Apr

30

Short and Fuzzy: All new episode!

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

Short and Fuzzy podcastShort and Fuzzy episode 8 is out now and this episode is all new and fresh from the sofa of our new flat. No more talk about Madeira! (Though it is a fabulous place.)

About the show:
Short and Fuzzy is an all talk podcast and I’m fifty percent of it. It’s around a half hour of Neil and I gabbing on about whatever is in our heads. It’s unscripted and, for the most part, unedited. This means not necessarily safe for work, y’all. ;) You’ve been warned and now you’re getting the link
(pick one that appeals to you):

There’s also Windows Media Player, Winamp, Real, and RSS feeds on the BTPS page.

Episode Notes: Welcome to a fresh new episode of Short and Fuzzy! Recorded from our new living room (we’ve recently moved) Jen and Neil chat on the sofa about the purpose of bathroom rugs, going low-tech without Sky+, Jen sorts some socks, Neil’s email order bride is paid for, the stress of her immigration, and why you should never carry someone else’s bag at the airport. Despite a super busy April, we’re pretty chilled. We may not be in Madeira anymore, but life is still pretty good.

Our next all new Short and Fuzzy has already been recorded and will likely be up next week.
Thank you for listening!

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Apr

29

Insert Miss Google UK speech here

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

My last post was on two headed tea cup pigs. In the time it took me to sit on the balcony, casually star watch, drink some red wine, and write a bit in a notebook by candlelight, I (with the help of Paul Nicholls and my own mild treatment of SEO - and I mean mild) managed to climb the Google ranks from ninth place to FIRST PLACE for two headed tea cup pigs.

This is power. I am both intoxicated by it and by Jacob’s Creek Shiraz Cabernet. Rarr!

I think I should put my silly butt to bed now…

Thanks Paul! :)

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Apr

29

Not one head, but two. Tea. Cup. Pigs.

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

I was going through my referral logs for regularjen.com and found that I rank ninth on Google for: two headed tea cup pigs.

This made my night. And soon, I’ll likely rank higher still since I mentioned it in this post.
Here, I’ll mention it some more:

two headed tea cup pigs
two headed tea cup pigs
two headed tea cup pigs

And these guys rank pretty high for the same term. And same here. There are 574,000 of us evidently. Weird.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what post led this web traveller to me, it’s this one. You need to consider the comments as well to figure out where the search term derived from. Ah, the magic of the weird and wonderful interwub. :)
Note: this post is not really a whole-hearted effort in SEO, though I could do it if I really wanted to. I’m just playing around here. ;)

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Apr

27

A new set on my flickr page - The Passenger

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

I try to take pictures wherever I go. Most of them are shots no one will see but there are plenty that will keep trickling their way up to my flickr page. I’ve decided to start a new set for all the shots I take as a passenger in a vehicle— no matter what type of vehicle it is. The new photo set has some experimental photos as well as some lucky shots, but all are from me and my camera in transit. Here’s a small sample of some of the eclectic mix of pictures you’ll find in The Passenger:
reDSC03916.jpg

reDSC05019.jpg

IMG_2374.JPG

Hope you enjoy the set and if you do, please keep checking in for more images. :)

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Apr

27

A List Apart has a little survey

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

test

If you’re a web professional, take a minute to fill out the A List Apart 2007 Web Design Survey. It’s up to 37 questions (mine was 30) and you could win a ticket to An Event Apart in the US, an Apple 30GB video iPod, a jump drive, or a t-shirt.

Plus, it’s fun to fill out forms. :)

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Apr

25

it’s definite, I have indefinite

Filed Under expat, tout le fromage | 10 Comments

As of today, and after spending four hours at the Home Office in Croydon with a mountain of paperwork, I can remain in the UK indefinitely. April has been one of the most stressful months in recent memory and I’m very glad it’s coming to a close. We’ve moved house, I’ve passed the Home Office Life in the UK test (required for my settlement visa), and finally, qualified and received my indefinite leave to remain endorsement. Yowsa. Phwew. Exhale.

Next step: citizenship. I’m gonna do it, but I’ve got time on my side for that. Let’s at least get the month of May over with first… ;)

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Apr

24

back in the saddle

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

I’m wearing my code monkey trousers again scratch designing and evolving the BritCaster v3.0 site. I haven’t done a lot of code over the past couple of months and part of me has missed it. I think I’ll be balancing my part-time job (which is very low-tech but enjoyable) and the occasional but better paying freelance code and/or design job. Not only will it help the bank account, but I’ll also continue to challenge and feed very different parts of my brain. This can only be good.

I’ll give a link here when BritCaster v3.0 is live. To visit BritCaster v2.0 go here.

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Apr

23

getting my wifi geek on

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

I’m trying to boost the wifi signal in the new flat and haven’t had any success by moving the Netgear RangeMax DG834PN  to different spots in the living room (where it has to stay to connect to the DSL) but remembered it came with this little dongle thingy — the WPN111. This could help… but this is a Mac household and the damn thing only comes with Windows drivers. Whatever. We have one older PC (Win2K) but never have it running save for the odd project where we need to quickly consult it and then promptly step into a disinfecting chamber to rid our Apple goodness of Redmond cooties. I digress.

So after doing some searching online and plugging the USB dongle into my Mac, I found through the System Profiler that the dongle has an Atheros* chipset. Counting on some positively gorgeous opensource geeks with enormous brains to have made a Linux workaround for the Windows OS-only device (Netgear actually has a page supporting opensource driver development - how cool! Not that I can find it now to link to it…) I was pleased to find MadWifi. You can also find good reading on this FreeBSD page.

I’m no UNIX guru, in fact I’m very un-guru, but I am a bit brave. (Too brave for my own good? Perhaps…)

Anyway, if I have any luck hacking around with this wifi device on the Mac platform, I’ll report back. Wish me luck, for I have nearly no idea what I’m doing… :)
(Oh, and if you have a Netgear RangeMax and would like to improve the wireless range, here is the official Netgear page on doing just that. It is somewhat helpful. And so is this page.)

* To see if your product is using an Atheros chipset, go here and search the Atheros Customer Products Database.

UPDATE: Another really interesting page at Netgear about Wireless Network Traffic and Channel Interference.

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