iPlayer Grabber

For the past few weeks, I've been using iPlayer Grabber to . .

Well to GRAB stuff from the BBC iPlayer site.
If you've got a Mac and you like to listen to radio or watch TV on your iPod, then this is the free app for you.
The interface is so simple. Clicking on the iPlayer icon opens up a dedicated web browser window which is already pointing to the BBC iPlayer home page.

Then all you have to do is click on a link which would usually take you to an iplayer page, where you could watch or listen to your chosen programme, except iPlayer Grabber opens a SAVE dialogue box and in a couple of clicks you will have an MP3 or a .MOV file downloading to your chosen destination.

The radio shows usually come with about 5 minutes unwanted material at either end which I edit out using Fission from Rogue Amoeba Software. The TV shows and occasionally movies are perfectly cut and just include the ttiles and credits without any runover material.

Strangely enough Apple has made .MOV files incompatible with the iPod???? So I convert these with VisualHub to MP4 files or M4V's.

Unfortunately VisualHub is no-longer available. But I'm sure you could convert them with Handbrake. Or you could always just watch em on your Mac

iPlayer Grabber is great for downloading complete radio series from BBC7. I then use Fission or Audiobook Builder to put them together into one long audiobook.

Riding on the train is bearable now.

Links:- iPlayer Grabber Rogue Amoeba AudioBook Builder Handbrake

UPDATE: I've just discovered a Windows version of iPlayer Downloader HERE

Bad Movie Club

Last night, I took part in the inaugural "Bad Movie Club" event.

If you follow Graham (@glinner) Linehan's Twitter's, you would have been invited to join a couple of thousand fellow Twitterer's (If that's what we are called?), to watch M. Night Shayamalan's really crap movie, The Happening.

It worked like this; You first had to rent, buy, steal or borrow a copy of the movie, log on to Twitter and then simultaneously at 9PM GMT we all had to begin watching.
At the same time as you were watching you were also twittering, your thoughts, comments, insults, and general criticisms of the movie, to the rest of the gang. It sounds naff, I know. But it was really enjoyable and made watching, what is possibly the worst movie ever made, into one of the best cinematic experiences I've ever had :) (OK a slight exaggeration there.) It was basically like sitting at home on the sofa watching a bad movie, with a load of mates, slagging off the really poor movie on the telly.
The whole thing was repeated again at midnight, this time hosted by Phil (@jupitusphillip) Jupitus.

I usually go to the pictures, on my own, in the afternoon. But I might just start going to Bad Movie Club every Friday instead.