A funny thing happened…

I was talking to a friend (a vista user) and she asked me if I knew of a free image editor. I instantly said ‘The GIMP’.

I’m a GIMP user. I first used it on Linux and now on mac. It’s free (as in speech AND in way cheaper than photoshop), works on almost anything (Mac, PC, Linux, BSD, Toasters ect) and is simple to use. I sent her the link to the site. She responded: “It’s blocked”.

My mouth fell open. It wasn’t the ISP. We both use BT and I got on the site no problem whatsoever. She said what OS and what browser she was using. We both agreed that it was the OS.

I sent her the sourceforge link, it downloaded no problem, but Vista wouldn’t open the file.

We installed it by clicking on the file directly.

The same happened when we tried to install Pidgin, which really shows that Microsoft has coded into it’s system code that trys to hinder what software you use.

It’s your PC, why can’t you choose the software?

Thank goddess for GNU.

Edit: Please Digg up.

Time lapse photography

So hey. Been a while hasn’t it?

So college and life caught up with me. The crunch (the worldwide down turn caused by greed and retarded bankers) is seriously biting due to the aftermath of christmas (Janurary is always a bad month). It’s depressing, annoying and heart breaking.

But I have been keeping buzy by dabbling in the dark art of time lapse movies.

Sadly my current attempts are not as impressive as that. My equipment consists of a Logitech plug and play webcam and my laptop. I tried making small movies that lasted a couple of seconds. Each frame taken 10 seconds after the last. I was impressed by the results. Clouds moving across the sky, lights turning on and off. It looked oddly beautiful. Due to the short time frame these movies lasted about 6 seconds or less. So I decided to leave the program running as I went out to town. Three hours caught in 40 seconds. The clouds moving across the sky, the shadows of the buildings acting like a sundial, cars vanishing and appearing. I even saw my dad and gran leave the house for shopping.

But recently I was inspired by a time lapse of Amsterdam Centraal Station.

Now, I live nexts to a railway line so I thought ‘Hey, what the heck?’ Problem was I wouln’t see much due to the low winter sun and the fact that my back bedroom window is south facing, so the sun will be in the way. So I waited to late afternoon/early evening and tried it out. I set my frame time to take a frame once a second knowing a train can pass my house in under ten seconds.

The trains were only visable for a fraction of a second, but it worked. I tried it at an angle that looked down the tracks and it made a more pleasing effect.

I think I have a project.

This is my face, this is my palm…

Christmas Webcomics

Love christmas specials? Well you’ll love christmas webcomics.

Here’s some from one’s I read.

El Goonish shive:

Questionable content

No words can explain this

Cyanide and happiness

LOL Those guys are still seven at heart

XKCD

Damn you credit cunch!

The Rev. I.M Shedtroll

Me, doing my Rev I.M Jolly impression

Somehow still awake (Update from yesterday).

I’M AWAKE!

Due to computer trouble, I moved my sleep time to 10pm and fixed the problem. I had trouble nodding off due to the loud TV downstairs (gotta shout at my parents about that). Otherwise I nodded off eventually.

Then the came, my alarm went off, I walked across to the shower room, shaved and showered. Went to get brekkies, ate, drank, was merry.

Oddly enough the morning seemed longer than usual. I didn’t shout or moan, I just got on with it.

My only regret, I forgot my bagt, but my dad soon gave it to me at the bus stop. Also forgot to take some money out for lunch (so I’m on a lower lunch budget today).

Otherwise I’m good.

Early to bed, Early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Ahhh those immortal words from Ben Franklin.

I recently found this blog entry from Zen Habits and I am impressed. I am a late riser, but I have to get up at six for college every morning.

And as we all know, late riser plus a six in the morning start equals a very very angry Shedtroll.

I’m not a productivity geek, but I feel it would be a good idea if I became one. College, leisure and general life would flow a bit more easily of I got up early and tried to become a productivity geek.

My first step: Move my alarm away from my bed and set it for six. This is just for starters, my goal is 4 am wake up time. Getting up at this seemingly ungodly hour will mean that I can get up, get things done, and go to college. I’ll reviel more steps in later blog posts.

Second step: Spread out my activities throughout the day. I don’t need to do all my stuff like reading blogs or stuff at the start or end of the day, same with homework and exercise. I can do that at many times in the day! I can read blogs and do homework at college if need be.

I nice little thing I found to help me comes from my worst enemy for this sleep plan: My macbook. It is the bane of my sleep patterns. I’m usually up at late hours, blogging, watching youtube/viddler, going on msn or listening/watching podcasts (this will have to end for this to work). I looked in system Preference and found a startup timer. At so and so o’clock, my macbook would start itself up. If I could get my startup noise loud enough I could (perhaps) use it as an alarm and get my podcasts, email and blogs while it’s at it!

I’m kinda exited about this, this might be a new beginning for me?

…and then there were three

Today the number of cats rose in our house from 2 to three.

We have adopted a homeless stray cat with a bitten off ear and a broken tail by that we have decided to call ‘Ginger’.

He is very affectionate (within minutes he was on my mum’s lap), but we’re keeping him away from the other two (Dexter and Lucy) for fear of fighting and bugs.

BLUE! TWO BLUE!

Things to do when bored at an Agracultural College

I’m gonna be honest, here at college I can’t just leave for some chips. Mainly because the nearest chippy is…ohhhh…39 minutes away. So I need to find ways to amuse myself during breaks. The lunch hour is 1 hour 10 minutes so I have a lot of time….Here’s some ways I keep myself from being driven mad.

1. Write in the computer register at the library made up courses like ‘NC Mad Sciences’ or HNC Village Idiocy’.
2. When top dressing lawns. try to develop a ’sand crop circle’ and see if anyone notices.
3. Go up to the sheep at the college farm and say ‘Mint Sauce’.
4. Go up to one of the greenkeeping students and say ‘See that newly laid turf, I’ve just walked on it and it’s a tad uneven’. (Watch them go nuts).
5. Try throwing your voice onto one of the horses when the stable keeper is there.
6. Go into the Blacksmith’s workshop dressed as Sauron and inquire about making a gold ring.
7. Go to the greenhouse, shake all the plants to release all the whitefly, change into tattered clothing and claim it was the white fly.
8. Put some wellies at the foot of the compost pile, the rims of the foot holes touching the compost and walking away looking very nervous weilding a spade.
9. Swap the labels on the grass seed samples and see if anyone notices.
10. Read the backs of the Fertilisers and start laughing inexplicably.

More to come