Cross Dominant

#“Experimental GIMP for Windows in Single-Window Mode” We use GIMP for all of our basic bitmap manipulations. Whether it’s changing the colour of stars or modifying logos for Facebook Connect, it gets the job done brilliantly. I’ve tried many others like Paint.net and nothing comes close. But as anyone who has used it knows, they have had that horrible multi-window setup for years. I went looking earlier to see if there had been any progress on GIMP in general. »

#“Irish Quango scoffs 240 pizzas. Calls it research.” Health warning over takeaway pizzas. Nextweek Safefood intends to eat 16 Ferrero Rochers a day whilst watching Loose Women to see if they get fat. »

#“Vodafone Ireland’s sly attempt to get you to pay more each month” I suddenly realised two weeks ago that I was probably due a phone upgrade on Vodafone. They kindly gave me a HTC Sensation as a prize in a competition last year so I hadn’t bothered think about it. But for fun I decided to have a look at what was available. Whilst the screen on the Galaxy Nexus is lovely, it seems a strange “flagship” with only a 5MP camera and no SD card slot. »

#“Ubuntu for Android - All the Horror of Unity in your pocket” Why carry two devices, when you could carry only one? Your next high-end smartphone has far more horsepower than youll need on a phone, and more than enough for a laptop. So weve brought Android together with Ubuntu, the worlds favourite free operating system, to give you a full productivity desktop that fits in your pocket. Android for the phone experience, Ubuntu for the desktop, all on one device, running at the same time. »

#“XBMC + Windows Media Center make surprisingly great bedfellows” Our main TV PC spends most of its time running the awesome XBMC software. It has everything you need in a media player except one - recording. Whilst there are forks of it out there which work with the MythTV or Media Portal recording software, I’ve never had much success configuring either reliably. As I mentioned before, I accidentally discovered late last year that Windows Media Center is fantastic at handling TV. »

#“Patriot PBO Core is a very nice cheap Media Player device” I’ve written at length about our media setup at home. The main box remains a low-end PC with a decent graphics card and HDMI-out. It mainly runs XBMCbut we switch over to Windows Media Centre for playing/recording satellite/terrestial. We have had two old XBOXes running XBMC for years and they are awesome. Their only drawback is that they don’t have enough welly to play h. »

#“Sick of Windows Media Player screwing up your video files? Try VLC 2.0” I love VLC. It’s a media player than can handle any piece of crap video you throw at it. When WMP can’t keep audio/video in sync for more than a minute, VLC nails it. There is an incredible set of features in there, of which I have only barely scratched the surface. But, and it’s a big but, the UI was designed by a blind person. »

#“Google Says Hello to Jason Isaacs” Ah this is just lovely. As anyone who listens to Kermode and Mayo’s film reviews on BBC Radio 5 Live (mostly via podcast) knows, they say hello to Jason Isaacs almost every week. It has become a bit of a meme with people trying to do the same via ever more interesting ways, including the rolling credits on the spoof news on the Jay Leno show. »

#“Netflix UK/Ireland shoots itself in the foot already. No Lilyhammer for us.” For me, in my innocence, the arrival of Netflix over here represented far more than justanothersource of media at a good price. I hoped it was the beginning of the end for the nonsensical region-limiting of media based on pre-internet, pre-airplane, business models. All of the vested interests can fight all they like, but eventually every movie, song and TV show will be available in every format at the same time globally. »

#“Underground Lakes, Antarctic UFOs, Nazis on The Moon and The Mayans” It’s a funny old week when all of the above come together in your head isn’t it? Bear with me for a sec. As we all know, The Mayans predicted the world would end in 2012. This ties nicely into the long-awaited B-movie Iron Sky coming in April - “In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon. In 2012 they’re coming back”. »