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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
BloGTK, it works on Linux Gnome and it will talk to Blogger, but is it any good?
I'm testing out BloGTK on my new Linux system, because a little while back my Windoze computer died on me.
My first foray into the use of BloGTK was prompted because I've been reading the Guardian again. I wanted to write an article about some of this stuff that I was reading so I looked for a blogging client/blog editor to use with my Mandriva Gnome Linux environment, to post to Blogger.
After a few downloads that contained deal-breaker problems, (no spell checker, no Blogger support, etc.) I found BloGTK. I started to write my blog post and became more than a little distracted by the things BloGTK can and can't do.
For example I wanted to write some text and make that into a link, but couldn't figure out how to elegantly do it. This is kind of a test of the BloGTK app so I'm just gonna paste the URL in and see if that works - http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/22/supermarkets-cynical-price-manipulation
While I was Googling around looking for a way to insert hypertext instead of just pasting in an URL I also discovered that BloGTK can not upload images either. Apparently this is coming in the next release, and the app's creator is working on it, but that does limit what I am going to be able to do. BloGTK is no Windows LiveWriter, at least not yet.
This is still quite a short post, more of a test, but exactly how short? I once read an article on SEO which said that the ideal website page or blog post should be between 250 and 500 words in length. I'm guessing that the author of this article just pulled those numbers out of his backside, but they have despite that become something of a magic target against which my posts tend to be judged. So I looked round the Blog Editor interface on BloGTK and could not find a way to do a word count.
So to sum up, there are some good things about BloGTK, namely I managed to install it on my Linux machine, it has a spell checker, it's under active development and it will talk to Blogger. But there are also some negatives, it can't do images, there's no word count, and I'm a little at a loss as to how to turn text into an active link the way Google now demands if it is to take any notice of it at all.
I'm sticking with BloGTK for now, and keeping my fingers crossed for the next release, but I'm also looking around for alternatives.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
UK Tories under pressure from US over far-right allies in Europe | stupid Politics, stupid party
It hasn’t exactly been an issue on everyone’s lips in the run up to the election in the UK, after all it is something happening outside the UK. It’s simply a shift in alliances within a European Parliament that a lot of UK citizens don’t care much about anyway, right. The party can do pretty much what it likes in that arena without anyone noticing or any harm done to electoral chances, right… but perhaps the sneaky little Tories haven’t gotten away with it after all. There does seem to be a group of people who have been watching what the Tories get up to, and who disprove.
I’m talking, surprisingly, about the Americans,
An American official, asked about the consequences for the US and about the far-right links, said: "I do not see any upsides in the new grouping. I can only see downsides. In life it is normally best to do things when they have an upside."
The American official is quoted here > William Hague under pressure from US over Conservative allies in Europe | Politics | The Guardian. It’s great to see the UK government in waiting get a slapdown from their masters.
It’s uncomfortable to think that there are so many far-right politicians in Europe with so much power – and doubly uncomfortable to think about the ease with which mainstream (I guess Tories are mainstream…ish) politicians cozy up to them, but the fact that America is willing to address this is very heartening.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
70% oppose internet ban for filesharers | I read in the The Guardian, and it got me thinking…
It’s probably become the dominant paradigm. 70% oppose internet ban for filesharers | The Guardian
You want an office application, you Google up a free one like Open Office; you want an operating system, you Google up a free one like Linux; you want to watch some animation, Big Buck Bunny can be downloaded for free; you want to make a cutting edge 3d animation, the Blender 3d image and animation creation suite is free to download; want to make 2d images, download Gimp; want to play a role-playing game, the only question is table top or online because there are great free options for both… and the list goes on and on. I once discovered a forum where people were lurking and writing free open source drivers for unsupported stuff you might want to plug into your computer like cameras, scanners and toasters (I might have made that last one up).
The idea that I might have to whip out my credit card and pay for any of this cool software and entertainment is almost alien. I can have the best, produced by helpful people who are fun to talk to (no salesmen involved, only honest developers thank goodness) and I can hit download straight away with no thought about strange creepy malware, or programs that want to take over my system.
Now some people take this idea a lot further than me. I’m just talking about the legal open source and promotional stuff that’s out there, but some people get used to this type of computing and swap copyrighted files with as little thought as the rest. By files we could of course be talking about a file with a program, an mp3, a game, a movie, a book, a role-playing game pdf etc. That small list right there covers the output of just about every creative industry producing content.
Against this background it is no surprise that the companies producing this content and asking for money for every copy of it are starting to lose money. I’ve got to say that I’m not 100% happy about that because I watch TV shows, and the TV networks seem to be light years away from working out how they are going to survive and make money in a world of file-sharing consumers (the dominant paradigm remember, the TV companies aren’t going to be able to stop it).
I haven’t a clue what that solution would look like – perhaps a download site, with advertising but no creepy malware or up-front charges, a site that didn’t try to snoop out what country you live in – but I do know that trying to stop file sharing just isn’t going to work. Even if you limit yourself to trying to stop only illegal sharing.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Chicago School economics 'a disaster and a disgrace', says leading analyst | you bet it is
This article, about Chicago School economics, I read today for example is the sort of thing that gives a real insight into what politicians of the Tory and Republican parties (boo, hiss) are thinking. The article is a short summary of some of the ideas of an economist called Roger Bootle.
"A year ago we came perilously close to utter catastrophe," Roger Bootle says. "But the neoliberal, free-market people are already on the warpath. They remind me of some mythical creature – cut off one head and it sprouts more."
Of course this Roger Bootle guy has a new book out and that’s why he’s in the paper, but it does seem to me that he really cares about the economy – and if you ask me the economy is part of society, not something outside it. It is something we have to try to understand and get right, and not just on a national scale, but internationally.
People talk about economies under a few different overarching headings, such as feudal, communist, barter and capitalist, but I don’t think they are particularly helpful. Animals can be talked about under the same overarching headings, such as mammal, fish, marsupial and arachnid, but a whale is a mammal that swims in the sea and a mudskipper is a fish that walks on the land.
In the same way a capitalist economy can develop to be very centrally controlled and limit the availability of wealth, and a communist economy can develop towards the free movement of wealth, ideas and people. In this way it is the direction the economy is moving in that defines it, and gives a clue about whether it is a positive influence on society and people’s overall happiness or not.
I spend most of my time in the UK and Austria, two very similar economies – mostly capitalist, but with healthy doses of socialism thrown in – and there are a lot of good things about these economies, but they are not perfect, and more worrying they seem to be developing in the wrong direction. The movement of wealth, ideas and people is slowing. Wealth is becoming less evenly distributed (the even distribution of wealth is the key) and peoples happiness is plummeting.
I also read – in the Guardian of course – about similar negative stuff happening across the rest of the world, and the suggestion at the end of the article about going towards a single world currency seems to be one tiny piece in the puzzle of getting the world economy right.
>you can read about the beautiful Dragonbat with his nose in the paper illustration and how it was done at Starbright Illustrations.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Deep Thought, Comment, Analysis, Guardian Readings, and maybe some rants too
I want to be a wild beast in the woods like Charlie Brooker. I want to vent my ire, give my opinion on the important issues of the day and give striking insights into the minutiae of our daily lives. But where to start, what subject is most deserving of my scrutiny and insightful comment…
… this Guardian story relating to the litmus test of the inhumanity of out time, the deportation of people who want to settle in a new country, has caught my eye. The British government is carrying out ever more of its inhuman forced expulsions of human beings who want to live in the country. This time flying a bunch of unfortunate people to the war zone that is Baghdad – of all places.
But it seems an actual human being with feelings for the fellow inhabitants of this planet actually asked the poor deportees if the whole thing was OK with them. This human being was an Iraqi Army Officer and apparently he asked if anyone really wanted to get off the plane.
Not surprisingly the vast majority said no, and that they would want to go back to the UK. The officer then told the crew of UK security guards not to force anyone to come to Iraq ever again. That’s so cool. In my mind this guy looks like Sayid out of Lost. A hero, but also a normal bloke fighting injustice.
I might be alone in thinking that deporting people from a country is a bad thing, but to me it reminds me too much of the medieval practice of returning people - “called surfs” - to the villages where they were born. As Wikipedia says, “Serfs were labourers who were bound to the land.”
Serfdom died out, or more accurately people fought to have it ended, at least on the national basis, but internationally we are all, except for a few exceptions bound to the land. I don’t like it. I would like to be able to go live in any country I want, and I would like anyone - who felt so inclined, for whatever reason - to be able to live in the UK. The UK is where I was born, and yet, for no logical reason that I can discern, I seem to be bound to it. Crazy.
OK that’s a nice controversial start, but it’s also what I really think. I’ll be back with more deep thought, comment, analysis, illustration, cartooning, Guardian reading and maybe some rants real soon.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
A planet for use in sci-fi RPGs
An example of the content on www.starbrightillustrations.com/blog
Pity Us is a mining planet. The atmosphere is thick poisonous and soopy, the terrain is rugged and the temperatures are uncomfortably cold without being outright deadly. In fact all you require to survive on the surface is a filter mask for the poisonous elements in the atmosphere, without a mask the weak poison will claim the victim within hours.
The planet is now predominantly human, like the rest of Tarazet space, but the current human inhabitants are not the first to occupy the dig sites on this science fiction role-playing planet. The megamole, a dangerous and monstrous local life form, is believed to be the devolved descendent of the original digs, based on its instinctive use of technology despite having little other obvious indication of intelligence. The megamoles are intent on sabotaging the dig operations and often attack the dig cities in waves.
There are 12 major dig sites, or dig cities as they have become known on Pity Us.
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