Jamiroquai 3/12

Went to the Jamiroquai concert last Saturday and it was nothing short of totally kick ass.

Sneaky Sound System kicked off the warm up acts, it was a little weird seeing them up in such a large space with all attention on the stage. I suspect most of us would be more familiar with seeing them cramped up in the corner of Hugo's or Bourben. Anyway, although it's becoming cool to put shit on Sneaky I reckon their music rocks and it was fun seeing Double D leaping around unhindered (Although I still think 'Double D' is a lame name to go by).

The Avalanches followed up next which was a pleasant blast from the past. I hadn't even really thought about them for a years until I came across their CD cover (no CD of course) recently cleaning up at home, so it was well timed to see them again. They did quite a lot of covers (which rocked), followed by what I suspect is some of their original stuff. Unfortunately none of it really stood out, perhaps my senses were a little dulled from sitting in the sun drinking beers for a large portion of the day ;)

Jamiroquai
Finally the sun decided to clock off, the crowd cheered as the Avalanches departed stage left, the projection screens were hoisted and rodies clambered around the lighting. For some strange reason ACDC was chosen as the CD to keep the punters psyched while they were setting up, it must be one of those industry things that the rodey gets to choose the music during their portion of the show. As abrasive as you would think it would be, they actually fit into the mood really well (bizzare, I know).

Eventually the telltale signs began - smoke machines billowed, light machines kicked into action, an input souce alert popped up onto one of the projectors (Murphey's Law, that bastard)... the show was about to begin. Despite the surge of people rushing for prime positions we somehow managed to get ourselves to within about 30 metres of the stage (a phenominal effort considering the size of the crowd).

Once it started it was just too cool for words. There's just something about an outdoor concert, with two of your longest time mates (Roz and Lloyd, amongst a whole bunch of other people), music you love, pissed and generally stoked to be tehre - a pretty good way to spend a Saturday.
Jay bounced around their entire catalogue with tracks from all their albums; 'Emergency on Planet Earth' (Love that didg, I remember thinking they must be aussie at that stage) and 'Travelling Without Moving' to his latest album, 'Dynamite'.
There was an awesome connection between the the band and the audience, you don't often feel a crowd so clearly full of gratitude for the music their listing to, it must be so cool performing with that kind of vibe around.

Afterwards we made the move to Paddo Inn to catch up with a few people who go to the concert, more fun, drinks, making our own dancefloor, followed by a long and fairly sobering walk home with Roz.

All in all it was an absolutely bonzer (such an underutilised word these days) day! If you get a chance to see them live, take it!

Bluepulse Widgets

So of late we've realised over at bluepulse that it's all about WIDGETS. It would seem that some people find the whole portal & remote application paradigm a little mind bending and bent minds are reasonably high on our don't-do-this-to-our-beloved-users list.

And so, we've made the decision to rename applications to widgets. For those out there who know what a widget is it's easy to translate the concept onto a mobile device. For those who don't know what we're on about we can start with a clean slate when describing them, a luxury we don't have when dealing with the associations people make with applications.

If you're familiar with Apple's Dashboard or Yahoo!'s Konfabulator then you'll know that widgets generally tend to deliver a specific bit of content or a particular service. For example, I run Konfabulator at work and have 6 widgets:

1. A todo list
2. An RSS news ticker that scrolls News.com, Slashdot and Reuters World News across the bottom of my screen
3. A Thotbot search
   
4. A World of Warcraft server status
5. Sydney weather with current conditions and a 5 day forcast
6. An IP locator (type in an IP and find out what city it's in)

So this has brought me to thinking about really simple widgets that we could build for bluepulse.
Keeping this in mind, here are a few ideas I've had for some new widgets:

1. Webcam viewer (Just enter the URL of the image and have a refresh option)
2. Translator (Enter a phrase, select its language and the language to convert to)
3. All the 'of the day' stuff
4. An IMDB search

With a bit of luck I'll get my webserver back up and running again at home (I get a BSOD on boot), along with a DnyDNS.com account, PHP (I prefer Cold Fusion but I know PHP can handle image conversion on its ear) and apache.

Project 1 will be taking the feed from my security system at home, which runs into my PC via the composite-in on the digital TV card, and hooking that up as a webcam, probably using the free software from the folks at VisionGS or the like. Then I'll build a bluepulse app that grabs a still so I can check out whats going on... Coooool =)