Don’t make me laugh →

October 19th, 2012

Hopefully this is all a knee-jerk reaction by prosecutors that’ll blow over.

How many of us have told horrible jokes as children?

An aside: I remember hearing (on a ‘This Week in Tech’ podcast, I think) that society uses dark humor to collectively deal with stuff going on. There was the example of dead-baby jokes becoming prolific in the 80s(?) following lots of cot deaths of a plague, or something… Wish I could find the details now!

Commuting Shuttle →

October 18th, 2012

This is my favourite picture from the Endeavour’s trip across LA. Captures the size of the orbiter, and especially its engines.

Adventures in Fan Filmmaking →

October 15th, 2012

Looks like a cool project. There’s lots of people making fan films, which is awesome. I love how the Internet allows people to share stuff they’ve made.

American is becoming English →

October 12th, 2012

Crikey, Britishisms are everywhere. Call it Anglocreep. Call it annoying. Snippets of British vernacular — “cheers” as a thank you, “brilliant” as an affirmative, “loo” as a bathroom…

The next time an American “mate” asks you to “ring” her on her “mobile” about renting your “flat” during your “holiday,” it’s fair to ask, have we all become Madonna?

Apparently, Americans are watching too many BBC TV shows. And they like to sound posh.

Model Mig jet plane →

October 12th, 2012

Me and Oscar found this when browsing YouTube this morning. It’s a long tedious video, but very impressive. Once it takes off it looks and sounds like a real (fullsize) jet. Then 30s after that, I started to wonder how the landing would be…

Who cares about 3D maps? →

September 26th, 2012

If this story is true, Google are putting off bringing a native Google Maps app to the iPhone, until they’ve integrated the Google Earth 3D stuff in it, to match Apple’s 3D maps.

I just don’t get why the 3D stuff is useful on a map? Google Earth is great, and it’s fun to explore cities by flying around, but turn-by-turn and navigation features (like public transport schedules) are the killer features for maps. Google Maps already has street-view. Use that as the differentiator from Apple.

It’s all just rumours, anyway. But I thought I’d share my thoughts.

Meeting a Troll →

September 25th, 2012

This is an amazing story. It’s terrifying, but the compassion is amazing. What an ordeal to go through!

Pixar story rules →

September 23rd, 2012

Interesting list.

The Economics of Stolen Bicycles →

September 22nd, 2012

Insights like this are really interesting. Although don’t make you feel happier about your favourite bike that got stolen.

Background to Apple designing their own CPUs →

September 19th, 2012

Most of the smartphone boom has been powered by ARM’s processor architectures (whoo! UK based company!).

Apple have been acquiring processor architecture talent and deals with ARM, which is just starting to really pay off with the iPhone 5. This is one of the edges Apple has over other smartphone makers.

And I think processor architecture is super interesting. When you look at a computer, it starts off pretty simple. (e.g. hit keys and letters appear on the screen) As you look at it deeper, it gets more and more complex, until you get to the processor. This is where the complexity starts to unravel, and you discover simple logic circuits doing simple things.