ASCII Generator

I don't know why i find these generators so irresistible, but I do - I will keep on posting these till I don't. So stuff it, because:

From the Mighty Wombat

Stripe Generator 2.0

This background comes to you from the crazy people at the Stripe Generator 2.0 I LOVE THIS!!!

Bialetti Brikka Coffee Maker

My 4 cup Bialetti Brikka Coffee Maker is by far my favourite kitchen device. It’s a coffee maker that is cheap, reliable and easy to use but whose produce is second to none. The coffee is rich and strong without being bitter.

My Beloved Brikka
The coffee maker has a special valve which makes the coffee in high pressure. You use it be filling the lower section with water, then the middle section with Coffee Grounds. You screw on the top section tightly and put it on the stove for about 3 minutes. The pressure builds up inside the lower chamber and when ready is released at once with a loud hiss. The result: coffee similar to espresso with a beautiful layer of crème (coffee froth).



No messing around with learning how to use a complicated machine (not to mention the cleaning). The flavour IMO is better than what you would get at any coffee chain (and almost free) and better than what you could produce at home with even a fairly expensive espresso machine.

When making the coffee, keep three things in mind:

1. Measure the quantity of water precisely
2. Use coarsely ground coffee (Filter grind if buying packaged)
3. For best results, screw the top section on as tightly as you can

This post is an experiment in selling via the blog, I picked something that I know is great, wrote my opinion and put a link. If you fancy one of these please buy it by click on the Amazon link at the top of this article.

eBay to purchase StumbleUpon

How come eBay buy all the cool sites on the internet, I though they were about selling? Skype is now the de facto VOIP on the net, miles ahead of the competition on quality and functionality, PayPal too. eBay buys these things at just the right moment, just before the network effect kicks in and crushes the competition. Clever that.

If you're lucky you could pick up some of my cool second hand junk on eBay (until 21:00 on Tues)

I Just couldn't resist

Physics in video

Physics is a strange subject. It deals with the most fundamental properties of the physical world, yet unlike many such ideas, it doesn't seem to give me any insight on the day-to-day experience of the world. At school I did Ok in physics by going through the motions of solving the problems, without understanding much about what i was doing. This left me with a very bitter taste. It was boring and seemed to comprise of meaningless symbol manipulation. The symbol manipulation in Physics is a key problem. It's inconsistent and in-expressive; the "clever" bits aren't in the representation, it's just short hand for the real explanation, an agreed way of referring to a specific idea. Like notes for a talk, but pretty meaningless by itself, Gerald Sussman IN The Role of Programming says it sucks.

Contrast that with computer languages which are completely self contained, any discussion about a computer program will always be less complete then the source code itself (assuming it runs on an idealised machine). What is computer science?

Particles and Waves, a PBS TV program has finally given me a glimpse of what Physics is really about. It's about giving humans, who can never experience the very large and very small, a way of visualising these things which doesn't involve drugs or psychotic hallucinations. This program explains the conflicting views of light as either wave or particle and shows how physicists in the 20th century resolve this dilemma in a very elegant way. But more interestingly, it shows how the ideas came to be. How people working together and over several generations brought together bits of the puzzle, sometimes adding a new element, sometimes extending or reusing existing ideas to refine and deepen the understanding of matter and energy.

Regardless of how this relates to reality and the very practical implications of these ideas, I am bewildered by the power and elegance of the methods used to construct them. Solutions to problems that seem fundamentally beyond the ability of humans are gradually teased out and shaped in a way that is accessible to us at an almost intuitive level.

This talk by physicist Murray Gell-Mann, a rather nasty man about creative thinking, is a bit dull. When asked about the practical implications of something, his initial response is that there are none (and ridicules the asker). But some of his talk is about how the "business" of physics is done. This is from someone in the "trenches" of physics which is why I find it so interesting.

Hot to turn windows into linux

..and become l33t

Embeded version removed due to popular demand
Click here to view

Regaining the faith with linux

Christmas was pretty busy so i didn't spend much time with the computers and didn't do any of the things I'd planned. Towards the second weekend Ubuntu started playing up a bit. Occasionally it would completely stall with no way to recover except a hard reset.
I decided to investigate windows vista. It felt elicit and dirty and at first sight vista is very sexy. The ui swishes around and guides you painlessly along. It was quick and responsive at first. But after just a day it got old. And slow. The differences with xp are only skin deep and in many ways it is even more restrictive. The UI is very pretty and usability is generally better but it is still windows - with all the baggage that implies.
So I happily returned to Linux. I removed the still experimental Beryl 3D Desktop although i doubt it's the cause of the crashes. I'm fairly certain it's something to do with the video card and i am leaning towards suspecting the hardware. The card is almost too hot to touch and the crashes tend to occur when playing video. The crashes aren't frequent - about every two to three days and i would be happy to replace it but the thing is I've just invested in two very nice toys and will have to hold my breath a bit before getting any more.
The first of my new toys is a beautiful 40" samsung LCD TV. This is possibly the nicest and most expensive piece of electronics i have ever owned. It's certainly the largest. I carefully researched this purchase but it has still exceeded my expectations. The picture quality is superb for TV usage and it is very usable as a PC monitor when sitting at a distance. The resolution is too low to even consider using it as a desktop monitor but for web-surfing from the sofa it is perfect.
Text is clear, sharp and large and you still get the same amount of page showing as you do with a regular pc monitor. With myth you can even use the remote to navigate.
The second toy is a Nokia e61 "smart-phone". A few years ago there was a debate between experts about mobile computing. One camp predicted that in the future people will carry a single powerful device that combines everything. The other spoke of the personal network in which you have small dedicated devices talking to each other a comms module. For example: a headset, a camera, storage unit, etc. This pic'n'mix approach makes more sense to me - but at the moment, the all-in-one group seem to be winning.
The e61 is a nice toy and it works well within it's design parameters. I am typing this post on it but the keyboard, is just too small and my thumbs are getting really saw. The screen is less than half the size of that on my old Palm T3 and it doesn't even have a camera. It's much wider then a normal phone so it doesn't fit comfortably into a trouser pocket. As a phone (for voice) it's pretty good in terms of features, sound quality and reception but the keypad is very awkward when typing numbers - it has a funny layout and there is no way to use it with touch alone. A really nice feature is voice activated dialing which works without any pre-learning and has worked perfectly for me. I have ordered a stereo headset which i believe has play/skip buttons on it so this should be a reasonable music player (with a MiniSD Card). In a quick test i had no problem playing music while doing other things on the phone (e.g. surfing).
But in the end it doesn't do any one thing really well. I think the ideal solution (for me) would be a small camera/music phone + pda (a Palm TX?) + blue-tooth keyboard. I will try to return the phone.