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Enjoy - office safe - Only for over 18s
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"
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]"
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 
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]
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]
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.
