Tuesday 27 February 2007 at 06:53 am
I loved Bards Tale on my C64 -
The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part 2: The Golden Age (1985-1993).
Interesting -
NetApp respond to recent studies on disk failure profiles. As per Storagemojos pre-amble its surprising other vendors aren't all over these studies plugging their solutions to these problems we've always suspected but didn't have the numbers to justify. Lovely quote - "RAID 5 today verges on professional malpractice".
Fascinating -
This is Iran, but not as you know it and also
Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World.
Wonderful -
Retro Steampunk Keyboard. Not sure about the white keys but its still pretty awesome.
Amusing -
Mr Pichassohead. Create your own Picasso-esque portraits.
Best comic in the universe -
Thirty years of 2000AD. On a related note Dave Bishop has a blog with a lot of background on 2000AD, its artists and authors -
Vicious Imagery. Dave also wrote a pretty definitive history of the comic -
Thrill Power Overload.
Some interesting ideas -
12 crackpot tech ideas that could transform the enterprise.
Interesting -
Users Who Know To Much and CIO's Who Fear Them. I'm all for client initiated innovation but I think IT departments need to be properly resourced to deal with the demands of "Shadow IT". Want to foster collaboration then resource enterprise IM and virtual workplaces (Wikis, SharePoint, QuickPlace etc); want to allow people to plug in memory sticks and mp3 players then resource IDS and eDRMS tools to make sure documents are safe and secure etc etc
Wednesday 21 February 2007 at 07:16 am
Fascinating -
Analysis of Googles Disk Failure Rate Study. Looks like MTBF doesn't mean a hell of a lot; neither does an optimal operating temperature (in fact according to the study cooler seems worse).
Open source -
DVD Authoring with DVD Flick.
Nifty -
Popular figures re-imagined by artists.
Interesting -
10 largest databases. Some discussion about the order of these databases and some omissions according to the comments. Still vast amounts of 'stuff'.
A couple of useful guides -
Linux NIC bonding and
Using VMWare P2V.
Spolsky on
Seven Key Customer Service Points. 'Take the blame' is always a good way of diffusing a difficult situation.
Useful -
10 Linux commands you've never used. Pstree, lsof are both really useful but I'm not sure about the others in the list.
Kiwiana -
Metafilter thread on the Haka complete with YouTube links. Useful for comparing the be-mulleted 70's All Blacks anaemic Haka to the new Tana era Haka. Also be sure to watch the All Black / Tonga Haka match-up. Series psychological warfare.
If you want to manage your iPod on different PC's but don't want to keep wiping out your iPod contents try the free and cross platform
Floola. Supports Windows, OS X and Linux.
Thursday 25 January 2007 at 06:28 am
YAVM (Yet Another Virtual Machine) -
VirtualBox goes open-source. Looks like it runs Vista and is cross-platform (Windows & Linux with an OS X alpha).
Ex Java developer doesn't regret moving to Cocoa -
In Which I Think About Java Again, But Only For A Moment.
Humour -
Get a Firstlife. Piss-take of
Secondlife (popular Virtual Reality environment).
For the luddite in you -
P-Mail. Like email only slower. I'm tempted to send these through the internal mail system instead of email.
Fascinating -
The making of an Al Qaeda Operative. The insight into groups of young, smart disenfranchised men congregating to find some meaning to life is a little frightening (shades of 'Fight Club').
Looks like theres now a Asterisk (Open Source VoIP/PABX) ISO -
Asterisk. It looks like a few small
companies are starting to offer Asterisk as an out of the box solution to businesses too.
Another X10 like solution for your home -
Indigo. Looks like a nice solution if you have a spare Mac Mini. I'm surprised this technology hasn't been 'consumerised' by now.
Fantastic -
anti-consumerist ATM splash screens.
Open source -
Docvert - convert Word documents to open formats.
If you're after a simple DIY appliance for web/email try out this
CentOS (based on RedHat) / BlueQuartz (based on the old Cobalt appliance) ISO. I installed it via VMWare and was impressed by how straightforward it was - one thing I did miss was SAMBA for basic workgroup file-sharing but it seemed to cover everything else and you can always install SAMBA from an RPM.
Genius -
Self-charging smoke alarms. Great idea.
Also over at Make -
How to photograph smoke.
Thursday 28 December 2006 at 08:25 am
Awesome -
Inkless metal pen.
Useful -
Turning off un-needed OS X services.
Handy Windows tool -
Driver Collector. Lets you collect all the drivers from a running system before a rebuild - particularly useful if you no longer have the original driver installers.
Interesting -
Early history of computer role-playing games.
Linked before but its still great for procrastination -
Optical Illusions.
Rudy Ruckers webzine -
Flurb. Features sci-fi short stories from people like Charles Stross. Rudy also has a series of
blog entries relating to a recent trip to NZ.
Handy -
Forty tips to improve your grammer.
Interesting historical contrast -
Genghis Khan: Law and order. How the Khan handled his 13th Century invasion of Iraq.
Excellent -
Twenty Four web tips. Nate Koechelys article on
easy fluid CSS layouts looks like a great time saver.
I haven't had much luck with Windows desktop managers but the freeware
Dexpot
looks like it has potential.
New Scientist -
Just can't get e-nough. Problems associated with to much technology.
Thursday 21 December 2006 at 1:06 pm
Looks like we may get a
$10 a week tax cut. Rod Dury (of Aftermail/Archivemail fame)
points out that from a business perspective giving some tax breaks may improve the economy as it would increase spending/saving and provides an interesting chart which indicates NZer's work harder but are less productive than their OECD counterparts (debunked in the comments). Rod also links to an amusing tale of the
way taxation works in terms of dis-enchanting high-income earners. I always thought once you got to a certain income level it just meant you ended up getting an accountant who could do some creative tax avoision (smash together avoidance & evasion) so you pay less tax anyway ?
Handy -
10 Good Unix Habits.
Interesting -
How Microsoft deals with network attacks.
Classic -
You Park Like An Asshole. Someone needs to come up with some of these sites in NZ so people can send pxts of moronic behaviour - youdrivelikeanidiot.co.nz / suicidalcyclists.co.nz / insanepedestrian.co.nz / suvdriversfeelinadequate.co.nz. I wonder when cars will come with built in cameras to record trips ?
Definitely need to get a decent turntable -
Walt Mossberg reviews two Vinyl to CD turntables. Bet they're direct drive (evil) rather than belt (good) . . .
Interesting -
Brian Eno - 77 Million Paintings. Looks like a great way to use a plasma screen while its idling
Thursday 07 December 2006 at 07:21 am
Like I need more procrastination fodder -
Best blogs of 2006 you aren't reading.
Also check out the finalist and winners of the
2007 Independent Games Festival.
From there I checked out
Indexed. Both funny, sad and strange.
Genius -
History of the button. My friend used to have a
Merlin - I was super envious.
Handy -
30 essential free applications for windows. I use Firefox, Notepad2, FileZilla (occassionally), KeyNote, VLC, TrueCrypt and Handbrake. They're missing Putty and Windows Media Player Classic & Real Alternative though.
Interesting -
Google System Blog. See what Google has planned for the future as well as useful tips on their services.
Useful -
ABC's of IPv6.
Destruction caused by the new Wii controller -
Wii Have A Problem. Looks like Nintendo are really onto a winner. A
negative take on the Wii from Slate - claims the controller and sensor system makes so many compromises that it doesn't matter about the quality of the motion so much as any kind of motion at all.
Interesting -
33 Names of things you never knew had names. Also check out these strange words at
Snopes. Some of these were on the tip of my tongue but for the life of me I couldn't recall them (peen, tang & ferrule).
Interesting -
50 Ways to use RFID tags.
Wonderful -
Writers Resource of information organised by decade - starting with 1650.
Great resource for scientific bits and pieces -
American Science Surplus. The
Wanna Smash Stuff book looks great for kids
Thoughts on
Unstructured Storage. It would seem only 15% of data is managed the rest is not. Describes a three way tussle between database vendors, storage vendors and dba's - who will win ? As the article says - most people on the business side don't really care until it affects the bottom line - when that happens it'll be interesting to see who suffers
Useful step by step guide to
setting up ssh keys with Putty.
Nifty -
Map of the internet by IP address allocation.
Monday 20 November 2006 at 07:18 am
Some interesting data-recovery tales from
Ontrack Data Recovery. Remember to always have a backup!
New Scientist -
50 Top Scientists Forecast the Future.
Nice -
Postit Pixel Art.
Geeky t-shirts -
Pixel-Tools Shirts. Manys the time I've cursed the Mac bomb.
Amusing -
Interesting stuff found by Google in source code.
Handy -
99 Email Tips. Some good stuff here particularly for email newbies.
Jason Kottke points to some
Logic Problems.
Goes to show that even though its already been invented it can still be improved upon -
the better nail.
More oddness from the Kircher Society -
Chromatic Writing from Benin. And I thought writing in long-hand was a hassle . . .
Can't wait for these things to hit production -
Chumby.
ArsTechnica reviews the
Sony PS3. Gets a fairly lacklustre review. I wonder if it'll turn around when the games start to appear - the PS2 had a slow launch too.
Ars also review the
Nintendo Wii.
Guy Kawasaki lists the
10 Things I Love About Steve Wozniak. The guy is a god.
Aaargghh -
Call my PA. I've never understood the PA thing either. And of course the higher up the food-chain the more likely you are to have an EA. Don't even get me started on 'Dairy Manager'. Sigh.
Interesting -
Intermine - lots of home-grown scripts to do this type of thing but this app looks like it takes most of the legwork out of finding where your space has gone and what filetypes are on your servers file-systems at an enterprise level.
Wednesday 15 November 2006 at 07:14 am
Certainly if you can't beat google at their own game then snazz up the search interface and hope nobody worries to much about the results -
Ms Dewey. Not that the results are bad but it just seems like overkill . . .
Funky -
Self assembling robot chair.
These are amazing -
Papercut Art.
I use three of these alot -
Interblag. I like the ring of 'blagosphere' . . .
Storagemojo has all sorts of good stuff on storage & datacenters - new idea for rack-mount servers from
Rackable. Their
stuff seems kind of neat - certainly a cheaper alternative to blades. Similar to the
Petabox servers used by
The Wayback Machine.
Insight into the benefits of server consolidation using VMWare -
VMware Both Better and Worse Than I Described. Going from 500 physical server to 25 is pretty impressive. If they're Windows boxes Microsoft must make a mint on server licenses . . .
Interesting -
Reverse Dictionary. I find it a little disappointing - the results don't stand out on the page very well either.
Handy & fascinating -
List of social faux pas by country/region. Very useful for frequent travellers.
One of many -
Zune review from ArsTechnica. Like most things Microsoft v1.0 can be disappointing but if they stick with it then they could be onto a winner. Wonder what others will do to stay one step ahead ?
The first of the Wii reviews are coming in -
PCMag and
CNet. Both very positive for game play and entertainment value but lukewarm on the graphics.
First pictures of what will be the production
OLPC Laptop. Looks so tiny! I think its going to be a hit and if they produce a slicker commercial variant it will sell like hot-cakes (ok maybe only to geeks).
Absolutely no irony in this domain name
Official Meeting & Facilities Guide. Or
OMFG. Hmmmm doesn't look like anyone has that as a NZ domain name yet (or my other favourite 'sendaselfaddressedstampedenvelope.co.nz') . . .
Wonderful -
room painted to look like its from a cartoon.
Monday 06 November 2006 at 06:38 am
Rogue Amoeba -
Delicious Generation. A little curmudgeonly perhaps - the Mac world has always been a more 'fun' (remember the pointless but fun
Talking Moose or
Oscar the Grouch trashcan) place to be in terms of a personal computer - but there is a ring of truth to the argument about flash in the pan developers and style over substance.
Via Wes Felters
Hack the Planet -
LogoWiki and
WikiCalc. I remember using Logo on an Apple II. Relive the experience via the web
StorageMojo discusses a couple of highlights at the
Storage Networking World. The inline compression looks interesting as does the flash based SAN and free iSCSI server which lets you experiment a bit with iSCSI if you grab the free Microsoft iSCSI initiator as well.
Ed Brill provides a
History of Lotus Notes.
Ed also points to a
Microsoft Windows Desktop Search add-in for Lotus Notes. Lets you search your Lotus mail from your desktop.
A database of Jobs-era Apple Mac & iPod gear -
Designed in California.
A couple of articles on Apple@30 -
Digibarn Computer Museum and
Woznaik Leads Anniversary Celebration.
Handy -
How to talk to a Climate Skeptic. One way or another the climate is changing - people who don't believe that are seriously blinkered. The weather patterns in NZ have changed markedly in the last 20 years IMHO.
Funny -
Amusing Icons explaining Internet Acronyms.
While we look forward to some excellent rugby - the
All Blacks are learning French. I love the Guardian translations at the end - "You look like a Sheila with that long hair = Vous ressemblez � une fille avec ces longs cheveux".
Wednesday 01 November 2006 at 10:44 am
Looks nifty -
Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking (VPN) application. A bit like setting up your own private LAN across the interweb.
Pretty useful place to check once in awhile -
SourceForge Project of the Month.
Found on the Project of the Month link above is
OpenQRM. Its basically a way to dynamically manage your server (physical & virtual) resources - check this
PDF for more information. Makes for pretty interesting reading. The idea of being able to provision applications and servers with minimal lead time is becoming more and more important.
Too true -
Users don't care about storage and data � they only care about their own applications, so it's essential to deliver IT as a transparent service.
Storagemagazine is chock full of useful stuff -
Backups are not archives. The ability to satisfy electronic discovery requests is pretty scarey. When you have lawyers breathing down your neck for records of email correspondence between two people that occurred over a 2 week period 3 years ago how do you respond ? Thats when products like
Archive Manager come into their own.
Interesting information about
Google Slack. It almost seems like a fancy version of OpenQRM - it would be amazing to see these sorts of dynamic provisioning tools in action.
Interesting things to do with trees -
Arborsmith.
Funny -
The Seven Phases of Owning an iPod - An Illustrated Journey.
WindowsXP eyecandy -
XPize.
Wired discusses
Aranofskys new movie 'The Fountain'. I liked 'Pi' but 'Requiem for a Dream' was a little to bleak for me.
Getting one step closer to having our own fabricators -
Draw and Print your own Furniture.
A nice laymans guide to the
SQL Injection Bug. I didn't realise it was that easy . . .
