Monday, July 28, 2003
The trip to London was great fun.I'm absolutely shattered now... far too tired to tell the story and Brigitte tells it very nicely in her blog, so I'll just show you my fave photo form the trip.
There'll be more great pics appearing in my photo album soon.
Labels: photos
Steve 9:51 PM [+] (0) comments
It's early, I can't believe I'm awake already and we're off to London for Brigitte's game show audition.
The plan is to bimble around before and after... so expect photos when we get back.
Steve 5:38 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Okay, this link is a bit fussy and doesn't seem to work all the time, depending on what other browsers you have open and what's in them... but here it is anyway.Benway's Live Audio Stream
If you're using a popup killer you may need to disable it. For some reason it also doesn't seem to work of you have the status bar at the bottom of your browser disabled. There're probably numerous other things that'll stop it from working, so the best I can say is, it works from here... sometimes.
Oh yeah... if you don't have broadband, it isn't even worth trying.
Steve 1:10 PM [+] (0) comments
More webcam/audio related waffle, so I'm sorry if that's a boring subject for you.
I've discovered that I if I run the camarades webcam software first, and then the other software, I can provide a decent quality cam image and live streaming audio with none of the glitching or beaks in the audio, as the camarades software uses a different port than the audio to send the cam image. You'll still need a broadband connection to hear the audio effectively, but it's much better than it was.
What this means though is, I now need to go back and remove all the cam 2 links from the sites I added them to and add an audio link to the main cam page. That's gonna have to wait a few days, as I don't have the time at the moment... it's going to be a busy week.
Busy? Moi? How can that be?
Today I'm spending some quality time with Brigitte as I tend to neglect her quite badly when I'm on a roll web design wise. Tomorrow we're going to London as Brigitte has an audition for another tv game show. Tuesday my mum's coming round and will likely take up a large chunk of my day. Wednesday I'm out buying birthday pressies for Brigitte, and on thursday we're off down to Dorset for a couple of days.
Maybe I'll find time between now and thursday to sort it out... maybe not.
Labels: webcams
Steve 11:08 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, July 25, 2003
Right then, after much testing I've made the new cam live on one of my main sites, so there's no more annoying popups and the design is much nicer.Truth is, it's still something of a compromise, as the audio stream breaks momenteraly each time the cam image updates. It's tollerable on a broadband connection, but fairly hopeless on dialup, even using the LoFi audio option. I've included the option to disable the cam, for those strange people who may want to listen to whatever I'm doing rather than watch and don't want the glitching.
The other issue I have is what to do about having two cam pages. The usual one is functional again and has the benefit of being on a community site, so it pulls traffic to my websites... but the new one has the funky audio option. The problem being I can't run both at the same time.
I guess I'll just alternate from day to day, and you'll always know if the original one is online as it has that funky status indicator.
Anyways, HERE is the link to the new cam page, and it'll also be in the sidebar on the left.
Labels: webcams
Steve 2:09 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Okay... ignore that last post, I've found something much better.HERE is the new webcam link.
I've fine tuned the audio and video rate so that they work well even on dialup connections. Take a look :-)
Steve 9:50 PM [+] (0) comments
The website that usually hosts my webcam appears to be down. Hopefully this is just a temporary situation, but it did cause me to go looking for alternatives. One of the things I found is a piece of software that not only streams video, but also audio.
I've been tinkering with it for a few hours now, as the idea of having a live audio stream is very appealing. So far I've managed to make it produce an mp3 audio stream, but am unable to alter the bitrate, rendering it useless for anyone on dialup, and probably not too useful if I have several viewers.
Anyways, if you'd like to have a look/listen, HERE is the link. To listen to the audio, click the triangle/arrow button on the page.
This will probably only be active for tonight, though if my regular cam hosting site remains down, I may set up something a bit more permenant.
Labels: webcams
Steve 7:29 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
It's one of those quiet uneventful periods chez Benway.Not much going on but sleep, tv, surfing, chatting, and generally idling away the days. I'm back in daytime mode again, and to be honest, it really doesn't suit me. I dunno what it is about being a nocturnal creature, but I do all my best thinking at night, so when I'm in daytime mode, I find it hard to function beyond simply existing.
Labels: sleep
Steve 4:18 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, July 20, 2003
Gulp!I just got my hands on something so... ummm... it's so something I daren't say what it is.
Something else it is is complicated, the last thing I had like this took me 3 years to learn, so this might take a lifetime, especially considering it took me 3 hours just to make the thing work at all.
Oh my.
Steve 7:38 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, July 19, 2003
Mirc is a wonderful program and chatting on IRC a great way to meet people and generally have fun chatting. There is however a down side... spam and lamers.There's not much more annoying than chatting away, either in the main room or in private, than to have a window pop open advertising porn, or some lame twit messaging you out of the blue asking "asl?" or some other dumbass thing.
There is however a solution to this.
While wandering through a series of mirc scripting sites, I came across a little addon that allows you to block and close the chat window to these lame twits, sending them whatever message you like in the process.
Initially it came unconfigured, and only allowed the blocking of 10 words or phrases, but I've done a little work on it, adding all the usual crap you're likely to get messaged with on the undernet network, and increasing the block count to 20 words.
So... if you use mirc, know how to install remote scripts and would like to block all that annying rubbish, Right Click Here and save it to your mirc folder. You may need to rename the file from .txt to .mrc, as earlier versions of mirc don't appear to like using .txt files as scripts.
There are still several empty slots available to block more words, or you could simply reset the whole list to block whatever you want.
Way handy :-)
Labels: chatrooms
Steve 1:42 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, July 17, 2003
After a day of being unable to publish, tripod have sorted out their ftp problems.Blogging may not be the be all and end all, but I find myself getting very aggravated when I don't have access to any of my sites, especially when solving the problem is out of my hands.
Steve 2:06 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
THIS should please a few people.... hehehe. It's a news report on a study in Australia that suggests men who frequently masturbate are at lower risk of developing prostate cancer.The potential for govt sponsored health advice on tv rather makes the mind boggle.
"Are you worried about prostate cancer? Then spank the monkey and add years to your life."
Steve 11:50 PM [+] (0) comments
That, it has to be said, was a really boring night.
The only noteworthy event was having my intelligence insulted by someone I'd otherwise considered a decent enough person, who couldn't accept that I don't share the same interest in reading material as him. Duh!
Steve 6:20 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, July 14, 2003
It's hot. It's very very hot.There's stuff I probably should be doing, site updates and suchlike, but damnit, it's just too hot to think, never mind actually do anything.
I'm getting some curious emails lately. Running some rather high profile websites, not to mention the webcam, I've come to expect that... but the themes are often poles apart.
Todays first notable email is from a guy who's writing a thiesis and is asking me about statistics regarding webcam community usage... more specificly, how many people I think use them world wide. Heh... it's rather amusing how having a top listing on google in a particular field causes people to see me as an authority on certain things... especially when I barely have a clue. I'll take a guess, and make it clear it is nothing but a guess.
The other notable email is one of a series from some guy who's been watching my webcam and wants to see my arms. Huh? Emails like that make me laugh.... especially when I make it clear on my cam page that I don't do requests of any kind. And absolutely NO WAY am I gonna wear a tank top. Get real!
Steve 11:50 PM [+] (0) comments
Yesterday's link to the #england Undernet chatroom didn't work. Something to do with Tripod not liking the applet, so I've moved it and it's now fully functional.
Steve 9:42 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, July 13, 2003
Since I've been waffling quite a bit recenty about the #England Undernet IRC chatroom where I hang out these days, I'd added a java chat applet.Now anyone who's not familar with mirc or other irc software can check the place out.
Be aware... this isn't my room, I'm not even an op there and have absolutely no control in the room whatsoever. It's can be a tough room for newcomers, and people who don't have the first clue regarding chat etiquette generally have quite a rough time. That's not to say it's not a friendly place... just with all the lamers out there, the regulars have little or no time for idiots, and it doesn't take much to get labelled an idiot.
So... if you're feeling brave, CLICK HERE.
I make no claims or guarantees regarding the security of the chat applet, and it's almost certainly not as safe as using mirc, but it's free, fast to load, and it works.
Labels: chatrooms
Steve 7:43 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Today has consisted of mostly sleep, or being awake and thinking about going back to sleep.It seems one or two people from the #england undernet irc chatroom have found this blog, probably via my webcam page, so I wanna say a big hi to the rabble there :-)
I've been thinking of putting up a java applet to that room on one or other of my sites, so that various friends who don't use mirc can get in and join the mayhem. However, it not being my room, and with various security issues that could arise, I'm in two minds about it.
We'll see.
Steve 10:34 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, July 11, 2003
Bwaaahaaaahaaaaahaaaaaa!!!!Big Brother!
Lisa!!
You're outta there... and it couldn't happen to a more deserving person.
Steve 9:02 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Phew... slept for 14 hours solid and then got up and fixed the comments script.A friend dropped round later for a coffee and a chat, and put herself on the dating site Brigitte and myself met on... so it should be interesting to see how much luck she has. It's a pretty good site too... I certainly can't complain about it :-)
There's not much else to tell you at the moment... not surprising considering how long I was asleep for.
Labels: sleep
Steve 8:22 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Whoops. Tehcnical difficulties with the comments script.It's not showing up when people have commented, which is why I haven't replied to anyone's comments.
Sorry folks, I'm not ignoring you all, I just didn't realise anyone had said anything. Truth is, I wasn't even sure anyone read this thing any more. It's nice to know that's not the case :-)
Labels: blogging
Steve 7:38 PM [+] (0) comments
I haven't had such a laugh in a chatroom for a long time.
There's a new stats page for the undernet #england chatroom. It includes rankings for people who talk the most and includes random quotes from everyone listed, among a whole load of other things.
So last night several of us played a game, talking as much rubbish as possible to climb to the top of the listing, and to get the funniest/silliest quotes.
Labels: chatrooms
Steve 7:38 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Panic over. The card was accepted and my site is back up again.What a relief.
Now I just need to make a point of logging into my account on a more regular basis, like maybe once a week.
Steve 7:12 PM [+] (0) comments
Argh!
My main website has been deactivated.
Stupid stupid stupid stupid me!!!
I have to log into the account at least once every 30 days, and was a couple of days out this month. Damnit!
I can't really tell you how much of a disaster this is, or why... but it's not good.
Anyway, I went through the reactivation procedure, which is costing me £25... but this requires a credit card and there's a chance the card I used may not be accepted. So, I phoned them and they were unable to confirm if the card would be accepted, and I'll have to wait till tomorrow to find out. If it isn't, I'll have to request a postal form and pay via postal order, which will take up to 7 days. Not good... not good at all.
In better news... actually, it's not my news to tell, but Brigitte will be blogging about it in the near future.
Steve 5:55 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, July 07, 2003
You've seen Spiderman, The X-Men, Daredevil and maybe even The Hulk, but did you know there's a Fantastic Four movie? I'll bet you didn't.Made in 1994 for a paltry $2 million, the film was pulled from release before any reviewer ever saw it, with the intention of producing a $50 million blockbuster in it's place. Needless to say, that blockbuster was never made, and the original version has sat hidden on some movie company shelf ever since.
Almost.
Ummm....
Labels: movies
Steve 10:21 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, July 06, 2003
Brigitte rocks.Let me say that again, just in case I didn't make myself clear... Brigitte rocks!!!
See the super funky bath sponge she bought for me in town the other day...
In other news, I watched Terminator 3 today.
How did I see it when it's not released in the uk till August?
*Cough*
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll already know... and if not, I'm not telling.
Anyway, suffice to say the film is very good.
I'd had my doubts about it, Arnie being no spring chicken these says, but he pulls it off really well... better than in T2 in fact.
With all the effects you'd expect and pretty good acting too, the film had a slightly different feel to the last two, probably because it wasn't directed by James Cameron.
It's hard to say what exactly was different... there was more obvious humour, but it seemed somehow more grown up too. The biggest surprise was the ending (no I'm not telling), and I'm not sure if I liked it or not, but it certainly isn't what I've come to expect. Maybe that's why I'm not sure about it.
Steve 10:33 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, July 03, 2003
I learned how to convert avi files to VCD last night, so today I spliced together all the short movies I'd shot with my digital camera and dumped them all onto a CD. It feels kinda weird watching them on tv after viewing them on the laptop for so long.Anyways, having gotten into the mood for dumping stuff onto CD, and wanting to take full advantage of my DVD player's multi-format abilities, I dumped my whole digital photo collection onto CD too... they're cycling through a slide show as I type this.
The other cool aspect of all this is that I've been able to delete a whole mass of stuff from my hard drive, freeing up room for some heavy duty video file conversions.
Labels: video
Steve 4:44 AM [+] (0) comments
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