I love this Dance (Candy Dance), comes up at weddings, end of year Christmas parties and others. Its such a cool line dance! (In the US they call it Electric Slide or maybe its originally known as the electric slide - but there is a slight variation in moves from the US and UK).
So anyway I decided to find some of my favourite videos for learning the moves for the Candy (by Cameo) Dance/Electric Slide, just watch it and you'll see how impressive it is to see everyone doing the same moves and having a great time. Dance Steps I got this from Yahoo answers (gotta love them!): Link: http://tinyurl.com/25zhv4m
On the beat) Two steps right (1-2, 1-2) Two steps left (1-2, 1-2) Two steps back (1,2 - 1,2) Hold One step with left foot forward (lean forth) One step with Right foot Lean back Hop 'n' kick sideways with right (Repeat for all 4 corners North, south, east, west)
Peter: "I read a book about that once" Brian: "Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't 'nothing'? Peter:"Oh yeah."
A friend was asking for some advice regarding a laptop she's a student and just needs something practical within the £300 - £450 price range. I had a quick look around and everything seems pretty standard for that amount of ca$h.
Bare in mind, I'm from the Amstrad CPC 464 8-bit generation, so seeing processors with 64-bit extensions, 1TB hard drives, and Gigs of Ram always puts a smile on my face. A lot of people new to PC's (through no fault of their own!) just won't be able to appreciate just how far we have come in terms of hardware/software. So really what I'm saying is times are good, so long as you don't buy a celeron processor laptop (unless you really must!) anything you get will be decent above the £350 range....and remember warranty can be your best friend, what with RMA headaches.
Anyhow here are the one's I showed her (I'm NOT affiliated with any of the companies below, just so you know :O), but I have used them including Samsung (but I can't be bothered to list Samsung, even though they make some slick machines) :
I've been away for quite some time now, not really had the time to update this blog. Although I feel I should start using my own webhosting for bloggin. Whats new with me, well PHP, MYSQL and vtiger CRM version 4.2.3.
Its fascinating on one hand as you have to decided whether to upgrade the existing system or update the existing one. Benefits of updating is that there is very little user training involved, however a 5 year old php web based application seems incredibly outdated when you look at the exciting stuff that is currently out there. Upgrading has its benefits but could be time consuming....and its difficult for me to predict how long it will take to do such a thing. Whats more interesting is that everything has changed on the user experience you have ZOHO, Sugar, Vtiger 5, and lots more - however the big thing is when real businesses use it and the customisations they ask for - ( bare in mind most of these web apps have very common features) - thats when things start to get a little tricky. Take for example reporting, reporting can be such a huge thing and yet there most of these although do provide reporting features its not full-set - in that you cant report on every single module within the application. You can only report on what has been decided is worth reporting on. Secondly the biggest issue is custom fields say you want custom field on a section that doesn't exist or you want to create sub-section ( I know Sugar provides this, and its great ) but what about if you have 500 hundred custom fields? Are you supposed to sit there and type every single one in? Why not just have a CSV file telling what a field name is, its type and length - simple, and then import that into the system?
I've had to learn PHP, MYSQL all over again and by MYSQL what I mean is SQL programming, and the biggest problem is not learning a language but learning how to edit an existing program written already. Its like trying to find the ingredients for a particular cuisine by taste, cutting the food up, seeing what works what doesn't.....its a tough mountain to climb but not an impossible one.
You hit a block but can't move on until you figured out how to fix another block you've already hit.
Certain short-cuts you made years ago come back to haunt you!
Programming is hard, and its difficult learning somebody else's system
Comprise, but how much you want to please your end users and give them what they want, yet it goes without saying that some of the smallest tasks in the users mind can be the most difficult to achieve.
Documentation is hard to do, and when the only person is you - who do you turn to for advice.
I am tired, but at the same time its 2am (GMT) here in London and I'm fascinated by SQL. Its got me hook line and sinker! The data manipulation possibilities are endless and you can do so much, its keeping me awake just thinking about it - hence why I'm still here. I love the fact that its been around for so long its got history and its still here, refined, reproduced and perfected.
I'll leave you with this amazing tune by the incredible Ronald Jenkees.
and you could have it all, my empire of dirt.
I won't let you down, I won't make you hurt.
Once again a few (yes they are few) people/developers flock against Apple regarding how apps are developed for the iphone. I don't think its a big deal. In my opinion its a small detail if you want develop for the iphone - you simply have to develop with tools that Apple say you can - so whats wrong with that? Nothing, its their creation and so let it be.
I agree with them on this one - as an individual developer I agree with Apple. Sometimes I feel that by placing limits on artist/developers you usually get better - more creative results. Throughout history man has done with little, then what he has done with a lot. I mean there are a lot of rich people now, and there tonnes of developer tools for the Windows platform, but there are only a few memorable apps for Windows. BeOS had some interesting apps, but then again it was way ahead of everything at the time...so the whole OS felt radical. Whereas the iphone has alot of apps that I want to show off to my mates who don't own one....I mean its like using butter, its so well crafted, and engineered beautifully that one just wants to show how marvellous it is to use.
So I have to admit around last year or before I was a bit disappointed with the whole Flash not being on my iphone, but now im over it, and it feels like an old argument. As a flash developer - I can see where Apple are coming from and regardless whether they say its buggy for the iphone, or if there is some ulterior motive to keep Adobe away, its Apple's choice and their decision and as a creative mind - I always like a challenge - thus I've been reading/learning more about CSS/HTML and just working on the idea of making more mobile friendly websites - I love touch screen.
What is interesting is how fans still argue about Hurt a song by Nine inch Nails (Trent Razor), which was covered by Johnny Cash in 2002, a lot of people still don't know it was written by Trent in 1994 and Cash covered it - what they automatically assume (like me) is that since Cash is such a legend he must have wrote it and every other artist covered it. Its funny reading the angry comments on youtube...personally I initially liked the Cash version, after hearing Sevendust live acoustic cover - I'm blown away by it - its my favourite version.
I have to be honest I don't look forward to Adobe CS suites, its not a joy for me to use. I remember everything about using photoshop/paintshop pro/ back in the day on a performa 5320 in school, photoshop was the dogs biscuit. I wonder what Apple have up their sleeve, they've nailed the video market with FCP, it'll be interesting to see what they do next.
Out of all of this - the biggest loser must be intel. I mean they don't make processors for mobiles and eventually mobile usage will surpass PC/Laptop. Now that we shall soon have Nvidia chips on mobiles dedicated to HD quality, low power consumption devices + ARM Chips - is there really any need for the Intel/AMD giants - in the long term? I wonder.
Outlook/Exchange alternatives/Integration! its obvious that LDAP/Caldav will somehow, one day may need to be integrated but its bloody amazing that Outlook just comes to life once you have exchange server - sharing calenders, contacts and all - however auto-complete contacts (NK2) are not importable via outlook using some friendly interface which would be great - as I (in a thick Indian accent) "having to do this manually" at the moment. Dare I say most users who are not familiar with Outlook/Exchange are totally dependent on NK2, and something should be done about this - perhaps like how google automatically adds contacts - even though you may only use that user once - its a good idea - space is not an issue for a few lines of text of an email address - autosave/autocomplete.
MIT Open Course Warethis is my new iphone/ipod addiction. Downloading the free lectures from ItunesU and transferring them into my iphone, then listening to the lectures on the tube or whenever. ITS brilliant. I'm kinda bored of transferring my DVD's to Mkv/mp4 to watch on my iphone - perhaps its a long process that bores me and the guilt of having to leave my PC on whilst converting huge VOB files into one mp4 that gets to me - after all - this feels like the age of being green and here I am with my PC on all night converting DVD's to mp4! - I did manage to convert Matrix (thats 1, 2, and 3) into mp4 which is still cool to watch on an iphone as is any film!.
Really sad ending though (ok I know I'm off topic), I wish that Captain Lock (played by Harry Lenix) could have seen the power of Neo and watch him blow up those machines - that was an incredible idea - however the whole excitement/magic was summed up with the first Matrix at the end when Tank goes "How?" and Morpheus says "He is the One" - this is right after we see Neo re-born. Then in Matrix 3 we don't get that same spoon fed reaction, whens its even more amazing that he can destroy them the machines in the real world, it would have been great to see other characters reactions, especially Captain Lock. This has been done before in several films where a non-believer military/goverment type guy - towards the end of the story sees or realises that all that he thought he knew is now irrelevant, and ultimately all this time he was WRONG to doubt the main character of the film.
Well alot of credit goes to the people at MIT for doing this, its not easy having to video lectures and then upload them and i guess there is alot of hard work involved, they don't mention the cameramen, or how they edit the footage which might be good for other uni's to do - (sometimes I've been a cameraman and its hard work, you're the first person to arrive and the last to leave and you get NO credit, nothing! - but its not about that). Currently I'm following the Computer Science lectures and learning a bit of python which feels more rewarding than when I was learning Java back in 1999 - as I look back fondly sitting in my armchair, with a pair of simpson slippers and a jack russell - one remembers, oh how I wanted to use swing interfaces but you had to wait 10 years for java to compile your code, and then another 10 years for it to run on your 200Mhz machine running windows 98. I tell ya, now is the best time to be a study or be a computer scientist (except if you were a student in the 50s/60s/70s/80s, they had some cool kit back then!) [ If I had seen the MITS Altair I'm sure I would have been inspired about one day creating Win32APi's, Dll's, Registry's, Icon's oh and lets not forget Outlook/Exchange server hahaha, sure why not. Even that made me laugh.]
This is a great film by the way - I may have mentioned it before - but I just realised that the scene with Bill Gates talking about stealing code is not in the film. Great music/soundtrack too! Pirates of silicon Valley.
OK so everyone well lets say the many geeks out there have been having a go at bashing the ipad. I for one, won't make the same mistake of underestimating the ipad until I've actually used it. I've been reading a few articles/blogs that criticise various issues like no-flash, no native HD, and a few others. However what my Dr said to me the other day, (he was going to say it in Urdu which probably would have sounded better?)
"doesn't matter if you cut the melon with the knife, or the melon falls on the knife - its the same thing"
What this means is ( I don't know) - but it does have some context for me such that let me explain at this stage where Apple are now incredibly successful, incredibly powerful and incredibly brilliant at what they do (largest mobile maker? really Steve? you could have added that, "we are the best mobile maker thus far"!! be honest its true). Back to my point is that people geeks in particular seem to want to find faults no matter what Apple do, granted it did seem a bit rushed, but so did the original iphone. I remember thinking to myself when it first came out 3 years ago, what really? who cares about a phone with an ipod? whats so great about that....and now I own one - and don't leave home without it - unless I forget to charge it.
What I'm trying to say is that even if Apple had presented the meaning of life to us, the very point of our existence on this planet, said that they had been contacted from another alien species who thought the ipad was cool, and in exchange for "our" (our meaning earth - aliens would naturally think that the ipad was a human creation) ipad technology they would be willing to share with us the meaning of life, ultra-lightspeed technology, in addition a cure that will bring the end of disease, famine and drought - oh and while we are at, let's show you a technology so incredibly amazing, so unbelievable that there is not a single word in the human dictionary to define it, call it what you want - you could not comprend its meaning, it would be like going to the edge of heaven and seeing God.
What?
What's that I hear, a little voice in the corner....sounds like, sounds like its saying......
"does it have flash though?"
At the end of all this, us geeks/non-geeks would still be dissatisfied and complaining to our new Alien friends that the ipad doesn't have flash, so thats why it sucks - oh and probably something else that Linux is blah blah gloop gloop. I think you get my point.
Seriously it seems no matter what Apple does there is the minority who will always complain, bicker and generally have a dissatisfaction about it. This my friends is human nature, and an important part of our earthly dna. It's who we are. Whats also important is that geeks don't usually rush to buy things so who does? that is the consumer, the shopper, the buyer. In their hands will determine the success of the Ipad.
I'm not going to make much of judgement on the issue, except that I've been wrong about the ipod, iphone (I've got both now!), and I'm not going to make any assumptions about the Ipad. I think it has enormous potential, the kind of potential that itunes+ipod did to revolutionise the music business. Again nothing new, but revolutionary overall.
Cue "I can't make you love me" by George Michael. I think this is the song of choice for the ipad. "")
I don't buy newspapers, but recently I downloaded the New York Times app to my iphone and dare I say its my favourite app, this app is the benchmark for all newspapers, magazines, glossy's etc to follow/build upon. i'm in the UK and I'm reading the New York Times on my iphone - not just because I can (and a part of me thinks its "cool"), but also because its bloody damn good - there are some amazing articles, much more interesting than some of the stuff I read here. I'm bored of the free newspapers - and I look forward to reading The Times/Independent/ or whatever maybe some Vogue or Elle now their marketing and adverts in their glossy's are fabulous - sometimes incredibly artistic..on either my iphone, or maybe the Ipad if I do get one in 3 months or whenever - we'll see! That is where the future could be, supplying quality content for free using all types of advertising on a device like the Ipad - Apple get's its 30% cut, advertisers get to advertise, and newspapers/publishers get to do their thing. I also assume there may exist a hybrid applications that can gather all news from all your favourite publishers and put this together as one publication using RSS - and present it as MyNews, or whatever.
I leave with this brilliant piece by Andrea Elliott. Before Saturday I never knew this guy existed.
MAGAZINE
The Jihadist Next Door
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: January 31, 2010
In his small-town Alabama high school, Omar Hammami was among the coolest, most gifted students in his class. How did he grow up to become a leader in an African terror group linked to Al Qaeda? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31Jihadist-t.html **Final note.
* I do some how, think this will affect sports - shall we say no more pay per view? Why well because now its all about free content withadvertising, and I think that some clever person at one of the promotions companies will figure that to have 500 million people watching for free is worth more than having 2 million pay to watch. Especially for advertisers.
I was wrong about ITUNES!!! its awesome! really bad!!
Ok so now we're past the honeymoon stage and what do I think about using itunes with my iphone - put it this way my next phone will probably be an android. I'm so put off my itunes that I've stopped syncing music from my iphone; its just inhibitive/slow and is almost the complete opposite user experience of the iphone itself.
I can't stand Itunes, anymore - I thought it was good but its not.
I am an avid follower of noah of phonedog.com on youtube, and Jon (asian dude) is so funny his reviews are great. Well im very interested in the Android Evo 4G. I want to use my phone as a usb storage device if I can, I want to be able to drag and drop using windows explorer, and I am a bit of geek. http://www.phonedog.com/2010/06/02/noah-s-evo-4g-review/
But how will the internet experience shape up? Will it be as good as my iphone? We'll see.
ok, so I know I was going on about how unfriendly itunes (the actual windows app used for syncing with my iphone) is. Well I figured out how to use it as drag and drop and dare I say its actually better than WMP11. I mean I can't complain anymore because its doing exactly what I want it to do. Before I put it down to my own ignorance of not knowing how to use this software. So now I've been ripping/converting my DVD's to mp4 using the wonderful app called Handbrake. Yes originally designed for BeoS (An awesome operating system), but now available for all other systems. Its great, I can't believe how simple it is to use.
Gigs and Gigs and Gig of RAM! So I was thinking, since we've got 64-bit CPU's and the ability to use stacks of RAM I'm talking way beyond 4GB limits (some systems I've seen on forums have got 32GB! RAM!!!). Could we create a RAM drive place the application Handbrake and together with a folder of the VOB files (from the DVD) and then start to encode it to Mp4 for the iphone? Would this have significant speed implications? I was just thinking that Hard drives are damn slow, and annoying. I've recently replaced my 3.5inch SATA drive with a 2.5inch (laptop) drive and its much more quiet and feels a little bit quicker (but this could just be my wishful thinking imagination).
So if anyone does the above, please let me know.
Music for fun? I mean there was a time when I got my first keyboard a casio my dad bought me ( back in the 80s?) it was awesome, I've still the little thing...its funny; as I was saying there was a time when music was just for fun, but somewhere along the lines I completely forgot about how much fun you could have with music. Now speaking about fun this guy Ronald Jenkees (from youtube), is an absolute legend of a musician. I was in total awe of his musicianship and was so happy he was using fruityloops (FL Studio as its now known) to create his beats, and I can see why. If your like me and make music on your PC or whatever it can be a little too much if you've been used to playing a physically involving instrument like a guitar or keyboard. Software like Cubase or Reason, I've just never understood properly - I mean there are courses which teach you how to use them - but its nothing like picking up a guitar (electric - preferably with some distortion and plugged into an amp with volume set on 11 - Spinal Tap ^^) and strumming to make some noise. There is no configuration necessary to start playing, whereas with so many music arranging applications - they are so "un" fun that I feel they overcomplicate things and take the fun out of making music. Now FL Studio on the other hand is so easy! I've only used Fruity Loops version 3 which is even more funny, as it has no street cred (well certainly among any budding young produca!), so stuff the street cred as its bloody brilliant fun to play with. The thing I dislike about these applications, and the producers that use them is that their almost revered as though they were unattainable pieces of jewels, and theres a certain pride involved in saying "yeah I use protools".
Well, enough of me ranting on, I hope we see more people like Ronald Jenkees reminding us how much fun you can have with a simple set-up. Keyboard, FL Studio, Good Monitors. You're done! No more investing £5000 on a sterile, studio setup.
After disappearing for a while, well almost 5 years!!! I'm back. I hope to keep this blog uptodate from now onwards....keep in touch. Peace! wonder what everyone else has been up2? Yes well actually come to think of I think I know, so far its been about facebook/twitter/....and come to think of I actually started off with hi5, then myspace, then facebook and now its facebook against twitter. I got to say that more people are appreciating the ease of twitter, could be speed as the factor here...we're all speed hungry? I'm liking twitter too, there are alot more interesting people on twitter, or maybe thats its easier to express interesting ideas on twitter than it is on facebook?
Social Networks - "haram, haram, haram! - well actually depends on who's perspective you're looking at here"
Facebook seems the application of choice for nosey parkers, whereas and this is what I like about twitter is that its more to the point, and has a limit on how much you can say. I like these limits, in an age where there are no limits technology wise, its kind of harmed creativity to an extent, however there are some amazing things being done especially in film, that whole revolution with the canon HV20 allowed a whole bunch of film-makers, to express themselves in HD. But I think for example games/applications in general like back in the 80s where we had limited memory RAM/ROM developers/programmers had to be more resourceful/genius with the tools they had to create the games/apps that they could, and they created some seriously addictive games. I never appreciated it before, but I can now. Not that I'm saying with all this amazing technology now its bad, of course its not! I love it, I love my iphone its nang man, and I'm a big sucker for CGI in film, anything from starship troopers to Lawnmower man, and of course The Matrix, but you know I just love the story of the matrix which easily overpowers the cosmetic/visual appeal. The visuals just enhance the philosophy/story. I wish I could learn like that, just be plugged in and download data into my brain (I've tried that mind-mapping stuff, but it don't feel natural to me).
Iphone - "yes I caved in and finally bought one of the most amazing gadgets ever invented"
Now the whole itunes thing with syncing, I can never understand, maybe I'm old school - but I like to plug in a usb device see it in explorer and then drag and drop my stuff into it - I mean syncing is what middle managers used to do with their PSIONS back in the 90s upto 2000. Its kinda dumb or a slow procedure that with a mobile device this sophisticated you have to sync it to transfer files to it, really this iphone is more powerful then what its creaters let on - and again with limits maybe its a good thing, "I dunno yet". People find ways around like with Jailbreaking, I haven't jailbreaked my iphone yet, maybe I will one day. However it is the best touch screen/mobile device at the moment, nothing, and I mean "nothing - like Cipher from The Matrix" comes close to it. But why? Why can't Microsoft adapt the ZuneHD to work like the iphone, just give it a touchscreen, 3G unlocked to any network carrier, spend some money on marketing, hire the best PR/AD agencies and maybe you'll have something, its not over yet Msdosh. Seriously windows mobile is such a funny OS to use. I would partner with Nvidia to provide the graphics, they've the done best unrealeased gadget so far, something that is small enough/portable enough yet can play over 9 hours of HD content - woah!
I'm not even into Apps "so why did you get it? - you're lame" - I like to check my email on it, and I use it for internet -when im out - I've put a few of my films on it from my DVD's and youtube videos those encoded in mp4 are easily transferable on it. The film quality, has easily convinced a few of my mates to get one - "Apple can you hear me - I should be on commission here!" because its sick/slick/and always gets a woah, really response. The best one was from my mum, when I showed her some of the old indian films (Bombay to Goa, starring Mehbob in lead, Amitabh in supporting roles). Now this film released in 1972, and we're watching it on my iphone in 2009/2010. I've never seen this film prior to having an iphone, and probably wouldn't have been too fussed it if weren't for the novelty factor of showing it off to my mum, but after watching the film - I can say its an absolute classic, and damn good story, with excellent characters.
The major gripe I have is the syncing. Copy/drag/drop are based on philosophies pHD dessertations were probably written on the subject, and philosophies rarely change, they are the foundations that we build upon - although technology always will be the change. Change Revolution.
For now enjoy this film, all the parts are uploaded courtesy of Rajishri, who I have to give credits for uploading nearly all of their films onto youtube, brilliant! thank you guys!
