Status-Q

My first computer, a Sinclair ZX81, cost £69.95. Since then, every computer I’ve owned has cost more – usually substantially more. Until today.

Today I bought a new laptop for £179 inc. VAT, which in real terms is less than my ZX81 of 27 years ago. Progress at last! And this one I didn’t have to plug into a cassette deck and an elderly black-and-white TV!

It’s an Acer Aspire One, and I have to say that, so far, I’m really impressed. It runs OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype very nicely, and it includes a few things like a camera and microphone that work remarkably well – I’ve just had a video-Skype call with my pal Jason while walking around the house.

Of course, it has some limitations – it boots up very much faster than any Windows machine I’ve ever seen but it’s not like a Mac’s almost instantaneous wake-up from sleep. I couldn’t write this post on it but only because it can’t read the RAW-format images from my SLR, and I couldn’t watch movie trailers on the Apple site because you can’t get Quicktime for Linux. But the number of things it can do rather well are remarkable, and I could happily survive with it for a weekend when I didn’t want to carry anything heavier, or use it to catch up on news at the breakfast table.

It may not be a Mac, but it’s certainly not a ZX81!

A very good way to pass an enjoyable few minutes on YouTube is to search for James Randi. Randi, for those who don't know, is a magician, but he's better known as a debunker of the paranormal and pseudoscientific. He's also an amusing speaker... here's a little clip where he explains homeopathy:

And there are lots of other nice examples out there - a TV appearance where he puts a graphologist to the test, for example.

And here he talks about Uri Geller, and the faith healer Peter Popoff:

The J. Randi Educational Foundation has, for several decades now, been offering a prize - now standing at $1M - to anybody who can demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability under proper scientific observation. Here are the details if you want to have a go, and the process is documented in the open on the JREF forums. Even getting past the preliminary test will get you $10,000. So far, none of the hundreds of applicants has got that far.

From RyanAir's FAQ:

Somehow I feel there must be an interesting story behind that.

Another one from Dr Seuss:

""Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.""

The mobile phone revolution really is sweeping across Africa.

Story here.

Martin sent me a link to this quite interesting site - if the world could vote for the US president, whom would you pick?

Now, this is a cute idea, though of course the rest of us won't have to live with the domestic decisions, the tax burden, the healthcare system etc. of whomever gets chosen. And I wish it had been done by somebody inside the country rather than an outsider.

None the less, it's valuable data, so as long as you can say with a clear conscience that you wouldn't mind Americans making suggestions about your next leader, cast your vote!

""Be who you are, and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.""

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as 'Dr Seuss'

An asteroid hit earth yesterday. Actually, it mostly broke up as it entered the atmosphere so there was nothing very Hollywoodish about it, but it was notable because it was a decent size - around 2-5m - but more significantly, it was the first earth-impacting rock to have been tracked before it hit us. It was discovered about a day in advance of the impact.

This story, in comparison, was discovered by me about a day after it happened. But no doubt, with a comparable rate of progress, I'll soon be able to bring you news stories before they actually occur.

One of my first HDR experiments.

I was most honoured to make the acquaintance of Piotr Fuglewicz on my recent trip to Poland. Piotr is a very smart chap, with a long history in IT and particularly in the computational linguistics world. He's also a good dinner companion.

Anyway, today, out of the blue, he sent me a photo:

(click for a larger version)

What's intriguing about this is that I took it, but I had never seen it before. Piotr assembled this panorama from three of my Krakow photos, which I hadn't even taken with the idea they might be stitched together! He used an amazing bit of software called Autopano Pro - you don't even have to give it a hint as to what goes where. Quite superb.

The user interface is complex - the basics are reasonably straightforward but there's then an infinite amount of tweaking you can do - but I can see I'm going to have to find time to play with this. Photoshop CS3 has some good panorama stuff built in, but it looks as if Autopano is to panoramas what Photomatix is to HDR... a dedicated tool which goes just that bit further.