Didn’t someone tell Acer that most of Europe has banned smoking in the workplace? This new desktop PC has a handy container at the top, with lid that would do the job just right.
Nice Ashtray
Category: random thoughts
Summer project thoughts
Alan gave me a nifty little submarine engine and it turned my thoughts to a summer project. I’m looking again at the home 3D printer.
There are now a few competing/complimentary home 3D printers around, these include Fab@Home, The RepRap, and hobby CNC
If anyone has any recommendations, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Reprap was the one i’d heard of a few years ago, but Fab@Home looks quite sophisticated.
I think the only criteria I have is that it must fit in my shed 🙂
Goatastic
My sister is becoming a farmer – a goat farmer to be precise. she and Ian now have approx 50 female and 1 billy goats on rented land near their place in Bradford upon Avon. The plan is to increase the herd (billy has been busy) and buy some farmland to establish themselves. After that it’s on to Smoothie production…
As you can see from the photo the goats were happily penned in, but my childhood experience reminds me that for goats the grass is always greener the other side of the fence, and they’ll do just about anything to get there.
Good luck Sarah, hope you don’t mind getting out of bed in the middle of the night to recapture your straying herd 🙂
A nice orderly queue
I do like to see the shopping ordered nicely at the checkout. Here are my top tips
- Nothing should overlap, unless its a multiple item (eg egg boxes)
- Group by food category and then size
- Tic-Tacsâ„¢ are optional
Sportsbeat
When I’m in Exeter, I always listen to Sportsbeat on Exeter 107.3fm.
Bike Rover
Is this the ultimate green 2×4 land rover?
Real Life SimCity
Recently I’ve been playing with a mapping app on the iPhone called Waze. This allows you to do free turn by turn routing on a smartphone (at time of writing Android and iPhone’s supported), with the added bonus of up to date traffic reporting by fellow users of the service.
Waze started in Israel, and they’ve pretty much got the whole country mapped now. The UK however is sparse – most roads are not mapped yet, but this is the bit I’m enjoying most. When you drive down a road that’s not on Waze, you actually create it. The phone uploads the GPS data to the web, and you go along later and add the street name.
This bit feels like SimCity – creating your own roads! However it does feel like wasted effort, as a project called OpenStreetMap has already created free maps of the entire UK, which Waze or other projects like it could be using. Waze are taking a bit of a gamble on UK users wanting to create a map of the UK before the routing and traffic functions will start to take off. Smartphone Apps that use OpenStreetMap are plentiful – but I’ve yet to find a free one for the iPhone.
For SimCity fans it’s great though – you find yourself deliberately taking new routes to and from work just to add new roads to the map.
Haiti earthquake appeal
If anyone is wishing to donate some money to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake, here’s the DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal page
Don’t forget to Gift Aid it!
“I want to work in the media when I grow up”
With no disrespect to my esteemed former colleagues at Westcountry TV:
Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach
Those who can’t do or teach, get a job with the council
Those who can’t even get a job with the council become journos.
Maybe we should add an extra category – X-Factor contestants.
Not dead after all
Just in case the last post made you feel depressed, think of the case of the twice-buried monk.
Oran, a sixth-century monk on Iona: having presumably been declared dead, he was buried, but was dug up again the following day and found to be alive. He is said to have subsequently been re-buried for heresy when he claimed that after his first burial he had seen heaven and hell.