Know Braille? Yeah if you do you're probably not too visually gifted and of course you can't feel the pixels on your monitor... The person who thought of this is brilliant...
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Captcha smaptcha...
My vote for the best dysfunctional captcha ever. There are a few others on this site, but this one blends the worst of everything.
Know Braille? Yeah if you do you're probably not too visually gifted and of course you can't feel the pixels on your monitor... The person who thought of this is brilliant...
Know Braille? Yeah if you do you're probably not too visually gifted and of course you can't feel the pixels on your monitor... The person who thought of this is brilliant...
Monday, 30 July 2007
Simone You Rock!
Just saw that I have a link back from Simone's site, which is totally rockin', and I appreciate it. Simone also built and operates the Enjoy Perth site where you can read all about new exciting and interesting events coming up in Perth and get to know the real Perth goings-on.
If you would like a link to your site please let me know, I'm working on a bit of local link love things, am researching a way I can differentiate blogs based on a person's location, among other things. This will take time, for the moment I'm making my blogroll serve as a place to keep most of the blogs I come across not only Perth ones.
If you would like a link to your site please let me know, I'm working on a bit of local link love things, am researching a way I can differentiate blogs based on a person's location, among other things. This will take time, for the moment I'm making my blogroll serve as a place to keep most of the blogs I come across not only Perth ones.
Friday, 27 July 2007
Weird News - Still Going Strong
Chuck Shepherd's News Of The Weird is great fun, and has now been around forever, and - wonder of wonders - is still updated faithfully every Sunday. If it had an RSS feed I'd like it even more, but I think the Web 1.0 ness of the site is one of the refreshing things about it, it's something you do, a weekly ceremony, pilgrimage to all that's weird in the world this week.
And in a nod to Kay (excellent find, totally rocks!) here's some CDs I WILL be buying, because - hey! - pirates RAWK! And Pirate Metal rawks even moah!
And in a nod to Kay (excellent find, totally rocks!) here's some CDs I WILL be buying, because - hey! - pirates RAWK! And Pirate Metal rawks even moah!
Powered by ScribeFire.
Jelly Lenses For Mobile Phones
Fun for everyone! I was recently in a Red Dot store and came across a display holding those blister card displays with these "Jelly Lenses" on them.
x
x
The photos above were taken with my mobile phone, first one with no additional lens, and it shows two of what you get after opening your $4.99 blister pack. BTW Kudos to the Jelly Lens people, these are slide-apart packages not the kind you need a chainsaw and sledge hamemr to get into the pack. Well done!
Once you open the package, you have a lens body which is colour coded, i.e. the wide angles are all yellow, close-up lenses are all orange, etc. The lens has a small keeper cap covering the camera end of the lens, and no lens cap or anything for the business end.
The camera end has a ring of that sticky silicon gel on it, the kind they make those stretchy sticky toys out of, and it's as sensitive to dust and dirt as those sticky toys. The keeper cap is presumably meant to keep the sticky stuff sticky, but has a tendency to fall off which is why I keep them in a breast pocket or somewhere that will tend to keep the lids on.
I imagine that if it loses stickiness a gentle wipe with a detergent and water soaked cloth should make the stickiness come back.
The lenses are attached to a small curly lanyard with a wrist-strap loop at one end so that, presumably, they can be attached to your phone to be ever at hand. In practice, though, that means the keeper cap will invariably detach and then the gel will get really dirty really quickly.
In use - the second shot was taken with the purported close-up lens but it's very hard to work out the focus on this lens hence the shot is blurry, the phone body was supported during the shot.
The third shot and the shot below were taken with the wide angle (fisheye) lens and it shows quite acceptable effect, in a Lomograph kind of way. Hey, these are $5 lenses after all!
Worst problem is that unless you can get the jelly lens very close the the camera lens they are a touch small and you will get vignetting (seeing the lens body in the corners of the shot) and that is that, you have to deal with it the lenses only come in that tiny size. I would have paid a dollar more to have a larger aperture but there you go.
Lenses come in macro, wide angle, and a variety of effects such as stretch, starburst, etc, and at $5 each you can have a good collection of the little suckers quite cheaply. I found mine at Red Dot as I mentioned, you will probably find them at other outlets and if you mention them and this article to your mobile phone or camera shop no doubt they can get them in.
xxThe photos above were taken with my mobile phone, first one with no additional lens, and it shows two of what you get after opening your $4.99 blister pack. BTW Kudos to the Jelly Lens people, these are slide-apart packages not the kind you need a chainsaw and sledge hamemr to get into the pack. Well done!
Once you open the package, you have a lens body which is colour coded, i.e. the wide angles are all yellow, close-up lenses are all orange, etc. The lens has a small keeper cap covering the camera end of the lens, and no lens cap or anything for the business end.
The camera end has a ring of that sticky silicon gel on it, the kind they make those stretchy sticky toys out of, and it's as sensitive to dust and dirt as those sticky toys. The keeper cap is presumably meant to keep the sticky stuff sticky, but has a tendency to fall off which is why I keep them in a breast pocket or somewhere that will tend to keep the lids on.
I imagine that if it loses stickiness a gentle wipe with a detergent and water soaked cloth should make the stickiness come back.
The lenses are attached to a small curly lanyard with a wrist-strap loop at one end so that, presumably, they can be attached to your phone to be ever at hand. In practice, though, that means the keeper cap will invariably detach and then the gel will get really dirty really quickly.
In use - the second shot was taken with the purported close-up lens but it's very hard to work out the focus on this lens hence the shot is blurry, the phone body was supported during the shot.
The third shot and the shot below were taken with the wide angle (fisheye) lens and it shows quite acceptable effect, in a Lomograph kind of way. Hey, these are $5 lenses after all!
Worst problem is that unless you can get the jelly lens very close the the camera lens they are a touch small and you will get vignetting (seeing the lens body in the corners of the shot) and that is that, you have to deal with it the lenses only come in that tiny size. I would have paid a dollar more to have a larger aperture but there you go.
Lenses come in macro, wide angle, and a variety of effects such as stretch, starburst, etc, and at $5 each you can have a good collection of the little suckers quite cheaply. I found mine at Red Dot as I mentioned, you will probably find them at other outlets and if you mention them and this article to your mobile phone or camera shop no doubt they can get them in.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Profilactic.com - Funny Name, Neat Features!
Profilactic.com is a lifestream/mashup site but it looks to me like it's gaining traction so keep an eye on it! Aside from the sheer number of social sites it allows one to keep track of (not facebook yet - get onto it profilactics!) it also allows adding 'static' sites and RSS feeds, and it already knows about pownce and twitter and jaiku.
It lets people stalk you with impunity, and a fair bit of accuracy. I'm going to add a few Google Maps to it and invite everyone to my place. (And stick the pin into a pesky neighbours home instead of mine... hehehe... Hey that could be the new cyber-revenge, who knows?)
I was actually surprised at the number of sites they already have in place, and I believe they are adding more as they get hold of feed URLs etc. I was even more surprised to see my 43things, having forgotten about that particular account. I'm also aware that there have to be several hundred other sites that they don't yet have but quite frankly it's been a while since I used my PBwiki for anything other than work notes.
All in all Profilactic gets a thimbs up, and one thumbs down - I didn't find anywhere to customise the appearance of the mashup page, and that is a must - as it is the page is big, ugly, and needs some CSS love...
It lets people stalk you with impunity, and a fair bit of accuracy. I'm going to add a few Google Maps to it and invite everyone to my place. (And stick the pin into a pesky neighbours home instead of mine... hehehe... Hey that could be the new cyber-revenge, who knows?)
I was actually surprised at the number of sites they already have in place, and I believe they are adding more as they get hold of feed URLs etc. I was even more surprised to see my 43things, having forgotten about that particular account. I'm also aware that there have to be several hundred other sites that they don't yet have but quite frankly it's been a while since I used my PBwiki for anything other than work notes.
All in all Profilactic gets a thimbs up, and one thumbs down - I didn't find anywhere to customise the appearance of the mashup page, and that is a must - as it is the page is big, ugly, and needs some CSS love...
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
John's Little Stumble
I like this, it sends out a powerful message to the Australian public:
What's the moral of this story kiddies? Mobile phones are dangerous! Especially in the hands of self-preoccupied prats!
What's the moral of this story kiddies? Mobile phones are dangerous! Especially in the hands of self-preoccupied prats!
Monday, 23 July 2007
AWAs Are NOT AOK. But You Knew That Already.
There's an ad circulating on TV, in which some woman stares straight down the barrel directly into your eyes, and tells you that the new Industrial Relations laws do not leave workers unprotected, there is a body to "look after" the workers, and an Ombudman, no less. She looks so effing butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth honest that you begin to think that maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Then you read articles such as this one and you know it's just more government bullshit... And why is this? Well, to begin with, the tone of the (very expensive, paid for with our taxes which just quietly are also not fair, far from it) commercial suggests that all employers know that the the Government Workplace watchdog is not to be trifled with.
(Brief article synopsis: Boy notices that his AWA seems to be a little bit unfair, takes it home to his parents before signing. Father is a Union official, has trouble understanding the AWA but sees that in addition to signing for ony 75% of the wage he's entitled to, the lad is also being asked to sign a five year agreement, and various other things. Boy asks for the AWA to be amended and is refused the job.)
So yeah, it sure looks like this particular employer was trembling in their office in total fear, doesn't it? No, they just wrote the AWA as biased as they wanted, knowing they had two aces up their sleeve. One, the average kid (and the parents, remember this was a union official who understands doublespeak) hasn't got a clue and will happily sign such a document.
Not being in any position to take the document home to their parents most of the time, what makes us think these exploited kids will get permission to take the AWA to the Ombudsman?
And therein lies the second point: Has this young guy got his job at a fair rate of pay? No he does not. The employer's attitude is "you don't like it, we'll find a hundred others who'll be dopes and just sign."
Overcoming that is gonna take changes in the education curriculum, such as taking classes in Your Rights 101 and DoubleSpeak 2.2 before letting the kids loose on the workplace. And as the state of our education system shows, the government is actively aware that a dumb population is a placid population...
So - if you're a parent, *insist* that your child brings home the AWA before signing it. If necessary go with your child, and insist. Read it carefully, and if anything is slightly amiss-looking or not clear, USE the Workplace Ombudsman, recoup some of your tax that they've spent on the advertising! And if a place has unfair AWAs, become an activist, let others know, boycott the place, write to your member for parliament and to all the newspapers!
I have said in the past, if you let people get away with stuff like this, they will get away with it, and get worse. That goes for unfair employers as much as it goes for unfair government. Do help keep your government honest by doing these things. One day it will result in a much fairer Australia!
Then you read articles such as this one and you know it's just more government bullshit... And why is this? Well, to begin with, the tone of the (very expensive, paid for with our taxes which just quietly are also not fair, far from it) commercial suggests that all employers know that the the Government Workplace watchdog is not to be trifled with.
(Brief article synopsis: Boy notices that his AWA seems to be a little bit unfair, takes it home to his parents before signing. Father is a Union official, has trouble understanding the AWA but sees that in addition to signing for ony 75% of the wage he's entitled to, the lad is also being asked to sign a five year agreement, and various other things. Boy asks for the AWA to be amended and is refused the job.)
So yeah, it sure looks like this particular employer was trembling in their office in total fear, doesn't it? No, they just wrote the AWA as biased as they wanted, knowing they had two aces up their sleeve. One, the average kid (and the parents, remember this was a union official who understands doublespeak) hasn't got a clue and will happily sign such a document.
Not being in any position to take the document home to their parents most of the time, what makes us think these exploited kids will get permission to take the AWA to the Ombudsman?
And therein lies the second point: Has this young guy got his job at a fair rate of pay? No he does not. The employer's attitude is "you don't like it, we'll find a hundred others who'll be dopes and just sign."
Overcoming that is gonna take changes in the education curriculum, such as taking classes in Your Rights 101 and DoubleSpeak 2.2 before letting the kids loose on the workplace. And as the state of our education system shows, the government is actively aware that a dumb population is a placid population...
So - if you're a parent, *insist* that your child brings home the AWA before signing it. If necessary go with your child, and insist. Read it carefully, and if anything is slightly amiss-looking or not clear, USE the Workplace Ombudsman, recoup some of your tax that they've spent on the advertising! And if a place has unfair AWAs, become an activist, let others know, boycott the place, write to your member for parliament and to all the newspapers!
I have said in the past, if you let people get away with stuff like this, they will get away with it, and get worse. That goes for unfair employers as much as it goes for unfair government. Do help keep your government honest by doing these things. One day it will result in a much fairer Australia!
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Hotwired - the life beyond wired.
Besides this "twitter telepathy" that develops after a while, there are a few other consequences of highly wired life that many people are not quite getting yet. We who are hotwired [tm Teddlesruss dat who!] have developed something else that most muggles only dream about: We have become somewhat omniscient.
Where other people are seeing the newscasts once or twice a day and reading their papers, we're there. I can be sitting at coffee and get a twitter SMS (aka a "tweet") telling me that the Mitchell Freeway has just had one direction closed due to an accident and so I'll go home along another route. Do that with your newspaper!
My Google Calendar can reach me with my appointments by SMS, almost anytime anywhere. No hot synching with Outlook or messing about with bluetooth or usb cables. Do that with your diary!
And thanks to some clever work with various RSS tolls, my posting this article will result in a quick tweet being sent to the entire Twitterverse. Do that with your letter to the editor!
Apropos of which, I read about the cold snap on our Australian east coast and see it on the news and that tends to make it just that - interesting news. But when I'm chatting to my friends on Twitter and Facebook and getting their brief twittergrams about how unusual that is, that is what drives it home.
These are people whose daily lives I've grown to know and appreciate. When six people from the same state say how unusual the weather is, I know it's more than just news - it's changing their lives, and by extension, mine.
When I combine that with my RSS reader articles, my reading on other people's blogs (see the sidebar of this blog for a cross-section of my blog roll, yes it's extensive but I like this kind of news feeding,) and the TV and newspaper news, I can see a LOT more than the specialist journalist or forecaster focusing on their particular area of expertise.
And it pays off in all sorts of ways. Latest news around the world? Delivered to my cell phone. All day. (And all night if I didn't set up my feeds to not bother me at night. But that's only a personal preference. Some people sleep with their megawiredness - I couldn't, not that the idea isn't attractive sometimes.) Latest sofware, gadgets, breaking news? Got it covered.
One of my payoffs was the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook, which is my diet that was all I used to reverse impending prostate cancer. It's been over two years now and so far no signs of recurrence, and my actual diet has changed to a very healthy one ideed.
So there are all sorts of things that makes being hotwired for as much of the day as possible a benefit. But I also think the reason for the success of sites such as Twitter and Facebook is more than that, it's the fact that they are fitted with a tap, and you can drink your fill or ration it to a few drops a day.
Me, I'm going back to lolcats now, kthxbye!
Where other people are seeing the newscasts once or twice a day and reading their papers, we're there. I can be sitting at coffee and get a twitter SMS (aka a "tweet") telling me that the Mitchell Freeway has just had one direction closed due to an accident and so I'll go home along another route. Do that with your newspaper!
My Google Calendar can reach me with my appointments by SMS, almost anytime anywhere. No hot synching with Outlook or messing about with bluetooth or usb cables. Do that with your diary!
And thanks to some clever work with various RSS tolls, my posting this article will result in a quick tweet being sent to the entire Twitterverse. Do that with your letter to the editor!
Apropos of which, I read about the cold snap on our Australian east coast and see it on the news and that tends to make it just that - interesting news. But when I'm chatting to my friends on Twitter and Facebook and getting their brief twittergrams about how unusual that is, that is what drives it home.
These are people whose daily lives I've grown to know and appreciate. When six people from the same state say how unusual the weather is, I know it's more than just news - it's changing their lives, and by extension, mine.
When I combine that with my RSS reader articles, my reading on other people's blogs (see the sidebar of this blog for a cross-section of my blog roll, yes it's extensive but I like this kind of news feeding,) and the TV and newspaper news, I can see a LOT more than the specialist journalist or forecaster focusing on their particular area of expertise.
And it pays off in all sorts of ways. Latest news around the world? Delivered to my cell phone. All day. (And all night if I didn't set up my feeds to not bother me at night. But that's only a personal preference. Some people sleep with their megawiredness - I couldn't, not that the idea isn't attractive sometimes.) Latest sofware, gadgets, breaking news? Got it covered.
One of my payoffs was the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook, which is my diet that was all I used to reverse impending prostate cancer. It's been over two years now and so far no signs of recurrence, and my actual diet has changed to a very healthy one ideed.
So there are all sorts of things that makes being hotwired for as much of the day as possible a benefit. But I also think the reason for the success of sites such as Twitter and Facebook is more than that, it's the fact that they are fitted with a tap, and you can drink your fill or ration it to a few drops a day.
Me, I'm going back to lolcats now, kthxbye!
Monday, 16 July 2007
Manual Method Maps
Years ago, (and three of my closest friends will bear me out on this) I had a dream to link an address repository to Google Maps. Back then, Google Maps was not quite up to the task as I couldn't add stickpins to it.
I've noticed how so many Google apps are improving over the moon, (Google Documents & Spreadsheets is pretty slick with the new interface, for example, and Google Calendar has adopted some reminder capabilities which have made it my #1 calendar app now,) so I went back to Google Maps and let me tell you I'm impressed there too! So much so that I've now applied my years old idea to the TEdADDRESSES address book.
Okay it's manual for the moment but I can see that I only need to find a developer that wants to make a simple mashup and this can become automated, as I add an address it will let me find the right spot and link back from the address book entry to a Google Map. For now it's all a manual operation involving lots of cut and paste so entries will take me time to get converted.
For now, if an address has a "GOOGLE MAP" link in the entry, I've found it for you and marked it up. And that's cool because, well - because it's just cool...
I've noticed how so many Google apps are improving over the moon, (Google Documents & Spreadsheets is pretty slick with the new interface, for example, and Google Calendar has adopted some reminder capabilities which have made it my #1 calendar app now,) so I went back to Google Maps and let me tell you I'm impressed there too! So much so that I've now applied my years old idea to the TEdADDRESSES address book.
Okay it's manual for the moment but I can see that I only need to find a developer that wants to make a simple mashup and this can become automated, as I add an address it will let me find the right spot and link back from the address book entry to a Google Map. For now it's all a manual operation involving lots of cut and paste so entries will take me time to get converted.
For now, if an address has a "GOOGLE MAP" link in the entry, I've found it for you and marked it up. And that's cool because, well - because it's just cool...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)