Archive for January 2007
Spying on Card Criminals 30 Jan 2007
I quite enjoy reading books on catching hackers, not that I’m particularly keen on the law making good, mainly it’s because they’re one-on-one matches with technically competent players and tons of inept coppers who barely know how to switch a PC on (and, let’s face it, it’s rare a hacker writes about his exploits from [...]
On the Ball 22 Jan 2007
I’ve mentioned before that I play football every other week. A group of guys, most of whom I’d never met before, from different walks of like, get together and have a runabout. It’s good fun, a bit of exercise and we all get to pretend we’re our favourite footy stars, plus it gives those of [...]
How to Survive a Robot Uprising 20 Jan 2007
I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed with How to Survive a Robot Uprising. It started with the layout of the book. It’s got a nice over, it’s on strange glossy paper with red edges, so far, so good, but that attention to detail wasn’t applied to the layout of the text, it was [...]
Water on the Brain 18 Jan 2007
A Californian woman has died after taking part in a water-drinking contest It just goes to show that too much of anything is not good for you. This isn’t the first time I’d heard this, apparently drinking too much in too short space of time overwhelms the kidneys, who can’t extract it fast enough, the [...]
Friends Across the Channel 16 Jan 2007
Startling news, apparently the Brits could have had an alliance with France, even more shocking, the could have joined the Commonwealth and had the Queen presiding over them. So, when Eden turned down his request for a union between France and Britain the French prime minister came up with another proposal. This time, while Eden [...]
Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony 14 Jan 2007
The Lost Colony is the fifth book in the Artemis Fowl series, I’ve read them all so far and they’ve been great reads. I thought the last book, the Opal Deception, was the weakest though, and feared Colfer might be running out of steam. While this book is much better, it is far from perfect, [...]
Man on the Moon 12 Jan 2007
Following on in the space theme (gettit?), a ‘consortium of space interests’ has tabled some ideas for the UK to have it’s own mission to the moon. Not to land on it, obviously, but to slam some probs into it so we can get a better idea of what it is made of. While the [...]
Spacey 10 Jan 2007
Mark Boulton has written an interesting article over on A List Apart concerning the use of whitespace in page and web design. Particularly interesting is the concept of micro whitespace, the space around words, letters, between lines, paragraphs and list items and how it can increase readability. There’s also some interesting points about how whitespace [...]
The Return of Tomorrow’s World 6 Jan 2007
As I kid I used to watch Tomorrow’s World all the time, many of my friends still remember it (ask anyone in the tech world of a certain age if they remember when the Sony minidisc debuted and the person demonstrating it opened the player, removed the disc and put it back in without the [...]
Lack of Vision 3 Jan 2007
Wandering around the BBC site today I ran across an article about James Dyson, the man who invented the cyclone vacuum cleaner, and took on the entire industry in the process. Dyson is one of those home inventors and tinkerers that Britain is famous for and one who made good. The story is about the [...]