31 Jan 2005 (Monday) 

We've now got a little 'favicon' for the website. It's only taken a few years, but until last night I had nothing decent that could create a '.ico' file that I liked. Now, having written something that's decent enough to create '.ico' files, I've created said logo for the site. I couldn't think of anything more useful, so I've used the 'G' from the 'Gerph' logo (simplified very slightly). This does mean it's a litle bit like the Google logo (in that they're both 'G'), but I don't think you'll get so confused.

Testing it in Opera, Firefox and IE shows that it works reasonably on light backgrounds. It doesn't work so well on a dark background, though. I might do something cunning to try to avoid that at some point. Like putting a white background outline on it. Ok, so that's not really cunning. It's just sensible.

Google have a program called 'Picasa 2' apparently that will locate all your pictures and sorts them into 'visual albums organized by date and folder names you will recognise'. So I'm giving it a go. I expect it to suck muchly, but we'll see.

First thing it asks is what you want to scan - all the discs or just the 'my <stuff>' folders. I've told it to scan all discs, and I'll just let it see what it can find. It's stumbling on the 35M TIFF files a little, taking quite a while to process them it seems. And oddly it only seems to have spotted the TIFF files, and ignored the PNGs. So that wasn't too impressive.

The entire operating system has scroll bars. This is Windows, you know what it's like. It's the same as every other WIMP-type GUI you've seen in recent years. Proportional scrollbar, which you can grab and drop where you want. Obviously this isn't in keeping with Google. They prefer to have a quite different control which is a block that you drag to indicate the direction you want to scroll through the bar.

I'm not going to rant on about how bloody stupid it is (yes, Apple and Real, I'm talking about you as well with your Quicktime and Real Player things... and nullsoft with their WinAmp and... etc) to go against the design used by the OS. The design that the user has selected as their interface. The design that ensures consistency of access and the principle of least surprise. Oh, that was a mini-rant. Anyhow, they shouldn't bloody well do it - it's not big and it's not clever.

Oh, and it uses this special type of scroll bar only for the main thumbnails view; the directories view is a conventional scrollbar. Well, conventional operation. It still looks completely different to the Windows standard.

Started 7:37am, and it's still going at 7:49.

The 'timeline' option is actually quite cute; it displays your images collected together as groups by the times they were taken. If it hadn't scanned the entire harddisc it might actually be useful. As it is, we've got half the timeline made up of images from HalfLife. But it's cute, I'll give it that.

Ah, I've found why it hasn't spotted the PNGs - it's configured to ignore them initially. PNG and GIF images are just ignored by default apparently. Even though it does say in the blurb that it will index them. Well it will, but you have to tell it to. Hmm.

There doesn't appear to be an option to show 'where it's currently up to in scanning all the discs'.

It's categorised some bits into 'Folders on disk' and others into 'Other stuff'. There doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between what goes where.

I think it must have finised now 'cos it's not popped anything up in a bit, and it's 5 past 8. Oh, I've just found the 'Manage folders' option which tells me that it hasn't actually scanned all the discs. It's ignored X:, Y: and Z: which are network mounted discs which actually contain the bulk of the files that I would be interested in. I've told it to scan Z: now, which is the MP3 archive and therefore contains every single album cover. It's not popped much up yet.

There's an option for 'Send to Hello' which appears to launch some website. Apparently 'Hello is a new program from Picasa that lets you instantly send dozens of pictures to your friends and talkabout them'. You know, I thought you could use 'email' for that. Doesn't seem at all useful to me when Email is just a click away otherwise.

The search of Z: appears to have only found two files - the video for Imagine which I've got in the JohnLennon folder. It looks like it's not actually marked the disc as being scanned recursively, so hasn't actually looked at most of the folders. And it appears that if I want to mark it as scanning everything on that disc you have to go and click on every folder and then click on the tick. That's pretty pathetic.

I've tried telling it to watch that folder for changes and it's not even bothered to look at what's there. It still only thinks that it has two files on the disc.

Yup, it appears to be utterly useless when it comes to network mounts. It's just not even bothering to check the folders as far as I can tell. And it isn't half hanging (like for 20 seconds) when I open the folder manager.

Oh. I found the 'Refresh thumbnails' option, which it appears you have to click on to tell it to actually do anything. So it's now scanning Z: and it could be there a while.

Apparently 'Other stuff' includes things that have 'non-standard aspect ratios'. And you can't delete this distinction, so far as I can tell. The sorting by name appears to be purely that - it just uses the name of the folder that the files were in. So I've got (at the moment) 4 marked as 'Greatest Hits' which is about as helpful as a chocolate teapot. The fact that they're already organised on the disc in sub-directories means that it's easier to use the filing system than this program. Which leads me to wonder who it's aimed at. Given the timeline thing and the fact that it does seem to like the idea of grouping by date, it would seem to me that it's intended for 'people who copy images off their digital camera and then never do anything more with them'.

Actually the timeline looks rather pretty for the album covers. If the albums were actually stamped with the period they came out it would actually be useful; as it is it's about as intuitive as randomly poking a directory to see what's in there - that's not my fault; the files are just created when I download them.

It's placed a number of things in the 'Other stuff' group which blatantly aren't 'non-standard aspect ratios'. Once in a Live Time, by Dream Theater album cover, 702x702 pixels. Now that I would have thought would be a pretty standard aspect ratio. If it's talking about the pixel aspect ratio then one would have thought that the properties would tell you that it was different. But no, it just tells you that the dimensions are 702x720. Which you could read in the status bar. The actual image itself is indeed square pixelled; 72dpi according to the ImgViewer application (and I wrote it so I'm pretty sure it's telling me the truth). 72dpi is the regular Windows resolution that you'll find. So obviously it's gone a little mad there.

I'm now up to 8 'Greatest Hits' folders now, and it's just in the middle of scanning Madonna.

The touch-up effects seem to be pretty neat, actually. More useful than some I've seen anyhow.

Hmm. The search does take into account parent folders, it appears. A search for Pendragon showed only those folders under Pendragon.

Well, all in all, quite interesting, but I'm not all that bothered byit really as I don't take photos much. Although maybe I would if I could organise them.

I've given in and written in the remaining answers on the lyrics guessing game thing.

Quick summary :

1 Further Away, from Ever, by IQ
2 The Crime Part 1 - Ballad Of Billy Grey, from The Crime, by Grey Lady Down
3 Honeymoon Suite, from In A Reverie, by Lacuna Coil
4 The Crime Part 3 - Paper chains, from The Crime, by Grey Lady Down
5 The Perfect Element, from The Perfect Element (Part I), by Pain Of Salvation
6 How Soon Is Now?, from Meat Is Murder, by The Smiths
8 In The End, from Hybrid Theory, by Linkin Park
9 Every Breath You Take, by The Police
10 One Of My Turns, from The Wall, by Pink Floyd
11 Empire Of A Thousand Days, from Pride, by Arena
12 I Don't Like Mondays, by Boomtown Rats
13 Grendel, from B'Sides themselves, by Marillion
14 Zombie, from No Need To Argue, by Cranberries
15 Going Under, from Fallen, by Evanescence
16 Last Act, from Quest, by Final Conflict
17 Your Town, from Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, by Deacon Blue
18 School, from Crime Of The Century, by Supertramp
19 A Collection, from No One Can single B-side, by Marillion
20 Permanent Vacation, from Heritage and Visions, by Galleon
21 What Do You Want from me ?, by Monaco
22 Inside, from The Mind's Eye, by Stiltskin
23 Into The Night, from Under The Red And White Sky, by John Wesley
24 Sorrow, from Momentary Lapse Of Reason, by Pink Floyd
25 Full Of Grace, from Surfacing, by Sarah McLachlan
26 Heart And Shoulder, from Siren, by Heather Nova
27 Scared Of The Dark, from Ring Of Roses, by Shadowland
28 Stay, by Shakespear's Sister
29 Mockingbird, from Once Again, by Barclay James Harvest
30 Somewhere Down That Crazy River, by Robbie Robertson
31 Bliss, from Origin Of Symmetry, by Muse
32 Toy Soldiers, from Toy Soldiers, by Martika
33 The Power Of Love, from Welcome To The Pleasuredome, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood
34 When Will I Be Famous ?, by Bros
35 Left Of Center, by Suzanne Vega
36 Well Known Sinner, from Take My Head, by Archive
37 How You Remind Me, from Silver Side Up, by Nickelback
39 All Alone, from Quest, by Final Conflict
40 The Last Man On Earth, from The Window Of Life, by Pendragon
41 Family Snapshot, by Peter Gabriel
42 The Land Of Make Believe, from The Best Of Bucks Fizz, by Bucks Fizz
43 Dear Jessie, by Madonna
44 Ocean Drive, by Lighthouse Family
45 Hazard, from Rush Street, by Richard Marx
48 Staring At The Sun, from Pop, by U2
47 Sweet Child O' Mine, from Appetite For Destruction, by Guns 'n' Roses
48 Prayer, from The World, by Pendragon
49 It's A Sin, from Actually, by Pet Shop Boys
50 Ecuador, by Sash!
51 Camouflage, by Stan Ridgway

And the results per-person are...

Nobody: 15
Simon: 19
Hannah: 3
Dad: 7
Chris Williams: 2
Chris Johns: 10
Andrew Hill: 4
Julian: 4

Note these are a little skewed because some people guessed things at the same time as others and I've included both those guesses up to the time that results were published, and people will have ignored those tracks that have already been guessed so they won't be present there.

So I declare that you all win because you got at least one track. Yay! Well done and I hope you enjoyed playing as much as I enjoyed doing it .

Someone's search the site for 'Hedgehog golf club' and 'Mongoose platters' just to make me curious. I rather like that.

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30 Jan 2005 (Sunday) 

Chris submitted a couple more guesses today for the lyrics and pointed out that I'd 'lost' 1988 diary entries. The link on the main page had accidentally been pointed at the 1998 diary. So I've just had to re-generate the entire diary to make it work. The annoyance with this is that it shows up how retaining static content can be annoying - if I change the template, the entire site (or in this case the entire diary part of the site, which is most of it really) has to be re-processed. So it's possible that I might use something more cunning to create those automated sections. What exactly, I'm not sure. I've got a choice between using SSI and PHP on the server, which is interesting but not to the extent that I want to go around changing all the page.

The diary management is... well I won't say archaic, but it was originally started back in '98 and I think at that time it ran HSC to process all the (well 'the only') pages in the diary. And aside from having more pages in it, and a few cleverer features - the summary sections, the automatically updated calendar, calendars for months and years, etc - it's still the same thing. And apart from the re-process time for the entire diary, the whole thing has kept working reasonably well.

I've just been skimming back through the very old diary, and 11 Jan 1999 made me laugh. Obviously at the time, setting fire to myself wasn't exactly humorous but I can at least laugh now.

I've added a tiny little feature to the diary so that the summary fields which previously only appeared in the RSS feed are now placed in a little block on the top right of the entry. It's not perfect, but it appears to work reasonably well for the browsers I've tested it with (Opera, IE, Firefox, Oregano 1, Phoenix, Fresco, Mozilla). I'm not entirely sure I'm keen on it so it might go in some future version but it looks ok-ish.

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29 Jan 2005 (Saturday) 

Lots of guesses by people over the past few days, making the list quite fun really . Obviously some of them would be difficult for people to have got as they'd never heard of the artists, but there's enough in there to have given most people a shot at one or two.

What's likely to be got next ? Well, 9 is bound to stick in someone's head some time soon. 15, too, should suddenly strike someone.

There's an amusing run from 22 through to 27 which nobody's got yet, and of them, 23 and 27 are unlikely to be got by anyone but family as the artist isn't likely to have been heard of outside them. 22 is more an odd one because the lyrics for the track are sort of strung together to sound good (or I just don't understand it!).

Clues ? 25 and 26 are female singers, the former of which is used on the end of a Buffy episode. 15 isn't sung as a single line, it's split after the word 'bottom'. 32 is a female singer too; as is 36 although it's on an earlier album by a group whose later stuff is predominently male. 43 is a female singer too and is intentionally placed beside 42.

44 is a sad track. Well, it's not really so sad, but it makes me sad. 46 is a well known group, but possibly not a well known album - the earlier albums were better known (at least by me until I began listening to the later stuff, obviously).

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28 Jan 2005 (Friday) 

Quite a few guesses of lyrics from people today. Simon got loads, Hannah and Andrew Hill got a few.

Interesting ones that cropped up were number 8 ('I tried so hard and got so far') which both Simon and Hannah said they knew but couldn't guess, and 33 (The Power of Love), though. which they both didn't get.

I'm a little surprised that nobody's got 15 ('Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom I'm dying again') yet.

Unsurprisingly, nobody's managed to guess 50 or 51 just yet which were thrown in for being really hard to get, I thought. 49's not exactly easy either, now I think about it.

So, based on that utterly unscientific poll of just 3 people, the most well known track is 'Stay', closely followed by 'How Soon Is Now?', 'Grendel', and 'Sweet Child O' Mine'.

Which ones am I surprised that haven't been got yet ? Well, 8 should have been got I think. 12 really should have been, but maybe that's just me. Actually I've just noticed that 6 is piano-based which (other than the lyrical and melodic content) is a good indicator of why I like it I guess. Plus I grew up with it played a bit, so it sort of stuck in my head. It's not an obvious section from the track, though. 15 is surprising too, possibly more so than 8.

Other than 49-51 which others are unsurprisingly unguessed ? Probably 5, 22, 25, 26, 27, and 30. Ah, Chris Williams just got 50. And 8 as well.

Of course, Julian would fill in most of the gaps if he had a go because he's just got the memory for these things, even if his tastes differ from mine.

I'll fill in the final answers after a week or so.

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27 Jan 2005 (Thursday) 

Some random song quotes in the style of Hannah will follow, although I can't actually put the collection on random (it's complicated, but ControlAMPlayer - the 'front end' that I use for playing MP3s has no concept of random. That's because I wrote it and I have no interest in playing things randomly - I listen to albums upon albums upon albums and having it playing things out of place would annoy me. And, more technically, the MP3 collection isn't accessible through an auto-indexed database (ControlAMPlayer is written in Assembler quite a few years before I had a database component on the system) and therefore to access the collection would mean cataloguing at least 19,100 files (spread over 914 artists) over an NFS link on 10baseT. Not something you want to be doing as a background operation, never mind in assembler. Plus on a less technical level, there's a lot of cack in the collection and I hardly want to listen to it randomly. So all in all, I don't deal in random playing of tracks), so instead it'll be a few minor snippets which I'll just choose at random that I think might amuse, irritate or... well, I don't care anyhow. It's amusing to me.

If you drop me an email with the name in, I'll fill in the details. Oh, and in Hannah style, they'll only be single lines. I'd probably have used more than that, but they're only single lines as she used only single lines. Ok, maybe I'll do a couple of double lines.

And remember, it's cheating to use lyrics databases except to confirm that the line is the one you believe it to be.

Don't you cry precious tears for me. [ 1: Nobody, Further Away, from Ever, by IQ ]

And I have walked these city streets, with X-ray eyes devoid of grief. And I have heard your every breath, and I have watched your every step. [ 2: Simon, The Crime Part 1 - Ballad Of Billy Grey, from The Crime, by Grey Lady Down ]

Close your eyes. Don't you feel the rejection, baby ? Does it hurt ? [ 3: Chris Johns, Honeymoon Suite, from In A Reverie, by Lacuna Coil ]

You changed your name You changed your face You moved a thousand miles away [ 4: Simon, The Crime Part 3 - Paper chains, from The Crime, by Grey Lady Down ]

Behind those eyes a world explodes - no one there to save him. [ 5: Nobody, The Perfect Element, from The Perfect Element (Part I), by Pain Of Salvation ]

So you go, and you stand on your own And you leave on your own [ 6: Hannah, Simon, Chris Johns, How Soon Is Now?, from Meat Is Murder, by The Smiths ]

(7 appears to have been a duplicate, so I've just removed it)

I tried so hard and got so far. [ 8: Chris Williams, Chris Johns, In The End, from Hybrid Theory, by Linkin Park ]

Oh can't you see you belong to me. [ 9: Chris Johns, Julian, Every Breath You Take, from Every Breath You Take (The Singles), by The Police ]

Would you like to learn to fly ? Would you like to see me try ? [ 10: Dad, One Of My Turns, from The Wall, by Pink Floyd ]

Take no prisoners For they shall not receive any hope from me. [ 11: Simon, Empire Of A Thousand Days, from Pride, by Arena ]

Mother feels so shocked, Father's world is rocked, And their thoughts turn to their own little girl. [ 12: Dad, Chris Johns, I Don't Like Mondays, by Boomtown Rats ]

I've had enough of all your pretty, pretty speeches. [ 13: Simon, Andrew Hill, Grendel, from B'Sides themselves, by Marillion ]

In your head they are fighting. [ 14: Simon, Chris Johns, Zombie, from No Need To Argue, by Cranberries ]

Just when I thought I'd reached the bottom, I'm dying again [ 15: Chris Johns, Going Under, from Fallen, by Evanescence ]

Lying here I can see, sprawled in front of me, A man lying dead with a hole in his head. [ 16: Simon, Last Act, from Quest, by Final Conflict ]

I wouldn't want to be you. Mostly not even near you. [ 17: Simon, Your Town, from Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, by Deacon Blue ]

I can see you in the morning when you go to school. [ 18: Simon, Dad, School, from Crime Of The Century, by Supertramp ]

Though you don't know the girls, you'll recognise the view. [ 19: Simon, Andrew Hill, A Collection, from No One Can single B-side, by Marillion ]

Once I used to read, once I used to think. Now I solve my problems by ordering in another drink. [ 20: Nobody, Permanent Vacation, from Heritage and Visions, by Galleon ]

It's not how it used to be. You've taken my life away. [ 21: Simon, Chris Johns, What Do You Want From Me ?, by Monaco ]

Shadows move in pairs Ring out from a bruised postcard In the shooting yard Looking through the tears [ 22: Nobody, Inside, from The Mind's Eye, by Stiltskin ]

I don't care where you go or who you'll tell. [ 23: Julian, Into The Night, from Under The Red And White Sky, by John Wesley ]

He's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise - in his youth or a dream, he can't be precise. [ 24: Julian, Sorrow, from A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, by Pink Floyd ]

The winter here is cold and bitter. It's chilled us to the bone. [ 25: Nobody, Full Of Grace, from Surfacing, by Sarah McLachlan ]

Wanna run for you. Would it do any good? If I flew for you, You would still be standing. [ 26: Nobody, Heart And Shoulder, from Siren, by Heather Nova ]

I can hear echoes of laughter in the attic Weeping in the hallway. [ 27: Nobody, Scared Of The Dark, from Ring Of Roses, by Shadowland ]

You'd better hope and pray that you'll wake one day in your own world. [ 28: Hannah, Simon, Andrew Hill, Stay, by Shakespear's Sister ]

Rain, sea, surf, sand, clouds and sky Hush now baby, don't you cry [ 29: Dad, Mockingbird, from Once Again, by Barclay James Harvest ]

Catch the blue train to places never been before [ 30: Julian, Somewhere Down That Crazy River, from Robbie Robertson, by Robbie Robertson ]

Everything about you is how I'd wanna be. [ 31: Simon, Bliss, from Origin Of Symmetry, by Muse ]

It's getting hard to wake up in the morning My head is spinning constantly [ 32: Nobody, Toy Soldiers, from Toy Soldiers, by Martika ]

I'll protect you from the hooded claw; Keep the vampires from your door. [ 33: Andrew Hill, Dad, The Power Of Love, from Welcome To The Pleasuredome, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood ]

You're a slave to fashion and your life is full of passion [ 34: Nobody, When Will I Be Famous ?, by Bros ]

When they ask me 'what are you looking at ?' I always answer 'nothing much'. [ 35: Nobody, Left Of Center, by Suzanne Vega ]

First you like to talk Then you like to come around [ 36: Nobody, Well Known Sinner, from Take My Head, by Archive ]

It must have been so bad 'cause living with me must have damn near killed you [ 37: Simon, How You Remind Me, from Silver Side Up, by Nickelback ]

(38 was a duplicate, so I've just removed it)

The dreams of wicked men, the sprites of spirit worlds, The hollow laughs of adults, the sniggers of little girls. The shadows from the bedroom when the lights went off, Demons that danced across the beams in cold deserted lofts. [ 39: Simon, All Alone, from Quest, by Final Conflict ]

With a stroke, one blinding stroke, the scythe sweeps the land The millions fall to their knees and finally set free [ 40: Simon, The Last Man On Earth, from The Window Of Life, by Pendragon ]

All you people in TV land I will wake up your empty shells Peak-time viewing blown in a flash As I burn into your memory cells [ 41: Nobody, Family Snapshot, from Shaking The Tree, by Peter Gabriel ]

Ghostly voices whisper 'Will you come and play?' [ 42: Dad, Land Of Make Believe, from The Best Of Bucks Fizz, by Bucks Fizz ]

Rub this magic lantern He will make your dreams come true for you [ 43: Nobody, Dear Jessie, from Like A Prayer, by Madonna ]

He left you black and blue Without a word of explanation [ 44: Nobody, Ocean Drive, from Ocean Drive, by Lighthouse Family ]

Here was I surrounded by a thousand fingers suddenly Pointed right at me [ 45: Simon, Hazard, from Rush Street, by Richard Marx ]

There's an insect in your ear If you scratch it won't disappear It's going to itch and burn and sting [ 46: Nobody, Staring At The Sun, from Pop, by U2 ]

I hate to look into those eyes And see an ounce of pain [ 47: Hannah, Simon, Sweet Child O' Mine, from Appetite For Destruction, by Guns 'n' Roses ]

All the hatred in the world Where did it all come from? [ 48: Simon, Dad, Prayer, from The World, by Pendragon ]

Twenty seconds and counting... ... t minus fifteen seconds [ 49: Chris Johns, It's A Sin, from Actually, by Pet Shop Boys ]

and can I just throw in ...

Dame tu mano y venga conmigo vámonos al viaje para buscar los so