Category: General

Following from the entirely unbelievable but true Epic Split truck advert with Jean-Claude Van Damme,

Scania has offered a new ad, building a working clock using trucks.

I love all of these ads, I really do. But I’m not in the market for a truck. 🙁

Sadly it seems that the Birkhill fireclay mine has been permanently closed as a visitor attraction. I was lucky enough to go round the mine tour a few years ago when it was still open and it was a fascinating visit.

The mine had been in operation from the 18th century before closing about 1980. The fire clay that was mined there was made into bricks for use in furnaces, the bricks being particularly suited for the high temperatures involved.

Unfortunately the mine was permanently closed in 2013, after an extended temporary closure. The closure has been blamed on the high costs of maintenance and the poor state of the buildings. I also suspect that the income from visitors couldn’t hope to cover the costs of operating the place, since several people were needed to give guided tours.

So I got to see something that others probably won’t, which is sad.

The new Raspberry Pi Zero looks amazing!

Base price is just £4!

Sure you have to add stuff like an SD card, a screen and a keyboard. But these can be shared, or borrowed or obtained second hand from somewhere if necessary.

Almost anyone can get one of these and starting building stuff.

It’s going to to be great. 🙂

WordPress usually needs plugins for things, but it’s a pain keeping them updated, unless you want to use the built in auto-updating (which I don’t use for various reasons)

That was until I discovered this method of using svn:externals to update them.[kovshenin.com]

cd public_html/wp-content/
svn propedit svn:externals plugins
<edit as required>
svn update

By adding third party plugins to the plugins directory svn:externals list, they all get updated at the same time as I update the wordpress install, which I already use subversion for anyway. The akismet plugin already gets updated by this method. It also allows changes to the version of the akismet plugin, which is good if it gets updated between major WordPress releases.

MoD releases code to GitHub

Well done to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at the UK ministry of Defence. They’ve started to release code on github.

I can’t imagine that getting approval for this was easy, and it probably required a fair amount of negotiation to get this far; but it’s a good sign for openness in government and hopefully it will be a good thing for both the government and the wider community.

Given that governments aren’t trying to make money selling software, open source seems an excellent fit. Hopefully we’ll see more stuff from them. (I imagine not the classified things though!)

I’ve been playing Prison Architect recently, having picked it up in a Humble Bundle deal.

Interesting idea and great fun. Plus not so lifelike that I would be uncomfortable playing.

http://xss-game.appspot.com/

It teaches a bit about Cross-site scripting (XSS) bugs that, as the page helpfully describes, are one of the most common and dangerous types of vulnerabilities in web apps.

Worth checking, even if you think you know the material.

I just saw details of this new stuffed/plush toy bear that contains medical sensors, which seems absolutely wonderful as an idea.

The idea is that instead of having to persuade a child patient to put up with various medical devices and sensors (like thermometers or heart rate sensors), the child just hugs a small toy bear, which contains the sensors. The data is sent wirelessly to a computer device that the doctor can then view.

It’s a brilliant idea and I would think that anything that makes the time children spend in hospitals a little easier is a good thing.

[Via CNet Interview]

For all of your cartoon analysis needs:

http://cartoonoveranalyzations.com/