I was ripping a few mix cd’s for my ipod yesterday and i put a disc in the drive and it didn’t show up in itunes, or in finder – very strange…

so i restarted and nothing changed, i held down the eject key on the keyboard and still nothing happened. this was when i panicked a little and hit the Apple Discussions forum to find out if this had happened to anyone else.

there were a few similar scenarios but nothing exactly the same, but the solution was found. basically you have to restart and hold down the touch pad button until the cd ejects – and it did.

here’s the support page with all the info: docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88068

I recently switched things around at work in regards to our email system. I was originally receiving all our work emails on my powerbook as well as all my personal and work related emails. which meant i always seemed to have a large amount of emails in my inbox, so i moved all the emails to do with the day job to a computer at work which has dramatically freed up my emails on my laptop. This also meant that i had to set up a new email address for my freelance work contacts – i was always using my work email for this.

so the problem now was what to put before the @martinlucas.co.uk for an email address. the obvious is my name, i.e. martin@martinlucas.co.uk which a lot of people do, but it’s something that i don’t like because of the repetition and i didn’t want the boring and predictable;

info@
contact@
mail@
email@

so i had a look around at work other ‘cool’ companies out there had. i know that i had seen websites with something different before the @ before – but purposefully looking for those wasn’t easy.

one of the more popular things to put before the @ was a greeting of some sorts, hello@ was found at a number of sites and i think this works really well – it’s casual, inviting and drops the rather stuffy and tired info@. but it still wasn’t quite right for me, as i wanted the email address to be (at least almost) grammatically correct, so you could actually say out the email address and it would make sense.

this limits the choices somewhat to verbs that came be done at a person or a place. here’s a couple that i came up with;

wink@ – way too flirtacious, but pretty fun
shout@ – would be great if it was for my dj site
sayhello@ – what i ended up going for

so i went with ’say hello at martin lucas dot co dot uk’, i think it works quite well. it asks people to contact me at my domain name, it’s an email address and a direction – it’s also quite casual without being too familiar and possibly off putting to potential clients and customers.

it’s nothing special in terms of technique or even the product it advertises – just a credit card, but the music (‘Non Stop’ by Whitey available at iTunes) and especially the storyline makes for the 60 seconds that it is squeezed into is really impressive… well, i thought so.

Just hit Google to do a search this morning and it’s gone dark – not undercover in a Jack Bauer kind of way – but to get across the message that turning your lights off when you don’t need them helps saves the World’s energy supply. A group called Earth Hour is asking everyone across the World to turn off their lights for 1 hour between 8:00 and 9:00pm this evening as a little demonstration slash experiment.

Find out more here; www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earthhour/.

so this is a post for Blog Action Day, “what’s that?” i hear you cry. well it’s a bit of a shout for a good cause that is being made by lots of bloggers on the world wide web and the cause is the environment – yep, the hot topic at the moment.

so what do i think about the environment? i think it needs to be there for a lot longer than we are going to be here that’s for sure. i also think it is stupidly easy to stop or change the majority of the things that we are doing to harm the planet [tree hugger moment alert], but we are just the little people, it’s businesses that are doing the lions share of the polluting at the moment and they are the ones that need to shift direction. fortunately this ‘being green’ look is pretty fashionable at the moment and many companies want to look as green as possible and certainly greener than the competition – have you noticed the amount of companies that are starting to advertise the fact that they are carbon neutral!

but there is a flip side to this coin.

did anyone see the fascinating documentary about the other side of the argument for global warming? entitled ‘the great global warming swindle‘ it was shown on channel 4 here in the uk about 6 months ago, little has been heard about it since, but some of the theory’s and explanations for the rise in the earth’s temperature made a lot of sense and in some cases a lot more sense than al gore and his inconvienent truth – which is something that i have yet to see. Many of the scientists involved were highly respected in their fields, a lot of them working for some of the largest universities and institutions around.

I really don’t think that it’s completely black and white – it just can’t be that simple. You know?!

So, what do I do? Well, assuming that I go along with the argument that we are helping to ruin the earth I recycle a lot and I buy recycled products where possible, we have started to use recycled paper and card for many of our printing services at work, I don’t use the car for unnecessary trips, I walk to work daily and I have used public transport for the majority of my life – I’ve only learnt to drive very recently. We use energy efficient light bulbs, we turn off stand by switches and power plugs when things aren’t in use and we try to stick another jumper on before whacking the heating up!

You see, the thing is, a lot of the things that you can do to help the environment will actually save you a fair amount of money – when added up. And that’s where I think a lot of advertising could be going wrong, the marketing and advertising people are trying to tug at our heart strings and the majority of people don’t care enough to make the changes, but if the angle was that it will save you ‘x’ amount of pounds, dollars, euros, yen or whatever then the little ice cube could start to snowball, quite literally!

btw, the photograph used at the top of this piece is “true energy” by Suat gursozlu.

i’ve been watching top gear for what seems like ages, the program actually started out way back in 1977 – before i was born, but the real birth of the program for me is when the bbc ditched the old 30 minute program for a studio based 1 hour show in 2002.

with the new series just underway i felt i should do something special to highlight my love for all things top and gear and show you my favourite 10 pieces of top gear, courtesy of youtube.com!

10. celebrities

is it a chat show? well, every week they have a well know celebrity who is usually publicising their new film or book or play or tv program or album or… you get the idea. here’s some of the best interviews and more importantly – the best efforts around the race track in the very reasonably priced car.

johnny vegas | jonathon ross | stephen fry | sir michael gambon

9. a great car review

BMW M3 CSL: I’ve always been a fan of BMW’s – ever since my parents had a 5 series, but it was the smaller 3 series that I drawn to and the m3 was the main attraction. This is a great car test, brilliantly shot and it just shows up every other car show that tries to imitate top gear’s style.

watch

8. a nail biting race in an amazing car

Aston Martin DB9 vs Eurostar Train: Ahh, the races – this is something that many find a complete pointless part of the program, it’s just an excuse for a holiday in a nice car and too probably drive too quickly in it. but for me it’s something adventurous and exciting – the ending is almost scripted, they are so close or it could be just an extended road test. see for yourself.

watch part 1 | part 2

7. extreme car testing

bugatti veyron does 253mph: not many people will have the chance to do it, so to witness it – even if it is only on tv is great. i can’t believe that when the veyron hit it’s top speed that it was eating up a football pitch every 1 second!

watch

6. silly sporting action

car football (Toyota’s V VW’s): there’s sporting action too, football with cars, a giant ball and some neat tricks by some of the drivers – some not so neat tricks by others.

watch

5. amazing human feats

Audi RS4 Review + Mountain Race: I’ve already mentioned that I love the BMW M3, but this audi RS4 went straight on to my lottery win car wish list.

watch part 1 | part 2

4. some toys for the kids

remote control cars: this was one of the funniest things they done, why don’t people do this and charge entrance fees?

watch

3. science abuse / almost clever engineering

Reliant Robin Space Shuttle: i think a lot of people thought that this was a step too far and completely pointless, i’ve never wanted them to finish and suceed in a project so much before, when it lifted off and it looked like a proper rocket… wow.

watch part 1 | part 2

2. danger

Richard Hammond Jet Car Crash: just to show that not everything turns out well, this was actually quite serious and if he wasn’t as short as he is then it would of turned out very differently.

watch

1. the best piece of television ever

bugatti veyron vs a private plane: I could honestly watch this over and over, it’s brilliantly done – the idea isn’t original because they’ve done these races before, but what makes this special is the car. now add to that the drama of this cross continent race then you really do have a top bit of telly. enjoy!

watch part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

top gear is great, the production quality, the writing, the chemistry between the presenters and even the music they use is all top notch – actually a lot of the cool soundtrack, breaks, downtempo, modern orchestral music is from my ipod – it’s one of the only programs that i look forward to and long may it continue!

i’ve been a mac os x’er for about a year and a half now and have gathered a fair few little applications in my dock. here’s some of the essentials;

cyberduck
my ftp client of choice, it’s a really great ftp client that does everything that is needed and it does so in a nice, clean and simple manor. get it here, cyberduck.ch.

cocoa mysql
a great little open source database management tool for os x, i’m not the most technically minded so i like small applications that make things simple for the not too technical and this is one of them. get it here, cocoamysql.sourceforge.net.

paparazzi!
paparazzi is a little application that takes screen grabs of websites, it’s one of these apps that does one thing really very well. you can export the final screen grab one of 4 different file types in either full size or as a reduced thumbnail. get it here, www.derailer.org/paparazzi.

adium
if you wanna chat on your mac, then you’re gonna need adium. you can login with your msn, aol, icq, yahoo messenger, google talk, .mac and many more. adium is also expandable and customisable – you can change the icons, add emoticons, messenger styles and more. get it here, adiumx.com.

snap ‘n’ drag
the screen grab function on os x is pretty good, but this app goes that little bit further. giving you options to grab the whole screen, a selection or an individual window. snap ‘n’ drag will also allow you to grab video clips from media players and the dvd player – which is the reason that i found it. get it here, www.yellowmug.com/snapndrag.

senuti
not being able to take tracks off your ipod – the only downside of connecting your ipod with itunes? maybe! but solve the issue with this smart little program. get it here, www.fadingred.org/senuti.

mac janitor
one that i can’t decide whether it’s needed or not, basically os x needs to be on during the night to run certain scripts that do a series of ‘house-keeping’ on your mac. i’m not sure what this house-keeping involves but it sounds helpful and for those of us who don’t leave their macs on 24/7 this program will run all the scripts for you. it did actually free up a load of hard drive space when i first ran it. try it for yourself here.

mac saber
now for something fun – if you have a mac laptop and one with a motion sensor you can run this application and throw your mac around and it will make light saber noises – just be careful with your mac, don’t let it slip out of your grip! get it here from macupdate.

holidays are more stressful than going to work all week. it’s a fact!

well maybe it’s the holidays that we take and what happens to us on them, in shot – i was ill for 3 days and we managed to kill our little car on the m11 motorway, the very nice man from the aa said it had a hole in the engine. oh dear.

it wasn’t all bad news though. we went to the new o2 arena to see prince, who was on top form – if you get the chance to check him out, then i highly recommend that you do! we also went down to the south coast for a few days, rye, camber and dungeness to be precise. i snapped some really nice photo’s which i’m hoping to publish on my new photography website which will be launched soon(ish) [www.photography.martinlucas.co.uk].

no, i’m not asking you to shift into reverse, i’m joining the rest of the world by saying that backing up your precious 1’s and 0’s i.e. the files on your computer is very very important. the fact that we now rely on our home computers to store our photos, home movies, our music collections and very soon our film collections and we are relying on them not to go wrong – i’m looking at all the windows users at this point because my mac will be fine… won’t it?

well, i’m not taking any chances and have just signed up to mozy, it’s probably the best way to keep a copy of all your files safe. hang on? the best way! yes, because it’s off site – i.e. you could use a external harddrive but what if your office or house burns down with computer AND backup harddrive in, or you could burn everything to DVD or CD, every month and every time you do something new.

mozy gives you 2gb of space for free, more if you refer people and if you want to spend some money on backing up then it is less than $5 a month.

no i don’t work for them – i just think it’s a grand idea. if you want to sign up then it would be brilliant if you took my reference number so we both get an extra 256mb of storage to play with. here’s the link;

https://mozy.com/?ref=MTR6MC

the original adverts featured 2 american chaps discussing the pro’s of owning and using a mac and the con’s of owning a pc including virus’s and having to read all those manuals. well now we’ve got versions featuring british comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb from Channel 4’s Peep Show.

you can view all the new uk versions here.