Do you remember when computers and software used to come with manuals?
Monthly Archives: May, 2005
A change in the Status-Q
I’ve been updating Statuq-Q to use WordPress 1.5 and making a few changes along the way.. a few more yet to come.
One is that I’m going to start using ‘categories’ on my posts so that people interested in
gadgets & toys or
Apple & Macs or
photos can see them in more concentrated form. (There are links on the right of the page, too). Other categories may follow.
With over 600 posts now, I may take some time to apply these retrospectively. But if I don’t start now, the job will only get harder in future.
SUV Segways
Mmm. The Segway XT looks fun.
See also the comments on my last segway post for another use for Segways.
France votes ‘non’!
Well, even if I weren’t heavily jetlagged, I can’t say I would lose any sleep at all over the likely demise of the EU constitution.
There’s a rather nice Q&A section in the Times:
…the French are very traditional, conservative, very prone to striking and revolution (the revolution is for when their conservatism runs out).
Like father, like son
I like ’em both. Nice photos from both John and Pete Naughton.
Actually, John has provided me with a good reason to start using categories in WordPress. You can view the recent postings in his Photography category for a visually-pleasing little browse. I haven’t felt the need to categorise my blog posts until now, but I might follow his example. It’s also time to upgrade my copy of WordPress…
My first time
Yesterday I rode on a Segway for the first time. I had high expectations and it lived up to all of them. A beautiful bit of engineering.
The main reason I don’t have one (despite it being an expensive toy at present) is that I would feel guilty about not exercising. It’s faster than walking and more convenient than but not as fast as cycling, but since it wouldn’t give me any exercise it’s not a compelling replacement for either of those. I couldn’t really justify it simply on the basis of being more fun.
For me to buy one I’d need to find a convincing reason to use it instead of a car. I don’t have that yet. But I’ll keep looking!
How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft
How Linux Could Overthrow Microsoft – a well-written article in MIT’s Technology Review.
Seen on a bumper sticker yesterday
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons
for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup
Two more cute Tiger features
1. Safari can now save ‘Web Archive’ files. A single file that captures a page with all its images, links etc intact. Useful for anything that you suspect may become premium content in a little while! IE on Windows has had this for a while, of course, but on the Mac, as you save it on disk, it gets indexed by Spotlight…
2. The Mail app can now resize images. This is a great timesaver for me; I’m always creating small versions of my pictures using PhotoShop or ImageWell before dropping them on a mail message. Now, if your message has images in, a menu appears at the bottom of the window allowing you to select the size and telling you how big the resulting message will be. Very handy.
Floored by lottery fraud?
Extract from a nice NYT story by Jennifer Lee:
Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.
But from state after state they kept coming in, the one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.
It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.
Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.
The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each, depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19 million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a $25 million reserve for odd situations.)
Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the wrong sixth number – 40, not 42 – and would have been first-place winners if they did.
Great inventions
In the early 80s, a new device suddenly became an indispensable part of office life and revolutionised corporate communications. And no, I don’t mean the PC.
A wonderful article on the history of the Post-It Note.
Many thanks to David Orange for the link
Feeds
RSS feed© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser
Recent Comments