The Beautiful Butterfly
"Crapping arse!" I shouted as I flexed my wings willing them to harden. I tried to think erotic thoughts but that didn’t appear to help anywhere. I looked back at the chrysalis from which I’d just emerged then towards the glistening pool of water near my spindly feet at my reflection. I was a beautiful butterfly. "Crapping arse!" I shouted again, louder. "Whoa! Mind your language there gorgeous!" said a voice from nearby. I turned and pretended to chew on something hard in my mouth to lend my pathetic face an air of menace. "You talking to me?" I asked the new arrival with the best attempt at a growl I could muster. "Yeah, this is a nice area. You look like you should fit in well. Just, you know, tone down the language a tad." "Fuck off beetle!" I told the beetle. "Hey! There’s no need for that! What are you so angry about?" I took the deepest breath my miniscule lungs could muster and then slowly – punctuating every word with a flutter of my attractively-coloured wings – I replied: "I. Am. A. Beautiful. Butterfly." The beetle rolled his eyes. "A butterfly! Me! That’s why I’m angry!" I half-yelled at the bug. "Yeah, I can see why that would make someone angry," the beetle said with dripping sarcasm. "I should be angry, not you." "And why’s that?" I said, feigning indifference as I beat my wings faster and glanced towards the sun in the sky wondering if it was going to ever harden the wings into something approaching usefulness. "Well, I’m a beetle," he began. "Have you ever tried getting a date over the phone when you’re a beetle? Of course you haven’t. It goes like this: Hi, fancy a date with a beetle? No, no I’m not Ringo. No, I’m not the one with a penchant for one-legged weirdos either. No, I’m not the car with a mind of its own. Yes, that’s the sort. Hello? Hello?" "Very upsetting, I’m sure," I hissed back. My wings, I thought, might actually be getting more rigid. "You’re still angry," said the beetle. "I’m not a happy bunny," I replied. "Did someone call my name?" asked a beaming, furry abomination from the undergrowth. The rabbit emerged with a grin from ear-to-ear. "Oh, fuck me," I half-whispered to myself. "This beautiful butterfly right here is apparently deeply upset because he’s a beautiful butterfly," explained the helpful and irritating beetle. "You’d be angry if you were a beautiful butterfly, believe you me," I added. "I’m never angry!" smiled the rabbit. I treated it to an invented swear word that still carried...
MP3 Song Cover Art Thing
MP3 Song Cover Art Thing (MP3 SCAT… no, that’s horrible… I’ll call it MP3 Friend instead)… MP3 Friend version 0.1 (the 0.1 means I haven’t spent much time working on it) is a little Windows application I knocked up over the weekend in order to turn these: into these: Firstly, if you don’t know what they are then let me explain that the first image is the image you see in Windows Media Player when the song you’re playing doesn’t have any embedded cover art whereas the second is an example of some album cover art for an MP3. Secondly, my application does not add the cover art for Bert Kaempfert’s A Swingin’ Safari to every song without art because that way lies madness. Here was my issue: I had a lot of MP3s and a great many of them didn’t have any cover art. It was unpleasing to my eyes. So… I had a look online for a utility that would get the cover art automatically for MP3s. I was quickly disappointed. And that’s why I whipped up my own. The application makes use of the excellent UltraID3Lib.dll to scan and update the MP3s and uses the rather lovely Last.fm API in order to try to work out what cover art to grab. Here’s what my little MP3 Friend does… adds cover art to your MP3s based on the files’ artist and album or track title tags allows you to delete cover art from one or more MP3s at a time allows you to edit the artist, track, or album text for one or more MP3s at a time works on Windows 7 and Vista (because I checked) and it probably works on XP with .Net 3.5 installed too (but who knows?) And here’s what my little MP3 Friend does not do… guarantee any accuracy of results returned (the first, best match is applied, and it’s pretty good most of the time but it’s not always right because it’s nearly wholly reliant on Last.fm supplying correctly-weighted search results) work 100% of the time (expect the odd exception raised with badly formed MP3 tags; I might address them in version 0.2 if you’re lucky) or utilise worker threads to slickify (it’s a word) things look attractive (damnit Jim I’m a developer not an artist) work very fast (there’s a reason for this: I deliberately throttle the requests to Last.fm so as not to abuse their service) Here’s how to use MP3 Friend: 1. Install it from here – setup.exe – and ignore any warnings about it being unsigned (I didn’t sign it) or it being perhaps untrustworthy (I have...
Catnip
We finally found a catnip toy that isn’t simply ignored by my cat. Music: Alchemists Tower by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) – Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution...
There, Their
NFL pundits pick there top 10 Super Bowl performances There? THERE?! THERE?!?! Oh, BBC! For shame! Fancy writing badderer grammar than a...
Top 10 Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books (*)
(*) That I’ve read and own. It’s an old internet law that lists of favourite things are a requirement of all websites annually. Well, this year I’m getting mine in early. I used to read a lot of fantasy but the genre holds less interest now that I’m older; science fiction has far more depth to it. Nevertheless, fantasy is represented here as there is a particularly cracking novel by C. J. Cherryh that I couldn’t omit. To prevent the rest of the list from weighing too heavily in one author or another’s favour I decided to limit my choices to only one book from any given author. Enough waffle… to the list! 10. The Forge Of God by Greg Bear The Earth’s about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspatial express route… no, wait, that’s something else entirely. But the Earth is about to be demolished and for the vast majority of the people on it that means a quite awe-inspiring description of death. 9. Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks How do you like your dark novels? Dark? Well, has Iain M. Banks got a treat for you! Not only is there the word ‘dark’ in the title, but the story is a masterpiece of dark and depressing science fiction at its finest. 8. Engines Of God by Jack McDevitt McDevitt’s books are, essentially, archaeological sci-fi. Yes, you’re right; that’s a pretty specific genre that might not appeal to those who like their science fiction devoid of exploration and digging. Me? I like it. Engines Of God is in this list, though, not because of its archaeology and interplanetary historical detective work but because it contains a sequence of chapters that I can only describe as unputdownablehighoctanepageturners. One word: tsunami. Ooh! Lovely bit of writing. 7. The Chronicles Of Morgaine by C.J. Cherryh The only fantasy representative on this list is actually three books in one! You’re being spoiled! And there’s more than a hint of sci-fi to satisfy the science fiction fan too. Gates to worlds separated by space and time, a sword called Changeling which has terrifying powers, and the best description of climate change gone awry you’ll ever find. 6. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester Essentially a tale of revenge… and teleportation! What more could you possibly want to know? 5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Another internet law you may already be aware of is that all science fiction lists must contain Brave New World or 1984 or both whether you like them or not. I do like them both but of the two Brave New...
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