Wind up MP3s

A short one today, just sharing a link I found with you all : a wind up MP3 player. Never mind being better for the environment - never running out of battery power sounds wonderful!

The only problem seems to be its size - only 2 gig - nowhere near enough in these days of 100gig plus players.

Hotelympia

Well our tickets are booked, and the times filled into the diary for myself and the owners to go to Hotelypia in Febuary next year. It bills itself as the worlds leading foodservice and hospitality show, running for over 75 years.

It's going to be my first time there, and looking through the list of exhibitors theres load there. More tomorrow when I've had a chance to read through properly and decide where I'm going first!

Model or Paintshop? Surprisingly model. Its a large white paper sphere suspended on a wire, with four projectors. And the best bit? Its animated - it actually seems to spin and to have weather patterns - have to pop in and see it the next time I'm in Harrisonburg!

Top 10

Stumbling around the web a few minutes ago I came across a list of Top Ten Science Fiction Novels and as a fanatical sci-fi reader I don't agree with most of the choices here. Oh, they're all good books, but best 10? Not really in some cases.

So naturally this leads me to ask what would my top 10 be?

Well in no particular order:

• Dune - agreeing with the other list here, a complex and deep far future space opera, even if I'm not a huge fan of the sequels and prequels.The
• The Nights Dawn Trilogy - A huge space opera and horror crossover, and possibly the longest single story I've ever seen commercially - to all of you who don't know it put is this way, its at least 50% longer than The Lord Of the Rings, even ignoring its prequel.
  
• The Day of the Triffids - No one does end of the world as well as Wyndham did, particularly with his own very eccentric twist.
  
• The Uplift War - a set of six books loosely bound together, set in a nice twist in a galaxy where humans are a small unimportant race who can't resist sticking their nose in where its not needed, with predictable consequences.
  
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - In my opinion Heinlein's finest hour, and a book every should read once. Seriously if you haven't read this you're missing out.
  
• Childhoods End - The phrase not with a bang but with a whimper might be made for this book, which deals with the end of humanity, not through war but through evolution away from what we would understand as being human. Moving.
  
• Excession - My favorite of Ian Bank's Culture Novels, largely dealing with the Cultures Minds (AIs) and the attempted use of the titled Excession (a visitor from another universe) to pursue their systematic brutality.
  
• The Forever War - What would really happen in an interstellar war if Einstein is right about the speed of light and time dilation? This book less with war and more with the alienisation of the soldiers who fight in it, 100s of years removed from their own culture.
  
• The Stand - Well what can I say about this? A virus with a near 100% mortality rate gets released by accident, and the world is basically over. The book follows two sides, clearly shown to be good and evil in their attempt to rebuild and to mold the future in their images.

Anyone agree? Disagree? Any I've missed?

Heard of Google Earth?

Of course you have - but have you heard of Google Moon? Its nowhere near as detailed as its bigger brother, concentrating on the Apollo moon landings, but its still fun to have a poke at.

You can't do the normal satellite thing though and see if you can find your house, which is a shame - anyone for a Fall of Moondust?

Awesomely Pretty

Machu Picchu high in the Andes in Peru. You really do find some good stuff on Flickr occasionally!

Solar powered keyboard

A wireless solar paneled keyboard might seem like a really great idea at first look - no more fiddling with batteries and having it get confused every couple of months.


Until you hit on the slight flaw in the scheme - solar panels work on sunlight and computers - especially desktop computers get used indoors. Oops. My question is - did they really not think of this when they built the keyboard, or did they think "Hey, everyones saying they want to go green these days - how can we cash in?"

Was it stupidity or greed? I'm not sure which is worse.

Murphy's Technology Laws

We've all heard of Murphys Law, that things will go wrong in any given situation, if you give them a chance, but how many of you have heard of Murphy's Technology Laws?

Heres a few :

• Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
• New systems generate new problems.
• The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
• If you can't understand it, it must be intuitively obvious.
• Standard parts are not.
• Never trust modern technology, trust it only when it is old technology.
• Everything is always in the least practical unit; for example velocity is measured in furlongs per fortnight.
• Any tool dropped will fall where it will cause the most damage.
• The repairman will have never seen a model quite like yours before.

Anyone else got any good ones?

Just Because

Completely unrelated to anything hotel, travel or business, but just because it was cool. Real time internet satellite tracking. Completely pointless, but strangely addictive - can you pick a random point on the globe and find a satellite near it? Did you know there were that many satellites up there? Can you tell me what the individual ones are for?