Simon Pearson - minor9th.com

Flight Control for iPhone is more addictive than crack

posted in Computers

2 Comments »

I’m just saying. You should under no circumstances play it.

That is all.

How to: revive a washed iPod shuffle

posted in Keeping Fit

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I nearly cried when I found my iPod shuffle had been through the washing machine with my skanky gym kit. When it came out I could hear soapy water sloshing around inside it. Big sad face. However! I am now a happy gym bunny and my iPod shuffle is well again. Here’s my advice for those in a similar situation:

• Don’t plug your iPod shuffle in!
• Bury it in a bag of rice for a week or so
• Plug it in to your computer
• Voila!

God bless electronics, and Mr Heathcote who, if i remember correctly, suggested this marvellous method. More tips and tricks over here.

Music to wash up to

posted in Life, Music

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It’s Saturday, I’m resting at home recovering from evil cold from hell, and I’m avoiding chores by looking for good music to wash up to.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• Martika’s Kitchen – Martika
• The Boy Does Nothing – Alesha Dixon
• Dishwasher – Fujiya & Miyagi
• Soul Kitchen – The Doors
• Wash Your Face In My Sink – Dream Warriors
• I Get Wet – Andrew W.K. (remember him?!)
• Soft And Wet – Prince
• High And Dry – Radiohead

Got any suggestions? Add them to this spotify playlist.

And now back to the grind.

Keep MPs’ expenses in the public domain

posted in Politics

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A very short but very important message: please write to your MP urging them to vote against changing the law to make MPs expenses exempt from the Freedom of Information act. It’s important!

Write to your MP now, and make sure your hard-earned pennies aren’t squandered on Swan pizzas, ice sculptures and private helter skelters. Or at least make sure that if that happens, you know about it and can act accordingly.

Please join the Facebook group too.

Update: phew. Panic over.

What I listened to in 2008

posted in Life, Music

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Thanks to the awesome LastGraph, I’ve mined my last.fm profile in a very elegant and beautiful way to look at listening habits over 2008, with the output below. No big surprises here. Had a couple of weeks off in late October/November so big chunk of listening there. Intriguied by a burst of listening to The Who last January. Might be time for another Baba-binge.

What I listened to in 2008, originally uploaded by minor9th.

I’ve also created a playlist of things which I enjoyed or discovered in 2008, which is presented below with mp3 links where I could find them. I’m sure I can help you out if you’re after an easier-to-digest version of the below…

1. Feel the love – Cut Copy
2. Paris Is Burning (Cut Copy Remix) – Ladyhawke
3. How We Became – Jeremy Warmsley
4. Quiet Houses – Fleet Foxes
5. Falling out of Reach – Guillemots
6. Grounds For Divorce – Elbow
7. Ada – The National
8. Edith and the Kingpin – Joni Mitchell
9. The Rip – Portishead
10. Black And Gold – Sam Sparro
11. Bring It Home – Nitin Sawhney feat. Imogen Heap
12. Lump Sum – Bon Iver
13. Sex On Fire – Kings Of Leon
14. Bleeding All Over You – Martha Wainwright
15. Possibly Maybe – Final Fantasy & Ed Droste
16. Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros (Featuring Rhymenoceros and the Hiphopopotamus) – Flight Of The Conchords
17. A-Punk – Vampire Weekend

Two whole weeks off in London

posted in London

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The last time i had two consecutive weeks to myself was a very long time ago. Even at university, when only 30 weeks a year were spent in lectures, there wasn’t ever a time when I wasn’t staying up doing overnight recording sessions to finish off my portfolio or checking other people’s data entry to make ends meet.

So from Friday, aside from a visit to my family up in Wales, I’m pretty much free as a bird, with all of credit-crunched London at my disposal.

What’s a boy to do?

Victoria line closures in iCal format

posted in London, Travel

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I recently moved to Finsbury Park, and luckily the weekends have been nice enough to afford drinking tea outside on our teeny teeny little roof terrace thingy. Tea good.

Victoria line being off is a slight nuisance though, and it causes all kinds of woe when people want brave the tube and come round to share in said tea.

Because I’ve yet to find one, I’ve created an iCal of the closures up to November on the Victoria line only, compiled from the not overly parseable pdf of planned track closures on their site.

The next things I will do with this are:

• Add evening closures
• Write to tfl and ask them nicely to provide their own iCal version of the skanky pdf document of closures on tfl.gov.uk
• Update the calendar to include closures to March 2009 done
• Add the others lines’ closures (whilst waiting for tfl to do their own thing)

Download the Victoria line closures calendar (iCal) now

Update March 1st, 2009: the calendar now includes all closures through to November 2009.

Who’d live in a house like this?

posted in Life, London

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Over the last month or so I’ve been flat-hunting extensively, crossing the threshold of various abodes listening to the same estate agent spiel.

Sadly the experience was nothing out of the ordinary, and despite what anyone says, garden flats will always be a bit dark; rooms remain the same size regardless of which way around you put the bed; if there are bars on the window there’s probably a good reason why; 15 minutes walk from the tube normally means 15 minute bus ride.

But most entertainment has come from dodgy ads on Gumtree, where property marketing through exquisite photography is the name of the game. These pictures represent just a few of the classy pads on offer in London this August.

Being an estate agent places stringent demands on the memory – it’s a job where the turnover of faces is high. But our charming, gelled-up letting agent Dan should really have realised that when I’m about to part with a large wodge of cash I’d rather not have my hand shaken by someone who calls me Peter.

Luckily we’ve found somewhere a little more inspiring than the above. And this post is the sole result of acute procrastination from packing.

• Check out more bad property listings…
• I customised a basic Yahoo! pipe to filter Gumtree rental ads by location. With a bit of tinkering it should work for whoever wants it. Unfortunately their RSS feed isn’t sophisticated enough to also filter by price – if anyone knows how to do this I’m all ears!

Boris vs Ken: is this really happening?

posted in London

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Not normally one to comment on politics, but the London mayoral election race just seems so much closer than it ought to. I mean. Really. Boris Johnson? As mayor? For real? Is anyone really going to vote for him? With that hair?

• Johnson vs Livingstone: it’s now on a knife-edge
• Stop Boris

Nice day for a blog wedding

posted in Web

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Big congratulations to Darren LMG and Sashinka on the announcement that they’re engaged! We do like a bit of love in the blogosphere. But in a world where our blog names are our surnames (Meg Meish (neé Notsosoft), Mike TD, Ian Blogadoon etc), obviously the biggest question of all is this: will it be Sasha LMG or Darren Sashinka?