Posts by Haku

Frying pans

I've tried searching the web but can't find any info on this;

Does anyone remember an advert from the 80s where Peter Davison I think it was called home to say he'd be home in 10 minutes for dinner, his wife picks up a frying pan and the handle breaks off - but she gets a Tefal one (?) with a 10 year guarantee, skip forward 10 years and the guy calls his wife on a video phone wristwatch to say he'd be home for dinner in 10 minutes, and the frying pan is still ok.

Maybe I'm going mad but I could swear that advert once existed. If so, we should have had phone watches at least 15 years ago. And I want my flying car, too.

What a prat

He should have stopped somewhere inconspicuous to rub one out, like this guy did:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=86a_1241647291

VholdR

My brother bought a VholdR for his mountain biking antics and I am very impressed with it, the twin lasers should be a feature of every headcam because it allows you to easily see where the camera is pointing and get it at the right angle, but what most impressed me was how well it copes in low light levels where most cameras fall flat.

I'm interested to see what the VholdR ContourHD is like. This is the kind of mad shit he gets up to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocBA9kCIjE0&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb-5ol8JXyw&fmt=18 (two VholdR cameras at the same time)

Tattoo solution?

If you've been following any articles regarding Augmented Reality you will have seen that many are using a printed square with a specific pattern on so the computer can identify it and therefore work out it's size & orientation for overlaying it's own graphics, like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKw_Mp5YkaE

My proposal is that anyone who wants their face pixellated/blurred out in video/photos should have an augmented reality marker tattoo'd on their forehead, then any press/tv organisation will run any footage/images they want displayed through a 'blanking' program that looks for the augmented reality markers and blurs faces accordingly..

Archery

I've been pondering how to get a computer to quickly & easily work out where an arrow lands on a target - can you imagine playing a version of Space Invaders, Duck Hunt or the like with bows and arrows?

It's illegal to hunt with a bow+arrow in the UK because it's effectively a silent weapon compared to guns, a system like this could bring some fun into the sport beyond traditional target shooting.

FUD

Ok, so how long til some hacking genius takes the bait Apple are dangling in front of everyone and finds out that either

yes, the iPhone can be hacked so much that you can make free & anonymous calls, as well as crashing cell towers (wouldn't that be funny if it were true and they released the code!)

or no, Apple are (again) talking out of their arse.

Buttle / Tuttle

Surely I can't be the only one who thought of the excellent Terry Gilliam film Brazil when reading about this fuckup?

A 1985 film in which a man was executed because of a typo in government computers...

Too tall? that's nothing, try going too fast on a bicycle...

Bournemouth police have taken it upon themselves to use a radar gun on cyclists on the beach front. Go over 10mph and they'll stop you and warn you that you're speeding.

Fucking ludicrus.

Bicycles are not required by law to have a speedometer, so how the hell are you supposed to know when you're going faster than 10mph?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1191607/Police-waste-taxpayers-cash-stopping-speeding-cyclists-seaside-punishing-them.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195870/Nine-police-officers-swoop-speeding-seafront-cyclist.html

"protecting the users"

is practically a blanket explanation as to why eBay make so many restrictive new rules.

I started using eBay in 2000 when you could have your email address as your username. I liked that, things were open and simple.

Then I was forced to change to pick a new username or they'd pick one for me, and from then on things have been steadily going downhill in terms of protecting yourself from rogue traders on eBay and faith in the system.

They removed the ability to find out what people were actively bidding on - a very easy way of finding out shill bidders.

Then they made it so you can only contact other eBay members through their own monitored message system, I've had several messages not reach the recipient because eBay thought I was wanting to buy something direct and so they wouldn't get their cut, despite in the messages asking when they'll be listing/relisting the item(s) etc.

Now they've made ALL bidders anonymous so you still can't find out who won the auction if you're not the seller, let alone find out what they've won in the past.

I tell you, eBay's becomming like a fricken freemasons event, you don't know who the hell you're dealing with until you win the auction. All this forced privacy to "protect the users" isn't helping with people's trust in the site.

I haven't sold anything on eBay since they introduced the fucking stupid rule of sellers not being able to give negative feedback to buyers.

As much as Google creeps me out, part of me wants them to make their own auctions site, they're probably the only force on the internet big enough to bitch slap eBay in the auctions dept.

NOT a notebook!

17 inch screen and weighs 4kg?

Do me a lemon, that's a bloody LAPTOP!

Processing power

I've been using VirtualDub & AviSynth for years, the main reasonn I got into video editing was the ability to filter video, cleaning up captured VHS/Betamax/Laserdisc to a point where it doesn't look like it was dragged (backwards & longways) through a hedge. The sheeer amount of 3rd party filters for those programs is staggering, http://compression.ru/video/ has some of the best ones.

When you're filtering video with complex noise removal algorhythms the first thing you learn is you can never have enough processing power, filtering with an 800mhz CPU is like trying to raytrace on a BBC Micro (been there, done that, waited days for the simple picture), doing test pieces on 5-10 minutes of video several times to find the right filter settings can take an age.

The one thing I've found with filtering video is that it can look superb on your PC's screen but once authored & burned to DVD and watched on a traditional TV screen it can look terrible because the filtering was too heavy. TV-out on your PC is a godsend in these situations, you can get almost instant feedback on how well your filter settings are working - and it's always that less is more.

@Stuart 22

Damn straight! I really like my Eee 900 because it was cheap, small, light, doesn't have a spinny disc so can withstand being carted around in panniers on crappy roads (I think I live in Pothole Land, millions of the buggers everywhere)

I saw a pic of an Eee with a 8.9" screen next to one of their 10"ers and no way would I buy any laptop with a screen bigger than 8.9 - http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/03/asus-eee-pc-1000-vs-atom-based-901-vs-original-701-fight/

And I really don't like how it appears all the newer netbooks all have that bloody iPod style curvyness on the edges, I like the bevel edges! I want a tool, not a damn fashion acessory!

What songs?

Was one of them "American Idiot" by Green Day?

Wot no SSD?

Is it me or have all the netbook manufacturers dropped SSD in their current/future machines?

When this Eee 900 gives up the ghost (or more likely, I tire of it) the replacment will have to have an SSD because I don't believe a spinny disc storage netbook would survive the day-to-day travelling my Eee 900 does (and previously Eee 701 before I retired it).

Streisand Effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

BTW, just read that the lawsuit has been settled, with Twitter agreeing to pay legal fees and a donation to his animal rescue foundation.

MS mice scrollwheel

I have to say something about the various Microsoft mice (on other people's computers) I've had the displeasure of using over the past few years, notably their horrible scrollwheels. It's the fact that they don't have any tactile feedback when turning it, there's no 'notches' which doesn't help you feel like the computer knows you've actually scrolled - couple this with IE's absolutely horrible scrolling (especially the smooth scroll option) and it's a nightmare.

Give me a mouse that when you spin the scrollwheel it 'bumps' to let you know it just told the computer you moved the wheel a notch and I'm happy.

/still using the Woolworths scrollwheel optical USB mouse he got in the sales for £3 :)

"Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

/the words that came into my mind when seeing that Monty Python image

How do we know this isn't just another publicity stunt, in that the DDoS attack was paid for by someone in the BNP just so they can cry "we're being attacked!" ?

I'm just disappointed it ISN'T the biggest DDoS in history.

Name changes

There's a local firm that for years was called T Butt & Son, but a couple of years ago they changed to Travis Perkins, which is abbreviated to TP on their signs.

From Butt to TP...

My next 'legtop' won't be an Asus then

I bought a 701 when they came out and used it practically daily for a year, then went up to a 900 which is a lot nicer because of the screensize (pixel wise), only drawback is the heat & shorter battery life, the 701 is now my download/online storage access machine.

But killing off the 8.9" & SSD range is monumentally dumb IMHO, I really like the size/weight of the 701/900, along with the ruggedness SSD provides it means I can lug em around without worry of the internal drive dying from being dropped or shaken to death in my panniers.

No 8.9" range from Asus will mean when I'm done with my Eee 900 I'll be searching for a manufacturer that does an 8.9" with SSD. So long and thanks for the 'legtops', Asus.

Finally

You know what this means?

The ability to have a car that looks AND sounds like KITT - just make it electric and add in your own digitised sounds from the tv show :D

eBay not always worth it

As much as I enjoy searching eBay for rare collectables I also use it to get everyday gadgets & useful items, but certain things are not worth getting from eBay because with a 20% price difference between 2nd hand off eBay & brand new shop bought on expensive items the shop always wins because of consumer protection laws (does anyone /really/ trust PayPal?) and 2 year warranty under EU laws.

Plus you shouldn't ever buy USB flash sticks off eBay, I've ended up acquiring (given by family/friends) 3 USB flash drives that originated from eBay and they all arrived screwey, 4gb one would 'lose' it's files when plugged into another computer even though they would initially playback ok, the other two had been programmed to appear bigger than they are - but found a handy piece of software to reprogram them to show their true sizes; so now I have a free 132mb & 1gb.

@Lionel Baden

I'll join your anti-twitter cause, I've got a big jar of spare change to help pay for twitter's downfall.

Remember the Merlin mini-series with Sam Neill and how they defeated Mab by simply ignoring her, thus losing her power over the people. That would be the perfect way to destroy twitter, except there are too many "look at me!" people out there believing what they tweet is important enough to regularly continue tweeting.

(yes I realize the irony of airing my views in the manner)

OMG I must be terrrrrist!

because I haven't switched on my mobile phone for months!

This surveillance lark is getting out of hand, the potential accusation of something to hide is only because you use a communication method they can't "wiretap", ie talking face to face with people in private places (homes).

So on that note, anyone fancy setting up a network of carrier pigeons? use em to send PGP encrypted notes and that should be pretty secure against "wiretapping".

Anyone remember DIVX?

Not DivX, DIVX - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express)

A pay-per-view DVD system that required special players whereby you paid to 'unlock' the disc for 48 hours.

Why would someone want to resurrect a 10 year old system/idea that failed miserably?

2k bug is sooo last millennium

*goes and buys some popcorn in readyness for Day Of The Conficker*

This looks like it'll be more exciting than the 2k bug (did anything important actually screw up because it was programmed with a two digit year instead of a 4 digit year?)

But but but

I don't have any of those.

I have a Legtop!

Well, two of them to be precise, Eee 701 & 900.

Q: How do you make a film fan's blood boil?

A: By reading this list of 55 remakes that are proposed/being made/in the can:

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/166239/55_movie_remakes_currently_in_the_works.html

How the fuck can they re-make The Karate Kid with Will Smith's son?!? it'll suck more than a truck of Dyson's