Category Archives: General

I was sad to read that the National lighthouse museum in Penzance appears to have closed. It was an interesting place to visit and it had lots of real exhibits including light house lamps, optics and models. It was also … Continue reading →

Since I got confused by this one the other day: http://unicode.org/faq/basic_q.html#14 Q: What is the difference between UCS-2 and UTF-16? A: UCS-2 is what a Unicode implementation was up to Unicode 1.1, before surrogate code points and UTF-16 were added … Continue reading →

The Google Chrome comic is a work of art, it’s both functional and artistic, and it manages to explain so many really important points in a way that is easy to understand. If you haven’t read it, and you’re interested … Continue reading →

The people at 280 North have released the The Cappuccino framework as open source. The Cappuccino framework is the system that powers the 280 slides web app, which is sort of Keynote in a browser. I’ve been playing around with … Continue reading →

Media Temple are running a beta programme for virtualized Mac OS X server hosting (Using Parallels Server) This sounds really interesting, it would be nice to be able to rent a Mac OS X box and run services on it. … Continue reading →

They spotted water on Mars! Colonising now seems a step closer … MarsPhoenix Twitter (via Boing Boing)

Because I can never remember where this list is kept: UK Film Distributors’ Association Film Release Schedule

George Lucas in Love A parody on the origins of the star wars story…

Wired has an interesting article about Engineers without borders, a group that is trying to develop cheap technology solutions for developing parts of the world. The latest idea is a low cost wind turbine to generate electricity for lighting. Best … Continue reading →

I happened to come across this: Chocolate Russian Roulette [cybercandy uk] You get a tray with 12 pieces of chocolate. 11 of them are praline filled milk chocolate bullets, the 12 contains a real chilli pepper.

Work started on the new acid test almost as soon as the IE developer team posted notification that IE8 passes Acid2 🙂 Well, if you read the article and comments, it’s not perfectly correct. But it’s kind of funny as … Continue reading →

Since it wasn’t obvious to me where this document was, here is a link to a Microsoft page describing Windows XP services with descriptions. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/serversecurity/tcg/tcgch07n.mspx There is also a similar document for Windows 2000 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742605.aspx

Interesting blog post talking about how Adobe plans to improve Photoshop, which is obviously an application with a large number of very committed users. John Nack is talking about task orientated user interfaces, which in theory is what Microsoft was … Continue reading →

This looks really cool: IT World: Nissan adds a robot helper to its concept car It’s a concept electric car which has a small robot on the dashboard that offers directions and tries to keep the driver cheerful.

Got a package this morning delivered by DHL and an interesting thing happened. I recognised the delivery person and the delivery person recognised me. Which was nice. 🙂 I think they must work a particular route, because the same woman … Continue reading →

I get tired of filling in captcha fields on forms. Wouldn’t it be handy if there was a facility in web browsers to fill them in automatically. 🙂

This says it all really. (Though saying that there are still some smart shows on tv. I just wanted to link to that page)

I’ve been watching educational stuff on the internet recently. One of the things that I really like is Google Tech Talks on Google Video. These are talks given at Google on different subjects and many are now available online. Amongst … Continue reading →

I’ve been reading stuff recently about creating native (non-java) mobile phone apps. The key thing is application signing. In an attempt to prevent viruses and malicious code from being run on mobile devices, the major platforms require that applications are … Continue reading →