The first woman tourist in space, Anousheh Ansari is writing a blog from space. Anousheh lifted off in a Soyuz on Sept 19th and has now docked with the International Space Station.
Geotag Flickr Photos
I’ve been playing around wth the geo tagging tool on Flickr which lets you drag an image onto a map and tag it with its geographical location. It uses Yahoo maps which seem to have much less detail than Google maps, certainly as far as Scotland is concerned.
The Bleeding Obvious
It is extremely easy to patent something in the USA which to most of us is obvious, remember Microsoft trying to patent the double click or BT laying claim to the internet link. Companies spend millions on this every year in an attempt to safeguard future investments or just to be able to extract money from companies or individuals for infringement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to get the US supreme court to change the law to make it easier to scrap patents that are clearly obvious by having additional evidence such a blogs and other media. With this in mind a blogger has set up a Wiki for people to post their obvious ideas thereby hopefully preventing some multinational money grabbing organisation from cashing in on it. If you have an obvious idea then post it here.
The first ever browser
You’d expect the worlds first browser to be a rather basic pretty dumb tool, but you’d be wrong this 
screen shot of the browser designed by Tim Berners-Lee was also an editor and designed to be an interactive tool for the web. Only problem was that it only ran on the NeXTStep operating system. The level of intercativety on the web is only now coming close to the original ideas of the inventor with blogs, wikis etc.
see also: Web Browser
New Browser on the Block…Flock
I started using a new browser called Flock which integrates a few nice features like drag and drop images on your Flickr or PhotoBucket accounts, search results as you type, a news reader, a blog editor and the ability to synchronise and share your favourites. You can of course already do all of these things in other ways but it’s quite nice to have them all packaged together in the browser. It’s early days as Flock is still in beta form but the outlook is promising.
Wireless Lan
We’ve had broadband for just over a year now and recently we were upgraded to 8Mbs download speed, it averages at about 7.6 Mbs which isn’t bad. There was always a queue for the PC which was our only connected computer, either my wife shopping on Ebay, my daughter playing games or me just wanting to read my email. So I finally shelled out for a 3Com wireless router and I have to say the install went like a dream. Our main PC is connected directly to the router and I’m currently writing this in my garden on my laptop using the free wireless card that came with the router. I reckon I’m a good 50 feet from the router as the crow flies. The problem I have is in connecting my daughters iMac to the WLan. We also got a USB wireless stick with the router unfortuantely it did not have a Mac driver with it. I did eventually track down a Mac driver for the chipset and have installed this on the Mac. The instructions with this driver say you have to create another network access point and that this should automatically detect the new Zydas WLan which can then be configured to connect to the router. No such luck, the Mac just doesn’t see this network adapter at all so I may have to resort to a patch cable from the iMac to the router. I’m no Mac expert however and it’s possible I’ve missed something so I’ll keep digging and hopefully I’ll crack it. The alternative of course is to buy a USB wireless stick whick does come with a Mac driver. Anyway, it’s nice to be able to get online without having to wait in line.
Sometimes it’s just not worth getting up
We’ve wanted to go to the Traquair Fair for quite a while but something else always cropped up. This year though I thought we’d cracked it, we got tickets well in advance, we had a new (second hand) car, and were all set to go. Then on the day we planned to leave the car developed a coolant leak, so that was that, even if I managed to fix it it would be too late to get to the fair. So the day wasn’t a complete loss I decided to fit a new aerial on our roof so we could pick up Freeview digital TV. The ladder was a bit short; the angle was a bit steep so I knew I was taking a risk. Standing at the very top of the ladder I tried to throw a rope around the chimney breast for safety, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t get it to go round. So I somehow got onto the roof without knocking over the ladder and managed to secure the rope. It was then I lost my footing and almost came right off, luckily I managed to grab the rope I’d just tied and suffered no more than a few grazes. If I’d slipped a few seconds earlier I reckon I’d have gone through the garage roof about 40 feet below, I don’t think it would have killed me but it would certainly have hurt…a lot. Anyway, after a couple more trips up and down the ladder I eventually hooked up the aerial and we now have digital TV…..I’m going to have a drink.
Essential web tools
Lists of resources are great, but often you just don’t get round to putting them together, so it’s even better when you find someone else has put a list of resources together that cover all the stuff you would have. So for a great set of web development tools pop over to Protolize, a site set up by Tony Yoo’s.
Walking in the rain…with a bike
I regularly cycle the 8 miles to and from work and enjoy it immensely. The views of the Ochil hills along the A91 more than compensate for the numerous car drivers who appear to think that passing within a couple of feet at 60 mph is OK. Over the last few years I have been using kevlar ‘puncture proof’ tyres and have suffered only one puncture, until today that is. The last time I had a puncture I knew the tyre walls were in poor condition, I’d been meaning to buy new ones for ages but never seemed to get round to it, so it was really my own fault that time. However, I had grown so used to not getting punctures that today took me by complete surprise. I don’t carry tools, patches, spare tube or even a pump, and I was sure that hissing sound had to be coming from the car behind me, right? No, my front tyre was flat. This, after I’d done so well to catch up and overtake another cyclist, who then stopped to ask if I needed help. We found a tear in the wall of the tyre, so how this happened is anyone’s guess. I now faced a 2.5 mile walk home, it had just started raining, I was wearing cycling shoes and very fetching Lycra shorts and shirt. It’s odd but when your on your bike with this gear on it feels fine, but as soon as you get off to walk suddenly your acutely aware of how ridiculous you look. Even pushing a bike you feel odd, it’s amplified ten-fold when you don’t have one. And as for the shoes, they’re OK for cycling but that’s it. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience walking home, at a slower pace you have more time to take in the scenery and as your on the pavement you don’t have to worry about the high speed vehicles who’s drivers regard you as an obstacle rather than a legitimate road user. So I arrived home a bit later than usual, rather wet and resolving to carry a repair kit in future.
CSS & PHP Essentials
This list is by no means extensive, nor is it in any way comprehensive, it is just a selection of sites which I have found usefull, educational or just plain entertaining. There are many many more but these are a good place to start.
