MrPowers.co.uk

Kevin Rose & Alex Albrecht soundboards released!

Posted by MrPowers under IPTV, Internet, People

It has been a great many months in the making but they have finally arrived. The Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht soundboards are complete and on the site. They took a long time to create and contain sounds from over 130 episodes of Diggnation. I couldnt add in a lot of sounds due to well….. lots of reasons, but theres still plenty there to have fun with. Just click on the thumbnails to view them!! I hope you all enjoy them!

Special thanks to Zen Elements & SelfReflexion for all their help!! Much appreciated guys!

YouTube… the good submitters

Posted by MrPowers under IPTV, Internet, People, Technology

It isn’t very often that I see somebody talented and make good use of the miracle that is YouTube. There is so much nonsense out there with a crap ton of videos taken from less than impressive camera phones…. like my LG U8110. There are times when I wish we could remove such things or at least put more restrictions on…. but them I am forgetting the freedom to upload and share any video you want is what makes YouTube so great!! Even if its a simple 20 second video you just want a friend to see, YouTube a great way of sharing it. Perhaps I don’t like a lot of the content thats there, but its not like I am being forced to watch anything on it.

However there are few out there that I have found, that create and share something really wonderful with people.

Sumfight (a.k.a. Cody Rapol)

The first is Cody Rapol(sumfight at gmail dot com) creator of sumfight.com. Here is somebody that really has a passion for creating entertaining videos and sharing them with friends and who ever else may be interested. One of the best things is that this is all his own work - OMG at production quality.

This particular video is called YAQMA: May 2008, where Cody answers user submitted questions in his usual half hearted manner. You won’t find more wierd questions anywhere else to be honest! However Cody answers them pretty damn well. As well as YAQMA he covers a great many topics and is always entertaining.

You can follow his updates be either go to his YouTube channel and clicking the Subscribe button, or subscribe to his blog’s RSS feed.

Some of my other fav’s of his are How Do You Want That, Nice Vagina Pants Bro, and the video that could not be more true: Anti Movie Piracy - man does that one hit home for me!!

At the moments I am also loving the videos entitled “Totally Random”…. as thats exactly what they are. Cody is also one of the top most subsricbed to Comedians on YouTube.  Also don’t forget to buy a shirt! - http://www.sumfight.com/shop/

Chris Pirillo

Ah yes! Chris was a favorite on Tech TV’s “Call for Help” and today still continues to share his wealth of tech knowledge with a loyal following on YouTube and Lockergnome. He runs a very popular personal blog where he published his YouTube videos on all that is tech.

This particular  video is Chris’s take on the nonsense going on at Comcast. I personally call it the “Pirillo pwns Comcast video”. It took them a few months but Comcast eventually admitted they were “shaping traffic” - which basically means if they found customers downloading torrents even if the content was LEGAL!

Of course Chris being the very intelligent person he is totally summed up how crazy the situation is by “pwning” this guys calling from Comcast. It really shows how poor Comcast is. This is amongst some 1,300 other videos he has posted. He gives amazing information on tech and how to use it even if you arent one who is tech savvy.

Dundee (unsafe for cycling)

Posted by MrPowers under Personal, Scotland/Dundee

There was once a time when you could rome about freely not worrying about crime, crackheads, and nutcases. How times have changed! Even when I had a bike I cannot imagine myself leaving it anywhere near the town center. I would be so scared that it would get stolen. But as this photo proves I don’t need to worry about that at all…. apparently its just the tires that people want and not the whole bike. I would much rather replace just the tires than the whole bicycle to be honest!

I was going for a walk to day and just so happened to pass it so I took a quick snap using the crappy camera on my 3 year old phone. This immediately reminded me of what happened to Alex and Jim and their bikes. They had theirs inside a secure apartment building yet somebody took it upon themselves to slash the tires on the two bikes!! So much for the locked doors keeping out the idiots which rome our streets. So the tires + wheels seem to be hot on the market at the moment, however I can’t see why so many people would want them….

I’ve got it! people are buying back their own bike parts. What an ingenious idea!! Why didnt I think of that!!

Life after ‘education’

Posted by MrPowers under Personal

For as far back as I can remember I have had many people around me in life telling me how important education is and that pursuing college/university will make a huge difference to your life. Rarely though do people tell you how exactly this will happen or how to go about it!

I did my four years at the University of Abertay Dundee and graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Science in Web Design & Development. I feel I learned some things, but I have yet to feel it has made any real difference in my life. Pre-college I could apply for jobs and never get any sort of feedback. This theme is still present to this very day! Needless to say getting a job you have waited so long for takes a lot more than a degree, much more. However that’s the part I am really struggling with. How to make yourself an asset to somebody/a company is so key now. You can have all the qualifications in the world but at the end of the day employers want to know what great and wonderful things you can do for them.

I sometimes feel that as long as you say “I have a degree” they are satisfied with that and move on from it. A degree is almost a formality….now you need to do a lot of hard work to create something of your own BEFORE you can get employed. Interesting… what is this stage of life called? Is there a word for it?!  Probably not but a fact of life many graduates must face nowadays. Just a few hours ago my dad (who lives far away in Oregon) called me and we discussed what I could and should be doing with myself. I never imagined how difficult it was to answer the question “What do you want to do?”. It’s such a simple question in itself but one I found incredibly difficult to come up with any sort of answer for. So for the next week or so (until my dad calls again) I really need to think what to do with myself. Apparently sitting at the computer all day while being unemployed doesn’t count as doing something! (what a crime!!)

So I have my degree and know the general field I want to work in. Time to get off of my rear end and start doing something with my expertise!

MrBabyMan

Posted by MrPowers under Internet, People

One of the best things to ever happen to Digg was the hard work & contribution from Andrew Sorcini (a.k.a. MrBabyMan). He consistently submits wonderful content to Digg and has a real passion for the site. He does a weekly podcast called The Drill Down, about some of the stories that appear on Digg (though the podcast isn’t strictly about Digg) and has even visited the Digg offices and met the staff. I myself had the pleasure of speaking with him on Skype in the “after chat” of The Drill Down, and found him to be a very intelligent and wonderful human being. Soooo….. can we just leave it at that? Apparently not!

Most people on Digg will likely be aware by now of who MrBabyMan is and the recent non sense thats been going on. Suffice to say a recent submission (from the girlfriend of a Digg employee no less) was directed at Andy and was abusive. Some say this was a parody submission, some said who cares? I think when one constantly sees “Fuck you MrBabyMan” in an overwhelming amount of comments on one website, they cannot help but care. Why say this to somebody? Ok yeah…. its only a website, but MrBabyMan is more than just an avatar or an account on a website. He is actually just somebody who really loves and cares about Digg. The reason for the popularity and success of social media (amongst many other things) is because of people just like him! So why hate him and abuse him? When you look at the profiles of the people who post the horrible comments about him and hate on him….. these people generally haven’t been on Digg very long, have no submissions, and have only made comments about Andy and his submissions. I would guess that some of these are dummy accounts but I can’t be too sure of that. Its pretty amazing that people can go out of their way to abuse somebody who really doesn’t deserve it.

After seeing this video I know that Andy is just your average kinda guy…. just like the rest of us!

IPTV & Video Podcasts vs TV

Posted by MrPowers under IPTV, Internet, Technology

More and more often I find myself watching video content delivered via the Internet over regular old television. There are two main reasons for this:

• A significant decline in quality of television programing
• Content via the Internet is more suited to my taste

I haven’t ever had cable TV during the entire time I lived in Scotland. The first few years of living here I was most disorientated and lost (for others reasons too) without my 60 channels. Instead (at first) I had to settle for 4 channels!! I couldn’t believe it!! Over the years I managed to adapt and learned to appreciate British TV for what it was. Then when I moved to Broughty Ferry in 2003 I had to do with no TV what so ever!!! There was no external antenna and internal ones just plain didn’t work.  How mad was I??!! Well more than words could explain. However a few months later I FINALLY got broadband in the house. This partially made up for it, and bought a lot more DVDs during that period. Suffice to say I was a big TV person in the past.

Then the Web 2.0 revolution happened. In time video podcasts, YouTube, and “less than legal sources of TV shows and movies” fast became a huge hobby of mine. I watch LOST, Family Guy, COPS, Battlestar Gallactica, and a few others but find myself scrambling to download video podcasts a lot quicker than “acquiring” regular television shows. I have found that while I still love a few TV shows, the content from the Internet definelty hits closer to home. Diggnation is probably one of the most well known video podcasts and I would have to say my favorite too! It basically a couple of guys sit on a couch and talk about the top stories from digg.com - simple right? In one sense there’s not too much to the show but it has certainly made for some great entertainment. So I suppose content that really hits home is now preferable to standard TV shows - but I still religiously watch both sets of content equally.

Perhaps in a couple of years time there will be more of a presence of this sort of media, leading to a mass migration to internet based video from “comtastic” video…. or perhaps I am just dreaming. Audio podcasts took off very well but I get the feeling many people (the general public that is, not the creators) haven’t quite adopted video podcasts or IPTV. Perhaps this could be due to the fact that many people have the iPod shuffle or similar device that doesn’t display video, or watching video on the move isn’t as convenient as audio is. Either way I will always be on the look out for new video content.

Lastly I leave you with one of my favorite Diggnation clips…

Twitter

Posted by MrPowers under Internet, Technology

Twitter is something of a phenomenon at the moment. No, its not a meme and there is no sign of Rick Astley anywhere (for the most part).  I have recently started following people in Dundee and to my surprise I have found that there actually are other people interested in the Internet and technology in this city! The best part of finding this out was the fact that it was so easy to do and it “just worked” (and it wasn’t even made by Apple). With its simplicity and popularity it begs the question “Why didn’t we see this years ago?“. While I don’t have an answer to this question, my best hypothesis would be that only in the past few years have we seen creative people and geeks team up and create some amazing apps like Twitter. I must admit - amazing as Twitter is I have been slow to adopt it. I do an update once every so often but not nearly as often as the people I follow. Perhaps thats a good thing, after all its not a rule to write every little thing that you do!

One of the features that I think helps make this a great web app, is the fact that it uses tinyurl to make the posts far more readable. Something I have never liked when reading blogs etc is outrageously long hyperlinks in the posts. Twitter is of course quite different from blogging but still a vital feature nonetheless.  Then we have all of the 3rd party apps. There are a few of them out there to say the least. One I found particularly interesting is twitterblacklist.com as its not too often we get to see such a wonderful thing generated from the user community. It seems very difficult to find a spam free area on the internet these days - what better than to have a community that can actually fight back, and help you fight back too. I should point out the companies who create the various Web 2.0 apps do try to combat this overwhelming problem, but I believe that the users provide the best means of killing the spam. Over the past few years I think the power of communities/users is evident, after all if you are reading this blog you are likely getting your news from Digg.com (a user content submitted site).

Last but not least…. follow me on Twitter!

Photography & Flickr, & Dundee

Posted by MrPowers under Photography

I have never fancied myself as a photographer but have always admired the people who do take the time and money to produce such wonderful pieces of work. To the left you see my picture of the view from my patio at the front of my house. it overlooks the estuary of the River Tay. Across the river is the small town of Tayport in the county of Fife. There was a fine sunny day (for a change) and it made me decide to take a quick photo as a memoir! I was surprised how well it actually came out. When I showed it to people I know they were surprised not at the quality of the photo, but suprised by the fact that it was taken in Dundee! I would like to think the photo proves contrary to popular belief that “there are no nice areas in Dundee”…..there are some but not lots. A little while back I asked a photographer friend of mine if he wouldn’t mind taking a couple of quick snaps for me as he has a much better talent for this sort of thing. I watched in confusion and envy to a certain extent, with all the time, preparation, and patience it takes to do this sort of thing. Furthermore… man that’s a lot of stuff to carry around just to take pictures!! I am glad he came though. He took a few different photos and did a great job.

Well what can I say! Great work. This gave me a chance to actually put more photos on my Flickr account…. something I don’t do often enough. I have an ok camera just sitting around not doing much, it needs to get used again…. its just about gathering dust! I am very happy to add in any of Alex’s photos to my Flickr