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October 9, 2008
Giraffes resting
June 11, 2008
Beardyman - Beat Boxing
December 8, 2007
How to stop British Telecom throttling your bittorrent
If you are fucking outraged by BT Broadband throttling bittorrent traffic read on to see how you can avoid this. Be aware that if you download too much BT may impale you on their spikes of justice for breaching their ‘fair-use’ policy. I for one am not happy to have my bittorrent downloads crawl at 20kb/s for most of the day.
This is a pretty simple trick that will work for now but there is not a guarantee that it is future proof. Simply change your bittorrent port to ‘443′ and don’t forget to forward that port on your router.
If you happen to be running Ubuntu or some other flavour of Linux like myself, then you might need to run your bittorrent client as superuser. To do this try running your bittorrent client using gksudo in Gnome or kdesu in KDE.
For instance, I typically hit ALT+F2 and type:
gksudo deluge
Deluge being my preferred bittorrent client, due to it’s similarity to utorrent for Windows. Don’t forget to test the port to make sure it’s forwarded.
November 27, 2007
Hellblazer - Constantine
I’ve just had the pleasure to start reading Hellblazer. This comic might be more well known to you as the film ‘Constantine’, of which it has very little in common with. Alan Moore sure has a habit of writing comics, selling the writes to the Silvers and then disowning the whole thing. I guess I should lay off growing my beard to the point where I become as dramatic as that - although I fear some would say I was already a lost cause.
It is worth noting when to begin to read this comic that it was first penned in ‘88. As such the style is aged in comparison to the airbrushed, photochopped offerings we see on our comic stands today. However Hellblazer reflects the spirit of the times, and the gritty drawing style reflects the content.
We see Constantine, an ambivalent anti-hero move through a Thatcher Britain, depressed and dark in both soul and body. As an ’80s child I am struck by things half remembered from my childhood, and other things that I was shockingly unaware of.
Constantine seems frequently forced into a position of making a moral choice, something that reflects a concern of the time. As the audience we urge him to make the right choice, but throughout the first few chapters he makes some entirely selfish ones - some might argue for self preservations sake - which leave us ill at ease with him as a hero.
Constantine seems to be a morally bankrupt character, however this benefits us as the reader as we can watch with incredulity as he makes choices we couldn’t our selves. This incredulity on our part is perhaps even more humorous than anything, because we rely on Constantine’s ability to think first of himself before others, so we can sit safely on his shoulder and come along for the ride.
However, having said all this I must admit that I have a great deal to read as of yet and will look forward to Constantine’s character developing. Plus, he’s fucking blond — not fucking Keanu Reeves.
November 26, 2007
Risen, his fetid corpse one again reaches out in the digital ether!
Heya all. I realize that the last time I blogged it was probably a different year/century/color but I am back.
Everything has been a little crazy, least of all the fact that I am now living at the bottom of my mum’s garden in a shed pagoda. This is a temporary measure while I find a new place to live. My previous Landlord (and old family friend) asked me if he could have my room to put up his recently made homeless colleague who was sleeping in the basement of their shop. Problematically as my Landlord was family friend I had entered into an informal tenancy with him with no contract - he gave me 7 days notice.
So here I am, the angry hermit at the bottom of the garden. I have sedentary Koi Carp for company, and thankfully through the wonders of wifi I have internet access.
I’m pretty bored these days - my jobs lost its interest and I desperately needs something new and inspiring to do. I am going to pull all the old files off my hard drives that are sitting around after I rebuilt my computer. Heh, I should mention that I built a new PC. I could go in to specs, but it’s enough to say it’s pretty nice to have some new gear to play around with. Anyhow, I need to pull my wiki database from the old hard drives, perhaps everything I’ve jotted down there will inspire me - to what, I don’t know.
Interestingly, I have been running Ubuntu exclusively now on my PC since building it. I guess I have been using it for about 2 months. It’s hardly a shock to the system as I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop for over a year. I am thinking about writing some articles about Ubuntu, Gnome & usability as there are elements that are bugging the hell out of me that I feel the urge to get down on e-paper.
Plus, I keep on getting sodding distracted!!!! argh. I swear I have e-add.