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I've been looking at these cool displays of interactive computer controlled lighting that were installed in tower blocks in Berlin and Paris recently for art festivals. Dialling in to them with a mobile phone lets you take control of the display or play Tetris or Pong, using the building as a huge screen. [quicktime video 3.2Mb]
Talking about tall buildings, this article raises some interesting questions regarding September 11, and references this BBC report that the US was already planning an invasion, as well as this story about the need for an oil pipeline across Afghanistan.
bronek.org may be down at some point over the next few days as I'm moving it to new servers with more capacity and features.
In the meantime I've set up a chat client that I'm testing on the site. It allows open conversations with everyone connected and the ability to send private messages to any user. Type something on it or email me to arrange a chat sometime (requires flash).
Short FAQ below
Q.So why did I put a chat client into the site when anyone can download ICQ or Yahoo?
A. For when using other computers that don't have chat software installed
For computers behind firewalls that block a lot of chat clients
For multi-user chat or with people who don't have a chat client installed
Q. No window popping up when you click on 'chat'?
A. Are pop-ups or java disabled on your browser? Try this link instead:
chat client
Q. Chat client not running?
A. Do you have Flash installed?
Any feedback on these issues or others would be appreciated.
My laptop has begun to do some very strange things today. I now have to shake it to get it to boot up, a bit like an Etch A Sketch.
Blogger, where this normally lives, got hacked yesterday, and so I went back to trying to get MovableType up and running on the server, something that I'd previously attempted. Well, after most of last night and all of today trying to understand cgi scripts, I'm happy to say that this is it, and so far it seems to be running!
So apart from the fact that this looks different, what is MovableType? Well, it's a server based content management system that allows me to log into my server from anywhere with internet access and update this. The biggest changes to the site are;
you can search the site
you can add comments, and I can reply ;-)
you can click on a category to go to its postings
all days with a posting are highlighted on the calendar
Hope you like it, though I'm still ironing out the bugs. Any problems or comments?
I've gradually been picking through the remains of my deleted hard drive with recovery programs over the last few days, trying to find some of the files that I don't have backups of. As far as I can see, my main losses seem to be recent photographs, files, webpages, and most of my email, though some of my program disks, including DreamWeaver, which I use for websites, are on the boat, and therefore difficult to re-install from here! The upside of the accident is that Windows 98 is running much, much better since being re-loaded, and my pc is as fast as it was in the beginning.
I was trying to burn some backup cds this morning but my writer decided that it just wanted to spit out coasters. Then ironically I downloaded a program called CleanCenter this evening, which is supposed to clean a lot of old, redundant files out of your pc to help it run smoother. For some reason, however, it decided to delete my entire hard drive, including Windows itself! So I have spent the last 7 hours attempting to get Windows up and running again, and examining my hard drive with a file recovery program to try to recover the files that I wanted to backup this morning. Looks like this should keep me busy for some time to come. Not a good day.
If you do a search on Google for superyacht limitless, which is one of, if not the most expensive superyacht in the world, then this site is number 9 in the list of hits. We also seem to be quite popular with people searching for nudists in menorca, where we're straight in at number 4 in the charts, though I couldn't even remember writing about it until I followed the link. It's strange when you have to check Google because you can't remember something you did yourself, and I can imagine this happening more as I get older, "Now where did I put my keys? I know... www.goo..." As you might have guessed, tonight I've been looking into the referrals we've been getting from search engines.
We've arranged to get adsl into the flat. Apart from the fact that we're often out of Denmark for months at a time and broadband here costs around 2-3 times the price it does in Britain, we can't really go on with life in Denmark any longer without it. We recently lost cable tv in the flat due to technical reasons, and sadly we can no longer watch BBC World or any other English programmes so internet is even more important now.
I'm writing this from the Teledanmark in shop in Copenhagen which appears to have some pcs with free internet access (i.e. they haven't thrown me out yet!). I've been working on the new frontpage to the site for the last couple of days, and version 5.1 of it is up now. Off to espresso house now for some badly needed caffeine.
After 5 years of keeping my Compuserve subscription going so that I could
get a connection in whatever country I was travelling in, I've now
terminated it, and along with it goes my Compuserve email address. So if
anyone out there is still writing to it, then, well, don't do it. Technology
has changed in the last 5 years, but they haven't, and now I'm more likely
to dial into a UK isp from another country over my mobile and check my mail
than pay Compuserve up to $10/hour to log onto their local node.
Have been neglecting the website over the last 4 weeks due to having guests
onboard for the whole of that time. On Thursday, however, Berit left and
Chris is getting the ferry back to Barcelona tomorrow morning, so suddenly
Nina and I are going to be alone on the boat again and able to make sailing
plans without having to take into account guests getting seasick or having
to hang around Mallorca so that they can catch their return flights. We're
still in Portocolom, though we've been out for the odd day sail, and Chris
spent most of yesterday trying to get the outboard to go faster, though in
the end it went slower.
I'm in an internet cafe right now where the pcs have Teletubbies Windows (i.e. Windows XP) loaded, and I have to say that it is the slowest, most awful looking OS ever! It really appears to be designed by five year-olds for five year-olds, with huge buttons and migraine inducing clashing colours.
On Tuesday I fly to London then onto Mallorca the next day so I've been attempting to enjoy the luxuries of civilised life now while I can. This has been overshadowed by getting a virus on my pc then spending 24 hours trying to get rid of it (don't worry, it didn't get out again). Now today, I was enrolled into Nina's project group at IT university to help with their website when I only went in to use their computers, and it doesn't look like they're going to let me do anything else until I leave the country.
We had a party at the weekend for Nina, Gitte, and allegedly my birthday, and we managed to get through about 35 litres of beer and 10 kilos of chicken. Much of this, of course, was supposedly consumed by me, but I have no memory of this whatsoever.
Sun coming up and I'm still sitting here... too much caffeine... must go to bed soon.
Tonight in my attempt to get away from Micro$oft products crashing on me all the time, I'm trying out the new browser from Opera and it seems to be much faster than Internet Explorer.
I also found this interesting article about anti-gravitational devices called Lifters.
I'm in Bristol now, and I've done been re-designing some of the front page of the website tonight. Chris will soon be getting up though, so I think I should go to bed!
Over the last couple of days bronek.org has migrated over to a new home, which shouldn't make any difference to most of you unless you've bookmarked it. If so, find the new version by clicking here, www.bronek.org, and bookmarking again. I've also uploaded the pictures I took in Finland and Iceland last year, and more countries are on their way.
Apart from that I'm not happy as Tiscali have effectively just doubled the cost of internet access here in Denmark!
I spent the weekend attempting to set Linux up on my pc, and after many hours, failed. I've also been busy working through the many, many photographs we've taken during our travelling in the last 8 months and trying to get some of them up on the website. At the same time we're moving bronek.org over to different servers with a 1600% jump in server space, which should just about handle all the new videos and photos!
One of the things about being in Denmark is that internet time is cheap after midnight. Much as I try to avoid it, this gradually starts to shape my time here, and I find myself sitting in a dark room lit only by the glare of my laptop screen at 2am as Windows tells me that it's crashed again. I've just upgraded to Internet Explorer 6.0, and the main improvement is that I now get a pop-up window when it crashes. Thanks, Bill.