hsNW :: (hack space for the NorthWest)

Getting rather excited about the prospect of a "hack space" for the North West of England. Looks like possible events are to be set-up in Liverpool, Manchester and Stockport (at the time of writing).

Some discussion at http://groups.google.co.uk/group/NW-hack-space

Liverpool specific venues being proposed:

[LSC] http://liverpoolsocialcentre.org/
[STATIC] http://www.static-ops.org/complex.htm
[CUC] http://www.novasscarman.org/contemporary-urban-centres/

Might be a useful re-cycling point for all the old-tech I've accumulated along the way - bit more creative re-cyling than down the local tip :-) I can just imagine the old components/PCs/Devkits and other Steptoe-esque items being beautifully combined into the latest 3D printing grid array bio-computer... or maybe not!

Just who the hell was jezar@cix anyway?

BLah blaH bLAh.

meh. 

http://christianfarrow.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/just-who-the-hell-was-jezarcix-anyway/

Shmeep :-)

Google Chrome for Linux please!

Come on Google - get your coding finger out! Can we have a native version of Chrome for Linux please? Codeweavers (using wine from wine HQ) have already proved that they can get the Win-Chrome running on Linux... see CrossOver Chrome - how about a real native Linux version from the google dev team?

I've been using the dev branch of Chrome on my work PC and have become used to its clean interface and speed - both things my latest install of Firefox 3 lacks... Chrome is a pleasure to use, is feature-rich and speedy at page-rendering.

So come on you Google code-monkeys - get your Linuxisation hats on...

emoda

iPhone 2.0 bashing

...or why iPhone 2.0 isn't really 2.0. So I thought I may as well jump on the bandwagon and have a dig at Cupertino's latest.

So, the usual fanfare and quasi-religious fervour reached fever pitch and culminated with Jobs' anti-climactic announcement of "iPhone 2.0".

So what? Big wow. So they fixed a few things that they should have included in the initial release - that does not warrant a major version increment! iPhone 2.0 really should have been 1.1. We got: 3G, GPS, better battery life, flush headphone jack, more storage and lower price. Not really a 2.0 feature set, would you say? Lots of people wanted more.

Let's look at my Top Ten list of what the iPhone still DOESN'T do...

1. No decent camera - still puny 2MP
2. No video capture (what? the youtube generation ignored?)
3. No front facing video camera - no video calling
   
4. No landscape Keyboard - wasting valuable screen real-estate making using prod in portrait only
5. No choice in Networks! Still locked to a handful of operators! How 1990's is that. C'mon get with the program
6. No Bluetooth Audio streaming - wake up! A2DP is here! No Bluetooth File-Transfer!
   
7. (laughable) No "Copy & Paste". What? Even my Psion Series3 from 1991 did that seamlessly across applications!
8. No MMS. Again, something the rest-of-the-world has been crazy about since around-2000 but again, apple have chosen to ignore.
   
9. No way for the iPhone to act as a 3G modem for Laptop. D'oh!
   
10. No expandable storage.

Still better off with an N95 8GB on any network you choose!

Google AdSense - Sense or NonSense?

Received some post from Google the other day - which was a first... turns out I'd added Google Adsense to a few of my websites in 2005, and then promptly forgotten about it/them!

Anyway, Google wrote to me because they "need to verify my identity" before paying me! Yippe I thought! $1,000,000 thank you very much. Well, no. when I logged in, I found a not-too-earth-shattering account balance of $25.42. Wow - for nearly 3 years imprints/clickthru's!

Back to the day job then.... :-(

Japanese Spam Hammer

"My eyes have turned to toast, and my ears are bleeding" - surely one of the all-time greatest lyrics, ever. I've just discovered it on Japanese Spam Hammer's "Bra Hair" - a debut album from 1998 that still sounds fresh today. But more than fresh - it will knock into a cocked hat any "made for TV" X-Factor style "manufactured" artist. This is pure originality. Buy it. Download it. If you can find some mp3's, look out for the very rare "It's snowing in spam hammer land" taken from the minidisc only release of "Xmas in various shapes of Spam"

Pure Genius!!!

Dinosaurs - prehistoric & post-war

Had a trip to two interesting places in Texas today:

1. Dinosaur Valley State Park, near Glen Rose, Texas and
2. Pate Museum, near Forth Worth, Texas.

Both places contained evidence of Dinosaurs.

The first, the Dinosaur Valley State Park, has real dinosaur footprints in the rock of the river-bed. The footprints were made about 111 Million years ago in the mud flats of what was once a sea shore. They've been preserved by a layer of clay and then turned into rock by the following 111 million years!

The second, The Pate Museum of transportation, contains dinosaurs of a different kind - most notably the Fairchild C-119 "Flying Boxcar" and the "Flying Banana" twin rotor helicopter. Both Dinosaurs of the 1950's and 1960's era of aviation.

Some photos in the IONGNSS folder on picassaweb below.


(and before anyone asks, the folder's called IONGNSS because I'm here for the 2006 ION GNSS conference!)

IONGNSS

Sep 24, 2006 - 18 Photos