I’ve written about Justin Sandercoe before, who has several hundred excellent guitar tutorials up on Youtube. To my delight, he has now started a series of ukulele lessons as well. And by the looks of things, he can really play the uke, too. So if you want some hints on strumming technique etc, tune in.
Tag: internet
I wrote in September about getting Multicast working, this being required for TV over IP channels.
Having proved it worked, I then forgot about it, as the only such channel I can currently get is Sky, which I am not interested in. I just wanted to ensure my kit could handle it should other channels come along in the future.
Here and here I spoke about Multicast, and needing a new router to make it work.
The new router arrived in July, but initial attempt to get VPN working to my office with a suitable encryption failed. All I had to do was tinker with it, but I didn’t have time, and couldn’t afford for my work VPN to be down.
I have been with TalkTalk for some time, but on their business service, rather than their domestic one. This meant I missed the boat a year ago, when they handed out free YouView boxes – I bought mine instead.
But this year, they announced that they were merging accounts, and I became a TalkTalk Plus customer last week. I promptly applied for my free box, and after some conflicting information (which I won’t go into here), it arrived along with a new ADSL router.
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I took out a free month of NetFlix, and then decided to keep it on for a while. The first attraction was watching the first 3 series of “Warehouse 13” (the 4th series isn’t available yet), numerous films and the excellent “White Collar”. I then got heavily into “Breaking Bad”, and devoured it from beginning to end; and more recently, I enjoyed Hank Azaria in “Huff”. A short diversion was the very weird (but watchable) “The Booth At The End”.
All of this is being viewed on my TV, using the NetFlix app on my Wii; as YouView hasn’t got either NetFlix or LoveFilms yet.
I’ve been frequenting the website and YouTube channel of a guy called Justin Sandercoe. Some of you will have already come across him, as he’s been getting some good press; but for those of you who haven’t, I’d really recommend taking a look.
http://www.justinguitar.com/
Although not a great user of twitter, I have used it as a way of conveniently getting messages from devices like my Kindle through to my blog. Yes, I was doing it to post to the blog, but twitter gained the traffic as well.
Except that has now stopped, with changes to twitter’s API policy. They want anything posted to twitter to stay with twitter, and not be exported or cross-posted to any other system. As a result the IFTTT website has had to remove all of its twitter triggers effective today.
Am a little bit peeved that Google have announced the demise of iGoogle. I’ve used it for some time, and find it handy to have certain bits of information – calendar, to-do list, and certain RSS feeds I follow – come up on screen whenever I do a search.
All of the gadgets I have on iGoogle have alternatives, but it is the habit of seeing them there as a reminder several times a day, that helps me keep on top of things I want to follow.
As those of you who know me will know, I hang out on a couple of BBQ forums. Generally speaking they are a source of good information, but there are two kinds of posters who I find frustating.
1) Someone who comes on asking for advice on buying a decent grill on a budget. They get lots of good suggestions, from a variety of knowledgeable posters, all which meet their budget. They then later post that they went to B&Q or Homebase and bought a piece of crap that you know isn’t going to make it through the summer. Why did they post asking for advice in the first time? I’m not sure.
I’ve been playing with Dropbox recently, which is a cloud service that allows you to easily share files between multiple computers and mobile phones.
I know that some people have the opinion that Dropbox is not as secure as it claims, but I’ve read up on the issues, and am really not that concerned, for the uses I am going to put it to. Being mainly a quick and easy way to dump photos/videos off of my smartphone and netbook when I am travelling, so I don’t have to worry about memory.
… as I have even started buying flour through them!
Following my breadmaking course in December, I haven’t had many hands-on sessions. I’ve used the bread machine for convenience when busy, but was determined to start making it by hand again, as what I made on the course tasted so good.
A while ago, in June last year, I backed a Kickstarter project by Julia Nunes. I’ve mentioned Julia before as being a YouTube genius. She has released a couple of albums in the past, but was looking to raise $15,000 to do a proper studio album. Within 24 hours she had received pledges of $19,000, and by the time the project closed, she had pledges of $77,888, with 1,685 backers.
I think one of the reasons that Julia is so popular with her fans is that she is so… well, interactive. She has used the Kickstarter site to the fullest, with regular updates and even videos of part of the recording process and her giving an impromtu concert in the Kickstarter office.