"Debubking urban legends"

Penguins fall on their backs when planes fly over, the number of hooves lifted into the air on horses statues reveals how the riders died
and Coca-Cola invented the modern image of Santa Claus.

All false Urban Legends.

"Use your fav IM through your browser"

I'm really digging this. With meebo.com you can use all the main IM clients through your browser - no software to install.

It looks good and works well.

The new wave of web 2.0 / AJAX web sites are just so cool.

"More tea, Gromit?"

Could I be any more exited about the new Wallace and Gromit film? Not now I've seen the Gromit mug, with the thermo-nose that turns red when hot tea is poured in. And coming early 2006, a kettle which will start boiling when it receives a text message.

"Happy, happy, joy, joy"

It's been a busy week - landed myself a job designing the apps behind the websites for many of the high-street firms.

Plus my previous employer rang up again to ask if I would come back for a month. The one that let me go with short notice.

A few weeks later and they are struggling with the work load.

Unfortunately, I had to turn them down :-P

"Fired!"

Well didn't expect to be looking for work again so quickly, but last week I was called into the boss' office and my contract was terminated early.

Nothing I'd done wrong, just the company financing the project had decided to trim costs. Despite the company I was working for having several attempts to save me (things were crazily busy), it wasn't to be.

I'm never one to look a gift horse in the mouth - although I'm back scanning the jobs pages again, I'm doing it whilst lounging in the sun with freshly brewed coffee. Cheers.

"Good old Beeb"

Marvellous. Not only is there a new series of my favourite surreal comedy show, "The Mighty Boosh", but the BBC are streaming each episode over the web a week in advance of the TV broadcast (UK only).

So rather than waiting until it was on later tonight, I just watched the streamed version on my TV at the exact moment I felt like it. Kinda like a TiVo in advance.

Almost worked perfectly - the picture quality was lower than usual digital TV and it did need a kick half way through when it dropped to one frame a second - but it's excellent that the Beeb is doing this.

"Job"

I got a job. Better yet, it's a local job, for local people.

In my new job it's mandatory to play Counter Strike:Source at lunchtime, so I've stumped up a copy of Half Life 2 that's needed to play it. Must admit HL2 is a lovely game to play too.

What a bizzaro world we live in. Even though I downloaded and patched the game from Valve, they wanted $50 for a registration key.

Or I could buy the game (with key) from Amazon.co.uk for £13. So much for electronic delivery being the cheap future.

"Ugly Next Gen Consoles"

Why have MS and Sony made such ugly consoles? The Xbox360 looks like a Dell and the PS3 has taken inspiration from the George Forman grill, as we can see below.

The only one I actually like is Nintendo's Revolution, but I can't see myself buying that one.

"Some very cool PS3 game movies"

Well the Xbox 360 and PS3 have been shown, both with hugely impressive hardware specs.

Two games so far have stunned me on the PS3: Motorstorm and Killzone Next Gen. Wow.

"Geobloggers"

A mashup of two cool technologies: Google maps + Flickr = Geobloggers.com

"What have I been up to?"

Instead of going to work and earning an honest living, I've been hacking code away at home.

I've made two quite handy Fat Fingers tools:

1) an add-in for Internet Explorer: select a word on any web page and right click to do a Fat Fingers search on eBay. Looks like this in action:



2) a Widget for OS X 10.4: Do a Fat Fingers search from the Widget Desktop. Thanks to Korruptor for helping out with the shiny panels - my ham fisted efforts were crap. I still don't like the Fat Fingers logo I put on it, but it'll do for a 1.0 release ;-)



They can be downloaded over here.

Time for my next idea....

"PSP Video Content"

That's more like it: ABC news provides news clips for PSP and an indie film maker offers downloadable films for PSP. All free.

Date:	2005-05-05 09:05
Mood:	amused
Music:	Heh Hey 16K

"Some people are never happy"

I just got an email from someone complaining that art4iTunes.com didn't find artwork for his vinyl punk singles (unreleased on CD).

Seesh, users? Who'd have 'em.

"Whoshouldyouvotefor.com"

I wonder if the election results would be different if we were just asked 25 questions, rather than asked to tick a box?

www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com

I also quite liked the Summary of Policys page.

"OurProperty.co.uk"

How much did your neighbours pay for there house?...hmmm, interesting.

OurProperty.co.uk

"Prague"

Prague is possibly the most beautiful place I've visited - every turn you are presented with gothic architecture, pastel coloured houses and grand stately buildings.

Some photos.

"House Genius"

It's been just over a week of my "House Genius" experiment. I resigned my job, and I'm taking a month off work to do my own coding.

I've been coding pretty much 8 hours a day, mostly catching up on a few things I wanted to add to FatFingers.com - some new features are almost completed, but it'll be another week or so before I finish it all and start on a new website.

I'm not missing the commute at all, but I'm already finding it a bit dull sitting in the house all day. I probably wouldn't be working so hard, but a torn calf muscle means I'm forced to take it easy and stay indoors. Once it heals up I'll be out on my bike all day.

"Entertain me"

I'm totally hooked on Metal Gear:AC!D on the PSP - I'm about 14 hours through, and still loving it. It's not the usual style, more of a strategy games with cards, but still lots of sneaking and dripping with Metal Gear nostalgia.

It's made the commute to London painless the past couple of weeks - occasionally not even noticing that the train has stopped in Waterloo.

When not playing that, I've been reading "The Timewaster Letters" which has me laughing out-loud on every page. It's a collection of letters making obscure requests to companies and associations, together with any replies.

Makes me glad I don't work in a customer relations department.

"High Definition"

This page gives a good demonstration on how much better things look using HD equipment.

"Two very cool add-ins"

Lookout - lightning-fast search for MS Outlook. The standard search is soooo slow. MS have bought the company so no doubt this will be standard functionality in the next Office release.

ForecastFox – nice, unobtrusive weather forecast plug-in for Firefox.

Both free.