Wednesday 27 June 2007 at 5:48 pm
Fascinating -
Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace. Summary - 'nice' kids use Facebook; 'bad' kids use MySpace. Related - genius pisstake of
Facebook in 40 years.
Finland is cool -
In Finland's Footsteps: If We're So Rich and Smart, Why Aren't We More Like Them?.
Notes 8 -
My life with Lotus Notes 8. Looks impressive for a beta. Love the integration of some of the OpenOffice stuff too.
Cool -
Img2HTML. Convert an image into a web page with 1 x 1 pixel coloured table cells.
Play Windows games on Linux with
Cedega.
Genius -
Walkman Mellotron.
Saturday 02 June 2007 at 12:19 pm
Faskinating -
Psychopaths among us. "For his first paper, now a classic, Hare had his subjects watch a countdown timer. When it reached zero, they got a "harmless but painful" electric shock while an electrode taped to their fingers measured perspiration. Normal people would start sweating as the countdown proceeded, nervously anticipating the shock. Psychopaths didn't sweat. They didn't fear punishment -- which, presumably, also holds true outside the laboratory."
Amusing -
Ultimate Mouse Pointer.
Useful -
TPS Report Template. For those burdened with an over-active bureaucracy.
I knew a guy who had a whole stash of altoid tins -
Uses for Altoid tins.
Interesting -
Presentations on who to scale websites from people like Twitter, Flickr, Bloglines etc.
Something to look forward to -
Top 10 Features in Windows Server 2008. A server OS without a GUI - fancy that.
More good stuff - Cognitive Bias:
Reasons why what you think is right is wrong.
One to watch -
Utu (FYI 'Utu' is a Maori word for revenge). "The Internet needs identity, reputation, and retribution." Should be a fascinating communication tool if it comes to fruition.
Neat -
3D window manager for Windows.
Tuesday 24 April 2007 at 1:26 pm
Some more interesting storage tidbits -
Is iSCSI a SAN or NAS ? (depends where you want to send the bill
and it turns out EMC also have a simulator -
EMC�s Celerra Simulator.
Joel Spolsky is looking at another office space -
Moveable Walls. Interesting the financial hoops that need to be jumped through just to setup shop.
According to New Scientist it looks like wealthy people will help the poor and the poor enjoy punishing the rich -
Money game reveals our inner Robin Hood.
Jason Kottke always links to interesting stuff (definitely recommend subscribing to his rss feed) -
eco friendly web pallette. Someone calculated the power saving potential of a
'black' Google which has been moderated somewhat by this
post. Still if you have a high volume page it does sound like an interesting idea.
If you're a fan of the brilliant anime/manga Akira you can check out the
soundtrack. My favourite is probably the opening track -
Kaneda - which features some brilliant tribal drumming.
Things to do with a
Single Sheet of Paper.
Tuesday 24 April 2007 at 1:26 pm
Some more interesting storage tidbits -
Is iSCSI a SAN or NAS ? (depends where you want to send the bill
and it turns out EMC also have a simulator -
EMC�s Celerra Simulator.
Joel Spolsky is looking at another office space -
Moveable Walls. Interesting the financial hoops that need to be jumped through just to setup shop.
According to New Scientist it looks like wealthy people will help the poor and the poor enjoy punishing the rich -
Money game reveals our inner Robin Hood.
Fascinating -
Infographic of American Gun Deaths - looks like guns in the US are primarily used for murder and suicide. I can never work out if the NY Times has a paywall or not - hopefully this will stay accessible for awhile.
Nice eyecandy -
wonderful desktop images.
A little pop-psychology -
The Ideological Animal. "Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns."
Jason Kottke always links to interesting stuff (definitely recommend subscribing to his rss feed) -
eco friendly web pallette. Someone calculated the power saving potential of a
'black' Google which has been moderated somewhat by this
post. Still if you have a high volume page it does sound like an interesting idea.
If you're a fan of the brilliant anime/manga Akira you can check out the
soundtrack. My favourite is probably the opening track -
Kaneda - which features some brilliant tribal drumming.
Things to do with a
Single Sheet of Paper. If you enjoy collections of humour goto the site root - quite an accumulation of stuff.
Brilliant but crazy -
print your own film. Digitise some film (of the analog variety), split it into its constituent frames and then print onto acetate strips to play back.
Wednesday 28 March 2007 at 06:40 am
Geeky -
Wallet made from a keyboard.
Bizarre -
Goldfish living in a deep fat fryer. Only in Japan of course.
Site to share recipes -
Nibblous. I'm a terrible cook but they have some pretty good stuff here and theres an rss feed so you can get a new idea delivered to your feedreader almost every day.
Heh -
Ribena Rumbled. GSK laid low by some Kiwi school kids.
Dave Bishop (of 2000AD fame) is reviewing all of them -
Films of Michael Caine. So far he's up to 73 movies!
Because I'm a sad geek I enjoy reminiscing about the old days -
Dans 20th Century Abandoneware. Check out some of those old applications
Awesome -
10 Most Magnificent Trees. I'm not sure about the best in the world but they're all pretty impressive.
Interesting -
XML Based IT Management Spec. Wonder if anything interesting will come out of this standard ?
For 2000AD fans -
Progslog. A guy blogs about rereading 2000AD from Prog 1.
OS X -
Some wonderful OS X screensavers.
Useful -
PC Deployment with WindowsPE.
I was almost going to post this in the humour section but then I had these nagging suspicion that these guys are for real -
A banana is apparently a sign that we're the product of divine creation. And
GodTube ? WTF.
Tuesday 27 February 2007 at 06:53 am
I loved Bards Tale on my C64 -
The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993).
Interesting -
NetApp respond to recent studies on disk failure profiles. As per Storagemojos pre-amble its surprising other vendors aren't all over these studies plugging their solutions to these problems we've always suspected but didn't have the numbers to justify. Lovely quote - "RAID 5 today verges on professional malpractice".
Fascinating -
This is Iran, but not as you know it and also
Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World.
Wonderful -
Retro Steampunk Keyboard. Not sure about the white keys but its still pretty awesome.
Amusing -
Mr Pichassohead. Create your own Picasso-esque portraits.
Best comic in the universe -
Thirty years of 2000AD. On a related note Dave Bishop has a blog with a lot of background on 2000AD, its artists and authors -
Vicious Imagery. Dave also wrote a pretty definitive history of the comic -
Thrill Power Overload.
Some interesting ideas -
12 crackpot tech ideas that could transform the enterprise.
Interesting -
Users Who Know To Much and CIO's Who Fear Them. I'm all for client initiated innovation but I think IT departments need to be properly resourced to deal with the demands of "Shadow IT". Want to foster collaboration then resource enterprise IM and virtual workplaces (Wikis, SharePoint, QuickPlace etc); want to allow people to plug in memory sticks and mp3 players then resource IDS and eDRMS tools to make sure documents are safe and secure etc etc
Wednesday 21 February 2007 at 07:16 am
Fascinating -
Analysis of Googles Disk Failure Rate Study. Looks like MTBF doesn't mean a hell of a lot; neither does an optimal operating temperature (in fact according to the study cooler seems worse).
Open source -
DVD Authoring with DVD Flick.
Nifty -
Popular figures re-imagined by artists.
Interesting -
10 largest databases. Some discussion about the order of these databases and some omissions according to the comments. Still vast amounts of 'stuff'.
A couple of useful guides -
Linux NIC bonding and
Using VMWare P2V.
Spolsky on
Seven Key Customer Service Points. 'Take the blame' is always a good way of diffusing a difficult situation.
Useful -
10 Linux commands you've never used. Pstree, lsof are both really useful but I'm not sure about the others in the list.
Kiwiana -
Metafilter thread on the Haka complete with YouTube links. Useful for comparing the be-mulleted 70's All Blacks anaemic Haka to the new Tana era Haka. Also be sure to watch the All Black / Tonga Haka match-up. Series psychological warfare.
If you want to manage your iPod on different PC's but don't want to keep wiping out your iPod contents try the free and cross platform
Floola. Supports Windows, OS X and Linux.
Thursday 25 January 2007 at 06:28 am
YAVM (Yet Another Virtual Machine) -
VirtualBox goes open-source. Looks like it runs Vista and is cross-platform (Windows & Linux with an OS X alpha).
Ex Java developer doesn't regret moving to Cocoa -
In Which I Think About Java Again, But Only For A Moment.
Humour -
Get a Firstlife. Piss-take of
Secondlife (popular Virtual Reality environment).
For the luddite in you -
P-Mail. Like email only slower. I'm tempted to send these through the internal mail system instead of email.
Fascinating -
The making of an Al Qaeda Operative. The insight into groups of young, smart disenfranchised men congregating to find some meaning to life is a little frightening (shades of 'Fight Club').
Looks like theres now a Asterisk (Open Source VoIP/PABX) ISO -
Asterisk. It looks like a few small
companies are starting to offer Asterisk as an out of the box solution to businesses too.
Another X10 like solution for your home -
Indigo. Looks like a nice solution if you have a spare Mac Mini. I'm surprised this technology hasn't been 'consumerised' by now.
Fantastic -
anti-consumerist ATM splash screens.
Open source -
Docvert - convert Word documents to open formats.
If you're after a simple DIY appliance for web/email try out this
CentOS (based on RedHat) / BlueQuartz (based on the old Cobalt appliance) ISO. I installed it via VMWare and was impressed by how straightforward it was - one thing I did miss was SAMBA for basic workgroup file-sharing but it seemed to cover everything else and you can always install SAMBA from an RPM.
Genius -
Self-charging smoke alarms. Great idea.
Also over at Make -
How to photograph smoke.
Thursday 28 December 2006 at 08:25 am
Awesome -
Inkless metal pen.
Useful -
Turning off un-needed OS X services.
Handy Windows tool -
Driver Collector. Lets you collect all the drivers from a running system before a rebuild - particularly useful if you no longer have the original driver installers.
Interesting -
Early history of computer role-playing games.
Linked before but its still great for procrastination -
Optical Illusions.
Rudy Ruckers webzine -
Flurb. Features sci-fi short stories from people like Charles Stross. Rudy also has a series of
blog entries relating to a recent trip to NZ.
Handy -
Forty tips to improve your grammer.
Interesting historical contrast -
Genghis Khan: Law and order. How the Khan handled his 13th Century invasion of Iraq.
Excellent -
Twenty Four web tips. Nate Koechelys article on
easy fluid CSS layouts looks like a great time saver.
I haven't had much luck with Windows desktop managers but the freeware
Dexpot
looks like it has potential.
New Scientist -
Just can't get e-nough. Problems associated with to much technology.
Thursday 21 December 2006 at 1:06 pm
Looks like we may get a
$10 a week tax cut. Rod Dury (of Aftermail/Archivemail fame)
points out that from a business perspective giving some tax breaks may improve the economy as it would increase spending/saving and provides an interesting chart which indicates NZer's work harder but are less productive than their OECD counterparts (debunked in the comments). Rod also links to an amusing tale of the
way taxation works in terms of dis-enchanting high-income earners. I always thought once you got to a certain income level it just meant you ended up getting an accountant who could do some creative tax avoision (smash together avoidance & evasion) so you pay less tax anyway ?
Handy -
10 Good Unix Habits.
Interesting -
How Microsoft deals with network attacks.
Classic -
You Park Like An Asshole. Someone needs to come up with some of these sites in NZ so people can send pxts of moronic behaviour - youdrivelikeanidiot.co.nz / suicidalcyclists.co.nz / insanepedestrian.co.nz / suvdriversfeelinadequate.co.nz. I wonder when cars will come with built in cameras to record trips ?
Definitely need to get a decent turntable -
Walt Mossberg reviews two Vinyl to CD turntables. Bet they're direct drive (evil) rather than belt (good) . . .
Interesting -
Brian Eno - 77 Million Paintings. Looks like a great way to use a plasma screen while its idling
