Thursday, March 31, 2005

I don't want one of those...

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Another IWOOT product, this is something we should never let Dave in the office have. Our lives would be at risk.

 

I want one of those....

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Just seen this on IWOOT - what a fantastic idea.

Of course, if you read down the comments, there is one drawback:

Compare these comments by "Steve from Hull":
As far as emissions go, this product is a must if radiation concerns you! Beta ray particles have reduced in my office area by 90% thanks to this product. The Holo Screen also seems to have the added effect of being an ionizer, keeping my hayfever from flaring up.

With these by "Dean C":
This unit even projects in pure daylight and even if there is a lack of dust in the air it uses a special built-in smoke generator, which puffs out small clouds of particles which guarantees clarity.

Hmm. It reduces radiation, eases hayfever [and eliminates world poverty, I suspect], but then it spits out smoke so you die a horrible lingering death by emphesema.

Nice.

But I still want one. How cool would that be?

 

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Watch out: punched-hole card computing is coming back...

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... in nano-technology form. Check out this description of the Millipede memory technology:


Remember the old paper computer punch cards? Well, change the cardboard for a nano-scale polymer stretched over a silicon substrate, add a few thousand read/write heads, and scale the whole thing down and you’d be looking at a Millipede Memory.

Millipede employs an array of micro-electromechanical silicon composite read/write heads—located on a x-y grid—to punch indentations into a thin polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) polymer film, coating a silicon substrate. Each head is constructed with a bi-metal conductor designed to transfer heat into the polymer material. During a write cycle, heating of the bi-metal head bends it toward the polymer material, and subsequently melts an indentation into the surface. Indentation locations—or individual bit cells—can then be detected by moving the substrate under the most convenient read/write head. If an indentation exists the head falls into the “hole” and heat conducts from the now cooler read/write head into the polymer, alters the resistive characteristic of the head, and may be detected as a binary one or an “on” condition. Absence of a indentation—or a plain flat surface—has very little contact with the head due to the head’s spiked shape, preventing significant thermal transfer, and therefore any negligible resistance change. In this case a zero or “off” condition is returned.

Since the polymer isn’t destroyed by indentation, information may be erased using a head to displace polymer to restore a flat surface.
Cool!

Next, it'll be platform shoes, afros, tank-tops, and real flares!

 

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Is your pizza delivery consistently late? Try this...

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Here's a new business set up in Wisconsin, quoted from the fabulous Springwise.com newsletter:

Wisconsin's Super Fast Pizza has finally figured out how to deliver piping hot pizzas within 15 minutes. The secret? High-tech mobile kitchen vans, officially licensed as restaurants, are outfitted with custom ovens that can cook pizzas at 600 degrees. Fully powered and wifi-enabled, Super Fast Pizza's kitchens on wheels take orders and cook pizzas while on their way to customers. To save time and make the best of the limited cooking space, all processes have been standardized: the menu only offers the seven most popular pizzas (think deluxe, sausage, sausage and pepperoni, five-cheese, four-meat, pepperoni, veggie, and a pizza of the month), all pizzas are uncut and medium sized, and all cost USD 10.99. Online ordering is encouraged.

Only in America, eh?

 

Site #1 Live: baby advice for new parents

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Just thought I'd share this. Not because it's relevant to my life at the moment, but because it's a new site I've set up that's part of an experiment. Hopefully, places like Google, MSN, and Yahoo will pick up my RSS feed, find the link to the new site about babies either from this site or the RSS feed, and spider it quicker than normal.

At least, that's what the experts say. WaddoIknow?

More sites to follow very rapidly...

 

Monday, March 21, 2005

What the fuck is it with NTL?

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Just tried to upgrade my speed online. No idea what my username/password is, since I never use their email (atrocious uptime) or webspace (unable to FTP unless you're on their network).

So I went to their helpful "remind me of my username/password" page. Put in what I guessed was my NTL email, thinking they've give me the reminder question/answer thing.

And they came with

"An e-mail has been sent to [my address] containing your username and password."

WHAT THE FUCK USE IS THAT!?

 

If you ever want to get somebody to do something...

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... think about this little technique:

We recently needed some landscaping done, which can require a great deal of advance planning here in Florida. All the good companies are extremely busy year round, often scheduling months in advance.

Luckily, we have a neighbor, Mike, who owns a big landscaping company, and has done work for us in the past.


But spring is the busiest time of year, and he didn't respond to Sonya's first phone call. Or her second, or her third.

Since Sonya needed the landscaping to meet a deadline in a real estate transaction, she decided stronger measures were necessary. So she sent a big bouquet of flowers to the landscapers's wife, with a note that read, "Sorry to bother you with so many phone calls. We appreciate all the work you have done for us in the past and hope to get on your schedule soon."

The landscaper was at our house the next morning. He said no customer had ever sent his wife flowers and she really appreciated it

 

I trust I'm not the only one...

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... who's NOT surprised at the news that the Sony PSP is being delayed in Europe because of an inability to meet demand in the US.

Doesn't this happen every time there's a new games device out?
(Yes)

Can't manufacturers learn from before?
(Obviously not)

Do I care?
(No, the PSP is nice, but not my thing)

 

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Man, I love this idea!

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An article on Lockergnome describes a new piece of software:


ScreenSwiftgives you the capability to turn your existing Flash movies (including sound) into screensavers. The process couldn't be easier or more satisfying. The program guides you through everything, and in absolutely no time, you'll be able to build and install applications that feature your very own screensavers. Send it to friends, colleagues, post it on your Web site... just get it out there. It's important to note that there are a ton of features that you can tweak in order to fully control how your screensaver turns out. Seriously, this is really great stuff.
That's fantastic!

Just a couple of button presses to turn your flash movies into screensavers!

Give it to your mates!

It's so easy!

It's...

... hold on a minute ...

... anyone know how to use Flash?

 

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Not sure if this is true or not...

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This is a voicemail left by one colleague for another, which turned into a running commentary on an interesting event ...

Funny, even if it's not true

 

Not sure if this is true or not...

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Supposedly this was left on someone's voicemail and broke their voicemail system because word started to spread about it and people started dialling in to listen to it.... but here it is in MP3 format.

Funny, even if it's not real.

 

How fecking ignorant can some people get?

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I subscribe to a newsletter from idea-a-day.com. Not because it's great content, but because some people come up with the most ridiculous ideas.

This one has gotta be the most socially insensitive one going:

Develop a reality TV show called 'Concrete Jungle' in which native Amazonian tribespeople are taken to a modern, soulless city. The tribespeople would be given various challenges, such as using the subway,hailing cabs, getting into (and home from) clubs and surviving on the local food.

Nice, eh?

 

Friday, March 11, 2005

Handy hint for fellow bloggers #2

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If you're using Blogger.com's handy text formatting tool rather than coding your blog entries in pure HTML (yes, Flyguy, it is OK to not code on HTML nowadays!)... then if you're creating a link, just stick " target="_blank" (yes, including that first quote-then-space) onto the end of it in the pop-up box where you enter the URL.

Blogger will then code that properly to open in a new window. And it saves going into the HTML to add that code in.

 

Handy hint for fellow bloggers #1

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Having just raved about blogging-fanboys, here's a useful URL:



Take this URL.

Insert your blog name where this says "Blakey%27s+Bits". Replace any spaces with + signs.

Insert your blog URL where it says "http%3A%2F%2Fblakeyuk.blogspot.com". Leave in the http%3A%2F%2F - which is browser-speak for http://

Add it to your favourites.

Every time you update your blog, recall that page from your favourites. It'll let the major blog indexing/spidering/summarising sites know that your sites been updated. Which mean mean within a year, you'll have 4 people visiting instead of the 3 I mentioned in my last post.

 

Fancy being a movie star?

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There's an open-source movie being made about blogging.

It's open-source because you can copy it, edit it, use it in your own movies, etc.

Which means every blogging-fanboy art student is going to do their own home-grown movie to share with their 3 readers (their mum, their best mate, and the other blogger geek at school university ).

I can hear the internet groaning under the strain already.

And no, I won't be making one.

 

My Christmas Shopping List

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.. is here

To: MadJock, BigAndiD, and Flyguy: I'm only kidding!

Ha ha.

Ha.

 

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Like sardines in a tin...

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Here is a picture taken of a train in Paris, which is suffering from rail workers strikes at the moment.

And here is a picture taken of the daily 5:53 from Glasgow to East Kilbride, on a day when the worker's aren't on strike.

 

Beautiful and unusual pictures

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I'm a big sucker for beautiful pictures, particularly since I now own my own place by myself - no having to ask the landlord or her indoors what pictures I can put up.

Yes, I've got some from Ikea (not yet put up), but I tend to get some from one-off places rather than the high street. One of the best places for framed photos is actually an on-line place: webshots.com.

They started out with a simple screensaver/desktop image software, and now do on-demand prints at various sizes. And their daily email of new photographs is stunning - there's always a pick that I want to download.

Take a look at some of just todays:

Well recommended for some unusual prints... another one that I've got hanging up is one of a siberian (black and white) tiger with piercing blue eyes. Simply stunning when print in a large format.

 

Friday, March 04, 2005

Ah-ha! A mystery solved...

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In a quote from Sci-Fi.com, "actor", and Oscar winner, Adrien Brody, star of Peter Jackson's upcoming King Kong remake, told SCI FI Wire that he

"...performed opposite an imaginary giant ape, but played it as if he were real. "

So that's why they call it "acting"...

 

"Eureka! It's invisible! It's invisible!!!"

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Scientists at the university of Pennsylvania have invented a "cloaking device". It basically modifies the light scattered by an object, rendering it instantly invisible.

Only one drawback: the object must be smaller than the wavelength of the light it's in. Visible light has a wavelength of less than 1/1000th of a millimetre. Objects that small are too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Er..... Hello!? Have the boffins at Penn Uni spent so long looking at CGI represenations of subatomic particles on ther 17" plasma screens that they've missed the obvious?

 

Damn!

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The B5 movie has bit the dust.

Double damn.

 

I think this will be a must-see...

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http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?id=30532

I've never been to an Imax....