Diary of a mad man
Procrastination
Talk about fun or random stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else
Beware of vouchers that expire
Jan 7th
I just wanted to warn people that if you got any vouchers for Christmas to be very careful about checking the date when they expire. I was shocked to find that vouchers I was given for my birthday expired less than four months later with no chance of a refund. Lost money and not just lost but they have the money for providing nothing!
Perhaps it is my fault for not reading the small print. I don’t get narked by many things but this has really gotten to me and the service was appalling. So much so that I have set a website to try and warn others (and make me feel a bit better). You never know, it may do something!
I have no problem with vouchers expiring, companies have to do this, prices of the experiences they sell will go up etc. however having a voucher that expired in less than four months with no other option is ludicrous in my opinion!
Update: The website worked! A very irate company got in touch and offered me a refund! I have now removed the link to the site that was in this post.
Silicone valleys, Germanium hills…
Dec 31st
Some things stay with you forever and I would like to think that the following little poem helped shape me. You see, the first computer I ever played with was the family Archimedes 310 and way before I had ever even heard the term “hacking” I was poking around in some of the library files trying to see how things worked. One of the first library files I looked at contained the following poem stuck in the middle of the code! I still don’t know who wrote it so I’m going to credit the author of the library. Surprisingly I can’t find this poem anywhere on the internet!
Silicone valleys,
Germanium hills,
Digital journeys,
And virtual thrills.Greetings, O hacker,
Feeling unwell?
Microchip tracker,
Welcome to hell.Jon Ribbens – DoggySoft
The next big thing
Mar 17th
I’m always looking for the next big thing however my father always tells me that you don’t want to be the first to do something, you want to be the second. It’s true too, I can’t think of many original conceptors that are still doing their ideas. Those that have made a go from it have mostly been through selling the patent however in this modern Internet world it’s very difficult (although not impossible) to patent an idea.
Take Google, not the Google you see now but the original startup Google. They didn’t invent the idea of crawling Internet websites, Digital had done that years earlier with Alta Vista. Google was however the site/company to launch the concept to the masses!
So… if I want to be the next Google, what exists out there today that I could improve on?
Prisons give inmates mobile phones
Dec 18th
So let me get this right, prisoners have been smuggling mobile phones into prisons to keep in contact with the outside world (although I dread to think with who in the outside world), fair enough, it’s going to happen but now they are actively giving prisoners mobiles phones. Now I’m not too worried about the calls (although I can see a few problems there!) but almost every phone nowadays has a basic browser (even WAP) let alone MMS messaging etc. There isn’t much you can’t do from a phone nowadays and well, if they can’t do it then it’s just a phone call away! Why not just give them broadband and and be done with it!
SingShot
Sep 15th
I have just come across SingShot, a fantastic site that brings karaoke up to Web 2.0 standards. Anyone can sing into their computers microphone and have their warblings mixes with the backing track totally automatically and without any downloads. Tracks can then be shared and scored by fellow participants in the common social networking way. Shame there aren’t any RSS feeds though!
End of VHS
Sep 5th
Yeah, I know this isn’t news but it does amaze me how quickly VHS has died! I have just sold 15 VHS videos, all pretty good movies and including two limited editions! How much did I get… £3 !! Yes 20p per video!!
Update: One year later and I can’t give VHS away now. Even charity shops are refusing them
Drake equation
Sep 2nd
I just came across the Drake equation which attempts to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy with which we might come in contact. The thing that gets me is how low the answer is! Even if you put high estimates into the equation the answer come out in the 1000′s. That’s a thousand odd civilizations in our entire galaxy! I do think there is intelligent life out there but going by these sorts of estimates we are so amazingly far away from contacting them that we can forget about it for a long long time!
The Internet is great
Aug 22nd
I was just about to order something online and it asked me if I had a discount voucher… a quick Google later and I found a discount code that practically halved the price! I love the internet 
Revolving head
Apr 30th
I had this idea ages ago, I have absolutely no idea where it came from but I suddenly realised that instead of the normal picture of me I should do something special. Then I came up with the idea of a rotating head!! Tell me if you like it, I think its rather cool, it certainly took me long enough to do!
For those of you sad enough to want to know how I did it. The effect was done by me repositioning my PC camera to in front of my window, there is plenty of light there and also a lot more room. I then positioned myself on my swivel chair and tried to line my head and back up on the central spindle of the chair (This is a lot harder than you think). I captured a 30 second avi file of me spinning around and around. I then edited the file to pick the best 360 degrees and to try and line up my head position in the start frame with the end frame. Paint Shop Pro v5 has this great utility for converting avi files into animated gifs, then with a bit of trimming and editing of the timing, the file was created!!! Easy as that!!!
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