The Sunday Times - A A Gill Gives Bar Shu A Four Star Review

This had me crying with laughter over the weekend: "The reason I’m unsure about exactly what we ate is because almost everything looked like disembodied shards of gloop submerged in an oily miasma with a grated topping of chilli. The first mouthful thudded me back in my chair and I emitted a small strangulated, “Wow!” It was almost the last coherent thing I said. After that, a painful numbness spread through my mouth and each new dish was experienced as a mugger’s stab behind the eyes. It seemed as if an unseen hand was roughly injecting Algipan up my nose. My cheeks began to melt and my lips quivered with an involuntary palsy. Sticky sweat ran down my back into pools in my soggy underpants. With a strangulated falsetto, I managed to ask the waiter to bring the specially mixed offal stewed in medieval dragon spit. “Very hot,” said the waiter. “You sure?” Bring it on, China boy, I sighed. "What arrived was another cauldron — an inferno of blood-curdled oil, Bruegelishly bobbing with tripe and lurking flesh, scabbed with chilli. I prodded with my chopsticks and came out with a corner of pig’s liver that collapsed like hot jelly. The whole thing looked like nothing so much as the bucket under a field-hospital operating table. I put a piece of nameless gut in my mouth and it was as if everything that had come before had merely been toying with me. I heard a distant choir, a white light exploded in my head, and I went to a place beyond physical agony, beyond understanding, a place of pure pain outside worldly vanity. I looked down and could see myself, my face glazed with my own juices, my hair standing in sticky fronds, puce eyeballs protruding and revolving like dashboard compasses, my mouth codding with mumbles as I shook and hiccupped with involuntary spasms. All the major junctions of my body oozed with a noisome effluvium." Read the full review at Times Online

Music: Eagle And Talon

I'm pretty excited about this musical discovery. Dropped Down is the most electrifying song I have heard in a long time, so I have wasted no time in ordering their EP from the website. You'll find clips from Eagle and Talon Cares here. I won't embarrass myself by describing how absurdly catchy the chorus is, how it whirls around your head like a crazy thing - go find out for yourselves. I'm so tempted to put a link right here, but I've already nicked the photo and that's enough e-pilfering for the time being. I hope they endure.

Firefox Extensions: Jumping On The YSMYISYM Bandwagon With Glee

I'm up to 31 at the moment, but, as always, they include some that are purely personal and some that are just for fun; although there are no extensions that could seriously be considered indispensable, I'll start with the - frankly - indispensable and work my way down: Tab Mix Plus This is the one you'll want if you want to bypass a lot of the others - sessionsaver, tabx, undoclosetab, and a multitude of others, all are rendered obsolete, being dealt with in this cracking extension. As is usually the case when it comes to tinkering with tab functionality, it is not particularly straightforward, but with some trial and error you'll get the hang of it and eventually get those tabs just how you want them. Sessionsaving is a breeze, and extremely well-mannered with it, not embarking on anything without asking you first. If that's the way you want it. DownTHEMall Ignoring the fact that it looks like Down The Mall, this is a brilliant extension for utilising the on board download manager. You might have your favourite little gizmo, and you curse the 'fox for not having a decent resume function, well, curse ye no longer, for it was here all along. I think many are frightened off by the fact that this guy does boast about capturing every downloadable link on a webpage - not a requirement of many a web surfer. Ignore that boast because you can configure this simply to download what you want and it is happy to do just that. It quietly integrates itself for your needs, something you'll be grateful for, believe me, and you'll soon be forgetting you even have another download manager somewhere else on your system. del.icio.us For seamless del.icio.us tagging and bagging, searching and coming and going. Restart Firefox I have no idea why I have put this fourth on the list when it is quite obviously the first extension to be installed. Yup, it restarts Firefox. Why click twice - thrice, maybe - when you need only click once? Adblock Plus seems to be a given; I'm sure I could make better use of it, but at the moment I simply surf with a smidgen more happiness knowing that I have it installed. For best effect use it in conjunction with Adblock Filterset G. Updater. Apparently. Statusbar Clock Some might consider this to come under the category of "Personal", but I'm reckoning it's indispensable. Thpbbt. Oh, of course, it puts the day, date, year and time in - you guessed it - the statusbar. Google Toolbar This frees up the seemingly extraneous search box for some kickbutt plugins. 'Nuff said. Oh, and by the way, for those who seethe at the inability to right-click and save the Google Toolbar .xpi, you can find it here. ForecastFox Who cares about the weather? Hey, I care about the weather. It's indispensable. Yes, both. Foxylicious To turn your del.icio.us entries into an enormous dropdown menu. Who wouldn't want to do that? Maybe not indispensable, but still Very Good Add Bookmark Here Adds a little menu entry to every folder allowing you to find the folder first and click this button to do the necessary. Helpful, I think. All-In-One Sidebar It...It...It...You are gathering that I'm finding it difficult to pour forth the myriad benefits of this slim bar that sits relatively unobtrusively at the side of your browser offering a handful of options that can, admittedly, be found elsewhere. I just like having the Extensions list available right there, or the History list. You might, too. Mouse Gestures Another one that I would struggle to sell. It offers the ability to configure...Ah, heck, I don't know. Read it for yourself. The mouse gesture I am mostly be using is the holding down of the right button and the clicking of the left to go back a page, and for that alone I Salute You! ReminderFox This, for me, was a find and a half. I want to remember things, I really do. I use EssentialPIM and I have a crazy impulse for 30 Boxes, but I fail to be disciplined enough to get the most benefit out of programs like that. Firefox I use every day, sometimes several times a day, and there's the pop-up to remind me what to do, or what's coming up, or whatever. Why is this not in the indispensable section? Margaret! ScrapBook From whole websites to one single quote, they can all be Captured and saved here in your scrapbook. They can be filed and foldered, managed and searched through with nary a moments worry. Some say better than bookmarking. Hmm, you be the judge of that. My only (very small) fear is that if you also go for EverNote (see below) you could have yourself a sticky little conflict: Do I want to save this to my Scrapbook, or EverNote? Nasty. ViewMyCurrency If you visit web shops abroad this does all the currency conversion for you, right there without any clicks of the mouse necessary. Configure it initially, say with US dollars, and every dollars price tag will have the British pounds equivalent displayed as well. Nice little feature. I almost gave up on it when it was first installed - it didn't feel particularly user-friendly, none of the prices were showing - then I clicked on the button in the statusbar and, ch-ching, there they were, and, I must say, it was a misty-eyed, magical moment. IE Tab For the occasional website that will only function with Bill's Browser, fool it into thinking this is it. Priceless. There's also one for Opera - OperaView - but, Why? NoScript It has a scary snake as a logo. With a big "Stop" sign slashed through it. One of the choices reads "Allow scripts Globally (dangerous)". JavaScript must be bad, and I'm going to monitor its presence from now on! Then, nothing works on a page...oh, oh, allow script for this site temporarily. Curiously, I do feel safer. EverNote Web Clipper I like EverNote, so it's going to follow that I like this extension that sends pages straight to this natty, slick and crystal-clear note-taker. Bloglines Toolkit Speaks for itself if you're a Bloglines user - addictive substance pun probably intentional. I also Enjoy The Company Of: ReloadEvery Great for those websites you leave open and want to...blah-de-blah blah... Snake Who needs a game extension? But, hey, it's Snake! gTranslate For the occasional word...very...occasional... PDF Download I once thought this was pretty good, but it kept losing in the battle against Adobe Acrobat Reader, so I did the only decent thing and uninstalled Adobe - who needs that bloated bully beast elbowing everyone out of the way and yet taking forever to open and never to close when cute'n'light, unassuming, humble (sometimes so humble it dances around on tippy-toes saying, "Should I open it, should I?") Foxit PDF Reader exists? (No Install required, extra bonus points) Anywaaaaaay, concerning PDF Download? Once I installed DownTHEMall it took care of everything because it asks how I want the .pdf handled. No problemo. Still, PDF Download lingers because I feel like I want to give it a chance. It declares that it can open .pdf as a straightforward web-page, and I want to see that work. I Once Enjoyed The Company Of: Find in Statusbar Mighty convenient having this little box in the statusbar, but I'm thinking I might prefer the whole look and feel of the onboard Find facility, so it may be worth waiting for this one. If you want to check it out, best use this link as the Mozilla Update entry is not compatible with 1.5. D'you know what? I've just deleted it. It is buggy. ListZilla Were it not for this extension, I would not have been able to publish this column with such ease. Possibly a candidate for "use-once-and-discard". Nuke Anything Enhanced If there is anything you do not like on a page - a picture, a box, umm (begins to sweat a little and giggle) - then right click and remove. Hurrah! I don't think I've used it yet. This and Image-Show-Hide are really dinosaurs from the dial-up age. They were a great help then, not so much now. For my web building aspirations I have installed: Aardvark This thing is fun (y'know) even without the web-building aspirations. Drop down the Tools menu and click Start Aardvark and everything your mouse hovers over highlights the elements for the page with a little yellow tag declaring what it is. How do these guys do it? Great for ideas, or, apparently, cleaning up a page before printing - so maybe elements can be altered depending on your viewing preference? So much still to find out... Web Developer So I have one or two extensions which seem to be light years ahead of my puny web-surfing/building intellect? Where's the harm? This one is essentially a toolbar with a whole host of buttons which offer dropdowns with more options than you can wave a stick at. I look, I click, I get a headache. This one's for later. HTML Validator This one I like, even if it's only to have the statusbar icon tell you that some great looking website actually has a handful of warnings. Not so good when it's your own website. But remember, Warnings - Good, Errors - Bad, Neither (Green with a Joyous Tick) - Best. That's the goal, the peak, the pinnacle, the, let's face it, unattainable, when it declares "&" a misdemeanor in the title Law & Order. Yah Boo. And, so far, that's it. I could probably add two or three to a Soon To Be Installed list: ColorZilla has got to be a candidate for any web-builder worth his groats; and is AllPeers not the most eagerly awaited Firefox extension? Can the big build-up and hanging expectation deliver? zzzzzzzzz

Gunfight At The eBay Corral: Who Shoots First?

Feedback: The great eBay face-off, eh? I received an e-mail today which read, "Hi there, please leave feedback and I will do the same in kind. Thank you for purchasing (la-di-da). Please leave feedback for me on eBay and I'll do the same for you. Take this opportunity now and help build a better eBay community." Here's the thing, see: Why do I have to leave feedback first? I payed for this item before the seller even knew it was sold. Zipped through to PayPal and winged the money into their account before I'd even received a confirmation e-mail. Surely, if the buyer pays quickly and there are no problems with the money being accepted, then they have fulfilled their side of the contract. It would be better if the seller left feedback at that point, gushing about how wonderful it is to do business with this person, monies have been happily obtained and everything is going swimmingly. Then, when the buyer collects his purchase and sees that the items have arrived in one piece without any unnecessary delays, he can leave positive feedback promptly and everyone is happy. Or if his purchase was shoddily packed and generally badly managed, he can leave negative feedback without fear of reprisal. The seller has not fulfilled his side of the arrangement and therefore deserves negative or, at least, neutral feedback. There should be no tit-for-tat. I'm being told, "Take this opportunity now and help build a better eBay community"? How did that happen? Building a better eBay community must rest on basic good manners and fair trading sense, not you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours. That just makes it a sham (umm...yeeees? Your point being..?) Anyway, I've replied to the seller's feedback reminder and I'll keep you posted as to how things unfold. March 6, 2006. Nothing to report. He no give me feedback, I no give he, and that is that. Perhaps I'll be blacklisted by him. Is that possible on ebay? No too sure. Anyway, it all turns into a bit of a yawn.

iAudio X5 (Part III): Loading It, Sorting It, Playing It, Cursing It

Subtitled: Having A Cow-on: Music On The Mooooove (There'll be plenty more of those bad jokes, I'm sure.) Push up the power button on the side and the player takes about twenty seconds to load up - and this with 12gigs already taken up with music files on the 30gb version - so you don't have to wait long to start having musical fun. There is a brief loading bar showing the firmware version, followed by a Cowon splash screen movie before it deposits you wherever you left off last time. At the end, when you shut down, it switches off almost instantly. Now, I had certain requirements I was looking for in an mp3 player. They were not many, but they were vital to me, and they drastically reduced the spectrum of players that I could choose from. In short, they were: 1. It had to be a machine that needed no proprietary software - just drag and drop the files, and the player would recognize them. I know that many players claim that they can do this, but I wanted all of the hard drive to be recognized, not just a section set assigned as drive space. I guess what I'm saying is that I wanted a portable hard drive which also played music when disconnected: UMS (Ultra Mass Storage) as opposed to MTP (Media Transfer Protocol). The latter requires that your mp3 collection can only be transferred to your player with the necessary software. Ultimately, I could either go for Cowon or Archos. 2. The player must have a "random" setting: folder, sub-folder, sub-sub-folder, whatever, just shuffle, alright. Ummm (nervous laugh), that was about it. I know that #1 is not necessarily a popular choice, but I wonder whether this is only because of what is generally expected, like sticking with your first bank, or going online with AOL (spit-spit). Suggest to someone that they can open up their player and use it over Windows Explorer as straightforward as copying files and folders any other time, and they may just prefer it. It is simplicity itself, and very quick. 1500 mp3s, VBR, and not small, were transferred in about...well, I didn't time it, but it can't have been much more than fifteen minutes. Although the X5 does not sort by ID3 tags (a l'Archos) it still reads them and displays the artist, album and track name while the song is playing. You can arrange the files and folders any way you wish while the player is plugged into the PC, and this is the way the player will display the folders when in use. I'm still undecided: I have my collection sorted into five broad genres so that I can shuffle the lot, or a particular genre depending on what I'm in the mood for. I don't know whether it will work, and it may not be too long before I'm back to plain old, dependable Artist/Album. It is easy enough to scroll through folders; push right to drill down, press to play or expand (as in, push right). When the music starts, you will not be disappointed in the sound. Enough has been written elsewhere about the superiority of Cowon's audio quality. Suffice to say that you will find nothing much to complain about in that department. This is their "thing", their raison d'etre, their forte... The player's user-friendliness, on the other hand, might well have you a tad frustrated. It seems to me to be a little on the buggy side, a little temperamental, if you will. Once or twice I have been marooned on a file - or, more annoyingly, in voice-record mode where I couldn't get out, and just kept "taping" myself turning the air blue. The only solution seemed to be to turn the whole thing off and then on again. It dumped me, rather alarmingly back into voice-record, but this time I was able to escape. You might also find yourself wandering around the "Settings" interface with the feeling that you are driving into a fog. It starts off innocently enough, but the choices gradually become more obscure, until you find that your only desire is to turn around and go back to the safer confines of your music collection until you feel a little braver. For a (tiny) bit of an easier ride, here are one or two things I have discovered so far: Settings/PlayMode/Boundary This simply determines whether your "play" selection is going to play a single file, a directory, sub-directory, or the whole darn shooting match. Use this last one cautiously, otherwise you might find yourself jumping from a music track to a spoken word file - and that may not be what you wanted to do. Settings/General/Controls Here you get faced with "PLAY-long" and "REC-long". Hey, you can choose what will happen when you press and hold the buttons on the side of your player. Very helpful if you want to toggle lyrics on and off (see below), or switch between "shuffle" and "boundary". Can you guess what mine are set to? Lyrics On/Off If only you could select "On" and, voila, there are the lyrics to all your mp3s. I'm telling you, at the other end of six months work that could be a dream come true: Click Here to find a brief how-to on attaching lyrics to a track. Dynamic Playlist My suggestion is you use this like queuing system, or a CD stacker. Going on a journey, or have some extended work to do? Select some albums and tracks and add them to the list. Go into Dynamic Playlist and start playing. Keep the serious playlisting for when you're connected to your PC; it will save some unnecessary frustration. Although the manual claims that m3u playlists will only recognise songs up to 128kbps, I find that it has no trouble recognising my files ripped at 192kbps VBR. And, while were on the manual, why is it that no matter how weighty these tomes are, no matter how extensive they appear to be, they never contain the information that you are really interested in. What, as they say, is that all about? TextFile If you find yourself caught in a web of text and you want to escape, press the REC button on the side. The usual method of clicking the joystick will present you with a choice of what line you want to jump to. Useful, but not if you want to get out. I'll add to this if I discover anything further, but it has been fairly intuitive otherwise. VIDEO Playback Make no mistake, video playback is not a major factor with the X5. It is obviously not a priority and subsequently suffers, by today's comparisons, by being sub-standard. On initial play one can be forgiven a moment of wonder at the moving picture being presented on a tiny screen, but, after a short while, as the pixilation begins to bleed all over the place, and the audio and video gradually part company, the irritation sets in. There is only so long your mind can flip-flop between "wow" and "darn this thing" before you want to turn it off, with a dull throbbing in your temples. For short bursts, it'll do. At the moment I'm learning how to turn my music DVDs into .avi and then splitting them into song sizes. For this, it could be a go-er. But, I'm thinking it wasn't meant for any serious video watching; with its USB-on-the-go support, it makes more sense to me that Cowon imagined it to be a means for playing back video captured by a camera, or some such device. If this is the case, it does the job ably enough. For all my determination about proprietary software, there is still a need to install jetAudio on your PC if you want to take advantage of any video playing. Putting an .avi through the jetAudio conversion tool was a breeze. I fed in a 350mb TV programme and it churned out a dinky little 70meg vid fit for the X5 in hardly any time at all. No need to fear that your portable hard drive is going to be quickly filled up with ungainly mpeg4s. IN CONCLUSION You might not think it with all my gripes about controls and usability, but I am really quite besotted with my X5. I wanted a portable hard drive mp3 player, and this solid gem delivers in spades. All the rest is just blah blah blah. I want to thank iAudiophile.NET for their kind permission to use several photos and link to their site. That's the place to go for any news; and head over to the X5 forum if you run into any trouble. They'll be happy to help.

iAudio X5 (Part II): Box Clever

So, it arrived. I was fairly surprised at how heavy the package was - this sturdy, deep, grey box with the "talent" displayed prominently in the window - until it dawned on me that half the weight would be taken up by a hefty instruction manual in fifteen languages. I wasn't wrong. It is worthy packaging, though; the box, the plastic window, and the false bottom lifted to reveal all the necessary kit: USB connector, adapter, line in/out cable, and the, somewhat maligned, so-called "dongle" needed to connect all these to the player itself (and it is small enough to give you the nagging suspicion: "I'm going to lose that"). But, what a player... Let me tell you that the pictures do it absolutely no justice at all. For a start, they give no real indication of just how svelte this little baby is. The galleries are replete with photos of a thing of massive proportions; even the perspective of it sitting in a palm only seems to conjure up images of gigantic hands. It's not until you see this thing for real that you get to appreciate what a cutie it really is. It weighs about the same as an apple (the fruit, the fruit, already) - no, a pack of cards, because that is about all the room in takes up in the palm of your hand. It is not smooth - not like an ipod, or a Creative or a Philips. Do they call it "brushed alluminium"? Whatever they call it, it feels safe in your hands, cold and gun-metal black. The controls are stout, giving a solid quiet "clik", and the joystick seems like no trouble at all. Ingenious, really, having barely any room taken up with controls; just allowing the aesthetics of the player some space - it matters that the iAudio logo is raised and sharp and angular on the front. They have done good with the look and packaging, those people at Cowon Industries. It is recommended that it is plugged in and fully charged before use, which is a good thing because I found I was curiously apprehensive about firing it up and beginning to use it. I plugged it into the timer and set it to charge in the night. Screen looks bright and clear...

iAudio X5 (Part I): The Colour, The Size, The...Stitching, The Size!

Isn't this just the cutest little thing? I mean, take a look around you. What's nearby? Look at your hand; this thing barely covers your palm. Well, it certainly doesn't widthways. See that packet of tissues? This is smaller, and thinner; or "not as deep" or whatever the term is. Packet of smokes? This tiny creation certainly beats a twenty; maybe even a packet of ten. That cassette ? (What's one of those, Daddy?) Why, this even has that topped. You should get the tape out to get more of the sense of smallness, tinyness, m-i-n-i-s-c-u-l-e-ness. A deck of cards, the mouse under your palm, your TV remote; this crazy lady of infinitesimal proportions, with the smooth leathery blackness, and the giggling, coy, white stitching, which (I might add) runs down and around and back up again, is - yes, you heard me - smaller than any of those too-large objects. It arrived yesterday, and it is waiting excitedly for what is to go in it. That's right - in it. Because, no matter how tiddly [Brit] this is, what is to go in it is going to be just that bit more petite [Fr]. I can't believe it, and I can't wait. I might even wear this on my belt while I work today anyway.

Virus Developer Recruiting Emergency Averted

I just got a shock to discover that a link on my old website was sending people to a bizarre dating search engine. I felt, by turns, murderous, stupid, panic-stricken; I harboured extreme revenge fantasies and wanted to do serious harm. All in the space of just this morning. A year or two back I decided against renewing my domain name - lessbrilliant.co.uk. I was at a point where I felt like I couldn't justify the miniscule amount it cost to reregister. The website was a hobby and a learning curve and an opportunity to fawn over my favourite music; all good reasons, I know, but when the renewal came up I thought I would pack it in. Then, a couple of months later, I had a moment of regret, like you do, and I attempted to buy the domain name again in order to keep things ticking over. Blow me if someone hadn't bought it already. The name means nothing to anyone except me! What does "lessbrilliant" mean? It doesn't give anyone an idea about anything in particular, so why on earth would anyone want to purloin it? As innocent as the person was at the other end of a couple of vitriolic e-mails - with an offer of whoever-knows-how-much to release it - I know that unscrupulous people have methods of keeping an eye on domain names which have been abandoned and buying them up so that they can either: 1) Act vaguely innocent and not a little bolshy and offer to sell your domain name back to you for extortionate and unnecessary administrative fees, 2) Rely on lazy mugs like me to leave their website live and have any passersby - however few there may be - redirected to some bizarre dating search engine, 3) Some other demented reasons I can hardly be bothered to think about. It was a little window into the world of virus developers, I feel. To seek revenge on society is perhaps one of the unearthly reasons why virus developers exist - and momentarily I wanted to join their ranks and pour all my wormy, trojanic, buggy, virusy scorn on whoever had picked up my innocent domain name. You'll be disappointed to know that instead I calmly broke into a cold sweat, fumbled around for passwords and usernames, logged onto my generic webspace and re-edited all (I hope) the relevant webpages. The good things I gleaned were: Once again installing and using HTML Kit, surely the best and most exhaustive HTML editor, evah! And finally finding a use for Portable FileZilla, FTP client extraordinaire. Like any language, without continued use the different brain areas have partially atrophied, but I was able to dredge up enough know-how to put right what was wrong. You live and learn and learn and learn...