Indonesia Lost World With PICS!

Pictures of the new species found in Indonesia. (Background: They found a hidden "lost" world with 100s of new species) Pretty amazing! There's some good pictures at the national geographic site, but MSN seem to have even more photos... including this cute, cool looking hedgehog thing!



read more | digg story

Me waffling...

If you're interested, I've written a long waffley post about "the death of film" and people's views on film versus digital cameras.

IBM Unveils 4 - 6 GHz Power6 Processor

This sounds very nice - but expensive - and it almost sounds like a shame that IBM and Apple couldn't work together. (Slightly related) The XBOX 360 makes me wonder why Microsoft don't release an awesomely powerful MS PC based on the XBOX360 insides... that would be a funny switch over, Apple switch to Intel, the Windows PC world then switches over to IBM Power6, and Dell switch to AMD... the computer world goes topsy turvy, but you can still open JPEGs!

"Bucking a trend in the chip industry, IBM Corp. said Tuesday its upcoming Power6 microprocessor for servers will run at unprecedented speeds while keeping a lid on power requirements and heat."

read more | digg story (some interesting comments here)

Intel, Apple and the IT Crowd (all via digg)

Intel Game, apparently Apple are abusing Intel, Why Apple really switched to Intel (in favour of PowerPC), and you can now watch the 3rd episode of The IT Crowd*.

* Although I just tried and it wouldn't work for me. Maybe I'll have more luck later.

Opera 9.0 TP2 is out - looks sweet

Opera 9.0 TP 2 supports bittorrent, widgets, and the ability to block content (similar to firefox ad-block), better css support, and many more

read more | digg story

Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 Comes Out Friday!

The Mozilla Organization is set to release a public version of Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 for public testing this Friday! (will it support bittorrent I wonder?)

read more | digg story

Looking for your soul mate?

I've always been of the opinion that yes there is a perfect person out there for you, ie the right person for you is out there, but it doesn't mean they're perfect (because nobody is). Normally seeing Dr. Phil (just the name alone annoys me!) makes me turn away, but for some reason I was reading this, and it's turned out quite interesting:

"What's a soul mate? It's just a term somebody made up, and with it comes some pretty mystical expectations. I've long believed that if you're looking for that perfect partner you're making a big mistake. If you can find an 80 percent fit and hope that you'll grow together on the other 20 percent, you'll find happiness a lot quicker. You wait for a 100 percent partner and you're going to be looking a long time, maybe forever. But if you're okay on the core issues -- children, careers, division of labor, religion, handling in-laws -- then you jump in and handle the other things as they come along." Read it here.

Link

Lego is on the case...

modern worship

Queensgate on the BBC:
hillsongs meet at the dominion theatre, tottenham court road. Queensgate have a new building, which is news to me.

5 things Steve Jobs (apple) has mislead us about. opinion here.

ps - second episode of IT crowd can now be watched here.

Boing Boing: One-quarter of LA's air pollution: made in China

This is funny for a lot of different reasons. America, the number one pollution generator in the World, is complaining that 25% of pollution in LA is from China! Boing Boing: One-quarter of LA's air pollution: made in China

digg, technorati, delicious

anybody fancy explaining them all, or finding out what they're all about, how to use them, how to get traffic from them to your site?

http://www.digg.com/ - "Digg is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do."

http://www.technorati.com/ - uses keywords/tags - "Technorati is the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs."

http://del.icio.us/ - uses tags. keeps your links for you (if you have an account). looks a bit badly designed.

and have you noticed the "bookmark this on del.icio.us" (eg) / "Submit to Digg" / "Technorati Tags" (eg) on blogs?

geekpatrol.ca: Geekbench Comparison

geekpatrol.ca: Geekbench Comparison - they have written a cross platform benchmark program and tested on pretty much all CPUs (including new Mac Intels, Mac G4, Mac G5, Quad G5, AMD64, Intel etc, although it is missing the Dual Core AMD64, and Dual Core Pentium 4)

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP - Windows XP Power toys are really good - for example, one of them "Image Resizer" will resize an image, or a group of selected images, all you need to do is select the image(s) right click, and it's there as a menu option, you can choose to resize to a preset size or a custom size. Especially useful if you want to upload and get 50 digital photos printed for free!

Boing Boing: Drunken gluttons order and eat 100-patty hamburger

Boing Boing: Drunken gluttons order and eat 100-patty hamburger. At "In-N-Out" you can order burgers with as many "pattys" (the meat bit) as you want. These people ordered 100 and then ate the burger!

Look who's back, back again

Apparently, Time are back, bought from the liquidators, Time UK Factory Ltd : : About Us. Scary stuff.

Boing Boing: Music video tells story of Atari's E.T. game debacle

Boing Boing: Music video tells story of Atari's E.T. game debacle. It looks like it's Atari day today, because here's some Atari inspired art (work-safe-ish, cartoon nudity)

Welcome to Llamasoft

Welcome to Llamasoft - Jeff Minter's updated his website, creator of classics such as Llamatron (ST/Amiga), Tempest 2000 (Atari Jaguar) and inventor of the virtual light machine (now featured/copied in iTunes, Winamp*, Windows Media Player) - his latest VLM, Neon, now features in the XBOX 360.

* "I was at a computer show in the US and one of the guys from Nullsoft (winamp) came up to me and apologised for "borrowing" the techniques I'd used on the Jaguar VLM for their own visualisations" link.

BBC NEWS | Business | The world according to Google

BBC NEWS | Business | The world according to Google: "In the 18 months since its stock market flotation, Google has been transformed from a company that prided itself on being simple and effective, into a multi-headed high tech beast which wants to get involved in everything." - Watch this 29 minute documentary online.

Backup your hard drive, automatically

Automatically backup your hard drive data Guide here. Hard Drives dying is fairly common (happened to my laptop hard drive over christmas), so make sure you have a backup somewhere (on a seperate HD, CD, DVD, Internet etc).

(PS - Posts now have title's displayed! early design, another old design, ooh and here's the original from 2002, 2003, and 2004) )

You Want One...

Link

Laser projected keyboard. Frikkin' sharks with frikkin' head attachments not included.

links

links that look good:
Persuasive Games - Disaffected! - have a naff time in this game that mimmicks real life.
1980s Computer history, scans of original brochures and catalogs. (matt might like this the most)
People advertise on the top of buildings for satellite photos simply for google earth.

Blame Bill (Why don't PCs work properly?)

Blame Bill - Wired News: Gates to Comdex: PCs Work Poorly: "Bill Gates admitted it: PCs don't work very well. And he promised to fix things, although it will take him a decade."

Google Pack (background info) is this clever package of software that's great for fresh / new PCs, it gives you 6 months of free anti-virus software, acrobat reader, ad-aware (anti-spyware), google toolbar etc all in one install package, so you only need to click "I accept" once, and don't have to download / install all the programs seperately. Would be nice if it included shockwave/flash player as well though.

Did you hear about the one eyed kitten (picture) that was born and lived a day. It had an eye where the nose was supposed to go. (I've just noticed I've worded this like some kind of crappy joke, it's not a joke.)

microsoft / logitech / kensington trackball reviews

microsoft / logitech / kensington trackball reviews - updated!

Whilst ergonomic solutions to RSI is generally a personal thing as people may find different solutions more or less comfortable compared to other people, this is just a quick guide / review to point out the good and bad bits of the following trackballs:


kensington expert mouse - mechanical + forward/back buttons - big / chunky + big ball means it seems much more precise and controlable compared to the others. still get RSI from too much use.


kensington orbit elite - mechanical + glowing blue ball - small/wobbly on desk - brand new and wheel sometimes seems to stick. Not recommended, doesn't work properly after very little use.

general negative points about kensington: kensington's american website has much more up to date versions of the trackballs compared to the uk/europe version. (ie. optical version of the orbit elite, plus a redesigned more ergonomic version of the 'expert mouse').


logitech marble mouse + optical + forward / back buttons - can still get gunked up with dirt thus slowing down the ball, even though it's optical. Definitely my favourite. Recommended.


microsoft trackball optical + optical + glowing red ball - uses the thumb / seems least controlable / precise out of all of them - seemed to make rsi worse in my thumb.

New Link: zero tension mouse.

MacWorld Keynote Speech Time again, coverage here:
Engadget, Gizmodo (live link), MacRumors, MacNN (started 5pm-ish UK Time).

Expected rumours:
15" Intel ibook, Plasma TV, Shuffle with screen etc

Things announced:
- FM Tuner and remote control for iPod (lets you listen to FM radio through your ipod), $49 (alternatively buy one for £1 from the poundshop!)
- New OS X 10.4.4
- New iLife. New iPhoto with Photocasting. (podcasting for photos, uses RSS)
- New iMac with Dual Core Intel 2.0ghz CPU (in 20" version) Shipping Today - "The new iMac is 2 to 3 times faster than the iMac G5."
- New MacBook Pro - Dual Core Intel 15.4" widescreen LCD. (shipping Feb)

What's impressive here is that, probably last week, dual core Intel PC Laptops were appearing (being announced!), but desktop PCs are/were still stuck with Athlon (dual core available) or (crappy) Pentium 4 CPUs (dual core available) or niche Pentium M (single core chips), whereas now, right now, in a Mac you can get dual core Intel chips (based on the pentium m*)!

* The Pentium M is pretty much the fastest x86 cpu available (or was before they made a dual core version) and is the fastest at SETI, so these dual core versions must ROCK!

Apple.com now updated with full details, pictures and specifications.

Zombie Robot Cockroaches. Link (with picture).

"A research team at Tokyo University is making these bio-bots by lopping off the antennae of regular roaches and replacing them with pulse-emitting electrodes. The researchers then send signals with a remote control to a backpack worn by the roach that powers the electrodes. The roaches can be told to go left, right, forward and back, and the team sees all sorts of "betterment of humanity" applications such as outfitting the bugs with mini-cameras to take on the good old search and rescue, or for a bit of espionage."

I don't know whether this is any good or not, as it's now become too late to read this, but here's a story of a Linux guy switching to Windows. It's written as though he's never used Windows before / never installed it before... I think if I read enough I'll figure out it's a comical take off of all the Mac/Linux people that want you to switch over to them. (turns out it's quite funny :)

save knobbly snacks

Golden wonder have gone into administration. What is the wordld coming to? Perhaps there will be shortages in the shops. I might just have to go out and panic buy. Right.. I'm off. What do they make again?

Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris Facts gave me a giggle over Christmas. (link fixed - j)

joshwaller.co.uk blog: New Years Eve 2005 - 2006 at Mood

Happy New Year! What did you get up to? Here's what I did (with photos).

I've removed the nedstat basic code / tracker, as it was generating the annoying pop-up adverts that seemed to bypass mozilla's popup blocker. If you want a tracker put back on, we could use extreme or perhaps sitemeter?

Famous Christmas Matt

UK to get network of cameras that will track Cars every move, and build patterns of travel over 2 years! Link 1984 anyone?

Newton Museum closes shop and auctions off collection - Matt you want to improve your newton collection?

Microsoft payout $761 million to RealNetworks for anti-competitive behaviour towards Real's RealPlayer. "In addition to the $761m, RealNetworks now gets long-term access to Microsoft technologies that will enhance its Real Player software. Microsoft has also agreed to promote RealNetworks' music and games subscription service through its MSN internet network."

Microsoft may also face daily fines of €2 million euros until Microsoft "gives rivals more access to its systems. Brussels said the software giant had failed to supply adequate information about its server programs."

"Seagate to buy Maxtor for $2 billion" Didn't Maxtor swallow up Quantum no so long ago?

"Western Digital is the second [largest] hard drive manufacturer after Seagate, with Maxtor in third place."

Ho Ho Ho!

Link

Check out the evolution of Santa Claus.

Turns out, if I was a celebrity, I'd a better looking celebrity than Elton John, in my humble opinion. You should try it. I dont think its that good more to do with the pose than the face, maybe?

As it turns out, if I was a celebrity, I'd be a gay singing communist ruling China. According to Online Face Recognition software. Either them, or Sarah Michelle Gellar.

it's okay to make bombs to kill people, but not to cause them biological damage:

"In addition, any form of weapon designed to provoke biological damage other than death is banned under the Geneva Protocols, making the development, deployment and use by any State illegal."

from here.

"The best way to respond to this violence is with love. We should as surfers spread our love into their community. One way to do this is to date their sisters"

Two lifeguards attacked in Australia, by Lebanese youth, prompts rioting and violence. Story here.

"More than 5000 people yesterday gathered at North Cronulla beach where drunken mobs within the crowd yelled racist chants and chased down and bashed people of Middle Eastern appearance."

You can see them use the word "bashing" more here. (it's usually used differently)

do you remember bike trials?

well now theres:
trials construction yard
trials mountain heights (too fast!)

and there's also fantasy rollercoaster that's equally challenging and frustrating :)

JCB song video.

"Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, was at DIEC 2005 and voiced his opinion of today’s video gaming world. He recalled his heyday when there wasn’t a lot of storage space for games, so gameplay came first, graphics second. But then Bushnell ventured into the choppier waters of corporate criticism, clearly taking sides. He complained that the PS2’s controller is too complex and noted that people have “interface phobia.”" Gizmodo.

Meekychuppet.com - now hosting the slightly disturbing "Glaucoma Hymn". Download it - I am lost for words.

And it is a genuine thing from some big Glaucoma association.

Watch your back

"Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report." It's the black squirrels you have to worry about! I didn't even know there were black squirrels!

"Two brothers were killed when the Peugeot 206 car they were travelling in hit a bus in Merseyside on Monday evening. Both died before they could be freed by emergency services. The driver of the bus was treated for minor injuries." I saw this car this morning on a tow truck, with it's roof cut off!

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

the american ford fusion looks very different to the european ford fusion which was based on the ford fiesta.

head on

If 2 cars were travelling at 70mph in the opposite direction to one another collided.. is it likely that the people in the cars survive? click here for an instance of. It'd be cool if they all make it.

special stuff

An unlicenced butcher.. plenty of people coming and going to get their hands on some 'special stuff' that tastes a bit like pork. League of Gentlemen vs Backroom Butcher.
Life imitates art.

Lego hard drives - you just stack them up on top of each other like lego.

wow! have a look at these awesome photos!

Silicon.com - "The organisation behind the creation of a $100 laptop for the developing world has refused an offer of free software from Apple." (shame it's not april the 1st) "Negroponte will demonstrate a working prototype of the wind-up laptop at the World Summit on the Information Society on Tuesday."

I think this website is really funny :)

Date her daughter

Date this woman - "A mother has launched a newspaper appeal urging men to write a 500-word essay on why they should be allowed to go out with her 24-year-old daughter. Linda Adams, from Barnstaple, north Devon, started her appeal with the question: "Who wants to date my daughter?". Single men aged between 24 and 30 are being invited to send in a picture to the North Devon Journal."

defeat.

you know how 'weapons of mass destruction' used to come up with this page and how there's failure which comes up with George Bush's biography, well I wonder if we can get the word defeat to link to Tony Blair

I've started using my old blog (as I can hopefully integrate it into joshwaller.co.uk) - it's got pics of Reuben if you wanna check em out.

"It's a very safe place to live, with no perceivable threat of terrorism - although we watch vigilantly. There's healthy food, a healthy environment, it's a great place to bring up a family."

Come back! urges New Zealand.

Buying a New/Used Car

Buying a New/Used Car
What would you do with £2-3K? Buy a second hand car of some sort (ebay.co.uk/autotrader.co.uk) and if so which one? Or put a deposit on a brand new car, and then pay monthly for the rest? (and if so which one?)

Beer Coffee invented. Non-alchoholic but made in a similar way to beer. New ways to drink coffee much be good :)

html editor online shared savesas word

html editor online shared, saves as word or zip (what?), with spell checker.
requires firefox or mozilla, erm maybe internet explorer.
writely
Invite mw333@hotmail.com to share a document with you.
I may never save locally again. did I mention autosave?
also can do blogging.

Tips to avoid the common cold: here seem pretty good. Ooh and here are 12 more tips on how to avoid a cold.

I thought this was funny so I thought I'd share :)

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

why does this site always generate a big popup to save the pandas?

IBM has lifted the veil on the chips inside Microsoft's Xbox 360 console.
Under the hood of the game gadget will be 3 processing cores, each running at clock speeds of more than three gigahertz.

Here it says "IBM said the chip features a customized version of IBM's 64-bit PowerPC core. The chip includes three of these cores, each with two simultaneous threads and clock speeds greater than 3GHz."

I say thats I say thats I say thats a lot of processing power...

Nelson gets exciting

Nelson, Lancashire, celebrates.

The Lancashire town that took its name from Admiral
Lord Nelson is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the end of the
Battle of Trafalgar this weekend.

Residents will be entertained by Bright Fusion Samba Band, Accrington Pipe Band and street entertainers on Saturday.

The Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Sea Cadets will also be performing their drill and a semaphore display.

Did anyone know there was a Sea Cadets for the area?

New Web Browser: Flock. Free, based on Mozilla, apparently super cool.

okay, this is seriously cool. these dudes launch a balloon into space almost (52,000feet) and take photos with a disposable digital camera videos, pics, story here. (found here)

Interesting articles:
The dwindling attention span - "the myriad ways that people are distracted from their computers in the workplace, and 'how hi-tech devices affect our behavior.'"
Is the Apple Video iPod, "Apple's first bad move"? - they say: why should you have to pay $2 per episode of a program, when you should be able to record straight from TV like you do with a video recorder or PC?
P4 motherboard that can also take AMD or Pentium M CPUS - via a daughterboard. seems like a potentially expensive way of upgrading? motherboards are pretty cheap now-a-days so why not just buy a newer better motherboard when you want to upgrade?

Quotes from the American Taliban

Or "Evangelical Christians" as they are called in the USA.

Fancy 288 CPUs all in a super computer config? simply build your own.

Did you know, that some goats faint when startled? It's pretty entertaining to watch!

Stanford wins the grand challenge(1), using a VW Toureg, and 6 Pentium Ms - further showing how great Pentium Ms are :) More details here. 1 - Grand Challenge - they drive a robot controlled car over a certain distance.

America is said to be "The Land of the Free", and people are always going on about "The American Dream" - what is the American Dream anyway? And is America really the land of the free, now that they are now allowed to detain people without charge(1), and the laws are now messed up(2)?

1 - "A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges." Source.
2 - Laws messed up: details here.

my website: www.joshwaller.co.uk should be up and running soon, as i've got a new ip address due to my wireless router breaking... hopefully i'll be putting some photos from my holiday on my site soon... ps, here's a website you might find interesting: bangernomics - all about buying and running cheap cars...

Speaking of buying and running cheap cars... we bought a Nissan Sunny to go up to Scotland in for our hols, pictures and further details are on monkeychai.

I discovered I had set the FSB jumpers incorrectly on an Athlon XP1600+. The net effect was that it was running 100Mhz fsb and an actual clock speed of 1050. It should have been 1400. In effect it wasnt going much better than the Duron 1100 that was in there before. Windows XP still chearfully reported the cpu to be an XP1600+. So I fixed the fsb.

Comparing the preformance of the Athlon XP1600+ (about 12,000 seconds a unit of seti) with the Sempron 2400+ (about 10,500 seconds a unit of seti). That doesn't sound right does it? The seti is about 15% faster, but the 'clock' numbers are 50% faster. So I thought maybe I've stuffed up the fsb of the Sempron as well?

Nope a quick check revealed a fsb of 333 and multiplier of 10, but hang on I thought the XP2400+ ran at an actual clock of 2000. 166 * 10 = 1666 or there abouts. That doesnt feel like much more than my XP1600+ at 1400. So whats going on there?

A quick search on the web Toms hardware says ".... value systems ... this seemed to be an opportunity to adjust the speed rating according to the clock speed of the competitor, namely Intel Celeron D." And futher that AthlonXP2000+ is the Sempron 2400+

Did I not know this already? I had read the artcilce before. Had I missed that point? Did AMD just magic 400Mhz from marketing?

Wot with josh taking borrowed cars to scotland some one better post on here....

Interesting quote from here

"In terms of performance-per-watt, nothing can touch the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor. It represents a potential annual savings of $50,000 for a datacenter with 500 two-way systems."

I assume thats just in the electric bill. Or $100 per year per computer. Based on a very quick calulation my CPU, at 72 watts, is using 613KWh per year, or $105(nz). Now can I convince myself to upgrade all my computers to Pentium Ms just on the baisis of the power I'll save.

Shockingly the Pentuim M 1.6 has Thermal Guideline 21.0W which would cost $31(nz) per year to run. Or a saving of $74 per year. Incredible.

Unfortunately it costs $335 to buy (Plus a motherboard and ram). The Mobile Celeron Ms at 1.4 chug out the same 21.0W and only cost $145 giving a realistic 2 year payback time. Now to magic the motherboard and ram out of thin air....

here's some cute robots.

i don't know why, but i really like dusty / dirty computers (just so long as they're not my main computer(s)). i want to get a computer and leave it on 24/7 in a super dusty environment and see what it's like in 2 years... anyway here's a clever idea that lets you use your computer in bed (followed by pictures of dirty / lazy computers, ooh and here's some more, dusty, broken stuff)

Paul Gilbert (was in Mr. Big, and 'Top 10 Shredders' etc) has some cool photoshopped images of himself on his website. (plus he did some stuff with steve hackett and his website's VERY funny so you should check out the rest of it).

The Bible in 100 minutes.

I don't know how, why, or where I found this site, but I REALLY like it, it's got lush photos in abundance, and posts on lots of really cool new stuff. check it out: CoolHunting.

Green Street Film Review. here (not by me) Interesting as it portrays thugs as normal people who have hidden thug tendancies that they play out outside of their respectable 9-5 jobs, as though it's normal. It also sounds like it glorifies being a thug...

BBC News - "Advert shows Jesus as Che Guevara"

firefighters save trapped boy.

boy trapped in toilet is rescued. hurrah.

crash

"The car ended up on its roof in the garden of David Harries, 58, who said he had only just finished compiling a petition about speeding on the road."
this article is about a straight piece of road that has recently had a car crash. The cause of the crash isn't obvious, but the crash is getting plenty of press attention.

Will a new road sign make a difference?

BBC News have written an article on "How the UK would deal with a disaster like Hurricane Katrina", which is very similar to my question posted the other day asking how we would cope with major tsunami type flooding.

French Rocky. Video (in a webpage)

Link.

Kinetic backpack for powering iPod.

Weatherman claims Japanese Mafia are behind hurricane Katrina

link

Illegal to refill your Lexmark Cartridges: Full details. (there's a Ink Refill shop near us, so I wonder whether they'll only do lexmark refills down a dark back alley?)

"The new film, directed by Joe Wright, is the 11th screen version inspired by Austen's novel." Stop making Pride and Prejudice already!!!!! (link)

Has anybody thought about: How the UK would cope if a Tsunami were to hit it? The UK is an island surrounded by water, so surely it's possible that one day there may be a serious water related natural disaster? A friend I know is researching the disaster situation of major flooding in the UK (it's already been seen in the North East (Carlisle (pics)), and 5 million people live in Flood risk areas etc Flood action plan / advise here.)

Gaming Console History: SNES, best ever.

World's Smallest Mac Laptop: "The Toshiba Libertto can now boast the distinction of being one of the world's smallest, if not the smallest, Macintosh! Here's an example of the Libretto 110CT running Mac OS 8.0 on the Basilisk II open source Macintosh emulator. Happily, you can multi-task and run the emulator in a window instead of full-screen if you so desire. Basilisk easily installs in moments and accepts installs of the OS from CD-ROM, floppy and downloaded image files." further details here.

CDs (MP3s) / TV (Films/Videos/Downloads): What are your views on all this? Whilst lending a DVD/CD of a film or music is completely legal (law-wise), where do you stand on copying CDs / MP3s / downloading TV off the internet / borrowing a dodgy copy of a film for one time watching etc? And what about allofmp3.com - currently (russian/international) law seems to say it's legal...?

Join the Waller Seti Team / See the team stats: Here
(optimised clients here - more info here) (alternatively do Grid / UD)

watermelon