Coffee Pot

I bought a stainless steel canteen for myself to take coffe to work in. I used it for the first time yesterday whilst working (trial run was at Legoland last Friday). But, today I forgot it!!! Feel my pain...

Rice Pudding

Have just walked passed the dinner laid out for lunch in the canteen (if you get my meaning) and there is a huge vat of rice pudding!

But I came in late and I haven't time to take a lunch break.... It's Roast Day today too. Oh, the humanity!

technorati tags:pudding

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A little too close to home

It often hard to prise Elias away from the Wii but he has not (yet) cost me $1000 (or £ for that matter) in damages to the LCD. Little close for comfort this story.

Three-year-old's Tennis tantrum - Nintendo Wii Fanboy

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New blog for my techy posts...

Just Too Techy

I realise that alot of my recent posts are a little to techy for the friends and family crowd that this blog is intended for. For instance, I haven't commented on my little boy's birthday, my brothers pictures or even my NEW car. Yes, my lovely new car!!!! (Sorry 'our' lovely new car.)

Therefore I have set up a new blog ("Another one!") called Just Too Techy for where to vent my techiness in a safe place with out being a danger to myself and others.

If still interested in the too-techy nature of some of my blogs recently you can pick up the geek-thought-process there.

Thanks for you time. Normal service will assume... Now!

Luggage server solutions

I remember once whilst working for at my friend Bob's network engineering company that he lugged in a large suitcase sized contraption with a fold out 7" monitor box and a fold down keyboard. It was an late 80s solution for pottering around large main frames between cities in the States and had somehow worked it's way back to the UK with Bob. It ran some flavour of Unix and was incredibly retro. So Of course - in the same way some people have the obsession of using one of the old 90s mobile phone bricks - I fell in love with the thing

.

The NextDimension 'Flextop' offering from NextComputing seems at first glance to be along the same lines. SO at first glance of Gearlogs post on the subject I fell in love again. Some seriously juicy performance can got from the box as it has 8 cores (yes! 8!) capacity for 16-24 GB of RAM and 5 X 160GB HDD. The NextDimension Evo HD has a built in screen for pitys sake!

On showing these to my boss he immediately initiated a price hunt for things (I am sooo in the right job). These baby's will facilitate a few DRM and onsite solution senarios no probs.

technorati tags:flextops

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Kev's Baby Boy

Kev is a colleague of mine. Today he brought in his brand new baby boy Ben Jonah who is 15 days old. I even got a cuddle... with Ben that is. Congrats, Kev!

Chow cooking site

A recent discovery for me has been Chow.com. I really like the useable inteface and recipes and food news and quite a lot of things about this site. The videos are short and informative. I think I'm going to become a regular visitor.

One thing I enjoyed was when I signed up there is a small section within which answer a number of questions that tell about your tastes and a little bit about who you are. I was surprised that I had an answer for most of them, but also that I found myself really enjoying the thinking about the questions. It made me realise that I really enjoy cooking and don't do enough of it. Cooking for enjoyment can be somethign that is so easily lost.

Nikki does most of the cooking in our house, but I have often wanted help out with this task, but find that in the stress of the moment I have no idea what to cook or, more importantly, what to do with the ingredients that we have to hand. So Nikki usually ends up preparing our meal.

I have often wondered if I added to my repertoire of meals I could help out a bit more.

We have experienced that 'Quick Meals' are no better and take no longer that cooking from stratch most of the time. But I would also like to learn how to cook things that take a bit longer. Especially Bread and Roast Meat...

Gadget Show seeks GOI

Someone (I can't remember who, I'm sorry...) directed me to this page on the Purely Gadgets website. Celador Productions is looking for GOI (Gadget Orientated Individuals) for a new show for BBC 2. Still in Pre-production but could mean a trip abroad if your the lucky chaps or chapesses that are chosen.

I had a conversation today with a researcher from the show and just had a great time chatting about all things Geek and Gadgetry. With my job I have to explain complex issues quickly to completely un-technically inclined people so it was good practice. Catherine, the researcher, was asking me questions about why someone would want to build a lightbulb or an RSS Coffee Maker and it was fun going through the fact that the 'why' is not important to Geeks, it's the 'how'.

The saying that most describes the Geek or Instructable mindset is "If it ain't broke, make it better". The idea that the making is important as the product. The journey is as important as the destination as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance would say.

Anyway, I'll mention how I get on with the selection process. It was a fun conversation whatever happens. Gave me a ten minute break.

RSS Coffee Mornings

This is just precious! A coffee brewer that reads RSS feeds and uses the frequencies to brew the coffee. Thus introducing a taste-bud-RSS-blood-sugar-caffine high! Nuttsy! Must be an Instructable for it surely?

Via Engadget

technorati tags:coffee, rss

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Tron-style graffiti wall

Tron-style graffiti wall
Originally uploaded by antony_mayfield.

My brother has some photos of Brighton's most artistic street crime. Very impressive. I must ask him what camera he uses.

Geek Jewelry

Since I'm going all geeky today here's a story from the Wired Gadget blog about geek jewelry made from use PC components by Jana Brevick. Pictured here is presumably a PS2 connector (male/female) but I prefer the Cat5 set. Aside from these quirky Blogline grabbers Jana has some beautiful and innovative Jewelry on her flickr page. Shame I can't seem to find a website to order from - though there are contact details in this article...

technorati tags:jewelry, geek

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iPod engraving at Apple Store UK

Not a surprise to some people, I'm sure. But Nikki pointed me to the Apple Store UK site yesterday where you are able to engrave your iPod before ordering. Lovely idea. Just means you spend half an hour deliberating what to put on there. Then realise that no ones going to see it anyway.

Bit like ring tones in that respect surely? Spend ages choosing a 'unique' ring tone that really reflects your personality - only to find that it just bugs the pittabread out of everyone.

Vista Explorer Shot

Another geeky post, but I love the feature of Vista that graphically represents space available on drives on your computer. In this shot I've just about exausted my USB 2.0 ports and hubs and am able to view in one place the amount of usage they all have. Have I a terrabyte of data yet? Maybe it's time to invest in one of these babies!

New Multimap - with added wifi!

Nikki told me that Multimap had a new site up. I have not looked at Multimap for ages. I love online maps and always was grateful for Multimap's service, but after the arrival of GoogleMaps and its constant adding of new features I just began to find Multimap outmoded and outclassed and stopped using it.

It's new interface is a lot closer to the usability that we have come to expect with online maps and it seems to replicate most of GoogleMaps features. With unfortunate exception of the mouse-wheel-zoom - a feature I think is such an intuitive addition to GoogleMaps.

However, Multimaps UPS (or 'Unique Point of Sale') for me is the addition of the useful information tickbox tab. When one of the 'Useful' items is near by it will display the number of said items next to the tickbox. When you click them the locations appear on the map you are viewing. My Favourite so far is the inclusion of the 'Wifi Hotspot' item that uses TotalHotspots.com info to show the hotspots in the area you are looking at.

This is the sort of usability that will bring me back to using Multimap. It's good to see them back on form.

*Updated* - the snapshot is of Wifi hotspots in Witney, UK.


*Updated 1.2* - Sorry, I meant Wifi hotspotsDidcot, UK.