Tired

Tired from my day spent on attachment at the hospital. Waking up at noon most days for the past three months has made me forget how it feels like to have an early start and a long day.

Creating your personal MTV

There seem to be fewer additions to the iTunes Music Store's free music video section of late, probably due to the fact that Apple has begun bundling videos with songs to be sold as 'exclusive video singles'. Nonetheless, there's still a wide selection of free videos to browse through; 596 are available on the US store as of today.

Now that iTunes 4.9 supports video playback, it's become possible to create a personalised MTV experience of sorts.

1. Follow the instructions on this website to download your videos of choice.
2. Drag and drop the videos into iTunes and tag them with the appropriate song and album information.
3. Create a playlist and add the videos you'd like to view. To show all music videos in your Library, create a smart playlist and set 'Kind' to 'Quicktime movie file'.
4. Go to the Advanced tab in Preferences and choose to play videos full screen.
5. Voila! Start the first video in your playlist and your videos will play continuously much like MTV, but only personalised with the videos you want. Turn shuffle on to randomise the sequence of videos playing.

Google Talk

Google has launched yet another web service, a new IM system called Google Talk. It's not particularly feature rich, so there isn't any compelling reason for someone to switch and go through the hassle of convincing his entire contact list to do so as well.

Shows promise though, given that it's based on the open-source Jabber protocol. Most of my contacts are on MSN, which isn't particularly Mac-friendly.

Bad day

Nothing's gone right today. A bad stomach to start the day, had to look "smart casual" and ended up wearing a motley mix of clothes, headed to my destination and got lost, scratched my mum's car and mounted two kerbs. 'Nuff said.

Marvel art

There's some magnificent comic art in the Marvel galleries at Corbis. If stock images weren't so exorbitantly priced, I'd buy one for my desktop. The artwork and colours are quite fabulous.

Would you like me to.

When you need help, there's always the Microsoft Office Assistant :)

The backstroke of the west

These are screenshots from a Chinese bootleg DVD of 'Revenge of the Sith'. Check out the subtitles; they're a direct English transliteration of the dubbed speech going on in Mandarin. Absolutely hilarious!

More at winterson.com: episode iii: the backstroke of the west (Google cache)

Getting a car in London

MINI.co.uk

16 years ago

BBC On This Day
1989: Man U sold in record takeover deal

"Manchester United Football Club has been sold for £20m in the biggest takeover deal in the history of British football."

I don't think £20m can buy much in today's inflated football market!

Moscow Metro panoramas

Take a look at these stunning panoramas of the Moscow Metro; the ornate mosaics are among the best examples of socialist realist art.

Read more about the Moscow Metro and socialist realism.

Mint

I dug up the press CD for Dad's toy museum and café, dubbed Mint, slated to open end 2005 in Singapore. The museum will exhibit pieces from his antique toy collection, one of the largest and finest in the world. Here are some artists' impressions.

Building exterior

Museum interior on the 3rd floor

Museum interior on the 5th floor

Hellooo Ser!

I've linked your blog! :)
She has some sweet art going on at her deviantART gallery.

It was nice

It was nice meeting her over dinner after such a long time. All the memories, pleasant or otherwise, came back to me on the journey home. Driving along a long, empty highway at night alone with one's thoughts can be very enjoyable.

WFTP networks

Michael Cina, Karl Frankowski, and Ben Hribar have some nice chill-out sets up at WFTP networks™. Soothing sounds in the evening just before bed (save for the cringe-worthy robotic introduction to each set). Their latest is 2005_08_16_WFTP0030 titled Mellow Summer, but I prefer some of their earlier jazzier sets. Listen in by streaming audio or podcast feed.

Somatic goodness

In addition to his existing Somatic icons, David Lanham of The Iconfactory has made available on his personal website Somatic Docs, an exhaustive new set of 280 (!) document icons. Downloads in both Mac and Windows formats. Indulge your desktop in some Somatic goodness!



Also up on his site are a whole slew of GUI goodies, including a new Somatic theme optimised for Tiger (you'll need ShapeShifter) and a line-up of excellently illustrated desktops. I've got SpaceDoggy on my desktop now, how about you?

Decidedly bored

Is blogging a perilous experience? Well it's always been my staunch belief that placing one's personal thoughts in the public domain without careful consideration can have disastrous after-effects; consequently, friends who tell me they've succumbed to the phenomenon are, more often than not, met with a look of disdain. Most assume that only the closest family and acquaintances would bother reading their blog, yet I have seen more than one instance of the trigger-happy blogger whose unfortunate comments are perused by the one reader they were not intended for.

The summer holidays go on for a month more; thus far I've had the odd movie and dinner with friends. But I prefer staying home doing nothing, I must say much to the dismay of my parents. Yet in my self-imposed hibernation at home I have done nearly every home-bound activity possible and I'm getting bored. And so I've decided to try this stuff out, here goes!