Hammer Time

It’s official – the iMac is going into storage…

 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Download now or watch on posterous

HammerTime.mov (4269 KB)

Posted via email from The Colors of Dreams

Size doesn’t matter

Subject to recent conjecture surrounding our wilderness fishing sojourn – I am forced to reveal the real winners….

The ‘Daddy Fish’

 

 

The ‘Hamish Fish’

 

The ‘Uncle James’ fish

Inspirational Bike Riding with Danny MacAskill

Inspired Bicycles have taken things to the next level with this fantastic video from Danny MacAskill. 

Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen. There’s some huge riding, but also some of the most technically difficult and imaginative lines you will ever see. Without a doubt, this video pushes the envelope of what is perceived as possible on a trials bike. 

Inspired Bicycles current sponsored riders include

• Danny MacAskill, 21 year old bike mechanic from Edinburgh
• Felix Mücke a 22 year old German studying Geology [Street performance]
• John Shrewsbury, 22 year old engineer from Porthcawl, South Wales

Social Media Music Chart – We Are Hunted

 

We Are Hunted is an Online Music Chart born out of a collaboration between the semantic news service Wotnews and Native Digital Media. The site is driven by the same semantic search and aggregation technology that powers wotnews.com.au, the popular Australian news search engine and its US and UK equivalents at wotnews.com and wotnews.co.uk.

The ‘We are Hunted’ team scour the social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter to develop a daily chart of the 99 most popular songs online. The user can then effectively track the hottest sounds on the social-media circuit virtually in real-time. You can choose to review and listen to the hippest tunes for that day, week, month or year and sort by artist or song title.

In the physical world, charts are built on shipped albums. Online, traditionally, they have been a count of digital downloads. We Are Hunted is different in that it tracks sentiment, expression and advocacy. Visually driven, intuitive and simple, We Are Hunted seeks to be a daily destination for music lovers looking for their next favourite artist track or song. Through We Are Hunted, music fans can discover new music and more importantly, join the conversation about it. – WeAreHunted

 

Richard Slatter from Wotnews explained the genesis of WAH to TechNation Australia:

It occurred to us there is no longer a single definitive chart. With the impact of the Internet over the last decade or so the old metrics have disappeared. We wanted to create a new kind of chart based on buzz and activity across social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter. Using this unstructured disparate data we measure and determine what are the most popular 99 songs online… right now.

I love the site – it’s clean, fresh and dynamic. The immediacy of response is awesome and the tunes are fresh and vibrant. WeAreHunted has brought  some great new artists and tracks to my attention and will be I will certainly be a frequent visitor.

Britain’s Battlers Bring a Tear

Really enjoying Britain’s Got talent. Not being able to see the shows live I have to resort to YouTube for a nostalgic fix of effervescence. I know I am way behind – but I am sure there are others out there who would love to see some of these great acts…

Paul Potts - 2007

•  At the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on 17 March, 2007
• Potts sang Giacomo Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma
• Semi-final performance of the main verses of Andrea Bocelli’s “Con te partirò”
• Final winning performance of the operatic aria, “Nessun Dorma”

 

Stavros Flatly – Greek Irish Dancers – 2009

 

Susan Boyle – 2009

 

Connie Talbot – 2007

I’m sorry our beaches are too white, wide and sandy

Living in paradise can be hard. In fact it should be wretched, unwholesome and downright dangerous according to a list of recent complaints by not-so-intrepid British tourists. Research compiled by the Association of British Travel Agents [ABTA] and Thomas Cook, have done nothing to dispel the whingeing Pom cliche. Here are some of my favorite ‘complaints’ British travelers made:

• I was bitten by a mosquito — no one said they could bite. 
• We had to queue outside with no air-conditioning.
• I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts
• Some British tourists found their Aussie holidays were spoiled because 
  • The beach was too sandy
  • The beaches were too wide
  • No one told us there would be fish in the sea; the children were startled
  • We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white.

• We booked an excursion to a water park but no one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels.
• We bought Ray-Ban sunglasses for five euros ($9) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake.
• My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room, but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant
• No hairdressers at the accommodation.” We’re trainee hairdressers — will we be OK staying here?
• On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food at all.

However, although Australia and India are devastatingly dreadful places to sojourn…Spain is even worse

• There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners.
• It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during “siesta” time — this should be banned.
• One disgruntled wife declared that topless sunbathing should be banned because her “holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women”.

If you ask me – the problem with Europe is that there are not enough castles…

 

Source: WA Today

Reference: Association for British Travel Agents – Thomas Cook

Real-time analytics with ChartBeat

Just getting to grips with a fantastic real-time analytics engine of ChartBeat which launched last week at web 2.0 expo. I have to agree with the consensus that it is (conceptually at least)- a very cool tool! . I say conceptually because I haven’t actually been able to get the program to work as yet…but the ChartBeat site demonstration, rave tech reviews as well as Andrew Hydes video review all bode well for real time website stats service. Even Hope Leman of AltSearchEngines described the real-time webmetrics as ‘Way Cool’

Peter Hershberg’s demo of the incredible Web site monitoring tool Chartbeat was by far the most interesting part of the keynote morning. If you are ever in need of heavy duty, real time analytics about your Web site check out Chartbeat. It’s an impressive tool. Way cool. I don’t think the average blogger would need it, but certainly mid-sized businesses and up would want to take a look at it. It was so good that the next speaker, Jeff Veen of Small Batch, Inc., was agog and in deep wow mode. – Hope Leman of AltSearchEngines.com

If Bruce Maler can install and view his real-time stats in 5 minutes…then I have to have another go! It is after all just a couple lines of code which are added to the websites, one after the head tag and the other right before the body tag. Hopefully I will be playing with tweets, historical data charts and fancy widgets before long…will let you know!

 

more about “ChartBeat“, posted with vodpod

Andrew Hyde of Techstars took the time to record a webcast about Chartbeat, and demonstrates the value-add social networking tools that sets ChartBeat apart from standard webmetrics.

 

 

 

Economic Rationalism

Due to the global financial crisis, the team had no other alternative but to fire Andre.