New food category announced!

In case you haven't heard, scientists have announced a new food category. The new group will be referred to as the "salads", and the transferal of foods from their old categories to this new category will be done in stages to minimise disruption to supermarkets. It has been suggested that the first foods to be reclassified will include lettuce (previously a vegetable), celery (previously also a disgusting vegetable), tomatoes (previously a fruit and vegetable) and eggs (previously unidentifiable).

Windows 7 and the "toolbar" problem

For as long as I can remember I have kept all my files and documents on one drive on my computer and the operating system on another. This meant if worst came to worst and Windows died for any reason, all I had to do was wipe the OS drive and reinstall it and all my files would be untouched and ready to access again as soon as Windows was working again. This may seem obvious now but hard weren't always as cheap as they are now and lashing out on a second drive was a big decision for me.

Where is this leading?

Well, since XP (and possibly earlier, I can't remember), Windows has had detachable that could sit on your desktop and display the contents of folders or drives. All you had to do was right click on the Taskbar and select Toolbars> New Toolbar and select the folder who's contents you wanted it to display. This was also a popular solution for people will billions of items in their "Quick Launch" toolbar, as you could detach it and make it span the length of the monitor to display them all.

The XP incarnation of toolbars was the best, as you could detach toolbars from the taskbar and have them floating on the desktop, or dock them to the edges of the screen and have them auto-hide like the taskbar. Beautiful. You couldn't very well ask for more. But you can always ask for less, and apparently due to the fact people would get "confused" when accidentally dragging toolbars off the taskbar, Microsoft removed the floating toolbar feature in Vista. Logic would have probably dictated that all they really had to do was set the taskbar to "locked" by default, but apparently Vista's search functionality was so unbelievably powerful, people wouldn't miss this feature.^[reference] Right. Clicking on the Start button and trying to remember the name of the folder you wanted to open, then actually typing it in, before finally trying to identify the right folder from the list is SO much faster than having a list displayed on your desktop at all times you can just click on.

Anyway.

I coped with this situation ok because you could still detach toolbars, so long as you docked them to another edge of the screen. Here's how I had it while using XP and Vista (click to enlarge).


This is on my second monitor, so my Taskbar isn't visible.

Now some genius at Microsoft decided that in Windows 7, not only could you not float toolbars anymore, you couldn't remove them from the taskbar at all, even to dock them :) Good one, idiots. Now if I want to have all the folders on my personal directory displayed for easy single-click access, I need to keep the toolbar attached to the taskbar. The best compromise I could come up with was having the folders displaying alongside the taskbar icons and dock the whole stupid taskbar to the side of my second monitor.


After scouring the internet for ages, posting on forums, finding out people were having similar problems and almost giving up after having no luck, I finally found the ultimate solution! Its name is Desktop Sidebar.

Check out my desktop now!

It does everything I was looking for, and even more! It has hundreds of plugins, amazing quality skins, and it's free! I'm excited.

WOWOWOWOW!!!!

The Big Day Out line-up has just been released. I was going to go see Ladyhawke play a solo show, but now I've seen she's been included in the BDO along side Muse, Calvin Harris, Dizzee Rascal, Groove Armada, The Mars Volta.... BLAAURRUHGHGHGISODO I ROI:LKF OSDIFU_@#( R:OSDJFPS)D (FU #OJ:OIS HEADASPLODE

Browsing. The post that wasn't.

I just wrote pages of stuff, noting that I'd recently decided to finally switch to Opera 10, despite it still not having a few features that Firefox has that I enjoy, but I'd just like to say that I'll most likely be changing back, seeing as I accidentally hit a link that took me to another page, and when I hit back it had all gone :) Die, Opera, Die. No, come back, I still love you. A bit.

Top 10 Songs!!

OK because no-one chose to help me I had to come up with the top 10 myself, so don't blame me if I forgot any that should be there. You also now get to enjoy my self indulgent analysis of why these were such worthy choices.

1. Sun Hits The Sky - Supergrass

Funnest song ever written. Most fun song ever written? Also the ultimate driving song on a summer's day by the beach. The only let down is the ending that drags on.

2. Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys

The harmonies, the chord progressions, the song structure, the theramin..... could go on and on about what makes this song amazing. Also the great quiet middle bit that just ebbs and flows until... aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh *silence* GOOOOOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD VIBRATIONS. Genius.

3. All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

A triumphant fanfare heralds the beginning of a Beatles song that is just perfect. I love the descending horn line after each "All you need is love", and the little self referential "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" in the background at the end.

4. Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi

Pure awesome distilled and presented in song form.

5. Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones

The haunting intro leads into a foot tappingly great rock song. In particular the female solo near the end is mindblowing.

6. Even Flow - Pearl Jam

The driving, unchanging chord underlying the confident then frantic vocals of each line of the verse then the explosive progression on the line E-ven-flo-oww just blows my mind every time.

7. Living Type - Powderfinger

From the only good Powderfinger album in my opinion (Double Allergic), this is another perfect slow rock song or whatever category this would be in. Inspired chord progressions make it, along with the intense lyrics.

8. Space Oddity - David Bowie

I remember reading some essay that some student had written around the time of the moon landing about how man landing on the moon had killed any future imaginaion, romanticism or creativity involving it and space in general. Well, I think this song is the rebuttle.

9. Reckless - Australian Crawl

Time goes into slow motion every time I hear this song.

10. Rainbow Connection - Kermit the Frog

A simple, melancholy yet uplifting song that worked so well as the intro to the Muppet Movie.

Hottest 100 of all time shortlist

I'm trying to come up with my top 10 songs of all time for the Triple J Hottest 100 Of All Time.
Voting closes in 4 days so I'm trying to wrack my brains for any songs I may have forgotten!

It's such a hard task, because there are so many criteria upon which you could judge a song. In the end, I've decided that it shouldn't be an intellectual decision, because music isn't about that, it's about feeling. So, I've chosen songs that have the most impact on the way they make me feel. The only problem then is that the feelings older songs produce may have diminished in time due to hearing them so often and hearing them now in a different musical era..

Anyway, here is my shortlist so far, in no particular order.

Rolling Stones, The - Gimme Shelter

Depeche Mode - Barrel of a Gun

Michael Jackson - Beat It

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

Michael Jackson - Thriller

Kermit the Frog - Rainbow Connection

Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure

David Bowie - Space Oddity

David Bowie - Dead Man Walking

Australian Crawl - Reckless

Ben Folds Five - Magic

Ben Folds Five - Battle Of Who Could Care Less

Ben Folds Five - One Angry Dwarf And 200 Solemn Faces

Ben Folds Five - Steven's Last Night In Town

Ben Folds Five - Underground

Foo Fighters - Everlong

Powderfinger - D.A.F.

Powderfinger - Living Type

Powderfinger - Pick You Up

Oasis - Champagne Supernova

Oasis - Don’t Look Back In Anger

Oasis - Wonderwall

Pearl Jam - Alive

Pearl Jam - Corduroy

Pearl Jam - Evenflow

Pearl Jam - Given To Fly

Pearl Jam - I Am Mine

Pearl Jam - Not For You

Pearl Jam - Rearviewmirror

Faith No More - Easy Like Sunday Morning

Faith No More - Epic

Faith No More - I Started A Joke

Faith No More - Last Cup Of Sorrow

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

Prodigy, The - Breathe

Prodigy, The - Firestarter

Silverchair - Israel's Son

Silverchair - Pure Massacre

silverchair - tomorrow

Beach Boys, The - Good Vibrations

Limahl - Never ending story

Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer

R.E.M. - Losing My Religion

Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning

Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mine

Midnight Oil - Dreamworld

Midnight Oil - Forgotten Years

Midnight Oil - King Of The Mountain

Midnight Oil - Power And The Passion

Midnight Oil - Us Forces

Billy Joel - The Longest Time

Beatles, The - Hey Jude

Beatles, The - All You Need Is Love

Beatles, The - Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End

Beatles, I Want You (She's So Heavy)

Beatles, The - I am the walrus

Beatles, The - Octopus's Garden

Madness - It Must Be Love

Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime

Metallica - Enter Sandman

Metallica - Nothing Else Matters

Metallica - The Unforgiven

Harry Nillson - Without You

Radiohead - India Rubber

Radiohead - Anyone Can Play Guitar

Radiohead - Creep

Radiohead - How To Disappear Completely

Radiohead - Karma Police

Radiohead - Paranoid Android

Supergrass - Sun Hits The Sky

Supergrass - Richard III

Zero G Water Bubbles!

Featuring the most annoying voice over guy ever. Good if you're blind, I guess.

When I was your age...

My favourite Weird Al song. It really deserves a good film clip but this is the best I could find. Enjoy.

Language update

Just a note to the world that the acronym "Podcast" is no longer derived from the words iPOD broadCAST, but Play On Demand broadCAST, a highly superior and non-brand-specific description.

This decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

ALDI Pure 8GB MP4 Player Review

Last week I splashed out on something that I didn't really need, but it was such a bargain I just had to have it. It is the $99 Pure 8GB MP4 Player from ALDI.

Click to enlarge

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box (it comes in very nice packaging by the way!) was how small it is, yet how big the screen is! Then I had to try and find the buttons, as there is nothing but the screen on the face of the device, which could easily fool you into thinking the device is touch-screen. Thankfully it's not. I prefer the tactile response of buttons over touchscreens, which tend to be annoyingly inaccurate. The navigation buttons were on the top of the device, and then I found the power-switch on the bottom and the inputs/outputs on the side. Very tidy.

Anyway after poking around on the internet I couldn't find any reviews on the device, so I thought I'd put one together myself. Well, it's more of a pros and cons list of things I've noticed during a week's use than a review, but it pretty much covers everything I'd want to have known before buying it.

ALDI Pure 8GB MP4 Player (Based on the Laserco "InterMate MP4 Widescreen Player")
Pros	Cons
Cheap!	NA
Huge, bright, 400x240, 3", 16:9 screen	The screen has been manufactured to be viewed vertically. This means that the viewing angle would be fine if you turned the device 90 degrees and watched it like that. However, because no movies are filmed taller than they are wide, you have to hold the player on a sideways tilt away from you so that both eyes are seeing it from the viewing angle it has been manufactured for (ie: for someone holding the screen vertically/portrait and watching it slightly from above). If you don't know anything about LCD screens and viewing angles all that probably won't mean anything to you, but you will notice that the image looks strange if you try and view a movie on it fully face-on. Max resolution for AVI files is 800x400 and 720x480 for RMVB
FLAC, APE audio support	No OGG support
FM Radio (which you can record from)	NA
FLV SUPPORT!! UNDOCUMENTED FEATURE!!	NA
Inbuilt speaker	Speaker can be very quiet, especially during movies
MicroSD expansion capability	MicroSD expansion capability limited to 2GB
Can read text files (ebooks) while listening to music. Can save bookmarks.	When you scroll down a page in text files (which doesn't actually scroll per se, it just displays the next block of text when you hit the "next" button), the text is reformatted for some unknown reason. This makes it very difficult to pick up where you left off, as you have to scan the screen trying to find the last word you read.
Can change the font colour, font size and background image when reading ebooks	Can only set font size to small or medium, even though it says large should be an option in the manual. Cannot use custom images as backgrounds for reading ebooks.
File transfer and charging via MiniUSB. Drag and drop files. Use device as hard-drive.	NA
Can alter aspect ratio of screen to display movies correctly.	NA
Music can be viewed by Artist, Album or Genre	Music on SDCard is not recognised by the Media Library and therefore cannot be viewed by Artist, Album or Genre and so must be organised via folder structures No playlist support
Uses actual buttons for navigation and not a stupid touch-screen!	Clumsy navigation, especially volume control. You must navigate to the "now playing" screen to adjust the volume, which is then a matter of clicking the "Volume" button, then checking to see that the volume number has turned red which indicates that you can now adjust it up or down with the left and right navigation buttons. However, left adjusts the volume up and right adjusts it down, when you would expect the opposite. And because you use the navigation buttons to adjust the volume, it is easy to accidentally navigate away from the page when you are trying to change the volume. Terrible design. Buttons feel like they may become spongy over time
	Other Anomalies
	If you have no music files on the device and you try to play music, it gives a red exclamation mark warning, but with no accomanying text to tell you what's wrong. I got confused the first few times this happened.
	Audio went out of sync with video on a large sized xvid AVI I tried to play (large as in a 717mb, 608x256, 1hr22min movie) This may be only specific to that one file, since I played another similarly large file and had no problems with it.
	Auto-shutdown activates when music is playing! STUPID! (This feature is meant to shut down the device after a period of inactivity to save batteries)
	Music playback can pause for a fraction of a second while you are navigating through folders on the device.

Although it may look like the negatives outweigh the positives, I haven't stopped using it since I've bought it and I rarely get annoyed with it to the point that I think any of its flaws are "deal-breakers".

There have been reports of "screen flicker" or "diagonal tearing" on the net, but I've watched a fair few movies of all different genres and haven't found this to be a problem at all. In fact, I have found the image quality to be fantastic and smooth. The only video I have noticed the flicker in is the preloaded real media demo video that comes with it. This may be a real media issue, as all the files I have watched have been AVIs.

EDIT: Updated 28th Jan 2009

I thought I'd write an update now that I've had more time to play with it. Some of the things are new, but some of the things have already been mentioned and have just become a bigger issue with time.

• Buttons are frustratingly small. And I'm sure they are sitting lower/more flush with the casing than they were.
• I'm sure I can hear audio distortion when playing music files at even a low volume. I've heard it while playing them on headphones and speakers. I can't seem to hear it all the time though for some reason.
• Speaker is often so quiet as to be useless.
• The radio will only play in mono. You are given the option to switch to stereo in a menu, but it doesn't work.
  
• When selecting "continue play" on a video, it continued playing it but without sound (I just found this bug right now while testing another bug!)
• Shuffle function only seems to shuffle the first 250 or so tracks (as stated elsewhere on the web).
• When hitting the "next" button when in shuffle mode, it plays the immediate next track, not the next randomly selected shuffle track.
• I have now seen the video "tearing" people have been talking about. However this has only occurred in one scene in all the movies I have watched, and it was at the start of Cars where there is a close-up of cars zooming by... just blurs basically. It resulted in diagonal tearing.
• The volume control is painfully annoying. You actually have to be looking at the screen to make sure you are adjusting the volume (ie you can't just adjust it by putting your hand in your pocket and pushing a button). You are always at least two button pushes away from adjusting the volume.
• Finally, when I sent an email to support asking if there was a way to fix the font-size issue in e-books, I never got a response. I think I might try calling them.

Still, even after all that, I can't stop thinking how much of a bargain it is for $99. I still get a lot of enjoyment out of it!