Apple have announced an interesting new product: the Airport Express. It allows computers with wireless capability to stream music (via an iTunes variant) to remote base stations. These base stations are, in turn, connected to your hi-fi.

Now, while I like the idea and being able to listen to my music collection on my stereo would be fantastic, I’ve got one question: when I’m upstairs listening to music via said stereo, how do I control the base station?

It would be easy to create a remote control that told the base station to tell the computer to fast forward/rewind/pause etc. As far as I can tell though, there is no mention of such functionality. I see that as a fundamental flaw. Music with no control? Hmm. A pause button is a minimum requirement in my book.

It’s been a struggle for the last few months, third year has seen many casualties, but it’s finally over. My last exam was yesterday and, for the first time since October, I can stop thinking about university. It is a very good feeling.

A few days of celebrations planned before updates here return to normal. Well, they will for about a week before the bigger news (and subsequent downtime around here).

Update: Ok, so apparently the year is actually 2004, and not 2005 as the title suggests. But I won’t have exams next year, so… quiet.

Update 2: For anyone who is interested, Chris is hosting pictures from the final day celebrations.

I’m not normally one to post about stuff that has happened to me personally or to keep some kind of dream record but the sheer number and vividness of my dreams lately makes me want to quickly write about them. Interestingly, they all have one thing in common: they have films entwined in the plot.

Imagine, if you will, the basic plot of Flash Gordon (hero fights evil emperor, saves the girl, wins the day). Got it? Now set it in Glasgow, cast Matt as Ming, myself as Flash, and have a getaway chase scene on go-karts through a palace that has appeared on Buchannan street. That is the kind of dream I’ve been having.

Another? A more literal re-telling: Having just come out of seeing Eddie Izzard perform, some friends and I get lost on the subway (which is no longer underground), ultimately ending up back at the same theatre. Rather than see the genius of Izzard again, we go into the bar. I start talking to Shaft (who is being played by Samuel L. Jackson in this dream) who is telling how tired he is, having not slept in several days. A call comes in over the radio: a local gang boss has been found. Shaft, who clearly isn’t going to take any crap from anyone, decides to round up a posse.

My friends and I decide that he probably needs some help and walk along the street. By the time we get along the road, he has amassed an army of angry young men with pieces. They began crossing town to go and get the gang boss. I take a motorcycle across town to arrive first, where we find a TV crew covering the whole thing.

The rest is slightly garbled: a chase through the villians mansion, down a secret passage and out into a street straight from the 1920’s. Two security guards grab him, and I go to put the cuffs on. At that he punches one in the throat and… my alarm goes off, ending the whole thing. Dammit.

Oh well, here’s hoping tonights doesn’t disappoint.

Thanks to some more permissions problems the Syndication page and various feeds had either disappeared or stopped regenerating. All is now well. That is all.

This is a large links post today, due to the lack of time to post it over the last few weeks (and some minor PHP and permissions problems).

• Bowman – An excellent flash game, with very satisfying hit noises and blood.
• SpotCode – Using your mobile phone’s camera as a pointer for your computer. Will it replace the mouse? Doubt it.
• Is the ninja death touch real? – Apparently not. Well, maybe not.
• Writing efficient PHP code – Some stuff even I never knew, like string concatenation runs faster when using single quotes.
• Fight Club: The Game – The very idea sickens me.
• Ticked Off Links – Checkboxes on visited links. Very clever effect.
• Google Software Principles – A reasonable set of guidelines from the upcoming giant.
• O’Reilly openbooks – The tech book company give away old editions. Very forward thinking. Kudos.
• Mr T Vs. Everything – I bet he won all of them too. He’s just that tough.
• Musicology Strategy – Prince gives his new album away at his concerts. Very forward thinking. Kudos.
• Object Oriented Improvements in PHP 5 – If you’re a Java programmer, most of this will be second nature.
• Backslider – An interesting history browsing idea, but not sure how it’d fair with a multiple tabs and windows.
• What is RAID? – A nice overview of the various forms of RAID.
• DTD mapper – Creates a hierarchy to browser from a given DTD. Nice.
• PNG Sun demo – An interesting little lighting demo for Mozilla browsers.
• Scribe – Mozilla plug-in that saves and restores text areas upon CTRL+S. An absolute gem.
• Onion Skin Shadows – A good tutorial on getting rounded edges and other effects using CSS.
• PHP Coding Standard – Not sure I’d agree with all of this, but not a bad start.
• Detente – The syndication formats all have specific purposes. Use the right one for the right goal.
• Perl Operator Periodic Table – Unbelievable number of operators.
• I Chased You For 12 Years… – Tragic but hilarious tale.
• Cows With Guns – Very funny flash cartoon, particularly the ending.

End. And I’ve still got enough links left for a regular size post.