Technology fetishism
At home for the second time this week. On Tuesday I worked from home on purpose, as things in the office were quiet and I needed to do some stuff on a side-project web site. Today however, Isaac woke up with a whopping 39.5 temperature. This managed to coincide with the work computer system being ... [More]
Rae’s post about the amusing email Away message reminded me of the screensaver I wrote years ago. It was intended to run on office computers, and one of the animations included a random message: I’m not here right now because I’m… out experiencing life. doing a nude team-building workshop. at a job interview with an ... [More]
I’m a bit of a geek, but even I can see that sometimes technology isn’t the answer to a problem. The Victorian government has announced a $494 million deal for a new public transport ticketing system, to run for 10 years from 2007. Question is: does it solve the number one problem with the old ... [More]
The Bureau of Meteorology installed a multi-gazillion dollar supercomputer a year or two back, with the aim of improving the accuracy of weather forecasts. How accurate are they? Well over about a week, I compared forecasts (including up to a week ahead of the day) against the actual weather reported the next day. I was ... [More]
Computers I have bought – 1995 vs 2000 vs 2005 (the one I bought yesterday). May 1995 June 2000 May 2005 Processor 60 Mhz 650 Mhz11 times faster than 1995 3 Ghz5 times faster then 200050 times faster than 1995(Actually it’s not really valid to compare raw clock speeds) Memory 8 Mb 256 Mb32 ... [More]
Dear Blogger users, I’m increasingly reading blogs through an aggregator. This is a software tool that grabs text from lots of different web pages and puts it in one place for me. It saves me time, and allows me to read more blogs in less time. More people are using them all the time. To ... [More]
(From next week’s Aliens of London)
The ABC has finally announced it will show Doctor Who, starting in May (I’m betting 7:30pm on Saturday or Sunday nights). Meanwhile a new study has shown Australians increasingly downloading TV programmes via the Net, and I think it correctly identifies the cause: viewer frustration with the time the networks take to broadcast overseas programs. ... [More]
Just when you’ve got used to the new year, used to the idea of it being 2005, the year picks up momentum and voom, suddenly it’s April. I’d love to tell you how I blitzed the footy tipping for a second week, but I’d be lying. Not only did I bomb out with only 4 ... [More]
Around this time last week, I checked the Apple web site for the status of my iPod repair. It proclaimed that they’d sent it back to me, and had a link to a rather nifty Australia Post parcel-tracking web site. Which didn’t work. But no matter, once Easter was out of the way, I got ... [More]
So, why the name change? ToxicCustard is a name that’s been with me for more than 15 years, and first got an airing with some writing of mine in university, back in 1990. I’ve grown and changed in the last 15 years. Matured, I hope, and I no longer feel the name no longer sits ... [More]
Welcome to the new blog URL. Feel free to update your bookmarks and blogrolls. Update 5pm. Well most stuff is working now, and forwarding is in place from the old site. Some of the title graphics for entries from 1998-2003 (years not yet migrated into WordPress) are broken; will fix those soon. Other than that, ... [More]