's not gone out in a blaze of publicity (I heard about it via the Bard of Barking group on last.fm). For another, only the people who perform the desired activity are rewarded.

But best of all, it gets people doing something concrete, that draws them into a greater level of involvement than just joining the latest fashion trend. Actually getting people engaged in the political process — marvellous.

Billy Bragg has agreed to do a private concert on Sunday April 1st in West Bromwich. There's one snag though. You have to help out with the anti-BNP day of action first.

So that'll be an hour delivering anti-fascist leaflets, then free food and drink and a private performance from the legend that is. Gotta be worth a look don't you think?

Pure. Genius.

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:04:29 +0000

Many years ago, over the water, the lads at Guinness used to sell a by-product of the brewing process, Guinness Yeast Extract. So the story goes, but no more.

Viewers from the UK will recognise the product category as the rather smashing Marmite.

Right, so. The Guinness and Marmite people have now got together to create... Guinness Marmite. The degree to which I want this blending of two of my favourite dark food substances cannot be measured. If I see it in Tescos, I'm bulk buying.

Back at Last! Back at Last!

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:45:49 +0000

Ahhhhhhh I'm back, with a working server once more.

What had happened is that my old Motherboard had gone 'phut', so needed replacing. Could have been much worse - could have been the hard drive, with associated data loss.

Here's the culprit:

Still, not so easy to replace at short notice when I'm mostly in Newcastle at the moment, and the time I have at home has other priorities. And once the Mobo was replaced, I discovered that it took a different kind of RAM to the old (now discontinued) one, so that was another trip to PC World for the sake of speed.

So now I have a nice EPIA M motherboard (and new stick of RAM) in my home server, and I'm back on the air. A huge thanks to Kevin at indigospring for diagnosing the problem. He also fixed my previously dead iPod which had resisted all the solutions Apple had provided, other than splash out on a new one. Cheers Kevin!

First Day at School!

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 12:31:08 +0000

Togged up..., originally uploaded by Martin Burns.

It's amazing how the time flies, but today is Morgan's 1st day at school. Wasn't he only just born the other day..? Seems like it.

Doing Difficult Jigsaws...

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:08:15 +0000

Morgan's Preschool Report from his Nursery (which is attached to the Primary School). Can you believe he starts at real school in August..?

Happy Birthday Orla Eowyn!

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:51:31 +0000

45 Minutes Old, originally uploaded by Martin Burns.

Born this morning at 11:10, weighing 3740g (8lb 4oz in Old Money).

Everyone's doing just fine - Morgan's very, very excited. Ruaridh's a bit more nonchalant so far. Lucy's relaxing, and I'm on paternity leave!

If you're in a present-buying mood (well, a bloke's got to try, eh?), see Lucy's Gift List.

New Webmail System

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 20:36:08 +0000

Because I'm working away from home at client site much of the time, and un-snooped access to my home email is A Good Thing™ to have, setting up secure webmail was a priority for me when I moved to hosting my own email setup.

I've been using SquirrelMail for pretty much all that time - having a system that I can keep up to date using Debian's apt-get management tools is a strong incentive.

But I never really liked it - the interface is extremely clunky, and uses frames, which is a particular hate of mine. Recently though, improved Open Source webmail interfaces have been coming along like buses, no doubt inspired by the success of Gmail.

One's so good, I installed it for a test, and liked it so much, I repointed my webmail domain at it within 5 minutes.

No Smoking in Scotland from 2006

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:26:20 +0000

At last, we're following Ireland in banning smoking in all public places by Spring 2006. It'll be enforced with £2.5k fines on employers, and threat of removal of license from licensed premises, while persistent offenders will be fined up to £1k. Nice to see (a) The Scot Exec doing something good (b) Gaining all-party support.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3999975.stm