Sunday, January 10, 2010

Quebec Gazette June 21 1764



This is the a copy of the first number, printed June 21, 1764 of the oldest continually published newspaper in North America. The Quebec Gazette eventually became the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which I wrote a few stories for, and is still published! I saw the original and it was in good condition - I think it was printed on hemp based paper and was brown but not crumbly. Here is the link to the pdf file: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25000544/Quebec-Gazette-June-21-1764

Friday, January 8, 2010

How to download BBC videos in Ubuntu

It's nice being able to keep a copy of a video for reference on your own pc - you can't  do this with the BBC's site using the firefox add-ons that work with youtube, but you can in Ubuntu's Linux using get_iplayer and flvstreamer - both of which you can find in Synaptic Package Manager (it's "get-iplayer" , not "get_iplayer" in Synaptic).
Then follow the instructions here: http://linuxcentre.net/getiplayer/documentation and if you just want to download from the BBC News' website go down to this section:

get_iplayer --modes=flashnormal
  --pid 'tv:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8104086.stm'
(put in the url of the page you want the embedded video from)

It will copy an .avi file to your home folder.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Huzzah!

The sound of a 50 calibre machine gun firing! It's New Years! I only hear it on New Years - they might even have tracer rounds...... wonder what the owner does with it the rest of the time.