May 13
MoggyApple, Mac, Website
The other day I purchased a GelaSkin cover for my MacBook Pro – it was about £20 – and unlike most retailers, is actually designed for my non-unibody old MacBook! Woop! I decided to get this Union Jack cover – I’m so patriotic!
For those that don’t understand – GelaSkins, according to their website are “removable covers for protecting and customizing your portable devices. They feature stunning, photo-quality graphics ranging from fine art prints to contemporary urban images designed by our growing family of artists from around the globe. Stand out in the crowd with personalized protection from GelaSkins.”
I got mine today – and it looks great! The application was no problem at all, the design is brilliant (matching much of my other Union Jack memorabilia), and the skin comes off just as easy as it goes on.
Plus, I am happy to see so many more designs for every other person out there – trust me, there is something for everyone. You can browse the GelaSkins website, Amazon, or the site I got mine from – UrbanRetro. Prices vary a bit, but I spose it’s up to you!
Anyway, I’m out. Can’t be arsed with a full review, but a star rating? Dunno… maybe 5 out of 5?
Apr 29
MoggyBBC, Politics, Web Design, Website
With the General Election coming in a month, many of the news websites have fantastic interactive map guides to the constituencies and the political party each MP represents. Here is a guide to the 5 best maps online:
Summary: My favorite is The Times, followed by Sky. They are both accurate, to scale maps with detailed information on each constituency. The Times more so because of extra features (such as the predictions) and it seemed to run a bit faster for me.
Feb 22
MoggyInternet, Web Design, Website
After a couple of days, I have now officially decided not to recommend on the site 123-reg.co.uk to friends. I will admit that they have been a great hosting and domain provider in the past (my website used to be hosted with them), but the debacle I’ve had in the past couple of days has really irritated me. This is the email I sent to the support centre.
Dear 123-reg,
Up until now, I have been a user of 123-reg services and have had no problems with the service at all. However, until the other day, when I signed up for my third domain (www.******************.co.uk) with you.
The purpose for the domain was simple, to set up a forward to the current .org.uk site. However, I specifically needed the domain forward set up for yesterday morning.. but this didn’t happen since my domain still hasn’t been set up, even after the “up to 48 hours” period of setting up.
Interestingly, today I can still search for the domain on your site, and it is listed as ‘available’, even though I’ve paid for it.
I purchased it at about 5pm on the 18th Feb, which I will admit allowed less than 48 hours for when I wanted the domain (about 10am on 20th Feb), but it is currently 11pm on 21st Feb, well over 72 hours from the purchase, and my domain still has not been set up in my control panel.
Another thing I would like to complain about, with regard to the “up to 48 hours” setting up period – I saw absolutely no detail of this information before purchasing – I only found it AFTER buying the domain. Knowing this info may have stopped me from purchasing the domain.
Because I only needed the domain for ONE simple task that has now passed, and it still hasn’t even been set up, I would like to request my money back (the invoice totalled to £7.03 inc. VAT).
Regards,
Alastair Mogford (username: **************)
PS. This is one of many times that I have tried to send this question. Turns out that both Safari and Firefox are determind to keep me logged into the site, prompting the message “all browser windows must be closed” – which ironically appears when it is the only browser window open.
The response given was rather interesting, they wanted me to fill in a manual form to complete my registration for the domain that had “failed”. There was no mention of any money return, at all.
I shall keep you posted with updates… although, for the moment, I will have to say avoid using the service for the above reason.
Update (9th March ‘10): After chasing the case up, it turns out that my domain failed registration. After asking for a refund, they seemed fine and wanted to pay it in, however it’s only today when my refund has actually made my bank account. 
Jan 26
MoggyApple, Mac, Web Design, Website
Apple, the company of absolute perfection and absolutely no room for error, has buggered up… and I know it’s industrially sad of me to point this out… but I just find it weird.
You’ll notice there is a difference between the horizontal viewing scroll bars on the USA and UK versions of Apple’s Mac website. It appears that Safari only exists in the States, despite the Safari website on the UK section exists, completely normally. Bizzare right? Check it out (click for larger previews):
So there you go. Do I deserve a reward? Or is there some anal reason why this is meant to be?
Nov 16
MoggyFamous People, Internet, Media, Website
Take a look at the screen shots below of headers of the most popular newspaper websites here in the UK. 4 broadsheets, and 4 tabloids. See if you notice any difference between the two… and i’ve added some arrows and circles to help you on the tabloid screen shots.
The Quality Broadsheets…
More
Oct 26
MoggyFacebook, Internet, Media, Update, Website
Dear Facebook,
While I like, and I am very supportive of the new features and design changes you bring to the community, the latest bunch of changes have had me very puzzled, and consequently annoyed.
I have never really liked the “Live Feed” idea, and in my mind it is just messy. Therefore I was happy to have it hidden away in the previous design. Now, however, I get awfully confused when sometimes I click on the “Home” button whilst logged in and it takes to one or the other (and not the last page I had previously been on) of either the much nicer, clearer and customisable News Feed, or the slow, irritating and cluttered Live Feed.
To be honest, and I will admit, this is not massively annoying, one click and it will take me back to my preferred News Feed. But WHY, have you – intentionally or not – COMPLETELY messed up my News Feed!?!? WHY!? Items that should be in the live feed are apparent… Items or types of updates I had previously hidden, are now appearing… and most of all – everything is out of order.
More
Sep 10
MoggyInternet, Music, Website
Right, lets get down to it – we all love music, right? But all of us don’t have a huge bank account, and there are some people that want to download music from around the web… without paying money. However, it’s getting harder and harder to do that.
In this series of blog posts I am going to show you where I commonly get my MP3 music files from – without, technically, being illegal. Look and learn people.
My first recommendation would be a website at:
http://www.jimmyr.com/mp3.php
This site was created by a popular YouTuber, Jimmy Ruska, and what he has done, is created a modified Google search that trawls through the internet and looks for free MP3 files. He has posted a video tutorial on YouTube that explains the step by step process, but I thought I would demonstrate the steps myself since the site is so efficient. Though first, I want to toss up the PRO’s and CON’s of the method:
PRO’s = Fast, relatively simple, free and technically legal for personal use.
CON’s = Sometimes contains dead links, often filled with spam, files mixed with bad quality files and ringtones sometimes (annoying!), and only works with the most popular songs and artists. Unwell-heard of artists are often not really found.
So this is how you do it, step by step. In this example, I am going to use the song Billie Jean by the recently late Michael Jackson. So, step 1 is to go to the site and search for the song, like so:
After pressing the Super Google Search button, you’ll see a new window containing a Google Search with a rather long query. This is what mine looked like:
And this is the rather long query. It’s all jibberish to the average person, so don’t worry about this too much. However, you can see the query YOU searched for at the beginning:
Right, so on this page, we have to look through the results, and find a page that may have a legit download link for your song. The top result for my Billie Jean search seems ok because of the following reasons:
- the website link displays the words “Index of” at the beginning.
- the website description displays (somewhere inside) the full name “Billie Jean.mp3″ in bold writing. If you see just “Billie Jean” as it is, without the “.mp3″, this may not be enough.
- the link also features “Micheal Jackson” as a subfolder, meaning the user who uploaded the MP3 file probably contains even more MJ songs. This point isn’t completely necessary, but is always a good thing to look out for.
- The domain (green writing) does not contain a spam link. Two of the biggest spam domains I see around are indexofmp3.net, mp3index.net and null3d.com. Just ignore these links.
Ok, so click on the link, and you should get an index page of some sort, similar to this one. If you go to a page that contains rich web content, you’ve got a spam or dead link. Go back and try again on a different link.
Now we need to search for our file. I can see it there, as the files are in alphabetical order, though you may want to try the handy Ctrl+F/Cmd+F trick if you can’t find it yourself. You want to check before you click on the link these two crucial things:
- The file name ends with “.mp3″ or other audio file extension. NEVER, ever, download a .exe ended file, as this will almost certainly be a virus. Ohh dear. You can check the MP3 status by looking at where it says “MP3 audio file” under the description column, if applicable.
- Check the file size of the file listed. This .mp3 file looks legit for a song as the file is 4.5MB in size. This is good as the average music file is about that… typically between 3MB and 6MB. If you get something at 100KB, that’s obviously either crap quality, a ringtone, or snippet from the song.
Ok? Yes, click on the link. The page will now open a small QuickTime snippet similar to this one, and start playing the file once buffered.
If this plays how you want to (it’s always worth checking), you want to go back to the previous index page listing all those files. Instead on clicking on the link again, right click on the link, and click either “open with iTunes” (Safari on Mac only) or “download linked file” (or could be “save linked file as”, or similar).
Now, the file starts downloading:
Once downloaded, as seen here in my Mac’s download stack, you drag it into iTunes, or whatever music library software you use, and there you go – you’ve got your free MP3.
Woo!
Now, just to recap – as I know someone is going to ask – downloading music like this is classed as stealing, and you could get your wrist slapped by your employer, peer or what have you. It is legal, however… so long as you use it for personal use. ie. you don’t publicly play it, use it in video projects, distribute it further, etc. It is only illegal for you if you break those rules just listed, or you are the person originally uploading that MP3 file to the internet for public use.
These, I know are the rules within the UK. As for the USA, or the rest of the world, it could be illegal, I don’t know, but I presume that it follows suit worldwide.
Sep 05
MoggyInternet, Media, TV, Website
A few posts ago, I wrote about how I favoured the Guardian news website against rivals, but today I stumbled across something that really rather annoyed me (for you folks outside the UK, you probably won’t understand this post, sorry.).
On the front page of all the major news websites, right now at about 9.30pm, there’s some story about the war, politics or something like that… but not The Guardian. The lead story here is about how, according to a survey, the Great British public support the BBC as a public corporation. Great news none the less, and this post is not a contest of that – but there findings are a bit interesting.
First, this all kicked off when James Murdoch, the CEO of News Corporation in Europe attacked the BBC, and this was at a keynote speech at the Edinburgh TV festival last weekend – an event sponsored and broadcasted by the Guardian Media Group. The next few days saw the reaction to this, and the poll, published by the company ICM, that the article refers to was introduced… great, but hang about… is this not a company heavily influenced by the Guardian Media Group as well? Oh yeah, I didn’t mention, the poll was also hosted on, and only on, the Guardian website. Great.
Some of you may be thinking what’s the problem with this. Well, the average reader for the Guardian newspaper is slightly left-wing… meaning they support public companies and object to privatisation. See where I’m going? Oh yeah, the BBC is one of those companies.
That’s right. By that line of thinking, everyone who actually visited the website and voted was heavily influenced already! Independent survey!? Bollocks to that! I would imagine had the survery been hosted on the Times Online website… or the Telegraph website, the results would be much different.
Aug 27
MoggyBBC, Internet, Media, Web Design, Website
On a day-to-day basis, I, and I’m sure many others of you do too, read the news. I commonly read mine online, brought forward to me either by RSS feeds or Twitter feeds – or by looking at my Safari homepage, currently set to Guardian.co.uk.
If you know me personally, you will know how much of a picky person I am, and here I will tell you why I picked the Guardian for my homepage out of all the other news sites to compare. I hve compared the layout of The Guardian to two other media sources; the BBC and The Times.
BBC News Online
I have always been a supporter of the BBC, and I shall say that for specific news stories, I read the BBC News online articles by choice. However, I dislike the BBC Homepage. Firstly, the whole thing just looks crammed in my opinion. I dislike the way that those eight ‘other top stories’ on the right don’t even get a description… and compare this to the ‘also in the news’ section and the ‘video and audio news’ section which have far less important stories, but are granted a thumbnail. Don’t get me wrong, the content on the BBC is great – but the layout and the homepage… not so.
Times Online
I rarely use the Times Online website, which is strange for me considering the Times is my favourite newspaper. Strange right? Well, I don’t read the online articles out of choice, nor is it set to my homepage, nor do I have any Times-related RSS feeds or updates of any sort. However, I thought I’d bung it in for comparison. I do rather like the layout, though see that big white space above the logo… yeah, thats a big banner ad – thankfully it’s not showing as I have an ad-blocker plug-in installed. Also see that space in the bottom right, yeah, that’s an ad too. I know companies like Times Online have to make money somehow, but I honestly hate large obtrusive adverts. Then there’s just the general feel of Times Online, it just looks… bland, plain, boring. Compare it to the Guardian, below, which makes better use of colour. And then, the layout, it hosts the biggest crime of all. When I’m scrolled to the top, excluding the ‘most read’ box, I can only see a maximum of 4 news stories. Just 4.
The Guardian
And then we have the Guardian, my current favourite. The page is vibrant and attractive, unlike The Times it is colourful and mildly exciting – and I can see more than just 4 stories! There are no obtrusive ads, and the column on the right is small and out the way in my opinion.
And then, finally, as it’s worth a mention – the Media Guardian section is fantastic and hosts great content – one of the real great reasons why I use The Guardian for online news reading.
Aug 19
MoggyMe, Update, Web Design, Website
Hi everyone,
I’ve spent the day flipping around my whole website. Homepage, blog, domains, hosting… everything. I’ve still got a long way to go, so if you’re reading this, don’t expect anything special to happen until around the beginning of September. After then, expect more and more frequent posts about interesting stuff!!
This blog is now hosted on Wordpress. I used to use Blogger, though found it restricting and annoying. I have since transferred all my previous posts over to here, and been making the UI look a little nicer.
Today, I also switched domain hosting. I was previously using alastairmogford.co.uk, though switched to alastairmogford.com after realizing that GoDaddy (whom I had just purchased hosting off), couldn’t transfer .co.uk domains. Therefore you’ll find I’m starting all over on the .com hosting, along with a fancy new subdomain. Nice!
Later everyone!
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