Red Dwarf is back

After the failed movie attempt and endless sales of DVDs there's to be a 2 part special on Dave. That's right: DAVE. I guess the BBC is too busy not showing Gaza appeals and funding Doctor Who to get this, seven million DVDs and videos worth, cult show back on the box. If you cant tell already I would have preferred it on the BBC but beggars cant be choosers. Its about time it was back!

Source: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7851989.stm

You can see production updates from dave.uktv.co.uk/library/red-dwarf/.

Learn Morse Code on Ubuntu

I recently became a scout assistant-leader. As you do. One of their activities is the use of morse code.

Enter aldo. A morse code learning tool released under GPL. It plays morse code and you have to identify/translate it. It has the Koch method which starts at 2 charters then once mastered it moves on to 3 charters. Then 4 and so on. Classic method, random characters, is also available.

Aldo is listed under package name aldo. Install with: sudo apt-get install aldo. Run it in a terminal by entering aldo. Simple really. Its better to run it on xterm or one of its variants.

To translate code I use the chart on www.learnmorsecode.com.
See www.nongnu.org/aldo for other aldo download sources.

Holiday Road Rage

I was a few minutes into a journey across town when the bus driver began pulling out of a stop only to pull out in front of a Chrysler PT. Which is probably the worst looking car on British roads. The driver understandably honked as he stopped. The bus driver stopped the bus then carried on thinking that was the end of the matter.

The bus pulled in to the next stop. The Chrysler, which followed the bus, decided it was a great idea to stop in front of the bus while passengers got on. I don't think the bus driver took much notice. I'm guessing his attention was on passengers money and tickets.

When all the passengers were on board the bus driver was ready to go. Only to see the fat back end of the Chrysler. He honked. Honked again. The Chrysler driver showed his/her intentions by honking back. It wouldn't move. Some passengers muttered along the lines of 'what's his game?'

What happened next is something I have never witnessed before. Well on a bus anyway. The bus driver opened the bus doors. Stormed out. Walked over to the Chrysler and totally let rip. I cant really write what he said. It is Christmas after all. The passengers fell silent. A lot of them gasped. At first at the language used then at the idiot in the Chrysler. The bus driver marched back on the bus while the Chrysler, watched by disapproved tutting old lady's, set off slowly pulling into another road. Leaving the old lady's asking themselves if the driver was drunk.

The meaning of the story is: chill out its the holidays.
Heres some Christmas stress tip links:
Impactfactory.com/p/stress_manageme...
Bbc.co.uk/norfolk/features/xmas_2003...

Text to Speech on ubuntu

A text to speech function can be provided with a program called Festival. Used for development and research it is capable of producing clearly understandable speech from text.
sudo apt-get install festival

Install a voice. You have a choice of some voices on the repositories.
festvox-rablpc8k -British English male 8khz.
festvox-rablpc16k -British English male 16khz.
festvox-don -British English male.
festvox-te-nsk -Telugu male.
festvox-suopuhe-mv -Finnish male
festvox-suopuhe-lj -Finnish female.
festvox-mr-nsk -Marathi male.
festvox-kdlpc8k -American English male 8khz.
festvox-kdlpc16k -American English male 16khz.
festvox-kallpc8k -American English male 8khz.
festvox-kallpc16k -American English male 16khz.
festvox-hi-nsk -Hindi male speaker.

Choose one and install with:
sudo apt-get install chosenpackagefromabove

To make it say something I make a text file with the text I want spoken and run the following (change the file location):
cat file.txt | festival --tts

Or you can run Festival in a terminal and use (SayText "something"). Keep the brackets. For example:
festival> (SayText "Testing Testing")

To use it with pidgin so that IM's are read out aloud install the pidgin-festival package:
sudo apt-get install pidgin-festival

To activate it open Pidgins plug-ins (in tools or Ctrl + U). Find Festival. Tick it and restart.


Click configure to see the options. Select a voice for the plug-in if you have more than one installed. Maximum message lengths is useful. You don't want someone annoying to instant message you a message the size of a book and have it all read out with 5 chats going. Also announcing events its neat if your out the room "Fred is online".

Changing voices can be done by running festival. Type festival in a terminal to start the festival prompt. Use this command (voice_NAMEOFVOICE) changing the voice name to which ever voice you want like festival> (voice_don_diphone). To find voice names of the packages you have installed look in /usr/share/festival/voices/.

If your seriously wanting to use Festival daily you may like to have more realistic voices checkout ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=677277 for instructions. For an online demo, source and other information see cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival.

Yet another Photoblog

For next year I may move away from photoforamonth.blogspot.com to a more generalized anything-goes photo blog. So I created blackhillproject.blogspot.com. It wont have much till next year. If the name sounds strange to you that's because its named after a local wood where iv taken many of my photos. A very airy place. In the mean time I am playing with my own template.

Brewed a Bitter

...using John Bull best bitter kit. Added some light malt, roasted barley, small amount of northern brewer hops and a can of extract that's been laying around. O.G 1.080. With my favourite dried yeast, Nottingham ale yeast, for obvious reasons. Wrapped up the fermenter in newspaper and placed it in the warmest part of the house just in case the cold causes a stuck fermentation.

Wii error

My sisters copy of Wii Music updated the Wii. Restarted it. Ran the disc then a error message. Other games work just not this one. I googled the problem and found a load of modders forums. The unit isn't chipped so there's no help but to replace the game disc.

Edit: Was the the disc after all.

Funny Hamster

A hamster sleeping up on a glass window in a pet store. Had to take a photo of it.

Okocim Beer

A German styled Pilsener brewed by Okocim Brewery in Brzesko in southeastern Poland.

Pours a very light gold colour. Nice but short lived head. Musty citrus aroma. Not great but I smelt worse beers. Light body maybe a little watery for some. Tastes of sweet light lager malts with balanced spicy bitterness. Quite dry. Clean hoppy finish. A good 5.5% alcohol.

Rating: Okay.
As you can see am a professional at rating beer
Overall: A decent dry pilsener polish lager.

Joe Strummer...

'...and the legend of the clash' is a book I found sitting on a shelve in the local library. I was looking for something good to read. Like a Orwell novel. Though, the library has only two copies of Animal farm and one copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I've read both these and didn't favour any other novels.

I nearly left empty handed until I saw "Joe Strummer" in bold capitals. I have liked the band since my teens. Songs like ''White riot' raw punk, 'London calling' reggae bassline and the dub sound of 'Straight to hell'. After reading the first chapters of the book I realised I knew little about them despite knowing their discography.

Written by Kris Needs it offers an inside look into the band. He was a journalist/editor of ZigZag. A music magazine which was devoted mostly to the growing punk movement around 77. Kris became friends with the band and other punk royalty.

The biography of Joe himself is detailed following his early life to busking, art college, his fascination with George Orwell (see what I did there), squatting, joining pub rock band the 101's and the Clash. It's packed with stuff I didn't know. For example he once went by the name of "woody" as in Woody Guthrie. There is also smaller biography's of Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Nicky "Topper" Headon. Most of the book follows the bands progression. Writing songs, tours, recoding albums and the bands relationship.

Famous names pop up like Shane MacGowan, Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese. Kris Needs also wrote about the first time he met Sid Vicious learning bass to 'Blitzkrieg bop' overnight.

It's well written with honesty and humour. Plenty of stories and photography by Pennie Smith makes its worth reading if your a punk/clash fan.