Ear candy

I've been listening to a few good albums lately:

Zola Jesus - "Taiga"  (UK) (US)



First heard Zola Jesus support Fever Ray at Brixton Academy a few years ago. Couldn't make my mind up at the time, but I heard the track "Go (Blank Sea)" a couple of weeks ago and figured I'd take the album for a spin. It can be a little overpowering at times, but there are a few tracks which make my hair stand on end.


Integral - "Sercosa" (UK) (US)



I think I discovered Integral on one of the smaller labels I was looking at getting some Dirty Fire Project tracks published via quite a few years ago. Intelligently put together minimalistic IDM. Very atmospheric and really good headphone material.

Imogen Heap - "Sparks" (UK) (US)



Cannot express just how awesome this album is :) Imogen's album is a beautiful collection of sounds, vocals and lyrics. There's a bit in Xizi She Knows which catches me every, single, damn, time.


Currently reading: Jeff Noon - "Pollen" (UK) (US)

Bookmarks for 20141014

Some really useful advice for Azure website developers, especially if you happen to deploy from an external repository (e.g. Bitbucket, etc). This covers how to get web.config transforms working when you aren't in a situation of publishing direct to Azure from Visual Studio. Also, it covers how to tell Azure which project to deploy as your website, instead of it picking the first website in the assembly.

http://www.freshconsulting.com/2-alternate-configurations-for-windows-azure-deployment/


Awesome looking build-your-own-killer-death-robot game "Rise Of The Walkers".

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/11/robocraft-scorpion-tanks/


Sony SmartEyeglass SDK. I had a go of a hardware preview for this at the XDA DevCon event in Manchester (both the hardware and the conference were awesome).

https://developer.sony.com/develop/wearables/smarteyeglass-sdk/


Currently reading: Jeff Noon - "Pollen" (UK) (US)

Ain't no party ...

Heh

Food last night

Cooked for a dinner party last night at Cari's...

Steve had this to say:

Lanroth:  very middle class and domesticated of you ;-)

Smug mode: true

Bookmarks for 20140926

Afternoon all, here's the stuff.

Black Desert #CB2 Character Creation video. Sheer, utter MMORPG graphics porn:


Pain in the ass stuff about upgrading Apache that just bit me while I was upgrading Ubuntu on a hosted box of mine:

https://www.linode.com/docs/security/upgrading/updating-virtual-host-settings-from-apache-2-2-to-apache-2-4/



Currently reading: Jeff Noon - "Pollen" (UK) (US)

Leaving the hive

Looks like I'll be casting around for a new development gig that starts in November. I've had an interesting six months working at Spacehive and it's been nice to work in Canary Wharf without feeling responsible for the global economic collapse and recessions, you worldfuckers.

I really want to build applications in Conclave. Next gig just doing that, yeah? Please?

Reading: "Vurt" by Jeff Noon (UK) (US)

Another day, another bit falling off ...

I would heartily recommend not buying an Acer Aspire 5943G or any laptop which has a similar case. Whomever designed this was a fucking retard. I'll be very surprised if I get through the next twelve months without tracking them down and burning their car.

The DC power cable socket you can see on the side there has some plastic mounts inside which just plain broke off shortly after purchase. This recently got so bad that I had to use epoxy putty to fix the connector in place. The power button itself has always been dodgy and today was the day it decided to just fall into the casing due to the shit plastic faring being massively shit. I guess I should have seen that coming. I've removed the plastic faring, the plastic on/off button and now I have a bare push-to-make micro-switch to use which, frankly, feels more reliable already. Insulating tape to follow.

My laptop is the Psion of some cyperpunk dystopia. Hear me roar.