Free wireless

As title, come to Brum. Well McDonalds in the library anyway. Here you’ll find plenty of free unsecured wireless*. Also you can access the frankly shite Birmingham Free Information Zone (FIZ).

So you have a choice, free internet to everywhere or shite council information.

*It is an offence to knowingly use someone else’s internet connection with out their knowledge. I assume I’m using the free internet supplied by McDonalds.

(I know at lot of the unsecured ones are BT openzone – which is subscription based, but still surprised by the lack of security on others.)

Library of Birmingham – Public information stuff!

To help celebrate the development of the new Library of Birmingham and the power of libraries in the 21st century Birmingham Library and Archive Services invite you to a special afternoon with poet, comedian & broadcaster Ian McMillan.

Thursday 16 October 2008
@ 4.30pm
@ The Library Theatre
Central Library, Birmingham

Poster to prove it!

No doubt they’ll be a bit of Whitby ‘the old library is shite’ spin about.  Still be worth seeing his face if the government decide to agree with English Heritage and list the site.

(and yes, I did just copy the word doc text)

Wireless – is it me, or is it shit?

So as title, I find wireless to be a bit of hit/miss technology.   Maybe it’s just my kit, but it fails too often for my liking.

My wireless if strange, it seems to be up and working (cos the LED says so) right up to the point where I connect my Macbook.   It’s not just the MB, as my DS used to do it as well (before I decided to use WPA instead of WEP).   Currently it just takes the piss, claiming that it is working when it plainly isn’t.  I would hit it, but it’s the only router I have.  Plus I know how it’s configured.

Keen readers (me), will remember the problems I had with the Apple Airport distress unit.  The positive with the AP was the free update to 802.11n spec.  Still this was more unreliable, though a general concensus with Apple wireless is it’s o.k., not great.

Still at least wireless isn’t as shite as bluetooth.

Virgin, spend before you leave

Probably my fault. But when I left Virgin Mediocrity (mobile contract) I had built up around £50 in rewards. When I left they said this would be fine. However after a number of attempts to get in to the system I’ve called them.

Because I left everything is gone, so they’ve stolen my money. Still gives me a chance to post a picture from Burgy’s blog I nabbed a while back.

Thanks.

Balena Project_Birmingham. ’08 – Ikon Gallery

Just by accident found this art work. The subject is a little strange: Whales, small toy whales (or fish type things), a brain, a video animation and some blubber.

The work is from the Italian artist Claudia Losi, it features a life size whale, a dramatic shift in scale that relates not only to the physical onject, but also to the epic concept of time evoked by a species that has survived for some 50 millions years (according to the brochure – hence not my words!).

Anyway, my take is a bloody big whale with the sound of whale music in the background. I assume the brain is representative of the brain in the beast – hence it’s quite small considering the size of the whale. That said it’s not really going to work out Pi to 28 places, so for motor function I guess it’s fine.

As with the Rice Show the gallery are happy for photography to take place. So with that in mind I went a little arty with the animated video, well the light it produced anyway.

Not too sure about the artistic merits of the display, however it’s worth seeing just for the impressive size of the beast. Which maybe is the point (you’ll have to excuse my ignorance – I’ve only recently started to do art/installation stuff).

Overall a worthwhile visit if you’re in the area, if you’re not why not pop in a have a nose around.

On display until 26th October (12-7pm – Tues-Sun) at the Mailbox Level 5 (bottom of the escalators)
Admission is free, plus the Ladies on site were very pleasant.

A quick google shows that i’m probably the last blog to mention it, so remember you heard here last!

Kebablog: Always late to the party since around 2005