SpareParts

Brilliant photo mapping

So, I like geo locating my photos, and now I've found Yuan.CC Maps that shows them all on a map at the same time, or at least whichever you choose to have. Brilliant !

my Del.icio.us

I use del.icio.us/cight a little. I thought I'd just back up my list of links here, handy I thought. I'm going to try to sort a way I can add a recent cool links to this blog without having to do a whole new entry each time I find something cool. I wondering maybe a separate links blog would be good that publishes its simple output here.

Godchecker

check details of gods. Random Reference ... (tags: random reference culture godmythology religion gods)

Upcoming.org: Metros:London

(tags: london social events)

Yahoo!Developer Network Home - Welcome!

(tags: ajax development geek hacks javascript programming reference web yahooapi)

Bore Me - the best of your inbox - funnymovies, funny pictures, games and jokes

(tags: cool email humor funny viral Videos)

Create your temporary spambox!

(tags: email temp spam)

FireFox Plugins

(tags: firefox plugin development tool css javascript)

GoogleAnalytics

site analysis ... (tags: tool analysis traffic statistics software freeuseful)

100-downloads.com |Top-100 essential downloads of free software & freeware for Windows XP

(tags: download software useful tools free freeware)

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Programmers

(tags: hacks howto programming development productivity tips tutorial usefulorganization reference)

The Pencil Pages!

(tags: Pencil)

wiseGEEK: clearanswers for common questions

(tags: howto reference useful questions FAQ geek)

Web Developer Extension

(tags: firefox html accessibility css debug extension javascript software tooltools usability)

DynamicDrive Forums - how to change div tag contents

(tags: javascript dom howto techie)

QuirksBlog - XMLHTTP

(tags: xmlhttprequest ajax)

homepage

(tags: web http firefox extension debug)

JavaScriptCompression - Compress JavaScript Code Free with this JavaScript Compressor (CSSToo) - from Creativyst

(tags: css javascript tool compression download filesize)

Regular Expressions: Introduction- Doc JavaScript

(tags: regex reference tools tutorial javascript howto)

Regular Expression Basics | evolt.org

(tags: regex tools)

The URLEncode andURLDecode Page

(tags: http tool web encode urlencode)

Ajaxian

(tags: ajax javascript blog xmlhttprequest tools web2.0)

AccessMatters

(tags: accessibility blog css html standards webstandards usability)

script.aculo.us - web 2.0javascript

(tags: ajax web2.0 javascript css tools)

moo.fx - the nextsmall thing

(tags: accessibility ajax web2.0 javascript reference tools dom flash)

DOM Scripting Task Force

(tags: accessibility ajax blog css javascript html reference usability webstandards dom webstandards)

TiddlyWiki- a reusable non-linear personal web notebook

(tags: blog wiki javascript web software tool cool techie lifehack organizationprojects)

bobbyvandersluis.com | UnobtrusiveFlash Objects (UFO) v2.0

(tags: flash javascript accessibility tools hacks)

Wait till Icome!

(tags: blog techie css accessibility javascript tools)

G E E K T O O L S

(tags: tools http techie reference)

SimpleLogic: URL Decode

(tags: tool http html techie)

http headerviewer

(tags: http apache tool automated techie)

Online Conversion - Convertjust about anything to anything else

(tags: reference tool academic howto techie)

Flock

D.I.Y. Live

(tags: cool diy howto hacks projects)

I want to - a pageof utilities that help you do stuff you want to

(tags: web2.0 ajax cool lifehack organization tool)

Remember The Milk

very nifty list management app. ... (tags: ajax tools tool techie cool automatedpersonal web2.0 planner lifehack todo organization)

RSS 0.91 Maker

(tags: rss techie cool html reference automated tool tools xml)

EyetoolsResearch: CSS Zen Garden -- an Eyetools eyetracking analysis

(tags: techie css usability)

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

(tags: techie)

stu nicholls | the CSSplayground

(tags: techie css)

JavaScript - Table ofContents

(tags: reference techie tutorial)

mediatinker.com

(tags: html css movabletype blogging techie)

Mozilla Accessibility Project

(tags: accessibility)

scriptygoddess

(tags: blogging techie)

Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks,& Techniques: A List Apart

(tags: css techie)

Web AccessibilityWeighted Lists :: WATS.ca

(tags: accessibility html)

YourTotalSite.com/ helping you develop the web. better.

(tags: techie css html accessibility javascript tools)

Notemaking

(tags: cool academic thought)

Encrypted PasswordGenerator for .htpasswd file

(tags: techie http apache)

Other JavaScript Issues

Creating Accessible JavaScript ... (tags: javascript techie htmlaccessibility)

all in the <head>

(tags: html techie ui javascript)

Standards-schmandards

a web stanards ... (tags: accessibility css)

An accessiblebar chart

(tags: css accessibility html)

CSS Image Maps

image map that's built entirely using CSS and XHTML ... (tags: css htmltechie)

The Terrorist's Handbook

(tags: cool)

Guide to Lockpicking

(tags: cool)

Using the XML HTTPRequest object

(tags: http html javascript xml techie)

/IE7/

making IE6 into IE7 ... (tags: html blog techie css)

The CSS Weblog - css.weblogsinc.com

'covering CSS innovations' ... (tags: css techie blog)

Joystiq - www.joystiq.com

gaming site ... (tags: blog gaming)

extisp.icio.us -charting the tags of del.icio.us users

what does your mind look like ... (tags: del.icio.us techie cool tool)

Engadget - www.engadget.com

new gadgets website ... (tags: cool techie)

currybetdotnet - search : web : media : politics :transport - Martin Belam

(tags: bbc search)

Ben Metcalfe Blog

(tags: bbc techie rss blog)

Wonderland

(tags: bbc gaming cool techie blog)

Anne's Weblog about Markup &Style

(tags: css html techie doctype)

Apache 2.0Documentation

(tags: http reference apache ssi modules)

Css Reference

Blooberry ... (tags: css reference)

HTML Reference

Blooberry ... (tags: html refernce)

HTTP headers reference

Lists all the message headers defined in the HTTP/1.1 protocol ... (tags: httpreference)

HTTP Header Viewer

This service will allow you to inspect the HTTP headers that your web server issending along with your files. ... (tags: http automated)

FavIcon from Pics --favicon.ico for your website

make favicons from gifs without needing a downloaded tool ... (tags: toolautomated favicon)

SpareParts

my Blog ... (tags: blog rant personal life cool techie)

What can I make to eat?

CookingByNumbers.com

Ever looked in your cupboards saw a range of things but had no inspiration of what to eat? I know I have. And then even if you do dare pick up a cookery book you end up not having this and that. This site goes at it the other way, tell it what you've got and it will give you loads of great ideas og what you can make. Some classics to be had, "Bacon Surprise, Bacon Surprise", the surprise, its just bacon, add sauce and break to taste... no complaints here...

Penny Contructions

Pictures of Pennies being stacked in very cool structures, bridges, pyramids, spiral towers [link from boingboing]

Gadgetty crap

Gazotto lists and comments on gadgetty crap and trends and the like. I thought it was vaguely interesting in the same way a stuff magazine and T3 (the latter being far better than the former imho).

Shoutwire

Foound this the other day, faily well filtered interesting news, of the failry techie variety, Shoutwire.com » Internet News for the Masses. Its al about people volunterring news stories they've seen, probably similar idea to the popular/new thread on delicious

A380 maiden flight

BBC NEWS - A380 takes off for maiden flight. Just watched the live stream of this with Benjamin, he said it was a turtle, but I told him it wasn't. So it went along the runway what seemed like very slowly after a good long wait. So I was half thinking, oh will it make it, but it did. It was quite dull after all, you couldn't really tell the scale, so it was just a plane taking off, tootling off into the distance and turning a bit then the stream ended. Oh well that's history for you I guess.

• Image to show scale
• Eads
• Airbus

Summerhouse

Just bought a summerhouse for the garden.

After procrastinating for 6-8 months finally got round to it and bought it. So it should arrive in a couple of weeks, not sure what colour it is going to be yet, but we think a (mildy) reddy mid to dark brown. Should be good, if the instructions I've read are correct then it fits together with interlocking panels one at a time, just like the 'Fort Dallas' I had as a kid growning up :-)
So, we'll put it up and then we can have a BBQ and summer-house warming party, yay !!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

well I'll give it a try and see how it goes.

Stereograms

Its them pictures where they are like loads of dots and stuff, and you stare at them and then a picture, like, arrives in your head - Stereogram Page.

This one is very cool, almost makes you wonder if there would be a way to invoke mind control by having a certain picture.

For fun why not change your monitor to 60Hz and really screw your eyes up.

(that was a joke, its bad enough staring at the monitor at 85Hz)

Geek Valentine

ThinkGeek :: Geek Love Poem T-shirt.

roses are #FF0000
violets are #0000FF
all my base
are belong to you

:-)

Just when I was about to give up on trackback

Just when I thought of giving up on trackbacks, (mostly because I can't seem to trackback to others due to a flaw with my hosting):

Cue Janine Melnitz (the secretary) in Ghostbusters - "We got one", whoop! whoop! (fire alarm).

So I finally have people reading my benign drivel. well I may as well leave trackbacks on for now, unless of course I start getting this trackback spam

nice shopping feature

Ok so yesterday I blogged about ebuyer, today I found they have a cool feature I've not spotted anywhere else before. I'd found something else I wanted to buy and I'd then found it at ebuyer, so, as I have before, I thought well the order isn't fully processed or dispatched yet, I'll go and cancel it and start again, adding this other item. So I get to the oder screen and notice an 'add item' tab along the top. So now I've added another item to my order which will still turn up when it was going to in the first place, and I don't have to cancel my order and remember everything to re-add or pay extra postage for the new item.

Cool !!

Urban Dictionary

Just found out the term for losing your job for writing contravercial things in a blog 'dooced'.

But my online monika comes out quite well from this : Cight - Very good, awsome, tight, sweet, cool. - as in - That was really cight when the panda blew up the town with a nuclear bomb and then conquered the world.

Of couse pronunciation is anyone's guess.

buffyology

Wow, that's some job they've done there... buffyology : searchable Buffy cast, crew and episode database. Nice counterpart to the fact that my girlfriend has every episode on video (and angle, oh except maybe the last series of both). Yay !!

(orininally from interconnected)

Perfect water for Whisky

Just notice our facilities management provide Speyside Glenlivet - Natural Mineral Water for meetings now. I think I'll be taking some home to accompany my Whisky collection. I don't often have water in malt (and NEVER anything else), but on occassion... and this seems just right.

Entering Competitions

So, you want something for nothing? Well this is a good start, an agregator of links to competition sites sorted by when they end, comps-online. Thanks to the lovely people at mozilla (and opera I'm told) you can use tabbed browsing with it too, so you can open all the comps from a day and then go though and do them all, well that's what I do anyways.

There is a offline version too if you feel inclined to go though and write out loads of postcards. And it all comes from the comps.org database, which you can help to fill using this bookmarklet Add Comp (instruction on how to use bookmarklet).

Its pretty easy, you find a competition page and hit the bookmarklet, it then opens you a pop-up where you can fill in information about the competition, and quite importantly, the closing date of the comp. And if you're already doing the competitions then it won't take but a few seconds longer.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Really brilliant medally version of "(somewhere) over the rainbow" and "wonderful world" - mp3 linked from some german blog.

You may have heard of it in a few films or also (allegedly) in ER Season 8, Episode Title: On the Beach.

Anyway its a great track, makes you feel kinda happy, pity the chap that did it dies a few years ago.

Yay, freebies...

Looks like there is a good package of goodies and freebies in the ApacheCon attendees pack - blogged in Ted Leung on the air : Hackathon or Packathon

I'll be detailing the pack once I get one, but it looks from the above like you get a nice bag with it, which is good, cos all I have just now is a Siemens bag, which has political implications as part of the BBC (bbc technology) was just sold off to them. I really hope its an apache bag, something I can carry with open-source pride, rather than just some other 3rd party commercial

Laser pointer that thinks its a projector

being made by fraunhoffer (mp3 codec writers?)
Following doc in german Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Mediendienst 11-2004-Thema6 But you can try google translate
...output in the extended entry...

Beamer for the vest pocket

A projector in the pocket size is in range: In it a mobile micro mirror develops the picture line for line. In laboratory prototypes researchers could increase its frequency of oscillation and dissolution so far that diagrams and texts appear clearly readable.

Not much more largely than a piece wuerfelzucker could be the Beamer of the future. Built into Handys would always participate the mini projector - approximately for a PowerPoint presentation in the small circle or the fast view into an on-line journal. In strange cities it could facilitate orientation, by projecting simply a city plan to the next house wall. Still is this future music. Researchers of the institute for Fraunhofer for silicon technology ISIT in Itzehoe however already built a demonstrator for such a tiny equipment. It projects texts and diagrams with a dissolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Heart is a mobile mirror with a diameter of 1,5 millimeters, which can be manufactured as mass product on a chip. It directs a laser beam by speedy changing of its tilting angle, and develops so the picture pixel for pixels.

"the special at the mirror is its suspension", stresses Ulrich Hofmann. "by a special attachment at two torsion bars the mirror can be tilted around two axles. Thus it can divert a laser beam horizontal and vertically." After each deflection the feathers/springs withdraw the mirror so fast into its initial position that it can be tilted several thousands times per second. Suitably the high mobility the researchers accelerated electronics. It decides within the range of nanoseconds, how it must modulate the laser light, so that each pixel in the correct brightness appears. In order to avoid errors in the projection, a second laser serves as control. It radiates likewise on the mobile mirror; the reflected light meets however a photodiode, which locates, as the mirror tilted. "the mirror changes its position for example by vibrations inadvertently, notices control this", explains Hofmann. "electronics can react then flexibly to it and adapt the picture information accordingly." The system is thereby to a large extent insensitively in relation to disturbances from the outside.

Still the demonstrator fits into no mobile telephone. "for the test we had not made, say electronics smaller yet to a minimum" Hofmann. That is however one of the next goals of the researchers, who in addition the frequency of the mirror movement and so the dissolution would like to increase. Also in other place it hooks still: As tiny source of light with sufficient life span and leuchtstaerke there are so far only red laser diodes. Within this range the researchers wait now for developments of their colleagues. They however already prepared their system for the multi-color enterprise.

Firefox 1.0 released

So Firefox 1.0 is released. Well its good. And it works to standards, by why has the Default skin got to look like IE6 :-(

I mean I think I know why, its so the funkyness won't alienate newbies or those people who can only really handle MS products; but some of the good features could have been a bit more obvious. I take for example one conversation I had with one of the programmers I had here. "It looks like IE, IE works on the sites I read, why would I change"

At least with mozilla they include the modern skin and you don't need to go though a, frankly, silightly alienating theme picking process. (alienating for newbies that is, but not entirely easy for those who aren't )

Yes Yes, I know I'm a day late, but I aint "fan-boy-ing" I'm commenting on issues post release.

Halloween Party

So we had a Halloween party which was great fun, lots of novelty food, drink, ballons, pumpkins, bobbing for apples and playing with fire. Oh and everyone singing along to the sound of music, shrug.

The Halloween Party pictures.

apachecon talk

So after about the 5th attempt, and 4th complete redraft, I finally submitted my talk to the planners of ApacheCon TU17 - Migrating the BBC website to Apache 2, and have a speaker logo on the cight.com homepage for now anyways.

The Logo:

So I've had a practice session or two and I've got a month left for some more of the same. People wanted me to change a few bits, but nothing much... So I'm pretty happy with how it looks now. The big issue is not knowing the audience that is going to turn up. Last year when I went I was surprised by some of the basic questions that were asked, as in they were very basic. But with is being the only migration talk, I think, I reckon some of the apache authors may turn up to see what is said about their baby, so I'd better be careful where I tread.

Cool satelite images

Space Imaging

I love...

Yay, its the old BBC kids progs title music, Battle of the Planets (yay, its 7-zark-7), Bagpuss (ahh... Bagpuss), Box of Delights (Ding, diddle, ling, ding, ding ding, ding), Roobarb and Custard (episodes).
... ahh them were the days with proper TV.

Avast Yee Landlubber

Yee olde pirates is back from the days of the Amiga, and by the looks of it, it will be brilliant !! Sid Meier's Pirates! . Out 17th November.

That's right, Sid Meier, the bloke who made the civ games, railroad tycoon, etc etc...

So what's Pirates like, well, its a bit adventure game with find the treasure, etc, a bit "elite" with buying and selling and the occasional plunder (well quite a lot of that actually), and a bit street fighter in the sword fighting sections - defend, defend, attack, up-left. And the sailing and attack bits of the game look cool as ever. I remember the days of - "quick follow him", "no he's in a barque and we've got a galleon with sail dammage, we'll never catch him" or "shoot, shoot him some more, whoops, that's too much, his power kegs have gone and he's sank will all the booty".

Ben & Jerry's in the park

We went to Lincoln's Inn Fields near work, where they wer giving away free icecream, unfortunately it was strawberry cheesecake so was a bit sickly to go back for seconds, and they only had the one flavour, which wasn't cherry garcia, but oh well, it was nice all the same: