Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Items matching ( girlfriend ) sad or lonely? want a girlfriend - why not buy one on ebay.

Monday, March 29, 2004

album sales up in australia
Arrrrg some one has "WORM_NETSKY.D" and its using my e-mail address as the from address. Yay. I suspect its a New Zealand person thats through trade me (like E-bay). Frustrating.

Also I removed CoolWebSearch using CWShredder neato.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

Polaroid Digital Cameras distributed by plawa. The Polaroid X530 digital camera doesn't make sense. Their marketing says: "wowee look we use this cool 4.5mp foveon sensor (really 1.5mp), at every pixel there is red, green, blue - which is way better than normal" BUT surely that's brilliant so long as you stick to 1.5mp images (so that every pixel is made from red,blue,green) - but then the camera produces 4.5mp images - so they're basically stretching 1 (rgb) pixel into 3 pixels... which seems to totally defeat the purpose of using a foveon sensor...
aw so cute (800k image)
shopping channel goes wrong. (video)

Friday, March 26, 2004

"Notoriously quick off the blocks with the latest Mini-ITX news and reviews, Epiacenter.com have new reviews of the VIA EPIA TC10000 and the VIA EPIA MII10000 mainboards. Author Joseph Waller is impressed with the awesome connectivity features of the boards and unique storage options including the CardBus and Compact Flash slots and the onboard DC-DC convertor on the VIA EPIA TC." subscribe to the VIA Eden Newsletter over here. :)
The Passion film prompts murder confession
Computers apparently rob children of sleep! "children were spending time texting under the bed covers when they should be asleep." naughty, in your bed!

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Sensitive Light: Dangerous streets interesting stuff.
kew gardens opens another attraction
Items matching ( (digital, camera, new, canon, fuji, minolta, olymups) ) I like ebay.co.uk's predefined search for digital cameras under �100 - especially how they search for olymups.

Newly Released Documents Shed Light on Microsoft Tactics Microsoft letter to Intel asking them to stop supporting "Go".

Starsky and Hutch. Recommended. Good film, funny, cool cars, good action.
that company that makes Coke, right, they go to the trouble of bottling (tap) water that costs more than coke and advertising it everywhere, and it's not actually water they add calcium and other stuff, and then say its as pure as bottled water gets, and then they realise that the calcium isn't very pure so the water has too much 'bromate' stuff, more than is legally permitted in something for humans to drink, so they recall it and decide not to sell that water stuff any more. hurrah
They do have some refreshing desktop pictures though. Won't take you more than 3 minutes to remove that silly logo :-)

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

tech news sites: i4u, Gizmodo.

pyroport reviews the Olympus C-750 and have a gallery with some really nice pics.

woman died of a heart attack whilst watching 'the passion' and comments about the film from creator of 'the last temptation of christ'.

eat less, live longer nice picture of a bacon sandwich on this page.

hamster computer mod (click hamster when you get there). not by me, but images resized as the one's on the original forum are 1600x1200!!

Monday, March 22, 2004

NHS offered own Windows system: "The NHS is in discussion with Microsoft about the possibility of a health service-specific version of its Windows and Office products." "Microsoft is in talks with the UK's National Health Service (NHS) for a "tailored" version of its Windows operating system and Office desktop suite in a deal that could have huge implications for the way it sells to its largest customers - but the company denies it will sell a 'stripped down' cheaper version." "Granger has previously and very publicly stated his demand for much bigger discounts on Microsoft software based on the NHS' bulk purchasing power of over half a million licences."

Windows for Welsh Folk as well. This is funny: IBM patches Hitachi laptop hard drives. In more BBC news bad picture usage: BBC NEWS use a picture of a mini-disc player when talking about MP3s! (see the picture here.) New Doctor Who.

London Weekend Pictures of Matt's birthday etc now on my site (joshwaller.tk).

Sony 1.3MP Camera Phone: picture here. Here's some cool photos of london signs. Text 84600 with 'Memory C' to win a Pentax Optio S4 (courtesy of T3 magazine).

Saturday, March 20, 2004

Nano-ITX boards shown at the Cebit thing, lots of pictures here. Not only is this much smaller (nano-itx = 12cm x 12cm, mini-itx = 17cm x 17cm) than current mini-itx boards, it's also got an updated chipset (and graphics?) which should make it quicker than current VIA EPIA boards! (plus it looks like it will be passively cooled at 1ghz!)

Thursday, March 18, 2004

the CRUCIBLE of my heart - the crucible another interesting blog (this time with his dreams on it). with lots of links to other people's blogs.

Want a Cat? Get frantic and it'll react more.
Camaras digitales: Fujifilm Q1 Digital - Review in a foreign language, but includes lots of sample pictures. translation to english?. image quality looks average-ish.

PCWorld.com - Nokia Flashes Megapixel Camera Phone... apparently there's a picture of the phone here. Here's a 1.3mp cameras phone from siemens: the S65

DCRP Review: Sigma SD10 another review of the Foveon sensor based Sigma SD10.
Intel develops new chip numbering system, "similar to the model numbers BMW uses on its sedans." After reading the article I'm confused - I'm sure punters will be even more confused.

Monday, March 15, 2004

this is a nice site: ::: alancreech ::: home ::: which got me onto thinking about Lent - what's that all about then? Who invented it? Is it in the bible? Is it just some strange tradition? Do we need lent?

More about Lent: Honest to God: "Life is not always uplifting, or wonderful, or pleasant, or joyous—but we have been taught the lie that for spiritual people like us, it must be so. So we become play actors, hypocrites—telling ourselves that by lying, we are having faith, and that if we lie enough, the bad things will fade away, like a dream upon awakening." - When does "positive thinking" cross over into lying?

remembering rebecca :: march 2004 collective nouns for mac users. see her computing page for more.

Backing up - Please backup your data. Don't wait till your hard drive dies, or your computer explodes before you do something about it. Cheap easy solution 1: buy a second 80/120gb hard drive 50/60quid inc vat (i recommend samsung because they have a 3yr warranty - what point is there in buying a hard drive with a 1year warranty?), backup your main drive to that as often as you feel fit, or 2: buy a DVD-writer for about 50/60quid from ebuyer.com and write a DVD every so often with your stuff on. They fit about 5GB if I'm not mistaken.
Three people have been arrested following a double shooting in a Liverpool pub on Friday night. "Both are in a serious condition following the incident at the Cock and Bottle on Wavertree High Street." update: Three on bail in shooting inquiry - apparently it was during a lock-in at about 4am in the morning.

we were in there about 2 weeks ago. :o

link ALL 15 self-navigating vehicles in a 150-mile race across the Mojave Desert were knocked out within a few miles of the starting gate Saturday, victims of technical glitches, barbed-wire fences and rugged terrain.

whats more interesting? digital cameras or computers? or mobile phones? or just technology in general? or what's interesting you at the moment?

and why do people now think mullets are cool? they're not, perhaps they're cool on other people, but seriously, you'll look back in a few years time and puke. and mohawks - some people actually have these nowadays - they're not cool. stop it. :)

who is jordan cooper? perhaps Matthew Brunton knows - but who is matthew brunton? (and what is "shoutlouder" all about?) perhaps Adam Whittaker knows some of the answers...
vnunet.com Fujifilm Digital Q1 Fuji Q1 Digital Review. I found one!
Read my VIA EPIA MII-10000 review at EPIACENTER.com now :)

Friday, March 12, 2004

Films I want to watch: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the day after tomorrow, and starsky and hutch. Saw Big Fish at the cinema last night and it was: kinda good. see it on video. that's my advice.

One film I have an issue with, is The Passion - not necessarily the film itself - but the fact that churches (mine included) are arranging trips to see the film, and recommending it to everyone, yet they haven't even seen the film, so why recommend the film to people? Lake County church shows bootleg tape of 'Passion' to 12 year olds!

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Something I hadn't known till yesterday was that the chernobl nuclear reactor meltdown thingy was caused by the people running the reactor doing some dodgy 'tests' that hadn't been thought through properly I guess. but also because there were 3 +ve feedback mechanisms that mean control of output is not linear.. (Xenon in the fuel rods, steam doesn't dampen the reaction like water does and the control rods displace water but are not homogeneous in their behavior) I like the way alot of stories say it was down to 'violating safety mechanisms' and 'flawed reactor design' when mostly it was a planned intentional violation of safety mechanisms, with a poor planning / understanding of the reactor design. Although I guess its easy to say that in hindsight. link 1 link 2

Sunday, March 07, 2004

The Macomb Daily "A Shelby Township Web site operator is accused of trying to extort $300,000 from the county's primary law enforcement agency — the Macomb County Sheriff's Office." Yes expensive, but surely he should be paid for hosting the website rather than taken being arrested for extortion!
VIA EPIA Nehemiah M10000 1Ghz All In One M/B Mini-itx In case anyone's interested, I'm selling my M10000.

Saturday, March 06, 2004

most annoying website ever award in my opinion goes to: BBC Top Gear Carbage for having a stupid flash pop-up on every single page that you have to find the miniscule close button on each time you go to a new page.
infoSync World : Sharp GX30 to break Europe megapixel barrier The new Sharp GX30 has a 1MP CCD digital camera - and comes with a flash! (well more like a bright white LED apparently)

Friday, March 05, 2004

1978 Reinhold Yeti history of the smack the penguin games
Please can the bbc get someone to proof-read their articles. Please.
Computers help land mine victims
... He said: "They will be distributed out to landmine victims, who will be will be shown how to use the computers.
"They will be trained up on them, they will be shown how to use Word and Excel so they can use the databases....
Amazon.co.uk: Fuji FinePix A205 Digital Camera [2MP 3xOptical] 89.99 free postage too.

Recommended Buys UK: Fuji Q1 Digital review review here. cheapest supplier 61quid (9quid postage - another french company that will want proof of address etc faxed to them). total 69quid - wonder whether anyone on ebay would pay 99quid for them? (apparently not) There's also about 1 maybe 2 paragraphs written about the Q1 in April "Stuff" magazine.

PRAKTICA DC-42 DIGITAL CAMERA - Digital Compact Cameras - Jessops.com 100quid for a 4.2MP camera!

59quid for what is basically a casio EX-S2 (a tiny 2mp camera).
Matchstick Men Quite good - the lead is called Ray Waller (like our grandad), his wife was Heather (in the film), and they mention a Josh too - and true to life a Pizza guy comes and says "Ray Walter?" to which Ray goes, "no, Waller" - I normally get Walker if people are going to get my name wrong. Anyway, I reckon it's worth watching.

Thursday, March 04, 2004

blatant plug: Samsung V200 Camera phone - yes, now you too have the opportunity to buy one of these lovely phones, they retail in the shops for 300 pound, but I reckon you could pick this one up for just under 160 pound. You've got till next sunday, so don't all bid at once. Please note I don't condone you bidding if you have no intention to purchase ie; if you were just bumping up the price, that's known as spoof bidding or something..
Slashdot | HardOCP Sues Infinium Over Legal Threats
Philips Fluid Lenses: Digital Photography Review: "Philips Research at the CeBIT exhibition is demonstrating a unique variable-focus lens system that has no mechanical moving parts. "
Getting Digital Exposure Right interesting article about the differences between film and digital, with film, if things appear white or black, the detail's often still there, but with digital if it's white , it's white and that's it basically.
1 on 1: Fuji S1 versus Nikon D1 super CCD vs CCD in these high end 3mp cameras - the Fuji super CCD has the edge - BUT is this down to the way Fuji cameras process their images - or is it actually to do with the SuperCCD sensor? (re colour /saturation etc etc)

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Times Online - Motoring - Splash water car boat thing (different to the other water-car thing that richard branson bought)
Universal's entire music catalogue goes digital so they can sell tracks on-line.
SCO sues Autozone madness
SCO wins Linux licence payments and more madness
Virus writers exchange coded insults :O proper mental.
Were Worm Outbreaks Sparked by Dueling Hackers? more of the same but a bit duller.
worlds weirdest football game is apparently in england! link to video
DIY iPod battery pack - engadget.com ha ha ha. looks fab. thanks to barbara for getting a birthday card to me today :) and no thanks to everyone else in the world who didn't send me a card! thanks also to hexus forums, bit-tech forums and webshots for emailing me a happy birthday message. and also my parents for emailing me a happy birthday message. thanks to matt for emailing me about graphics cards :)

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

mini digital cameras. minolta xg (3.2mp) apparently is better than 4mp cameras from casio and pentax, and better than a 5mp sony camera. another site somewhere said the casio Z4 (4mp version of the 3mp Z3) was no better than the Z3 because the lens wasn't good enough - ie the 3mp sensor was picking up as much detail as the lens could chuck through - so adding a 4mp sensor simply makes the image bigger, but with no additional detail... or perhaps that was in a magazine somewhere - i can't remember. i've added 3 extra paragraphs to my fuji 2800 review and today's date is 02/03/04 which is pretty cool, and tomorrow's my birthday :)

Monday, March 01, 2004

MP3.com.au - badger remix it's alreet.
mini-itx.com - projects - mini-itx cluster a mini-cluster of 12 epia 800 boards.
This will be of most interest to matt - i've put a review of a Fuji Finepix 2800 on my site. (joshwaller.tk). this looks like a good deal: Minolta X20 2MP/3xOpt very small £99 (won some kind of: "8th Annual DIMA Digital Camera Shoot-Out" - in the $200-299 price range) also available down local ASDA for't same price. (here's a steve's digicams review - it does audio with vids, it does macro, and it's got a little mirror in the front so you can take pictures of yourself) Also the 3mp (no zoom) Sony P32 is £99 from prcdirect.co.uk - is it just me, or are digital cameras always coming down in price?
Forbes.com: Dell Could Reclaim PC Crown In First Half Mac market share at all time low - "We expect iPod success eventually to spill over into Mac purchases." - why? your ipod and mini ipods are very cool, expensive for an mp3 player, but very cool therefore people buy them, but why would that make your imac successful? you've got to have a computer already to use an ipod - therefore all the people with ipods already have a computer - therefore: why do you expect them to start buying macs?