Oh my God, they've killed 1998!!!!!!!!

Radio East Milton: 'Cool'!!!!!

Well, this is a very nice start to the new year!!!!!! One of our fave news sites of the last year, the very nice Newstrolls, have given our Radio East Milton station (See issue 18...) a plug!!!! And from no less a person than Pasty Drone herself!!!! "Hey Old Fart! Anyone who gives a 5 weight in the playlist to BowWowWow AND Public Enemy is cool by me!" Thanks very much, Pasty!!!!!

http://www.newstrolls.com/news/dev/fpage/usertrolls/usertrolls.cgi

In case you haven't heard us, (Where you been!!!!) here's where you can find us!!!!

http://seniordads.atari.org/radio/

Have a good old shout- on tha netweb!!!!!!!

Well, it looks like Image Radio no longer has the monopoly on letting users make their own radio stations on tha inphopipe highway netweb thingy!!!!! Even more significantly, (We're using big words today, aren't we!!!!!!) it looks like Realaudio's dominance in the webby audio streaming department is under threat!!!!

It's all thanks to this thingy called Shoutcast by Nullsoft- that's right it's the people behind Winamp!!!! What they've done is added a plugin to Winamp that allows whatever you're playing on Winamp (Whether it's MP3s, WAVs, MODs, YMs, etc.) to be streamed to a special Shoutcast server anywhere on tha netweb!!!!! Even better, you can download a server for Windows, and broadcast to the web on the same computer you're playing Winamp on!!!!! For you non-Windows peeps, there's also server proggies for quite a few non-wintel platforms... And it's all for free as well!!!!!!

http://www.shoutcast.com/

This idea has really caught the Slashdot crowd on the hop- they're looking for ways to take the Windows part out of the equation...

http://cachedot.slashdot.org/askslashdot/99/01/06/170239.shtml

At the time of writing, we've been sampling (!!!!) some of the stations in the Shoutcast directory... By default all Shoutcast servers tell the main Shoutcast directory if they're broadcasting or not... (Which is quite handy if you're a Trading Standards person, and want to find out who's broadcasting copyrighted music on tha netweb without permission!!!!!!) In amongst the top 10 we found this little beauty!!! Sub Ether Radio broadcast whole uncut episodes of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy!!!!!! (And apparently they appear to be broadcasting the original radio episodes, rather than the versions released on the record...

http://yp.shoutcast.com/cgi-bin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?
addr=209.24.232.254:8000&file=filename.pls

Another interesting station (And one which is a bit more legit!!!!!) is MP3.com's Top 40 Countdown, where you can hear loadsa unsigned acts on MP3.com's archives, which is really great, as you can listen to such jolly tunes as X-Clan's "F&$ked up world"!!!!!! (A brilliant reason if there ever was one!!!!!)

http://www.mp3.com/charts/topchart.html

X-Clan!!!!!

http://www.mp3.com/music/HipHop/1091.html

Panto Banton mk II!!!!!!

Talking of MP3.com, you might remember that some time ago we mentioned one of their stranger artists, some dude called Chuckie Dogg Fresh, who talked an awful lot about "bitches" and "mo fo" people on his album "The Shit Is Wack"!!!!! (See issue 14...) Well, we've seen his page on mp3.com again recently, and there's been a couple of changes!!!! For a start, the album has been renamed "This Shit *Be* Wack", and for another, the Dogg's piccy has gone!!!! Presumably this is because the "Dogg" feels that he'll get less of a slagging off from "homies" who think he is a tad patronising if he doesn't put up any pic of himself!!!!!!!!!

Well, he's now got an alter-ego in the reggae section, called Chuck Rastaboyee Fresh!!!!! And in his "Nicely Stylin'", he's still got his original "Dogg" piccy up there!!!! As he says in his page: "Yum yum ladies gimme sum"!!!!!

http://www.mp3.com/music/Reggae/6122.html

However, in case a few people start slagging him off there as well, and he decides to remove his pic there, here's our local copy!!!!

http://seniordads.atari.org/features/citizen/graphics/dogg.jpg

Bet you can imagine him going: "Everybody in the house throw yo hands up in tha air!!!! And wave them around like you just don't care!!!!!!!!!"

Move over Slashdot, here's Cachedot!!!!

As you might have noticed from the Slashdot link above, those clever peeps at Slashdot-land have noticed that their server is getting so popular these days, that at some times it's very hard to get on!!!!! So they've started up another server called Cachedot, which keeps a copy of all the articles in Slashdot, so if you can't get in Slashdot proper, then you can still see the latest news here!!!!!

http://cachedot.slashdot.org/

Like Video- only wierder!!!

Now this is interesting!!!!!! If you're having problems with working your video recorder, (Like forgetting where the record button is, or what channel to switch to!!!!) then you might like this!!!! ReplayTV is a spiffy little "short-term" video recorder that is able to work by itself!!!!!! That's because it uses loads of computer stuff, and it doesn't record on a video tape- it record programs on a hard drive!!!!!!!!! (That's why it's "short-term", presumably!!!!!!!!!) It also connects with the Replay site on tha inphopipe highweb, to find out when programs are, so you can record a proggy, and then say to the videobox thingy to record all future episodes... And it'll get the details from the Replay site, and record them!!!! You can even get it to search for unknown programs of a specific genere (eg sci-fi, cop drama, thrash metal, etc.), and it'll find them and record it for you, so you can have your own special "Old Fart" telly channel!!!!

How long before this sortof thing blurs with the Internet, and we have a telly equivalent of Imagine Radio or Shoutcast on tha netweb?!?!?! Personally I can't wait till we can launch East Milton Gold, East Milton Movies, East Milton Gardening, and so on!!!!!!

http://www.replaytv.com/faq.html

Next years MP3 players- according to Korea!!!!

You wouldn't belive how many people have been asking me: "Old Fart, being the really 'hip' dude that you are, are you going to be getting one of those new-fangled Rio MP3 Walkman thinges?!?!?!"!!!!! To which I say: "Get out of my way, you young whippersnappers!!!!!"!!!!! Erm, yes well anyway, here is a little article about the whole load of Rio-style MP3 players that are coming in from South Korea, which looks to dominate the MP3 Walkman market at the moment!!!!!

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/kh1230/m1230b12.html

Encryption- with fish!!!!!!!!!

I've gone fishing a couple of times!!!!! I've never caught anything tho!!!!! But if I do in future, and I catch two fish, I might say: "Aha!!!! I can encrypt my email with this!!!!!" That's because there's this new encryption rate called Twofish encryption!!!!

http://www.ddj.com/articles/1998/9812/9812b/9812b.htm

Gravity- on your browsey-wowsey!!!!!

Have you ever wanted to find out what happens when you disrupt the gravititional balance of the solar system by dropping in another sun or two?!??!?! Well, now you can find out- thanks to Java!!!!! That's because there's a Gravity Java modeller on this spiffy little webbo site-o!!!

http://arachnoid.com/gravitation/

Who needs Saddam Hussein!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever wanted to the US to attack your "pad"?!?!? Well, now you can achieve this by building up your own stockpile of chemical weapons, with the help of this lovely little document which give you info about chemical weapons!!!!!!!! You'd need a lot of "nerve" to attempt this tho!!!!!!!! (DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

http://www.opcw.nl/chemhaz/toxins.htm

Chips on tha web- literally!!!!!!

Have you ever looked at a printed circuit board and thought: "Hmmm!!! I wonder what this would look like if there were a big hairy spider crawling all over it?!?!?!?"?!?!?!?!? Well, now you can find out!!!! Because in this government webpage, they've got pictures... Of spiders crawling over silicon chips!!!!!!! Why, I do not know, but there must be an interesting reason for it or something!!!!! Perhaps the government wants to make sure that their machine will still work, even if big hairy spiders crawl all over them!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.mdl.sandia.gov/Micromachine/images.html

Steve Albini says- Record Companies are cowboys!!!!!!

As they say, you can always trust the man who produced the final Nirvana album!!!!! This very informative article, by Steve Albini, the man behind that delighftul band Rapeman, tells you of all the pitfalls that can befall you if you sign with a major record label!!!! One very interesting part is when he mentions that crappy little pieces of paper can be used as legal documents, so that a record company can conceivably muck around with a band even before they've signed an actual proper contract with them!!!!! Basically, then entire article can be summarised in the following 3 words: "Major Labels: avoid!!!!!"!!! But then again, if it was just 3 words, it wouldn't be such an entertaining article, would it?!?!?!?!??!

http://www.atlantic-satellite.com/major_la.htm

Ladies & Gentlemen... The greatest Rock 'n' Roll band in the world... Pentium P2 33MHz With Soundcard!!!!!

But in the future, major labels might be using this instead!!!!!! Some bloke, who looks like something out of a mid 1970s Open University program, has knocked up this computer thingy, which makes up music in any style!!!!! So a future equivalent of Steps or Boyzone won't need to keep doing cover versions of other people's well-known songs!!!!!!!! But they probably will still use them anyway!!!!! Because they're rubbish!!!!!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_240000/240642.stm

DIVX- 'astroturf'?!?!?!

Well, you might have heard of the VHS of new video media, DVD, but you might not have yet heard of the Blockbusters/Sky Box Office of new video media, called DIVX!!!!! Unlike DVD, DIVX "software" only allows you to play it for a limited amount of time, then you have to pay to view it again!!!!!

For some odd reason, a lot of people don't really like this idea!!!!! And there's been a lot of DVD/DIVX flamewars going on, and a lot of the pro-DVD websites are not too kind about DIVX!!!!!! One thing there hasn't been too much of though, is websites that are actually in _favour_ of DIVX- until recently, when a few of them suddenly sprang up from nowhere!!!!! Oddly enough, a few people on the DVD side wondered if the sites were actually made up by pro DIVX companies!!!!

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981220S0001

http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/culture/story/16889.html?wnpg=all

Then, guess what happened!!!!!!!!!! After the Wired story, the site Prodivx.com suddenly mysteriously went down!!!!

http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/16923.html

Yahoo: overrated!!!!!

Ho ho!!!! Those cheeky chappies at Online Press have awarded Yahoo "Most overrated site of 1998"!!!!!!

http://www.onlinepress.com/context/122198.shtml

We also like their amusing sports news banner ad!!!!!!!

http://www.onlinepress.com/adman/portal.gif

Pull Furby's ears off!!!!!!!!!!

Why aren't there more sites like this on tha megamighty inphoweb highway, we say!!!! Yes, after that "Furby dissection" site, (See issue 20...) we've found out about this lovely little site called "Furby Assassination" you can, erm, assassinate a Furby!!!!! Mind you, I've never heard of an assassin killing someone by pulling their ears off!!!!!!!

http://www.newgrounds.com/assassin/furby/index.html

Magnetic Mindwarp!!!!!!!

The next time you're fooling around with magnets, whatever you do, don't put one on your head, or you might accidentelly peform a frontal labotomy on your brain!!!!!!!!!!! That's because the first brain surgery using magnetic controllers has just been performed!!!!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_241000/241244.stm

It's a 'poseur' of a program!!!!!!

Have you ever seen that funny little box they show in a corner of the screen on CNN during the Business programmes?!?!?! I'm talking about that box thingy that goes "NASDAQ" or "DOW", and then prints a funny number!!!!!! Well, wouldn't it be really great if instead of printing all that, it would display the latest headlines from Slashdot?!?!?!?! Well, you might interested in this!!!!! Some bloke has done a spiffy java proggy, which read various new websites, and then displays the headlines, "news-wire" style!!!!! I still don't know why he called it "Poseur Interactive Newswire" tho!!!!!!

http://www.poseur.com/pin.html

BioHazard Unit- for Mars!!!!

People still speculate about whether there's life on Mars on not... But thanks to this lot, you can be sure that if there are Martians, you won't catch the cold off them!!!!!!! That's because a planned Mars labratory thingy is expected to include a Bio-hazard unit on it!!!!!!!!

http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9812/25/mars.virus/index.html

EMail checker- by phone!!!!

Remember in the early 1980s when modems had those big sucker thingies that you stuck the phone handset to!??!?!!? They called them acoustic modems, presumably because they vaguely looked like the basic shape of an acoustic guitar!!!!!!! Well, they're back!!!!! Kind of!!!!!!!! Enter this brillibobs "personal organiser" palmtop type thingy- you can stick a mobile phone onto it, and the palmtop can then dial onto the netweb, and download your mail!!!!!! And it doesn't even look remotely like an acoustic guitar!!!!!!

http://www.jvc-america.com/pocketmail/pocketmail.html

Five fruity flavours!!!!!!!!

Here's another thing you might remember about the early 80s!!!!!! The BBC Micro we all know and love was launched as part of the Beeb's Computer Literacy Programme, another part of which was this telly proggy called "The Computer Programme"!!!!! (Funky name, huh?!?!?) The title sequence had some owl flying about whilst "Computer World" by those Kraftwerk dudes played in the background!!!!!

You might remember that, but do you remember the very first bit in the very first ever programme, just before the titles ran?!?!?! Well, I do!!!! It was this sort of "comedy sketch" thing, with Roy Kinnear as the bloke who ran a computer shop, and Fred Harris (From that classic telly show, "Leapfrog"!!!) as a really naive person wanting to buy a computer!!!! At one point, Fred wondered what colours the computers were available in, and we all rolled in the isles (Laughing!!!!) because we knew that you couldn't get computers in different colours!!!!!!!

Well, Fred has the last laugh now!!!! Apple are now releasing their iMacs in five different colours!!!!!!! So now someone who knows nothing about computers can now walk into a computer shop, ask for a computer in green, and we won't be able to laugh at them any more!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/culture/story/17173.html?wnpg=all

It might make The Financial Times a bit more interesting!!!!

If you've ever found your newspaper really boring!??!?!?! Have you ever wondered if rolling it up very tightly and sticking in an electrical socket will make it a bit more interesting??!??! Well, it might be a little bit like that in future!!!!!!!! That's because this lot are doing a lot of work on *electronic ink*!!!!!!!! This sort of stuff can be put on a page, and you can apply an electric signal to it, and the appearance of the ink changes!!!!! So it's a bit like a big monitor screen- on a page of paper!!!!! This means you could get a paper, and it'll update itself via tha netweb!!!!!!! Presumably you'll also be able to play a good game of Quake on it as well!!!!!!!!!!!

http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9812/23/electronic.ink.ap/

Norwegians can probe your bits!!!!!

This Norwegian lot say they can probe your bits!!!!! No, it's not a challenge to a fight!!!!!!! It's actually about hacking!!!!!! These really clever people are able to sniff the "bits" on computer networks anywhere on tha netweb!!!!

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/wr/story.html?s=v/nm/19981224/wr/hacking_1.html

Take a weight off your mind- literally!!!

They say the cheapest holidays are the ones near you live... But soon that'll be a load of crap!!!!!!!! That's because in the future, there will be a really stupidly expensive hotel, and it'll only be a couple of hundred miles away from you!!!!!!!! That's because it'll be a couple of hundred miles upwards... In space!!!!! Yes, this Space Island (Presumably because it's like Fantasy Island, expect that it's in space!!!!!!) lot are planning a hotel equivalent of the new space station!!!!! Their website's quite funny tho!!!!!! On it they "See Earth as God sees it"!!!!!! But if God's everywhere, then you already *are* seeing it as God sees it, because God's everywhere, and therefore is also where you are when you're seeing things!!!!!!! You're just not in orbit round the Earth, that's all!!!! Mind you, I didn't know God was in orbit round the Earth as this lot appear to be claiming!!!!! Won't he bump into the Space Shuttle or something?!?!??!!

http://www.spaceisland.com

Luvely Jabber(ly)!!!!!!!

Now I bet you thought a Jabber was what young people called a hypodermic syringe!!!!!!!! Well, you'd be wrong!!!!!!!! It's actually a Linux messaging system, bit like ICQ, and that bloody annoying Netscape AOL Instant Messenger proggy that starts up when I use the internet!!!!! (And I can't flippin' get rid of it either!!!!!!! It's even worse than those bloody disks they stick in every computing magazine!!!!!! It really gets up my nose!!!!!!!!!) Erm, anyway!!! It's like those two progs, but it's compatible with both of them!!!!! It also uses that spiffy XML business- and it's open source!!!!!!!

http://jabber.org/

Serial Doomsayer!!!!!!!!!!

As we mentioned before, there are some loopy survivalist types, who see the Y2K bug as the lastest candidate for causing society to break down!!!!!! (See issue 4...) So it's no surprise to see this person pitching in!!!!!!! Apparently he's been predicting the apocalypse for years!!!! Only one thing tho- he keeps changing the date and the cause of the apocalypse!!!!! At the moment it's Y2K, but if he gets that one wrong, then he'll probably change again and predict a big meteorite or whatever!!!! What he doesn't say that much is that the reason he's wanting the apocalypse to get a bloody move on is that he's wanting to meet Jesus or something!!!! Why he doesn't instead just place an ad in the personal ad section in a newspaper is anyone's guess!!!!!

http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/17193.html

Will they draw the line at this?!?!?!?! (Doh!!!!!!)

If you've got lots of awesome realtime graphics computing power, how would you use it to imporve your football coverage?!?!?!? Well, according to this telly channel in the US, you would use all those computers to draw a little line on the pitch!!!!!!!!!! Yes, this lot are using loads of technology in order to seemlessly draw a "ten yard line" on shots of an American football pitch, in real-time during a match!!!!!!!!! Maybe in future, we could have computer enhanced TV coverage of football matches over here... Though if it was Partick Thistle playing, it would probably need more enhancement than current computing power can provide!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/17192.html

This one's a card- literally!!!!! (Almost!!!!!)

Someone at that NT course I'm on discovered this trick on tha web!!!!!! It's a very neat card trick- and it uses no sneaky stuff like CGI or Java/Javascript!!!!!! So how is it done?!?!?! Well, have a go yourself, and see if you can work it out.... After a little examination and testing, we found out how it worked, and we were kicking ourselves!!!!!!!!!

http://www3.mcps.k12.md.us/users/rsfay/magic/