Monday, January 31, 2005

do you remember 'candyflip - madstock'? (cds available on ebay and amazon.co.uk), well anyway, 'air - walkie talkie' (for £7) sound a lot like them.
Apple - PowerBook G4 - new apple powerbooks, G4 up to 1.67ghz, 512mb memory standard, and 8x dvd burning as standard. (from £1049 inc vat)

other film reviews: meet the fockers. funny feel good film. (sequel to meet the parents). collateral - very good action/thriller tom cruise plays bad guy, really worth watching.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

filums

Envy (2004) it's fairly poor. if it's free then you could watch it. but if not then you could choose a better film to watch.
American Splendor (2003) okay, if you like true stories, it's not really a comedy, maybe a dark comedy, you might like it, but I think they could have fast forwarded some bits of it and I would have been happier if they did.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

google advert links suggested this: padihamlife while I was reading an article about stratford (proposed site of the 2012 olympic games)

shop pony

hello. So these people were like shopping at their local tescos, when they hear a noise behind them. They look round.. Its a pony. After a couple of seconds of stunned silence, everyone carries on shopping, and the pony leaves. pony
I wonder if that would be the reaction if it were a big wildebeest
.. 'well you don't normally see them round here' ..
.. 'maybe it's a special promotion.'

Friday, January 28, 2005

joshwaller.tk: some of matt's long lost new zealand photos are now on my website. here. lots of them, even I haven't seen!

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

http://www.konfabulator.com/ right, is flipping excellent, weather, cpu usage, battery life, clock, photo slideshow, notepads all on your desktop, your choice though, choose from over 400 different widgets!
hotmail's too busy to let me in when i'm using firefox, but it's not too busy to let me in when i'm using internet explorer.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

internet users are stupid* says research.

internet users are stupid* says research.

geek.com report that research indicates that internet users using search engines aren't very clever, as only 38% are able to figure out what is paid results/advertising and what isn't. There are some interesting comments that attempt to sum things up nicely, here's one: 'Alot of americans are freaking idiots.', and another 'I never ate a MacDonalds in my life.'

* replace with your own less politically correct version in your head if you so wish for a more exciting story.

Monday, January 24, 2005

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Man found after weeks in cave

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Man found after weeks in cave: "A man who went missing five weeks ago in south-western France has been found alive in an underground cave system where he had got lost. "

Sunday, January 23, 2005

BBC News: "The US military is planning to deploy robots armed with machine-guns to wage war against insurgents in Iraq." ... "Mr Quinn says there are plans to replace the computer screen, joysticks and keypad in the remote-control unit with a Gameboy-style controller and virtual-reality goggles."

ok... is anybody else concerned that the gameboy controller may get into the wrong hands, ie. kids? or is anybody else concerned that we're about to have a Robocop / Terminator type situation on our hands coming to a street near you? (that is if you're in Iraq)
bengal cats

Saturday, January 22, 2005

google mail (gmail.google.com) is now pop3 - plus i've updated joshwaller.tk with some 'quick links' - let me know what sites you visit regularly and would like adding to the quick links, then you can use it as your home page :)

Alternative Email Clients

Does anybody use an alternative email client on the PC? Eg Thunderbird, etc? And do they work with Hotmail, the way that outlook express works with hotmail (er, no, not without additional apps), and do any of them have a built in calendar? (er, nope, they're still working on it - doh!)

Friday, January 21, 2005

another quiz

here go on make your own :)

Other handy functions | KONICA MINOLTA


Konica Minolta have released 2 new digital cameras today, and this is one of their pics on their website. (Which I thought was very funny so I thought I'd share it here). Looks like quite a neat camera, and could be much improved on the Z3 - as it's got a bigger screen, and more megapixels, plus they might have made other internal improvements that make the pictures better. Other handy functions | KONICA MINOLTA

S-Media GP2000 20GB White MP3/WMA Player USB2 with FM Radio, Line In and SD/MMC Card Reader available at Micro Direct Ltd UK

S-Media GP2000 20GB White MP3/WMA Player USB2 with FM Radio, Line In and SD/MMC Card Reader available at Micro Direct Ltd UK £117inc vat

Thursday, January 20, 2005

� Before and After Images of Aceh Indonesia

� Before and After Images of Aceh Indonesia Check these out, follow the link through, some of these sattelite images are simply shocking.

Emerging / New Church

What's it all about? Some examples: Bliss (they appear to meet monthly in a hotel), LivingRoom (they don't have a building). It appears to be communities of people, that aren't really interested or finding what they want from the traditional monthly meetings and buildings. Your thoughts?

sega idog

is it just me or does it look a bit sad?Linky Link Micro chips - "it does the usual stuff we’ve come to expect from robot pets, like responding “emotionally” to touches to its various sensors. Its main claim to fame is its musical ability, though: it’ll improvise tunes based on 720 internal musical phrases, changing the mood of the music as you wave your hand over the phototransistor on its head (could…get…old…real…fast…). They’ve even included an external audio jack on its hindquarters for you to connect an external player; no prizes for guessing the device of choice for the MP3 enema at their press event. And yes, it does waggle its ears and paws in time to the music."

MSNBC - Report: World can end poverty by 2025

MSNBC - Report: World can end poverty by 2025: "Global poverty can be cut in half by 2015 and eliminated by 2025 if the world's richest countries including the United States, Japan and Germany more than double aid to the poorest countries, hundreds of development experts concluded in a report Monday"

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

so...

let me get this right, Apple are the longest surviving computer type since the olden days, when it all started, they beat IBM, Atari, Commodore/Amiga, Acorn. okay so IBM didn't go bankrupt, but the computer bit did get bought by someone else. isn't that pretty mental when you think of it like that. (obviously all the cheap IBM clones are winning really, ie. Dell - who started in 1984/85)

European Mac fans call Mac Mini pricing unfair | CNET News.com

European Mac fans call Mac Mini pricing unfair | CNET News.com "Apple Computer's "most affordable" Mac--the Mac Mini--has drawn a storm of protest from European shoppers, who are petitioning the Mac maker to bring EU pricing better in line with that of the United States." sign here.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

http://www.skype.com/

http://www.skype.com/ - right you download the program, which is a 5mb download, it lets you do 'voice over ip' basically call other people up who use the thing for free over the internet, you just need a mic and some speakers attached to your computer. so basically 100% free phone calls assuming that other people use the thing, and assuming that your internet is flat rate. also, you can call real phone numbers and pay 1.1p per minute to most places on the planet, eg New Zealand, London, America etc. (even Nelson!) gettit! just search for my name and you should find me.

mini mac opinion

aaronadams.net - Mac mini: Why its future looks mediocre (the guy who featured in apple switch adds a couple of years ago). cube vs mini mac here, with a pic that makes the G4 Cube look massive (even though it's not). plus there's an article here that clears up some 'confusion' about the mac mini.

other things you might want to know: apparently it's got a laptop hard drive in it (the largest currently is 100gb, available for £124, so if that's not big enough, you'll have to connect up some firewire/usb external hard drives or use another machine like a pc or another mac with a large hard drive and share it), and it's only got stereo out (no 5.1 dolby surround sound like your current pc). apparently 256mb ram will make it a bit slower, apparently 30% slower than if you had 512mb ram.

I'd rather (and have) spent less money (£230) on a very good second hand laptop with a 15.7" 1280x1024 screen, a P3-800 cpu, a 20gb hard drive (I'll be using my webserver as a fileserver as well, with it's dvd-rw), a dvd-rom, lan, modem, 96mb ram (easily and cheaply upgradable), so that I can continue to use Windows, and all the apps I have for it.

Friday, January 14, 2005

free winzip clones tested

All of these are like winzip, but completely and utterly free - which one's best?

zipgenius it's better in the 'advanced mode' as the easy mode uses loads of confusing 'wizards'. about a 7mb download (!). interface slightly overly graphicy and animates when extracting zips, with a speedy computer it shouldn't matter too much, but with a slower computer, it might make you think 'why's it wasting it's time animating all that stuff, just get on with it!' tis very nice though. 98mb zip extracting: 18seconds.

7-zip, another winzip clone, sounds even better, it's completely free, plus it can compress stuff way better than anything else. plus this one's only 900kb to download. quite a basic looking interface - and pretty awkward to use, it doesn't auto-create folders for you etc. (i've only tried the earlier version, v3.13, i haven't tried the beta version). 98mb zip extracting: 13seconds.

filzip, suggested by phil, especially good if your name's phil, as filzip is like phil's zip innit. 1.16mb, with nice green icons. easy to use. 98mb zip extracting: 7seconds.

Tested on a P4 with a 2.66GHz CPU, and 512mb DDR ram. So there you go, Phil's is the best, easy to use, and the quickest, also a quick download. ZipGenius is overly graphical, too much megabytes to download, the slowest at extracting the zip. 7-zip (v3.13) is overly difficult to use, doesn't seem to support Windows drag and drop, but is quicker than ZipGenius. Filzip on the other hand, is easy to use, a small download, and the quickest program out of the 3.

supersize me

i watched 'supersize me' yesturday (rented from blockbuster), and have read some of the 'fast food nation' book. the author of 'fast food nation' was on the extras of the 'supersize me' dvd, and there was some hugely interesting stuff in there, like: there's meat bits from over 1000 cows in one burger from mcdonalds. the guy in supersize me eats mcdonalds for 30 days, and nothing else, only mcdonalds food - he ends up poisoning his liver, getting depressed, loosing sex drive, getting huge migraines etc. well worth watching, and well worth avoiding fast food places!

Break Reminder

Break Reminder - Reviews and free downloads at Download.com - remind yourself to take breaks away from the computer regularly to avoid RSI (repetitive strain injury) or other similar problems. (Seems slightly overcomplicated, but has some clever stuff in there, like blanking the screen so you make sure you do actually have the break).

HEXUS.net Forums - Commodore 64 DTV

HEXUS.net Forums - Commodore 64 DTV it's a commodore 64 but in a joystick.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Plenty of poor taste puns in this story of a Restaurant with an badly named burger.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

for sale: konica minolta dimage e40 £140 info

comments

hi there, [well i've tried to] enable the built in comments system that blogger provide. it didn't work though. and i'm not sure how to fix the current comments, coz i don't think i set them up in the first place.
Showing to go that you can learn a thing or 2 from Phil heres my 6 second film reviews of what I've watched so far this week.
Along came polly, was almost good but not quite. Ben Stiller was failry typical and a bit Zoolanderish at times. His obsessive charater didnt really come thru on the fim. Blind ferrets wrent that funny either.
In the cut. Not your typical Meg Ryan fare. Suspense till the end. Get out and watch it.
Stuck on you. Yep almost a why bother. A couple of funny moments, a couple more poinient ones. But over all about as dull as shallow hal.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Apple - Updated - Keynote Speech '05

Apple's keynote speech should be soon, which could be interesting. AM/FM radio, that looks like a mini ipod. people are expecting a flash based apple mp3 player, and a sub $500 (bbc news reckon that's £266) imac (the ihome?). Although you can't watch the keynote live, you have to wait till later. Anyway, the keynote should start at 5pm today.

Live updates at engadget (click this link), with the latest news. Even quicker updates here (first to announce Mac Mini!!)


In stores Jan 22nd: "Stripped down Mac, more affordable. Headless Mac. Mac mini! DVI and VGA, ethernet, FireWire and USB2. Tiny little thing. "BYODKM" Bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse." (from gizmodo) "$499 with 1.25GHz G4 processor. 40GB hard drive. 256mb" - there's gonna be a 599 one with 80gb hard drive and faster cpu (1.4ghz). holy cow it's small, 1/4 of the]
size of the G4 cube: imac mini pic here.


plus there's a new flash based mp3 player: "iPod Shuffle: really tiny (smaller than most packs of gum), no screen, weighs under 1 ounce. Cap on the bottom, USB 2. 12 hour rechargeable battery. PC/Mac. Looks about the size of a flash key drive" 512MB version for $100, 1GB for $149. (play, stop, next, previous button and volume control - so i'm guessing that it plays in shuffle/random mode all the time unless you setup a playlist)

...speech finished. apple website updated and apple store updated (with pics and full details of 'imac mini' (store | apple site | engadget pics) and 'ipod shuffle' (store | apple site | engadget pics).

Apple's UK website updated - prices from: iMac Mini (uk site) £339 (slightly cheaper than I expected (375), but more than I had hoped - if it was £266 like the BBC predicted, then you could just go and get 4 on your credit card and nobody would notice), iPod Shuffle from £69.

more photos/info: mac mini + shuffle hands on (top of mini is white), many many shuffle pics, shuffle review, loads of pics of the mac mini (including inside - plus they stack 7 of them up next to a normal looking pc). (normal DDR ram by the looks of things, so could be upgraded cheaply yourself - but what about the hard drive - is it laptop or normal size? - it might be a laptop hard drive, coz the max size is 80gb) the mac mini comes with OS X v10.3 - will you have to pay to get the next one 'Tiger'?

> updated again - ipod shuffle review.

Monday, January 10, 2005

printer plays up

I got home today to find my pc crashed.. mouse wont move.. fine, I restart and everything seems ok. only I just (3h later) tried printing something out, and find I'm out of paper.. So sitting on the printer is 60 pages, all beginning.. 'Fujifilm Computer Products, ....
SETI@home was developed by...
Beginning analysis...
(This is the last message...

How annoying is that.

retro t-shirts.

FRAGGLE ROCK DOOZER 80'S RETRO T-SHIRT, plus loads more retro t-shirts, including willy wonka, thundercats, he-ra, transformers, pink panther, top cat, atom ant, mr. benn, etc all here. and here's one i'm selling.

Nick's Place: Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings: Murphy at his best

Nick's Place: Path to Enlightened Insanity via Defacted Musings: Murphy at his best seriously this is flipping mental.

Wired 13.01: The Shadow Internet

Wired 13.01: The Shadow Internet

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Yahoo! Finds of the Year 2004

Yahoo! Finds of the Year 2004 (Yahoo's top ten websites)

One of the finds of the year is derelictlondon.com - hundreds of photos of london, including cafes, buildings, toilets, post offices, etc. here's an interesting and slightly sad fact from the site: "trendy coffee bars & US chains have helped towards the gradual decline of the English Cafe Culture. London's "greasy spoon" cafes are disappearing at the rate of one a month while the number of branded coffeeshops like Starbucks have trebled in the last 5 years."

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Gizmodo : Apple Sues Think Secret

Gizmodo : Apple Sues Think Secret - ooh and there's a mock up of the apple iphone here. iTunes user sues apple over iTunes: link. BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft debuts security tools (anti-spayware and anti-virus software) - microsoft seem to be really keen to sell/provide(monopolise) every kind of software

Win a SONY Digital Camera worth £300!

Win a SONY Digital Camera worth £300!: "To celebrate the release of Hellboy on DVD 10th January 2005, Revolution Studios and Firebox.com are giving you the chance to win a Sony digital camera valued at £300."
msn.co.uk is pants! search for 'stinger' and you don't get mcafee stinger metioned once, search for mcafee stinger - the 2nd result is mcafee's home page, and it doesn't even take you straight to mcafee's stinger page - search for stinger on google.com - and the first result is mcafee's site, and the one under that takes you directly to the mcafee stinger page. (stinger is an emergency anti-virus tool that scans for about 47 of the most common/recent viruses) oh and microsoft have released an anti-spyware program here.

To Ugrade Or Not Upgrade that is the question

To Ugrade Or Not Upgrade that is the question?

Wether it is better, to leave things that aren't broke alone. Or to insert some more memoery only.

Heres what started the thought process, Ram for sale on trade me, another link

I run a Linux box as the server / gateway / firewall / bandwidth throttle / web server / network sniffer, plus it does seti.
It currently has 512Meg of ram, a 40 Gig 5400rpm HDD, and a Celeron 1.2 cpu 100Mhz FSB 256Meg cache.

Or should I go the whole hogg. I have mother boards comming out of my ears. I'm sure I could find a suitable socket A mother board, maybe even for a newer 333 FSB Sempron cpu.

AMD Sempron 2400+
Or AMD Athlon XP2000+ the advantage there being I know I have a working mother board for one of those.

And 2 lots of 512MB PC3200 DDR400 RAM

Monday, January 03, 2005

2004 mp3 players

2004 was a good year for mp3 players: starting with the rumour of a mini iPod. Later they decided to give the old ipod a hard drive upgrade and a colour screen and call it iPod Photo, (nice if you want to view slideshows on tv).
Creative, iRiver, philips, rio also produce stand alone small attractive mp3 players, some even do video:


linkcompanynamecapacitypricespecial features
linkCreativeZen Touch20gb169.99
linkCreativeZen Xtra30gb169.99
linkCreativeZen Micro5gb169.99(multiple colours)
linkCreativeMuVo TX FM512mb99.99tuner, voice recorder
linkmpioHD2005gb169.99tuner, voice recorder
linkSonyNW-HD320gb219.99
linkSonyNW-HD120gb199.99(not quite an mp3 player?)
linkSonyNW-E991gb139.99
linkiRiver20GB20gb199.99tuner, voice recorder
linkiRiverH320 Lite30gb219.99colour, tuner, encoder
linkiRiverH-14040gb239.99tuner, voice recorder
linkiRiveriFP-795512mb129.99tuner, voice recorder, alarm
linkiRiveriFP-895512mb129.99same as 795, only curvier
linkPhilipsHDD0702gb127.6tuner.
linkPhilipsKey015512mb139.9931g, small
linkArchosAV20020gb319.99colour, video.
linkAiwaHZ-WS20001.5gb hdd121.99shock proof'
linkRioKarma20gb189.99
linkRioNitrus1.5gb hdd119.99tuner


And finally, if you want cheap, small, light, virtually unlimited storage*.. you can go for integrated memory card readers that also do mp3 playback (thanks to josh, as I didn't know this category existed.. definitely good for cheap):

here is one:
link DigitFab DBHSL Silver Aluminium (req. SD/MMC) £22.77 from microdirect.

another: link
HAMA DMP-100 (req. SD/MMC card), with headset, £29 from pixmania.co.uk.

a third: link Pocki 5 in 1 reader, £35.24 fom ebuyer.

and finally: link
ebuyer 7 in 1 reader, £17.62 from ebuyer.

So, if you had to choose between something that can display photos on a tidgy screen (ipod photo, £399, apple), or a vivitar hdd video recorder for £292.58 from microdirect, what would be more fun??

2004 processors progress to 90nm

2004: the year of 90nm processors:
In 2004, people like Intel (pentium 4, 115w, 3.6ghz), IBM ('G5'/PowerPC 970FX 24w, 2.5ghz) and AMD (opteron, 110-150w, 2.2ghz?) made faster processors with 90nm process, meaning faster computers for everyone, but barely any profit, and we're still waiting for chips from transmeta (Efficeon, 1.6ghz), sony (cell, 65nm or 90nm, for playstation 3) and VIA (Esther/C7, 2ghz, 3w, 800mhz fsb)

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Compy 386??

Compy 386?? strongbad's computer gets a virus. in the one after this he gets a laptop - you can click the screen and it does the thing like on real laptops when you press the screen on a real laptop or tft screen.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Tea Review - Tea Reviews and News

Another new USB powered cup warmer - this one looks very neat with a base that heats the bottom of the cup - Tea Review - Tea Reviews and News

Happy New Year

Happy new year! Welcome to 2005! Has anyone tried 'Advanced Browser' - it's only a 1.03mb download, has tabbed browsing, and popup blocking - might be worth a try. link here. Although it's just an IE 'wrapper' so to speak - and apparently Maxthon is a better IE wrapper - they're both going to have all the same insecurities and bugs as IE though - but might be worth trying if you still prefer IE over firefox.