New Webtools + More

Friday 21 December 2007 at 6:05 pm If you had a small startup company you could almost get away with not buying any software at all - Top 11 New Webtools for 2007.

Interesting - Python-based spreadsheet type thing - ResolverOne. Looks interesting - any cell updates are reflected instantly in the python code.

A little impractical for anywhere that gets rain - Illy Push Button House. But with so many containers floating around its an interesting take on a house. If you want to see a real container house check out this one in Wellington. Looks a little utilitarian on the inside but I'm sure it could be made a little less austere with some thought.

Turns out there is a megapixel sweet spot for compact digital cameras - Best picture quality with 6 megapixels!. It does point out that if you have an SLR then more megapixels is definitely better - for the magority of us however, it looks like 6 is more than adequate.

Does your government treat you like a child - How the UK government advises you to deal with a broken bulb. Followed by lots of discussion about the dangers of mercury contained in this type of bulb

Should be fascinating as it expands - How Experts Fail: The Patterns and Situations in Which Experts Are Less Intelligent Than Non-Experts. Nice case studies.

I need to get something like this up and running to complement our Cactii install but it looks to painful - PHP Network Weathermap.

Interesting blog - RoughType. The author has a bunch of good books and articles out - IT Doesn't Matter, IT Doesn't Matter-Business Processes Do and Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn't Make. Looks like a must read for anyone in upper IT management.

Pivot 2 is almost out

Friday 21 December 2007 at 6:03 pm Pivot is a fantastic PHP based flatfile blogging engine - the new version is in development and the first alpha has been released. Check it out at PivotX.

My biggest gripe is probably a lack of any decent (and simple) plugin architecture like Blosxom. I really miss a simple category-tree like view.

ESX 3.5 Gotcha

Friday 21 December 2007 at 5:57 pm Just doing some test upgrades from VMWare ESX 3.01 to 3.5 - using the in place upgrade zip file and 'esxupdate' worked a treat.

The biggest PITA (pain in the ass) is that the new VI 2.5 client doesn't work on a 64bit OS (ie WindowsXP or Vista 64) - feck!

The previous client worked - why would they remove functionality ?

Sigh.

I guess you just run it in a 32bit VM on VMWare Workstation!

Other than that 3.5 looks pretty nice.

Horton Hears a Who + More

Tuesday 18 December 2007 at 06:35 am Light on technology and heavy on animation and xmas cheer this week -

Trailer looks promising - Horton Hears a Who. Dr Seuss rules.

Nifty - A definitive list of where the in-jokes & self references in Pixar's feature films & shorts are located.

Compare and contrast side by side - Evolution vs Creationism. Genius.

Nice. I want. Lovely pictures - review of the Leica M8.

Geeky gifts (yeah I know its a little late) - wooden usb stick, desktop characters, electronic bubblewrap.

Spooky - Mini spy planes that re-charge via the power lines. If they make them look like bats that would be awesome.

Humour - How many five year olds could you take in a fight. I can only manage 14 . . .

WTF ?! - DCPROMO on W2K3 R2

Wednesday 12 December 2007 at 2:31 pm I'm sure other Windows admins have already come across this but its new to me - promoting a Windows 2003 R2 server into a Windows 2003 domain requires you to prep the forest on the schema master !

Whichever bright-spark at Microsoft came up with that gem should have been shot.

Sigh.

Cranial Contour Map + More

Sunday 09 December 2007 at 4:11 pm Cool - Cranial contour map.

Check out the 2007 Interactive Fiction Competition Winners.

I am one of these Music snob t-shirt.

Nice - Putty Tray. A custom Putty app with extra bells and whistles.

Strangemaps strikes again - The blonde map of Europe.

Yet another Elite remake.

Fascinating - Game theory in which two losers equals a winner.

A friend is a Physics lecturer (first years through to post-doc) and he's striking the first group of Physics 101 students who have not had to do maths under NZ's NCEA Physics - and of course they complain that its just to darn hard when you add in those pesky theoretical equations. It reminded me of a an article by Wellington Grey (a GCSE physics teacher) - A physics teacher begs for his subject back. The idiocracy is looming.