PigPog

Jaymz OHHH-NOOO! Lennfield sez:

Happy Hal-loooohh-weeeeen! I totally love this time of year, dudes! Each time I walk through woods and piles of leaves it reminds me of long ago when I used to blast Don’t Break the Oath by Mercyful Fate and get crazy with my fellow bangers in the Cudahy Park woods. Oh, wait, I just did that last weekend…!

So, speaking of Halloween, we have a treat for you. Be sure to visit the site on Halloween nite for the release of 4 live songs. We’re putting up 2 from the Cleveland show and 2 from the Madison show. Of course, they will be available for FREE. But no hints as to what songs. I will say this though: expect a guest appearance on one and a new track for another.

So, if you’re sat at home bored tonight, and are fed up with answering the door to brats forcing you to give them sweets, why not get to downloading these new tunes and blast the neighbours away with a bit of Fab Metal Magic!

No trick, it’s just a treat. Enjoy and have a Happy Halloween

Celebrating four years of broken ornaments, knackered furniture and bleeding arms. Happy Birthday Blugs.

BBC NEWS | Magazine: ‘Ethiopian Christianity, which pre-dates European Christianity, always depicts Christ as an African and it generally agreed that people of the region where Jesus came from looked nothing like Boris Johnson..’

Gizmodo : Aaton Cantor-X: “This Aaton Cantar-X portable field recorder is so beautiful I don’t know what to say, exactly. I think I want it inside of me.”

Even with no idea what it is, I wanted one. Gizmodo says it’s a ruggedized recorder. Like a tape recorder, not one of those plastic flute things you learned to play Three Blind Mice on at school. Anyway, he gets it spot on when he says…

"…but who cares? I just want to take the $18,000 recorder into my tender embrace until my nerdy folds grow over it, like a tree hugging a barbed wire fence."

Just go see the pictures. Then you’ll want one too.

My mojo had been kind to me today, dealing me enough skill and basic sense to get through my working day with a smile intact and a feeling of a job well done.

Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be seen when I picked up the guitar tonight. I was doing *so* well, following Guitar Pro at a decent (but nowhere near the actual) tempo of the song, and getting well into the chorus. Tonight I can barely get past the first bar. I am bereft of mojo, high and dry, with a brain of cauliflower and fingers like well-cooked noodles.

If I had let this post go up with typos intact (and I may have left the majority of them in for all I know right now) you’d see the severity of the situation. I’m going on eBay to see if I can bid for some better quality, longer lasting mojo.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies: “‘He always had his finger on the pulse of the music industry and the fact that Radio 1 played the Undertones, the White Stripes and the Strokes today showed just how relevant he remained throughout his career.’ “

Pandas benefit from wireless net

Is there anything in the world cuter than a baby panda?

tompeters! leadership training development project management: “IT’S ALWAYS SHOWTIME!”

I love Tom Peters’ blogs. He! Just! Explodes! With! Enthusiasm!

For the last few nights we’ve been listening to Wil Wheaton‘s talk at this year’s Gnomedex. It was my first experience of Wil other than reading his blog. Having never seen Stand By Me and not being much of a Star Trek ‘TNG’ fan, I only really know him as, well, Just A Geek.

The last of his stories was about the time he met William Shatner, a classic example of how meeting your heroes can be a major disappointment. It got me thinking about Shatner’s career. The only time he’s ever seen in anything recently (say, since the last Star Trek movie), he’s been there as a kind of ironic object of fun. The last few times I’ve seen him on TV he’s been presenting a VH1 Top 100 One Hit Wonders countdown, playing a pompous, washed-up old actor in some sitcom or other and, my favourite, playing William Shatner the Celebrity staying with Joe Public and Family in an All-Bran advert. And then there’s the album that I have been fortunate enough to avoid hearing any of and I intend to keep it that way.

As for Wil, he’s got a great blog, the books sound fantastic (from the readings at the Gnomedex talk), and I could listen to him for hours (in fact, we did). Seems like the kid is doing a damn sight better than the old guy with the toupee who wouldn’t allow him on his bridge.

One of the things I really like about Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, or whatever we’re going to call it, is the Today screen. When you’ve tapped all the little ‘OK’ or ‘X’ buttons in the top right, it’s the screen you end up with. It’s the default home screen, much like Palm’s ‘Launcher’. Because all the apps are on the start menu, though, it’s not a launcher. It acts much like the Outlook Today screen on the desktop Outlook, but it’s less of a disappointment.

The basic built in functions include today’s date, the owner information, coming calendar items, how many tasks you have active, and the number of unread emails. Tapping on each of these things takes you to the appropriate program – tap the unread mails item to go to Messaging, or tap an appointment to go to the calendar, for example.

I spent a while looking for alternative plug-ins to the calendar and tasks defaults, so I could jump from the plug-in to Pocket Informant rather than the basic Calendar and Tasks programs. The iPaq came with Pocket Informant in ROM, and it’s much more powerful than the standard programs. After trying a couple, and not really liking them as much as the nice simple standard ones, I discovered that I didn’t need an alternative at all – Pocket Informant had an option to take over links to the built in apps, and that applied to the Today screen bits too. One ticked box, and it all worked as I wanted it. Nice. Pocket Informant doesn’t do as much for Notes as it does for the other default apps, so it very sensibly leaves those links alone.

Too many Today screen plug-ins, or just the wrong plug-ins, are a good way to crash your Pocket PC.

My Today Screen, Today

That’s it as it stands at the moment. It’ll keep changing – I’m a fiddler. So, what’s different to the defaults? From the top…

• The clock – it’s displaying the date as well as the time – see CTitanic’s excellent page of hacks. It involves fiddling with the registry, so if you’re not keen on playing to much depth, you may prefer buying his splendid Tweaks2k2 to do this sort of thing for you.
• The meters – they’re almost the default – the iPaq comes with a version of RhinoCode‘s TodayPanel, but I’ve upgraded to the Pro version, since they’re doing a fairly irresistible offer for us 4700 owners. $9.95 for three useful apps. The screen capture program is what I used to get the screenshot above, so this article wouldn’t exist without this offer
• RhinoCode’s launcher – part of the same offer – just puts icons on the today screen. Click icon, launch program. Simple, good.
• Theme – it’s from McDeb. There’s matching desktop wallpaper for the PC, too, so they look pretty sitting together