Goodbye iTunes, Hello Ziepod

For ages now I've moaned (mostly to myself) about iTunes taking up a whopping 3 million gigabytes of precious hard-drive space. I may have also been exaggerating to myself too.

I only use it as a podcast aggregator, so it's a little outrageously large for my needs.

After a bit of searching a Download Squad blog led me to Ziepod, which is bloody great. I usually listen to podcasts at home as opposed to the usual out-and-about because I'm quite content with what's available via the magic invisible FM radio waves.

Ziepod lets me stream podcasts instead of downloading by default, saving more precious hard-drive space. It docks neatly and doesn't ask me to download Quicktime and Safari every time I start it. It also let me export my subscriptions, unlike iTunes, which was useful when I decided to put it on the other PC.

Katie and Peter's break up (or is it)

Bearing in mind Kaite Price is very media savvy I don't believe a word of this split- just think how much they're making from all this publicity, exclusive articles, TV appearances and whathaveyou. Then consider they'll get the same again when they announce their getting back together- more publicity more cash coming in. And as for the second wedding...

Pull the other one Katie and Peter, but good on you both for exploiting the newspapers!

Big Brother Bother

Statistically most people reading this blog will have come across it from looking at a Big Brother 2008 animation. So, big news for you.

Today, one of my videos came up as "The user has disabled embedding by request". That's wrong, I didn't do that. So I checked the video and found I was unable to revert the change and that my video is no longer available to watch in the UK.

Why?

Because after speaking to me on several occasions telling me how appreciative they were, encouraging me to make more videos, reassuring me that I was fine to use screenshots from Big Brother to make the videos, doing an interview with me for the website, showing two of my videos on Big Brother's Little Brother, asking me to appear on BBLB and phoning me up again at the start of CBB6 to see if I was going to do any for that, Channel 4 have filed a copyright claim on one of my videos. A video I made with music I recorded. Yes, it uses faces of the BB contestants, but I was told this was fine otherwise I would have drawn cartoon versions.

I doubt anyone would agree that the use of static images that would fit on a stamp at 300dpi is worth destroying the hard work put into fan art and the loyalty/obsession of this Big Brother fan.

Needless to say if this isn't sorted out there will be no more Big Brother videos and after 9 years I will be handing in my notice as a fan.


Edit:

I contested the copyright claim through Youtube and they reinstated my video. Nothing more has come of it, but it has left me a little wary of producing more BB videos for future series'.

Dog years, WFT?

Dog years. What's the point of dog years? Who invented dog years? Bloody dog lovers probably - you know the type - the kind of person who sees absolutely nothing wrong with letting their mouth be licked by the tongue of an animal that will happily eat sick and poo then cleans itself with the same tongue "it's kissing me", no actually it's trying to make you vomit so it can eat it (look it up).

So- one dog year = 7 human actual years.

How old's your dog?
He's 6, but that's 42 in dog years.

No, it's six. It's been alive for 6 years. We all know how long six years is. No-one else does this nonsense...

Oh nice tattoo, when did you get that done?
Ooh about 3 years ago, that's 18 in tattoo years. I had it done that time I went to LA for a month, which is 8 months in LA months with the current exchange rate. Anyway must go, I need to get some food for my cat. It's 386 years old today.

Ridiculous.

Enter a memorable password...

Arrgh! I hate websites/systems that force users to format passwords in the way the system wants. "Your password must contain a mixture of upper and lower case". This doesn't increase the security it actually increases the chances of being able to guess it.

I'm changing my address on the DVLA government website and it's come up with this:

Enter a memorable password. The password must:

* be between 8 and 12 characters
* contain a combination of letters and numbers
* contain two or more numbers which are separated by one or more letters
* not contain spaces or the word 'password'
* not contain three adjacent letters or numbers the same (eg 'aaa' or '999')

I'm sorry, didn't you just say MEMORABLE? How the eff am I supposed to choose a memorable password when at least one of the rules prevent me from using every password that I already have stored in my brain - the ones that would therefore be memorable.

MoneySense Advice from Natwest

In the large Liverpool branch of the NatWest bank, staff are seen discussing finance with customers and offering friendly advice. The narrator declares that NatWest has MoneySense advisors in 1000 branches, and that they are not there to sell but to offer free impartial financial guidance.

Financial guidance?

"Electric, gas- Do you shop around for them?"

"No."

"Well, you should."

With that amazingly high level of experienced financial advice I'm surprised Natwest haven't lost, ooh, about £7billion in a year.

Video: MoneySense Advice from Natwest

As Good Today as Always from Hovis

This ad starts off with a boy in 1886 (when Hovis was formed) holding a loaf under his arm.


During his journey home events from periods of British history occur around him.



He ends up at home in the modern day not having aged a bit, and plonks the loaf of bread on the table.


Well I'm sorry but I don't care how many preservatives you put in it, it would be off by then.