Haven’t listened to New Forms in years but took it out recently and remebered that the CD always looks like a cartoon character who just got a kick in the nuts.
Which reminds me, the icon on power buttons, always look like an icon for someone giving the finger.
Spot the frisbee I’m waiting to catch, by leaving a letter/number comment and win a special prize. The frisbee has been digitally removed by a hoard of rare golden photoshop monkeys.
NB: Special prize may be one of three dead Bonsai threes. Or a half eaten book on how to keep Bonsai trees alive.
UPDATE:
Ok, here the original image.
The answer was D16. Thanks for playing! Alex was the closest with D17. I’ll put you down for an IOU pint.
WANTED: Obsessive compulsive type *addicted to cleaning*. Clean to your hearts content all day – can stay in the yard during evenings. Clean at night if desired but no hoovering or other noisy cleaning. OCD therapy sessions will not be tolerated this time. Immediate start. No time wasters.
Phone John on 08755555555.
You know when you’re flicking through your camera and you see two shots that were taken in quick succession and it looks like a little animation and you sit there for a while making the people dance? No!? well I’m always at it. Thought I’d add some music to this one…
It’s been a while since I’ve had any interest in gig listings filling in my inbox. But I’ve just subscribed to a new email weekly listing called Le Cool that’s not just music; comedy, family events, movies, arty stuff and any other cultural events. Check it out / subscribe at lecool.com/cities/dublin.
Disclaimer: Wouldn’t post if I didn’t like it but yes I do know one of the promoters. And he’s one of the friendliest people I know. And that get’s extra bonus points from me.
I’ve officially given up shampoo. It’s a load of nonsense, the short n’ curlies have been doing just fine with shower gel for all this time and they’re in much better condition than my head. So that’s it; sayonara shampoo.
I don’t know why we need so many different cleaning products. Scam central. We should just have one big bottle of stuff for cleaning us and one big tub of chemicals for cleaning the house. Ok maybe something a bit milder for wood surfaces – but do we really need a different spray for the kitchen and the jacks!? Of course not it’s a scam. Do you need one bottle of stuff for the sink and another for the shower? No you fucking don’t! So I put it to you; unless you have long flowing golden locks, do you really need shampoo? I don’t. I just wash, and go!
I know what you’re thinking; I should join Beat.ie with this wealth of knowledge. Maybe if they ask nicely.
And another thing. D’you know cat litter isn’t just grit? It contains compounds like Calcium bentonite specifically designed to soak up urine and then go hard.Yet one of the most popular brands, Thomas, doesn’t seem to do this at all, it just seems like a bag of gravel to me! And that’s the brand that’s in every single shop. That’s marketing for you. Get the really cheap stuff in the like of Lidl, it’s the proper stuff.
So we had a thread on Creative Ireland to celebrate the whole Cowengate/Picturegate saga, which I’ve found to be a highly entertaining interlude to the usual CEFC (Cunting Economic Fucking Climate) stories… despite the sad fact that RTE got bent over Cowen’s knee.
Anyway, Creative Ireland Photoshop threads are always pretty funny, and there were loads of crackers in the current one. Here’s a few:
As much as I love Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factoy, the ending is just ridicilous. There is absolutely no way Charlie would hand over The Everlasting Gobstopper. Ok we get it, Charlie is the bastion of honesty he’s not going to slip it to Mr. Slugworth (now working for Alan Sugar by the way) but there’s just no way he wouldn’t keep it for himself anyway. It’s an everlasting gobstopper! Why would he hand it over!? Most unplausible ending ever.
Train of thought: I was installing a wireless scanner, and still get amazed by that kind of stuff. I put a photo in the scanner and it magically floated through the air and popped up on my monitor! Just like Mike Teevee.
Related: I once did a mixtape called “The Everlasting Gobstopper mix”. When you got to the end of the tape you’d turn it over and it continued at the same point in the mix on the other side. Then when you got to the end of that side, the same thing would happen. I managed to get clear tapes with no markings at all. No A. No B. No start. No finish. An everlasting gobstopper mix. I think I got those tapes free with Cornflakes.
Yes this one is definitely getting filed under random.
I can remember when I was much younger, entirely dismissing trad as fiddledy dee nonsense. How wrong I was, I’d like to go back and give myself a clip around the ear.
I was up in the Blue light last night. What a little treasure the place is. Perched on the hills of Barnacullia, not too far back from Sandyford, the view of Dublin is perfect.
Every Wednesday, musicians pile in one by one and join in with whatever is playing. Both elderly gents and young colleens with their fiddles. Artists sit by the crackling fire sketching the musicians and comparing their work. Lovely atmosphere, lovely place. It’s a bit of a bitch to get there and back but that just adds to the adventure of the night. Highly recommended antidote to the city at this time of year. And if you have any visiting yanks looking for somewhere traditional, they’d cream themselves.
This is going to be one of those drunken posts that seemed like a great idea at the time but I’ll probably have to delete first thing in the morning.
I love those nights where you just end up somewhere, kind of on your own, almost randomly.
I was out for a last supper with people from work, all of us redundees. Had some grub, had some beer, then that was that. Was on my way home and had a look at twitter on my phone and saw some bloggers/twitterers were out for another one of those Soundcheck nights at Spy bar.
Cue me stumbling in there 10 minutes later, and recognising a gang of people via their blogger/twitter avatars, and introducing myself, one by one. And having a great craic. And dancing to random eighties poptastic stuff.
This is a long techy post but don’t click ‘next’ just yet! it could make your working life a hell of a lot easier.
You know computers are supposed to make your working life easier not harder right? But it can be easy to forget that sometimes, and some people will downright deny it! We’ve all had moments where we wanted to drop a PC out of a high story building but in general day-to-day work, if your computer is making your life harder, there’s a good chance you’re just not using the right tools. Or you’re not using a fraction of their potential. And that potential is to make your life much easier.
For every repetitive task you do, you could probably be using a dedicated application, an automated function or a macro. Some tasks are so suitable to this, that you can click a button and just watch your computer working away for a minute, doing a task that previously took you 15 minutes by hand. 15 long minutes of grunting and swearing and banging the keyboard.
Macros
One of the greatest labour-saving devices in computing is the macro. A simple definition of a macro is the ability to record your keyboard and/or mouse actions, so you can ‘replay’ the actions rather than manually redoing them each time.
I first got into the whole macro thing when I started a job as a technical writer where we were using Word to write our documents; scripts for content developers and voice over artists. All the text had to be in very particular formats, labels, layouts and colour-codes. People spent an unbelievable amount of time on the formatting rather than the actual writing. Word Styles (which looked different on every computer were driving people crazy). They spent a fortune getting some guys to build a dedicated application but that was just as bad. An unfortunate but all too frequent case of programmers with no user interface skills building a useability nightmare. So I dug a bit into Word’s automation and customization and it ended up as the perfect solution.
People slag off Microsoft products – but the level of customization you can do in Word makes it an amazing piece of user centred software. You can record your own macros, then create keyboard shortcuts or buttons to trigger the macros and you can add whole toolbars containing the buttons, or use menus to add new commands. You can also delve a bit deeper with vbscript to add loops and if statements to your macros, almost building applications within the application.
I started off recording simple macros for myself that would make text red bold, green italic etc. Then I would map that to a keyboard shortcut. Then I started adding more complex functionality. I started sharing these with the team and soon enough I took on the role of completely redesigning all the templates, and processes used throughout the whole production team, making use of every level of automation available. I got really carried away with the macros then, using them to build whole tables of information.
The main template ended up with a whole toolbar of buttons, a customized insert menu, and lots of other functionality available through keyboard shortcuts.
Below is a brief video example: At the click of a button, a whole table is split up, formatted and populated. Common phrases are added from the insert menu. That’s just one type of table, we had about 5 different types, all added with one click. At the end of the process, another macro re-formatted the whole script to spit out xml for the developers and a vo script for the voice over artist.
This is an advanced version of the amount of work you can save yourself doing if you use Word a lot and find yourself doing any task again and again.
I didn’t intend to write this as a tutorial, more as a nudge in the right direction, but let’s have a quick go. We’ll create a copyright type sign off.
Step1. Record the macro
In Word, go to Tools > Macro > Record New Macro > Type sig then hit Enter
Go to Insert > Symbol > click the Copyright symbol > Click Insert then Close
Type a space, then your name, then another space
Go to Insert > Date and Time > Click OK > hit enter to go onto next line
Click the square stop button on the macro toolbar
Step2. Make a button
Go to Tools > Customize > Commands tab
Scroll down on the left column and click Macros
Your sig macro will be on the right, click-and-drag it to your toolbar (beside the bold button for example)
Now right-click this button (don’t close the Customize dialog box) and select Default Style
Then right-click it again and select Change Button Image and select the pencil icon (You can also right-click and edit these icons and make your own)
Close the dialog box.
Step3: test it out
Click the pencil icon
Click it again!
Cool hoh!?
You can record any kind of macro you want. Very detailed ones. Though beware you can’t just click all over the screen, you have to use your keyboard to highlight text and navigate around text. Find and replace type macros can be very useful too. I have a few macros that I use now to take a word document and clean it up for the web, so it replaces foreign characters and symbols with the proper Unicode / html.
When I was leaving the job where I built all the macros, I was handed a thoughtful customized gift that is one of my proudest possessions: a Macro Man superhero t-shirt! It even has the buttons on the back!
Breaking out of Word
Right so. Word Macros. Great craic altogether. Used wisely they will save you a lot of work. Invest a bit and you get a lot – but what about outside of Word? Now you need an independent macro recorder. I’ve tried a few over the years but recently found one I really like, autohotkey, a free, open source application. Downloadable from http://www.autohotkey.com/
Autohotkey, lets you record mouse clicks and keyboard actions. That simple. You can use it in a number of ways. It’s one of those programs where the more you invest in, the more you get back. I found, I really needed it a few times recently. It was a total lifesaver. If you find yourself cursing a really badly designed user interface, something like autohotkey can make all the difference.
I was working on a job recently where I was migrating from one web based resource centre to another. I had to add loads of images. Three versions of the same image every time. The UI and UX design was terrible. I had to browse through a load of folders every single time I needed to add an image, it took about 5 minutes and 50 clicks to add every image! After recording a few macros in autohotkey, I could just sit there with my arms folded and watch autohotkey do all the work. It’s great to watch!
Below is a video capture of another resource library that I used regularly, and went to the same location regularly. I often had to login and browse through lots of folders ever time, clicking those tiny plus symbols (which should be banned from all user interfaces!). The video below isn’t impressive in itself but bear in mind that I just pressed a button, sat back and watched until the folder with the images I wanted was open.
Autohotkey comes with a recorder but you usually have to edit the script a bit as well. It doesn’t record intervals between actions, so you have to add a lot of pauses, or sleeps. It’s very easy script to edit though. Here’s one example:
Send, {ALTDOWN}{ALTUP}fd
sleep, 2500
Send, {ENTER}
What this does is press ALT F D on my keyboard, waits 2½ seconds, and then hits Enter. When I’m using Photoshop, I run this script with a keyboard shortcut and it goes to ‘save the image for the web’. Something that you do a LOT, yet takes longer than it should; a good simple example of using Autohotkey.
Another example is when I’m editing PHP that has to be previewed on a live server. That’s a lot of clicking for every edit. Now I just press a button, and Autohotkey saves the file (in dreamweaver), uploads it, waits a tiny bit, then switches to Firefox and hits refresh. So much easier. And I had it set up in now time.
You can also use Autohotkey to autofinish phrases that you type a lot. For example when I type JBA, autohotkey types my name and address and when I type btw, autohotkey types by the way for me. Again you can see that investing a bit of time here, could save a huge amount of time in the future. Word has an inbuilt version of this too, called autocomplete but obviously autohotkey works throughout all applications, so you can use it for webmail, twitter, excel… whatever.
A launcher
The final part in automating your work easily is to have a dedicated launcher for your macros. You can launch Autohotkey macros as you would any other file; by adding a desktop shortcut, or adding an icon to your taskbar, or using a keyboard shortcut but the snazziest method of all is to buy a dedicated programmable keypad. This really ties everything in together nicely. After much research I got an X-keys desktop. It’s got 20 programmable keys. Setting it up couldn’t be easier, it’s got a great interface, you just click a switch on the hardware and the buttons appear onscreen, then you can drag your shortcuts onto the keys and flick the switch again. It’s also got its own Macro software that’s also really easy to use but I mostly use Autohotkey.
X-Keys comes pre-programmed with regular functions like cut, copy, paste and undo, which I’d recommend keeping. It also has shortcuts to launch applications like your browser or email but I think this is a terrible waste of hotkeys. Any application that you open and leave open for most of the day is a waste of a key.
You can save different presets with the x-keys software, so you can have a whole keypad of different shortcuts just for Photoshop, or you can load another full of html code, and another for general use. But as they keys are labelled with stickers, if you change the presets a lot, you have to remember or write down the combinations. I haven’t properly labelled them yet as I’m still changing them a lot. One idea I find useful is to have one key mapped to an autohotkey script called ‘latest’, which will launch whatever macro you’re currently using a lot.
It was very hard to find somewhere I could buy this from Ireland. I eventually got it from Keytools. You can’t use the web form to buy directly from Ireland but you can ask them to fax or email you a form.
I was also going to write about various applications for very specific jobs but this post is already big enough, but just to point you in the right direction, there are applications for everything these days. If you find yourself resizing windows to specific dimensions a lot, then google ‘windows resizer’, if you find yourself taking lots of screen grabs and emailing them to people then download an application to do it for you. Or just have a look around download.com or tucows or lifehacker for some inspiration.
So – I’ll say it again: invest a little and you will get a lot back, stop banging your head against your computer screen, give it a big hug instead!
I’m putting the feelers out there by every means necessary to try and find a new job. Not just any job but the right job. My role here has been made redundant. I’ve known a while. So this isn’t a pity-seeking post – I’m just trying to avail of all my contacts. It is a pity though! I knew this job was too good to be true. Palm has been the most professional and maturely run company I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for, with genuinely great benefits and no nonsense from anyone. The redundancies here aren’t really related to the recession; we’re just not selling phones in Europe at the moment, we’ve got the likes of the iPhone as competition. So the sites that I look after are going to be made redundant themselves or cut right back.
My role has been as Web Producer of Palm EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) which has been a mixture of web master, web design, content management and project management. I’m looking for a similar role, or a role as a senior web designer (my main area of expertise) or user interface designer. Or anything interesting that involves multimedia design and production. If you know of anyone that might be interested please pass it on. I’m available at the end of November.
I’m a bit late on this one. Exquisite bloggeress k8 the Gr8 is looking for your help. St. Catherine’s, a school for children with various disabilities, is a complete life saver for many parents and it’s about to get swept under the carpet as another economic fatality. For as little as a fiver a month you could help save it. And as we measure all deeds; that’s only one pint less in the month. Read all about it at K8’s Cackaloo.
There’s a little gem doing the rounds on city channel at the moment. Keep an eye out for the Oxegen coverage that’s currently on a loop. At one point Ray Shah is interviewing Alphabeat. It goes a little something like this:
Ray Shah: So three of the band members are called Anders. How do you differentiate between each one…Anders1, Anders2, and Anders3?
I have a confession. I’m an avid internet user but I despise chat. Am I alone? I dropped into Facebook a while ago and a chat window popped up. “WASSUP Dude?!” said a guy I used to work with but don’t know from Adam. “Gaaaaah!!” said I, in my head like. I wish Faceache had given me some warning so I could have turned off the chat option straight away. Which I did. Right after saying WASSUP!? or something.
Admittedly like many I was briefly addicted to mIRC 12 or so years ago, and ran up some scary dial-up bills. But the insane thrill of chatting to someone from a different country quickly turned into an inane trill. When the giddiness wore off, all that was left was mundane chatter and people slapping each other with trouts, which was then the equivalent of being bitten by a vampire, except back then then you actually typed
*Braines slaps VirtualGurl72 with a trout*. (Note: To be properly affiliated with the old school, you have to mention that you used to have to type lots of stuff to produce an action achieved by just clicking a mouse in this modern age). The attraction of slapping someone with a trout made about as much sense then, as virtual vampires do now. I have to admit, the Top Chat Quotes of All Time mostly gleaned from mIRC is well worth a gander now and then for some geek humour.
When ICQ was all the rage, I gave it a whirl but hated it, and uninstalled it quicker than you can say “Oh, I SEEK YOU! I get it!”. I briefly tried Instant Messenger some time after, thinking for some reason that it may be less annoying. It’s not just that I’m above the inane chatter in my lofty towers of deep thought. It’s those windows popping up all over the place when I’m trying to do something else of great importance. A disturbing attempt at doing a comedy sketch for example.
I’ll do my best to avoid the usual sexual stereotyping in saying this – but I am actually pretty useless at multitasking – and even more so when I’ve no control over the amount of windows popping up all over the place. I really don’t like lots of little windows. Not sure why. Maybe it was that brief stint in San Quentin. I also fret over chat etiquette much more than is necessary, which in itself is very distracting. “Can I close that window now?”, “How long do I have to wait?” “Do I say goodbye first?”. Nerve-shattering dilemmas I’m sure you’ll all agree.
When Gmail chat came along, I tried again. My list of contacts who were using chat was small enough so all was well with the world. People chatted to me with purpose. When the purpose had been purported, the chat was ended. Neat. But then the chit chatters began to emerge.“Yo John, what’s the story?”… “Well, I was working but I’ll be spending the next ten minutes wondering exactly how soon I can close this window.” (Apologies if you actually understand what the word purported means. I only looked it up after I abused it.)
I suppose a part of this is the fact that I’m not that good at chit chat in real life. I love a good old chin wag – and have friends I’ll happily listen to for hours. But bored hairdressers fill me with dread. And bumping into a co-worker I barely know on a long commute fills me with utter terror. An hour of small talk!!? I actually shivered just now. I also have a relative who, without fail, starts every conversation with “What’s the story?”. I’m never sure which story to tell. No – not good at the chit chat.
Myself and the missus have tried turning on chat now and then rather than sharing 40 emails to sort out some domesticalities, and profess our undying love of course. But we both get bombarded with chit chatters and run screaming, vowing never to turn chat on again, ever. It’s a bit like vowing never to drink wine then beer (in that order) – but not a fraction of the fun.
And the jury’s still out on Twitter. Ok it’s not live chat but it can get a bit chatty from what I’ve seen. Although none of it is directly to me, so that’s ok. It’s an odd sort of chatter. Like having a pint and listening in on the next table. A happy medium in both senses of the phrase. Maybe. I’m still trying to get into the swing of it.
By the way, I’m not talking about YOU in all of this. No no no. You and I had meaningful conversations. It was all those other guys firing up too many windows with the chit chat.
Save yourself money, queing and stabbing by staying one version behind the posse! As Grand Theft Auto IV hits the streets for a half a ton, I just nabbed a copy of GTA3 on ebay for a fiver. You gotta picka pocket, or two.
I was called up for jury service this week. The first thing anyone said to me when I mentioned it is “If you want out get out of it just blah blah blah”. What’s that all about? While not exactly a barrel of laughs, I thought it’d be a really interesting life experience. I didn’t try and get out of it – but I have to admit I was having second thoughts on the day. It’s all fairly unnerving, or at least it is for people like me who are easily unnerved by certain situations.
After a lengthy roll call of about 200 possible jurors, and some brief instruction on the day, Justice Carey arrived, and straight off the cuff ran through a summary of the current case. I didn’t even see the defendant arrive but all of a sudden I was listening to grisly details of a man accused of murdering his brother in a knife and hatchet fight. So I peaked over the rail and sure enough there he was with his head in his hands. It only struck me then that this is the central criminal court and it was all going to be very serious shit. I saw three different people who were accused of murder.
I couldn’t believe the amount of people around me cracking jokes or noisily reading papers. I felt like nudging the guy beside me and saying “Look, that’s tomorrow’s news right in front of you, right there!” When the jury were sent off to reach a verdict (they found him guilty of manslaughter), it was our turn.
The atmosphere was unbelievably tense. Nerve bugs like me feed off that shit. I was feeling more nervous then the new defendants that had just strolled in. Jury names were picked out of a hat and people filed up to the jury box where they were either sworn in, rejected (by prosecution or defence team), or shouted up that they had a holiday in a couple of weeks. A few people seemed to get cold feet and copied the holiday idea. I was surprised at how many people swore on almighty god. Not one person requested to attest. I guess when you’re surrounded by peers, it’s easy to forget the general populace still go through the motions of Catholicism (or are actual believers).
My name wasn’t called for either of the two new cases. Both would have ran for at least four weeks and both were murder cases; the guy who allegedly grabbed the steering wheel of a car, causing the death of a bloke who he argued with in a club earlier. And the other case was a guy who casually pleaded guilty to an attempted murder with a sawn off shotgun in Stillorgan. Nice. Imagine the amount of waffle I’d write if I actually ended up on the jury.
I saw a Kangaroo Dog in the Metro today. I couldn’t find a photo on the interweb though. So I made my own. The one I saw was born with back legs only and hopped about like Skippy. Turns out there is actually a type of dog called a Kangaroo Dog. According to kangaroodog.org it’s the first Australian breed ever created. As you were…
What happens when you give a four year old half a banana while you’re trying to make pancakes? He thows it into the batter of course, you were just asking for it.
Ever play Wallet Top Trumps? The rules are simple: you have to be in the pub having already consumed one too many ales and already talking shit. Then you start pulling random shit out of your wallet. Best shit wins. That’s it.
I just came across an old wallet that was lost and since returned. Was most chuffed to get it back, as it I thought I’d lost a few Top Trumps.
Just warming up… some punts and shillings
Patriot Wipes
I picked these up in some fast food place in New Jersey post 9-11. They’re like those wet wipe things you get on planes. The text on the back reads KARI-OUT will donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this fresh nap to charities for the attack on America. I didn’t know there were charities that funded terrorism.
Engrish instructions I got a with a Secret-Santa-inflicted pedometer.
My favourite bits are:
“This stepping meter can only count correctly under the flat plant“
“Under the following conditions, the stepping meter can’t count correctly:
(i)Moon Walking, Wearing Sandal
(ii) When walking in the tricky condition.”
Get out of Jail (not free) card
And just when you thought I’d dealt my top trump with some classic Engrish, I’d whip out my get out of jail card. Also picked up in New Jersey. It’s a business card from a bail bondsman.
