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Today I ran across the BBC Programme Catalogue: a database of thousands of BBC TV and radio programmes, including details of contributors. Of course, I had to try a vanity search. And I’m on there! When I was a kid, I was on TV quite a lot because of a newspaper I’d made. They only have one of those listed, but it was the best one: I was on Blue Peter. Non-Brits of a certain age may not understand the importance of this. I have the badge and everything to prove it. I have no recollection of being in Casualty, but it is filmed in Bristol. Would be a bit bizarre if there was someone else with my name in the city.

Long time no post! The past week I’ve been glued to the BBC Drama Five Days. One highlight of the show was the music, especially the haunting song that played whenever the going was getting really tragic. Haje and I couldn’t identify the vocalist, and nor could Google (shameful!). All we could tell was that she was Swedish or Icelandic (it was hard to tell). This warranted some detective work. I’m posting this here in case it helps anyone else who’s searching for it.

The credits listed Magnus Fiennes as the music producer (who Wikipedia informs me is the brother of Ralph and Joseph). If anyone could tell me, it would be him. Of course, I couldn’t find a way to contact him, but I did find his agent. I dashed them off a quick email last night, then promptly forgot about the whole thing until this afternoon when I get a reply.

Thankyou for your interest in Magnus Fiennes’ work on Five Days. He is
delighted with the response he has had from it! The female soloist was
Heidrunanna Bjornsdottir, Im afraid I dont know who she is represented
by but more of her music, seperate from her work on Five Days, is
available on Myspace. At the moment we are not involvred in any plans to
release the soundtrack. The best people to discuss this with are the
BBC. If we have any news on this release all info will be available on
our website in the future www.coolmusicltd.com

Some more digging around identified her as Heidrun Anna Bjornsdottir (or should that be Heiðrún Anna Björnsdóttir?), an Icelandic singer currently based in London. Back in the day she was part of Icelandic band GusGus (whose other members have included Emilíana Torrini, who I am a fan of. Others may know her as the singer of Gollum’s Song from LotR, but her own stuff is loads better.). Her previous band was called Gloss (they have some stuff on iTunes and some singles on Amazon). Her current band is Cicada - you can listen to their stuff on their Myspazz and they have an album out. It’s nothing like the Five Days stuff, but it’s some good dirty electronica and I’m liking it.

Success! Now we just need the Beeb to release the soundtrack.

The project that I’ve working on all summer quietly went live a few days ago. I wrote a bit about it before, but it’s all working now, if a little buggy. It’s all about making panoramic images and virtual tours. Take a look at CleVR.com. It lets you stitch the photos and turn them into a tour, and it’s all free to use. There’s an example below the cut.
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E2 is down, and I have the fear that it’s my fault. When it went down I was testing some database stuff (to list new users) and I screwed up one of the queries. I don’t know how that could cause the errors, but the timing is worrying. I’ve emailed nate, so I hope it should be fixed soon. Sorry everyone. I’ve only been an admin for about a week too!

Iran has banned the Economist for the unforgivable crime of calling the Persian/Arabian Gulf “the Gulf” on a map in last weeks issue. Oddly they make no mention of it on their site, despite it getting wide coverage in other news outlets. According to those stories they’ve said they won’t back down over this. However, the map on their Iran country profile seems to suggest otherwise. Funny. Compare:

Just a little note for the benefit of others with the same problem searching for an answer.
When compiling on my shiny new MacBook, I got the following error:
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/i686-apple-darwin8/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib
Referenced from: /usr/bin/gcc
Reason: image not found


The answer is to remove the DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH:
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=
..which should solve it.

Tip of the hat

And quite right too. Why should they listen to bossy notices on bossy letters.

After the frustrating wait, tracking the delivery all the way from China, I now have my shiny new MacBook. The thing is fantastic, though there are a couple of niggling issues that bug me. First, while the shiny screen looks great, I already have a fingerprint on it, which seems really hard to remove. More seriously, it’s a bad idea to use the optical drive while holding the machione on your lap. I was burning a DVD, and picked the thing up off my lap. There was a worrying sound from the drive, and up popped a warning that the burn had failed. Seems the drive assembly and case are a little too bendy for comfort.

Edit: The 65° idle temperature is a little worrying too.

I bought a copy of Flash Pro a couple of days ago (or rather my company did). Our main business is based on QuickTime VR panoramas, and I decided it would be useful for us to have a Flash viewer. Beware: this gets a bit technical and boring for most people, but there is a pretty example.

Edit: I just realised that I have consecutive posts entitled “Ming” and “Flash”. Hehe. Retro joke.

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A lively young damsel named Menzies

Inquired: “Do you know what this thenzies?”

Her aunt, with a gasp,

Replied: “It’s a wasp,

And you’re holding the end where the stenzies.”

Listen »
From johnmenziesplc.com