Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.
– Jack Handey
Quote of the day
August 24th, 2008
Joiku to the world
August 23rd, 2008
In the past (here and here) I’ve written about how I really wanted my 3G phone to operate as a mobile wifi basestation. I got excited when I discovered the early versions of JoikuSpot, and played with it, but it was very flaky.
Well, I’ve just JoikuSpot Premium is out, supports full connectivity and doesn’t depend on the web proxy that the ‘lite’ version used. I can now get 3G connectivity to my iTouch and my laptop at the same time. If you have one of the supported Nokia or Samsung phones, it’s well worth the €15.
Rock (and roll)
August 22nd, 2008
If your neighbours share your musical tastes, or are very distant, this might be just what you need:
Now, wouldn’t a little light Vivaldi add the finishing touch to that garden party you were planning? You can pretend that the string quartet are hiding behind the rockery…
Take the long way home
August 21st, 2008
From our long drive to New York last week, a sight you don’t often see in the UK…
Note the bottom right-hand corner of the SatNav: “Turn in 242 miles”.
Oh, and it turned out really to be more of a lane-change.
Convergence
August 19th, 2008
There’s a nice demonstration of a ‘vanishing point’ as you come up the stairs in Apple’s 5th Avenue Store in New York.
Old Harry visits New York
August 19th, 2008
Rose met Henry VIII (or at least, experienced what it might have been like!) in the Met. This is one of his suits of armour.
Monday is now upside down
August 18th, 2008
For those not familiar with the finer points of operation of the British postbox, the little metal label just above the slot is changed by the postman on each visit, to indicate the day of the next collection. This one got inverted by mistake, making it appear as if our local service might be rather prompter than usual!
Postcard from New York
August 18th, 2008
We weren’t the only people enjoying the Delacorte mechanical clock in Central Park last week…
The Apollo
August 17th, 2008
I have very little interest in the Olympics – and strongly object to the hundreds of pounds of my taxes that will be wasted in 2012 – but I do get a regular report of recent events over the dinner table, and a thought occurred to me tonight….
I think there should be a unit of Olympic achievement for countries. We might call it the Apollo. Your Apollo score would be something like the number of medals won divided by the number of your athletes attending and by the population of your country and its GDP. You’d also want to subtract something for the proportion of your athletes who had tested positive on drugs tests in the past…
Rose says it’s more complicated than that, because so many athletes do not train in their own country; they get scholarships to US universities, so the GDP of their country is less relevant. And I think an athlete who gets medals in several different disciplines should score more than one who just gets the 100, 200 & 400m medals in the same thing.
So it’s far from trivial. The definition of the Apollo would need to be refined over time.
Still, it might make an interesting discussion in the pub. If you wanted a realistic measure of a country’s sporting achievement, how would you do it?
Remotely Possible
August 17th, 2008
One of the neatest apps to be released for the new iPhone/iTouch software is Apple’s Remote, which connects to a copy of iTunes running on a machine on your network and allows you to control it from the iPod.
This is great, but I seldom feel the need to control my computer from across the room. It lives in a very small study and, from across the room, I can reach the keyboard! I did, however, have an old Airport Express hanging about, and an idea occurred to me today… I plugged it into the back of my stereo downstairs:
and configured my iTunes upstairs to play through the Airport Express, and suddenly I had wireless control of my entire music collection at my fingertips.
But wait, it gets better… I found the Settings panel on the Remote application and it had grown a new feature: the ability to select the speakers you want to use:
So now, sitting on the sofa, I can browse my music located in another room, and send it to the big speakers in this one.
Very cool. Mmm… Those Airport Expresses on eBay start to look much more attractive…
BigDog
August 15th, 2008
An exceedingly impressive video from Boston Dynamics. Well worth a look.
Dashed clever, these robotics chaps.
Many thanks to Jason Young for the link.
Domenic
August 14th, 2008
Back home, jetlagged but happy. And back to a rediscovered Cambridge insitution… I was delighted to hear recently that Domenic – the hairdresser who nobly strove for nearly twenty years my ‘knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end’ – has come back from retirement and is working again, this time at 45 Newnham Road – about here – which is just around the corner from me. Splendid news. This information will be of very little interest to anybody outside Cambridge, but for those nearby desirous of the services of a gentleman’s hairdresser, he comes highly recommended.
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