Welcome to my world

OK I confess, Kookosity is yet another blog. No wait, don't switch off just yet! It's a blog with a difference... a blog with a real purpose. Novel, eh? ;) Aside from being outrageously witty and irreverent (no really, honest) I'll be employing my pet project as a vehicle to impart all manner of (hopefully educational) computer-oriented sorcery. It will feature a myriad of tangential flummery - everything from retro gaming to movie and music playback, web design and computer building - dished up in the guise of tutorials, FAQs and opinion-based articles.

From time to time you'll catch me clambering aboard my well-worn soapbox to rant about the mess our esteemed leaders are making of planet earth and the lives of its inhabitants. Thrown into the mix for good measure will be a selection of random, waffle-laden musings, web site recommendations and other miscellany.

While anything goes, you'll never read about what I ate for breakfast, the current mood of my iguana/cat/dog/stick insect/whatever, or how long it took me to get to work on any given day... sorry. I believe in posting only when I've got something useful or at least vaguely entertaining/interesting to say so don't expect daily updates... hang on a minute, if anyone else said that to me I'd take it as an insult. :D

I'm not new to writing for the web - I've been doing so since 1999 - though have never blogged before. I've got a tonne of material I want to re-work and re-publish as it's no longer available anywhere else online. Some of this is 'time sensitive' so I'll have to backdate it to set it in its proper context. The rest I will post tagged with the current date as and when I get round to re-formatting it. Just so you know, if you get the impression you've read some of my ramblings before, it's likely because you've read some of my ramblings before.

In case anyone is curious about the origin of my blog's title, let me clarify. You know that character from the British TV comedy sketch programme, The Fast Show, called Colin Hunt played by Charlie Higson? The one who was always doing and saying really random, zany things to try to convince people he has a more interesting personality than reality would otherwise suggest. To hammer the point home he would often blurt out, "I'm crazy I am" while treating his onlookers to an open-mouthed, wide-eyed, showbiz double-handed wave. Are you with me?

Well that has nothing at all to do with it. 'Kookos' means coconut in Japanese. To introduce the tutorials section of my former web site I concocted this patronising, meandering 'internet-as-coconut' metaphor (it's full of untapped bounty, you need the right tools to crack it open and so on - in my defence it was meant to be tongue in cheek). Despite the corniness, the goal was (and still is) to provide information to help people get the most out of the net. I suppose adding the -ity part alludes to an object or concept possessing the essence of coconutness... or something like that. I'm sorry I started this now.

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How to read your Yahoo email in Mozilla Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Outlook Express et al

If you've got an e-mail account at Yahoo and would rather not have to return to their home page each time you wish to check for new mail, you can configure your e-mail client to download your messages instead. In future, all your Yahoo web mail will be conveniently downloaded to your inbox alongside your regular pop 3 e-mail.

To the dismay of a great many life-long Yahoo users, in April 2002 Yahoo decided to begin charging for this feature (known as pop 3 access). If you subscribe to their premium service it'll be business as usual for you, though even if you're not a VIP Yahooligan, this shouldn't spell the end for your Yahoo-email client relationship. With Yahoo Pops (or the Mozilla Thunderbird WebMail extension) you can continue to access your email through many of the most popular email clients, and reassuringly, as it emulates a pop 3 server rather than operating as an exploit of any kind, using it does not represent an infringement of Yahoo's terms and conditions. As a result you can continue to enjoy the convenience of pop 3 without worrying about having your account terminated.

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Screen captures at the click of a button

You'll be glad to know that for a change this is a very short and snappy tip (geddit?). To take a screen shot of your Windows desktop: arrange your windows as you want them to appear in your captured image and press the 'print screen' button on your keyboard (it should be next to the 'scroll lock' and 'pause' buttons near the top right corner). Now if you open up your favourite paint program, locate the 'paste' button and press it, your capture will appear in all its glory.

What you choose to do with it now is up to you. I wouldn't for a second advocate that you set it as the desktop wallpaper image on a friend's computer and observe them hopelessly attempting to close down windows and edit documents that were open when you snapped the pic because that would be extremely mischievous and naughty.

Conversely, if you only want to take a snapshot of your currently active window, you can hold down the 'alt' button while you press the print screen key.

Mac users can achieve the same results by using OS X's built-in 'Grab' tool located in the Applications - Utilities folder.

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How can I capture an audio stream?

If you're a Mac user, the simplest way to achieve this would be to use the original, free version of WireTap. Unfortunately, version 1.0 is no longer available from the official home page (oh look, they have a pro version for sale - could the two things be connected?), but can be found elsewhere on the web if you're prepared to scout around for it.

WireTap is an atypical stream-ripping tool in that it records any sounds emitted by your Mac within a given time-frame - it doesn't discriminate between applications - it will pick up system beeps, iTunes output, everything, so if you require a 'clean' recording, ensure that you mute the sound in all applications bar the target source before you begin 'tapping'.

The interface consists of three buttons - record, stop and pause. To save an audio stream you would click on the relevant link in your web browser to commence playback and then hit the record button in WireTap - the captured sound is saved to a folder of your choice as an AIFF file. If you wish to save streams in MP3 format you will have to upgrade to the pro version or use Audio Hijack instead. Incidentally, Audio Hijack will allow you to capture audio from specific applications, and additionally grants you much more control over the quality and format of captured sound files.

The handful of PC users amongst us *wink* might like to try Stream Ripper instead. This being a more traditional stream capturing tool, it records audio streams directly, ignoring any extraneous background system noise. It can't interpret Windows Media or Real Audio streams, but pretty much anything else is fair game.

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Whiff of humble pie distracts APB attack dogs

Antipiratbyran spokesman: "Hey Jon, how ya doin' pal? You remember last month when we accidentally raided your ISP and accused you of running an Aladdin's cave for software pirates? Well, err, tell ya what; let's just forget it, whadda ya say? We realize the reprehensible behaviour of that loose cannon 'Rouge' could well land us in hot water, but that's not what this is about. No, no, no, we just think it was really a lot of kerfuffle over nothing and neither of us need the hassle of taking this to court. Uhm, so if you promise not to make a fuss about our silly little slip-up, we'll do the same. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, right?"

Not an actual quote from Sweden's anti-piracy bureau (reeeally?), but that's the paraphrased gist of the latest turn of events in the bungled Bahnhof raid escapade.

Left reeling by the highly dubious agent provocateur tactics employed by the ABP at the offices of Swedish ISP, Bahnhof, managing director, Jon Karlung, threatened judicial proceedings of his own. The row centred around the APB's use of an employee infiltrator known as 'Rouge' who was found to have transferred 68,000 illegal files throughout Bahnhof servers while undertaking an anti-piracy surveillance operation on the firm.

Following the dismissal of two Bahnhof employees and APB's infiltrator, both parties have agreed to bury the hatchet and "stand united against pirate copying". Despite the ceasefire, the Swedish Data Inspection Board and the National Post and Telecom Agency may still seek to hold the APB accountable for transgressing personal data and electronic communication laws. As Bart Simpson would say: "the ironing is delicious."

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