I didn’t make it to Brickvention this year, but Adrian O’Hagan did, and sent me this photo. It’s a Lego Myki reader… and on the back of it is a Metcard reader. Adrian says when a Myki card was presented it beeped and displayed a balance (which may or may not have been the real ... [More]
Category: Geek / tech
Technology fetishism
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Records, cassettes, CDs, iTunes
Back in 1995, I wrote as part of my History Of The World: 1964 Beatlemania sweeps the world. Shortly afterwards, electronics companies devise a fifty year plan to get people to buy all their favourite music many times over, by introducing new recorded music technology every decade. This works until the 1990s, when, due to ... [More]
(This could have gone to Geek Rant, but it’s not overly technical…) Some stupid web site stuff, that would be easy to fix/avoid, that bugs me: When you click to watch an online video, and the player shows you the video advert, but then stops working when it comes to play the actual thing you ... [More]
Some people got just a little too hysterical last week when news of a security vulnerability in Myki came out. The story broke on Monday, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that the mainstream media got hold of it, with the Melbourne Times running it first, spreading rapidly to The Age, AAP, 3AW and others — ... [More]
(Actually there have been real, major Blackberry outages this week.)
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New camera
After much procrastination, I got a new camera. It’s a Canon IXUS 115, to replace the old Canon A70 I got way back in 2003. The old one still just about works (with minor problems), so I figured Canon was deserving of my loyalty. (My 4-ish year old Canon MP610 printer/scanner is going strong too.) ... [More]
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Pondering 5.1 surround-sound systems
I was looking at what DVD/Blu-Ray 5.1 systems I can get on my credit card points (because this is not something I want to or can afford to spend Real Money on). Some options include (eg the highest-specced ones I have enough points for): Samsung HTD5300 5.1CH 3D Blu-Ray Home Theatre System — which gives ... [More]
I’d heard ages ago that there was a Samsung ABC iView app in the works. It’s now out, but some kind of screw-up means it’s visible to newer (2011) Samsung television owners, but not owners of last year’s models. Thanks to wiser people than me on the ABC iView forums, here’s how you do it, ... [More]
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Server hiccup
If you can see this, then (hopefully) things are getting back to normal. A server move was in the offing, but part of it happened sooner than I thought, effectively taking the site offline, and I didn’t have time earlier to fix it. Long story. Please leave a comment if you see any more weirdness. ... [More]
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How to reject a call on an iPhone
iPhones are so easy to use. A colleague’s iPhone rings on his desk when he’s elsewhere in a meeting, and the screen lights up to say you slide to answer. Great! But how does one reject the call? I ask around to my office full of iPhone users. Nobody knows. Hilarious. I’m not just wording ... [More]
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New phone
Well, I finally got a new phone. In the end I decided to “think different” and not get an iPhone. Instead I’ve got the HTC Desire S, running Android 2.3. As I figure out how it works, I’m blogging about it over on Geekrant: http://www.geekrant.org/2011/06/04/new-phone-htc-desire-s/ Suffice to say, still getting used to it after the ... [More]