The best freeware games of 2007

Retro Atari Laptop looks great

Dudes turn an Atari 1500XL into a cool looking laptop.

Free utility to monitor and report hard drive health

Tonight it looked like more hard-drive woes at Phil's house. They seem to have gone away after switching a drive to a different SATA channel, but, as a man with a very poor back-up strategy in place (i.e. almost no back-ups whatsoever) this sort of thing scares me a bit. Have found a utility that can display information that your hard-drive reports to the computer using SMART. It's free. Clickety click.

Christmas shopping... (real shops vs online shopping)

Maplin have some impressive deals on lots of stuff, a lot of it on special offer, half price car speakers, powerballs for £10 (vs £15 at amazon), and lots of other gadgety gift type things. They also seem to have the cheapest twin pack of Mini Remote Control Cars at £15.

If you're looking for paper, for example print your own A6 greeting cards, then staples have the best range, way better than PC World, they also have a surprisingly number of winter car things for really cheap (like de-icer and washer fluid for £1.49). 4gb Sandisk pen drives are £20 at Staples vs £15 at Amazon.

If you're looking for ink for your printer, then sites online like mx2 are still way cheaper, but if you have to buy it in a store then some supermarkets like Tesco / Sainsburys are often cheaper than PC World / Staples.

The Simpsons movie / Bourne Ultimatum DVDs are cheaper at Sainsburys, at £8.75 (vs £10 at Tesco, and £12 at play.com).

Tesco have Kodak digital cameras with optical zoom for £50, which is the same price you'll pay for a similar Samsung camera from Amazon (although admittedly Amazon have an infinitely better range of budget digital cameras and much cheaper memory cards as well).

Tesco are giving customers a £5 voucher for use when they spend £50 or more.

Forget the Wii, why not buy a Pleo instead, only £249!

Have you seen any good deals?

new cat

 

If you need another reason why you shouldn't eat at McDonalds...

then this is a pretty convincing argument. Many McDonalds car parks will now charge you £125 if you spend more than 45 minutes in the car park! If you feel like complaining about this, then here's the McDonalds contact page.

Build your own engine...

Haynes sell a "working" build your own engine for £25.

"Build a realistic working model of a combustion engine. Includes light and sound features, light up spark plugs and moving pistons, valvegear and fan belt. Includes a 'Haynes Manual'"

99p earphones from woolworths...

They look like ipod copies, but they actually sound really good!

Of course you should spend £200 on a fancy keyboard

You can edit the images on each key using software. Imagine that. Coo wee, wow.

Biodiesel: Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Well, no, apparently biodiesel isn't the solution you're looking for, and it's bad, apparently. But on-line TV is good, and getting better, especially in the UK.

Space watch of the future...

but now.

Firefox 3 is online, in beta and available for download.

एए-फी

Source

Eye-Fi is going to revolutionise your photography. Instead of taking photos and forgetting about them, having them nestle on your memory card for six months and then you wonder what on Earth they are, this SD card has a WiFi chip which will automatically route them to wherever you want to send them, via any wireless access point.

At the moment I blog photos to my MSN space using my HTC TyTN II by opening the photo and selecting "Send to your space". This needs a Windows Live account and a Windows Mobile, connected device. This card will automate this process and do it to any supported blog or account, without proprietary software and via ANY connection in range.

The future of photoblogging just got MUCH more interesting.

Giveaway of the day

It's an interesting little site, where you can download software titles for free, but each one just for one specific day. After that, they're regular full price software. I've only just discovered it, so heaven knows what the software quality is normally like, but perhaps worth a look.

There's also a site that gives away a game everyday, here:
http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/

TV on the Internet...

Things are getting better. Hooray!

Link

Lemmy, Jack Black, Rob Halford and more are all v oicing a new game featuring a roadie for a death metal band.

If you thought your blog was well optimised and fared well, then it seems Google would like a word with you. They've reset their algorithm and destroyed search rankings of cheaters and fiddlers.

New Mac OS X

Details here - appears to add virtual desktops (4 of them, like linux, and "Virtual Desktop Manager" for Windows), a new way of viewing images/documents, and a timeline feature, and webcam face distortion software, kind of bad timing to be releasing this feature surely?

Did you know Stephen Fry is a total gadget nut? He and Douglas Adams were early adopters for anything by Apple and they were Usenet users even before it was fashionable. His blog has all sorts of gadgets reviewed.

something happened.

generally nothing much happens. you know, nothing interesting, or groundbreaking, or new really happens. sure quad core happened, and is great, but generally, apart from that, nothing much happens, everything is generally an evolution of something before hand, we had a 90bhp car, then next year they released a 95bhp car etc etc. but then this happened, they reckon they've found out the function of the appendix!!!!

Looking for a cheap A4 Photo Printer?

If you're looking for a cheap A4 photo printer - then these two seem pretty good.

Home 2 Rome

We're off to home 2 rome! If you feel like giving some money to charity, then you can do that here. More details on Facebook!

If you were an early adopter of the Apple Lisa then Steve Jobs will compensate you to the tune of $7000.

Seriously.

Link

Think you're a big shot? Help UK with it's sperm shortage.

Al Gore was right...

the end of the world is nigh!!!!!

Free bigmacs...

buy one get one free - printable voucher.

New Apple iPods etc

ipod shuffle (new colours), ipod nano (4gb, 8gb, video, 2" screen), ipod classic (80gb, 160gb, video, 2.5" screen), ipod touch - (8gb, or 16gb, 3.5" screen, wifi, like an iphone but without the phone).

all the details on www.apple.com

Edit - The Archos 204 looks pretty sweet, 20gb, £106, colour screen, tiny.

YA RLY.

Link

Tracking the Voyager probes with 30 year old tech - cool or what?

Did you know that Google Earth has a hidden flight simulator? Here are details and instructions.

BBC iPlayer...

Anyone else signed up for this yet? Sign up here seems okay so far. A bit awkward, you need one logon to get to the iplayer programs list, then another logon to download your chosen programs. Video quality seems pretty decent and plays okay full screen.

... I've given up on Joost. But still use 4OD and 4live.

Coffee explained...

Burnt Face Man episode six is now online.

If you weren't old enough...

to know what all the fuss was about with the "Bionic Man", then never fear, you can watch the Bionic Woman instead. Hooray!

More than 3GB of RAM a waste of time...

Apparently having more than 3GB of RAM is a complete waste of time (unless you're running a 64bit OS and 64bit applications!)... and worse still if you do have more than 3gb of RAM, and a whopping 512mb gfx card, then the gfx card will use up 512mb of your ram! Scary unpleasant stuff*

* especially for someone like me who has bought extra ram to make his new PC have 4gb in total!

USB Cassette Desk

Twin tape deck with USB socket on the back lets you convert all your tapes to MP3... mmm quality.

The IT Crows Returns this week...

The IT Crowd returns at the end of this week, you can watch in on 4OD. Fans of Alan Partridge may be interested to know that Saxondale returns on Thursday.

Link

The top 10 media devices that do freakin' everything that you'll never get you hands on because they are only available in Asia OH WHY OH WHY DOESN'T OUR TECH DO THIS STUFF?!?!?!?!?!

For fellow Google Apps and Windows Mobile users like me, as well as owners of Blackberry, Palm devices, iPod and iPhones, here is software which will synchronise your device with Google calendar.

It isn't freeware unfortunately but it looks like good value on the face of it. It will also synchronise with Outlook, Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise and has Vista compatibility. It will also support wireless synchronisation very shortly.

Bored of SETI? Try Einstein @ Home.

Interview with Richard Branson at Engadget

An interesting interview with Richard Branson about the launch of Virgin America. It also covers Virgin Mobile, Music sales and the flight industry worldwide.

Simian Mobile Disco... "New Rave"

Apparently Simian Mobile Disco are "New Rave" (whatever that is) - if you want a taster of what that's like, then why not go over to b00mb0x.org and get "remnants mix" by a chap I work with. The mix, and Simian Mobile Disco, seem to be very good, so much so that I might have to buy Simian Mobile Disco's album, I have a feeling that it's going to be better than the Chemical Brothers' latest album.

In other news, I recently found Kings X - Gretchen Goes to Nebraska on CD on ebay :) yay!

Chocolate Rain

A series of YouTube videos, to viewed ideally in sequence.

Chocolate Rain
Chocolate Rain (Spoof)
Chocolate Rain (Remix)

I hope you will be deeply moved.

Link

Scratched CD/DVD? Bananas.

Anyone else got Pownce? If not I have six invites for anyone interested.

Live in the Now! The future is here!

Intel Core2Duo Quad core 2.4ghz CPUs are now £146 (ex vat) !!! (from scan.co.uk) So if you want a system based on this, then you're looking at around £330 - £380 upgrade costs to get CPU (£146), Mobo (£40 intel), 2gbs DDR2 ram (Crucial £32 ea), Case (£35 Aopen + 500+ Watt powersupply £30), Gefore 8600 PCI-express gfx (£65), excluding vat. You can use your HD etc from your current system, but if you're like me, then you've got an AGP card, and DDR 1 memory that you can't use.

How fast are your reactions?

Shoot the sheep to find out.

I found this by using "Stumble Upon" - it basically asks you a few questions about what you like, then you install the toolbar (firefox or ie), and click "Stumble" and it takes you to a random website that you're (hopefully) interested in. You then vote whether you like it or not, and presumably it then finds more websites that you're interested in.

Optimum Groovy Lemons

Original Bumble Bee Tuna Advert
A smashing tribute to the advert
A not quite as polished rock tribute

Obviously, don't think the advert ever screened in the UK, but I think it's easy to tap into the excitement over the advert nevertheless.

30 years of apple evolution

big picture shows 30 years of Apple evolution. via gizmodo.

This is awesome...

this is awesome. this is awesome in a completely different way. there's another example of awesome-ness here! another awesome video here.

Earphones...

Do they need "breaking-in" like other stereo equipement? I have recently bought a number of new MP3 players* and earphones (3 sets of earphones in total), and the moment I've got them out of the box and used them, they've sounded complete crap, lacking bass, was too much treble, and no depth. And compared to my 9 month old pair of ipod earphones, they've all sounded crap... yet a new pair that I've had around a month now, have started sounding much better than they did previously... is this because I've been using them more? or are the other new ones worse? All the brand new earphones have sounded much worse in comparison... do they need breaking in? Are the free earphones / cheap earphones generally always crap?

* just got the new Creative Zen Stone Plus 2gb MP3 Player and have written about it on the joshwaller.co.uk blog.

Nokia reinvents Rubiks Magic Puzzle as mobile phone

Nokia have released the new Nokia 7500 Prism in China. It reminded me of the Rubiks Magic Puzzle did anyone else have one of these? (more info here on Rubiks Cubes etc). In other news Mexican businessman richer than Bill Gates.

allofmp3.com shutdown, new one springs up...

boing boing have details... allofmp3.com is now shut, but the credits etc have been moved over to a new site run by the same people apparently.

Prince releasing latest album free with Daily Mail

Prince is planning on giving his newest album away for free with Daily Mail, record companies and shops are freaking out saying crazy things like

"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday!" (via boingboing)

Linkage (Pops)

94 pieces of great free software.

Pop Goes My Heart

Watched the film "Music & Lyrics" on Friday. It's quite good so long as you like Hugh Grant. Anyway, there's a slight 80s theme in the film, and as part of the deal you get this wonderfully cheesy song infecting your brain. Thought I'd share it with you boys...

Take Action: Tell Steve Jobs to Unlock the iPhone!

This one's a bit strange, normally Act For Change campaign for things like, oh I don't know, the constitution, and closing Bush Administration's prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but you know, this is obviously just as important, the iphone is locked to AT&T!

Behold, the first man to by an iPhone:



YA RLY.

Hydra Console Game Dev. Kit

"Written by best-selling game development author Andre' LaMothe, the included book is your complete guide to developing games, graphics, and media applications for the Propeller Powered Hydra Game console. The book assumes you have only basic programming experience. It covers all aspects of the Propeller chip from its architecture to using the Propeller Tool IDE for programming in both Spin and assembly language, with numerous demo programs to use as starting points for your own games.

Included on the CD is all the source code and executables for all the included games, demos, tools and examples. Additionally, "Hydra Tiny BASIC" based on the "Tiny BASIC" specification originally published in "Dr. Dobb's Journal" in 1975 is included." (via boing boing). better picture here.

Source (Pops)

What to do with gadgets dropped in water?

ग्रेतेस्त एक्षेर्किसे विडो एवर Made

This could be the greatest work of genius ever.

गूगल गोएस ग्रीन

Source (Pops).

"Google said Tuesday it is getting in on the development of electric vehicles, awarding $1 million in grants and inviting applicants to bid for another $10 million in funding to develop plug-in hybrid electric vehicles capable of getting 70 to 100 miles per gallon."

Bravo Google!.

Bernard Manning's Dead

Obviously you probably knew that. My feeling has always been that I probably quite liked him, but I can't say I've actually seen that much of his stuff - strangely doesn't seem to turn up on TV so often. So I thought I might investigate to see whether his comedy actually was racist or just didn't fall into line with the way the politically correct brigade want us all to think/speak. Was he funny? For the entire span of his life? Never? Was his comedy overshadowed in later years? If you would like to accompany me on this arguably pointless journey, here's a YouTube link to some a selection of his stuff:

You tube search for "Bernard Manning"

And my first conclusion so far: He certainly didn't necessarily know comedy genius when he saw it. Here he his laying into The Mighty Boosh in a way that only a man who didn't get it would:

Click

Download and keep video from YouTube and similar sites

Keepvid.com allows you to download an .flv (flash video) file of YouTube and that.  There are .flv players and convertors (to more useful formats) out there too, which can be handy.

Here's something interesting to try it on, if you move swiftly (it's only up on YouTube for a week, apparently):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/06/18/do1804.xml 

हाई तेच Urinals

Source (pops)

Hydraulics, self cleaning with games built in. Is there anything they can't do? Also for a giggle check out the Google ads.

Safari now for the PC

Apple have released the Safari browser for the PC. They reckon it's the quickest web browser available and have graphs to prove it and everything. Although we all (should) know that you can use graphs to prove anything... They've updated it due to the security flaws.

Scorched 3D

Think it might've been mentioned before, not sure, but just stumbled across it again. It's Scorched Earth (Scorched Tanks on the Amiga) in 3D. It might be good - the 2d Amiga one certainly gave many happy hours, anyway. It's also very free.

Free Automated Backup Software

EZBack-it-up recommended by the Sunday Times, it comes with a built in scheduler, great if you just want to copy from one place to another, for example an external USB hard drive. Alternatively mozy.com offer 2GB of automatic backup for free.

Mr Lee CatCam

Lots of Photos taken by a cat as it walks around living its cat life.

Surface computing

I'm sure I've seen something about this before, but it was more of a serious/techie type of video.  This is Microsoft trying to impress us with the possibilities, and, well - actually, if it doesn't blue screen it might be really good!

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/30/surface_computing

Artpad - it's great, it lets you do things like this (ie. draw yourself). Post your version here, draw one, click save and send, then "i don't want to send to friends, but i was a link instead" to get your url.
One by Matt: here.

Plasma Pong

it's a really good version of pong. you should play it.

england play football

Albania, a country somewhere in Europe. England, another country, to the left of Europe. They've sent their best footballing men and women, to Burnley, to have a bit of a kick-about. And people from all over England might just try and visit to watch. (the match occurs at 8pm local time this friday, and will involve England's 'B' team - Whatever happened to the A-Team?).
Also, one of the Albanian players got a bit excited in Clayton-Le-Moors and found the local staff to be a little too attractive - more details from here.

The final word in Mac vs. PC? (South Park stylee)

Kodak apparently not bothering with "cheap" digital cameras anymore...

but they are going to make CMOS sensors for mobile phones. kind of a shame really as "Kodak Moments" were part of life, and we've all had Kodak camera's at some point in our life. maybe the future of digital photographs is on you mobile phone?

anyway, it's worth watching this Kodak video, sounded like they were pretty fired up for digital cameras, but then made cheap ones with no profit.

PS - They've got a sale on now - lots of cheap cameras that might be great for your mum, or as someone's first digital camera. Although there's a number of digital camera sales happening over this bank holiday weekend so keep your eye out for bargains :)

bigger and faster

Just thought someone might find this interesting.. firstly, IBM are going to make 4.7ghz chips, which could run stuff like linux or apple macs or if they got really popular, maybe even windows. link

And also there are now 1000gb hard drives (hitachi) and 300gb laptop hard drives (fujitsu). I think that's really fantastic.

Creative Zen Stone MP3 Player Review

So I went and bought a Creative Zen Stone read all about it.

While Seti / Boinc is down...

If anyone wants to join the Hexus Folding at Home Team, then you can do that using the above link, they even have some friendly forums as well.

Resource to help kids learn to code

Back in the early 80's, if you were lucky enough to have a home computer, you switched on and if you could be bothered looking at the books that came in the box, you had everything you needed to take your first steps in computer programming/becoming a social outcast. Now you fire up Windows, and by default there's almost no coding tools installed, so if there's no-one around to show you how, the chances are you won't. Maybe you'll learn HTML, but HTML isn't really much like coding for the most part unless you dabble with Javascript.

So this BBC article points to a few interesting resources. First there's Scratch, which sounds like it's pretty much 100% visual. Then there's HacketyHack which is apparently all about learning Ruby, which I gather is probably quite an interesting language.

Lemmings for Windows Shareware and Digital Cameras

and a cheap ultra compact digital camera £105 (or £10 off with google checkout) - and you get an ultra compact 7 megapixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom lens, 2.5" screen, and MPEG4 DIVX video recording...

or perhaps you'd like to spend £23 on an "Alba / Bush" 2 megapixel digital camera... (it's based on the Minolta E2300 from like 7 years ago...), there's quite a lot on there under £40. But ASDA had the some of the best deals, the Canon Powershot something (4mp, 4x optical) for £40. Although if you do want a great camera for around £100, then you can't go wrong with the Fuji F20, or any Canon.

Seti at home is down

Hi All,

Just a short note for you boinc with seti users.. seti has had a machine down since may 1st, and the machine is the one that gives you new units. So they think sun will be bringing them a new machine as i write this and on wednesday (that might be quite soon) they will have it back up again.

The only reason I hadn't noticed till now was that I have been having my own difficulties with a semi reliable ntl telewest internet connection.

Matt.

Creative Zen Stone

A cute 1gb mp3 player for £27 - (compares favourably to the £55 apple want for their cheapest player) - and it's small enough that you can use it as a keyring / keychain! details here. I want one now. Anyone want to buy a 30gb ipod?

He's got a beard!

I'm not joking.  He's genuinely got a beard.  Plus he's done an amusing song thing, with electro backing, which is great because electro is the best form of audiable music in the world - including custard doughnuts, which are probably a form of cake as it turns out.  Dan le sac VS scroobius pip "Thou Shalt always Kill" isn't it?  Seven hairdressers out of ten I say.

The IT Crowd Series 2

is currently being filmed! Hoorah!

http://www.christiandatingforfree.com/

Haven't checked it over properly, yet.  It appears to be U.S. based, but international.  Free has to be good though.

Mouse Trapper - another device aimed at RSI suffers

I've taken a brief look, and from my experience of RSI, I suspect it's not going to be a great help, but still - you never know, and I have to commend their efforts for trying.  If you take an interest they might just give you a free mug, which is nice of them too.

The Idiot Test

It's a bit of fun, but it is liable to insult you at some point along the way.

"Real" TV on the Internet

Channel 4 Live - "Simulcast", lets you watch C4 made programs, like Peep show, live at the same time they are on C4, small video size, full length programs.
Channel 4 On Demand - download C4 special program to your PC for small videos of stuff that was on TV, lots of free content, full length programs, as well as programs that cost 99p, shame the video size is so small.
Joost (beta) - Download their program to your PC / Mac, watch DVD sized videos in a window or full screen from specially selected programs, like clips from Fifth Gear, etc. Impressive, but limited programs at the moment.

Huge oceans underneath Earth’s surface caused global flood in times of Noah

It would seem there's probably more water knocking around on planet earth than is immediately apparent.  This might be relevant in sussing out some of the finer details of what might've happened with the big flood and what have you.

Spare CPUs

I have a load of spare Socket 370 CPUs if anyone is interested. They are just gathering dust in my house because I don't have any Socket 370 (Celeron / Pentium III) systems anymore... If anyone wants any please let me know...

Celeron 1.2/100
Pentium III 800/133
Celeron 566/66
Celeron 600/66

The older slot 1 boards may not like the 1.2 or the 133 P3, but most socket 370 boards should take them ok. PS - Phil, can you tell us the benefits / differences between myspace and facebook? ie what's the point joining facebook if you're already on myspace.

"Just push the big red button"

Realpix have released (announced) a digital camera to meet the "special needs" of Real Estate agents in America. Details here. The Faq has some great questions and answers:

"Q: What are these 'special needs' addressed by the RealPIX?"
"Q: My camera store guy says I need lots of megapixels. A: Really."

R.E.M. - Their finest hour

Everyone likes R.E.M. .  Yes, they've done some distinctly average songs at times.  Yes, they sometimes come over as a bit boring, but with moments like this one, they ought to be very proud of what they've achieved.  Lovely stuff.

BookButler.com

I don't know if you guys are the same, but I get through techie books like Tom gets through dead animals.  Well, today, I found a frankly amazing search engine.  It's like Kelkoo or Froogle, but specifically for books.  Armed with a title or ISBN I've been able to find some out of print techie books at shockingly good prices, and it even gave me the postage costs to the UK in it's summary.  Can't say if it'd be good for other kinds of books, but nobody reads fiction anyway, surely?

http://us.bookbutler.com/

apple make cheap apple

Hey, somehow, apple made a system with pentium M computer at 1ghz and 256mb of ram and a 40gb hard drive, and with a little work, it will run os X. Well done. It costs 199 pounds in the uk or 300 dollars in the USA. graphics accelleration currently not supported, and not sure how easy it is to upgrade the ram. Link. Also Engadget have done a benchmark.

Desktop Tower Defense

Again I haven't actually tried it myself, but I'm told this Flash game is really addictive and terribly, terribly good.  Maybe it is.

Messenger Plus Live!

I haven't tried it yet, but I've been recommended this (non Microsoft) extension to MSN Messenger.  Looks like you can program it to expand short text snippets, so maybe it will help eliminate such tragedies as "lol" and "lmao".  I can hope.  Apparently it can do tabbed windows as well, for when you've got multiple conversations going on (surely nobody does that!).

Free Hugs Campaign. (music by Sick Puppies album out April3)

More info: http://www.freehugscampaign.org and http://www.myspace.com/freehugscampaign

The Proclaimers feat. Brian Potter & Andy Pipkin - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)

Apparently will feature on Now 66 out on Monday.

Andy Pipkin: Sits in a wheelchair, Little Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Pipkin

Brian Potter: Sits in a wheelchair, Phoenix Nights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_potter

Presumably will be released as a single too.

Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVRRcJiPbwU

Wibble wobble, wibble wobble, jelly on a plate

Playstation 3 Most Powerful Supercomputer in the World

(potentially) So far 13000 ish Playstation 3s have started doing folding at home producing 338 TFLOPS - more than double the TFLOPS produced by 160,000 ish PCs. If 18,000 more PS3s take part then the folding at home project will outperform the World's most powerful supercomputer and will produce 1 PFLOP. (Latest stats here - they've almost reached 1 Petaflop, and are currently producing 900 TFLOPS!)

Symantec tells world that Windows is most secure OS

"According to Internet News, Symantec found that Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored in the last six months of 2006.

During this time more than 39 vulnerabilities were found in the operating system and Vole took an average of 21 days to fix them. While this is still more than last year it still knocked the spots off the competition." from the inquirer

The Show with ZeFrank is over :(

You can watch it here. It was a year long video show. LATimes article here.

Nathan Barley Second Series?

Trailer here...

New series of Peep Show April 13th C4 9pm

Fun with Athiesm

A friend sent me this, here big chunk of text, with a few interesting thoughts on Atheism in.  It might have a few interesting points, and also hog the page somewhat!:

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the
problem science has with God, The Almighty.


He asks one of his new students to stand and .....


Prof: So you believe in God?
Student: Absolutely, sir.

Prof: Is God good?
Student: Sure.


Prof: Is God all-powerful?
Student: Yes.


Prof: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal
him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God
didn't.
How is this God good then? Hmm?

(Student is silent.)

Prof: You can't answer, can you? Let's start again! , young fellow. Is
God good?
Student: Yes.

Prof: Is Satan good?
Student: No.

Prof: Where does Satan come from?
Student: From...God...

Prof: That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: Yes.

Prof: Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything.
Correct?
Student: Yes.

Prof: So who created evil?


Student does not answer.


Prof: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these
terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student: Yes, sir.

Prof: So, who created them?


Student has no answer.


Prof: Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe
the world around you. Tell me, son...Have you ever seen God?
Student: No, sir.

Prof: Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: No, sir.

Prof: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God?
Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student: No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.

Prof: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student: Yes.

Prof: According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol,
science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student: Nothing. I only have my faith.

Prof: Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.


Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof: Yes.

Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.

Student: No sir. There isn't.


(The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)


Student: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat,
mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have
anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no
heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing
as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat.
We cannot measure cold.

Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the
absence of it.


(There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre.)


Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as
darkness?


Prof: Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?

Student: You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of
something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light,
flashing light....But if you have no light constantly, you have
nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? In reality, darkness
isn't. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker,
wouldn't you?

Prof: So what is the point you are making, young man?

Student: Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Prof: Flawed? Can you explain how?

Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue
there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You
are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can
measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses
electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully
understood either one.

To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact
that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the
opposite of life: just the absence of it.

Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved
from a monkey?

Prof: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes,
of course, I do.


Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?


(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize
where the argument is going.)


Student: Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at
work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going
endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a
scientist but a preacher?


(The class is in uproar.)


Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the
Professor's brain?


(The class breaks out into laughter.)


Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's
brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so.
So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable,
demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir.

With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?


(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face
unfathomable.)


Prof: I guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.

Student: That is it sir... The link between man & god is FAITH. That
is all that keeps things moving & alive.

Tom Green - The Bum Bum Song

It's good.  Perhaps not utter genius, but good.  Set mind to "insane/childish" and press play.

IT Crowd Cut Scenes

The God Who Wasn't There

Haven't heard anything about this film in the UK yet, but maybe it'll find it's way over here eventually.  It sounds like it's probably in a documentary format, and, much like the Da Vinci Code, will presumably bring a broad grin to the face of anyone wishing back up their belief that Christianity is historical hog-wash without thinking very hard and remain entirely unimpressive to the rest of us. Looks like viewers will be treated to the mindless spoutings of athiest fundamentalist Richard Dawkins (who presumably is a huge embarassment to athiests the world over!), although most of us in the UK have probably already seen him do his thing on various TV documentaries.

According to imdb.com the film kicks off with the narrative lines
"The Earth revolves around the Sun. But it wasn't always that way. The Sun used to revolve around the Earth. It was like that for hundreds of years, until it was discovered to be otherwise, and even for a few hundred years after that. But, ultimately, after much kicking and screaming, the Earth did, in fact, begin to revolve around the Sun. Christianity was wrong about the solar system. What if it's wrong about something else, too? This movie's about what happened when I went looking for Jesus."

Perhaps they're saying that culturally Christianity had it wrong at some point in history, which may possibly be true, but as far as I'm aware the bible doesn't paint a picture of a sun revolving around the earth.  Impossible to say without actually watching it, but it -does- sound like it's going to be another film aimed squarely at people with little interest in truth!

Sir Mix a Lot - Baby Got Back.

I love the internet. If only for the fact that it enabled the discovery of Baby Got Back by Sir Mix a Lot. The Christian version Baby got Bible is here. And there's even this slightly strange Cover version synced to the original video.

See my vest, see my vest, Oh please, won't you see my vest.

Atari Jaguar Tempest 2000 Emulator

The best version of Tempest was Tempest 2000. The best version of Temptest 2000 was only available on the Atari Jaguar. (all the versions on other systems were just bad ports or something like that). So to experience Tempest 2000 at it's best you either need a: A working Atari Jaguar Games console OR you can get an awesome Atari Jaguar Emulator written specifically to emulate Tempest 2000 and the Virtual Light Machine! (The Virtual Light Machine was only available if you had both the Atari Jag and ADD-ON Atari Jag CD unit...) ps - the Tempest 2k ROM is here.

Stuff I've recently written...

Stuff I've written recently (in the last week or so) that you might be interested in:

Focus on Imaging 2007 Show Report - Yearly Photographic / Imaging Show in Birmingham NEC.
Free Monkey with PG Tips. It's the monkey from ITV Digital, but with PG Tips.
DIY Alloy Wheel Repair / Refurbishment with pics. Step by step instructions.
The new Rover 45 / Roewe 450 Pictures and Speculation. Will the UK accept Rover's new manufacturers?
Pentax Optio W20 Review - currently the cheapest waterproof and dustproof digital camera - and pretty decent too!

March the 3rd : Total Lunar Eclipse

Cool thing to happen on my birthday: total lunar eclipse apparently we're in a good position to see it.

Second Life

It's like a computer game but more boring. Or it's like real life but more boring. Either way: Toothpastefordinner give you a good guide to Second Life.

All about hard drives

Google use thousands and thousands of hard drives. They have shared their findings with some interesting conclusions about the reliability of hard drives:

"First of all, Mean Time Between Failure rates mean nothing.
•Secondly, SMART hardware monitoring missed 36% of all uh-ohs.
•Third, overworked drives fail similarly to standard drives after the first year.
•Fourth, Hard drive age means less than you think.
•Fifth, failure does not go up when temperatures are higher than usual (unless super high.)"

Unfortunately they don't tell us who manufactures the most reliable drives... found at Gizmodo

Fun game: Photograph superman

Another Good Money Tips Site

Obviously there's Money Saving Expert as well, which is great, but you probably already know about that.

The Sunday Times On-line Driving Section

The Sunday Times Online is still stupidly arranged, making finding all the car articles annoyingly difficult (based on guesswork mainly, guessing that the title "If it ain’t broke ... oh, fix it anyway" is one of Jeremy Clarkson's articles about cars). Anyway, here's all the car articles I can find:

Jeremy Clarkson on the new Mini (If it ain't broke... oh, fix it anyway)
New Cars New Ford Mondeo
New Smart ForTwo
Citroen C2 Rally Car (the shopping car that went mad)
Wheel to wheel combat - all about 4x4s and how they are killing the world (YAWN! luxury cars and MPVs can be just as bad, and there are many other things polluting the world more, so shutup already!)
Used Cars: Subaru Legacy Outback
Car Clinic / Letters, Car Letters

... last week.

Widgets in Opera

Opera is a fun, free web-browser (and apparently pretty short on security vulnerabilities), but what I hadn't realised until ten minutes ago, was that it has this "Widgets" menu. If you use it and select "add widgets", you get the option to download a whole load of smart little mini-applications. Here's a few that sounded immediately interesting...

Video downloader - allows you to download videos from YouTube and maybe other places too. It works too, so now you can grab that advert with Gary in! You have to use a .flv player application, though.
Bit-torrent search utility - seems to be able to find quite a lot of good stuff.
Circular tetris - a nice variation.

N

N is a game.  You can play it. 

The Sunday Times

The sunday times online is more difficult to find now that they've redesigned the website, and it's also much more difficult to find the "ingear" (aka car) section of the paper online... probably not finished on it yet, or perhaps they want you to buy the paper instead of reading it online... anyway, here's some of the motoring content from today's sunday times... (I'm not sure if it's all of it, as it's mixed in with "life and style"... I hope the main papers not so badly organised! - see what other people are saying here)

New cars: Volvo V70 and Citroen C-Crosser SUV
Second Hand Cars (Jason Dawe): VW Phaeton
Car Clinic: Letters
Jeremy Clarkson: New Lexus LS460
Article: Death by Supercar

Get a Mac Adverts Updated

Apple's "Get a Mac" adverts have been updated to show a PC running the new Vista - the new one's called "Security" - and "Surgery" is about the PC being upgraded to Vista.

"In a sketch clearly aimed at exposing just one of the weak spots in Windows Vista, Apple's ad is critical of Microsoft's intrusive User Account Control (UAC) element, and of Windows security across the board. The ad features a third character who represents the UAC. The third character interrupts the flow of communication between Mac and PC with a constant string of permission requests."

All the UK Adverts are here, there are more than I thought.

The next Tempest

Jeff Minter is working on the next Tempest... for the XBOX 360... and it's looking very pretty...

WiiJing

Using two Nintendo Wii remote controls to DJ: Video on Engadget full details on DJWiiJ.com

The Flapcam Concept Folding Digital Camera

the flapcam at image-acquire - a prototype / concept - it folds up so that the lens and screen are protected. seriously I had this idea about a month ago and even sketched some designs (as shown here) my version allows you to use it folded so it's small, or (as shown in the middle) in a self-portrait mode where the lens and screen are pointing at you. My version was called the "Slim Shot" :)

obvisously it's already been done by Olympus with the IR-500, but shhh, lets pretend that never happened! :)

Apple vs PC Adverts UK Style featuring Mitchell and Webb (aka Peep Show Guys)

http://www.apple.com/uk/getamac/ quite funny, but blatantly Mac biased and partially annoying because of Apple's view that there are NEVER ever any problems with Macs, whereas obviously there are.

find-dvd.co.uk - cheap dvds

Ever wanted to find the cheapest place to buy your DVDs - use find-dvd.co.uk - it'll find the cheapest place to buy Simpsons Season 9 - the cheapest is a place called blahdvd.com. Hoorah for the internet. You'll also find nearly all the old seasons are now half-price! Hoorah!

Nelson Colne Blogger Upgraded

This blogs been upgraded to the new google blogger - so you will need to upgrade your account to post here. The forced you to upgrade all the blogs you owned when you logged in meaning you have to now use a google account instead of the old blogger account.

Amiga OS 4

ArsTechnica have reviewed Amiga OS 4. The only problem being that the company that manufactured the hardware (using a G3 processor) doesn't exist anymore.

Addictive Game

so very very very addictive. I think level 37/38 is the highest I got (out of 40 levels).

Blackberries are cool BUT...

Blackberry Pearl's look very cool, and the whole concept of "always on" email, that you can access anytime, anywhere is very useful for some people, but blackberry's are such a pain in the ass to setup and configure in an enterprise (exchange) environment! ARGH!! Hopefully sometime today I'll actually get this blackberry setup and configured and working... it's only taken me 4 hours!!!!! (and it's still not finished.. will it ever get past 92% activation?). More on the sexy looking Blackberry Pearl here.

Apple release the iPhone (PDA) thingy.

"So what we have ended up with is a widescreen, touch screen product that somewhat resembles a slick PDA. At just 11.6mm thick it is the thinnest smartphone in the world and comes with Mac OS X installed as its core operating system! A two megapixel camera makes it onboard along with the anticipated audio and video playback (supported codecs not revealed) and the large 3.5in, 320 x 480 resolution display automatically detects whether the phone is being held in a landscape for portrait position."

Widescreen 3.5" iPod (Video and MP3), Phone, Internet, 2mp Camera, 4gb or 8gb versions available.

More details: Trusted Reviews, Apple iPhone.

Best Teas of 2006!

Tea Review have published their list of the best, the greatest teas of 2006, including the all time best teas. Best Teas of 2006 at Tea Review. For more reviews and tea links have a look at the site - if you'd like to contribute please let me know!

Mixmags Best Tune of 2006

Mixmag says Ame : Rej is THE best tune of 2006. (available here). watch / listen to it on youtube.

In car DVD player 7" screen £299

It will play DVDs, or DVDs full of MP3s (4.7gbs worth), and it fits in a normal sized car stereo hole, and has a 7" screen that comes out of the unit, and when it's closed, the top of the screen has an LCD display so it looks like a normal car stereo! from Halfords half price - I seriously can't believe it's only £299 - it seems like it's so much of a bargain you'd be mad not to buy one - but for the fact that you can buy cars for less than £300.

Car Bibles.com

All you ever wanted to know about car engines, wheels, oil, suspension, brakes etc.