Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot

I was putting together a short video with Windows Movie Maker showing show photos from our recent trip to Butlins but realised I didn’t really want to use any of the MP3s I had. The music I had is all copyrighted and with YouTube ripping music out of videos I wanted to do the right thing.

So, after poking around the Web a bit, I came across Jamendo, a site I had never been to before. It’s a place where artists can upload tracks and albums that they want to share with the world, music which is covered by the Creative Commons license, allowing people to share and make use of their work without having to specifically ask for a license. Anyway, I found a track to use and created a video using it. But I wanted to mention the site on my blog so that I can return back there next time I needed some music. I’ve also downloaded a few tracks to listen to, maybe I’ll get to find some new exciting bands. Here’s the video I created:

They’re photos from a weekend we spent down in Butlins. We had an awesome time as you can see from the photos. Loads of swimming, photos with Bob the Builder, live entertainment, candy floss .. you get the picture. We’ll be back!

Do you have an antivirus and antispyware package running on your machine? Well, if you don’t, you should really get one, because you’re taking a pretty heavy risk by not staying protected. And nowadays you can find a combined package that does performs both these roles, instead of having to install two different packages.

One such product is VIPRE which is a combined Antivirus Software and Antispyware Software package rolled into one. It’s promises combined protection from viruses, trojans, rootkits and all sorts of other nasties. It’s also available to try on at 15 day trial if you want to give it a whirl.

Whatever you do, just don’t stay unprotected!

The Isle of Man Section of the BCS is organising a talk tomorrow focusing on Dependency Injection as a coding technique. Here’s some more detail about the event:

Our next event is about a programming technique called Dependency Injection. Here’s a brief outline:

As software applications grow in complexity de-coupling your code becomes more important. Dependency injection is one of these de-coupling techniques. Explore dependency injection and inversion of control design principles and how they lead to loosely coupled code (a good thing), very testable code and more flexible applications. We will also look at the use of DI containers as an aid to Inversion of Control. See how you can start using these today

The talk is aimed at professionals involved in different aspects surrounding the development of software. The talk will be presented by Zakir Hoosen, from Fuzzelogic Solutions, who specialise in the provision of technology services over a range of different technologies and methodologies. You can read more about them on their profile.

More details and  CPD certificate available for download on the BCS Event Details page.

I’m planning on being there. Any others with an interest in programming coming along?

I came across the @buydig Twitter account today and it was good to see how they’re using Twitter to stimulate conversations with their customers. Brands using Twitter isn’t breaking news, but too many companies are using Twitter just as a broadcast medium, much the way RSS can be used. BuyDig seem to be using it to speak to their customers, listen to them and share their success stories.

So, who are BuyDig anyway? They’re a Digital Superstore operating in the US who have been around since 1996. They sell all sorts of electronic goods from flat panel TVs to security cameras; a wide range of SLR digital cameras (including the Nikon D90 and others) all the way to their Home and Garden category including kitchen gadgets and baby gear. It’s a pretty comprehensive catalogue which merits the name “SuperStore”. The pricing looks pretty competitive too, but as they don’t ship outside the US, this site is really for my buddies across the pond.

They have some cool kit too. For example, one of the things that I saw on their Twitter feed was the Wacom Bamboo Craft Scrapbook Kit which is a tablet, mouse and pen combination that lets you play around with your photos, create drawings and creating and maintaining your digital scrapbooks in a brand new way. Another product that caught my eye was the Celestron VistaPix 8×22 Binocular (shown alongside) which has a built in digital camera, now that’s a cool gadget.

So if you’re based in the US and looking for an online supply for your gadgets, check out BuyDig.com and make sure you follow them on Twitter.

photo credit: Many Cats 4 Me

Are you interested in Social Media and based in the Isle of Man? If so, you just have to join us for lunch next Thursday. Whether you’re interested in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Friendfeed, Mister-Wong, Buzzster, Mixx, Furl, YiGG, Fark, Hugg, Propeller, Simpy, Sphere, Spinn, Tumblr, Blinklist, Multiply, Netvouz, Bebo, StumbleUpon, Diigo, MySpace, Strands, Technorati, Squidoo, Spurl or any of the other millions (well it feels like millions sometimes) of social networks around; you should come and join us. If you’re interested in blogging, wikis, message boards and other ways of building community online; you should come and join us.

The Manx TT is over next week, so you don’t have any excuse that you’re racing your motobike, your zero-emissions vehicle or even one of your Yamaha Rhinos over the mountain. So go read all about it on Sherrilynne’s blog or just come down to Paparazzi on Thursday at 13:00. We’ll all be there.

(I’m sure I had some photos here from previous events, but I’m not sure where I put them!)

If you’re a .Net developer here’s an event you mustn’t miss here on the Isle of Man. It’s a talk about the new language features of C# and here are the details:

Mike has agreed to share is knowledge with us, and will be giving a talk on the 3.5 language features, covering Lamdas, Extension methods and linq. I’m sure it will be interesting for everyone.

As you can imagine its been challenging finding a venue especially around TT week. A company in Ballasalla has kindly allowed us to have a room for the evening of the 23rd June 2009.

So the second meeting will be : Tuesday, 23rd June 2009, Global House, Station Road, Ballasalla. Its the office park next to the Ballasalla station. Should we say around 6:15pm.

See u there!

The presentation is being given by Mike Cromwell who is to Visual Studio what Tiger Woods is to golf clubs. Come listen to some new ideas and technique that can help you up your game. It will be a great geeky evening.

I woke up this morning to find that WordPress 2.8 has finally be released. It was promised for the 10th June, but as I’m based in Europe, I didn’t get to see it till today. I’ve been running the RC down at WordPressGuru and haven’t really had any major problems. So, what’s new in this release? It’s all outlined in this video:

Word of the new release has already started spreading, but most people will find out about it when they log into WordPress and it tells them there’s a new version. I’ve uploaded two blogs using the in-built upgrade mechanism and everything was smooth, thought I had to restart the process a couple of times till it completed. Presumably users on faster servers won’t have the same issue.

Most of the changes are a step in the right direction I think, faster admin UI and better handling of widgets are among those. I’m a bit unsure about the theme uploader/upgrader as I think some people may lose theme customisations this way and I don’t think I like the new plugin interface, but all in all I’ve been looking forward to this drop.

One interesting thing to report. The WordPress admin interface was broken with Firefox 3.5b99, but this new drop of WordPress has resolved that issue because of an upgrade in the Javascript components used by the admin interface. So go ahead and upgrade to the latest versions of stuff, things seem to be working nicely!

(P.S. I’ve noticed that the upgrade has disabled one of my plugins that provided paged comments, but seeing that this is now a built-in feature of WordPress, I was quite happy for it to deactivate it)