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September 30, 2005
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/tutorials/quick/rising_tide/
September 29, 2005
Gizmo
We work with a system here in work that students use on a regular basis. Somehow my telephone number gets passed on to people in the libraries and the like as someone who might help with technical problems with this system.
Student gets passed to me via one of these people..conversation goes like this, I swear I am not making this up.
Shy Student: hello..mmm..sorry the gizmo won't let me save from the online thing.
Me: Pardon
Shy Student:the gizmo won't let me save stuff, a security message keeps coming up.
Me: I'm sorry I don't understand what a gizmo is, what is it?
Shy Student: You know a gizmo, it goes in the back of your computer to save stuff so you don't have to carry loads of floppy discs round. It keeps giving a security error message when I plug it in.
Me: Oh a USB jump drive? I'm sorry but I don't think this has anything to do with our system, you should really ask one of the technicians in the lab if there are security settings preventing you from using jump drives.
Shy Student: Oh OK then, thanks.
I suppose this isn't the fault of the student, who, when I was checking her access credentials had a date of birth in 1987, 1987 I can't believe it. I'm getting old so quickly.
It's one of my biggest annoyances, people not taking the time to understand a problem. Someone who hears a keyword and automatically passes the monkey to someone else. Rather like those email enquiry companies that have ruined online customer support. Spot a keyword in your email and automatically fire off a prepared response.
http://www.ulflyingmag.com/oct.web/flite.html
http://makezine.com/blog/ is just the greatest thing. It's so full of great links that I just marvel at. I will be unlikely to build anything I see here, but it's worth visiting the site just for the WOW factor.
http://www.ulflyingmag.com/oct.web/flite.html
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue13/brinkmann.htm
September 28, 2005
Ideas Ideas
Reading the papers at the weekend I saw this:
http://www.numberonepig.co.uk/
A farmer cuts out the middle (or back or streaky) men and flogs you a pig for 279 quid. You get a number and can watch it be reared and then you get it delivered to your door butchered and ready to eat. Great craic was had asking Rebecca if we could sponsor a pig, the idea of sponsoring a pig appeals to a veggie mwahhahah!!!
So this started a train of thought about alternative methods of buying things we buy all the time. Rebecca and her workmates phoned a collection of oil companies to get the best price for 500 litres of oil, the best price was about 180 quid in Belfast at the moment. Four of her workmates needed 500 litres aswell, I asked if they had asked the companies for the best price for buying all their oild from the same company, they hadn't.
So my mind starts ticking over, website, enter post code, agree to buy 500 litres in the next two weeks, others needing oil add their totals. Oil companies come along and bid for the combined custom. Customer gets a good price and the website gets a percentage cut of the sale.
If you get 10 people in a few square miles all geting a delivery the same day, I bet you would get a good price.
So there's the first of my brilliant ideas free to you faithful readers, I'll not let you know all the obvious problems I also thought about relating to the system.
September 23, 2005
/me shamelessly ripping off links from Make Magazine
The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart.
http://cs-people.bu.edu/aaron/turret/turret.htm
September 18, 2005
Dubai
Just returned from a fantastic two weeks staying with family in Dubai. Our hosts could not have been more hospitable, two weeks is a long time to have family hanging around and I'm sure it was stressful at times.
I had a lot of pre conceived ideas about Dubai and wasn't sure if it was my kind of place, but I must admit I was seduced. It's such a busy,frantic,vibrant city. The lifestyle ex pats enjoy out there is slightly tainted by the exploitation of Indian,Sri Lankan and Filipino workers, a live in maid who will cook, clean and be a general skivvy costs no more than 150 quid a month. The huge construction industry is fuelled by workers with no unions who live in labour camps, but I am told that this is improving and conditions are not as bad as many make out.
This was the only negative I could find about the place, big positives for me were tax free living and filling a petrol tank of an X5 for 16 quid. Maybe because of cheap fuel and labour costs, the cost of living is a fraction of what it is here. To give a brief idea, a scan of a receipt shows a tray of 24 cans of pepsi at just over 2 quid.
The guy next door to where we were staying was a senior software engineer in a big company in Dubai Internet City. His tax free salary got him a hell of a lot more than you could hope in a similar position here, things like a live in maid, two big jeeps, kids at public school and business class travel backwards and forwards to his home in South Africa. It was an eye opener.
Three car loads of us went in to the desert near the UAE/Oman border for a spot of what they call dune bashing. I have never seen cars pushed to their limits before and had no idea they could be pushed so hard. I still have whiplash.
I can't say I was entirely comfortable when the engine over heated, and the car thermometer in my brother in law's jeep read 48 degrees, especially when the eejits are navigating by GPS and the nearest road is 6 kms away and there is no mobile reception.
Anyway here are a few photos, the first one is me partaking in the perfectly legal pursuit of smoking mint shisha. A very relaxing pastime. I'm sure the Arabs were in stitches at the state of me, but I looked like Don Corleone in my head.
