Grim Macintosh Market Share Forebodes Crises

More doom and gloom for Apple - Opinion Column by John Dvorak (PC Magazine): Grim Macintosh Market Share Forebodes Crises here's a LOL quote: "But at some point (which may have been reached already), declining market share creates a relative lack of interest, and eventually, discontinuance. The Amiga fell prey to this." The Amiga/Atari/Acorn situation was completely different in my opinion - they were all multimedia computers for not a lot of money - suddenly PCs got better (capable of multimedia), and affordable, the Apple situation is unique - Apple survived the period where Amiga/Atari/Acorn died...

Commodore gets bought - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Commodore gets bought (probably again) - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Robots take over World Expo 2005 - Robots are the best!

Robots take over World Expo 2005 - Engadget - www.engadget.com "The 2005 World Expo, to take place in Aichi, Japan March 25 to September 25 next year, will have a handful of robots throughout, ones that clean floors at night, guide visitors with spoken English, Japanese, and Korean, and play games with kids. If you’re in the area come June 9 to 19, the prototype robot exhibition will feature a total of 63 different bots that snow-plow or even set the table."

Gizmodo : Display-Less iMac?

Gizmodo : Display-Less iMac? something i reckon mac have been needing for a long time - a low-end super cheap imac without a screen. US price is expected to be around $499.

Interesting stuff and best/worst of 2004

Interesting stuff news roundup: Tom's Hardware Guide: Stress Test Tom stress tests a high end Intel system and a high end AMD system for 5 days. GameShout wonder whether Firefox is really more secure? I don't think they actually come to any conclusion though - and point out that IE has more bugs that they know about. Opera release a talking web browser, Apple gonna make a droppable ipod, something matt might be interested in boffins decode chromosome 16, ibm/apple's next chip to gets high end features, knoppix make live cd slimmer, a funny story here microsoft attempt to shutdown macslash. (in other bad guy stories: apple are suing various people: the people who leaked Tiger, and the people who leaked info about new mini flash ipods?)

2004 favourites/worsts: Cnet, kuro5hin's asshole of the year awards.

My 2004 Favourites:
- Really cheap DVD players - eg £25 multi-region at richersounds.com - $10 in the US!!
- Really good digital cameras - they are getter smaller in size, better with bigger screens, faster with quicker response, and cheaper. (Next year should be even better!)
- On-line shops are really cheap. (Amazon.co.uk are excellent - I've ordered loads of stuff and it's all been very cheap, sometimes way cheaper than anywhere else on the net, and always delivered in perfect condition)
- RSS / Bloglines is REALLY really good - like proper awesome! (you can read RSS on your ipod)

Bad stuff:
- Real shops are still WAY more expensive than on-line shops, and where they "say" they will price match the internet - they won't actually when you go in there.
- Firefox doesn't have a "blog this" button that you get with the google toolbar.
- Apple still way expensive
- Microsoft very dull this year. (XP still bad, IE still the same)
- Still waiting for Nano-itx from VIA, and still waiting for silent 1ghz mini-itx boards from VIA, and still waiting for 1.4ghz or more VIA cpus/boards (1.2ghz was out in around May!).
- Keyboards / Mice etc are still wired - why don't they just make them all wireless?

Rockstar give away GTA2 for free

Rockstar give away GTA2 for free

Web site compression / optimisation

Bandwidth right, serious bandwidth, like 16gb a month, costs money.

Opera the web browser says it's the quickest thing on the planet (it seems more buggy than firefox!), but it has a neat feature that tells you how much KB each webpage you go to is, for example www.dell.co.uk is 80kb. Anyway things you can do:

1. use html compression - link (using 'mod gzip' somehow)*
2. check your pages - here to see how much your webpages could be compressed, ie 62kb, could be compressed to 14kb.
3. there's a program called acdc that compresses images. adobe photoshop (imageready) is very good as well.

* mat - do you know how i install this on a webserver - you can download it for windows/apache etc but i don't know how to install it to get it working...

Gizmodo : Korea's HUBO

Gizmodo : Korea's HUBO Admit it, robots are very cool.

Man builds giant robot in backyard - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Man builds giant robot in backyard - Engadget - www.engadget.com

holy cow batman!

check out the size of the sony psp - it's tiny compared the atari lynx. Sony Playstation Portable review.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Merseyside | Scientists 'switch off' arthritis

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Merseyside | Scientists 'switch off' arthritis

WebSense Blog - Marketing, Advertising, Media and Business -- Reshaped.

WebSense Blog - Marketing, Advertising, Media and Business -- Reshaped. This looks like an interesting website.

Main Menu -> Do you enjoy your work?

Why don't you join my mates forum and answer the following question: Do you enjoy your work?

Zoolander (2001)

Zoolander (2001) get's 6/10! I'd rate this at 8/10 - it's just brilliant! (lots of laugh out loud moments) How would you rate it?

MyMemory SD/MMC MP3 Player In Detail

£18 for an MP3 player that takes SD cards and has a screen pretty impressive MyMemory SD/MMC MP3 Player In Detail (512mb sd cards are about £23 at ebuyer)

Cannon Fodder game download

Cannon Fodder game download for pc. apparently freeware

Recently watched films: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) (pretty fresh new comedy - good) and The Incredibles - (very good, should have been longer though)

Scientist claims he's developed robot 'genes'

Scientist claims he's developed robot 'genes' - Engadget - www.engadget.com "Professor Kim Jong-Hwan says his robot has 14 artificial chromosomes that can be passed on to offspring, creating new robots with unique personalities."

In response to Google's desktop search tool: "Microsoft has entered the desktop search fray, releasing a test version of its tool to find documents, e-mails and other files on a PC hard drive." hmmm... did Microsoft forget that there's already a (albeit crappy) search built into Windows? bbc news link, microsoft search tool, google desktop search tool.

ps - have you seen this? apparently the world's smallest 256mb mp3 player - i saw it in gadgetshop t'other day and it were chuffin small!

i had this idea a while ago. well done for making it happen Lexar :) - i trust the cheque is in the post? ;)

Last year...

Last Year... At the end of the year 2003, you could get a proper brand 2mp, 3x optical zoom digital camera for £99 (the Fuji A405) - at the end of the year 2004, you can get a few 4mp digital cameras with 3x optical zoom for £99 or less - even a proper brand - the Fuji A340 £99 (fuji refurb store). Other 4mp, 3x optical zoom digital cameras for £99 or less: BenQ DC C40 (£99 - Jacobs), Lumicron LDC4013 at Toys R Us (£79), Vivitar Vivicam 3826 (£82 - Microdirect.co.uk, and 'the computer shop'). However the majority of digital cameras for £99 are 3mp, with 3x optical zoom. (Canon a400, Olympus c310, Pentax S30, Kodak CX7330, Fuji A330 etc)

end of last year (2003): fuji 2mp,3x opt: £99, olympus 3mp: £149
end of this year (2004): fuji 4mp,3x opt: £99, olympus 4mp: £149 fuji/samsung 6mp,3x opt: £199

Next year? (if it's anything like this year) Budget 5mp, maybe 6mp, 3x optical zoom digital cameras will be around £99*, especially nearer the end of the year, and the majority of proper brand 4mp, 3x optical zoom digital cameras will be around £99 making them the default choice for most people. *The cheapest (new) 5mp/3x opt digital camera currently appears to be the: Yakumo MegaImage 57x at £118 / Premier DC5331 at £129 and the cheapest 6mp/3x opt digital camera currently appears to be the: Yakumo MegaImage 67x at £131 - so it shouldn't be too long now... (for digital camera news and reviews visit www.digicamreview.co.uk)

info ports at every bus shelter

imagine if every bus shelter had a place where you could plug in a serial lead and be connected directly to a bbs. Yeah well that's never gunna happen, get over it.
However mobile phone owners can connect to something almost as simple over infra red. see. One day the uk might just feel like a modern city: '95 stock has the ability to be driven automatically: however, Automatic Train Operation on the Northern Line isn't ready yet (actually, it won't begin to be installed until the re-signalling which is expected to happen in about 2005) and the trains are driven manually. from here

teletext

You can get irish teletext on the internet, but teletext uk haven't figured out what the internet is really for eg: where?
from teletext's FAQ: we can't figure out how to make money from the internet, so we're concentrating on selling advertising on the existing media.
Teletext has taken this decision in order to continue to invest in its core activities whilst withdrawing from activities that show little potential for commercial success.

mad sheep sharp shooters

lost sheep shot
'The animal took up residence on the Commonhead roundabout near the Great Western Hospital at 9am, before being shot in a nearby field.'
So if they managed to get the sheep to a nearby field, erm, how was it a danger?

Dangerous chocolates banned
Sorry but any historically religious sponsorship of all schools must be stopped immediately.. (I wonder if you're allowed to wear shirts with football team's logos on at these schools)

"Come and see Santa in his Enchanted Castle." Since when did Santa have an enchanted castle? Perhaps he's bought a new house, and doesn't have to live in his Grotto anymore. Perhaps he's been manufacturing Nike trainers during the quiet months, with Santa's 'little helpers' - are they children, does that mean he's involved in child labour? are they elves or little chinese children? is Santa involved in running China's Nike sweat shops? It makes you wonder...

Kodak Easyshare CX7330 3mp 3x optical zoom as new boxed

FS: Kodak Easyshare CX7330 3mp 3x optical zoom as new boxed (viewable after 9.45pm tonight).

ibm sells pc business to lenovo (there's now titles in this blog, but they don't disply on the actual webpage yet)

Link1. "tis official: the news just broke a few minutes ago that IBM is indeed selling their PC business to Chinese computer maker Lenovo. IBM settled for $650 million in cash and $600 million in Lenovo stock, a deal with gives IBM ownership of 18.9% of Lenovo. Lenovo gets all the associated “Think” trademarks, like for the ThinkPad and the ThinkCenter, and will hire on 10,000 or so of the employees in IBM’s PC division. We’re curious to see what Lenovo will end up doing with the ThinkPad, but we’re even more curious to see what IBM decides to do next."

Link2. "IBM, the pioneer of the personal computer business, has sold its PC hardware division to China's number one computer maker Lenovo. After days of rumours, the announcement heralds a $1.75bn (£900m) deal which will make the combined operation the third biggest PC vendor in the world. Lenovo, formerly known as Legend, has been pushing hard to spread its brand on the international stage. IBM, meanwhile, will be free to focus on its other more lucrative businesses."

eh up look what i found

matt's amazon wish list. (will the link work?) oh and here's mine. i couldn't find anybody elses. do you have one?

92million people have downloaded adware, and 41million people have downloaded spybot, and that's just from download.com! spyware/adware must be a common and flipping annoying problem - and the 92/41 million people who download these programs are the one's who know what to do with spyware / adware - think about the millions out there who don't know what to do - they end up with buggy crappy computers that have millions of pop-ups, search bars appearing in internet explorer, software being installed without their consent, and pcs that crash a lot. some of this spyware software will stop you from visiting ad-aware's website (www.lavasoft.de) and come up with an error page, and other's will change your google search results so you still can't find ad-aware's website and end up getting results that show you FAKE spyware removal software.

flipping (annoying) nightmare if you ask me! (even for me who knows what to do about it) For someone who doesn't know that they're doing it could be complete hell and could leave them with a completely innoperable computer - and this is just spyware/adware - this doesn't even touch on the hell that could be a spyware/adware infected pc that also has numerous nasty viruses / backdoor stuff (like email spam machine / hidden prawn sharing) unpatched windows vulnerabilities etc!

just goes to show how microsoft, even with windows XP sp1 weren't ready for the internet (it's only with windows xp sp2 that they have included built in firewall / virus protection). (remember they used to say windows 95 wasn't ready for the internet, or rather it wasn't till after windows 95 that they actually acknowleged that the 'internet' could be vaguely interesting)

i don't know what's going on here, but maybe that's because i don't have sound. weird flash website anyways.

Get a free case, charger and batteries (worth £25) with the £99 Olympus C-310 - a neat 3 megapixel, 3x optical zoom digital camera.

the sega mega drive 6 in 1 games thingy that firebox have for £25 is currently £9.99 at argos!! bargain, especially if you wanna have a quick go of Sonic the hedgehog, or the classic Golden Axe.

Canon Ixus i bronze: "review by:
PHILIP HACKETT" did you buy one of these phil?

BBC NEWS | Business | Apple iTunes 'overcharging in UK' "The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has referred Apple's iTunes service to the European Commission on grounds that it overcharges UK customers."

weird stuff: IBM getting out of the PC business? - Engadget - www.engadget.com

BBC NEWS | Technology | Freeze on anti-spam campaign "Freeze on anti-spam campaign This holding page has replaced the original site A campaign by Lycos Europe to target spam-related websites appears to have been put on hold. Earlier this week the company released a screensaver that bombarded the sites with data to try to bump up the running costs of the websites. But the site hosting the screensaver now displays a pink graphic and the words "Stay tuned". No one at Lycos was available for comment on latest developments in its controversial anti-spam campaign."

fs: Sony Cybershot DSC U40 2mp tiny Digital Camera boxed (starts 7.30pm tonight)

Amazon.co.uk: DVD: Monty Python: The Movies (5 Disc Box Set) [1971] crikey - only £13.97 fantastic or wot?

"Follow up to phil's earlier post. A plan to bump up the bandwidth bills of spammers seems to be getting out of control. Earlier this week Lycos Europe released a screensaver that bombards spam websites with data to try to increase the cost of running such sites. But analysis shows that, in some cases, spam websites are being completely overwhelmed by the traffic being directed their way. The Lycos plan has also come under fire for encouraging vigilantism." link. (and what has that picture got to do with anything?)

NEC 16x dual layer dvd writer £44 inc vat. can you get 16x dvd disks yet? cos ebuyer don't seem to sell them. anyway - this is my crimbo present to myself from me and heather and santa. (and here's the media)

Easter on the Net - When is Easter? wondering when easter is this year? or next? this site chuffin well tells you. next year, if your holidays get "reset" in april, you may want to take into account the fact that easter is in march in 2005. ps - you may want to take your sunglasses with you when you go to the site.

The C-One is a reconfigurable "Commodore-64 native" computer, that takes simms for video ram, and compact flash for spare ram:
The price of the C-One board is 269,- EUR.
..there are no profits on the C-One project. All losses (presumably 40,000 EUR)..
"Computer Memory is a standard SD-Ram module of up to 1GB size, multimedia memory of up to 128MB is a standard SIMM module. Minimum is 4MB of multimedia memory and 16M main memory."
"The main processor of the C1 is a 65c816 processor running at approximately 20 MHz. The 65c816 is a 6502 compatible processor with a 24 bit address range and extra instructions that access the full memory range are added to the 6502 core. The C-One has a processor slot for any other 8-bit CPU such as a real 6502, Z80, 6809 or even the Z8S180."
ok, so just click the link.
Sounds slightly expensive for a C-64 but.. I guess when they start selling millions as mp3 players, picture viewers, game consoles, web browsers (use updated version of linux), they might be able to reduce the price a bit.

I4U News - Atari Flashback on Sale "The Atari Flashback console features 20 Atari Games from the 80s including Breakout, Centipede and Asteriods. The Console features two Atari 7800 inspired controllers."

This is an MP3 player. (price - approx 17 pounds)

These are 1gb CF cards. (price - approx 57 pounds)

So there are rumors that apple might do a non-hard drive based mp3 player. Well unless they sell it for under 100 pounds, it looks likely that CF or whatever will be cheaper, and way more expandable.

if you still don't have a dvd-writer (which i don't), maplins are selling a philips 4x dvd writer for £29.99. chuffin cheap that is. maplin.co.uk can't see it on there website, but have seen it in their christmas catalogue.

Fuji Fujifilm FinePix A607 £82 buy now. the people at dixons/pc world etc reduced the price to £99.

Right there I was looking at this 2.5 billion pixel image, and I never expected to see matt in there! walking along, with his bag (10k jpeg). see if you can find him in the image! here's some more pics of people: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. (source news story)

Slashdot | Failed Win XP Upgrade Wipes Out UK Government Agency "The BBC and the Register report that the UK Government's Department for Work and Pensions attempted to upgrade seven PCs from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, and ended up with BSODs on over 60,000 machines. I wonder if the National Health Service is regretting awarding Microsoft a £500 million contract now."

hmm. the nhs is a completely seperate body to the UK Government. but how is it possible for an upgrade of 7 pcs to cause such an effect?

Pendle Hill is one of the Seven Wonders of the North West "Seven Wonders of the North West
Here in the North West, you don’t have travel far to reach the countryside and see areas of outstanding natural beauty. But which is your jewel in the North West crown?" Why don't you go and vote!

Overclockers UK Philips more bargain mp3 players, 1.5gb £70, 15gb £116.

Crikey, for £18, you can get a 7 in 1 memory card reader with built in mp3 player! bargain, simply use your current memory card to store all your mp3s ebuyer

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Devon | Students put university on eBay "Students at Exeter University have put the institution up for sale on internet auction site eBay as part of their protest against proposed cuts. The university wants to end degrees in music, chemistry and Italian, in a bid to save £1.5m. On Wednesday night the highest mock bid was £31,437 and the page had received more than 4,000 hits. The university has insisted the students will be able to finish their degrees in the affected departments. Despite this hundreds of students are planning to join a protest march against the cuts on Thursday."

Apple the cult: They have a leader (Steve Jobs), they fit the dictionary definitions for 'religion' and 'cult', they have fervent followers trying to "convert" the "heathen" (pc users), as though they would be doing the world a great favour by making pc users "see the light"... when in fact what they are really doing is making Steve Jobs more money, like the corrupt american tv evangelists... Marketing Magazine | The cult of Apple: "Apple is, in fact, possibly the prime example of a 'cult brand,' a phrase coined by U.S. ad man and author Douglas Atkin in his recently published The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers (Portfolio, $36). Atkin notes this cult status-that some consumers grant Apple and others like eBay, Harley-Davidson and Starbucks-is not dissimilar to the emotional investments people make in mainstream and fringe religions."

www.bloglines.com
Fan-chubbly-tastic! you go there, you sign up, you add your favourite websites that post news, eg nelsoncolne as an example, and chuffy-nora it lists them all in the left, you click them, and you get a really quick page pop up with the lastest news, for example, this site nelsoncolne, now has an rss feed: http://nelsoncolne.blogspot.com/atom.xml, (after i've republished it) as does www.digicamreview.co.uk which is here: http://www.digicamreview.co.uk/atom.xml it really is easy, and where you see a site that says: 'rss' or 'xml' it means you can add that site to bloglines.

does blogger seem really slow to you sometimes?

also, can you get to www.digicamreview.co.uk ? it works at work, but at home on blueyonder it does not. may just take a while for the dns records to update around the globe. http://digicamreview.blogspot.com is the definitely working address no matter where you are.

are you using firefox?

join the mac cult in london. consumerism at it's most profitable (for apple).

wonder what this is "sky tv on your computer for free", and "TV CARD - NO! NO! Don't need one thanks!" looks like you need windows media player to play the stuff - so surely if you put some effect in, you could find all these tv channels yourself? or are they providing something more? here's another listing with more info, saying that sky tv is not free, and providing 3 links to samples, none of them currently working...

Remember recently that telewest upgraded all their services for free, ie 512k went to 750k, well, they're gonna upgrade all the services again, as shown below in the 3rd bit... apparently this will happen in december. I wonder whether they'll upgrade the 'upload' speeds? either way, free upgrades are sweet!

was 512k - now 750k - becomes 1mb
was 1mb - now 1.5mb - becomes 2mb
was 2mb - now 3mb - becomes 4mb

I review the ultra sexy Olympus Mju Mini Digital. Plus I've got new webhosting - so the site should be much much quicker - let me know what you think about the review, do you have any ideas on how I could improve them, also, let me know if you find the webserver much quicker than the old reviews.

minolta dimage x31, 3mp, 3x optical zoom. £95. anyone wanna buy it off me.

channel4.com - E4 - Peep Show peep show series 2 starts friday coming up! if anyone wants to volunteer to tape it for me, that would be way cool.

AWEXOME CROSS 98!!

Hippo Girl - Joel Veitch rathergood.com music by Joel and Alex Veitch and Mike Baker just in case you haven't seen it yet.

powercut in liverpool

Firefox browser v1.0 takes on Microsoft | Download Firefox here.

Random Thoughts of Josh > Josh's Health Tips >
1. Quit smoking (300 people die a day due to smoking, 2 due to passive smoking).
2. Moisturise more - specifically the face area.
3. (Specifically for Liverpool) Cut down on the amount you use tanning machines / fake tan. Use tanning machines in winter if you don't use them. (the sun is a good source of vitamin D, and happiness)

dvd player and 5.1 surround sound speakers £49

i want a playstation 2 (so i can play gran turismo 3 and maybe grand theft auto).

Simpsons Mug Warmer if anyone wants to get me this for Christmas that would be well cool! (in fact I think I'll put it on my list for work)

robot cats.

Apple ratings by Apple. All of them get a 5star rating obviously, and customers can't rate them. riiight. http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/apple-rating-wtf-is-this-024962.php

http://www.yogakitty.com/yogavideos.html

"In the last four years, firefighters have spent $12m in efforts to put out the flames at Liuhuanggou colliery, near Urumqi in Xinjiang province." 130year chinese fire put out.

Good to see the domain easyrabbi.com is still available.

FS: Pentax Optio 33LF Digital Camera [3MP 3xOptical]

Cheapest CD's and DVD's..
I had expected people like play.com, 101cd.com, (cd)jungle, cdwow.com to be cheaper than amazon. But when I had a check, (tried to see how much it would cost for 3 'current cd's' - maroon 5, f ferdinand, and 2 slightly older ones.. plus the DVD of little britain series 1 dvd) it turns out amazon were cheaper overall (about 3 quid cheaper than next cheapest). Anyway, it doesn't take too long to compare prices. Observations: older cds are cheaper on amazon, where they go up in price if they're not currently mainstream. play cost 9 quid a cd, while 101cd cost about 8.49 for one. Jungle loses on the not mainstream cd's being well expensive, and no dvd? but are 8quid for one.
Also Mexico wasn't significantly cheaper for cd's. Possibly 7-7.50 for mainstream stuff.
summary:
£52.90 amazon.co.uk
£55.94 cdwow.com (all cd's 8.99, littbrit 10.99)
£44.45 cdjungle.com (no little britain)
£55.90 101cd.com
£58.94 play.com

So does anyone know any alternative suppliers?

train crashes in liverpool man is hospitalised

"We found no matches for "mash and peas" . Below are results for "mass peace" - amazon search.

Apple iPod Photo 40gb and 60gb

John Peel is dead
baby pandas are really cute.

Slashdot | Mac OS X Panther On A 25MHz Centris 650
Transmeta Mini-ITX Board Reviewed

AMD beats Intel to fastest chip

"PC manufacturers looking for more performance will find they have a real advantage using the AMD chip .... how important it is these days to have the fastest processor or the fastest computer on some set of benchmark measurements? Years ago it really mattered"

Amazon.co.uk: DVD: Peep Show will be out nov 15th on deeveedee. in case you didn't see it ont telly - it were really really funny.

Apple some new ibooks. from $999

DigiCamReview.co.uk: HP Photosmart R707 Review On-Line I review another digital camera - check it owt :)

Where is mat? Is he in dublin, london, or mexico? We're in london baby.

HEXUS.net Forums - Free Wilkinson Razor: "Free Wilkinson Razor - There will be girls handing out the new Wilinsons razors on Sat 16th and 23rd of October in most Boots stores.
The ladies will be dressed in Blue 'Wilkinsons Intuition' T -shirts. Stocks are limited" "Liverpool Street station is on friday 15th and the 22nd instead!"

see inside too
"Boost with glucose + gaurana, stimulation for body and mind", ingredients include glucose solids, glucose syrup, sugar, guarana, caffiene, amongst other usual things. 60.5g bar contains 1300kj / 310kcal, 3.4g of protien, 35.3g of carbohydrate, and 17.2g of fat.

Dual CPU Mini-ITX board shown at FPF dual VIA C3 boards are looking like more of a reality (quad cpu stuff too). Plus, Matt: is the Darryl Still that now works for NVidia, the same Darryl Still that used to work for Atari? (Maybe not, unless it's a bit out of date) ah crikey IT IS HIM! - he looks a bit different though!) ...ah it's a sad story...

has nobody done a remix of prodigy's spacehopper mp3 (1.25mb, right click, save target as) - surely it's got potential?

3rd worst job in UK: IT Manager.

ThinkGeek :: Yes Timekeeper very cool watch.

Shaun of the Dead. Romantic comedy with zombies. Well worth watching, I thought it was really good, and really funny. More ratings, DVD from amazon.co.uk.

VIA goes 64-bit. I review a 3mp, 3x optical zoom digital camera that costs £86.99 from boots. read about it here.

Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate Sample Request Free tea or coffee.

Gizmodo : Mac OSXbox "someone has figured out how to install Mac OSX onto an Xbox and been kind enough to post instructions." does that mean you can run mac os x on a pc?

have you seen the new cadbury's moro bars? they are really boost bars that have been renamed. in New Zealand cadbury's moro bars are just like Mars bars, but made by cadburys.

aye. it's true.

Konica Minolta Dimage Z3 Digital Camera (not Z1, Z2) for sale. See link after 9.30pm tonight.

ic Liverpool - Caine's gangster 'is best UK film': "GANGSTER film Get Carter has been declared the greatest British movie of all time."

Vauxhall hits Toyota. In Nelson

You can't park your bus on a bridge

You can't park your bus in my house

You can park it in the pool

Don't park upsidedown like this man did

the boobs have gone from next to a church, but it seems like they're staying in the city (centre) for the meantime

Microsoft blames spammers for Hotmail charges - vnunet.com: "In a move which Microsoft claims will help fight spammers, MSN Hotmail users are facing charges if they want to access the email service via the Outlook/Outlook Express email client." apparently "Existing Hotmail users who have been accessing the service via Outlook will be able to carry on doing so until April, when this feature will be switched to paying customers only." oh and I wish Jack Feng would stop emailing me about winding machines - I'm quite capable of winding myself thank you very much.

10 most hated brands in a recent UK poll: 1. Pot Noodle (18.3%), 2. QVC, 3. Sunny D, 4. McDonalds, 5. Man Utd, 6. Sainsburys Novon Washing powder (!?), 7. Lidl Supermarkets, 8. Tiny computer company (owned by Time), 9. Snack-a-Jacks, 10. The Sun.

DigiCamReview.co.uk: Recommended Budget Digital Cameras those £50 2mp, 3x optical zoom digital cameras are back at amazon.co.uk!

"shoot and store" memory cards - EXACTLY like normal memory cards, just marketing so that people take photos fill up their memory card, then buy another memory card, sounds great for the company selling the cards, bad for end users who don't that they can get the images saved to cd or to their computer and then re-use their card. SanDisk Shoot and Store range: Digital Photography Review

Welcome to LOOkylikey..

according to "club news" a magazine for nhs people, these are 6 of the best "cult" websites: culttelly.co.uk, www.wonderwoman-online.com, www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony, www.cultmovies.info , www.ultimatedallas.com, www.awesome80s.com. erm, my little pony? ok, here is my list of the top 3 cult websites: www.b3ta.com, www.slashdot.org, www.gizmodo.com, with www.rathergood.com and weebl and bob (plus badgers) being other alternatives. what would you call cult websites?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Virgin boss in space tourism bid "Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has signed a £14m agreement which will see his company take passengers into space."

Win a 128mb Compact Flash Card with DigiCamReview.co.uk

eBay item 3842687196 (Ends 02-Oct-04 21:30:00 BST) - Minolta Dimage 2300 Digital Camera. V.Good Cond + 64mb! know anyone who wants to buy a 2mp digital camera? listing starts tonight.

NTL Customer service line filled with expletives

New Zealand cars we don't seem to get in the UK: (Big cars, bigger than mondeo's) Ford Falcon, Holden (GM/Vauxhall) Commodore, Mitsubishi Diamante, Ford Territory (AWD), Subaru Legacy, Toyota Camry, Nissan Maxima etc. I say - why not? Why can't we have big cars too?

kindof madder than anything even i'd come up with. pong. without the help of computers. Including ?? funny video.

runescape looks like a cool game. Moorhuhnjagd is also another cool game. download here.

2mp digital camera and mp3 player £50 inc vat. seems very cheap for mp3/digicam all in one. picure quality's probably not up to much though. Update: Amazon.co.uk have just reduced the price of the Olympus Mju 400 4mp, 3x Optical digital camera to £149inc vat and free postage (usual price £179inc vat) get it while stocks last.

Win a canon a85 (4mp, 3x optical zoom) digital camera and a canon printer over at dp-now. See digicamreview.co.uk today around 2pm for some exciting news! ;)

stuff you didn't know about the imac G5:
- it has parts you can install yourself - apparently ...
"the iMac G5 is designed to make it easy for you to install replacement parts if you need to"-- not only the AirPort Extreme card and RAM, but also the internal hard drive, the power supply, the optical drive, the modem, the entire LCD display, and the mid-plane assembly (which includes "the main logic board, the G5 processor, fans, and so forth"). In other words, pretty much the whole darn system is user-replaceable part by part, except for, apparently, the speakers. So don't blow 'em out.
(quote courtesy of atat)
Also, if you happened to buy a Hewlett Packard version of the ipod, here's a helpful little page, just in case you can't tell the difference. woo. look for the logo.
Finally, instructions for people who don't know How to pick up and carry your iMac G5

I don't think the mainland has anything quite as exciting:
Ballycastle fair
.. The latest attraction is dulse cheese ..
And there is a singing priest..

avoid microland technology like the plague: Microland Technology UK - Worst Company Ever Award

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple shows off new iMac in Paris
CNet news : Apple unveils new G5 iMac
Apple said the iMac G5 will begin shipping worldwide in mid-September, at prices ranging between $1,299 and $1,899 each more details at apple. 256mb(!) as standard on ALL models / surely it'd only cost them another $20 to make it 512mb!

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Berlin bear's break-out bid fails

kids go for the white stuff (iPods and DVD players, rather than bikes and rollerblades)
World Bog Snorkelling Championships: Philip John wins first prize of a year's supply of ice cream courtesy of Ben and Jerry's
also flat panel iMacs are out now.

Roast Duck
"We were waving our arms and jumping around to a Christian rock group called Delirious... then you could feel the seats vibrating.
"All of a sudden the seats vanished," said Mr Cuthbert, who was sitting nearby but not injured.
.. pretty self explanatory ;-) Delirious Rocks.

dp-now.com - Features - Printer reviews - Epson PictureMate "Epson's new £149 PictureMate Personal Photo Lab is a single-size (6x4 inches) ink-jet photo printer that promises fade-resistant colour photo prints for about 29p a go." Are photo printers a waste of money? This one gives you prints for 29p a go... others give you prints for abotut 40p a go - and that's excluding the initial cost for the printer (eg £149!) - plus you get prints that are 6x4 when all your digital photos would fit on 6x4.5 better. When you can get prints for 15p each from www.photobox.co.uk or 50prints for £5 from some places - why would anyone want to print their own photos at home? (it's not for speed, as this epson takes 2 minutes per photo)

found this over here. can't seem to get it working right now though.

ecotonoha (found at waving at myself), sounds a bit like like Eketahuna / (found here)

Films:

Taxi Driver - very good (classic)
Starsky and Hutch - very good / funny
Xmen 2 - quite good (but it was the 4th film today so wasn't as switched on by then)
Lilo & Stitch - very good / emotional
The Recruit - Very good
DareDevil - quite good
Blue Streak - quite good / funny

Anyone care to recommend some films I should watch? also why not check out my latest review on digicamreview.co.uk.

8 free sms / day http://www.sms.ac

Athlon XP Multiplier Adjustments on the fly from Windows just colour in some bridges trick your cpu into thinking its a mobile and bingo multiplier adjustments from software. Also your can tell your cpu its a MP for dual use.

Works with : Palomino, Morgan, Thoroughbred, Barton and also Applebred and Thorton (those last two are just Thoroughbred / Barton with disabled part of L2 cache).

cheapest pc?
£399 hp 2.5ghz, 40gb/256mb, dvd/cdr, 17inch crt
£299 albacomp 2440: 2.4ghz, 40gb/128mb, 17inch crt, DVD

Fat Fingers "Thousands of items on eBay are listed with misspelled descriptions. - These items often expire with no bids on them as no-one can find them. - Type in a keyword below and click the Generate button - Then click the link and uncover those hidden gems..."

photobox.co.uk register, use the code "WDCFREETRIAL" and get 15 free prints delivered to your door (including free postage). (courtesy of what digital camera). Amazon.co.uk have the Premier DC5331 Digital Camera [5MP 3xOptical] for £149, which is the same as the BENQ DC C50 I reviewed here.

Josh should get the following in Singapore:

Konica Minolta Dimage Z3 (4mp, 12x opt, Anti-shake)Canon Powershot S1 IS (3mp, 10x, image stabilisation)Panasonic Lumix FZ3 (3mp, 12x, image stabilisation)Other (cheaper)

Free polls from Pollhost.com

More info: Canon S1 IS Review (uk price £300), Konica Minolta Dimage Z3 (uk price £270), Fz3 (no review yet on-line, price unknown), other(s): don't have image stabilisation which means you will get blurry pics when using 10x optical zoom in cloudy lighting.

blogcount apparently 3.5million blogs. take a long time to look at them all. have you noticed the new bar up there ^ ? kinda annoying - but some other people have managed to change the colours so it matches their site better - anyone know how to do that? plus it covera up the logo mat made! innit - i suppose the bar at the top is better than those massive adds they used to have...

ever so sad story about a komodo dragon
that tricky maths/physics problem about two trams .. two trams heading toward each other at 12mph..

kill bill vol. 1 kill bill vol. 2 very very good film(s). slightly graphic / gross in bits.
three kings very good
holy man good film (should be funnier considering the description on the back of the box).

AppleMac news:
background -
- Apple currently sell dual processor machines running at 1.8, 2.0 and 2.5ghz.
[delivery on the dual 2.5 is currently 3-5 weeks, delivery on the 2.0 is 3-5 days]

- these machines do not come with monitors.
- the cheapest monitor is 700 dollars, [350pound?] for a 17 inch, to be discontinued (currently not available in uk)
- then the cheapest will be a 1300 dollar 20 inch screen [uk price: 1000pound]

- The imac is currently discontinued until the next model comes out [september, so only 2 more weeks]
- Laptops are consistently cheaper than imacs at present.

interpretation -
apple do not have any low-end machines. You need to spend approx 2000 pound to become a mac owner, unless you want a laptop.

other news -
apple may have supply issues with faster processors: Prudential Equity Group reports availability worse than anticipated
motorola are developing faster G4 processors: Freescale develop(arstechnica.com) dual core G4(macobserver.com)

Lost in Translation (2003) anyone else seen it? imdb give it 8.1/10 - how would you rate it?

Christian in name but not in nature - interesting survey

meatless monday
Perhaps a simpler way to start being vegetarian.
official website.

Manilla Wallet, man made out of vanilla.

Make your way past rebel checkpoints to deliver food "A forthcoming video game aims to teach children about global hunger." "initially only be available in the US as a free CD or download from the net." er how does that work - the internet's global, man. "The game itself is somewhere between a game like Tomb Raider and a lecture from the WFP," nice. and then again at the end "Initially the game for the PC and Mac will only be available in the US." er you've already said that.

Over at Toms Hardware AMD's Sempron Takes on Intel's Celeron Value Challenge

"AthlonXP To Be Phased Out. As soon as Sempron will hit the market, the lower and middle class AthlonXP models will immediately be phased out. The first victims of AMD's new course will be all models up to 2500+. ...in the third week of August..."

So if you you have 133 mhz FSB socket a main boards, like me. I have 8 of them. Now is the time to get those XP2400+.

Dan's Data Review: The Wine Clip: The Wine Clip company ask Dan to review their product. Near the end, when Dan finds the thing does nothing: "When I asked the Wine Clip people to comment on this, they stopped answering my e-mail." LOL

Fredriks Diary Car crash towing a trailer, at the bottom, a cool "animated gif of the whole scenario". (found because he's got a review of the Minolta Dimage Z3 on his site)

Fuji S3000 £129 (3mp, 6x Optical, no sound on vids) PC World offer ends tuesday. (details on pcworld.co.uk)

Wikipedia doesnt know anything about Nelson, Lancashire, England Get into it guys, heres an example 'ear look its Burnley even Accrington is in there

Free 128mb CF Card when you purchase a Canon Digital Camera details here.

I replaced some faulty capacitors on a BE6-II main board yesterday. It had needed doing since I got it. The capacitors were domed then. Its symptoms had included refusal to run anything faster than a 566 celeron and intermittent boot issues. It finally gave up the ghost on Monday and would not post or sync the screen. I'm happy to say its all go now.

"children in our schools will now be indoctrinated about the illegality of downloading music." Kuro5hin: Open Letter Against British Copyright Indoctrination in Schools

other interesting stories: Google hacks are real, "the failure rate of outsourcing [IT] contracts is still estimated to be about 75 per cent" the customer is always wrong.

Tony came over at the weekend, there's lots of sunny photos, like this one of New Brighton Lighthouse at joshwaller.tk in the gallery.

BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | Man murdered in shotgun shooting

Compact flash card reliability:
I know this reads like an advert for lexar, but just wondering, do you get more reliable brands, brands that just don't work.. brands that just lose frames.
My fujifilm digicam likes to not finish recording videos, which is my fault I know, but then the video is not recorded even though 6/10ths of the file was written.
And of course the compact flash card I'm using is memorex? or unbranded, either way I don't expect much support.
ok.. I also think, and perhaps josh'll back me up on this one.. Zinc Chloride batteries.. cheap.. but not really upto the job. Maybe the power delivery is not enough for charging the flash and powering the autofocus on the motor and displaying the lcd and writing to the compact flash all at the same time, but anyway, the camera turns off.
Matt

Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo: Olympus C-725UZ Digital Camera ( 3MP , 8 x Optical ) £141.99 inc vat (and free postage) - £10 cheaper than anywhere else.

BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | Batman crane protest continues - Batman doesn't have access to his kids, and is protesting, up the end of the street I work on. I didn't even know batman had kids, maybe he got jiggy with Catwoman last time he was in a film with her, and the feline won't allow access to their half bat half cat kids.

Matt in Dilbert

UK's only money saving expert - check the forums for current bargains and special offer codes :) Reestit Mutton's Bargain Basement another great bargain website. http://www.daveham.plus.com/ another site - this one focuses more on PC parts etc.

DHTML Lemmings by crisp - Menu

Samsung 21" monitor 0.20dpi dynaflat black £129 inc vat! at ebuyer.com

Minolta Dimage F200 4MP 3x Zoom (not F100, F300) UK For Sale.

preparingforemergencies.co.uk preparingforemergencies.gov.uk spot the difference. co.uk: "Under the category of "General advice about what to do in an emergency" readers are instructed to "Remain calm and think before acting, and try to reassure others. Or, trample them in a desperate attempt to flee as the building you're in is consumed by a radioactive cloud"." bbc news article about it.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Lazy joke lands author in trouble

cyrkam airt game. breaking pcs stories on slashdot

www.hardwarezone.com :: Articles - Coolest Hardware, Hottest Reviews Did you know AMD have a new "budget" version of the Athlon 64 called the AMD Sempron !! Sempron! Latin translation Semper = Always - so it's vaguely "Always On". Personally I think it's a naff name - too similar to Celeron, it should be something completely different like "AMD Aardvark" or "AMD Good".

The BBC : Killings by pirates on the rise || kuro5hin.org

identity cards and the weaknesses of biometric records.. I wonder whether I'm a luddite. or a pessimist. or what it is, not scepticism, like when you expect something to go wrong, not because you have no confidence in the people managing the large projects, but because they just dont see how its all part of the same project : DVLA | NHS records | congestion charging records | police records | jobseeker and inland revenue / national insurance records | passports | electoral roll

8 more years of analogue tv. hurrah (I dont need a new tv card / video recorder for a while)

unrelated link
At the moment, and this might just be me, but, in general, I think I'm mostly happy about the way this country is.
Which is a really broad statement. And it probably means I'm burying my head in the sand and ignoring some blindingly obvious stuff.
If you could say what bothers you, what's most important, what you would change, if you could..
What's the most important thing you'd want to see done to change the country you live in?

10240 processors.
I'm rated 96000th out of 5million seti at home users.
940 million internet users..
Seems like about 20 million people have faster computers than me.
I just wonder how many people can be convinced to buy even faster ones.. whether 2% market share for apple means they'd expect to sell 400,000 apples every year.
No I'm wrong: Apple shipped 876 thousand Macintosh® units ... during the quarter .. that's 3million computers every year that are faster than mine ;-)
(yeah i know its just random waffle .. looks like there are more fast computers in the real world that don't do seti, and more slower computers that have been doing seti, but not working as hard at it.)

DigiCamReview.co.uk: 6 New Fujifilm Finepix Cameras 3 of them look pretty ugly to me. New versions of the S3000 (6x optical), and S5000 (10x optical) - they both get bumped up to 4mp normal CCD.

BBC NEWS | UK | ACPO bans police from joining BNP: "Mr Fox said: 'Under this policy, no member of the police service, whether police officer or police staff, may be a member of an organisation whose constitution, aims, objectives or pronouncements contradict the general duty to promote race equality.
'This specifically includes the British National Party."

- not being funny, but surely racism is 'noticing that someone else is different to you and then deciding that you don't like them because of it' Its a bit like 'gingerism' but not really the same as 'football supporterism' but I mean the northern ireland situation is basically not racism, it could be alled accentism (maybe) and religionism, but you'd probably not want people who hated one side and loved the other to necessarily be in your police force.

Any thoughts??

Yakumo Announces Affordable Digicams 4mp, 3x optical for €99 euros (looks like an old samsung with same spec), and a 6mp, 3x optical camera for €199 euros!

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Knight Rider car goes to auction

sold out: ipod

My mate Damon withdrew all his savings once to buy a car. It was like $2000 nz and he had it all in cash in his wallet. In the tunnel under the motorway on his way home there were 3 teenage kids comming the other way. They said "Give us all your money or we'll beat you up."

What did he do? Was it the right thing ;)

google.com is broken! (Server Error - The service you requested is not available at this time. - Service error -27.) yahoo.com works but mainly gives you shops as the results, altavista works. What other search engines are there?

Atari 13-in-1 Two-Player Paddles

Some more bargains at amazon.co.uk: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo: Kodak LS633 Digital Camera [3MP 3xOptical] £99, Olympus C-220 ZOOM Camedia Digital Camera [2MP 3xOptical] £69.99, Pentax Optio 33LF Digital Camera [3MP 3xOptical] £99.

Win a Centon DC5 - 5mp digital camera Jessops - Parliament Prints simply vote for your favourite photo on this page!

Monkey starts walking on back legs

£1,901.00 - Daihatsu Hijet panel van - white
9 days - white Dahatsu Hijet panel van

Sony DSC-P150, 7 megapixel: Digital Photography Review new 7mp digicam from sony! and 6 new cameras from panasonic, 3 with 12x optical zoom and image stabilisation (3,4,5mp), and 2 small digital cameras with image stabilisation and 3x optical zoom (4,5mp), and another 5mp digital camera.

Big brother is watching your surfing "[But] anyone who repeatedly tries to access sites may become subject to police investigations and dealt with very firmly."

Related article with nice flawed logic, "We try to stop the supply of images and, through the industry, the demand can be stopped." Any one remember the laws of supply and demand from 3rd form economics? Supply can be stopped, demand can't.

Related link Internet Watch Foundation. Interesting to note I got a request timed out when I tried it. Maybe they're under attack from pornographers?

"Two software developers have opted to take very different approaches to the lack of security in Internet Explorer: one has decided to join Microsoft, the other to beat them." Really? "As security software developer Winferno launches an add-on that fills IE's security gaps, UK-based Deepnet Technologies has decided the time is right to release a rival to IE called Deepnet Explorer." Really? Really? Really?
 
From deepnetexplorer forum "Do you have to have IE also?" "Deepnet is using IE as its underlying browser technology... [snip] ...  They've basically developed a program which wraps IE and extends its functionalitiy."

Fascinating fact:
What is the circumference of the earth?
The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers).
But, if you measure the earth through the poles the circumference is a bit shorter - 24,859.82 miles (40,008 km). This the earth is a tad wider than it is tall, giving it a slight bulge at the equator. This shape is known as an ellipsoid or more properly, geoid (earth-like)."
If a diesel van does 40mpg, and diesel costs 3pound 61 a gallon, it costs 2247 pounds to drive around the world. So its quite a bit cheaper to fly.

Statistics have shown most of the drivers killed last year were driving high-powered motorbikes in good weather on Sunday afternoons. link ...18 bikers had died on north Wales' roads, the highest annual total ever.
I guess then that riding in the rain at night on little bikes may seem more dangerous, but really its more fun.

Happy birthday SAM

at the moment there seem to be loads of 10x optical zoom digital cameras - as we're going to NZ soon, i think it would be really cool to get one... which would you recommend?
 
3mp:
minolta Z1 (cheapest from £185)
fuji s5000 (around £210)
canon S1 IS (image stabilisation - which is very useful for such a long zoom - around £330?)
 
4mp
minolta Z2 (around £245)
olympus C765 (very small from £240?)
olympus C770 (same as 765 but metal body, black, from £360?)
 
or should I wait for the Minolta Z3 - a 12x optical zoom lens with image stabilisation - and should I see if I could get it while we're in singapore for cheap? (it should be cheaper than the large Panansonic Lumix DMC FZ10 (12x image stabilisation, 4mp, from £350) hopefully - review)

edit - there's also the Kyocera Finecam M410R (review - 4mp) from £283, but i'm not very interested in this as I don't think the extra cost over the other's is justified, plus it's much larger. There's also a Premier based on the Toshiba PDR-M700 (3mp) for about £199, but I don't think it's worth the risk. (ebay search)

eBay STARSKY & HUTCH 1974 GRAN TORINO REAL CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We could use this in Liverpool: public stare at criminals till they leave.

This is the insides of a 2mp digital camera, on the right (detached) is the lens, and the bit in the middle of the circle is the 2mp cmos sensor - I was wondering - if you put a fresh lens on the front - would you be able to use a much better lens? 

SSC Service Utility for Epson Stylus Printer. Sneaky Epson printers, they count how many times you printed with an ink cartridge, and then stop you from using it, they also count how many times you've cleaned your cartridges, too much and your printer will stop. This clever program lets you reset all those counters, so you can keep on going! Plus it does other clever stuff too! :)

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea: "Samsung Introduces 3 Million Pixel Resolution Camera Phone" - with a 3x Optical Zoom lens from Pentax!

AnandTech review the 400GB Hitachi hard drive! (it uses 5 80gb platters)

Mozilla Flaw Lets Links Run Arbitrary Programs: "Updated: The Mozilla Foundation has confirmed findings that its Mozilla and Firefox browsers are vulnerable to attacks using the 'shell:' scheme, which execute arbitrary code under Windows without the user having to click a link." - This flaw is mainly due to Windows, rather than Mozilla/Firefox - but they've patched it anyway. (patch here)

dom does the weather

Fahrenheit 9/11 is definitely worth watching. Yes it's biased, and anti-bush, but with very good reason. WMD may never be found admits Tony Blair, CIA Staff blamed for flawed Iraq data, 11-13 thousand civilians killed in Iraq War, Al-Qaeda had only limited ties with Iraq: 9/11 panel (they used the link as another reason to attack Iraq), US removes uranium from Iraq (without UN approval), but leaves some (400 tonnes) behind ("natural uranium is still dangerous and could be used in a nuclear weapons program or sold to somebody that would misuse it")

DigiCamReview.co.uk - 4 new cameras from Konica Minolta, including 4mp/12x optical zoom (stabilised), 3mp/8x optical zoom, and a new 5mp compact camera.

Teacher writes CISCO manual because he's fed up with the poor quality of the CISCO manuals. It's a free download from his site.

freshnews.org all the tech news all in one place.

frosty pod disease threatens chocolate production!

Security statistics show surprising finds: "The Micorsoft Windows application is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined. That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia." "The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software - 33% of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30% for XP Professional and 27% for SLES 8 and just 12% for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19%."

"Companies may have to make big changes to their desktop and web site strategies after US government security body Cert last week advised users to consider abandoning Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser." link

The server is having a cuppa tea, bog off. Hotmail is rubbish. FACT. Anyone want a gmail invite? If so, put your email address in the comments box.

apple ipod tune the other one is "the vines - ride". On the subject of "new" music, does anyone have any recommendations? Most 'recent' stuff I've thought: "Cool! Must buy!" are System of a Down, and Mull Historical Society.

and the fuji refurb shop have some good deals on digital cameras. and funny saddam hussein thing with a double yew tee eff bit in the middle.

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event: "The prison helper already performs the role for other inmates at the top-security Belmarsh jail, and has earned the nickname Dirty Harry."

"We rang Mike Tait, Jersey's public relations manager. 'There's no law against gay couples sharing rooms,' he insisted. 'You might get the odd proprietor who is a fascist or a redneck, but there's not much we can do about that.'" Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Nice place, unless you're gay: "A gay couple have been refused a double room in a Scottish guesthouse."

BBC NEWS | Magazine | This man wrote down his every thought - why?, and can you believe no daleks in the next Dr. Who!?

Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore. By Christopher Hitchens quite an interesting and seemingly balanced look at the contradictions within the film. If you've seen bowling for columbine - you'll find this interesting about Moore: "But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia."

lightertricks.com - fun with zippos (background)

MSN Search (web address: uk.search.msn.com) is now much cleaner. but who'd gonna go to uk.search.msn.com, when they can just type in google.com?

sh1ft.org presents 26 Things : July 2004 - got a new funky digital camera? - don't know what to take photos of? 26things is just the thing, it's a list of 26 things you can go take photos of.

Yahoo! News - Apple Plans New iMac, But Delays Shipment Until Sept: "Apple Plans New iMac, But Delays Shipment Until Sept"

CNN.com - Girl burned when cell phone catches fire - Jul 1, 2004 "A 16-year-old California girl suffered second degree burns Thursday when her cell phone caught fire in her back pocket, according to the Ontario Fire Department."

Wheely Willy the crippled dog... BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | US chihuahua wows Japanese crowds

kitten

Malware attacks IE users via pop-ups | The Register might be worth sticking to firefox for now...?

tiger (10.4), the latest os from mac, is coming in 2005. This article is a kind of taster/preview... if you go to the apple website, they've got some info about it too.
Oh and apple have a huge new 30 inch display (2569pound), which requires a 450pound grafic card to use it. Available in Grey or erm gray. yup. 2500 pound for the computer. 3000 pound for a monitor. there must be some very rich people out there.
So tiger: another "new" way to find files, and an alternative way to get desk accessories (taskbar temperature style readouts) displayed.
And it sounds like they're releasing it in the new year, which I always thought was Apple's biggest problem - all the new stuff comes out after you've bought your christmas presents.

Sega Mega Drive 6-in-1 Plug 'n' Play £30 for a sega megadrive and 6 games (inc sonic the hedgehog, golden axe etc).

Gannow Baths in Burnley, to close.. Anyone heard of these?

BBC NEWS | England | London | London in grip of Tube strike: "Millions struggled into work in London on Wednesday as a rail union strike crippled the underground. "

BBC NEWS | UK | North-south split 'getting wider': "The poor are getting poorer while the north-south divide is getting wider, researchers have claimed."

myatari.net has a review of a 68060 add-on board called CT60 which runs at either 66 or 100mhz (depending on processor model) - you can fit 512meg of pc133 ram to it. It also has the exciting 'tip of the day' page.
Also we've just missed Jagfest 2004 in Rochester (12/13June), and the allegro speedhack competition entries are available to download and try out.

Slashdot | Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1 Released firefox is only 4.7mb so why not give it a go. apparently it's right good.

morecambe bay bridge could create upto 2000 new jobs: I look forward to waving to the 167 people working on each mile as I cross it.

Cams BIG Adventure it starts...

anyone wanna buy a "mercury slim cam II / Aiptek Slim 3000F" (practially brand new, as i used a different one for the review) for £40? (plus £3.50 postage?) normally £40 + £7.50 postage from microlandtech.

Which one's most interesting: Pentax Optio 33LF Digital Camera [3MP 3xOptical] (£99), Fuji A120 3mp (no optical zoom) (about £80) ?

3GHz PowerPC G5 Eludes IBM "Even the most ingenious chip designs can be undone by manufacturing problems: Consider IBM Corp.'s struggle to raise the megahertz ante for its PowerPC processors." Steve Jobs said they'd have 3ghz by now, but they don't. (More interesting comment here)

Honoloko (background)

Die Wagenschenke - Das Partyzelt am Albanifest in Winterthur.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Why imitation is not always flattering: "Luxury handbags, DVDs, computer software - all well-known targets of counterfeiters. But the UK is being flooded with other fake goods, including teabags. It's a crime that stabs at the heart of British society and costs billions." ""The ante has been upped, big time," she says. "It's in about the last five years or so that the volume of goods flooding the market has doubled - at least doubled - in terms of quantity and also in terms of range of the goods that are being faked."" - how often are people quoted as saying "big time"?

Vote for your favourite name..., re: this, and this. (camera share project).

crap research + bbc news website = another crappie article with re-used old images! quote:
"Junk e-mails are driving computer users mad" - "Viagra offers and miracle diets crowd our inboxes" - "Six days are wasted battling with spam and three more days are lost due to viruses." right - so we spend 6 days dealing with spam and only 3 dealing with viruses. riiiight. "a third of people would be prepared to make a drastic lifestyle change, such as exercising five times a week, if it meant an end to spam." wtf!? what kind of questions were on there, "what would you be prepared to do to get rid of spam: a) excersice 5 times a week, b) have a shower on mondays c)kill your parents" - like HELLO!! what has excersice got to do with spam!!!??

bit of a mac fan article here, sorry,
Apple Xserve's to power new supercomputer for US Army
A new supercomputer comprising 1,566 dual-processor Apple Xserve servers is expected to be the second most powerful in the world, with a peak performance capability of 25 Teraflops per second.

To see the whole article go here

Ey Up, dems worst motorway service stations in Europe.

"These need to improve otherwise the UK's sites will not match the best in the rest in Europe for quality and value." ... and then?

vnunet.com - Intel kicks off new system: "Intel will next week change the face of volume computer systems by releasing its first EM64T chips, which combine full 32bit performance with 64bit capabilities, and by introducing support for a radically new platform including the PCI Express bus."

Main Menu -> Fun with Cans of compressed Air!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Climate film put to computer test: "Computer users across the world are being invited to download and run a climate model of what may happen this century. "

InformationWeek > Supercomputing > Top 500 Supercomputers List Shows IBM A Big Winner > June 21, 2004: "According to the newest edition of the semi-annual Top 500 list compiled by a group of German and American academics, two prototype IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputers rank as the world's fourth- and eighth-fastest. Japan's Earth Simulator still ranks as the world's fastest computer, but a new Intel-based system at Lawrence Livermore National Lab is now second-fastest."

InformationWeek > EBay Billing Errors > EBay Hit With Complaints > June 21, 2004: "Complaints about balky new eBay Inc. billing software that's overcharging sellers continue to flood a Web message board about the Internet's largest auction site on the eve of the company's eBay Live users conference in New Orleans. "

tom, phil, (others) what do you think of this?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Top honour for robot heroes, Honda's ASIMO robot visiting london scien museum for a week!. Matt quick - go and take some photos / videos of it!

Slashdot | Beastie Boys' New Album Silently Installs DRM Code (in countries other than the UK and US) - maybe I won't buy that album.

Can't remember if I've mentioned this before, anyway here it is again: Cheese Racing

ireland gets their own windows - hurrah

Blair and Frost see who's finger is best at the subtle art of pointing

a game that turns into something thats a bit minterish.. speed.
just depack the zip and type "speed.exe 640 480 8" or similar.

Ironic Passengers injured in bus crash: Just when you thought your train journey couldn't get any worse, your bus crashes into a railway bridge.

Here's a pic of Heather, Susan, Me and Dave (Susan's fiance) taken last week at "Pub in the Park" (put here by bloggerbot/hello/ using the new free unlimited blogger image hosting thing) 

I have a plan: Buy a cheap 2mp digital camera (between £20 - £40 ebay/morgan computers/etc eg this) ideally small, with flash. Setup a website (perhaps a blog?) where people can post their pictures taken with said camera. Camera is posted to people around the world, they have it for a week, take X amount of pics, and upload 5 of their best pictures to website (as pic above), then post it to next person in line. This would only work if people didn't decide to steal the camera - to combat this, perhaps I could use a paypal account to collect deposit (perhaps £5/£10) which is refunded once the camera has gone to the next person? The address list (so to speak), could be centrally managed by me. So it would go like this:

1. Email me, with your address. (and put deposit in my paypal account)
2. I'll invite you to join the blogger
3. (once joined) Someone will post camera to you.
4. You use for a week, upload 5 of your favourite pictures to website
5. Let me know you're done, and I'll email you the address of the next person.
6. You post the camera to the next person (when they confirm they have it, I will refund paypal deposit)

alternatively, they don't post their pictures, but they could just email the pictures (With text) to my email account? I could also mark the camera with something like "If found, return to (web address)".