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In Search of Fake Bacon…

As we all should now acknowledge vegetarian, vegan or otherwise love bacon. Whether they admit this is an entirely different matter, but usually you can have any vegetarian craving a bacon butty with a couple more drinks than he or she should really have had.

So has the vegetarian cult found its saviour in the most unlikely of places, Linda McCartney? Well not really, unlike the Cult of Qorn eaters who insist they are vegetarian but have to have meat substitutes that look and taste like meat. Linda McCartney’s range of Super Substitute foods, offers the meat eater something that tastes good and more importantly doesn’t pretend to be meat. Best of all they do taste rather good, even without a large dousing in HP sauce.

So ends Day 9, of my epic struggle with not eating meat till easter – so far so good, and don’t forget I am suffering so you don’t have to.

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Pseudo-Sausages & Fake Bacon – What Have I Done…

You may not know, but during the cold snap over Britain at the beginning of this new decade – Hell Froze Over. Yes, thats right Hell Froze Over completely. How do I know this? Well its quite simple, I decided to disregard 19 years of teaching and go VEGETARIAN. Any rational human being such as Gregory House MD, would immediately declare me insane, and probably have me certified if I was to add I would keep the game up for 3 whole months. So a New Years Resolution was made.

So far so good I am already at Day 4, of what is sure to be a flatulent, green eating, tree hugging, hippy portion of my life. Observations are coming thick and fast:

1) Vegetarians don’t have a stereotype do they?
This is something that made me laugh at the supermarket, practically every vegetarian product has a “Save the {Insert Animal Here}” or some high moral statement. Way to go and dispelling the stereotype to the novice vege.

2) Tesco Express is rubbish
Every little may help, but there is such a poor selection of vegetables and meat substitutes in even the biggest Central London Tesco’s its a joke. Also involved me going under nourished on Day 3, because I really wanted some courgettes.

3) “Captain, We appear to be detecting a gaseous anomaly on the starboard side”
Now we get to the toilet humor. I am guessing that everybody kind of guesses this one, but nobody really wants to talk about it. Well fear not jack is here, and let me tell you eating all that hey and lettuce makes you fart like you have never farted before, it also causes a small weather nexus of high pressure around you. I think this was the inspiration of the Travis Song – Why Does It Always Rain On Me.

Wait there is yet more to come.
In my next installment, I am going to cover Whole Foods, Dietary Balance, What on Earth to do with Tofu, and why does Linda McCartney make Vegetarian Pseudo-Sausages.

I am suffering so you don’t have to people.

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Bricks and Mortar is Dead, Long Live Bricks and Mortar.

Preface: This post is a direct result of a very heated discussion with the MI (Music Industry) on the following article at MI-Pro and as such is very MI centric and should be taken as such
highstreet

Problem

MI Retail stores are fast failing in the UK, and its been happening for years not just because of the ‘recession’. The common held wisdom that if you build a music store they will come and sample the wares and buy – bricks and mortar is good. However, as history is consistently showing the MI Retail sector isn’t making much out of this philosophy. Maybe there are exceptions to the rule, but at large retails stores with their inherent overheads of staff and upkeep as well as stock – its a complete non-starter.
Continue reading “Bricks and Mortar is Dead, Long Live Bricks and Mortar.”

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Spotify Applescripts – Updated

New Version Here
picture-2As with all good things there comes a time when a little update and a refresh is needed. Sometime ago a released several little Applescript helpers that let you control spotify through Quicksilver triggers. However they had a little tendency to make spotify the front and therefore active app when you used them. The new and improved scripts will return you back to the app you where using before the script was triggered, fun eh!

Continue reading “Spotify Applescripts – Updated”

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Royal Mail – Doomed! I Tell You.

pa_rmlogo-1

Lets not lose sight of the reason why these public spirited workers are taking action, they are being asked to “work the hours they are paid for”.

Commentor Guardian Website

The end of an era is finally here, Labour tried to Privatise the Royal Mail and failed because of Union opposition. Now out of greed and short sightedness the very same union are painting themselves into a corner the business will never recover from.

Amazon, Argos & eBay, The life blood of what is left of the Royal Mail are setting up to drop them like a stone on the back of any industrial action. Small businesses are up in arms and there is even a petition.
Continue reading “Royal Mail – Doomed! I Tell You.”

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Protecting Media from Pirates…

Web pirates placed in ‘slow lane’

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The government has all but ruled out using a “three strikes” law to tackle persistent net pirates.
Using warnings and disconnection to tackle pirates was thought to be in the final Digital Britain report due to be published on 16 June.
bbc.co.uk/news

After years and years fighting the Music and Movie industries, still seem reluctant to change there business models. Still trying to convince government and ISP the only solution is to kick pirates off their respective networks, or divulge the users browsing habits so they can be sued.

The fact still remains that the industry in general still doesn’t get it, see the pirate bay trial, and repeatedly shady operations for so-called piracy prevention. See

There have been more problems caused by the industry completely and utter refusal to get with the times and stick to their, pay at every point model. Than if they had simply said lets follow the path of least resistance.

Continue reading “Protecting Media from Pirates…”

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Spotify & Apple Remote

iconIn my continuing saga to be as lazy as possible, I have brought back my Apple Remote into use. It has practically no use except when away from the computer you can change the iTunes track. So been as I use Spotify almost as much as I use iTunes why can’t I do the same.

Turns out you can with a little SIMBL plugin, http://themacbox.co.uk/smr/

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Controlling Spotify through Applescript & Quicksilver.

Update Available: http://www.jacktams.co.uk/2009/10/09/spotify-applescripts-updated/

picture-2I have almost solely being listen to music through spotify for the last couple of weeks, sure it doesn’t replace iTunes but its damn good at what it does, all you can eat music for free. http://www.spotify.com/

The Problem:
Spotify can use the built in shortcuts for play/pause, forward and reverse, but if like me you use a different keyboard and effectively ‘dock’ you Macbook its not much use. Enter Quicksilver, the perennial quick-launch and whiz-kid short-cutter for mac. http://bit.ly/yrlr7

I already have a load of triggers set up within quicksilver for everything from make an event in iCal to post a tweet or send email.

So getting Spotify in there, it turns out Applescript is here to help, using the System Events helper you can select a menu item without actually clicking it. Below is the code for the main actions you would want in Spotify. Simply save the apple script, then attach it to a trigger in Quicksilver. Hey Presto, magic! For more details on setting up triggers check the Quicksilver wiki, it explains it alot better than I ever could. http://bit.ly/134dnL

Play Next

tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
   tell process "Spotify"
      click menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
   end tell
end tell

Play Previous

tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
   tell process "Spotify"
      click menu item 4 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
   end tell
end tell

Play/Pause

tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
   tell process "Spotify"
      click menu item 1 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
   end tell
end tell

Notes:
Don’t forget to activate assitive device support see http://www.macspeech.com/extensions/faq/kb.php?article=48