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added: Tue, 11th October 2005 | 8823 views | 0x in favourites
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General interest, Tech Tricks, movie recommendations

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Crash Test your Car

Consumer Reports now provides video and information on how your car crash-tests... woo hoo, look at that dummy fly!

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/safety-recalls/carcrashtest/crashtestvideo.htm

Attention Apple (iPhone unit)

Dear Apple,

Wow, what a great looking phone you've come up with, smooth, shiny, functional, and hopefully easy to use (one would guess based on the ads).  Your marketing department should be commended on attaching the letter "i" to the word "Phone", and creating the iPhone... what a novel name for a phone! I don't think anyone saw that coming.

I understand with all the hype and fanboys, it wasn't going to be hard to sell your phone. Even at an expensive asking price you're bound to sell, sell, sell... hey the iPods were expensive but you had no problems selling them. So I see how it would be a coup for a single cell phone service company to sell your phones and let all the others weep as various ill-informed consumers came in and asked for "that new apple phone, the phone with the fish". I'm sure AT&T; paid a pretty penny for the privaledge, and not just for 6 months (originally the popularity lifetime of a cell phone), not even for a year... but for two years. In itself there's nothing wrong with that - with number portability anyone can move to AT&T; if they want an iPhone, but what about those tech-savvy people in the forgotten country north of you?

Perhaps you're unaware that we share media with you... perhaps you didn't know there isn't a Canadian edition of every magazine and TV channel you have. Well, there it is, we see your TV spots, we hear the internet speak about the iPhone, we flip over our favourite magazines and find an iPhone ad on the back. But wait! You can't buy an iPhone in Canada. We don't have AT&T; as a service provider.

News is finally starting to percolate through the web that Rogers, the only GSM provider in Canada is working on bringing the iPhone to Canada. That's good to hear. What's worrying about said news, is there aren't any definite times, there isn't anything certain, and there's no excuse for the delay. Why didn't Apple work with a Canadian carrier to provide the handset in both countries at the same time? Why do we have to hear about everyone else enjoying the technology before it's even considered that perhaps a Canadian would like to carry an iPhone?

I think those wonderful glossy iPhone commercials should have an apology to Canadians, or at least mention that we should put it out of our minds for the time being while things are worked out. Yes I know your phone is groundbreaking, yes I see it's popular and does many great things, yes I know it's available now... so why can't I get one?

Interesting Concept

A sort of spam gateway for your snailmail/lettermail, Earth Class Mail gives you an address to give out, scans the outside of incoming mail - if commanded (by you) it'll open the mail and scan the contents. Plans are somewhat reasonable but only available to Americans (sigh).

... of course this concept looks rather like self-generated eBilling... all the utility companies I get mail from want me to switch to ebill (of course they do - it's WAY cheaper for then - but they offer no financial incentive to me). The advantage is spam mail can be shredded/recycled by them (woo saving mail-bin trip) and you don't have to give away geographic information that resolves to your residence.. that's good for spys (I hear).

Props to Chanse Vigen

Next time I'm riding a chuck wagon (as unlikely as that may sound) I think I want Chanse Vigen as one of my outriders. On Saturday night at the Calgary Stampede, there was a serious crash injuring a wagon racer (he was thrown from the wagon and sustained hip and arm injuries), and causing the death of three horses.

No doubt the horses pulling the driverless wagon were scared (not just from the driver departing, but from the crash itself) but fortunately Chanse Vigen jumped onto the wagon and brought it under control without incident. I'm interested in races not crashes, but it would have been something to see someone do that - no take 2, no controlled conditions, after-editing, or wires to help him... just one guy gettin' it done.

Apparently protesters at the grounds called for an "an end to rodeo and chuckwagon races at the Stampede" after the third horse was euthanized (hate that word)... which some absolutely moronic. The point of the stampede is the chucks and rodeo - the drinking, debauchery, food and rides are there because of the chucks and rodeo. Take away what makes the Stampede and you've basically got nothing. Still no matter what the problem/success there's always someone who feels it very wrong and should be stopped immediately.

Have a Hobby

Some obvious reasons to have a hobby here - and yet it's nice to see it in digital ink... 5 Reasons Why Hobbies Are Important

Heat Beating (Long Term)

Long Term Solutions

Shade - If you're landscaping, and thinking really long term, or have the budget to buy large, or the ability to build near mature trees, give shade a shot. A well placed tree can reduce the direct sun into your place, and also provide a captivating dance of leaf shadows inside the house. Plus you get the undeniable pleasure of hearing wind in the leaves (and raking them in fall - oh joy).

Water - Don’t underestimate the power of a body of water to help cool. You can use water as a heat regulator – it’ll absorb heat during the day and release heat a night. Or you can use the phase change of water to steam to help cool – in fact many commercial cooling systems use water to cool on a large scale.

Window Technology - There's no such thing as "just a window, you can have multiple glazings, inert gases between panes, and reflective coatings on some/all of the layers. A good combination can make a huge difference to the heat you feel on the other side.

Window Placement - A north facing window (north hemisphere) isn't going to get much sun (depending on how far north you are it'll get some in winter). An east facing window will get morning sun, however regional air temperature takes time to warm up. A south facing window gets the most sun (north hemisphere, depending on latitude) but won't be directly heated at sunrise or set (depending on time of year). A west facing window gets as much sun as an east facing window - but this time it's at the hottest time of the day – so it’s going to feel warmer.

Heat Beating (Longer Term)

Longer Term Solutions

Be sensible about Window/Door openings - the low to mid 20 centigrades (22c-25c) tend to be where the air starts to feel hot. It's all relative of course. Around that temperature or below outside - open windows and doors to cool the place. If you live in an area that's cooler at night, an especially effective method is to open the windows and doors over night (this can be so effective you might need a blankie by morning!) Just remember to close the windows as soon as it starts warming outside - otherwise your nice cool air will disappear soon after it warms up.

Blow air out through an open window - here's something I didn't know... pointing a fan to blow hot air out through an open window is more effective then sucking cool air in through the window. Something to keep in mind when you're using fans next.

Close the curtains/blinds - exterior blockers - be them wood, fabric, steel or plants - will stop sunlight (and therefore some heat) from getting into the place. It'll also make you feel like you're living in a cave or bunker. Less effective but still helpful is closing the interior window coverings - particularly if they have light colour on the side facing out (to partially reflect the light and heat back). If you happen to have foil-backed curtains, all the more power to you (FYI: get some taste.)

Air Conditioning - Not much needs to be said here – we mean, of course, hot-to-cold heat exchangers when we say Air Conditioning (A/C) - even though heating air is also conditioning. Just be warned - you'll see a difference on your utility bill.

Heat Beating (Quick Remedies)

You can't win with weather ... it's too hot, it's too cold, it's to dry, it's too humid... no matter what’s going on someone feels it's some kind of extreme. You can even catch the more irritating claiming opposites at the same time, or flip-flopping in an extraordinarily short range (22c=too cold, 23c=too hot... and the couldn't tell you which it was without a thermometer anyway!).

Never the less there are times when the heat can become too much... so here’s a list of ways to help out. There are lots of useful articles out there, every paper/blog in the northern hemisphere is probably doing something on this... and none of this is rocket science.

Quick Remedies

Spritz - get a squirt bottle and lightly mist yourself, especially your wrists, the back of your neck, the back of your knees and your chest (anything that goes red is a good indicator - that's blood near the surface, or a burn in which case wear sunscreen, fool). This really helped on my journey to the bottom of the Grand Canyon last year.

Take off your shoes + socks - you'd be amazed how cooling it is to free your feet from shoes and socks. If you're already wearing sandals removing them will still give you a benefit. If you're really adventurous you can even dip your feet in cool water, but for those with ticklish feet, that might be a bit extreme.

Point a Fan at Yourself - A fan doesn't cool anything - in fact technically it's adding to the temperature since it isn't 100% efficient (the electrical motor will give off heat) that being said - air movement will help with evaporation - one of your bodies fundamental ways of cooling itself (perhaps you’ve heard of sweat?) Don't leave a fan on if you're not there - perhaps like a tree in the woods; it doesn't cool/make a noise if you're not there to observe it.

Shallow, Cool Water - Placing a shallow bowl of cool/ice water in the stream of moving air (behind a fan for example) will increase the humidity of the air, but the heat absorbed by the water will cool the air passing by. If you’re in a sticky, humid heat this probably isn’t a good solution for you. Also if you’re using ice that you made in your own freezer – don’t forget you will generate more heat making the ice then you’ll absorb melting it.

Generic Ink

My home printer is pretty useless right now without any ink, or with most of them dried up and not working. Rather than fork out almost $100 for Epson ink (more than the printer!) I've decided to try some generic ink. I don't want to mess around with re-filling, there's a reason you replace the heads/cartridges and from what I've read it's an incredibly slow process.

Anyway, G+G ink seems to be my choice after reading the website: http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/inktest.html. The spam-like layout, the repeating, the structure all lead me to fear it was hype created by G+G but once I got down to the sample prints, and some of the other information I decided it probably was for real. Either way - if I'm not paying for Epson ink I'm going to have to chose one generic to try.

I'll let you know how the ink pans out.

Your Mileage May Vary

If you're considering an SUV, considering fueling an SUV or just plain interested in how they all stack up (other than their pretty colours, shapes and extras) have a look at this excellent list of best gas mileage SUVs.

Via NanoBook

Word on the street... an excellent new Micro/Ultra mobile PC called the Via NanoBook is coming. With a 7" touch-screen, 4.5 hours of lifetime, and all sorts of specs to make you drool (usb 2, wifi, bluetooth, vga, ethernet, 30GB HDD, up to 1GB memory all under 1kg) is coming.

I've always had my eye on the "smaller" laptops out there - sure a 17" macbook pro looks hot, but it's not exactly mobile, and you're really just carrying a PC around with you, not a mobile computer. These tiny little guys provide decent processing power, battery life, and a whole host of opportunities for you. Like car/plane journey entertainment, traveling development, temporary Point of Sale (POS) terminals (at trade shows) and generally uber cool tech.

You heard me uber cool.

Also announced, although currently priceless, is the Via Pico-ITX board at 7x10cm this thing is tiny! On the last page of the review you'll find an original Gameboy handheld modified to contain the computer - think about were you'll be able to hide CPUS! It has everything to drive audio/video/standard USB devices (Web cams, VOIP phones, printers etc) and source an IDE and SATA drive. I'm thinking this would be excellent for robotics, installation art, making a artistic computers, and comically misplacing.

Irony

Does anyone else find this ad incredibly ironic, Botox prevents facial expression when you first get it done!

I like that they found a model who doesn't quite look natural in the face too - more of an authentic post-botox look.

Google

Fascinating article about Google on the New York Times Website: Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine

The Great Turtle Race (Website/News)

To raise awareness of the endangered leatherback sea turtle, there are satellite trackers on the shells of eleven females "racing" from Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands (some 1,200miles/1,930kms). To see how they're doing visit:

http://www.greatturtlerace.com/

Tracking My Exercise

So I've been using FitOff.ca to track exercise since the beginning of February - it's really quite awesome to see that 90 minutes of walking, 30 minutes of a vigorous workout, or 30 minutes of serious stair climbing are about equivalent in the grand calorie-burning scheme of things! It's also nice to see that 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there all add up over the day. I'm looking forward to the score board feature being available for small groups so I can run a mini fitness challenge against my friends and family.

Through the social club at work I'm participating in a fitness scoreboard. I'm just about managing to hover around 15th place (out of 80). I'm a bit disappointed by my position - I thought I'd be higher. The board really separates those with an every day commitment to exercise (eg. they cycle to work), those who are serious about exercising (they're regularly logging exercise) and those who occasionally exercise. It's got to the point where if someone trailing me on the board passes me I'll go out and climb a few flights of stairs to try and regain my position. I guess I'm kind of hoping that people's interest wanes a little so I can get ahead - that's probably wrong of me isn't it?

FitOff Goes Beta!

A new site I've been working with a team on has just switched from alpha to public beta status. FitOff allows you to track your daily exercise, awarding Fitness and Activity points based on how long and what you did. A fitness point roughly translates into a calorie, while an activity point allows you to compare your exercise to anyone else on the site.

Now here's where it get's clever - you can signup on various scoreboards on the site and compete against other users! Nothing gets people motivated to exercise like seeing their position on the board slip as others get out there and work up a sweat!

They have some great features coming up too - like public profiles (let your friends and family see how you're doing), create new scoreboards (compete in your social club, neighbourhood, family, between friends), access your fitness data in an open format, and download achievement icons to show the world how you're doing.

It's definitely worth checking out - signup now at http://fitoff.ca/register. Gotta run - it'll increase my score!

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk7]

Movie: Timeline
I'm not sure why this got bad reviews/disappeared into obscurity. The premise is fairly original, the story's good (based on a Michael Crichton book), the action, situations, and history are all believable. People die - which was a bit surprising given we're used to everyone miraculously surviving, but still we have a love interest, some sort fighting, some despair, some history. It's all lovely stuff. Watch this movie - eat popcorn, have a good evening.

Wine: Eco-Frog (France)
The title of this is presently a little lacking - I can't seem to find any information online, so I'll have to check the bottle! Still this excellent red wine is made through an entirely organic process. Apparently frogs are very susceptible to environmental damage. It's a very tasty red you'll probably have some trouble stopping drinking, plus it has a nice little frog on the label.

Song: Calvin Harris - 'Acceptable In The 80's' Wham! Here comes Calvin Harris out of nowhere - well he probably didn't come from no where, but he's suddenly appeared with this song, several remixes, and even a mini-mix on Annie Mac's show. To be honest I don't know if I like this song, but it's catchy and probably won't leave the catacombs of my head for ages - no doubt it'll be played to death by the radios if they ever get their hands on it. The words are clever, the sound is - well a retro 80's song. If you don't know what those young kids are listening to at their discotheques, you should have a listen to this one.

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk6]

Movie: Transporter 2
Yes it's a pretty standard action flick, but man does it have a nice car, some great stunts and driving. You like the characters, which I found to be well developed (surprising). Sit back and enjoy the ride on this one. Btw, I never saw the first Transporter, but I'm told it wasn't very good - I'm not exactly rushing to see it.

Wine: Mouton Cadet Bordeaux 2002
This excellent, and well priced wine is often found in restaurants with a nice wine list - at some over inflated price. That being said - it's almost worth the "wine list" price - this spectacular, smooth, red is great for any occasion - I enjoy it with barbecue, steak, stews and in a glass.

Song: Sinden & Count of Monte Cristal - 'Beeper'
Awesome happy bumpy loopy song, it's a bit repetitive, but man is it easy to start bopping around and smiling - and even singing along (trust me it won't take you long to pick it up). An excellent song to exercise to - it keeps the energy up through the whole song.

Terrible Movie:The Ice Harvest

Watched this movie last night - oh god it was terrible. The amusing preview you may or may not have seen are the best bits. And I don't mean just a little better than the rest I mean their the only bits. It was a waste of time, useless, undesirable movie that just isn't worth seeing.
Don't go watch it

To make matters worse a brand I like Toyota had the gall to (a) put an ad on the DVD and (b) stop me from being able to skip the ad or go to the movie menu. I cannot stand the concept of ads on something I paid for - but worse to lock the disc so you can't escape it. Well that's inexcusable. This has certainly damaged their image in my eyes.

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk5]

Movie: The Family Stone
It's a Christmas movie, and we managed to sneak this in just before Christmas - a surprising feat given it's popularity. It's a movie about a big, but somewhat insular family and their flaws. Sounds boring doesn't it? It's not. It's funny, well written, well filmed, excellently acted. You can't help put get caught up in every characters plight/feelings... they're all likable and dis-likable!

Wine: Naked Grape - 2004 Chardonnay (Canada)
A well priced Canadian white wine - fact or fiction? Well we tried this one out and found it a delicious light slightly fruity wine. It has a sweet taste, but is still dry (if that makes sense). It's very easy drinking - I'm talking a case easy drinking. I think it might make the "always consider buying" list!

Song: Peter Bjorn And John - 'Young Folks (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve Mix)'
Acoustic, Foreign, Raw, Happy, Pop, electronic, whistling
I have to throw this up after hearing it featured on last week's scrubs (not the remix). I first heard it approximately July last year - both the original acoustic (featured in the episode) and a really beautiful remix (listed here). The vocals are heartfelt, really pretty and to a nice musical and rhythmical backdrop. Even better there's a nice whistling line you're going to find it hard to forget, and not to imitate! It's so easy to get lost in this song when you hear it.

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk4]

Movie: Proof
I didn't think I'd put this movie in - I enjoyed the movie, well written, well acted and with a good cast - however I saw some other good movies at the time, and figured something new would replace it. But it didn't! I've been having a bad spell of mediocre/fine/moderately good movies recently - so while I might suggest watching them, I'm not uber excited about them. This movie has a fair bit of believable mathematics (nothing you'll have to learn), but is pretty much about human relationships, especially dealing with death, illness and perhaps brilliance. Go Donny Darko!

Wine: Max and Henry - 2005 When Pigs Fly Shiraz (France)
This french wine wasn't expensive, doesn't have an impressive label (bad colour choices looking like a cartoon and hard to see in some lights), and judging by the name/attempt at being funny would just be OK. We were wrong! It was an excellent wine enjoyable to the last drop - sure it's got a silly name (generally covering up a poor wine) but this time you can chuckle and sip (some practice required)

Song: Gus Gus ft. Daniel Agust - 'Moss'
Electronic, Progressive
Ah Gus Gus - some guy I never really listened to or was interested in when he was hyped - and then discovered I actually really enjoy his music. This song is really quite awesome - it has a driving beat with a mournful/slightly remove male vocal, and a progressive-cord keyboard sound over the top. With it's slow progression you feel like you're being pushed along by the ebbs and whorls of a river on a summer's day. You just don't want it to end.

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk3]

Movie: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Alright, it's the third in a poor series - I'm not even sure it made it to theatres. But let us say this: it rocked. It's not so much the story (although the format, while not original, is far from bad/weird - you'll find it in your weekly TV shows, and tons of other movies), but the sound track, and the stunts. Yes stunts. This movie was something of a visual masterpiece - not in scene setting (although Tokyo presented some nice back drops) - but in supped up cars and "drifting" stunts. Don't expect anything but fun from this movie - sit down and enjoy. I know I'll take flack for it - but I liked it.

Wine: Altos Las Hormigas - 2005 Mendoza Malbec (Argentina)
This Argentinian beaut is rated somewhere in the 90s by an acclaimed reviewer, and deserves to be. It won't cost you a fortune (somewhere in the teens), but it tastes fantastic. Definitely comparable to some $30+ bottles around. If you cna find it you really should try it.

Song: Lily Allen - Knock 'Em Out
Hip Hop, Pop, Funky
The CD's been out for ages, and due to her release recently in the states we'll probably see a massive explosion of this on radio, commercials and TV shows - but you have to listen to her fun new CD, and particularly this track which is fun, happy and witty. You can't help but tap your feet and chuckle.

Public Domain Images

Public domain image resources (should still check the licenses) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

"Your source for free photos:" (you have to check the licenses) http://everystockphoto.com/

Compare Linux Distros Side by Side

The next time you're installing Linux - and I know everyone out there is installing linux weekly - you might want to check this handy little guide on all features and metrics on the distro's out there: polishlinux.org - Compare distros

If you don't know what I mean by distro's but you've heard of this linux thing I'll make it quick: Linux comes in many different "flavours" - consider Linux a car, and all the distro's different manufacturer/model combinations - they all drive around and have base similarities (steering, brakes, audio systems), but different distros (models) offer different features (4 door, 2 door, horse power) - in Linux that's security, speed, ease, configurability, support, application choice etc. You wouldn't believe how frustrating it is to use a distro but all the documentation for your problem is for a different distro.

Web PowerPoint

Empressr this web app might just replace any need for Powerpoint... creating web based presentations instead of Microsoft specific ones. Definitely worth a look if you make a lot of ppt files and may want to make them more globally accessible.

Link Roundup

So much good stuff today, I'm going to have to stick it all together in one post.

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk2]

Movie: Monsoon Wedding
A Bollywood movie, and possibly one of the original ones for Bollywood's current incarnation. This movie focuses on an arranged wedding, and life in general in India. It was a charming story, with bright colours, lots of culture (it all seems different from Canada), good characters. Found it had to follow the people/story 'cause unfortunately it was also subtitled (and reading names/matching faces at the same time can be tricky), but that's my only qualm. I have to say this is making the list because it exposes a culture I don't know much about - it's worth seeing, and I think everyone should.

Wine: See Ya Later Ranch - 2002 Chardonnay
British Columbian wine from the Okangan, I have no idea about the availability since I bought it directly from the vineyard (my first stop at 10am on a Saturday). This delicious white - is slightly sweet and goes down very easy :) Sorry to pick something so obscure - I'm sure some people will be able to find it.

Song: Paul Hartnoll – Patchwork Guilt
Electronic, Progressive, Relaxed

Movie/Wine/Song of the week [wk1]

Some explaining! This year I've decided to pick a movie, wine and song for every week. There will be a better place for this information (rather than in this blog) but for now - so I don't accidentally empty the brain's recycle bin, I thought I'd get it down in, err, bytes.

Movie: A Very Long Engagement (Un Long dimanche de fiancailles)
Unfortunately it's in french, but don't let that stop you from watching this cinematic masterpiece - a nice story, beautiful photography, some witty lines, and good actors await. You may find the beginning and some scenes surprisingly gory, but wait it out - it's really not about the gore.

Wine: La Vieille Ferme - Cotes du Ventoux
French movie? French wine! Of course there are far more french wines that I'm willing to drink than movies I'm willing to watch - but lets not ruin the plan here. This excellent and inexpensive wine is great - if you don't tell others it's price they'll think it worth more than you paid.

Song: Beatles vs. Diplo - Shake it Up (Diplo Mix)
There are tons of great songs for me to choose - 'cause I haven't done this yet, so I've decided to start the year with a happy, classic/remake that'll get the young and the old on the dance floor. I'm not sure there's an English-speaking person on the planet who doesn't know the song, the Diplo mix breaths new life into it

Roast your own coffee

The DIY Guide to Roasting Your Own Coffee!

Take some wind out of their sails

Some interesting technology is out there for providing free (wind) power to your home. About $8,500USD will get you a SkyStream3.7 which reportedly will produce 400KWh/month in 12mph/19kph winds. After 8 years this puppy's paid for itself, plus you have the satisfaction of not paying your local power company.

There's an even more interesting turbine coming (no specs, details, costs yet) called StormBlade which provides a jet-like turbine rather than the prop(ellar) kind... simpler, more efficient and quieter than it's prop cousins, this thing's sure to be a hit. Hopefully we'll see something concrete about it in the not to distant future.

20 CSS Tips

Good for any designers out there, these CSS tips are killer for whatever your next project is: CSS Techniques Roundup - 20 CSS Tips and Tricks.

New Years Resolutions

  • Great achievements involve great risk
  • When you lose or fail, don't lose the lesson
  • Respect yourself, Respect others, be Responsible for your actions
  • Not getting what you want is sometimes of great benefit
  • Don't let a little dispute injure a great relationship
  • When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it
  • Spend some time alone every day
  • Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values
  • Silence is sometimes the best answer

The Postage Stamp Pain

I've blogged about this before, unfortunately in one of the "great harddrive crashes" from an IBM Deathstar drive (there where 3 in the end - it turns out it was the motherboards power supply) the blog got lost... but it's memory remains.

This year Canada Post has permanent stamps. Brilliant. I was appalled that Rick Mercer had the gall to mock this with his TV show, I enjoy his shows and his opinions mostly (although I'm not terribly interested in general politics) but when he mocked Canada Post for finally giving stamp buyers a break... well lets just say I felt anger. Later I decided he was probably (hopefully) just being devils advocate, and he probably did enjoy the benefit (not wasting time late January buying 1c stamps is a benefit to all - Canada Post included).

This is at least 14 years after Europe did the same: a stamp is a stamp is a stamp, it's not a paper representation of money. It's a paper receipt that a service has been paid for. That's the difference... I paid for a piece of mail to be delivered (already) so I don't want to have to revisit the post office (bad customer service and long lineups included) to have to supplement that payment because they've decided it's not enough.

Not only that... you're investing in the service up front... many don't use all the stamps for up to a year (1 piece of mail a month - now (apparently) sold in books of 12 = 1 year's supply). It seems small but if everyone (30million) spends $0.51 up front to be used in 12 months... with some good investment you could make $1.5 million in interest off that last stamp... it all adds up. I've given up on an out of date tamps beacause it's so time consuming to stand in line at the Post Office to get 1c stamps. I've found books of stamps from yesterear... I'm sure I'm not the only one. Unlike the dollar, it's not novel to find these retro stamps - they're useless! I think I even have some 45c stamps kicking around (6 cents off target).

I'm digressing...

Today I bought a book of stamps. I couldn't get a 10 pack (they didn't have) so I had to take a 12 pack. I assumed, given all the media coverage, that I'd be getting these new Permanent stamps... after sticking my stamps carefully on the 4 pieces of mail I had... I didn't see any discernible difference between these and the non-permanent type. I inquired with the Post office worker.

"Nope, those aren't the permanent"

So they'll need extra postage January 15th?

"That's right"

So what of these permanent stamps I've heard of?

"Oh well they don't come in books of 12"

... but I wanted a book of 10, and I would expect some kind of disclosure rather than you selling me the useless junk (they're the same price apparently) first and then telling me. As if I couldn't buy 10 not in a book (heaven forbid! or better yet just the 4 I need for now (since I'll be lining up again anyway).

So enjoy your Permanent stamps people... if you actually manage to get one out of the post office... I'll be (yet again) lining up for my favourite stamp: the 1 penny special.

Email Security, Productivity and Etiquette

Just like this article, I have to wonder why people don't know some of these simple and obvious email etiquette suggestions. Still it may not all be obvious... everyone has access to computers and emails but they don't all think about ramifications of what they are or are not doing. On the other hand we're all getting better as time goes along... gone are the days of those email lists where you could find up to a thousand email addresses listed for any spammer to harvest.

Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips

EveryStockPhoto

EveryStockPhoto.com, this free pile of stock photos could be an excellent resource for your next poster/design. Just be warned, you may need release forms from models/building/logo owners included in the photos (if there are some). As creative commons files you don't need to worry about the photographer at least.

Watch Google Tech Talks

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=techtalks:: nuff said

Convert PDF files to Executables

PDF2EXE allows you to take a PDF file and convert it into an executable. In some ways this seems seriously dodgy (people opening EXEs in their email instead of PDFS).... but in many ways this could be extremely useful.

Why convert to EXE? Well first, anyone (in Windows) can open the file... no need for Adobe's bloated software (although you'll find plenty of alternatives out there). Better yet, in the conversion to EXE the programme gives you all sorts of extended options: Encryption, Password Protection, disable output to TXT, disable printing, disable conversion to image files, prevent modification, disable document properties. It's a free product, so give it a shot.

Mega Graphics tutorial list

Enough said, you need to read several of these Welcome to Photoshop, Corel, Xara, Painter and PSP Tutorials.

Disable F1-Help in Windows Explorer

If you use the F2 (rename) or ESC keys in explorer, you're probably well aware the F1 key brings on a painstaking loading process to show you a useless MS help centre. That we can do without. No fear, Hydrous has a fix... and it just effects explorer (F1 for help will still work in all your other apps)... ace.

  1. You'll need dummy.exe... store it in C:WINDOWS
  2. [Start]->Run->regedit
  3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows CurrentVersionApp PathsHELPCTR.EXE
  4. Double click on "(Default}" and change the value to "C:WindowsDummy.exe" (no quotes)
  5. Click [OK] and close the registry editor.

Colour Palette Generator

Colour Palette Generator
Give this w(eb)app an image URL and it'll give you the dull and the vibrant choices of colour. If you were repainting a room and you wanted to pull some colours from our favourite image this might just work... on the other hand you're going to have to worry about colour spaces and differences between tone on a monitor, camera, printer, and in paint. Cripes I hate colour spaces.

SLRGear

Next time you're trying to choose components for your SLR camera have a look at SLRGear.com for reviews, tips, and performance statistics on lenses and accessories.

Ext2/Ext3 from Windows

This beautiful piece of software allows you to access Ext2 and Ext3 filesystems from Windows (Ext2 Installable File System For Windows). This means your Linux partition is on longer only accessible from Windows. Perfect for retriving files you have stored there, or maybe even using the Ext2/3 filesystem for windows needs. Since this is a core piece, any application in windows will be able to use the drive.

Sync your google-calendar with your phone

If you have a Nokia, Motorolla, BlackBerry, or Sony-Erickson phone there's a good chance GCalSync can syncronise your google calendar to your phone... handy!

Community Loans

I find this both scary, and, well brilliant. Prosper.com is a website for two different types of people... those that need money, and those that have money to lend. As either party you state how much you're willing to pay/want in interest and you allow other users to bid for your money/to lend you money. Why should it just be banks and criminal organizations that loan money? There's a rating system built into the site to give you protection, and they're upfront about their rates for the users. If I have a spare pile-o-change maybe I'll try loaning it out :)

Cool Covers

Innovative display here... sure he's trying to sell you stuff, but what a great way to look at the selection CoverPop.com.

Top 10 Power foods

Top 10 Power foods... and some recipies and advice on how to cook/consume them :)

Create a grunge brush in photoshop

Creating grunge brushes ... an excellent tutorial on how to make that clinical photo look dirty, used, retro, and perhaps a little more interesting.

When to buy stuff

A very handy guide basically loaded with common sense, but with some surprises (and handily all written in the same article!). Read The Best Time to Buy Everything to find out how to pay less.

Never Ever Ship UPS to Canada

I recently purchased some goods from the US, only to be was reminded, in brutal clarity, why I should never accept anything shipped with UPS. The goods I purchased where probably 20% less expensive than my local store... a good enough difference I could assume the extra costs (duty, shipping, handling) will still make it worth while buying online. Boy, was I wrong.

First up the seller (northernlightfx.com)was poor at giving any kind of incentive for multiple purchases (this sadly after I'd already agreed to buy... most sellers are more than reasonable). Their claim; the 3 major items would have to ship in separate boxes (surprise! they turned up in combined boxes). On top of this, they're a seller steadfast in their use of the atrocious UPS where most sellers will offer an alternative (listed or otherwise) this one would not budge. I'm disappointed: their product line is great, prices are good, and service (outside of shipping) is fine... but I will never shop there again, and recommend no one else in Canada tries either.

So my packages are shipping for $60usd.... they're somewhat heavy (35lbs) and it's a fair distance, so while I fell this is expensive (that's half the cost of what I paid to ship 200lbs of stuff the same distance across the country and 1/6 of the weight) it's just in the acceptable range. If we translate into Canadian dollars that's $72 so far. My packages arrive in the same time as something shipped USPS from a similar distance (a North-Eastern state to South-Western Canada) something couriers are constantly claiming: they give better speed and service... why am I paying +$20usd to courier something that can move better/as well through the postal system? Still I'm ok with this... I can't expect things to be too outrageously fast (both came in good time). Two weeks after delivery however things start to go bad... I receive an invoice in the mail.

Couriers no longer bill you when they deliver packages under $1600... you just mail you a bill after. This removes all your rights to refuse their outrageous fees, and keeps you completely in the dark on what costs will eventually show up in an ugly envelope two weeks later (82 wasted cents of postage, why not just attach to the delivery package?). UPS sends me a bill for $65 and change. That's $20 of duty... and $45 for their pocket. They have various excuses for parts of it (and the 8+5 parts I basically except, but not the other 32). When asked to justify the costs, I get nothing. I've now paid $135 to get these items ($300 of goods)... that's 45% more than the original cost. Gone is my 20% savings (26% if you include taxes at a local store)... gone is the convenience of driving home with my new items, massively increased is my dislike of UPS.

Will I ever accept a UPS shipment again: never. I am appalled by their practices. They only hurt the private shippers, since all corporations have brokerage firms (an industry that no doubt exists solely from ridiculous fees by the couriers).

Do yourself a favour NEVER SHIP UPS.

And I'm not even getting into their bad delivery practices: 9-4 workdays only, only one pickup point in the whole city open till only 7pm workdays, takes 2 days to "re-route" a package within the city (when all the drivers have wireless computers that tell them what's going on in real time, so they don't need to "attempt delivery" when you called in 6 hours earlier to ask them to send it to your workplace because surprise! you work during business hours)

What you can take on a plane...

Sure it's an American list, but it's fairly safe to expect our guidelines to be close to theirs. Have a look at Permitted and Prohibited Items (Transportation Security Administration).

Adobe Illustrator

So you want to create a good looking graph, and you don't want to use Excel? I don't blame you! Check out Creating graphs at Bartelme design for a concise guide to creating them with illustrator.

Shoe Fitting Guide

It seems obvious, and yet it's full of useful information. I suppose, having never worked in a shoe store, it's not the sort of thing you'd know. Check out the blog-post Buy Shoes that Fit Every Time. You'll need this shoe-size conversion table too.

Add a map to a site

Using the blog-post How to add a Google Map to any web page in 30 seconds and the site WikiMapia you can add a google map of somewhere including controls in 30seconds. No developer account needed.!

Table Styles

Nice selection of CSS table styles (with loading on the page you're looking at) CSS Table gallery

Learn how to draw

Visit DrawSpace.com to learn many techniques on how to draw... this seems to be a huge resource covering lots of different areas.

10 tips on leading a balanced life

What an awesome blog entry (10 tips on leading a balanced life)... read this, and try and follow this... a more balanced life will follow (some effort required).

How to Become a Regular

I'm not sure this is a killer guide on How To become a Regular but it's a helpful set of etiquette for any restaurant dining. Obviously some of the rules can be skipped over if you're just looking for how to dine responsibly.

Recycle old books

BookMooch allows you to offer books you'd like to get rid of, and obtain books you'd like through an online community. It costs nothing to join, and nothing to trade, 'cept the cost of shipping. You receive points for what you put in, as long as you're sending one out for every two in you'll be fine.

Link Roundup

Windows XP 15 Minute Tune-Up
- Follow this and have a faster, brighter computer. Probably worth doing every 6 months or so on your computers.

How to setup a personal home Subversion server
- Allow yourself timely backups of files so that you don't loose them when you accidentally save a blank document over your 40 page thesis. A brief view of this guide suggests it's a bit technical for most... will report after trying. Roger roger.

Create ringtones for your cellphone

ToneThis allows you to create ringtons and wallpapers for your cellphone without paying your service provider exorbitant fees. Using your own audio files, and images from your PC, you can create a ringtone by selecting an audio file, the portion to extract and clicking go. You receive the tone/wallpaper as an SMS message (which may cost you).

Glasses for CVS (Computer Vision Syndrome)

Awesome Lockergnome posting about CVS today; Computer Glasses For Computer Vision Syndrome Sufferers. It would have been nice if these risks where known earlier... for many the damage is already done, but perhaps with some awareness now people can recover and/or stop making it worse.

I command you: Speak with confidence!

Speaking with confidence
10 Tips For Successful Public Speaking

London Design Museum (online)

If you're bored or interested in design... and those two in no way go together (honest millhop!)... then you might want to check out London Design Museum... full of great information, and great designs.

ScanR

This seems like quite a clever little idea... take a photo with a phone-cam, or digital camera, email it to these guys and get back a PDF with of what you caught. Be it a business card, document, or whiteboard shot. The samples of what it can do are impressive. I don't know how they can stay in business if they aren't charging, but *shrug* enjoy it while it lasts :)

ScanR

Being Called to the Bar

In Tom's own words, this is how getting called to the bar goes (roughly - a full report after the event)...

Routine should be something like this: someone talks about me/makes fun of me for about 10 minutes, judge talks about how great/important it is to be a lawyer for five minutes, and then I take some kind of oath about not being a lying slimebucket. Then presto I'm a lawyer.

Take over the world with Briefcase!

That briefcase thingy in Windows... it's still there. Guess what? I have a use for you! Create a briefcase (with the guide: Keep Your USB Drive Synchronized With Briefcase) and you'll be able to have a USB drive of information that you use on multiple stations. Bet most of you didn't even know what it was for!

Free Stuff! Use it on your website

Check out Wikimedia Commons for a pile of resources in... well... tons of categories, 700,000 items and growing try category:your-city to see what's already been contributed.

How much paint will you need?

Whether you're planning some elaborate prank, or considering repainting a room in your house, perhaps you'd like to have a clue how much paint you need? Look no further! Interior Paint Calculator

Get Rid of Adobe Reader Bloatware

Tired of the huge download that constantly checks back for updates and installs toolbars? Check out Foxit Reader for windows, a 1MB alternative, that seems to do everything Adobe can.

TripMates

This is a neat idea, a site that allows you to find other people making a trip to the same place around the same time as you... now you can meet up and slag how crap the place is. Or possibly just find someone understanding in an unfamiliar place. Check out TripMates.

Free stuff for web design

A link to another blog here, with a great list of free resources for web designers out there on a budget... or perhaps just looking to learn from others and what's out there. Have a look at Get free stuff for Web design.

In other news, there's a list of obvious, but handy tips in 20 Pro Tips... nothing should shock you here, but it's nice to reiterate (and remember).

Video Killed the Video Star

Lore Sjöberg is at it again with his thoughts and feelings (don't break it gently man) on the trend of lip syncing and generally being an idiot on camera to "become famous" (through YouTube and Google Video). Read this and reconsider that video of yours (that includes you Paris).

Debt Collectors and your Rights

You don't want to get into this situation, but if for some reason you're stuck there, this article (Debt Collection Practices: When Hardball Tactics Go Too Far) is an excellent resource (even in Canada) of what you're entitled to, what you can do, what they can do, and what they can't do. The advice taken as comon sense can actually be allied to any sort of dispute, or situation where it's possible it might get ugly. Hope you won't need this link, but if you do... well there it is.

Interview tips

Interview tips from an experienced recruiter, a handy (if somewhat obvious) guide on how to deal with things and what to do at an interview.

Free Virtual PCs

In an update to an earlier (toasted) post... all vendors are offering free Virtual PCs now:

Performance wise you have two tiers:
OK: VMWare Server, MS Virtual PC
Good: Zen, VMWare ACE

How to Brew Cheap Wine

I find this strangely fascinating, while at the same time quite disturbing. Not sure if I'll ever get around to trying, perhaps tilley will give it a shot and let us know. How to Brew Cheap Wine.

Convert .bat or .vbs to .exe

A very handy trick! If you can't think of a use, don't read this guide... it seems you'll already have the programme though. How to Convert a .BAT file or .VBS file into .EXE to Enable Pinning to XP Start Menu.

ie for linux

Just like the man says, for those web designers out there, this application will allow you to test your app in IE without having to be running Windows on a box somewhere... it's a pretty great solution really. Support for versions 5, 5.5, 6. Check out IEs4Linux.

Collaboration made simple with Bracket Notation

So you want to edit someone elses article. Perhaps you've tried MS Word markup, or some other proprietary layout, and perhaps you haven't. This innovative suggestion creates a way for everyone to markup a piece of text... IM, Cell phone text, plain email, html, word, excel etc etc etc. It's usefulness is in it's simplicity, and according to one user it's used by the UN to markup documents.

Personally I agree with [ICR] that the rules and order: [Inserted Text^][#Scrubbed Text][@Comments] should be used... it allows you to skip the empty boxes when you don't need to remove, or when making a comment. We'll try implementing this over a few weeks and see how it works out :)

Collaboration made simple with Bracket Notation

There's no such thing as a one-hour meeting

I certainly agree with this article, meetings (especially for me) decrease my output for the day by a considerable amount. There's no such thing as the one-hour meeting.

SysInfo for your Tasklist cleaning needs

Next time you're not sure about what's running in your task list, or you want to limit what's automatically starting up, have a look at SysInfo.Org.

Your Green Dream

Seems like a great idea to me: Your Green Dream

"A free source of information on how to create your own homemade projects on solar, hydro, wind, tidal, geothermal or other green power. The site is designed to help and inspire hobby or starters with good easy to understand basic information about solar, wind, hydro electricity generating projects. It also allows you to communicate with others who are doing them same thing so you can avoid making those mistakes others make. And once you have the energy the best ways to use and store that energy, with batteries, electrolysis (hydrogen) and great low consumption products."

Build your own projector

Sure it's not amazing quality, but it could be fun for a various activites... have a look at DIY Projector. I'm thinking occasional use, additional effect that sort of thing :)

FCKEditor 2.3 and Opera 9

If you use FCKEditor or you have an application that comes with it embedded (Gnabgib software, FootSteps, DotNetNuke, LiveCity, Lemon CSS, FHM Online, etc) you should considering modifying your Integration script to allow the new Opera 9.0 to work with the editor (Opera finally supports - hurrah!)

PHP Upgrade (2.3 file)
Line:105: Function IsCompatible() { global $HTTP_USER_AGENT ; if (isset($HTTP_USER_AGENT)) { $sAgent = $HTTP_USER_AGENT; } else { $sAgent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']; } if (strpos($sAgent,'Opera')!==false) { $iVersion=(float)substr($sAgent,strpos($sAgent,'Opera')+6,4); return ($iVersion>=9.0); } elseif ( strpos($sAgent, 'MSIE') !== false && strpos($sAgent, 'mac') === false ) { $iVersion = (float)substr($sAgent, strpos($sAgent, 'MSIE') + 5, 3) ; return ($iVersion >= 5.5) ; } else if ( strpos($sAgent, 'Gecko/') !== false ) { $iVersion = (int)substr($sAgent, strpos($sAgent, 'Gecko/') + 6, 8) ; return ($iVersion >= 20030210) ; } return false ; }
Javascript Upgrade (2.3 file)

No upgrade required (already detects 9.0)

ASP Upgrade (2.3 file)
Line:129: Private Function IsCompatible() Dim sAgent sAgent = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT") Dim iVersion if InStr(sAgent,"Opera") > 0 Then iVersion = CInt( ToNumericFormat( Mid(sAgent, InStr(sAgent, "Opera") + 6, 3) ) ) IsCompatible = ( iVersion >= 9.0 ) ElseIf InStr(sAgent, "MSIE") > 0 AND InStr(sAgent, "mac") <= 0 Then iVersion = CInt( ToNumericFormat( Mid(sAgent, InStr(sAgent, "MSIE") + 5, 3) ) ) IsCompatible = ( iVersion >= 5.5 ) ElseIf InStr(sAgent, "Gecko/") > 0 Then iVersion = CLng( Mid( sAgent, InStr( sAgent, "Gecko/" ) + 6, 8 ) ) IsCompatible = ( iVersion >= 20030210 ) Else IsCompatible = False End If End Function

All we've done is stopped ignoring all Opera users, and test to make sure they're using at least version 9.0 in order to show FCK Editor (just like MSIE and Gecko detection is setup). Similarly we can modify the ASP.NET, ColdFusion, Java and other scripts, I'll leave that up to you.

Send Big Files the easy way

This innovative peer to peer technology allows you to send files to others in a secured and simple manor. You both need to be running the software, but after that you email/IM them a delivery slip and they use that to download whatever the content is from you. Quite brilliant if you ask me. Check out Civil Netizen [Free]

Minti

Whether you're an experienced parent, a surprised parent, a new parent or an expecting parent, you're going to have questions and concerns. This online community (very web two point oh) provides just that... nicely laid out, tagged messages and discussions on all things parenting. Check out Minti.

Free MS Office Training

Sometimes you just need to know how to do one thing, so an 800 page reference book is overkill. Sometimes you just want to become better at an application because you just know there are better ways to go about using it. Either way, this online training area provided by Microsoft is very handy, check out Microsoft Office Training Homepage

Anti Chris' MiniMix (Annie Mac)

If you didn't listen to last week's "Rainbow show" on Annie Mac/Radio 1... well then you haven't heard creative radio DJing. But enough about that... this week's Minimix (a 5 minute mix of whatever you want) was by a listener... someone called Anti Chris. What a mix!

This person has a lot of talent. Hopefully someone will stream it off the radio so you can find it and listen to it yourself (once the radio show stops playing on Thursday). Perhaps if you combine this person with a chris they'll neutralize each other and release energy?

Annie Mac's Show [changes every Thursday at 1pm MST]
Annie Mac's Radio Site & Tracklisting.

Oracle reserved column name (words, keywords)

So you have a table with a column that uses a keyword for it's name (say: Precision). When you write a standard SQL statement to pull data from that column:

SELECT Precision
FROM my_tricky_table

...you'll get an error like...

ORA-00904: "PRECISION": invalid identifier

So what do you do? Escape the column name! Which should be easy, but it just took me 20 minutes of searching the web to discover how to do it...

To escape a column in Oracle you put double quotes around it (the error message gave a clue eh?) but !watchout! the column-name is now case sensitive. When the table was created the column (as I've listed above) is actually in it's own case (proper case in this case) rather than the default upper-case so often found in Oracle.

So our new select statement:

SELECT "Precision"
FROM my_tricky_table

Select a random DB row

MySQL

SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 1

PostgreSQL

SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY RANDOM()
LIMIT 1

SQL Server

SELECT TOP 1 column FROM table
ORDER BY NEWID()

Oracle

SELECT column FROM
( SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY dbms_random.value )
WHERE rownum = 1

Nonvolatile Memory Cards

Two years ago while buying my first Camera I bought a 512MB CF card (Ultra II) for $110 (this was a huge deal, since the prices had just dropped from $200). Six months ago (November 2005) I bought a 1GB SD card (133x) for $100. The SD typically cost more money than the CF cards, so again this is a big breakthrough. Two weeks ago (April 2006) I bought a 2GB SD card (133x OCZ) for $60! What a price curve! The size has doubled each time and the costs are coming down. It's a golden age of digital stuff (PDA's, Pocket PC's, Digital Cameras, MP3 players).

Just be careful where you buy... the big mall-electronics stores are slower to decrease their prices with the manufacturer trends, whereas the smaller (often more daunting to the un-initiated) computer part suppliers stay with the good prices... that means you can pay twice what you should be at retailers.

King Kong

After reading a ton on Wired.com about this, I finally got to see the movie over the weekend. I knew it was a long movie, so I actually started watching it earlier than normal. Did I complete it in one night? Nope.

Only 30 minutes didn't make it into my first viewing, and certainly the majority of the movie had happened (the last 30 minutes are obvious if you know the storyline). I enjoyed the movie overall, but I've gotta say it was too long. It told a story, and it did a very good jobs, but there were parts (the bug scene, the dinosaur scene) that where too long and/or needless. Nice idea, but what's the point (you're thinking).

...sorry I'm doing my best not to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it..

Watch it if you're interested, it certainly has some action... early in the movie you're heart might fail (later you'll just notice how stupid things are). Peter Jackson wove a sad story this time. I think it's better that way.

Opera Tweaks

Right from the horses mouth: Opera6.ini settings explained. This page gives you clues on how to change settings that aren't tweakable through the Opera UI. Some handy entries in this file!

Automatic scaling of Base Font (1em=15px everywhere)

This excellent script allows you to set a page's base font through javascript alone. No CSS hacks, and finally cross-browser compatibility on your site design (fix the px size of the base font for all browsers). Check out Demonstration Page for ASBF.

From Maxthon back to Opera

A while ago... 6 months, a year I'm not sure... the Opera client I was using in one of my environments started to hang basically every minute. This, I found, greatly frustrating, and after exploring my options, I discovered there wasn't much that could be done about it. Some other people on the net had the same issues, but no one had a solution. A new version of Opera might fix (none were available at the time) but we'd have to wait and see.

So off I went to find another browser. Maxthon was what I basically settled on. This IE based browser provided tabbed browsing (a must once you've got hooked on it) and even had some nice features (ad blocking how much I love thee) so I've been fairly happy with the switch. I've upgraded a couple of times over the months (now at version 1.5.2). Lately, however I've been noticing just how much of a resource hog Maxthon is... not just memory (where it actually appeared to be better than Opera) but also processor. Not to mention the resources it uses when it's minimized (too many as far as I'm concerned). The specific issue: with 10 tabs open, even with the window minimized the process would take up 100% of the processor (as close as it could get) and sometimes not release... other times just run on a cycle.

This, I feel, isn't acceptable.

So here I am again, it's plenty of releases later Opera is now up to 8.54 and works smoothly on my computer. The memory usuage is the same or lower than Maxthon (for the exact same sites), the CPU usage is considerably less and it's stable (no freezing/crashing). Best of all some of my favourite features with respect to web forms are back (on a drop down you can type an option in and it'll move to it, rather than every keypress being interpreted as the first letter of what you're looking for / a form's content is locally stored so if you go off somewhere by accident you can always go back and not have lost your entries).

I can also safely say the browser loads fast, loads sites faster, and is much smarter over data display. Take IMP by Horde... when you page through your mailbox the whole screen doesn't blink and reload... just the rows showing your mail update... it makes it feel much more like an application than what we've traditionally called a "website". Brilliant!

Go download and enjoy.

PageRank

This online resource allows you to see the page rank of all the links on a page: PR Overlay. There's also a Firefox extension for those who use them.

Charles

Charles
"Charles is an HTTP proxy / HTTP monitor / Reverse Proxy that enables a developer to view all of the HTTP traffic between their machine and the Internet. This includes requests, responses and the HTTP headers (which contain the cookies and caching information).

"Charles can act as a man-in-the-middle for HTTP/SSL communication, enabling you to debug the content of your HTTPS sessions.

"Charles simulates modem speeds by effectively throttling your bandwidth and introducing latency, so that you can experience an entire website as a modem user might (bandwidth simulator)."

Sounds like an excellent tool for getting your AJAX based system to play nice when you're not absolutely sure what's doing bye... also handy for checking on those sites where you're not quite sure what they're doing. It it an AJAX call or a javascript execution that updates that State/Province list?

Mmm prototyping

Who doesn't like tiny electrical devices that are a bitch to get going, and end up looking terrible but performing something that only the creater founds amazing? On that note, check out Spark Fun a source of tons of tiny little brilliant electronics (some assembly required!). Man I could have done with this during my final design project :|

Sustainable Design for Living

Came across this awesome shopping site today: Branch. You've gotta check out their products... they have some beautiful, amazing and creative things. My picks... well there's a glass Ice Bucket that looks like melted ice (Tabletop->Rocks Ice Bucket), there's a vase that looks like glass cubs cobbled together (Tabletop -> Qbert Vase), there's everything in the Furniture section (bit pricey). Perhaps the coolest (and most economical) is the "in a Can" series (Garden -> * in a Can), which includes Bonsai, Cactus, Clover, Christmas Tree and Praire in a Can... what a nice way to add a little green!

Top 10 CSS Tutorials

Cameron Olthuis has put together a pretty great list of Top 10 CSS Tutorials. Not all are strictly tutorials (some are examples, others are tutorial sites) but you can bet with this list you can pretty much create anything in CSS. Brilliant!

Roll up the rim: the crowds die off

For at least the last week, the Tim Horton's crowds have been subsiding. Yesterday going at 10 (what used to be the worst time) it was only a 10 person line we were in before getting coffee! They've run out of large cups, but unlike some of the other dumb franchise locations, they'll give you a large coffee, but double cup it with a regular roller on the outside. Brilliant! You still get all the coffee you want and you still get the rolling thrill.

I actually stopped counting somewhere in there, but my wins come to 3 coffees, and one doughnut, and all this over approximately 90 cups. Not the best odds or achievement... by their own admission I should have had 10 wins in that time. Don't know how they can claim such odds if people don't actually get them :|

Back to my normal coffeeing habits, which will still include trips to TH now and then... perhaps a doughnut here and there too! :)

Elevator Pitch

I can see this site getting out of hand, but the underlying idea of Your Elevator Pitch is pretty decent... write out your idea in a concise pitch and have it critiqued by others.

Evian

In this highly praised animated spot, a drop of water with a personality of its own climbs out of a glass. To the Queen song "We Will Rock You", the watery sprite enjoys a series of adventures

http://www.epica-awards.org/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/06037.htm

Roll up the rim, don't win, but come back?

Word to Peter Dowling and his Rim rolling ways... if he's the most unlucky person in the world (no wins in 20), what does that make me with my first win at 40 (a coffee), and second at 60ish (a doughnut). Next year I'm buyin' a barbecue, a bag of expensive coffee, a few litres of milk and I'm brewing my own coffee for two months... 80*$1.50 makes my budget for this $120... it'll be a cheap BBQ, but at least I'll be a winner.

Hnefatafl

It sounds like a sneeze, but it's a very old (and fun) game... try out Hnefatafl. You will need two players (no computer player).

TH Update

43 coffees at Tim Hortons, 1 win (a coffee). This is a bad year for me. Worse yet I've noticed the cups plainly state 1:9 odds of winning... in two more cups I'm doing five times worse than that (1:9=5:45). Hrrmm.

WARDK

An interesting article on what someone's looking for in a Web Application Rapid Development Kit: What Do I Really Want from a Web Application Rapid Development Kit. Some excellent points.

AJAX

AJAX continues to grow as a web technology (and as someone who's build an app with it, it's going to change the way we think about working with applications on the web)... now it has a website at AJAX Impact.

*drool*

Dell days of deals are still on, and today they have their 30" LCD monitor on sale.

Mmm 30" of desktop realestate... 2560x1600 pixels arragagagah. Price is high, but then I think it's fairly new. In a year perhaps it'll be more reasonable... as the owner of a Dell monitor, I can definitely get behind their quality, build and performance (at least of the wide/ultrasharp series, ie. the expensive one). I just wonder what a 30" wide-screen panel would look like on a computer :) Would work very nicely with a PVR or DVR as a TV setup (with far better than HD resolution).

Lisa J. Pavenston

You heard me!

... she was integral in the development of the UltraSolve Online Assistant.

PictureCloud

Make a fun little 360 view of something using the PictureCloud website and some creative photography. The results aren't even close to amazing (at least not what I had in mind in my head) but it's still pretty neat to see the 3D spinning around some object. How many beer bottles are going to be rendered I wonder.

The elevator of death

Oh wait, that title sounds a little more worrisome than it should... after all I'm alive to write this blog.

I've been coming to work a little earlier recently, which apparently puts me in a far worse situation with the elevator in waiting times, and travel times. Last Sunday, for example, the 15 minutes it should have taken me in total to travel to my nearby breakfast establishment of choice, was used entirely up waiting for an elevator in my building. It's frustrating as you can never really predict when they'll be bad: on the weekends they are, but earlier in the day people typically aren't using them yet (at least that's what I'd found).

Well anyway, we're talking about today. Wednesday.

So first problem... two total moron's are already in the elevator. Beginners mistake? I think not... the one guy has been in there every time this week... every time he presses the up and down buttons, I get him with him already there and all the buttons off (the elevators don't like people trying to go down when it's trying to go up either)... every day we stop on the 35th floor and look out at the corridor that he should be standing in. Today there was two of them, I think they're probably both from the same floor, although they weren't talking or standing together (quite the opposite... perhaps they're married?)

This is a retarded practice... if everyone does that you half the speed of the elevator making the problem even worse, press the button you want for the direction you want and wait it out like the rest of civilized society. Well anyway... there's stop number 1 (their floor, no one joins us)... we then proceed to have 16 more stops on the way down. Towards the end we stop on almost every floor... which is awesome when you consider it takes far longer to wait for an elevator on -even the 7th floor- then to walk down the stairs.

I should point out the elevator can only take 12 people max (according to it's own claims), and is full after 8 sensibly, and 10 in a stupid squeeze. To not programme the elevator to ignore floors after 12 stops (or even better - measure the weight inside and not stop after a certain limit since more than one person can get on at a floor! Amazing!) just slows the whole process down. We the incredibly full elevator have a really long end of the trip stopping on all these floors to look out at the people in a lovely spacious corridor who cannot cram in, they the tired of waiting people have to wait for an elevator, watch it go by, then press the button and wait again, and it the next elevator has probably gone off to do something else (like start high up and pickup tons more passengers).

Sure elevator programming isn't a cake walk, but there is some logic that they should use when setting these things up. I wonder if there are really smart elevators out there, and if anyone even notices when they ride them.

20 Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-development

Check out the whole article... if you're in a rush the suggested rules are:

  1. Respect your visitors
  2. Bad advertisement is evil
  3. Inform and teach your visitors
  4. Develop your own style. Develop your own ideas
  5. Respect the standards. Think about people
  6. Be clear. Use a clear markup
  7. Hate Internet Explorer if you like, but don’t ignore its users
  8. Care about your content
  9. Don’t be concerned about web-crawlers and SEO optimization (Avoid wrong SEO and bad PR)
  10. Contact, but don’t spam
  11. Write, publish, feel free to ask
  12. Answer your e-mails immediately
  13. Use the advantages of Semantic Web
  14. Make connections
  15. Think in global terms
  16. Never compromise your principles
  17. Stay in touch
  18. Learn to handle the creativity block
  19. Make Web prettier
  20. Be aware of the Power of the Web

A score of losers (TH)

20 cups of not winning at The Tim of the Horton's. I had the luck of the Irish with me today too... my Guinness shirt is getting some attention, although I'm a little uncomfortable that it's from guys.

Dell Canada's 12 Days of Deals.

Only just thought of blogging about this, if you're in Canada, and looking for a deal something watch 12 days of deals on Dell.Ca to see if anything takes your fancy. Typically there's one of everything on sale on one day or another, I picked up my monitor during the promotion (LCD's are on sale today). This is day two, sorry about the delayed posting!

Update (sore rolling thumbs)

For those on the edge of their seat as to whether I've found myself a prize under the rim of a cup... everything is not coming up Millhouse. I'm approaching 20 cups purchased from good ol' Horton's, all yielding the same prize: please pay again.

*sigh*

Lunar Eclipse Calculator

Have a laugh an figure out if you can see the next of several Lunar Eclipses with the Lunar Eclipse Computer. I required the Latitude and Longitude of U.S. and Canadian Cities page to help me figure out where I was for the "locations worldwide" section. :)

Office 2007

If you've got anything above Office 97, you probably won't even consider upgrading. Even Office 97 provides more than enough abilities for the majority of users out there. On the other hand if you're interested on what is coming up in Microsoft's Office products, check out the Office blog. Today it includes some screen shots... they're really shaking up the GUI. While such a change is a huge step and will no doubt confuse some users, I think the new GUI looks more intuitive so in the long run it's a good change.

TH tricks me again

I might have accidentally had a coffee over the weekend... but don't all your prize winners worry, I haven't consumed any of your cups. 2 more cups: 0 more prizes. As someone who's been consistently visiting Tim Horton's all year (not just during this promotion like masses of the visitors) I'm feeling a little... forsaken by the TDL Group Corp.

Roll up the rim, or don't

February 27th spelled the start of Tim Horton's promotion to roll up the rim and win. Naturally being the sucker for coffee that I am, and looking for the thrill of vegas pursuant to said caffeine consumption... I may steer out of my way to procure coffee from the aforementioned establishment.

(I buy more coffee from Tims because of the promotion.)

But during the consumption of no less than 9 cups of Tim Horton's beverages not one winner has been found. In Calgary a cuppa will cost you $1.50 so I've so far sunk $13.50 into Tim Horton's all so some undeserving people in Quebec can bicker. Strictly speaking it's a little less than $13.50 since some were (unsteeped!) tea which present a slight saving over coffee.

Am I happy about this? Of course not. Do I love the increased lines and poorer service I experience at Tim Horton's during this phase? Well who wouldn't.

And so this blogger has made a decision: no more out of the way trips to Tim Hortons. I won't stop drinking coffee, but I'm not gonna trek over to TH without a good reason, and I'll certainly consider tastier more local coffee establishments for my work day caffeine consumption.

You Can Play With Your Food

You Can Play With Your Food by Lore Sjöberg (Wired.com)... a hilarious view at tantalizing new foods out there. I can see the paintable cupcakes coming in handy for subliminal messages for your coworkers/ enemies/ other drivers/ loved ones.

Morons Waiting for Buses

Public transit is a brilliant idea, far less expensive than driving yourself, and much better for the environment, but somehow it just lacks the "classiness" or driving yourself (frankly I loved that I could read and listen to some music while someone else drove me to/from work, but not everyone on the transit was of good character... you just ignore those types).

When I first moved here (got of the banana boat as they say) I was mocked, and quizzed as to whether "people in Britain really line up to get on a bus". "Well Yeah", I said... like this was blindingly obvious. Then I took the bus home. It's not really that there's a chance you won't all fit, more that you really want to get on before everyone else. Any amount of indirect pushing (being pushed by others: wasn't my fault), tripping, hair pulling, groinal injuring and reverse psychology is fair game in the quest to be the first few (the chosen). I'm not even certain why... one time in maybe 50 the last few people would have to wait for the dreaded "second bus" which was 5 minutes later. These days I never leave at the second my time is up.

But that's how to get on the bus, the real topic of this blog is why people waiting for a bus are so retarded, thoughtless, moron or sheep-like. Not me of course, but everyone else. Depending on my route to work I may have to walk by a bus stop or two. If I'm lucky the transit riders have alighted their preferred transit vehicle and I can freely walk down the side walk.

Sidewalk
n.
A paved walkway along the side of a street.

walkway
n.
A passage or path for walking.

Ah Ha! Already, I've lost the bus riders. A sidewalk is a paved pathway for me to walk down! See how it doesn't mention them standing on it? But I'm not fussy, I'm happy for them to use my paved side walk to stand and wait for their bus. What I'm not happy about is the people equally distribute themselves across the width, and a considerable length of the sidewalk, creating a human barrier bus waiters. The transit commission has aided their blocking practices by putting up a sign on one side, and a bench on the other side of walkway, taking the pass-through width down to the absolute minimum it can (probably) legally be... which wouldn't be in the slightest be a problem if no one stood in it. But that's the first place they stand.

So any time I have to muscle through a transit desiring crowd, I have to swing my bag like a morning star, and put some weight behind my shoulder as I break through. I have not a care for these people who think they're the only ones in the world, nor do I look back when I'm sure I've woken some of them up and they realised they're in a 1990's simulation of life and machines are harvesting them for electricity.

The thoughtlessness of some people... but then that's what I blogged about yesterday, isn't it?

If you catch the bus, and moronically stand to block a sidewalk, or someone else comes along and closes the sidewalk, but your moving could open the sidewalk please think about everyone who shock! horror! doesn't need to catch your bus.