Tired of Life!
I was doing a Google image search for Robert Indiana’s LOVE poster and wasn’t getting anywhere fast, mainly because I couldn’t remember Robert Indiana’s name.
But I did find this.
And this.
Monthly Archive for January, 2005
Back at the old grey school, we had for a short, weird while a rather colourful English teacher called Tim Mowl.
Totally unbidden, a memory popped into my head this afternoon of a short story he once read to us, called ‘The Mezzotint’. My memory might be playing tricks, but I seem to recall that on that particular afternoon we, me and my fellows of the Lower Remove 2, were having our English lesson in the Physics lab for some reason. ‘The Mezzotint’ is a ghost story, and having it read to us in the cavernous Victorian laboratory seemed most appropriate. Using that most fiendishly efficient internet search engine, I resolved to track the story down and read it again.
I was expecting to have to order the book from Amazon, but it turns out that it was written by M R James, and thanks to Mr Charles Tyson you can read the whole story for yourself on the web. You might also want to explore the rest of Mr Tyson’s web site - it’s not quite like any other, and I rather like the whole enterprise. Well, anyone who describes his own solitaire computer game as ‘incorrigibly free’ can’t be such a rum cove, can he?
…or something similar ran a memorable Onion headline.
Playing with the 233 mHz iMac, I discovered some forgotton old tools, and I ended up making wallpaper…
My eldest son Henry won a disposable camera at a Somerset House family day last summer, and I finally got the pictures back from Boots. I think they’re great, it’s interesting to see the world through the eyes of a four-to-five-year-old.
Henry’s school book bag.
Cousin Dominic and brother William having a sleepover at Nanny’s house.
Mummy.
Paul next door.
Paula next door.
Sleepover Sweets!
The words of Douglas Adams, and they just about sum up my feelings about the Asian earthquake and tsunami.
We’ve been collecting improbably named Americans at work, so my eyes lit up when I saw a certain Waverly Person, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center, being interviewed about the tsuami on CNN. The following evening I heard him being interviewed by Roger Hearing on The World Tonight on Radio 4. The interview was extraordinary - Roger pressed him on why no-one called any governments in the region to warn them a tsunami might be on the way, and Waverly said “who would you call?”. Roger suggested looking them up in the phone book. He could also have suggested calling their US embassies, using the internet - or maybe even just calling CNN.
Now, a lot of harsh words have been thrown at Waverly - at least in my office, any way. I think this is a bit harsh. Waverly looks like a nice man, he’s getting on a bit. He’s also based in Denver which is (a) the dullest city I’ve ever visited, and (b) a long way from the sea, so tsumanis are not only not his area of expertise, they’re probably not on on his mind. Well, they probably are now.
Cringely comes up trumps again this week. He says a tsunami warning system could be set up, not over ten years costing millions of dollars - but within a year using some smart software, data already available on the internet, running on low-end PCs with a dial-up internet connection. Let’s hope he’s right and that some smart programmers make his idea a reality.
Imagine my surprise when I finally got my hands on the proper Motorola Mobile Phone Tools, only to discover that it won’t let you change ringtones or wallpaper on a C350 phone, even though the C350 has a colour screen and comes pre-loaded with some very sucky yucky images and tones.
Anyhoo, I found a friend with a WindowsXP machine and - with some trepidation - loaded P2KMan. And it worked! Well, ringtones seem to be a bit of a pain and I haven’t got them working yet, but I managed to get some of my own wallpaper uploaded. You do need to be very careful with P2KMan, though, as it’s possible to damage your phone by deleting essential files.
Images for wallpaper or screensavers should be GIFs, preferably 96×65 pixels. Animated screensavers can be animated GIFs. You can find rather more info than you’re ever likely to need about creating images and ringtones for the C350 here (PDF file).
I’ve also knocked up some simple guide images - a transparent GIF and a Photoshop / Elements layered image that show the safe areas for your wallpaper, so you can see which bits will be obscured by the battery icon, time, netwok ident etc:
right-click here to download template.psd
Plus a few wallpaper images that I made:
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