Monday, April 19, 2010
The Nature Of RealityA series of five videos about my theories and ideas on the nature of reality.
Labels: video
Steve 4:23 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Walk Into Town - Worksop in North Nottinghamshire.I took an old camera with me on my walk into town today, and shot some of the sites on the way.
The image quality is very rough, as it's a very old digital stills camera. I didn't want to take my usual camera, as it's a bit big, not at all suitable for shooting unobtrusively, and would have drawn unwanted attention.
Despite the low resolution and frame rate, I rather like the feel of the footage... like something from an old 70s home move, shot with 8mm film or something.
I was initially going to add commentary, but even though I've ;ived here for nearly 5 years, I don't know most fo the street names, and virtually none of the history, so it would have been fairly pointless.
The music is all royalty free and comes from
incompetech.com
Steve 12:20 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Q&A Special!This video is in 12 parts. When each part finishes, wait a few moments and the next part will load automatically.
Steve 4:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The episode of The Gadget that featured my Atari 2600 "Heavy Sixer" a few weeks ago is now streaming on their website.You can find it here.
If you don't want to watch the whole episode, skip forward to around 17:40ish. You'll have to watch a few adverts first, but what the heck.
I just like watching that bit where they're playing Atari games, knowing not only that that's my console, and those are my game cartridges, but also that I was sitting in that room while they recorded.
Steve 6:47 PM [+] (3) comments
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
I've updated the Video Clips page, adding a load of stuff I've had sitting around on youtube for a while.If you watch my youtube videos on a regular basis, you may already be familiar with these, but if you don't and have nothing better to do, go take a look.
Labels: video
Steve 7:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, August 10, 2009
I've uploaded a new page for that Scarborough video, including an index, so if you'd like to know exactly what you're looking at while watching, go check it out.Steve 6:51 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Our holiday in Scarborough.Steve 12:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Labels: video
Steve 2:21 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, July 17, 2009
Labels: video
Steve 6:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, June 29, 2009
Just setting the record straight regarding the suggested "theme" in my recent videos.Labels: video
Steve 1:12 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Finally, the pages with all of those music videos are up onBenway's Music Videos.
I'm working my way through adding the links to the menu on the left, but that's not going to be completed until I've uploaded the new retro gaming site I'm working on. No sense updating all of those links when I'm only gonna have to do it again soon.
Steve 2:46 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
So, all of my tunes are now on youtube. I'll be creating individual pages for each tune on this site soon... tomorrow, if all goes according to plan.In the meantime, here's all of them in one embedded player.
Steve 9:57 PM [+] (3) comments
Friday, June 05, 2009
This is number 5 in the series.This was recorded in 1989 using a Tascam Porta 01 4 track portastudio.
All of the instruments were played by myself, except for the drums, which were a Yamaha DD10.
This is another tune I'd hoped to do more with, with a band, but again, that never happened.
It was inspired by the later tracks on the album Closer, by Joy Division. In that sense, I guess it's quite generic, but I do like the atmosphere, if you'll forgive the pun.
Along with most of the other tunes in this series, this sounds better on headphones, as a lot of the subtleties and layers are lost through speakers.
Steve 5:13 AM [+] (0) comments
This is number four in the series.
This was recorded in 1989 using a Tascam Porta 01 4 track portastudio.
All of the instruments were played by myself, except for the drums, which were a Yamaha DD10.
By this time I'd changed the "band" name, as "The Non-Existant Puppies" name no longer seemed suited to the kind of music I was making. At the time, I hoped to put together a band to play this stuff live, hopefully with a singer, but in the end, that never happened, and these tunes never existed outside of the tape they were recorded on.
Influences were The Fall and King Of The Slums.
I guess the main thing that crosses my mind when listening to this is "I really shouldn't have tried playing lead guitar." Though I do like the rhythm guitar quite a lot.
Steve 4:17 AM [+] (0) comments
This is the third tune.
By this time the band had gone through several line-up changes, none of which produced anything noteworthy, and had finally disbanded. This tune is probably the best example of the kind of clumsy noodling I managed to come up with on my own, while attempting to learn how to actually play the guitar, instead of just thrashing mindlessly at it.
Again, no clever recording equipment was used. It was just me with my amp next to an old mono tape recorder.
Steve 1:48 AM [+] (0) comments
This is the second in the series.
Steve 1:43 AM [+] (0) comments
This is the first in a series of videos I'm uploading (as mentioned a few days ago), to document my musical progression from utterly rubbish, to somewhat mediocre.
I was prompted to do these videos after finding some 20 year old tapes that I thought were lost, and then discovering that I could almost completely remove the terrible tape hiss using Audacity audio editing software.
I'm entirely aware that this tune is bloody awful, so comments stating that "You can't play" or "That's crap" are completely redundant.
This was recorded in 1988 and represents the best effort by a bunch of teens who could neither play nor sing, but were having a lot of fun making quite a racket.
No clever recording equipment was used. We simply placed our amps around a cheap mono tape recorder at the appropriate distances to get the right volumes, while the "singer" simply screamed as loud as he could.
Musical influences were a few local (Milton Keynes) alternative bands - Claire, The Sally Harper Project and Despair, and the infamous Manchester band - The Fall.
Steve 1:35 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, May 22, 2009
I've been playing around with a Media Server for my PS3 and PSP recently, so decided to do a video, describing how it all works.Steve 1:37 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
I decided I'd combine several of my hobbies - photography, music, and making videos for youtube, and came up with these....So they're nothing a lot of my friends and regular visitors won't have seen or heard before, but what the heck... I just felt like doing something different with them.
Steve 11:36 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, May 04, 2009
I installed a new piece of video editing software recently, so tonight, I had a bit of a tinker with it, just to learn the basic features.My first test run resulted in this silly little video.
Steve 2:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Labels: computers, consoles, games, video
Steve 3:41 PM [+] (3) comments
Friday, March 20, 2009
I have two new videos to share.The first is the updated video of my console and computer collection.
The second is a clip of our two dogs, Max and Bailey, playing in the living room.
Labels: computers, consoles, dogs, video
Steve 11:00 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, March 07, 2009
With the loss of our cat, Whisper, just before Christmas, a new cat was needed to fill that moggy shaped hole in the house.So, a couple of months ago, Andrea picked up a sweet little kitten from a local rescue centre.
She started out as a very timid, nervous little thing, who spent her first few days here hiding under the wardrobe in the games room.
How things have changed.
Here's her debut appearance on youtube.
Steve 2:25 AM [+] (3) comments
Saturday, January 24, 2009
This is the latest addition to my vintage computer and retro console collection.To say I'm thrilled to bits to get my hands on one of these is a serious understatement.
It's a Jupiter Ace, which probably won't mean anything at all to most people, but to retro gaming collectors, it's *the* holy grail.
Steve 11:11 PM [+] (2) comments
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I've been working on some more videos for my youtube channel again, over the past couple of days, concentrating mostly on handhelds this time.Here's one of the videos, should you feel like having a look.
If that kind of thing is your cup of tea, you can find a whole load more here.
Labels: consoles, games, video
Steve 7:34 AM [+] (3) comments
Monday, December 01, 2008
Here's the latest video of my vintage computers, retro games consoles, and classic gaming handhelds collection.Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 1:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Yet another new and rare addition to my collection.The Enterprise 64.
Steve 8:31 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, October 13, 2008
I've gradually been adding to my computer and console collection over the past couple of months... something like 10 new machines.All of them are quite nice, a few are slightly rare, or even a little exotic, but this latest one... it's a true collectors item. The Sinclair ZX80. Not ZX81.... ZX80!
It's probably the first computer in my collection that really cost me an arm and a leg, but even then, I got a very good deal, as I've seen them sell for even more.
So, rather than post a photo, and write a whole load of technical mumbo-jumbo, and as I don't have any games for it, to record videos of, I've recorded a short video article on it, and uploaded to youbube.
This vid is by no means comprehensive. I remembered loads of details and stuff that I could have, or should have, included, but what the heck. I think it serves its purpose fairly well.
Steve 2:00 AM [+] (3) comments
Friday, July 04, 2008
I don't need to say anything about this.The video speaks for itself.
Labels: computers, games, video
Steve 8:52 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Regular readers will probably be aware that I collect old computers and consoles. They may not be aware that I regularly recieve emails from people who've seen my collection, either on my website, or on youtube, and ask if I'd like to buy their old (insert console or computer here).Now, while it's nice that they're interested, I always have to decline. It simply isn't safe to be sending money to complete strangers with none of the safeguards in place that you get with ebay, or other online stores. I recently stated this on my website, as it became frustrating, having to field so many of these emails.
So, imagine my surprise when I recieved an email from a very nice guy called Rob, from Shropshire, asking if i would like a handful of old systems and large collection of software, from his own collection.... for free!!!
Rob was making room for his grandaughter, so most of his collection simply had to go. He didn't have time to be messing around with ebay, and so rather than just throw it all into a landfill, decided to give it away to a good home. A search on google found my website.
How could I refuse an offer like that?
A week spent passing emails back and forth saw us meet up at a motorway services, at a halfway point between his home and mine, and transferring numerous boxes from his car to Andreas.
We chatted in the car park for a while and I have to say, what an extremely cool chap Rob is. So, if you're reading this Rob, a very big thank you. You also get a mention in my latest youtube video.
Now to save you all from hunting on youtube, or from hunting round my site, (where I haven't embedded it yet anyway), here is the latest video of my computer and console collection. All 10 minutes of it. (It took 3 attempts to make it fit into the time limit)
Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 3:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, May 30, 2008
Nintendo Virtual Boy game vidoes are now up.On an entirely non-gaming note, wedding progress was made today.
We went to Sheffield where I bought my suit, and very nice it is too.
Later, we ordered our rings online, being quite unsatisfied with the same old unimaginitive stuff available in the shops.
Lets just say they're very cool, and very individual looking rings, and you can wait till they arrive before I show pics here.
Labels: consoles, games, video
Steve 4:55 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, May 29, 2008
More videos.Philips Videopac G7000 aka Magnavox Odyssey 2 gaming videos
Labels: consoles, games, video
Steve 6:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Latest update: Vectrex retro gaming video clips are now uploaded and ready for your viewing pleasure.Labels: consoles, games, video
Steve 5:39 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Okay, so I haven't been to bed yet.Here's the latest instalment of gaming videos.
Colecovision Games Video Clips.
There aren't as many here. Not because I didn't have time, but because these are all the games I have for the Coleco at the moment. Expect more to be added as time goes by.
Labels: consoles, games, video
Steve 8:13 AM [+] (0) comments
I've been a busy chappy over the past couple of nights, and will likely be just as busy for the rest of the week.
I have the week off work, so among other things (like organising a wedding), I'm working hard on updating the videos section of my site.
The largest and most notable inclusion so far though, is the Atari 2600 games video clips.
Obviously, there's lots more to follow, but the ammount of time involved in pulling this lot together is quite... well... it takes a while.
Setting up the games systems, playing and recording the game, uploading to YouTube, writing each page for each clip and then optimising it for google, putting together the index page, uploading the new section structure to the site, uploading all the new files, checking all the pages and then fixing the very numerous design screwups..... blah blah blah....
Anyway, check it out if you feel like it, and expect more to follow over the next couple of days.
Labels: consoles, games, video
Steve 3:41 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I'd started ripping my DVD collection and converting it to play as video files on my PS3.Initially, I used a piece of software to rip the DVDs, and then used DIVX converter to create the playable video files. However, I soon ran into problems, as DIVX converter insisted on converting to 29 frames per second, when the DVDs were only 25fps... causing huge audio sync problems. The films were ultimately unwatchable.
Anyway, after an amount of research into alternative solutions, I settled on a piece of software called Handbrake. I spent a couple of weeks ripping and converting, and then checking the conversions on my PC, just to be sure they'd come out okay.
Big mistake. I'd tested the very first one on my PS3, and it was fine, but for later conversions, I used a higher image resolution, and only much later did I find that this wouldn't play back on my PS3.
Doh!!!
So, after much research on various forums, looking for optimum settings, I realised that really, no-one who had anything to say, actually knew. Solution? Find out myself, through trial and error, and then write an article/tutorial on the subject.
And here it is....
Handbrake Settings For Converting DVD to mpeg4 for Sony PS3
Steve 2:59 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The last week has been rather difficult.My computer died... not sure if it was a hardware issue, a virus, or just generally corrupted system files, but whatever the case, it was mostly non-functional.
Anyone who knows me will know just how much time I spend on my pc, and so will understand just how distressing this was.
So... I bought a nice big 750gig external hard drive, and with the computer in safe mode, backed up all of my doccuments and transferable software.
Next I disconnected all non-vital hardware, ie card readers, webcam and gfx cards, and did a full reinstall of windows.
This worked just fine, right up to the point that I tried to re-fit my gfx cards. I have 2... one rather better than the other, but neither would install for reasons that fail me.
What this meant was that while I could have a perfectly functional workhorse of a computer, games were now out of the question.
Oh well.
On the upside though, now that everything was backed up, and my OS installation was fairly minimal, I could take the risk of repartitioning the hard drive, and setting the whole thing up as a dual-boot system.
So now I have a nice clean installation of Windows XP on one partition, and a very funky, not to mention quirky, copy of Ubuntu Linux on the other.
I'm finding this Linux malarky quite fascinating, having never used it before.
It seems to me that modern Linux OS's have something of a split personality.
On the one hand, they can be quite intuitive and very clever, allowing you to automatically install software from a huge list of compatible programs, without even having to launch a browser to find it.
On the other hand, installing things like drivers, which don't appear to be installed automatically, is like going back in time, to at least MSDOS era computing.
Very very odd.
This external hard drive thing is a cool piece of kit.
I'd been planning to buy one some time soon anyway, so the pc failure just prompted me to get the thing a little sooner.
The thing is... it can be accessed by my PS3.
Why does this matter?
Because the PS3 can play mp4 and DIVX video.
So think about it.... PS3 plugged into a 32 inch TV, with a massive hard drive containging my entire DVD (and later, VHS) collection.
No more searching for the right disk or tape... it'll be all right there, available at the touch of a button, not to mention being viewable all round the house (and garden) from my PSP, via wifi streaming.
And there's more....
For Valentines day, Andrea and I bought each other presents.
I gave her a Swarovsky crystal bracelet, which she seems very pleased with.
What she gave me pleased me no end.
It's a watch, but not just any old watch. This watch is also an mp3 player, and better yet... a video player.
It comes with software to convert your typical digital video file into 128x128 SMV video files. These are fairly tiny... 35meg, compared to a 150meg avi, and with the screen being so tiny, you don't notice the lack of quality.
So, I can fit my entire collection of Invader Zim videos into it's 2gig storage capacity, still have room for a load of tunes, and have the whole lot strapped to my wrist wherever I go.
Yay!
Labels: computers, consoles, gadgets, video
Steve 8:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
There's a chatroom I hang out in sometimes where they seem to really enjoy it when I read kids stories to them.Obviously, I don't read the story completely straight, but add a certain dry spin to it.... and in a room full of americans, with the english accent on top of it all, it seems to keep them quite entertained.
So, I figured, why not record stories like that, and upload them to youtube?
Here's my first attempt.
Labels: video
Steve 1:16 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Not a lot going on here at the moment. One or two things ticking over on the backburner, ideas bubbling away in the background, but most things on hold due to lack of motivation, funds, or both.I'll be altering the website a bit soon, removing the forum and chatroom links. The forum serves pretty much no purpose, and I'm totally done with the chatroom these days.
In their place will come a section for my youtube videos, and a links page, where I can add reciprocal links to sites that don't fit in any of the othther areas of the site.
Anyways... here's a video of Cat and his brother Milo, having a fight.
Cat's the agressive looking one.
I say "looking", coz he really isn't. He's very chilled, just Milo is one seriously annoying little shitbag of a cat, in most ways you could imagine.
Steve 10:56 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, April 06, 2007
Some video footage of my computer and games console collection.Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 1:24 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Cat likes webcams, so it seems.Steve 6:05 PM [+] (0) comments
It's been a busy few days.
Andrea's oldest daughter moved out a couple of days ago, taking one dog and two cats with her, while just a couple of days previously, we took in a stray dog.
So, while attempting to move much furniture and other stuff, we've been evading collision with Max, the staffy/whippet cross puppy, and Bailey, who looks like a german shepherd/rottweiler cross puppy.
How anyone could abandon such a sweet animal is beyond us. He'd been seen wandering round for several days, looking very lost, and when a bunch of kids started kicking him around, another more civilised kid brought him to Andrea. He's been reported as found to the appropriate authorities, but after over a week now, no-one's come forward to claim him.
Here's a video clip of Max and Bailey playing in the garden
Steve 1:10 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
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Ah, technology... dontcha just love it?Sometimes techie toys go wrong for the most untechie of reasons.
Turns out the problem I was having was down to the cd resonating. Why was it doing that? Duh. The laptop's sat on a fold-up wooden chair, and wasn't entirely horizontal. A stack of coins placed under the feet at the rear of the laptop levelled it off and cds burn just fine now.
So... svcd movies. Are they worth the huge download time when you can get a highly compressed avi file of the same film in a fraction of the time? Hell yes!!! Very very nearly dvd quality... they stomp all over vhs, and as for vcd or avi.... no contest. Watching on a tv via an svcd compatible dvd player instead of pc monitor makes a big difference too, as the low definition screen acts as a great anti-aliaser... no jaggies, pixelation or blockyness anywhere.
I'm a happy chappy again :-)
Steve 3:56 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, June 06, 2003
I have a new widget.A Samsung dvd player.
Nothing too impressive about that you may think, but it's rather more than that. The number of formats it can handle is impressive to say the least, and means I can mothball several other players.
It'll play dvds, cds, vcds, svdcs, mp3s and displays jpegs on photo cds. Sadly it's unable to play mpeg or avi video files, and the conversion software I have doesn't seem able to convert them to vcd, so I guess I'm gonna have to hunt around a few bittorrent sites for .bin and .cue files and burn movies direct to video cd.
Heavy bandwidth usage here we come :-)
Steve 7:26 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, May 23, 2003
The Benway Guide To Downloading Movies (If you're not interested in such stuff, skip this post, it'll bore you senseless.)The first port of call when looking for a movie is always going to be Kazaa Lite closeley followed by MinMX
These are both fairly typical file sharing systems where you'll often find movies in mpg and avi formats. However, the movies you'll find here have usually been reprocessed by various movie sharing groups, and the quality can often be questionable. The speed of downloads can often suck too, as very often people just grab the movie they want and then remove it form their shared folder, meaning there are only a few people sharing the file, with thousands trying to download it.
The solution to both of these problems is to go directly to the source, obtaining the movie in it's original form (or as near to it as possible) as it was distributed by the group who first obtained it.
The first port of call is usually an irc channel, the details of which I'm not going to go into, as usually these files are split into about 50 rar files, which then need to be decompressed, rejoined, and have numerous other conversions done to make them work. I know how to do it, but it's a pain in the arse and not really worth the hassle.
So... the next place these files will so up, and a much more useful system is on BitTorrent.
This is a very clever and (I suspect deliberately) confusing file sharing system. Unlike Kazaa Lite or WinMX, there is no search facility, and to make things more confusing, the first time you run the program it will give you nothing but an error message, and appear not to be working. Pretty good for putting those who'd like to shut it down off the trail.
So how does it work?
First, you go to the link above and download the program. Next, you need to go the a website that lists live torrent files, the most popular at the moment being www.suprnova.org. Here you'll find a list of links to various movies, tv shows, software, games and various other files. If you have the bittorrent program, you can click on those links, a small file will download onto the temp files folder of your system which will automatically run your bittorrent program and begin downloading the movie or whatever file you've clicked on. If you don't have bittorrent installed, all you'll get is a webpage or file filled with rubbish that appears to make no sense at all. (Also good for putting off those who don't know what they're doing.)
What happens next is, bittorrent will allocate a space on your drive for the file, making it look like you already have it (this confused the hell out of me at first), and only then will it begin downloading, while at the same time uploading the same file from you to other users. This is rather an elegant system, as it removes the need for large queues as seen on other systems. Also, the more data you upload, the faster your download will come through (usually), which is handy for preventing people from hacking the system so they can download without uploading, and makes the whole thing more usable for everyone.
Now, assuming you've downloaded a movie from bittorrent, chances are you won't have an mpg or avi, but a set of .cue and .bin files ammounting to 1 - 2 gigs, which don't appear to do anything. At this point you can either burn then to a writable CD using nero or similar (I've never done this so can't go into the details), or alternatively, you can use vcdgear to convert them into mpg files which you can view with media player.
Other Useful Sites:
www.vcdquality.com has up to the minute reviews of all the latest movies that have been made available by the various crews and groups.
AVIPreview allows you to preview movie files from Kazaa Lite, WinMX and similar before they've finished downloading... handy for checking that they're not fakes or broken files. (This doesn't work with bittorrent.)
GSpot is a handy tool for telling you what video codec a file needs to be viewed. Very often a file may appear to not be working, when in truth you simply don't have the required codec.
MovieCodec.com is a good starting point for finding info about codecs, and has a large (if sometimes obnoxious) forum which can sometimes be informative.
Steve 11:06 PM [+] (0) comments
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