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slowfoxContinuing my thing for the Decay of Things, here's an article about The Salton Sea in California. The journo may have overdone the wide-angle stuff a bit, but there are some stunning (if slightly sad) photos there.
On the other hand, these tilt-shift photos of London go almost the other way - instead of zooming in on the destruction of the world, it's almost like they're going the other way, and trying to render reality ever more abstract. The first time I glanced at these pics, I'd assumed that they were architects' models or something. I was wrong.
The Register ran a story this week about how Microsoft were attempting to bribe Australian users to ditch Firefox in favour of IE 8 (as an aside here, have IE 8 users noticed that the browser now calls itself 'Windows Internet Explorer', rather than 'Microsoft Internet Explorer'?). The basic deal is that users visit the IE8 competition site, where they're told about the virtual treasure hunt that leads to $10,000. But only if you're running IE8 - the clues won't be rendered in alternative browsers... so that's Microsoft 1 - Standards 0 (or, possibly, going by version numbers, Microsoft 8, Standards 0).
What seems to really be irrititating the Registrati about this tale is the discover of Microsoft's 'facts' on IE8 vs Firefox 3 vs Chrome. You'll see that Microsoft reckon that only IE8, of the three browsers mentioned, is considered 'secure'... When you're having to offer people bribes to use your software that you had preinstalled on the machine by default, you know you've got user acceptance issues.
The Times' columnists' blogs are hosted on typepad, which always strikes me as a little... cheap. Surely The Thunderer could manage to find a spare URL or two kicking about on its own servers - farming out articles to other sites to host (keeping all the Times branding and stuff) but without bothering to mask the URL just seems lazy, and also lessens one's perception of the commentator's authority (are they really writing for The Times? Or is it just some slick redirection?). This becomes an issue when the columnist is manifestly bonkers. Witness this article about the conspiracy to suppress the chances of confirming the existence of life on Mars.
Actually, not best pleased with the Times, since they're the paper who outed the true identity of Nightjack, a (formerly) anonymous police blogger who wrote about his job. I only read it a couple of times, having been pointed to it by The Observer (the Grauniad's Sunday incarnation), but it was good reading. Anyway, The Register reports on how The Times revealed the guy's identity, as a result of which Nightjack got taken down. Which is a shame - I didn't read it much, but the stuff that was there seemed pretty good.
Obviously, plenty of sites have devoted space to the protests in Iran - I quite liked the Times' photos, but the coverage has been so fast-moving that no doubt there are better collections to be had as I write this, nearly a week on. There's been a lot of somewhat self-congratulatory back-slapping by Web 2.0 over its coverage of the Iranian election protests and stuff, and it's true, of course, that without sites like Twitter and Facebook and other things, a lot of the coverage wouldn't have made it out, but I can't help wondering if the angle on the story, at times, is not so much the Iranian political situation, but the self-justification of New Media, trying to prove that they're not just narcissistic self-promoting animals.
The Torygraph clearly thinks it's onto something with this crop-circles in rapeseed fields lark: picture gallery here, and then an article about how this particular phoenix design may predict the end of the world. Useful stuff, I'm sure ;-P
The Telegraph redeems itself somewhat, however, with this set of pictures of the Aurora Borealis photos from space, and they also have this interesting story about adaptive camouflage in moths, where the insects' colourings have morphed from black to white as the skies have changed colour.
Staying with the animal kingdom, Snakes on a Plane are passé - what you really want are Snakes in a Police Station. I love the bit how MSNBC's subheading is how even snake charmers have failed to move the undesirables from the place :-)
You'll know by now that I tend do like The Grauniad's photo galleries, and this week's Week In Wildlife has some stunning images once again. The Grauniad also had an article reporting how cats are officially thicker than dogs. Hmm. Having owned both, I would beg to differ, and will fall back on that old, old quip: dogs have owners, cats have staff.
Wired has an article about High altitude wind power - tethered blimps or windmill structures float above conurbations to pick up the wind sans architectural interruptions... I'm not wholly convinced, to be honest - it seems like a lot of trouble to go through, and I can't imagine that the EROEI (Energy Return Over Energy Invested) is going to be that great. So personally I think that it'd make more sense to cut back on consumption through increasing efficiency (and, it has to be said, sacrifice) rather than attempting to maintain an essentially profligate lifestyle by chasing the fantasy of maintaining energy production levels having switched to renewable sources. But hey, I'm just a sceptic.
And talking of scepticism, although the Beeb are getting excited about the prospect of the Hyrdogen Powered Car (open source, too!), the technical and logistical hurdles implied in the transition to a Hydrogen Economy lead me to suspect that this isn't really going to be practical in the sense that people are hoping. My personal belief is that, ultimately, we're all going to have to get used to being a lot less mobile.
Or, at least, less mobile in the transport sense. In the phone sense, however...
...as most of you will have heard by now, Apple announced the 3GS, the latest version of its iPhone the other week. Well, it didn't take long for people to take it to pieces, the conclusion being that the innards contain an 833MHz capable processor, running at 600MHz. The earlier versions of the iPhone ran at 412MHz, so that's quite a speed bump - whether batterylife is unaffected remains to be seen, however. The other bonus with the 3GS is, apparently, a much better camera: so say Wired, anyway, with their somewhat tongue-in-cheek headline iPhone 3GS Camera Doesn’t Suck.
And as if increased speed, 720p video playback and a non-sucky camera weren't enough, how about lightning strike protection? Admittedly, the crucial detail in the story is that the earbuds were dangling, rather than connected to Ms Frost's ears, so you're sorta sacrificing audio functionality for protection from Teh Smite of Zeus, but some might consider that a reasonable tradeoff.
Amidst all this iPhone love-in, one of the little-voiced criticisms of the iPhone is that, sure, it's a great device, and the operating system is intuitive and flexible and yadda yadda yadda, but the screen is just too small. Never fear, stout reader: for every problem, there is a suitably dedicated geek sufficiently dedicated to address the problem. Yup, that's iPhone OS running on a Mac Pro with a full-size touch screen display.
And finally, wave therapy of the highest order courtesy of wired's article, here's BBC2's South Pacific trailer featuring super slow motion surfing. Absolutely awesome.
On the other hand, these tilt-shift photos of London go almost the other way - instead of zooming in on the destruction of the world, it's almost like they're going the other way, and trying to render reality ever more abstract. The first time I glanced at these pics, I'd assumed that they were architects' models or something. I was wrong.
The Register ran a story this week about how Microsoft were attempting to bribe Australian users to ditch Firefox in favour of IE 8 (as an aside here, have IE 8 users noticed that the browser now calls itself 'Windows Internet Explorer', rather than 'Microsoft Internet Explorer'?). The basic deal is that users visit the IE8 competition site, where they're told about the virtual treasure hunt that leads to $10,000. But only if you're running IE8 - the clues won't be rendered in alternative browsers... so that's Microsoft 1 - Standards 0 (or, possibly, going by version numbers, Microsoft 8, Standards 0).
What seems to really be irrititating the Registrati about this tale is the discover of Microsoft's 'facts' on IE8 vs Firefox 3 vs Chrome. You'll see that Microsoft reckon that only IE8, of the three browsers mentioned, is considered 'secure'... When you're having to offer people bribes to use your software that you had preinstalled on the machine by default, you know you've got user acceptance issues.
The Times' columnists' blogs are hosted on typepad, which always strikes me as a little... cheap. Surely The Thunderer could manage to find a spare URL or two kicking about on its own servers - farming out articles to other sites to host (keeping all the Times branding and stuff) but without bothering to mask the URL just seems lazy, and also lessens one's perception of the commentator's authority (are they really writing for The Times? Or is it just some slick redirection?). This becomes an issue when the columnist is manifestly bonkers. Witness this article about the conspiracy to suppress the chances of confirming the existence of life on Mars.
Actually, not best pleased with the Times, since they're the paper who outed the true identity of Nightjack, a (formerly) anonymous police blogger who wrote about his job. I only read it a couple of times, having been pointed to it by The Observer (the Grauniad's Sunday incarnation), but it was good reading. Anyway, The Register reports on how The Times revealed the guy's identity, as a result of which Nightjack got taken down. Which is a shame - I didn't read it much, but the stuff that was there seemed pretty good.
Obviously, plenty of sites have devoted space to the protests in Iran - I quite liked the Times' photos, but the coverage has been so fast-moving that no doubt there are better collections to be had as I write this, nearly a week on. There's been a lot of somewhat self-congratulatory back-slapping by Web 2.0 over its coverage of the Iranian election protests and stuff, and it's true, of course, that without sites like Twitter and Facebook and other things, a lot of the coverage wouldn't have made it out, but I can't help wondering if the angle on the story, at times, is not so much the Iranian political situation, but the self-justification of New Media, trying to prove that they're not just narcissistic self-promoting animals.
The Torygraph clearly thinks it's onto something with this crop-circles in rapeseed fields lark: picture gallery here, and then an article about how this particular phoenix design may predict the end of the world. Useful stuff, I'm sure ;-P
The Telegraph redeems itself somewhat, however, with this set of pictures of the Aurora Borealis photos from space, and they also have this interesting story about adaptive camouflage in moths, where the insects' colourings have morphed from black to white as the skies have changed colour.
Staying with the animal kingdom, Snakes on a Plane are passé - what you really want are Snakes in a Police Station. I love the bit how MSNBC's subheading is how even snake charmers have failed to move the undesirables from the place :-)
You'll know by now that I tend do like The Grauniad's photo galleries, and this week's Week In Wildlife has some stunning images once again. The Grauniad also had an article reporting how cats are officially thicker than dogs. Hmm. Having owned both, I would beg to differ, and will fall back on that old, old quip: dogs have owners, cats have staff.
Wired has an article about High altitude wind power - tethered blimps or windmill structures float above conurbations to pick up the wind sans architectural interruptions... I'm not wholly convinced, to be honest - it seems like a lot of trouble to go through, and I can't imagine that the EROEI (Energy Return Over Energy Invested) is going to be that great. So personally I think that it'd make more sense to cut back on consumption through increasing efficiency (and, it has to be said, sacrifice) rather than attempting to maintain an essentially profligate lifestyle by chasing the fantasy of maintaining energy production levels having switched to renewable sources. But hey, I'm just a sceptic.
And talking of scepticism, although the Beeb are getting excited about the prospect of the Hyrdogen Powered Car (open source, too!), the technical and logistical hurdles implied in the transition to a Hydrogen Economy lead me to suspect that this isn't really going to be practical in the sense that people are hoping. My personal belief is that, ultimately, we're all going to have to get used to being a lot less mobile.
Or, at least, less mobile in the transport sense. In the phone sense, however...
...as most of you will have heard by now, Apple announced the 3GS, the latest version of its iPhone the other week. Well, it didn't take long for people to take it to pieces, the conclusion being that the innards contain an 833MHz capable processor, running at 600MHz. The earlier versions of the iPhone ran at 412MHz, so that's quite a speed bump - whether batterylife is unaffected remains to be seen, however. The other bonus with the 3GS is, apparently, a much better camera: so say Wired, anyway, with their somewhat tongue-in-cheek headline iPhone 3GS Camera Doesn’t Suck.
And as if increased speed, 720p video playback and a non-sucky camera weren't enough, how about lightning strike protection? Admittedly, the crucial detail in the story is that the earbuds were dangling, rather than connected to Ms Frost's ears, so you're sorta sacrificing audio functionality for protection from Teh Smite of Zeus, but some might consider that a reasonable tradeoff.
Amidst all this iPhone love-in, one of the little-voiced criticisms of the iPhone is that, sure, it's a great device, and the operating system is intuitive and flexible and yadda yadda yadda, but the screen is just too small. Never fear, stout reader: for every problem, there is a suitably dedicated geek sufficiently dedicated to address the problem. Yup, that's iPhone OS running on a Mac Pro with a full-size touch screen display.
And finally, wave therapy of the highest order courtesy of wired's article, here's BBC2's South Pacific trailer featuring super slow motion surfing. Absolutely awesome.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-20 10:50 am (UTC)Not being one to take a pronouncement without checking, there's some interesting points here(9to5mac.com) and commentary here (TUAW.com "The Unofficial Apple Weblog").
It would be very cool to have a larger sized screen though!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 09:04 am (UTC)Ah well - it would, indeed, be very cool to have a larger screen. Slightly less portable, though - everything's a tradeoff, I s'pose...
no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 07:48 pm (UTC)