Wee hee - as a brick lover I couldn't resist this one ! A wired article on how the brick is about to go techno........... [QUOTE]If that seems like overkill for a 6,400-year-old technology[/ENDQUOTE]
Smart Bricks, or a Dumb Idea?
And the new Harry Potter book has gone on sale.... I've already seen a copy of the first chapter that was psoted to USENET.... nah,nah ne nah, nah !!!
posted by Mike Foord on Saturday, June 21, 2003
Oh yeah... we got hammered in Atlantis. The two biggest players are fighting it out (naturally I'm on the side of the good guys). The badguy, called Warwolves, has sent up some mages with currently 14 Balrogs (meaning big beast) in tow and is *stomping* all over Calipso's cities. It doesn't look good. We've got a lot of mages who are moving in to position to build up a Balrog army to try and save the day (this war is fought with technology as well - meaning well trained mages ! - a balrog definiely counts as a WMD) - but it will be sometime before our mages are all trained to a high enough level. In the meantime big armies are just being wiped out.... ouch.
posted by Mike Foord on Saturday, June 21, 2003
I tried to get blogger to convert all my 'archives' (the old blogs) from weekly to monthly........ It didn't work *sigh*. Oh well -to be fair, I guess you don't care !!
You might find the following article slightly more interesting. A few more details on gateway's new PDA - due *soon* - with PocketPC 2003 which is due to be released next week. This will mean there are some 7 or 8 different *decent* PDA's available for around 200 quid (pounds sterling for those not up on british slang).
Gateway's New PDA.
Controversially, by decent I mean running PocketPC on an Xscale (or ARM) processor clocked at *least* 200mhz. Anyone who disagrees with that spec is welcome to come and find me and we'll fight over it. True to form - just as PocketPC 2003 coems out, I'll probably be buying a machine with PocketPC 2002. Living without my Jornada is *killing* me at the moment.... but I have a plan............
posted by Mike Foord on Saturday, June 21, 2003
Dilbert can be very funny.... I think the last two days are great..........
Well, I'm sitting in the Northampton (UK) CEMC (Council for Ethnic Minority something...) where they have a nice cool room *filled* with computers - all with funky flatscreens....... And they give free internet access *very* nice of them :-)
I've just finalised the date of my wedding - five weeks away (August the 2nd) - you're all invited ! ;-)
My goodness - gorgeous warm weather, a day off to chat to a lady about our Jesus Centre Project and a headache off my mind now the wedding day is sorted.... great - much happier than yesterday. Why does disaster come all at once ? As if having a big screw up on sorting your wedding day out wasn't enough.... it's manically busy *and* I manage to fall out with two people...... bizarre..... I blame my karma.
I had an old buddhist friend called Aparimana (he was actually ordained as a buddhist priest with the FWBO in Cambridge). At the time I met him he was more interested in becoming a black magician - a most un-Buddhist thing to do ! - and he had this theory that you could cash in your Karma.......... it kind of worked like a bank account..... I think at the moment I'm busy trying to cash in some Karma to get a new PDA - theres various funky new ones available for not *too* much dosh... unfortunately more than I happen to have... oh well - who needs karma anyway ?
And I just learned a new acronym - IDE - Integrated development environment. I've started to look at a new programming language - Squeak. If I do it'll be the first programming I've done for years. And what's more - its proper - an object oriented language. A bit overkill for the few scripts I want to do *but* I can write stuff and it will run on my desktop *and* my PDA without modification... funky. Thats the only 'high-level' language I've found that I can do that with... and it doesn't look *too* hard to learn either.
posted by Mike Foord on Thursday, June 19, 2003
By an unusual series of events I came across some photos by a lady called Heather. Heres my favourite.
My friend Rob (a regular on the Void-Shockz message group) has updated his website at long last !! Its basically a photo-album ; but I can particularly reccommend the photos from Boston... some of them are quite spectactular.
www.tansley.org
posted by Mike Foord on Sunday, June 15, 2003
Every time I sit down in front of my computer my mind reels with possibilities... as a result I pootle around doing bits of this, bits of that... and rarely actually achieve anything !! Great fun ! (I feel emotionally crippled without smilies... must get some)
I'm working on developing my friends business through www.learnlandrover.com so I've been looking round the internet at 4x4 and landrover websites. Not a subject I know *anything* about - but it was nice when I showed him how a webpage worked (very basic HTML) and he was *impressed* - I know very little... but to a welder it looks good :-)
Heres a weird one - the first bionic chips.
Coal-Mine Canaries on a Chip
The Berkeley bionic chip works by gauging the electrical resistance of a cell membrane. In the cell's death throes, that resistance spikes, and then plummets.......... An individual chip could work for days or weeks, Rubinsky said, depending on how much care is taken to incubate the cell. It lives in a nutrient bath that sits on a silicon wafer. At either end are electrodes carrying electrical current. The membrane of a living cell won't allow many ions to pass, so the circuit is weak. A meter can then monitor for changes.
I think life scares me.
Heres one thats a bit 'safer' than microchips containing living cells :
Some Kid-Play on the Way to Mars
They're sending some lego space explorers to mars... and the little explorers are doing a blog of their journey !!
posted by Mike Foord on Sunday, June 15, 2003
Just a little update. Fiddled with the sitemap a bit, added a section summary to the main index page and a couple of pages of jokes to the 'otherfunkystuff' section. Theres also a new 'cartoons and comics' gallery - but its not finished yet. A few more changes to go tonight hopefully.
Oh yes, I'd love to get back into programming - and I've found a project that might help. The PBeM (Play By e-Mail) Atlantis involves occupying territory and conquering it. Part of the trouble is that your borders can get quite large - and the alliance I am in is in serious risk of invasion from the 'Warwolves'. We are setting up about 100 scouts to monitor our borders against invasion.... the only trouble is - someone has to read the reports !! I'm going to try and write a script that will do it automatically and report anything unusual. I'm *hoping* to use Javascript as it seems reasonably accessible, can be ported straight to my little handheld computer (or almost any other platform) and even put on the web.... cool.
I found a nice looking javascript tutorial here.
Oh, one last thing.... I've started hanging round a bit on + comp.sys.handhelds + Its a USENET newsgroup - if you haven't got a newsgroup reader you can get there by the link on the left hand bar. I'm definitely on a mission to get a new PDA - theres some cracking new ones for less than two hundred quid - I've got about fifty !! PocketPC 2003 (the new operating system) comes out any day now apparently. (June 23rd ?).
posted by Mike Foord on Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Hmmmm... I think, on average, a Linux user is more likely to have something interesting to say than a windows user. So its a shame that last time I checked Blogger didn't work with netscape (which shares a core with the common Linux browser) - ho hum, it might have changed recently anyway. Whilst we're on the subject of irrelevant stuff - look what I found..... nice huh
Oooo oooh - and I can now offer an excellent hosting deal - particularly for businesses in the UK......... Expect big adverts to appear *everywhere* the minute I get a chance..................
posted by Mike Foord on Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Well - the sitemap is updated........ unfortunately I updated it *before* I added an extra gallery to the gallery section !!
But there we go. The sitemap is generated by a program called Site Xpert. I use a free version they gave away on a magazine coverdisk. I would be interested in some feedback as to how easy it is to use. I think its easy to use - but then I already know my way around this site......
Likewise I`m still looking for a nice guestbook script - if any of you have any suggestions that would be much appreciated. You can always mail me using anything @ voidspace.org.uk !!
Any day now www.learnlandrover.com goes live - a project for a good friend called James Martin who teaches welding and breaking landrovers.
Oops - I almost forgot. The new gallery is called 'nice pictures' (sickly isn`t it !!)... I`ve tested the sitemap in netscape *and* I`ve updated the search engine index as well. There are lots of new photos in *most* of the gallery sections to browse. I`m currently working on finding a way to stop 'wide pages' breaking the table at the top - it looks rather odd... I think I know how to do it - but I still have to test it. I also need to update the search engine on the main index page *and* the sitemap page *sigh*........
[slight update.... I`ve tested the sitemap in Netscape - and although it appears, the folders don`t collapse/expand in the way they should. It still *works* - its just a bit big....... I`ll look at site Xpert some time and see if it can generate a Netscape compatible one........ oh and www.learnlandrover.com is now live.... great... no time to set it all up properly yet / submit it to search engines or anything like that !! ]
posted by Mike Foord on Tuesday, June 03, 2003
This is another of those pointless blogging about blogging posts (say that word six times and it sounds *really* silly). Just an observation that the best blogs are people who's character comes across in their blogs. A dry wit is helpful - but a consistent style is even more helpful. I think as I only blog infrequently, and usually when I do a site update... or I have some personal news, or I`ve discovered something geeky - all of which are different styles etc etc..... oh well - such is this fragmented and odd life we live.
Hmmm..... just rebuildign the sitemap. I use a program called site Xpert which was given away free on a magazine cover disc. [Geek Warning] Because I use server side includes my website has to be read from the webserver - it can`t just read it from my hard drive. This means it builds the sitemap by actually going to the webpage and following all the links. It takes a bit of time - but it produces a very good sitemap. *If* you set the options right. If you set them wrongly it produces a sitemap with links in all the wrong places and you have to spend *ages* re-arranging everything because you can`t be bothered to run it again *doh*.
Hmmm... if I was motivated enough I`d make some witty and incisive comments and this would be a proper blog. (Even 'acerbic' comments - good word huh !). But I`m too lazy.......
Anyway - happy Monday - and a grey and bleak one it is too.............
posted by Mike Foord on Monday, June 02, 2003