A quick request: does anyone know of any good flash radio stations? The best one I’ve seen so far is the absolutely fantastic Captain’s Of Industry player, featuring stuff by a lot of good rock bands.

Requirements: preferably rock, indie, metal, punk or otherwise listenable guitar and drums based music. It also has to use Macromedia flash to deliver the sound.

I’m asking because I want music to listen to in the lab, and I’m sick of trying to get Real player working on Linux.

Thanks.

Yes, it’s that time of year when this fine site celebrates its birthday. Solitude started two years ago today, promising that a new version of VKPS (from whence Solitude came) would be dropping soon. We are all, I’m sure, still waiting (it’ll be a while yet).

Last year, promises were made about more on web design, an undisclosed project, more fiction and more toys. In true Solitude fashion, none were delivered.

This year I’ve very recently talked about my plans for the site’s future, so will not bother to reiterate those. The new sister site of Solitude has indefinitely slipped due to my home computer being incapacitated. I had originally intended (a month or so ago) that it would launch today, but circumstances outwith my control conspired against me.

Being more realistic than previous years, post content will remain somewhat light for the first half of the year while I finish this last crucial part of university life. It will hopefully pick up after then, with some interesting stuff along the way.

Hopefully, we’ll see you for another year.

As has been mentioned before, Solitude will be undergoing some changes in the near future. Some are purely aesthetic, some are not.

First of all, there will be no more film reviews. I don’t think they are useful posts, and I don’t think many people like them (despite the moderate level of commentary they produce, and reasonable number of searches that they appear in). I only write them because I’m one of those digital hoarders that I mentioned yesterday. Without them, I can’t remember films I saw or most of what I thought of them. I’ll keep writing them, but they are unlikely to appear anywhere public online.

Next up, I rather like these vaguely connected posts. A chance to brain dump things that are semi-related in my head gives the site some consistency (in the weakest sense of that word). So, expect posts to be collected together as they make sense to me. This might mean a more bursty post rate (5 in 5 days, followed by a weeks silence).

Random links have recently moved to the sidebar. This change is working and will stay in effect. My concerns with this are the lack of credit for links (backlinks make the world go round) and comments. The former is unavoidable just now, but I think I can come up with some way of addressing the latter; it’s just not trivial.

Around six months ago, I came up with a plan to rebuild VKPS (the site for which Solitude is ostensibly a sidetrack). It never came to fruition due to time constraints. The plan was to bring Solitude and 3 new sites together under some framework. University has to come first, but the first of those 3 sites is set to drop within a fortnight. If I’m being honest, I haven’t done any concrete work for it yet (beyond a dozen scribbled ideas for content). It is likely the release date will falter due to University starting back. I will try though.

Final point: I’m not sticking by any of these. If you disagree (or agree) with anything here, or can think of any other changes, comment. I’m listening.

It’s a new year and I’m sure you’re all stuffed? Time to lose some dead weight.

One of the (many) problems with the digital age is the persistence of data. Put your hand up if you do any of the following:

• Store every email you have ever received (excluding spam),
• Never remove anything from your bookmarks,
• Never update your blogroll (whether adding or removing, displayed or otherwise).

That’s just a few things. Over the next week, be ruthless with your data. If you honestly haven’t used it in months, either delete it or archive it on physical media. No point in it stuffing up your computer.

Beyond the wasted space, you’ll be doing yourself a favour. The more useless data you have, the more noise it produces when trying to find something more useful. Lose those kilo(byte)s now.

Good new year, everyone? Excellent. Another year, another chance. You’ll (hopefully) be seeing a few changes around Solitude over the next few weeks, which I’ll dicuss slightly in the next post or two.

Let’s begin the new year with that most laughable of traditions, the list of resolutions:

• Keep my previous resolutions. Managed to keep half of last years.
• To tangibly make the world a better place. As should be somewhat apparent from my previous posts on apathy and changing the world, I’m not completely happy with the amount I give back to the world. I will try to do more.
• To release more software. There are several ideas waiting on my to-do list, some of which have been there for over a year. I will make time to start at least one of them.
• Improvements to Solitude. The Solitude to-do list is huge in itself. Doing anything on the list would be a step forward.
• Finish my degree. Really, really need to do this one.
• Private resolutions. I have a few private resolutions too.

More on changes to Solitude in the next part.