BBC is going to make its entire archive available online.

Which is cool.

Opera 9.5 is out...

Opera 9.5 is now out, and ready for download. It's got built in almost instant web search in the address bar, that searches while you type, it lets you sync with your mobile phone (assuming it's got mobile opera), and has a new rendering engine... there's more features but you can read them for yourself here, and a new "cool" look... I use it for about 98% of my browsing, and the new version seems to have fixed the blogger bug! Hoorah!

1 gig SD Card, £0 + £3 p&p (brand new)

I dunno, maybe you could store pictures of a horse or pony on it.

Talking fish etc.

Man goes mental in office cubicle...

Security video here (liveleak.com) and cellphone video with audio here (youtube). found at gizmodo (who found it at neatorama). some more info on boingboing...

V for Vendetta, but in real life, in Russia

Gizmodo: "It's been digitally erased from the entire broadcast, a result of his being placed on a "stop list" of critics of the Russian government and Prime Minister Putin. Using digital manipulation to literally erase any critic of the administration is a pretty great way to stifle any kind of dissent, and it's pretty easy when you're in control of the national networks."

Fire NES is a Firefox add on that allows you to play over 2500 NES games without an emulator.

Foobar 2000

In the olden days, when you wanted to play mp3s, you may have used winamp, back when it was good, before it became bloated and slow. Nowadays everything is bloated, winamp, windows media player, itunes, and if you want a basic mp3 player, then why not try foobar?

Peep Show returns tonight...

Channel 4 10.30pm. Series 5.

Which town has the most pubs for its size?

BBC News - I think Colne's got a good chance - it's got a population of 21,000 (Census 2001) - and 16 pubs according to this list - I would have thought there'd be more pubs than this? can anyone confirm?

Too much stuff...

If anyone's interested, I have the following stuff spare...

- Sony A250 CD/MP3/AUX car stereo (£35 inc postage)
- Cambridge Audio A4 AMP (£35 inc postage)
- Hifi (bookshelf) Speaker stands
- USB / infrared Windows Cyberlink Remote control (£8 posted)
- 40GB external laptop HDD in caddy (USB) (£30 posted)
- Black optical mouse (PS2 - new)
- external usb floppy disk drive
- Sata DVDRW (LG, Black) £15 posted
- Sony XB 930 QS CD player faulty - skips last tracks on 1/20 cds (£35 inc postage, rrp £200, so could be worth fixing if you want a high quality hifi cd player)

I've also got a faulty car stereo (Tevion 4187) with USB/SD/CD/Aux Mp3 support - but it doesn't work anymore... someone electrically minded might want to play with it... although to be honest it's probably completely fried, as I may have got the red and black (+ and -) the wrong way round as they came out...

Any Video Converter

One way or another I end up tinkering with a lot of video conversion/video editing software. A lot of it's badly written crap. Lots of very crashy video software out there.

Have discovered a gem here, so I thought I'd spread the word. The free edition is free (which is a great idea), and offers lots of conversion options, including quicktime to xvid and stuff. It's also good with .mkv and .flv files and does a bit of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 stuff as well.

Sesame Tree

"Sesame Street have created a new show called Sesame Tree to bridge the gap in communities in my country - Northern Ireland. I hope Cookie gets to make a visit!!"

Irish Sesame Street, sort of.

Return of the Dead Flesh Keyboard

The 48K Spectrum had a legendary rubber keyboard, affectionately known as a "dead flesh keyboard". Sort of likely a rubbery calculator keyboard but bigger. I for one always really liked it. Now you can get one for your PC - yay! And what's more it rolls up and slips neatly into a Parka jacket pocket and can probably be cleaned under a tap with aid of a dishcloth. I've just had a go on one, and I have to say it feels gorgeous. If I didn't use a freaky keyboard for folk with RSI, I'd probably move to one immediatley. Fifteen pounds to you sir.

Self stirring tea... sort of

Little ball in bottom of cup stirs the tea for you one handed freaks out there. link. pretty awesome!

TrackMania Nations Forever is now Free!

TrackMania Nations Forever is a great car game where you can make your own tracks (well it was the last time I played one of the TrackMania games), and race high speed cars around it. It's now completely free with 65 track, single player mode, and multiplayer online modes.

...and it's pretty much a modern day version of Stunt Car Racer.

Check out Halosim. This free software allows you to simulate the atmospheric conditions that lead to halos, bows etc. Great fun.

Free CDs to good home...

Free CDs assuming you can collect, if not then I'll have to charge postage. This is because ebay/paypal are evil and won't actually give you the money till 21days after you've sold it! (details here)

Source

Several Firefox employees are looking to use Mozilla source code to create a paid-for browser with 'added functions'.

The final ever issue of ST Format for sale on ebay

What happened to Candy Flip?

Strawberry Fields Forever on Youtube.

ZX Spectrum Laptop...

Made with a little bit of help from a Toshiba Libretto 110. Full details here. Actually, a lot of help from the Toshiba: It's actually still a PC, but with a ZX Spectrum keyboard and case / styling, running Linux with a custom keyboard mapping so that the Spectrum keyboard works on the computer. Eh up, the chaps from Bolton as well.

A rackmount Atari Falcon...

from 1996. "complete Audio Workstation including rack mounted Atari Falcon"

Petition against further liberalisation of abortions

Please give it a ponder, and sign it if you feel you it represents your views. Maybe pass the link on too, to give others a chance to have their say.

Baltic Fleet album out now...

Baltic Fleet's new debut album is out now. It's only £8, from Amazon, so well worth the investment. It's got shades of Radiohead (the good bits), mixed with modern stuff, great drum beats, and was made while on tour with Echo and the Bunnymen. You can listen to some of the tracks on their myspace page.

PG Tips Monkey Movie?!?!?!?! Please let it be true!

Sexy Pictures At A Bargain Price!

OpenTTD

Looks like a good Transport Tycoon Deluxe clone. Not tried it yet, but it might also be an interesting Sim City alternative.

Beware of the phones!

Hooray for the police, protecting us from terrorists. Met Police Anti-Terrorism Campaign - beware of people taking photos, and also of people with "too many phones". Some funny alternatives here.

Nintendo Lovers Unite

Linkage

Nintendo's 8-bit games are now emulated online - play them in your browser.

My own Elmo? Could my wildest dreams be about to come true?

Elmo, Elmo, Elmo.

The News...

I don't particularly take much notice of the news, well apart from technology stuff, and keeping a general eye on whatevers on boingboing and bbc news, but the three following things struck me as interesting / somewhat unusual or perhaps world changing...

Castro steps down as leader of Cuba. This could be interesting... with regards to what happens next.

USA orders massive recall of Beef, not because of something serious like CJD / Mad's Cow Disease like the UK cows suffered from, but because lame cows were shown on video being mistreated, and entered the food chain. Could this be the beginning of animals actually being treated well, and food quality being important? (see Fast Food Nation the film or book and you know that food quality has never been important for beef / hamburger production for McDs etc)

Northern Rock to be nationalised! "Despite Tory opposition the bill was approved by a majority of 203 MPs. The emergency measure is expected to clear the Commons tonight. The decision to rush through the bill was criticised by MPs, but Chancellor Alistair Darling said it was essential." This is just weird - what was wrong with Richard Branson's offer of taking over the company?

...and in other news HD-DVD is dead...

Link

Possible PSPhone pictures leaked?

Every Graphics Card Compared in one big list

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before but couldn't find it on here. It's a big list of every single video card in the world rated in one big easy to use list. On Gizmodo

Android Update

Android Demo'd.

Gphone is coming...

Link

Well, specifically the Android OS actually. Google isn't producing devices, just powering them

I cannot help thinking that they are going to need on hell of a badass killer application or feature because when the iPhone reaches 100 GB, has 3G, HSDPA, GPS and other new features, it's going to become pretty awesome and, as one of the many carrying high spec phone and an iPod, convergence is my nemesis.

Unless Android does something incredible this could be difficult for Google, unless their business model of free services to users based on ad revenue spells the death of mobile contracts and phone bills as we know them (that WOULD be worth it!).

Once the iPhone becomes a high spec phone I don't see anyone stopping it.

Best £8 I've ever spent on earphones

Creative Labs EP-630/A Earphones ... best budget earphones by a long stretch, punchy bass, and great clarity and crispness, I can hear things in songs I've never heard before.

Lego without the risk of embedding a piece in your foot at 2.00am

You can now build lego things on your computer instead of your carpet. How exciting is that?

Free Nokia Maps for your mobile phone...

Admittedly it's one of the most frustrating navigation systems I've ever used (and has made me want to snap my phone in half!) But it could be handy if you're lost and in the middle of nowhere. Free download here. Beware, it does use a LOT of data if you don't already have the maps on a memory card. Works with Windows Mobile 5, and Nokias from the 6110, E60, E91, N70, N73 etc through the N series to the N95. Update - you can loads maps onto your phone using Nokia Map Loader (run it on your PC - Nokia Maps Loader 1.3 doesn't work, use an earlier version).

Final Update (I promise) - none of the Nokia Maps Loaders I've tried have worked AT ALL - so I've gone with something else. But, if you can wait, the next version of Nokia Maps looks much better.

VIA Launch new 64-bit CPU call Isaiah

New low power 64bit CPU with speeds up to 2ghz, using the same socket as the VIA C7. more details here.

Pole Position for iPod

Pole Position for iPod (ipod with video, ipod classic, and new ipod nano).

केमरा देसिग्न्स.

Link

Despite the fact that I hate this article because it uses the phrase 'outside the box', there are some pretty cool and original designs here.

Mario's Secret

18 years after it's release someone ha found a new secret in Super Mario Bros 3. He should probably get out a bit more.

Apple Made Some Stuff...

Apple have made the world's thinnest laptop, the MacBook Air. They've also released a new network backup device.

Trusted Reviews have slated the MacBook Air for having no optical drive, only one usb socket, no firewire port, a sealed battery, a sealed hard drive, and more importantly, no ethernet (network) port, leaving the laptop to rely on a wireless network connection.

Update: Further design issues: USB devices don't fit.

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps - Series 7

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps is back. Episode 1 is now on BBC iPlayer (it was broadcast live!). Episode 2 can be watched online on the BBC Three Website (before it's on TV), but don't go there unless you've seen episode one, because they spoil the 1st episode which is nice.

Sim City SOURCE CODE now Free

Source Code released under GPL 3 - hacks / home grown mods expected - (found via boingboing)

Source

New photographic software which resizes intelligently - no distortion.

Transfer Jet is Sony's new technology which allows you to transfer files rapidly just by placing devices in close proximity to one another. It apparently dispenses with passwords until the security protocols are hacked and posted online?) and the need to search for wireless networks.

Transfer speeds are theoretically possible up to 560 MBPS (USB = 480) and it can be built in to the computer or added as a USB peripheral (thereby knocking down speeds to 480 maximum one assumes).

Seems to me that all of this fuss about how we move information is diverting attention away from the fact that we do seem to move rather a lot of it.

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.