boncey's random Internet stuff

"My issue with a packed lunch is that it robs you of one of the essential elements of the football..."

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:49:23 +0000

“My issue with a packed lunch is that it robs you of one of the essential elements of the football experience - average food. A flask of tea, or soup, is acceptable but anything beyond that takes you into a dark place. All you need is a gingham tablecloth and you’re ready to watch polo!”

- Football Focus presenter Dan Walker attempts to take some friends to watch their first football match.

BBC - Dan Walker’s Blog: Winning hearts and minds

"The centrifuge is a genuinely terrifying device. The lights dim when it is switched on. A strong..."

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:28:36 +0000

“The centrifuge is a genuinely terrifying device. The lights dim when it is switched on. A strong wind is produced as the centrifuge induces a cyclone in the room. The smell of boiling insulation emanates from the overloaded 25 amp cables. If not perfectly adjusted and lubricated, it will shred the teeth off solid brass gears in under a second. Runs were conducted from the relative safety of the next room while peeking through a crack in the door.”

- “Would a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Would the wax still rise to the surface? Would the blobs be smaller and faster? With broad disagreement on the answers, I built a large centrifuge to find out.”

Neil Fraser: Hardware: Lava Lamp Centrifuge

(via http://twitter.com/jaywgraves)

"I haven’t got the faintest idea what digital means. Don’t want to know about it. I like film,..."

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:13:14 +0000

“I haven’t got the faintest idea what digital means. Don’t want to know about it. I like film, preferably black and white.”

- Lord Snowdon: ‘Taking photographs is a very nasty thing to do’ - Telegraph

[Maurice Broomfield’s] carefully-crafted photographs of...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:52:43 +0000

[Maurice Broomfield’s] carefully-crafted photographs of industries such as nylon, insulation and shipbuilding provide a unique document of ‘pre-Thatcher’ Industrial Britain during the 1950s and ’60s.

Captain of Industry - Telegraph

"For mixologists, one of the main ice form differentials is melt rate. In all the but most exclusive..."

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:34:27 +0000

“For mixologists, one of the main ice form differentials is melt rate. In all the but most exclusive bars, for example, most drinks are still made using “cheater ice” – standard, machine-made, rounded half-cylinders, often with a hollow interior. This shape is quick-melting and designed to fit the maximum number in a glass.”

- Very interesting article on ice - including instructions on how to make your own glacier and which types of ice to make your cocktails with.

(via @mondoagogo)

The Ice Program

"I hate disruptive technologies. They’re antithetical to all that’s sane and stable in..."

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:03:06 +0000

“I hate disruptive technologies. They’re antithetical to all that’s sane and stable in enterprise IT. So when I hear that one out of every five tech-savvy consumers is interested in buying the as-yet-unannounced Apple tablet device, I start to squirm a bit in my chair.”

- A Dinosaur speaks.

Act now to avoid the Apple tablet apocalypse | Windows - InfoWorld

These seem like they shouldn’t really work but they do...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:48:49 +0000

These seem like they shouldn’t really work but they do (for me).

Pictures of superimposed superheroes and villains in wartime by Indonesian artist and illustrator Agan Harahap - Telegraph

Don McCullin’s damaged Nikon F Camera, hit by a bullet from an...

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:22:27 +0000

Don McCullin’s damaged Nikon F Camera, hit by a bullet from an AK-47 in Cambodia.

Shaped by war - Telegraph

"ALL DOCUMENT IDS MUST BE UNIQUE UNSIGNED NON-ZERO INTEGER NUMBERS (32-BIT OR 64-BIT, DEPENDING ON..."

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:54:00 +0000

“

ALL DOCUMENT IDS MUST BE UNIQUE UNSIGNED NON-ZERO INTEGER NUMBERS (32-BIT OR 64-BIT, DEPENDING ON BUILD TIME SETTINGS).

If this requirement is not met, different bad things can happen. For instance, Sphinx can crash with an internal assertion while indexing; or produce strange results when searching due to conflicting IDs. Also, a 1000-pound gorilla might eventually come out of your display and start throwing barrels at you. You’ve been warned.

”

- Watch out for the Gorilla.

Sphinx - Free open-source SQL full-text search engine

Albert Exergian’s modernist TV posters | Television &...

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:18:13 +0000

Albert Exergian’s modernist TV posters | Television & radio | The Guardian

(via http://twitter.com/skink74/status/8408484249)

Kindle 2 vs Nook

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:19:26 +0000

lrusso:

Remember this post? Where I outed myself as a lover of books? A person who loves the weight and the smell and the turning of pages? Welp, now I’m considering breaking down and turning in my chips for an e-reader. Does anyone own a Kindle or a Nook and have any words of wisdom? Is one better than the other? I’m leaning towards the Kindle. Kind of wish I knew when the Kindle 3 was being released, though. I always seem to be the person who waits and waits to buy a fun new gadget only to have them release a new one as soon as I swipe my credit card.

You don’t need to “turn in your chips” once you buy an e-reader. You can still read books too.

I do both and although I have those absent-minded moments where I reach to turn the page on my Kindle or go to highlight a word in a book to see its definition it works out fine. :-)

Oh, and the answer to “buyer’s remorse” is to not “wait and wait”. As soon as you decide you want it and you’re happy you can spare the money, go and buy it. :-)

A dealer of curiosities Amazing (to me (but I’m into that...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:53:49 +0000

A dealer of curiosities

Amazing (to me (but I’m into that sort of thing)) photos of China taken in the 1870s.

China through the lens of John Thomson - Telegraph

but ultimately there is one very important point that is too...

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:04:22 +0000

but ultimately there is one very important point that is too often overlooked: at no point did film stop doing well all the things it has always done well

I love film. (via David R Munson)

"I had been hoping to see a dodo - it was the whole reason I came to this bloody place initially, so..."

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:44:00 +0000

“I had been hoping to see a dodo - it was the whole reason I came to this bloody place initially, so you can imagine my disappointment when Angela told me that the bird had died out in the seventeenth century. What a gip!”

- Richard Herring visits Mauritius.

Tuesday 12th January 2010 | Warming Up | RichardHerring.com

"Steven Seagal’s taser uses more electricity in a day than a Texas prison. Where you and I leave a..."

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:00:35 +0000

“Steven Seagal’s taser uses more electricity in a day than a Texas prison. Where you and I leave a carbon footprint, Steven Seagal pounds his foot into the Earth’s ass, and activates his coal-burning boot taser.”

- 7 Super Powers That Steven Seagal Actually Believes He Has | Cracked.com

"When you have to keep twenty things in your head at one time, you can’t afford to be..."

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:35:05 +0000

“When you have to keep twenty things in your head at one time, you can’t afford to be overhearing your co-worker’s phone calls about his explosive diarrhea problem.”

- Coping with Speech Noise in the Modern Workplace

FilmDev has now hit 500 recipes!

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:25:29 +0000

filmdev:

FilmDev has now hit 500 recipes!

And by the time I got around to doing a screenshot for this post another 22 had been added.

This is all great news.

I was never really sure if the site would take off so seeing people join and add recipes on an almost daily basis please me greatly.

Since I did the new version of the site in November 2008 it’s been a pretty consistent upwards growth.

As we get more and more data added to the site the next steps are for me to think about better ways to allow people to compare results for different developer combinations.

Not much for me to say other than long may it continue!

Crunchpad manufacturer renames product JooJoo, promises launch this Friday at $499

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:46:42 +0000

Crunchpad manufacturer renames product JooJoo, promises launch this Friday at $499:

blech:

nrbd:

marco:

Assuming this is necessary is a Bill Gates fallacy: assuming that the general public has the same demands and priorities as geeks like us.

I have an iPhone and a MacBook, and I recently sold my Dell Mini 9 netbook. I thought, as a geek, that there was a hole to be filled between Real Computer Tasks like coding and Photoshopping, and Tiny Mobile Tasks like checking Twitter and email and little games. There, in fact, is a hole there. It’s called go outside, and/or talk to real people in person.

I managed to figure out there was no “hole” that a netbook would fit in without buying one. Go me, I suppose.

There is one company I’m waiting for a tablet from: Apple. It’s not because I love everything they do, but because they won’t launch a product without describing a use case. It might be obscure and irrelevant to me (like the Apple TV), but at least it’s part of the sales pitch. Unsurprisingly, tech-led products like the JooJoo lack that entirely, which is why I wouldn’t buy one even if it was only $200.

How about this as a use-case.

Attach it to the wall by the front door so I can see how my trains are running and if I need my umbrella as I leave the house in the morning.

Not saying I’d pay $500 for one but it’s certainly something I’ve considered building for my own use.

"Arsene Wenger “I’m free to shake hands with whoever I want.” Refreshing to see a..."

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:21:00 +0000

“

Arsene Wenger “I’m free to shake hands with whoever I want.”

Refreshing to see a Frenchman that doesn’t want to use his hands.

”

- comment by ScopeJack - BBC - 606

"After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service...."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:21:24 +0000

“After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples.”

- Uniformed Letter Carrier with Child in Mailbag - The Best of LIFE

Indirectly found via notes.husk.org.