Posted on November 28, 2006
So we went to watch Casino Royale at the weekend (along with most of the British population, I think). Seriously cool. Daniel Craig is Bond. Apart from being a tough bugger and kicking serious butt, being far too handsome for his own good, having all the chicks and the body to die for (the audible 'woah' from the audience when he comes out of the sea was actually from the men in the audience), he also has the car.
Not one, but two unbelievably gorgeous Aston Martins. I mean, just how unfair is that?
When he gets the keys to the all-new DBS, I the whole cinema made a collective sigh. It is that beautiful.
I have vowed never to buy another car until I can own a real car - an Aston Martin that is.
*drool*
Technorati Tags: 007, Aston Martin, Bond, Casino Royale
Posted on November 18, 2006
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Found this in my open tabs. Few weeks late, but still awesome. Neil, you rock.
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Useful simple layouts
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So many great opportunities in ‘Enterprise 2.0’ (bleugh) right now.
Posted on November 11, 2006
Interesting idea: ReviewMe.com is a new alternative (or supplement) to the regular Google adsense way of monetizing a blog.
Basically, as a blogger, you register and drop in a bunch of tags the describe the content of your blog. They check out your ranking (I’m guessing a quick technorati api call or something) and based on the popularity of your blog, you can accept ‘jobs’ to review products or services, for cash. The interesting thing is that you must disclose the fact that your review is a paid for review. Much more pleasant and legitimate than the nasty PayPerPost non-disclosure debacle where some advertisers require a positive review and won’t allow you to disclose that it’s a paid-for post. With reviewme you can be as critical as you want – no sucking up required.
Of course, it all relies on who the advertisers are and how much control they are willing to give up and get honest reviews. Of course if someone is getting paid for reviewing something, there is always likely to be a slight bias, but hopefully honest bloggers who have a reputation to uphold will not hold back.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. Always looking for new ways to make money!
Needless to say, this post is brought to you by reviewme.com. They’re paying to 20 whole bucks for writing about them. Neat :) Go and signup and grab yourself $20 too.
Posted on November 11, 2006
Since energy prices and consequently energy conservation is on everyone's lips at the moment (and especially mine since my electricity bill is growing rather alarmingly), I picked up a mains energy monitor from Maplin at the weekend. I've since been switching it around the study, looking to see exactly how much power the machines are eating.
Interesting results so far...
| | 2GHz Dual G5 | 1.66GHz Mac Mini Core Duo |
| Powered Off | 4W | 0W |
| Sleeping | 6W | 3W |
| On, but idle | 240W | 20W |
| On, CPU under load | 260W | 34W |
Now I knew that the G5 was a bit of a power-monster, but I didn't realised it was burning through > 10 times the power of the little Mini. To put that into real numbers, at the average-ish price of 10p per kWh (actually, that's probably a little low - UK electricity runs about 12p/kWh at the moment, I think), if both machines were on but idling for a year, I'd save almost 200 quid by running the mini instead of the G5 (the mini would only cost £17.50 to run for the year vs. £210 for the G5. Woah.)
If you're anything like me, machines are left on the majority of the time. If I put them to sleep some, if not most nights, then I'd still be looking at a saving over 100 quid a year. Yeah, I should to get into the habit of putting to sleep more often, but since the G5 is also the file share for the XBMC and laptops/Airport Express combo it's easy to forget.
I wonder how feasible it is to run the mini off some solar-topped-up batteries? Sure, they'd cost a hell of a lot more then £17.50, but how cool would that be? :)
Technorati Tags: Apple, electricity, G5, mac, Mac Mini
Posted on November 10, 2006
Overheard in John Lewis earlier today:
Customer: So what’s the difference between these two [a TomTom One and some Garmin thing].
Salesman: Um, well, this one [the Garmin] has a wide screen.
Customer: err, ok. And?
Salesman: It’s got bluetooth. So you can use it with your phone.
Customer: How?
Salesman: It works with your mobile.
Customer: Um, riiight. So which one would you buy?
Salesman: I’d just use a bloody map.
Customer: OK. Bye.
And his commission walked out of the door. Not exactly a great sales tactic.
Posted on November 07, 2006
Posted on November 06, 2006
Carson Systems have announced the follow up to their London Future of Web Apps conference set for Feb 20th and 21st '07. I missed out on this last year (this year?) and I decided to make sure I signed up for the next one since. I'm not a conference-a-holic, but it did get some good feedback.
However, instead of the 1 day £75 affair that the '06 conference was, this is a 2 day (£195) or 3 day (£595!!!!) thing. £395 gets you 'access to a full day of workshops'.
Seems like they're following in the London Rails Conf footsteps in creating something that only people with money to burn can attend. Six hundred quid plus 2 nights accommodation in London plus travel is rather insane for a conference not aimed at big corps. Sure, I'm sure they'll sell out, but I'm all for just going the route of bar camp and going with the self-organised conf at a nice cheap location out of the city.
Anyway, basically, I'm a little disappointed and will be putting the money towards next year's reboot or d.construct. Unless they start charging 600 quid too. :(
Update: OK, I should read properly before ranting. Sorry, Ryan. The early bird for the non-workshop conf is £145. Which isn't too bad at all.
Personally I always get much more from hanging and talking to the attendees rather than listening to the speakers so I shouldn't really be bothered if the speakers are that interesting to me or not (don't get me wrong, I really dig Amazon's web services and Google docs).
I think I'm just grumpy tonight :)
Technorati Tags: conferences, FOWA, london
Posted on November 02, 2006
Posted on November 02, 2006
Textmate simply rock in many ways. It's an absolutely superb editor that grows with you. The Rails bundle makes Rails coding an absolute joy and I was rather excited by the screencast of tm_dialog. I can't wait to get a few spare hours to play with that.
From today's release notes:
[2006-11-02: REVISION 1324]
[REMOVED] TextMate no longer pays tribute to human sacrifices, rape, nor does it show a picture of the God of the deaths in your dock -- ticket 945BEB5D
Man, I really enjoyed Pumpkinhead in my dock! I'm hoping for a Santa on Christmas day!
Technorati Tags: textmate
