Month of September, 2007

Spaghetti Cabling that would make a fully-grown sys admin cry. or… Cable management is for wimps.

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Shocking and shameful series of pictures

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In general day time TV sucks, I don't get to see much of it now I work full time but at University there was always one show you could rely on for some entertainment - The Jeremy Kyle show.

There was shock and horror in the news today as a judge stated that The Jeremy Kyle show is "a human form of bear baiting which goes under the guise of entertainment".

This all comes after a man head butted someone on the show. It was not aired though Sky News fortunately provided a clip. The man was fined £300 and the Judge gave us this awesome money quote [the programme was aiming to] "effect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people".

I thought this was the idea of the show in the first place but perhaps Jeremy Kyle is helping these people rather than just providing entertainment ;).

Cnet is reporting that NASA is looking to take on astronauts for training in 2009 onwards. They are looking for between 10-15 candidates who have a bachelor's degree in engineering, science or maths and three years of relevant professional experience.

I have a bachelors degree in computer science but unfortunately only one years experience in relevant work (well my experience in. The job gives you the opportunity to drive moon buggys, fortunately I currently have a clean driving licence.

One of the requirements of the job comes from this money quote:

"Frequent travel may be required"

I always wanted to be an Astronaut when I was growing up, perhaps this is my opportunity - application is open until next summer!

I am really amazed on what kind of question is this . Its the first one and you wont have an idea on how to answer it .

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It's amazing how quickly technology advances these days...

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.....worth getting electrocuted over

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Maybe she was wondering if she had any panty lines and just had to look for herself. I wonder how many of my fellow Diggers will give this a shot after seeing the pic.

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These pics are cool.

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Do you normally think of graffiti as subversive art spray-painted illegally on the walls of a city? Some artists, including Edgar Mueller, Julian Beever and Kurt Wenner, defy that stereotype, painting and chalking openly on city streets and sidewalks. Check out these brief bios with 20 amazing images of their work from around the world!

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expose_overload, originally uploaded by jeffseb.

This is what happens when you CMD+A in the Applications folder on a MBPro (2.33 GHz Intel with 3 GB DDR2 SDRAM) and accidentally double click....EVERY application on the computer opens at the same time.

It's that time of year again land lubbers where we get to talk like pirates! The 19th of September is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Avast, I wont be dressing as a pirate but I will be adding in as many pirate phrases as possible.

The official website has some common lingo and even pirate chat up lines for all ye beauties out there. Some common phrases to help you through the day.

Ahoy: Hey!
Avast: Stop!
Aye: Yes
Booty: treasure
Jolly Roger: the skull and crossbones, the pirate flag!
Landlubber: "Land-lover," someone not used to life onboard a ship.
Lily-livered: faint o' heart
Loaded to the Gunwales (pron. gunnels): drunk
Matey: A shipmate or a friend.
Me hearty: a friend or shipmate.
Pieces o' eight: pieces o' silver which can be cut into eights to be givin' small change.
Scallywag: A bad person. A scoundrel.
Scurvy dog!: a fine insult!
Shiver me timbers!: an exclamation of surprise, to be shouted most loud.
Swashbucklin': fightin' and carousin' on the high seas!
Yo-ho-ho: Pirate laughter

A full list here.

Apple announced today in London that the iPhone is coming to the UK with carrier 02 for £269 plus a minimum of a 18 month £35/month contact. That £35/month gets you a pathetic 200 minutes, 200 texts and unlimited data.

Other 02 tariffs on 18month contracts for £35/month get you 600 minutes and 1000 texts or 730 minutes and 100 texts. So why is iPhone tariff so different considering you have to fork out an extra £269 for the phone? Similar contracts with Orange Dolphin get you a Nokia N95 for £89.99 plus 600 minutes and unlimited texts for £35/month on an 18month contact.

I was really tempted to get an iPhone but for the sort of minutes I use it will cost me at least £45/month for the contract plus the initial £269 for the phone. This makes the iPhone way to expensive for myself and most other people, I will be surprised if the iPhone sells well at this price and I would expect a price drop in the near future.

Anyone going to be queueing for an iPhone on launch day?

The theme for Nej's Birthday this year was Wrestling, I've never been a big fan but didn't want to turn down the opportunity to dress as a Sumo.

( Much love to Serena for the picture - I didn't want to smile, wasn't sure if Sumo's actually smile).

As you can see the realism of this costume is simply amazing, if you hadn't noticed everything below my head is fake. The suit is fan powered and is constantly filling up the inside with air (think how a bouncy castle works).

Walking around Shrewsbury town was an interesting experience and if you suffer from low confidence or self esteem then I would highly recommend drinking plenty first. I spent the night sober after drinking far too much on Friday night in Liverpool.

It was interesting all the attention the costume got, most people found the it funny and we turned heads in a number of restaurants we walked past, I guess this is how Tom Cruise must feel.

Here my costume is fully inflated. Much love to Nick for being my tag team partner. I was expecting more trouble from the costumer however even in a club most people just laughed.

The costumers came as a pair off Ebay for about £30 but it will never beat my transformers costume.

More photos on my Flickr account.

Whats better than a refrigerator mod to get some beers in the office.

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Last weekend Laura and myself booked a holiday to Hong Kong for 12 days going the 1st of October. I wanted to do something different this time rather than just spending a week on a beach or round a pool. I wanted to see some culture and visit a place completely different.

Hong Kong seemed an ideal place to book and I'm really excited! If anyone has been there before or lives there and can suggest any really good places to visit then please let me know.

I will be getting lots of pictures and will put a post up in my travel series once I get back. Until then check out some of my previous travel dairy entries in Egypt and Rhodes.

Many people seek the comfort and companionship of a pet, however cannot find the time to care for, feed and nurture the live animal. Pet robots with artificial intelligence may serve as a good replacement for these people. Pet robots have many of the senses, abilities to recognize and reason, emotions and stimulation needs of live pets...

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Here are some really big holes from around the world.

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View them all in 360
° interactive panoramas from internationally known panorama photographers.

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brilliant ad design using the exhaust of a bus to illustrate a point

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clever and disturbing....

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On Wednesday Apple updated their entire iPod line. The shuffle stayed the same shape and design but got new colours. The Nano got a new wider shape with rounded corners, a bigger screen, video playback capabilities, higher storage capacity and an updated interface. The iPod (or classic as its now known) got an updated design ( including rounded edges), an updated user interface and a choice between 80gig or a huge 160gig of storage.

Apple also unveiled a new device called the iPod Touch which is basically an iPhone without the phone. The device is only 8mm thick, incorporates Apples multi touch interface and comes in 8gig and 16gig models. The really cool part of the Touch is that it contains Wi-Fi, Safari, YouTube and the new iTunes WiFi Store. This makes the iPod Touch like a PDA meaning that where ever there is wireless Internet you will be able to check your email, news, Facebook and use all those other cool iPhone app on your iPod!

The problem this leaves me is do I sacrifice being able to carry all my music around with me on an 160gig iPod (I have about 45gig of music, 10gig photos and 30gig video) to be able to use the net in WiFi areas (as the Touch can only carry 16gig of music/photos/video)?

Before it was a simple choice to go for the iPod with the most features and storage, now the iPod with the best features doesn't have the most storage. Anyone else with a similar hard choice between iPods? All the new iPods can be found on the Apple Store.

Scroll through the top and to the bottom, towards the bottom of the bug report you may find the most enjoyment... Or maybe not.

In the end, it's a small chuckle at what not to include in your bug reports.

P.S. if you had a Category for stupidity, I would put it in that.

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Yeah, it's exactly like it sounds.

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I sell a few items here and there on Ebay, usually when I'm short of cash or feel the need to get rid of some junk. This month I'm just short of cash and with going on holiday in early October I thought it was time to raise some funds. After looking round my room I decided I no longer needed my MDA Vario as for me it has been the lamest phone ever.

By getting rid of the phone I no longer needed my GPS Receiver so I put both items on Ebay. I knew roughly the value of the GPS Receiver so I put that on with 'Buy It Now', the phone on the other hand I wasn't sure about so just listed that with a standard auction. The GPS Receiver went after a few days and the phone finished at a nice £97 on Sunday.

I was suspicious of the phone buyer almost immediately as the user had only joined Ebay in the past week and had no feedback. Second they did not try to pay until the following morning when I got this email:

I have pointed out various parts that made me even more suspicious:

1. The email has come from paypal.fundtransfer@inbox.com rather than service@paypal.com .

2. The header reveals more about the email not originating from Paypal.

3. Unusual characters showing that the fraudster cannot get the character encoding right.

4. I had been paid £10 more than needed in an attempt to get me to post it.

5. The ultimate give away was the frigtard trying to get me to post it to Nigeria. This country is renown for its '401' scams and fraud problems.

After logging into my Paypal account (not through a link in the email) there had been no payments and it was the final conclusion that someone was trying to make me a victim of fraud. I reported the incident to Ebay and they instructed me to file a none payment on the item however this can only be done after 7 days meaning I would have to wait that time then relist the item. So much for a quick sale.

I will most likely continue to use Ebay as I have not lost anything this time however this is only because I know what to look for and how to spot this kind of fraud. Perhaps Ebay needs to do more to protect its users, unfortunately I'm sure its not very simple.

wow...

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Of Vogue
’s 840 pages, 727 are ads, or: 13 percent is editorial. Sounds about the right ratio to us.

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"Summing it up, only one new script had to be written and some minor changes to existing scripts had to be made to generate the new website." Sweet! A neat feed page until Digg implements their official version!

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Today marks the 12th anniversary of this landmark RTS franchise. To kick the celebration off, today we have a special surprise which we are certain new and old Command & Conquer fans will enjoy. We are providing the original Command & Conquer Gold as a free download, compatible for Windows XP!

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