Woof Woof - Fido bag

fake or not, Gizmodo found this ... unusual case from Samsung. personally I think it is a must for everybody :)


http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/fidobag-024519.php

road trip on speed

I was kind of expecting a very boring clip of clouds from above - this is a road trip on speed; LA->NY in 4 mins

Lacquer

Something for the weekend??

Found via B3ta and well worth the click...
Something Silly

Gravity Lamp

Ooooo you know this is near the top of the Xmas list :)
Shame I'll have to redecorate



Found at http://funfurde.blogspot.com/2004/09/gravity.html, via Engadget

False Domain renewal notice

So 10 days after I renewed BIAS.COM for another 8 years I received a simple (plain) invoice similar to this one from;
Domain Registry Services
Office 6, 154 Church End
Cambridge, CB1 3LD
UK.
0870 950 0369

I found it strange that they didn't accept CC's or direct transfer, relying on just cheques as a form of payment.
Then it dawned on me, Yes, I was a target by this lowlife organisation who try to extort money by getting you to pay renewal fees to them rather than your proper ISP

being slightly more clued up, [a] I checked with whois [b] rang the ISP who holds my domain registration and [c] then looked into ways of signing this organisation up for way too much spam and grief by talking about them here. Believe me when I find it, theirs will be the ONLY real email address on this site and it will occur a lot.



here is what some others talked about;
Domain Registration scam
Who lists some neat suggestions to help;
"Here's what you can do to help shut down these and similar rogue traders:

Forward the original letter to:
Alison Adams
Nominet UK
Sandford Gate
Sandy Lane West
Oxford
OX4 5LB

Included a letter-headed statement containing the following:

1. What you thought the document meant and if you thought it was real
2. If you thought the sender was an official body
3. Whether Nominet can confirm your details to the Trading Standards or the Office of Fair Trading
4. A closing statement — I believe the above statement to be true.

Oh ... and it may be an idea to seal and pop the empty supplied addressed (but not stamped) envelope in the post. Guess who pays ..."

The register also caught up with this "artist"
The Register on Domain Registry Services
Nominet:Nominet UK warns of new Internet invoicing scam

Call for help #2

Following on my request for help re; backups. I am curious if anybody knows how to track configuration files used by each and every application. You can guess why I am asking - I am having to go through remembering passwords, usernames to forums that I know I belong to.

Grrr

Backups... who needs 'em?

It never rains when you take an umbrella. While it might feel like it is true we all know that is a crock. So we all back up the important documents & Pictures don't we? Hard Disks don't fail do they?

Well, I have spent the last 5 days recovering a 160GB disk. I hadn't changed anything, no new components or software. just stopped turning round quietly.

On it, were all my photos (from the wedding you can see I just got back from) most of which was unbacked up. In fact my last backup was July AND it worked! JULY! Wow thats ages ago. Well at least I have a backup!
It is normally something I do quarterly. And right about now I am considering that is wrong.

So I have got most of it back, enough that I could bored O&M with photos of their wedding if I tried. But it doesn't answer the question of HOW DO YOU BACK UP LARGE AMOUNTS of data.
What is more annoying is just after the wedding O and I came up with a plan for backing up data across our machines, taking advantage of the unlimited data of the internet connections we have and just doing disk to disk back ups where the disks were separated by a very large distance. Boy I wish their honeymoon was shorter.

So please do tell me. Please email me any suggestions you have for backing up a large amount of data. (For information sakes, 50Gb most of which doesn't change - excluding applications)

In fact as I put on my raincoat and grab my umbrella before heading out in to the sunny afternoon I really do think I should start a backup before I go

Kill Bill

Vol 1 - ASCII version

Where would we be without people spending all their free time doing some really strange things in the name of ... ummm ... entertainment? nature? free will??

Anyhow ... enjoy the abridged ascii version of Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol 1

A good fit

An advert that if it was any other company would bring tears to the eyes... this did eventually, as I laughed so much!  Does make me worry about the mind of the marketing fraternity.

From Boing Boing
"A good fit BB pal Vann Hall points us to this brilliant KY Jelly advertisement that, unfortunately, is not officially sanctioned by Johnson & Johnson. It should be though! Link (via Adrants) "

 

White Wedding
What a fantastic day - brilliant best man's speech (of course) and even the weather didn't stop everybody having fun. Of course that is probably because the Brits and the Washington locals were all used to the rain.

Whale ahoy

Well a wet and winding day around the San Juan Islands near Seattle lead to a rather spectacular time watching a pod of whales.

Week 2

Yes I have now completed my second week as Regional CTO at HP. Wow! This is going to be so much fun.... though at times it feels like I could make a fortune harvesting acronyms! I guess I should consider I made it, when on day 7 I made up my first acronym at HP :)

I now have a car, so a daily fight for the parking bays opposite the house has started
I now have a laptop AND email address AND a new mobile phone number --- all terribly efficient --- what more does a man need :)

The best bit, has got to be the people, and the local office (only a 25 minute walk)
Of course, Oliver did point out that as soon as I joined the share price had a hickup and a half, but, HONEST, it wasn't me!

The daleks are back ;)

The BBC has confirmed that artistic differences have been resolved and the Daleks will be back in the new series... now if only we could get Ace back.

SCO starts getting wise....?

The Register has an interesting article about how the SCO CEO once so full of brovado now seems to be wising up to the fact they may not win ... may not win the court cases, may not win any new customer deals ... oh and may not win any FRIENDS.

I think the line I liked the best was... " SCO, however, became less ambitious after a judge largely tossed out its claim against DaimlerChrysler. SCO can ill afford a series of thrown out suits that make it look like a litigation hungry open source ambulance chaser. Oh wait. "

Read it here.

Need directions??

I couldn't resist this ... Classic lines like "You've been going round in circles for the last half hour" and "Can't you just stop and ask for directions for once"and the one all us blokes have used at some point ... "I know it is around here somewhere"

Enjoy - office safe - Only for over 18s

National Orgasm Week

Penguins of the future

Couldn't resist this one...

http://www.scriobh.com/fark/penguins.gif

OMG How much fun




Found at http://www.b3ta.com/board/3475318

One way ...

To sell underwear :)
Is that Dubya I see before me????

http://www.agentprovocateur.com/lost_control/lost_control_high.php

About time
I am amazed it has taken so long for this to be produced - a docking station for the iPod with speakers - and decent speakers at that.

http://www.jbl.com/home/products/product_detail.asp?ProdId=ONSTAGE&SerId=HMM&sCatId=

Hidden dangers of Laptop bags

Having gone through the lining of a number of leather jackets I was rather amused to see this entry at Layer 8.  A rather imaginative way of carrying and protecting you laptop.  I think the line that got me was "Need to go out in the rain? Putting your PowerPizza in a carrier bag will not only increase the level of disguise - it'll keep it dry too"

Here is the entry;

Hidden dangers of laptop bags Those black, nondescript laptop bags are boring - and dangerous. Just think: You could put your black laptop bag down next to you at the airport and an evil mastermind's...

The Bush conspiracy generator

Following on from the October Surprise we now have a conspiracy theory generator for George.

The George W. Bush Conspiracy Generator: "George W. Bush caused the Cubs to lose to the Marlins in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series so that Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, the Christian Coalition, big corporations, and oil companies could invade Iraqis."

If Only....

[via Gizmodo]

The Chewbacca Defense

We all heard the findings of the Sept 11 report last week, where they concluded that there was no significant link between Osama Bin Liner and Iraq. Nor in fact any significant link between al-Qaida and Iraq.
Of course almost at the same time, we also heard many, seeming gifted, members of the various governments contradicting this report's findings.

While I personally have an opinion, that provided we make good the country/world will be better place - I still have my doubts as to the timing and merits of such an all out "correction" of a foreign country/culture.

The following link did make me smile, I prefer to look at this as the Chewbacca Defense rather than the whatever defense --- you get the picture.

9/11 Panel Finds No Link Between Bin Laden And Iraq; White House Uses "Whatever" Defense

Essential IPod upgrade

As you know I love my iPod ... both of them :) 
An enterprising soul has designed an upgrade for the iTrip (localised FM transmitter for the iPod allowing you to listen to your iPod on any nearby radio)

The upgrade is an iTrip AMP :)  Simple but I am sure quite effective... and what a fantastic idea those at Boing Boing came up with.  Now you can OVERRIDE the music coming from the car with their windows open next to you.

Now all that I am missing, is a car.

Original article;
"DIY ITrip amp This fellow created an interesting amp design for an iTrip. Boing Boing reader Ian Meyer says, " He said that it would probably be capable of overpowering broadcast stations for a small radium (ie: enough to blast some Queen in place of the hippity-hoppity music that the guy in the car next to me is listening to loud enough to be heard for half a mile)." [Ed: Hippity Hoppity? Did someone see "The Ladykillers"?] Link
[via Boing Boing]"

Badgers

Everybody loves Badgers.... Cute, fluffy, and highly addictive :)

http://www.footballbadgers.com/

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/badgers.html

SCO - the slow demise

While I haven't been a fan of SCO since Openmail, their corporate strategy for making money does seem strange.  They are writing the book on "how to make friends and influence people" --- or maybe just the chapter on how to upset everybody and your friends.

Not only have they made threatening noises at SUN (probably one of the closest friends) by publicly telling them they can't open source Solaris --- even when the details of such a move are undefined/undecided/hot-air (well they have been talking about it for a few years now)  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/09/sco_nogpl_solaris/

But also, their revenue has tanked.  I think the line that summarise this CNet article for me is "its SCOsource licensing effort yielded only $11,000 in revenue at a cost of $4.5 million in expenses. " 

Though it is the line at the end that made me laugh the most.  "The company also announced on Thursday that it had notified the Berlin-Bremen, Stuttgart and Frankfurt Freiverkehr stock exchanges that its ticker symbol had been listed without the company's permission. SCO is asking the exchanges to remove the symbol."

SCO revenue takes a tumble The company's Unix licensing program costs a lot more than it brings in.
[via CNET News.com]

As Britain goes to the polls

For the MEP elections and local government - hope my team doesn't fall at the first hurdle - I was chatting to a friend about what the incumbant American Government might do to secure the election in November.

A quick search later, lead us to October Surprise a rather good/entertaining online survey about that Rabbit will be pulled out of the Bush bag ahead of this years elections.  You can review the results and vote here; http://www.octobersurprise.net

Now, wouldn't it be funny/scarey if this was actually an endorsed project to work out WHAT needed to be done to win the election.

On a similar but much more interesting note, check out the book INTERFACE by Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson + Frederick George)

Too stressed to work?

Well you must be getting pretty close to be here, reading this :)
http://www.viceking.net/bubblewrap.swf

Thanks Sean

Potentialities

I ask you!  An awesome presentation found here by Boing Boing, but I couldn't concentrate after reading about Potentialities

Does everybody have them?  Can I buy them at the local Safeways?  Will they help me get thin? 

Sometimes the made up words are the Beezkneez :)

 

History of the Universe in Seven Snoozes Web art site Locus Novus is run by a Pasadena, California-based designer who does amazing things with hypertext. A Flash-based presentation of writer Jim Ruland's short piece "History of the Universe in Seven Snoozes" just went live today, and I think it is sublime.
Link, and here is another one of my favorite pieces from Ruland at McSweeney's. Link

[via Boing Boing]

Ducks have regional accents: official

I just had to add this one.  For posterity :)

 

[via The Register]

EMAIL encoding
Ever wondered how to have your email address in clear text yet prevent it from being grabbing by every passing spam feeding robot?

check out this neat little encoder I found...
http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

Gmail or not to Gmail

I have been using yahoo.com as an "away from the office" or "feed the spammers/mailing lists" mail client for many years - so long that it now receives a considerable amount of spam, which bless their cotton socks, YAHOO do actually manage pretty well.

The account has served me well but I am beginning to wonder if now is not the time to move, lose the spam completely.  My investigation has got a far as registering at http://www.aventuremail.com who offer 2GB of email storage. 

But it is at this point one finds the hardest thing about moving any address... namely telling everybody, every mailing list, ex-colleague, ex-company, product registration that has the current address that there is now a new one.  Even then, how can you tell you have got them all?  I will persist for a bit longer, but I see a day when I will have YET another email address full of spam.

in the meantime, as a test of email address encoding here is my new address
anonymouse@aventuremail.com

Finally RFID finds an everyday use .... almost

Recently I went to a conference on Ubiquitious Computing (Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing)

The conference was thought provoking and the debates were argued with passion - in particular the pros and cons of RFID and the knock on effect on privacy to the individual.  While everybody could (and did) agree that RFID will improve inventory control and order processing - streamlining businesses and in fact even improving the shopping experience.

Where the debate raged was in the "future" of RFID and the ability to track anything. One arguement was that the criminal element of the world could be tracked and processes could be put in place to prevent them straying further from the path.  Unfortunately what seemed to be unconstrained was knowing WHAT was recorded, WHEN it was being tracked/probed/monitored and of course WHO was doing the tracking probing.

An example use given was, as an emergency monitor for the aged and infirm, and maybe even tracking the prosecuted villans of the world.  This opportunity, to track the criminal element, was taken forward.  For it to be realistic, one would need to capture every criminal or wannabe criminal first and implant them.  This is a little impractical, unless it is something that is done early on in the person's life - ummm, e.g. Birth.  Now this opens pandora's box even further - now everybody is trackable, by anybody with the inclination.

This proved to be the losing arguement - and the house (pro) lost, even though it was actually in the direction of ubiquitious computing.

Now ... the (from Layer 8) is an interesting USE for such technology;
Long weekend: Tip #1 Attention golfers: Never lose another ball in the woods or tall grass again. RadarGolf has created a device that lets your help find your wayward shot using RFID technology embedded...

[via Layer 8]

Recipe of the day

This dedicated to Dave O and all Banoffee pie lovers out there - lets spread the word

A great reference to all things Banoffee can be found at The Banoffee Pie Page

However for those of you desperate for the recipe already ...

Ingredients
2 Tins (~400g) of condensed milk
Three large bananas
One packet of digestives or similar
2 tablespoons margarine (or butter)
Half-pint of double cream, or whipping cream

Method
Put the sealed tin of condensed milk in a pan of boiling water and allow to boil/simmer for around 2 hours. Place a lid on the pan to prevent all the water boiling off. ***do not let the water boil dry***
When done, remove the tin and leave to cool.

While the milk is cooking make the base.
Crush the biscuits in a freezer bag with a rolling pin until they are reduced to crumbs. Gently heat some margarine in a saucepan or a microwave until soft/liquid.
Pour crumbs and liquid/soft margarine and mix in with the crumbs until they start to bind together. Transfer the biscuit crumbs to a round dish and flatten with a spoon so that the base is covered. Place in the fridge to set.

When the tins are cool enough to handle, open carefully - the condensed milk will have caramelised and may well shoot out the opening.
Pour/spoon the toffee from the tin onto the biscuit base of the dish.
Slice the bananas and arrange them on top of the toffee.
Cover in cream as required.

Eric Idle's Singing Tribute to the FCC

"Here's a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge… It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."           http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

 

The Wine has landed

Bubbling finished
Bottles a brushed
A sip, sip, sip
wine made :)

More Prague pictures

Just to prove we didn't spend the entire weekend underground.




Not all were from this year :)

When in Prague

Eat well.... try the Museum of Torture

Though on the inside it seemed to be a fairly ordinary McFastFood shop...

 

Some other pictures of the group/Prague
(well ok only one of Prague.... it is not the done thing to take a camera to all the places one goes to on a stag weekend.)

Prague :)

Off to Prague today - Stag weekend 8-)
I'll try to take some non-blurred pictures and post a few when I get back.

Meanwhile .... Town sold (again)

Town Sold On eBay Finally Sold For Real... But Not On eBay Back in 2002 there was a tremendous amount of hype when Bridgeville, the small (mostly deserted) California town was put up for sale on eBay. It eventually sold in an auction for $1.8 million - and got a tremendous amount of press attention. The only problem: the $1.8 million bid was a hoax. A whole year went by and the owners of the "town" sheepishly admitted that the buyer (and his money) never showed up. Now, however, the town has been sold again - but not on eBay, and back down at its original asking price of $700,000. Even with the failure of the actual sale to go through, though, people still remember that you can "sell a town on eBay," contributing to the use of eBay as a PR platform beyond just its ability to match buyers and sellers.

[via Techdirt]

and

Has SCO gone mad ...?

I used to be a fan of SCO - heck I nearly worked there back in the late 80s.  BUT now they seem to have lost it.  http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html

I just fail to see what this will do to help them in their case against IBM or long term financial benefit it will give them.  In fact I would have thought that trawling through all the information from FSF will be a painful expensive exercise for both SCO and FSF.   The only people who are going to make money out of this are the lawyers!  Enough already.  SCO go home!

OS X on a PC???

Now that is something I will have to try out.

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/index.html  Free too :)
Watch this space and I will let you know how I get on.

Original lead care of Wired News;
OS X Makes Slow Debut on PC German students develop the first emulator for running Mac OS X on a Windows machine.

Olympic decision postponed!

I am joking, or am I?

I find it incredible that millions of pounds (of tax payers money) is being spent by 9 countries for the chance to host the olympics in 2012.  Yet the Committee seems to be enjoying their job - since the decision is still not expected for over another year --- WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

London awaits 2012 decision The nine cities bidding for the 2012 Olympics will find out if they have made the initial cut on Tuesday.

[via BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

www.bananaguard.com

What more needs to be said :)

(thanks to Gareth for finding this one)

TiVo saviour of the advert?

It seems that TiVo is not the nemisis of advertisers, statistics (see Lies Damn Lies and Statistics further down) recently published by TiVo about the superbowl suggest that the adverts were the second most replayed aspect of the superbowl.

Apart from the fact that advertisers will be pleased, I have to wonder what these special adverts were like?  Are they still being aired?  I do not hesitate to fast forward through the adverts and in fact irrate friends (who force me to watch them) by mimicking the soundeffect of the TiVo fast forward.  For me they interrupt my mental process and ruin what I was watching.  I am as likely to get up and do something else forgetting what and why I was watching TV in the first place.  Surely I am not alone in this behaviour.

The quality of TV is suspect most of the time, hindered further by the fact that advertisers seem to only put effort in to addictive programming for a short time/special occasions, with those adverts/programs soon losing their appeal to the masses.  Maybe Blipverts from MAX HEADROOM was on the right line, at least they would only last a split second.

The good news is that I have recently bought my parents a TiVo :) 

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 'A TiVo moment to bust open the market' from Red Herring Blog.
http://blog.redherring.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/108

North Dekota sounds DANGEROUS!

Man Angry At Mobile Phone Service, Starts Throwing Phones These days, with things like number portability around, if you don't really like your mobile phone provider, you can simply change providers. Apparently, that wasn't what a man in North Dakota wanted, though. He went to the local Verizon Wireless store, pissed off about something, and when yelling at employees (his original intention) didn't satisfy him, he started to fling mobile phones around the store causing $2,000 worth of damages and injuring (not badly) an employee. Of course, you have to wonder about his claim that he only intended to yell at employees. Before he started his fling fest he apparently took off his shirt (?!?) and put on safety goggles. Amusingly, this was done at a Verizon Wireless store - and Verizon Wireless tends to get some of the best marks for customer service.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040514/APA/405140778

In Memory of Dakota Da Cat

Hmmm, can't seem to work out how to allow comments to be left.
A problem for tomorrow

So I had to include this as a "tip of the hat" to my old Maths school books - which I had covered with the quote "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"

My teacher was surprisingly amused, but only when I was able to say where the quote had come from; while often considered to be Mark Twain - Twain actually credits Benjamim Disraeli

Looks like lunches in the City are going high tech

"Lies, Damn Lies And Technology A few months ago we wrote about how one guy predicted that 3G mobile phones would never take off because the camera phone part would make it difficult to lie about where you were. We had no idea that most people used their mobile phones to lie about their location (or that that single factor would damn the entire product category). However, apparently the lying segment of the population is out there, and they've got money to spend, so solutions started cropping up, including a way to put fake image backgrounds into camera phone images to make people think you're somewhere you're not and (even more impressive) fake audio sounds to complete the faux imagery. There are even (apparently) bars that have fake office backdrops for camera phone enabled workers sneaking out for a drink. Douglas Rushkoff is now wondering about all this technological effort put into helping us lie better and wonders if it really shows how technology advancements make us more truthful. All these efforts show that people now need to make much more of an effort to be dishonest, which makes it even clearer (perhaps to themselves as well) how much they are lying. In fact, Rushkoff believes that such enforced honesty should be seen as an opportunity for people, rather than as a reason to avoid the technology altogether.

[via Techdirt]"

So, a quick wine update

The wine I am making is entering its last stage, and then we start the messy bottling process.  Not know for being messy, I think it must be something to do with my approach :)  Anyhow, it will be my next opportunity to taste it.

Yesterday's accidental taste was positive.  The wine had a big fruity flavour - no oak yet - and gave a slight tingle to the lips.  The Specific Gravity was at .992 which I am happy with.  Couldn't taste any tannins which I was a little surprised about.  All in all very positive.

I'll see if I can take an interesting picture and add it to this... two technical challenges :)

 

Wow!

Newszcrawler really does help summarise the inumerable newsfeeds and websites out there that you want to keep up to date with.

Maybe now I will begin to write a little more.

 

check out www.newzcrawler.com

 

Open Source Scripts - WebReference.com

I wonder if I can bring in some news ... RSS seems to be the thing of the day.