Sneaky

A clever way of making roads safer... make them appear more dangerous.

Job Hunting

The weeks have been flying by. My contract is coming to an end soon, thank [insert fictional deity of your choice]. User training on the dodgy CRM system that I'm helping implement starts next week and only slightly behind schedule, so stress levels at work are up.

I guess it's time to start looking again. I've got to be more choosey about which jobs I accept this time around.

That's a job for Monday though.... right now I have to decide how to take advantage of the good weather we're supposed to be having this weekend.

Cool

Scooter Racing arrives in America.

Delays

More delays on Windows XP 64-bit Edition.

Now it's been postponed to the first half of 2005 which can be
interpreted as "end of 2005" if we're lucky.

eBay goodies...

KITT from the Knight Rider series goes under the hammer on friday.

Annual Mobile Robot Challenge

This sounds like an interesting exhibition. I think I'm going to have to find out if there is anything similar held in the UK.

I watched I, Robot last night and quite enjoyed it. It could be the prequel for The Matrix.

Car Emoticons

Toyota have patented designs for a car that can express your emotions.

Expect to see hundreds of unhappy looking cars on the road on Monday mornings in the future...

RIAA

I think RIAA are after the wrong people if one in three CDs sold is a pirate copy.

Surely they should be fighting the people making money out of pirate
copies before taking on the people that download mp3s?

...or is it just that "civilians" are an easier target than organised
crime rings?

I wonder how much music they actually downloaded to have RIAA bust them.

PC Accessories

How have I managed to live without one of these?

Video Clip

Nils' video clips from Saturday converted into one file.

Urban Games

We made the most of the sun yesterday and went to the Sprite Urban Games being held in Clapham Common this weekend.

The main attraction for us was the FMX demo (and the XBox stand but I think that was just me.) The shutter speed on my digital camera is a bit pants and ended up getting loads of pictures of the sky or an empty ramp.

This was a great superman a few split seconds earlier...






















We finished the day with a BBQ and annoying people with a flying disc on the common.

In 15 min we managed to clear the space around us and only had to hit 3 groups of people.
One of our neighbours tried the same trick with a mini football but it eneded up in the pond way before they could get any real results.




My fair skin is not used to the sun anymore and I got a little burnt... not as much as <-- Craig though. He's going to feel it this morning.




Every now and then we got to see a bike fly over the top of the tent in the background but by then my reflexes were way to slow to get a decent picture.

Craig's Photos

Craig had better luck getting photos with his phone.

Nil's Photos

Nils got loads of photos (some of them are pretty good *grin*)

Is there Intelligent life out there?

We could find out in 20 years according to SETI's predictions.

Robo-Librarian

The Spanish are building a Robot Librarian.

Will it be built before books are replaced by e-books though?

Satan Inside

*Chuckle*

God violates Intel trademark

More eBay goodness...

The ball that failed to find the net by Beckham's penalty in the Euro 2004 game against Portugal.

Monday Morning

Monday morning has arrived again. The weeks are flying by.

Had a nice lunch at the Dog on Sunday aftenoon with Craig and Jon. Their food is supprisingly good.... even if you get there sober.

*sigh* I guess I'm going to have to rush off to work now. I can't afford to pay another £50 for parking because I arrived late.

Kang

*Sigh* Kang seems to have learnt some naughty words. He's very impressionable.

St Berners-Lee

A knighthood? He should be made a Saint.

Being dead may be one of the pre-requisits for that though I guess.

You've got to love eBay

Where else would you look if you were a Trekkie looking to move?

Robot Cleaners

Some bad reviews on the current state of Robot Vacuum Cleaners and you may need to get a dog as an additional cleaning accesory.

I think the article actually made me want one even more for some reason though.

Oh Dear...

Revenge by DoS

He's complaining about being wrongfully arrested now... Does this mean that the Met are going to be receiving a few emails from him next?

Cloud theft

Cloud theft is rife in China.

We can't even give them away here...

Alcohol & Firearms don't mix.

As if we didn't know that but just to drive the point home... read this
article.

I didn't know that you're not allowed to carry screwdrivers though.

Linux vs. Windows

Interesting reading.

Something on your mind?

Just Ask Kang.

Lazy Monday Afternoon Entertainment

Mini Ball!

Chess

So, computer's beating humans in chess has been done... now it's time for computers to face other computers.

I wonder why Intel didn't enter any dual processor machines? Could it be so that they have an excuse if they get whipped?

The Spotted Dog

Went to The Crown and The Spotted Dog last night. Unfortunately I faded before the band got on stage. I still haven't learnt to pace myself. I'll have to keep practicing *grin*

Now I'm sitting around thinking up things to do so that I can put off doing some work that I should get done. Hmmm... I think I'll try hook up our new old tv to the pc in our lounge.

Breast feeding

There was a bit of commotion at the National Gallery on Friday because a breastfeeding mother was asked to breast feed her child in a "Mother & Child" room.

Now, I don't have anything aginst women breastfeeding in public or the right for the gallery to ask that it be done in their specially set aside space. What I do have a problem with is the fact that the argument that there are paintings of breastfeeding mothers hanging in the gallery should make it ok to do so.

They have paintings of food hanging in the gallery. Does that make it ok for me to eat inside? (I don't actually remember if you're allowed to take food in or not to tell the truth).

They also have "The Execution of Maximilian", some guy being tortured and another of someone bleeding from a serious neck wound hanging in the gallery.

nVida test rig

I should of used this image for my ATi post

*sigh*

...if only I had a lawn... this would be on the top of my shopping list.

Here we go...

The flaws in Non-IE browsers are begining to surface...

According to ww3schools, IE usage has gone down 1.7% since May. 80% of the browser market is still a sizable chunk.

*Correction to previous post: Opera 7 had 2.8% of the browser market.

F1 Parade

So... the F1 parade in London was on today. The route took the cars down Regents Street which is great because they ran right past my office. The only problem was that I was on training in Godalming.

I slightly reget stopping for a beer on the river with my work mates on the way in now.... and perhaps the last one I had before leaving Godalming.

Nah... It was a nice evening to be sitting outside in the sun...

I tried to make it back in time to see a few of them go by but missed the last one by about 10 min so and didn't even get to hear any go by.

Instead I got some photos of the people heading home. It's not a good sign when you're heading towards where you think the action is and everyone is heading in the oposite direction.

Toilet with a view

Who needs reading material when you have a view like this.

New PC?

I was wondering if it would be worth buying another 64-bit chip rather than a 32-bit chip despite the fact that there isn't a Windows OS that supports it yet.

According to this benchmark, the 64-bit chip does out perform it's 32-bit brother.

...now where's my credit card...

I spent most of the weekend lazing around and enjoying not being at work (well... in between running around in the tech support hat).

This weekend we managed two fresh XP installations, one fried DVD ROM and IDE channel, a RAM upgrade (and downgrade for the machine that we cannibalized it from) and added an old Win 98 machine onto our network (which we're still undecided what to do with but at least it's there).

Things should run smoothly next time people pop around to play a few network games *grin*. I think we've got everything set up properly now.

BT

It sounds like I'm not the only one that's had problems with BT.

(Although there's no need to loose your rag with them like this guy....)

Scary

What is he on?

Anyone got spare GMail accounts that they want to get rid of?

Try GMailswap.

(You may be able to get a painted rock out of the deal)

MSN to compete with Google?

Sooo... Microsoft are trying to compete with Google.... I think they still have a bit of work to do. The searches that I tried had loads of repeated results and it seemed a little slower than Google. To be fair, it is still in testing.

Drool...

*sigh* I think I'm in love.

Don't Listen!

CERT recommends anything but IE. Noooo! Keep the unwashed masses away from Opera.

The main reason that it's secure is the fact that it only has a 0.1% share of the browser market.

Another accidental photo.

(These seem to come out much nicer than the ones I take intentionally *grin*)