Dom Barnes’s Blog

I came across this very problem when I was doing some short films for work. The manager had bought a JVC GZ-MG130 Hard drive based camcorder and had recorded some short bits that needed editing. After first searching, I found out that iMovie couldn’t directly interface with the camera like it does on a Firewire one, because its JVC and they use a USB interface.

So some searching came up with this method.
Read the rest of this entry »

As you will have seen on the previous post, the Douglas Furs played their first live gig to a crowd of dozens at the Bear Tavern in Bearwood on 22 May 2007.

After being the first ones there, we got on the list, went to enjoy some food while being nervous, we were told we were 3rd on the bill.
After sitting through a guy on an acoustic guitar, and a guy playing Gary Moore with his massive pedal, we took to the stage. Our set list went as Russia, Sequoia, Birdclock, and finished on Dog in a Garden.
It seems like the cowbell alone got a lot more cheers than some of the songs, which is a shame, but I’d put it down to not knowing the songs.
As said before, you can check out the photos on Flickr, or the video on Revver.

After the half-success of the first gig, we planned to return on 12 June. Unfortunately, I had a call from James to let me know that the gig was cancelled. The whole night was. Apparently there was some trouble with fighting, and the night got permanently cancelled.

And as you would have it, the Douglas Furs take a short break. The other guys are in moving season and houses are scarce, so practice and gigs have been put on hold until July.

Hopefully, we’ll be back with a bang, with a new song in tow (and one less song thanks to a missing notebook). We may even get back to record again.

So until more happens, keep listening!

I picked up the local jobs paper and saw this familiar Microsoft Student Campus advert and noticed a sign for a free laptop.

Is it just me or is that a Apple Macbook Pro?

[digg=http://digg.com/apple/Microsoft_Student_Campus_gives_away_Macbook_Pro_s]

It seems like Part 3 is System Preferences time. Read on….

Growl - Its less of an application and more of a system preference and a hook. Growl allows other applications to display onscreen notices. For example, our previously mentioned app Transmission can show notices when it adds new torrents and when they are done downloading. Adium shows notices when you get an IM, when someone comes online. Other great apps like Cyberduck, Burn, Skype, iStumbler, Twitterific, Superduper and many more. It give you the chance to choose styles of notifications, change transparency of the notices, and many other settings. Give it a go and see how it can change your day?

Flip4Mac - Millions of years ago, a small software company in Seattle created a video codec. That codec was called Windows Media Video (WMV). And given the large use of Windows in the corporate environment, it became quite widely used. But that hinders us wisened Mac users. Luckily Microsoft made a video player, and God said “It’ll do” Lucky for us, someone else wouldn’t settle for it, so made Flip4Mac. Its a quicktime plugin that allows you to view WMV files through Quicktime, rather than the horrid Windows Media Player for Mac (ugh ugh ugh and a few more). It lets you decide if you want to display them in the browser, or load them in Quicktime, which personally I think is better as it gives you the chance to make the window larger. So go and download it, install, then hop into the System Preferences and set it up. Its free, and is now available from Microsoft, who deemed it good enough to remove the one hampster they were employing to keep WMP for Mac up to date.

MenuMeters - You might wonder after a while, how much is my processor being hammered? Or why is my computer going slow. Well install MenuMeters and you can find out at a glance. It allows you to add extra menubar items to your desktop. You can add them for processor speed, RAM usage, network traffic, disk usage. Its recently been updated to a Universal Binary and so it displays the CPU usage for each core on your Core Duo or Quad core Intel chip.

Sidetrack - Remember thosePowerbook, the pre-January 2005 ones before they added the scrolling trackpad? Well I have one, and some others do. Well this lets you scroll! Great! It converts the side of your trackpad to a scrolling section. Great!

MAMP - If you are looking to start your own blog, and have more control over it, you might want to give it a test run before you commit to a domain name and a host, you may want to download MAMP and try things out. It is a self-contained setup with Apache, MySQL, and PHP for Mac. So you can install Wordpress, or Typepad, or anything you want to and run it in a test environment. Or even to test updates and changes. Great! I use it to run a local version of Wordpress for when I actually bother to get my own domain. It gives you much more functionality than wordpress.com. And remember, its not just for Wordpress.

Be sure to check out the original list, Part 1 and Part 2

Hopefully Part 4 will come sooner than this!

So I have been struggling recently to get online via my powerbook using my Nokia 6280 handset from Three in the UK. I had signed up for an internet package, and was hoping I could do the same I did with Orange previously, and use my phone as a bluetooth modem.

Alas, it did not work. Three handsets blocked this sort of action to limit the bandwidth on the network, and also charge you for a proper package.

But behold, the solution.

1. Set up your handset as a bluetooth modem using the Bluetooth Setup Wizard. The key here is the handset. I think its the phone itself that blocks the access. So I used an unlocked non-Three handset from eBay, my new(to me) Nokia N70

2. Download the Nokia GPRS/3G scripts from http://www.taniwha.org.uk - Use the Nokia 3G Scrripts. Download and copy the scripts to ~/Library/Modem Scripts (this should be the one at the root of the hard drive, not in your user folder.

3. Load up System Preferences, go to Network, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Modem. Check settings are as follows
a) PPP Tab - Telephone number is Three.co.uk
b) Bluetooth Modem tab - Modem is Nokia 3G CID1

4. Go back to the PPP tab, and click Dial Now. This will open Internet Connect. Tick the box to add a Menu bar icon if you want, if not click Connect.

As long as your bluetooth is on your phone, and its paired (which it should be) then it should connect to the 3G network and give you 3G speeds up to 384kbps

NOTE: This is likely to use up all your alloted data in your package (mine is 10Mb) so be careful of additional charges. This also violates the terms of your contract, and your service may be cut off.

Having said that, its good to have an option when you can’t find a Hotspot

technorati tags:3g, three, bluetooth, modem, macosx

Blogged with Flock

So at work we won this campaign and got £3000 to spend on a day out for the office. We ended up going to Garlands Leisure in Leicestershire.

My morning started out early, at 6am, when I woke up, as I had to be at work for 8am to get a minibus to the centre. When we arrived, we all piled into the reception room, signed away our lives, and dumped our bags. We were then split into two teams, and went off to do different activities. The first for me was Quadbiking. It was fun. We did figure of 8’s first to get used to the bikes, then did a few test runs, then did a 3 lap timed run, and a final lap of victory. How did I get on? Well see below

As you can see I greatly improved on the second run. The best time was done by Ben who got 1.34 seconds. So my score was respectable I think.

After that we did laser clay pigeon shooting. We used decomissioned rifles which had been fitted with lasers for reuse. Again we did some practice shooting, 25 rounds, with dual shot rifles. Then we went onto the scoring round. First round was simple, 2 points for the first shot, and 1 for the second, so you could get up to 75 points in this round. I think I got about 37. Second round, fastest guns. Clay goes up, first shot on it gets 5 points, 2nd gets 4, and so on for the first 5 shots. So you can get up to 175 maximum (9 points if you get the first two shots), again I did quite well, about 85ish I think.

Last game was sudden death. Clay goes up, first shot takes 2 points. Thats it. I came out with a reasonable 8, compared to 14 by the winner.

Lunch time came next. A barbecue had been put on (although we didn’t see the grills so questionable) but I chowed down on burgers, sausages and chips.

In the afternoon we did off road dirt karting. That was rough. The track was really bumpy and it was a little frightening. Did ok there. 1.45 was my best time.

Afterwards, we did archery, and having done this before at scout camp, I was used to it. So I took my shots like a pro! Well I did alright. Again, we did some warming up, then went for scoring on the targets. Three different sizes, scoring as normal. And would you know it, I came third in the group. I was only about 7 points off second, and a quite a few off first (Pete hit a bull for 25 on his last shot)

At the end of the (exhausting) day we went back to the reception room for the prize giving. Our team did well, and I bagged the medal for 3rd best overall in the archery, so that meant all our team got medals in that.
The best thing was that our team got best overall and won the cup! And I brought it

home!

Victory is sweet.