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.

allofmp3 bigger than itunes

Story here (on boing boing) about allofmp3 - selling more than itunes apparently - and due to be shut down? - but still currently operating...

Have a Green Christmas - Gift gen dot com Christmas Present Idea Generator Etc

Gift Gen - suggests presents based on price, age, character, sex, could be handy if you're stuck for ideas.

FYI: Last post days are 19th Dec for 2nd class, 21st Dec for 1st class. But you'll need to check with the website in question to see what their last days are.

Metro have a news item on "giving africa an animal" - World Land Trust say it's "grossly irresponsible", Animal Aid say it does "not diminish poverty" due to the fact that "all farmed animals require proper nourishment, large quantities of water, shelter from weather, and vetenary care" which is something places like Africa lack (they lack them for people, let alone animals).

Some more links to Green Christmas sites:
www.oxfamunwrapped.com (give an alpaca or plant a crop allotment)
www.worldlandtrust.org (give an acre of land)
www.presentaid.org (give a community tap for £45)
www.goodgifts.org (cool things like a years supply of tea for £15, or save a penguin)
www.climatecare.org (a carbon offsetting company)
www.nigelsecostore.com (eco balls £30)
www.naturalcollection.com
www.ecocentric.co.uk
www.britisheco.com
www.greenerstyle.co.uk
www.ecogadgets.co.uk (sell "eco balls" £35 for around 1000+ washes, saves you heaps of money and is good for the environment)

Christian Albums CDs in the UK Cheap Cheep!

www.acorndirect.co.uk (based in Guernsey) sell cheap christian CDs, for example "Passion Everything Glorious" is £9.99 including postage. Wesley Owen sell the same CD for £12.99, and Amazon sell it for £13.99 as a "US Import".

Get the new AVG Free

If you're running AVG 7.something and not 7.5 - then you might get messages saying "this program is going to run out, please buy me!"* - when in actual fact, all you need to do is download the newer free version 7.5 from here and do a manual install (repair installation).

* paraphrased by me

Cheap cars on ebay.

Hey, if you're interested in buying a car, especially a cheap one, then ebay seems to be the place, with a 2002 model Proton Impian selling for £1550 (cost new £13000, valued at £2500+ by parkers), whereas a similar age Ford Focus is valued at £3500 - £4200 (cost new £12495). Knowing that some cars depreciate more than others, I've setup this ebay search that shows you all these cheap cars for sale. I guess they're like the modern day Lada, but better.

Cheap Cars on Ebay.

Alternatively you can search for "Buy it Now" cars under a set price, for example, under £250. This search gets you some good results, such as a Mk2 Golf for £100.

blogger beta gone live

blogger have started to let you convert your normall blogger blogs into the new "blogger beta" style of blog -

this has many advantages namely: tags* (used on technorati and other sites, and used for searching on certain topics), much quicker publishing, neater archive display, integrate other site's RSS feed onto your blog easily, private blogs etc etc.

however, there are some dis-advantages: you need a google account to logon. plus it's a bit of an unknown as to how well it will migrate over the current design, although I suspect it shouldn't cause any problems.

I've been using blogger beta for this: The Ricoh Caplio R5 Blog and it's been great!

So to summarise: I think blogger beta is quite good, but we need to make sure everyone is happy to move over to blogger beta with this site and has a working google account before we can move over. alternatively we could simply not move over, as what we have now is currently working.

*example tags for this post would be: blogger, beta, tags, etc

Update: Turns out we can't upgrade this blog yet as this kind of blog can't be converted yet: "A very large blog. (More than a couple thousand posts + comments.)"

Asteroids Revenge

a game in which you avenge the death of your fellow asteroids.

CutePDF

Free PDF writer, lets you print any document to a PDF File. Get it here. Recommended.

Zune Bad, Babies Good

apparently the zune is really crappy. suntimes.com:

"Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity."

In other exciting news, we had a baby. details here (with links to lots of pics).

Buy Nothing Day

Interesting idea for Christmas - stop buying stuff! It junks up the world causing major environmental issues, and we have 10 times as much stuff as other countries. We (the western world) consume 86% of the world's products! Found at http://blog.iamnotashamed.net/. Another interesting Christmas thought here: Chistmas is not your birthday.

boinc machines

At BOINCstats, they have lists and lists of information about which types of computers have contributed how many units in recent days. And part of my interest was actually seeing where my processor is relative to other processors, just to see what I can expect. One of the things that's interesting for me though is that the mac pro machines (which all get the same identity on the lists, whether they have 2ghz or 3ghz processor) are very near the top - as can be see in this list. (check that the list is sorted by average credit per cpu, and then look at the fourth item down) or have a look at this list where you can see a fair few machines which regularly average above 2000 credits per day! That's 10 times faster than my Intel P4 @ 2.8ghz.

A Big list of Essential PC Software

Matt said I should do a big list of all the software needed for a Windows PC in order to protect it from the internet, viruses, spyware, adware, malicious software, etc. Whilst it may seem slightly excessive, in my personal experience, it's pretty much essential!

here it is.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know! (I thought I'd already done something similar, but not to the same extent)

PC World can't fix your PC

"Computing Which? magazine visited seven PC World outlets and 13 independent stores. The experts deliberately created faults. On half the computers they deleted a file that helps to start up the Windows operating system. On the other half they loosened a cable connecting the hard disk to the rest of the computer.

The research identified 'staggering' differences in the level of know-how and charges. Correcting the simple Windows software problem triggered price quotes from £20 to £260, while the bill for fixing a loose cable ranged from £10 to £139.

One London branch of PC World misdiagnosed the software problem as a corrupted hard disk and quoted £350 for repairs. A member of staff even advised buying a new PC which could have cost more than £500. Another PC World branch in Oxford misdiagnosed a computer with a loose cable as having a corrupted hard disk and quoted £300 for a repair. "

Obsessed with shreddies?

this site has some great info on shreddies, and many other great things.

Solid State Digital Speedometer

Coolest speedo ever? Austin Meastro Vardan Plas. Even has a "Convert" button. Am I the only one that has always wanted a digital speedo? If you own a ford fiesta there is a "trick mode" where you can get the car to display the speed digitally instead of showing you the mileage and the time. Instructions here.

Other cars with digital speedos:
Check out this Fiat Tipo bad boy here. (another pic here)
Citroen C4 central digital speedo.

greenmyapple.org

"We love Apple. Apple knows more about "clean" design than anybody, right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have abandoned? A cutting edge company shouldn't be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. That's why we Apple fans need to demand a new, cool product: a greener Apple." watch their ad here.

Portable Atari Jaguar

Ben Heck has taken apart an Atari Jaguar, and made it into a portable console with built in joypad, screen, and stereo speakers. He says the 64bit console has a 32-bit bus, and is not a 64-bit machine as Atari were claiming at the time...

I escaped from the Dungeon of Stinkygoat! - I killed Stickofjoy the cockatrice, Cannonstar the leprechaun, Fuseball the nymph, Aureo1e the leprechaun, Dudewhoisrandom the leprechaun, Quinling the leprechaun, Duke Otterland the leprechaun, Stereotypist the orc, Hirosama the goblin and Alarm Fil the floating eye. - I looted a Figurine of Hukkax, a Figurine of Matt303, the Dagger of Postcardstohell, a Figurine of Dhau, the Sword of Nicolyrezk, the Crown of the Stony 1, the Crown of Lezek, the Shield of Deanoc, the Sceptre of Sack , the Armour of Zagreb2, the Sceptre of Nerfboy, the Sword of 4zumanga and 194 gold pieces.

Play it here - my score was 544.

Scott Adams has his voice back...

If you read the Dilbert blog, then you might know that Scott Adams lost his voice 18 months ago and hasn't been able to speak since (except in a public speaking context), well he's got his voice back through ryhme!

More links: NZ Herald. Boing Boing.

AMD and ATI become one. Germany requires Internet License!

AMD and ATI are now one, and if you go to ati.com you end up at ati.amd.com.

Some worrying news from Germany: Germany brings in TV license fees for the internet -

"And, just to really rub salt into the wound, the follow up of shock troops comes with the realisation that you’ll be charged this license fee no matter what you use your internet device for! Yep, that means you business users, who never surf the net, have net access for information and email only, you get charged. Likewise, home users in the ex-Eastern Germany, who are just unwrapping the latest 486DX2, are going to be hit with the charge too." more details at the inquirer.

Firefox 2

Download here. It seems good so far.

Does it remember your open windows like Opera?
Yes it can pick up where you left off just change it in tools>options>main and change "when firefox starts" from "show my homepage" to "show my windows and tabs from last..."

Apple iPod 5 years old...

Engadget has it in pictures showing every model except the latest 5.5G Photo/Video iPod, and Gizmodo list 10 reasons why they hate the ipod. Hoorah!

If you like Darkplace, and IT Crowd

then you might like Man to Man with Dean Learner (played by Moss from the IT Crowd), and the makers of Darkplace. The spoof chat show (sounds like 'Knowing me, knowing you, with Alan Partridge') is hosted by a millionaire playboy, and guests are played by co-creator Matthew Holness. It's on tonight at 11.05pm on C4.

Rover History in Video Form

1959 (to 2000) - Mini (Montage?), Mini (Spike Milligan), Advert (1988)
1977 - (Leyland) Rover 3500
1980 - Austin Rover Mini Metro (Batman Spoof)
1984? - Austin Rover (Metro, Maestro etc) Feat. Noel Edmunds.
1986 - Rover 800
1995 - Rover 400
2000 - Rover 25
2001 - Rover MG ZR (MG version of 25)
2003? - MG Rover internal press video (includes two TV ads, one for MG Rover, one for MG ZR (25) and MG ZS (45), also features MG ZT (75), City Rover, SV-R etc).

Other stuff:
Rover 200 / 25 / Streetwise / MG ZR Story.
MG Z Cars on Top Gear (25 ZR, 45 ZS 180, 75 ZT).
Top Gear reviews the new City Rover.

Link

The iPod's genesis.

History of Computers

in the form of TV adverts. link.

google buy youtube

Link - Google have bought youtube.com for $1.65 billion in stock!

Car for sale

Skoda Fabia 1.4 W Reg Green.

Kip Hawley

"Kip Hawley continues to harass his fellow Americans with an absurd theater of ID checks, shoe removal, and now Ziploc™ 'security'. Meanwhile, serious security concerns are ignored: air cargo is not screened and there is still no point-to-point baggage matching."

Flu, hernia, or police more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda

HSBC have a go at other banks for increasing security

"HSBC has criticised competitors using two-factor authentication, claiming that such tactics encourage hackers to target banks that haven't implemented similar measures." Link "Banks that have chosen to beef up their authentication systems are exposing unprotected rivals to attack, the financial services group claims" - Guess who haven't implemented a more secure system? HSBC.

The mess that was / is Rover?

The brand that was Rover belongs to BMW currently and the company was half bought by two chinese firms (one owning design rights to the 25 (now around 11 years old), and the 75 (now around 8 years old), the other owning MG - ie MGTF - both companies are owned by the Chinese state.). Now Ford want to buy the name "Rover" from BMW to "protect" the Land Rover brand.

Nobody is really interested in the 11 year old Rover 400/45 because it was long overdue for a replacement and was based on the Honda Accord and there are obvious copyright / design rights issues.

Slate.com

Slate - an interesting news, politics, culture, blog website with an interesting splattering of religious material. (including blogging the bible)

Apple announce ITV (and other stuff)

Erm yeah, Apple announced a load of stuff yesturday, such as new ultra small mp3 players, and updated nano's and ipods etc. Mainly fairly boring. Apart from a new device called iTV - surely Apple realise that ITV already exists? And you'd think that since apple are so protective of their own names such as 'POD' - surely they wouldn't go round nicking other people's names? Maybe it's just a prototype name anyway...

New iPod Shuffle here. £55 for 1gb.
New iPod Nano here. £99 for 2gb, £169 for 8gb.
New iPod here. £189 for 30gb (11mm thin), £259 for 80gb (14mm thick). Includes gapless playback, new games (inc Bejewelled, Pacman, Tetris etc!) Games can be added to older ipods.
New iTunes 7 with video. Free download.

Free Computer Maintenance

So when was the last time you made a complete backup of all your data? Or when was the last time you scanned your computer for viruses? When was the last time you scanned for spyware, adware or other stuff? When was the last time you updated windows? are you running WXP with SP2?

Free Virus Solutions: AVG, Anti-Vir, Avast
Free Spyware/Adware Removers: Ad-Aware, Spybot, MS Defender
Windows Update: here.
Free Backup Software: Setup automatic backups

From today's Metro: "Police called to a stable found a naked man covered in olive oil and oats being licked by a horse. Alfred Steven told them he was living out a lifelong fantasy. The 69 year old from Santa Barbara, California, was charged with trespassing, animal cruelty and sexually assaulting an animal."

I guess the next time he's where-ever-old-poeple-hang-out could be a bit awkward. It might sound a bit like this:

Eve: So hows life? OH GAWD don't look now, it's Alf!
Elsie: Er, why, what's wrong with Alf?
Eve: Don't you know!? He feeds horses oats!
Elsie: ... so what's wrong with that?
Eve: He uses olive oil!
Elsie: ... do horses dislike olive oil?
Eve: No! He's naked covered in olive oil and oats making the horses lick him!
Elsie: Oh!!!

Anyway, is it really cruel to feed a horse oats?

Old skool baby. Fisher Price PXL 2000

Link - "Back in 1988, Fisher Price introduced an insane video camera for kids. Crafted in thick rubber-coated plastic, it shot horribly lo-fi videos on audio cassette tapes. If you've ever seen the original Game Boy camera - it's a lot like that."

beta blogger, blogging at work, video, apple

blogger have a great article on blogging in the workplace. microsoft, dell, and other large corporations have welcomed blogging* (excluding apple, who hate the internet and all apple fan sites), yet posting the wrong stuff (even when working for microsoft) can get you fired like this guy. thankfully there are some ways to address the issues 1. is to host your own blog on your own server and make it private, or 2. wait till the new version of blogger is out (currently in beta) as it has the ability to make your blogger invite only. other new features include the ability to categorise posts so for example this post could be categorized as "Web Tech", while other posts could be categorised as "US / UK Spelling differences", or "Apple" etc. Annoyingly you can't be logged into both beta and normal blogger at the same time. Check out a beta blog I've just setup here.

blogger ends there article with this:

"If you end up getting yourself fired for blogging, deep down you must have really wanted out of that job. If that's the case, keep blogging. With your newfound status as one of only a handful of people in the world who have been "fired for blogging," you should be able to grab some headlines. Fan those flames! You could wind up on Oprah with a million dollar book deal. Theoretically."

* I wonder, by the time we all have blogs, whether we'll decide that reading and writing is boring and watching and speaking is much better, and we'll all migrate to youtube?

PS - Apple announced some new imacs and mini macs.

nine million

there are 9 million children who are refugees. 9 million. what does that even mean as a number? the entire population of london, homeless?

Australian Police Confused by Commodore 64

The kidnapper who held captive a woman for 8 years used a commodore 64. story here. police say they are finding it difficult to get the data off the computer, and may face data loss. the article doesn't mention the fact that commodore 64s use external means of data storage, ie. tapes, etc. but surely the police will have figured that out? boingboing don't seem so sure...

Message to Dell

"Can you address the issues we are still facing daily with GX270s (and some GX280s) with bulging capacitors - probably 50% of our current PCs out of over 3000 are GX270s - currently for every single PC we have to phone up, spend half an hour diagnostics with dell for them to arrange a motherboard replacement - in each instance we (myself and the Dell tech) knows that the problem is resolved by a motherboard replacement - this fixes 100% of the GX270s we've had problems with, yet this is taking hours of productivity (per incident) away from the staff we support and from us as IT support technicians - surely there is a quicker solution to this problem?"

This message is regarding faulty capacitors used in Dell Optiplex GX270s (and GX280s): More info here. and was posted to dell's official blog.

Link

Water bomb exploding in slo-mo.

Stop Junk Mail, Spam, and Telemarketing Calls

Stop junk mail: www.mpsonline.org.uk, or email optout@royalmail.co.uk (a postman has been sacked after informing his customers of this service!)
Stop junk phone calls: www.tpsonline.org.uk
Stop junk email: www.dma.org.uk

Pleo gets Mar 07 Launch Date

Hooray - just in time for my next birthday! :D

Acid Rave Music on the Up

According to the Sunday Times Style Magazine RAVE is Going Up in the world: New tunes, new renegade parties, new Day-Glo... yay! Here's a rave website.

Ricky Gervais Microsoft Videos

Episode 1, Episode 2

911 Cover Up

Hermann Goering. Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII said: "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Film here about 9/11: Google Video. Wonders why there were no remains of a plane crashing into the pentagon, why the twin towers collapsed when fires have never caused towers to collapse previously, why a 3rd wall street building collapsed several blocks away. etc. entertaining video about recent terror alerts in britain / US regarding flights.

The IBM PC - 25 Years Old

Engadget have written an interesting piece on their first PCs. Mine was a 486DX 50 with 8mb of ram and an 80mb hard drive second hand for a whopping £325 from Butts, Bits and Bytes (How did they get away with a name containing butts for so long?), who are now called 3B Systems.

Pheobe's Songs, Lisa Simpson's Poems

Lisa's poem about her cat:

"I had a cat named Snowball
She died! She died!
Mom said she was sleeping
She lied! She lied!
Why oh why is my cat dead?
Couldn't that Chrysler hit me instead?
I had a hamster named Snuffy
He died..."

Could Pheobe in Friends be the real life grown up version of Lisa Simpson?
Pheobe's Songs

Biased media in the UK? Never...

Interview on Sky News with some interesting opinion / facts about the Lebanon / Isreal thing. Death toll: Isreal people dead: 244, Lebanon people dead: 1076.

Borat the Movie

Ali-G is making a move: Borat Trailer - here he is on the Conan show.

www.channel4.com Live, Free, TV

www.channel4.com let you watch channel4 live. you just need to register and then you want watch live tv! (if you live in the UK) I checked with Channel4 and you DO NOT need a TV license to watch it!

Apple Mac Pro Quad Core Announced

Did you notice? Apple announced the new Quad Core MacPro - it feature 2x Dual Core Xeon CPUs with 4MB Cache per CPU (8mb total), with speeds up to 3GHz. The CPUs feature SSE3 which is pretty good. (Like MMX but on steroids with actual benefits rather than pretend benefits)

All your snakes are belong to us

Merry-go-rounds - the silent death trap.

According to people who worry too much merry-go-rounds are potential death traps because IF you get a moped and put it's back wheel on the merry-go-round and spin it at high speed with people on board, then they fly off at high speed like rag dolls, POTENTIALLY crashing into the moped and NOT the soft ground that surrounds the merry-go-round. West Sussex council have so far made no plans to get rid of the offending MERRY-GO-ROUND but may be forced to if it hears of similar incidents.

You can watch the video here of the seemingly WILLING participants. I say: If idiots want to find new ways of potentially killing themselves, then let them!

internet explorer downloads

download the FULL version of Internet Explorer here - includes all the old versions like 5.5 sp2 (suitable for an old Windows 98 PC). avgfree demands at least ie5 for example, and windowsupdate doesn't even attempt to work on older versions of ie. (that's if it's still available for win98 machines).

Apple Love

"A stupid little detail in an Apple app nicely illustrates the extreme attention to the fine points of user experience that makes people fanatical about the company." Wired News.

Here's my version: "A stupid little detail in an Apple app* nicely illustrates the extremely poor documentation and implementation that makes people frustrated with Apple software."

* Microsoft Entourage is the app in question. Getting the application to open other users shared calendars is the part that has extremely poor documentation. (You need the latest version of Entourage with SP2 for it to even think about working - and the exchange servers need at least SP2). The method of the madness is that it doesn't work simply by looking up the person in the address book, no, you have to go into the advanced properties and use the full alias of the username @ the root/parent domain of the organisation in order for it to work properly. For example instead of using jo.blog@centralblog.com you have to use blogj1@blogger.com where blogj1 is the actual username** on the (exchange) system, and blogger is the parent domain. Thankfully this is documented on the Internet, here, although it is noticeably missing from any Apple or Microsoft pages. And does anybody ever answer mac support questions on the internet to a point where a solution is provided? No, never in my experience.

** The stupidness of the exchange / active directory (AD) implementation of usernames is that you can have blogj on the system twice in AD, once in the blogger/centralblog domain and again (as another person) in blogger/otherdomain - yet exchange doesn't like this one bit at all, and will give the second blogj a DIFFERENT alias/username, such as blogj1 !!!

Cats Carrying Fish

Video - "Which cat can carry the largest fish? Only Japanese television can tell us."

Cute cats video. Mario Brothers tune played on an 11 string bass.

Are Electric Cars the Future?

There were/are several new electric cars at the british motor show. The Smart EV (70mpg, 72 mile range, from £15000), the Mega City Nice (40mph, 50 mile range, rentable London), and the Reva G-Wiz (£7000). All fun names apart from the Smart. The G-Wiz has the following benefits:

"Drive electric & save over £8,000 per year
* up to 600 'mpg' equiv.
* exempt from road tax
* exempt from (C) charge
* free parking in London
* free charging in London
* lowest insurance group
* 100% tax write down for business
* lowest rate company car tax at just 9%
... and cut your emissions impact by between 74% & 100%"

More about electric cars here.

Wouldn't it be great if...

You could get the "Saturday" or "Sunday Papers" on-line - you know, the massive Sunday Times, or Observer, or Guardian etc. I mean the internets great, but you don't get the wide variety of stuff shoved in your face like you do with the Sunday Papers - for example by flicking through every page you get a quick snippet of news that you might find interesting, you'd get some random article about someone famous in one of the magazines, you might get a small section on a car, and you'd get some highlight on a TV program on in the next week that you should watch... I know you can probably find all this information on line, but it's not been pre-packaged for you. You see the thing is, that there's so much random content that when I look through I find a number of interesting articles to read, but the next person who reads it would probably find a completely different set of interesting articles...

Saying that... these sites are quite interesting (and produce the main sunday papers):
Guardian Online
Guardian News Blog
Observer Blog (Guardian / Observer are the same thing)
The Times Online (you can read the current issue online, but it's a big list of text links)
Telegraph (website down?)
The Independant

Win a Digital Camera worth £200

Courtesy of DigiCamReview. Sweet!

Intel Core 2 Duo Finally Available

Well, the Pentium M descendant, the Intel Core 2 Duo, has finally entered the desktop market. It's even quicker than the Intel Core Duo that's been in laptops etc. And prices are very competitive for top of the range Intel chips - being priced less than the single core Pentium M chips...

You can buy motherboards from around £100 at scan.co.uk and chips are likely to be available on the 24th of July from overclockers.co.uk, with speeds up to 2.9ghz!!! Prices of dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 chips seem to have dropped dramatically as they appear considerably slower than the new Intel chips.

Have you noticed? (Seti Changes)

If you do Waller Seti Effort - and you were using the old optimised clients then it might have stopped working. If it did stop, you might need to uninstall and delete all your boinc / seti folders and re-download the latest version. The new version seems better optimised. And seems to give the following results:

Pentium M 1.8ghz - 20 - 29,000 seconds
Athlon XP 2000+ (1.667ghz actual?) - 31,000 seconds
Apple G4 1.25ghz - 45,000 seconds
Celeron 749mhz - 81,000 seconds
Via C3 Nehemiah 1.2ghz - 117,000 seconds

These numbers are very vague as the new "enhanced" seti results seem to fluctuate quite wildly. Results from the Pentium 4 and Athlon CPUS seem to better now than in previous versions.

Kitty is SO two faced!!

NBC10 have published a photo and video of a kitten with two faces, two mouths, two noses, 4 eyes - "The kitten was born Wednesday morning in Ohio. It has two mouths that meow in unison, two noses and four eyes that have not opened yet." (found at Boing Boing)

ipod transmitters legal in November

FM radio transmitters are due to become legal in the UK from November - these devices can be used with ipods in order to listen to your ipod in the car by tuning the FM radio into the ipod transmitter. story here.

Mac vs PC

So have you seen the Apple adverts for the Mac featuring a PC guy and a Mac guy? Well, here's some alternative versions featured on VH1.

How to be Happy

Pupils at Wellington College, Berkshire, will soon be taking "Happiness Classes" / "Positive Psycology". Some of the following tips provided by Metro are:

1- Money doesn't make you happy - don't spend on gadgets, spend on holidays and memories instead.
2 - Say thank you - keep a gratitude journal.
3 - Go to the gym - 30 minutes of excercise a day may help beat depression.
4 - Eat fish, turkey, chicken, beans, avocados and bananas - they all contain an amino acid that will boos serotonin.
5 - Have a laugh - join a laughter club: www.laughteryoga.co.uk

The Best Rock/Pop/Rap/Hip-Hop Album Ever! 2

The Best Rock/Pop/Rap/Hip-Hop Album Ever! 2 (now on YouTube)

Link

Some geezer has recreated Pac Man in the real world using crickets.

Link

Google can be used as a virus scanner.

Websense is involved so I am immediately a little skeptical but hey, if it works, it works.

Chinese Man Invents Robots

This one carries him on a rickshaw. Others serve tea and light cigerettes. Unfortunately he's having to sell some as one of them caught fire and burnt down his house. BoingBoing.

10 years late?

Marantz have released a new high end dual tape casette deck. Looks very swish.

You know how 10 years after something has died (like the Atari Jaguar, or Sega Megadrive, or Atari ST, or Amiga) a company releases the best ever program or add-on for the system ever, and nobody buys it because all the machines are already in the bin... well I can see some parallels now with the Marantz tape deck...

except for the fact that we still have all our tapes lying around, loads of older cars still have tape decks, and CDs (and DVDs) are much more scratch prone than we were led to believe by all the CD marketing people! Fact: You leave your CDs in your car (or your mates car) for a period of time, and you get back a scratched CD that doesn't play properly!

Update: Someone's released a new game for the Atari 2600 via BoingBoing

Link

Turn your Windows desktop in to an interactive Mario leve.

Microsoft Windows Vista Pants Rating

Okay, we'll start with a Pants rating of 5/10, i.e. we're assuming it's mainly pants. Every time someone writes something positive about it, the pants rating will go down, and every time someone writes something negative about it, the pants rating will go up.

Positives:
Tom's Hardware give it the thumbs up. (-1)

Negatives:
Deleting shortcuts in Vista takes too many steps (+1)
Vista takes longer to boot than XP. (+1)
Pants versions available. (+1)
MSNBC (Microsoft NBC) Say it's pants. (+1)
Computerworld - 20 things you wont like in Vista. (+1)

Updated (27/06/06) Current Microsoft Windows Vista Pants Rating: 9/10 - Almost ULTRA Pants

Foxconn Admit to breaking Chinese Labour Laws

"In what would seem to be a 180-degree reversal from last week's vehement denials concerning the Daily Mail's "iPod City" exposé, Hon Hai Precision Industry's Foxconn factory has now come forward to admit that it has indeed been in violation of Chinese labor laws. Even though the company -- which was accused of underpaying and overworking employees -- had initially threatened to take legal action over the story, ChinaCSR is now reporting that a Foxconn spokesperson has publicly copped to the fact that its workers are forced to be on duty an extra 80 hours a month, which is 44 more hours of overtime than Chinese regulations allow (or 1.5 to 2 extra hours per day depending on the length of their work week)." engadget.com

Jonathan Ross

There's a big stink about Jonathan Ross' interview of David Cameron (leader of Conservative party): a - because Jonathan Ross was rude and suggested David Cameron masterbated to Margeret Thatcher when he was younger, and b - because other conservatives don't think Mr. Cameron should have been there.

BBC end their article on it in the following way: "A BBC spokeswoman said 27 complaints had been received about the programme, with four related to Ross's interview with Cameron."

So what were the other 23 complaints about? Are they not news-worthy? :)

In other Jonathan Ross related news, he's now being paid £18 million by the BBC - is this the best way to spend people's TV license fee's - spending such a big chunk for one program / person?

Happy to pay more for greener PCs?

BBC News are reporting that we'd be happy to pay an extra £64 - £108 / $117 - $197 for an environmentally friendly PC with fewer chemicals. People in the UK were willing to pay the £64 extra, whilst people in China were willing to pay an extra £108 according to a Green-Peace report.

Okay, this raises some questions, 1. What were the base prices for PCs. Ie were the UK PCs £400 to start with meaning people would be happy to pay £464 total price? In China, what is the base price of a PC, £200? Less? More? 2. Can people in the UK / China afford to pay this much extra for a PC, ie, the study is a theoretical study, when it actually comes to the crunch when people are handing over money for a new PC, will they be as happy then to part with the extra dosh? 3. Poor US people can't afford cheap PCs, how can people in China afford an extra £108 for a PC when wages for a lot of people are around £15 per month?

Even if there are environmentally friendly PCs available for an extra £64/£108, what will stop budget manufacturers continuing to produce the cheapest PC possible? (You know the people who try market £300 / $300 PCs in Walmart / Dell Newspaper Offers) - And how about paying more for products that aren't manufactured in sweatshops?

Link

iPod powered laser system.

What will they think of next?

Futurama Season 4 only £11.97 Delivered

From Amazon UK/Jersey. All the other Futurama, Family Guy and Simpsons seasons are dirt cheap too!

Sexed Robots

Wow. Robots that wander around looking for another robot to have sex with. Have a look at the video on the site. They are great. Via Boing Boing.

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The cloud appreciation society.

No,really.

The Bad People List - Updated

FAI - steal take money off poor people to the tune of $1500 extra for a $300 PC. Why don't people just buy a second hand PC or save up $300 for an emachines from Walmart?

Foxconn / China.
McDonalds.
Carol Vorderman.
Apple.

Foxconn (Apple, Dell Manufacturers) Deny Sweatshop

Engadget have details stating that Foxconn have denied the claims of them running a sweatshop called "ipod city", where people work 15 hours days. Foxconn state that they pay the government required minimum wage. Apple say they will investigate the claims.

Did you see the program on BBC2 on Tuesday at 9pm about Women in China, some of the women worked 8am till 8pm in factories and weren't allowed to talk all day. Naturally they hated there jobs but had no choice but to work there in order to make enough money to live. The program stated that China has the highest suicide rate for women in the world. So perhaps even though companies do follow China's laws regarding labour, perhaps the laws aren't enough to prevent intolerable conditions?

Batteries Included

Batteries Included is an awesome blog about the batteries that come with stuff. "This site is a gallery of batteries — those strange, off-brand batteries that are included when you buy remote controls, toys, and other consumer electronics." And if you wanted to know what's inside batteries, then this site seems to cover them all. Image uploading to blogger totally doesn't work with opera. so here's a link to a pic.

PS - They do battery recycling in my area now, when they give up paper recycling bags, they also give us battery recycling bags. Neat!

Linkage

TiVo on your mobile.

To watch the World Cup in ASCII enter: telnet ascii-wm.net 2006 in to the command line shell.

Alan Partridge The Movie (2007)

Movie expected 2007!. He's even got his own my space account.

Boing Boing: Man lives on monkey chow for less than $1 per meal

Boing Boing: Man lives on monkey chow for less than $1 per meal

Wired News: A Sixth Sense for a Wired World

Wired News: A Sixth Sense for a Wired World: "What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects -- a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch." Gross, but cool. via BoingBoing.