Someone’s written a Magic Eye Tetris game…
I don’t have the problems seeing it that some people are reporting, but the control keys are a pain: I found that the numeric keypad (non num-lock) 8 would rotate, and the ‘normal’ non-keypad 4 and 6 would move left and right respectively.
Awkward to play, but still neat.
How useful are most glossaries in Technical Manuals?
I’ve got a manual here on Open Directory Administration. It’s not the simplest thing in the world to do: you’d expect someone implementing any sort of LDAP or domain to be a relatively experienced system admin. As a techie who’s never administered a domain before, there’s a fair amount of learning curve for me (especially when you consider that what I’m actually trying to do is extend my university’s Novell eDirectory for a suite of macs that will benefit from the extra management capabilities of OS X Server).
So I think it’s kind of funny when the glossary is full of terms like:
You might not expect the man on the street to know what those sorts of terms mean, but the idea of someone expecting to be able to set up directory services not knowing them is… well, silly at best and scary at worst. Plus, the definition for ‘administrator’ relies on the use of the noun administration: in other words, it’s recursion rather than definition.
I had to lose four pages for the thermal binding machine to cope with the manual. I don’t think I’ll miss the glossary.
Cool Earth is a new charity aiming at preserving the rainforest by selling it - to you and me.
An Acre is going for around £70-£100.
Interesting - I’m often banging on about wishing to reduce my carbon footprint - I wonder how much that would reduce it by? Nothing at all? A fixed ‘one off’ amount? Or something I can continue to count year by year? Either way, a good idea.
More from an article at The Register or at the Cool Earth Website.
Matt is a respected security researcher who has a rare gift of communicating his field.
I’m lucky to be rather tenuously associated with him through a website his partner created and runs, on which I am a (seriously lapsed) moderator. Every now and again something goes disasterously wrong with the server hardware and we get a little email from him to remind us of his presence. Usually something along the lines of ‘I fixed it, it’s working now’.
Matt is almost entirely unknown about by the frequenters of the website he has done a lot to maintain over the years; occasionally one of us comes across his name in his professional context, given that there are a fair few computer profesionals around on the web, but generally these little emails serve as the only reminders of what Matt does.
And what Matt does is interesting. Moreover, Matt has the rare gift of being able to talk about what he does and make it sound interesting. You should go have a little look at his site and his blog that’s up there - hopefully he’ll get around to writing more of it sometime in the future.
I’ve just found Mark Wells‘ Showreel on Youtube:
Mark’s a friend of mine through my old housemate, and last I heard he was thinking of giving up on the acting. That would be a huge waste, so here’s hoping this means he’s putting himself out there again
Go Mark! (Oh, and nice lippy, but that’s not what I meant by putting yourself out there 
)
The possible health drawbacks of owning a wii are pointed out above… I mean, it’s all a bit obvious, though, isn’t it? The risks are exactly the same as playing any exertive sport, plus a few from playing any console game on a TV.
Also, the article doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the Wii, and Wii sports, the free game that comes with the wii.
Still, it’s probably important to do more warm-up and stretching exercises. Personally, I’d see this as an opportunity if I worked in Nintendo: a warm-up channel would be a pretty simple addition to download to the wii itself, and a great PR exercise.
I’m beginning to get obsessive about stationery.
I really like pilot V5 pens - but they’re expensive. I’m sure they don’t have to be.
The other week a student left this great pen in our office - comfortable to write (with a sensible triangular grip), nice thin clear lines, and looks cheap as chips.
I can find no reference anywhere on the (non-chinese) internet to the existence of this pen, despite knowing the name, manufacturer and model number. Shame, I could see myself buying four bulk packs in different colours…
I’m not very good at that, either.
Since last (seriously) posting I’ve been to Ireland for a seminar on remotely managing and administrating Apple Macs, and I want to talk about that at some point. I’ve begun to implement Getting Things Done, and you bet I’ll be talking about that as soon as I’ve made some progress.
usbiquitous
But for now, something a bit fun:
dialog05 is a series of art works (I think they’re all real sculptures rather than renders or photoshops) based around the ubiquitous USB plug. (heh, usbiquitous might have made a good name for it 
)
Word of Mouth Advertising is coming to Britain, according to the BBC.
I was cynical, but reading on, this seems to be what I do anyway, except that someone will actually buy me the toys I’ll be ranting about.
I can cope with that.
One of the problems I have with Pandora is that it puts a little too much emphasis on technicalities of the music, and not so much the mood… Musicovery is on the other end of the spectrum.
Neato.