Electrickery is caused by Amps. These small tiny creatures live in batteries.  If they can be sure of getting back home, they can be persuaded to run along burrows called wires, and the sometimes they have to squeeze through very tight holes such as the lights.  Squeezing through tight holes is hard work, which makes the Amps very hot.  That in turn makes the lights work because the burrow gets white hot. 

They will do this trick on their own but get very tired of doing it and soon stop running through the wires.  Which is a bad thing if you are out at night.  This causes the old saying “Many Amps make light work”.

If they can be persuaded to run through a dynamo it acts as a sort of works canteen where the Amps can feed, but like any canteen there has to be some sort of control of the queues at the servery.

When the canteen is closed the Amps will try to crowd in and this will cause chaos when they discover that there is no food for them and they will set fire to the place.

The canteen door that stops this happening is called the cut-out.  When the engine is stopped the canteen door is closed keeping the Amps out.  Starting the engine opens the door allowing the Amps in for their dinners.  You still have to control the hungry crowds of Amps and this is done by means of a sort of turn-stile called a “regulator.” The turnstile works at varying rates according

In a Swiss mountain inn:

SPECIAL TODAY - NO ICE-CREAM.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen:

WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

A laundry in Rome:

LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Sign at a Methodist Church, N. America:

DON'T LET WORRIES KILL YOU. LET THE CHURCH HELP.

Information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner,

Japan:

COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT JUST CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN

YOUR ROOM, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

On an Athi River highway:

TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.

A sign seen on an automatic restroom hand dryer:

DO NOT ACTIVATE WITH WET HANDS. 

Hotel catering to skiers, Austria:

NOT TO PERAMBULATE THE CORRIDORS IN THE HOURS OF REPOSE IN THE BOOTS OF ASCENSION.

Supermarket, Hong Kong:

FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, WE RECOMMEND COURTEOUS, EFFICIENT SELF-SERVICE. 

The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong:

GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

It seems like such a simple task, "Can you convert this .avi to a flash video?". My first question was um, why? Followed by a string of expletives. But instead of explaining why I didn't want to do it, I decided to give it a go. Or rather I asked someone else how to ... thank you Handyande http://andy.elcock.org/

So, the process of creating a flash video from an avi is as follows (Using Mcc OS X):

1. First you need fink. What is fink? Well I fink that ... sorry bad pun. Their website says "The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X". i.e. they want to port UNIX software to MacOSX and make it available for people like you and me. 

So go to http://www.finkproject.org/download/srcdist.php and download the fink file. I downloaded fink--0.29.10 which was released in September 2009. 

Then follow the instructions on the website ... It sounds easy and it probably is if you don't have a tendency to being blonde. The more comprehensive instructions are 

- open a terminal (swear, try and remember what a terminal is, find it in the applications folder under utilities, sigh)

- cd to the folder where you downloaded the fink file (probably /Downloads) 

- type tar -xvf fink-0.29.10.tar OR tar -xvzf fink-0.29.10.tar.gz depending on if you have a .tar or .tar.gz file downloaded

- hold your breath

- when everything works continue to follow the instructions on the Fink page and type in ./bootstrap

- a whole

Meeow! I love cats, they are a million times better than dogs. This particular cat is a very clever cat. 

cat stands for "concatenate and display". (Don't ask me how, I think it was developed by someone who thought t was the same as d) It is also a commad that tries to multitask, and doesn't really manage it very well. It must be male. 

So let's deal with the display part first. cat displays the content of a file. It works fine if you have a short file. However, if you have a large file the contents will fly rapidly past you and you will only see the last page. That's great if you just want to see the last page, or can read like the robot in Short Circuit. If you want to see any other bits of the file then try the more comand instead.

The other thing that cat does is the "concatenate" part. The OED says that concatenate means "to chain together". It combines the contents of two things into another thing. 

1. Open a terminal

2. Type cat file1 file2 > destination_file

3. Press return

More details:

More is about as simple as things get. This command lets you look at the contents of a file. And (wow!) lets you skip through it page or line at a time. 

1. Open terminal

2. Type more and then the file name you want to know more about

3. Press return

4. The first page of the document will be displayed. To display the next line press return and to display the next page press the space bar. To go back type b. 

5. When you are bored of reading press q to escape. 

This is probably the best place to start with anything computer-wize - how to write a list. The ls command lists the files in the current directory. 

Stage 1: open up a terminal

Stage 2: type     ls

Stage 3: press return (This is really as easy as things get around here)

Stage 4: watch as pretty lists appear as if by magic (unless you are in an empty directory when you will be disappointed)

Useful added extra options:

ls -a lists all, ie includes hidden files

ls -l lists extra lists ie it tells you about the file

ls -F shows the type of file with a \ for a directory, * for an executabe file, @ for a symbloic link (I have no idea what that is, but I can now identify it in a list)

ls -alF tells you everything (but I wont understand it)

I now have ubuntu on my new mac book pro!

http://www.ehow.com/i/#article_4919543

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_BootCamp
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/
http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.findyourgeek.com/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/01/28/funny-pictures-video-kitteh-computer-2/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/01/28/funny-pictures-caffine-since-when/

Greetings shiny, stylish, black, linux based phone. Hello Nokia N900. 

The new Nokia N900 (almost available but  not quite) has crashed into the smart phone market. It is a hybrid of phone and tablet computer, coming down more heavily on the side of tablet computer. It's competition is stiff: iPhone, Droid, Blackberry ...

The numbers all add up: 600MHz processor, 1GB application memory, 32 GB internal storage, 600x480 touch screen display. And there is a string of connection abbreviations: GPS, 3.5G, WLAN, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, WiFi. I think that's everything i would need? There is a nice 5 megapixel camera, but no zoom. When someone makes a phone/computer/camera with proper zoom I will be buying it without question 

However, the big attraction of this phone is the Maemo 5 Linux based operating system and the ability to multitask. Being female, the ability to multitask with my mobile devices is important, even essential, to me. My  brain can handle using the internet, phone and calendar at the same time - surely my phone should be able to as well? (Men beware, you may not be able to handle the N900)

Ohoh - and unlike my iPhone the N900 can handle Flash. Yes I know it's proprietary and yes I know you can do shiny things without Flash. But there is nothing more frustrating than browsing websites composed of blank pages where there should be pretty animations. 

The big draw back of the N900 is size. It is definitely thicker than the iphone. Heavier too. A

Proud father and imaginative inventor, Corey Menscher has made the ultimate yummy mummy gadget, the Kickbee. This chunky belt of electronic wizardry detects every kick from junior fetus and informs the world via Twitter. Just what we need, another way for expectant mothers (and tech crazed fathers) to show off and annoy us. 

However, once you get past the inane tackiness of this gizmo it razes another, bigger, much more important question.

The digital freedom of our children is being stolen before they even know what that means: tiny, innocent fetus can tweet from the womb; newborn babies have their pictures plastered over Facebook; toddlers have their own Myspace pages; infant school children have email addresses and mobile phones. Childhood has being stolen by the microchip.

But it’s more than just children sitting in front of computer game consuls rather than playing outside. The pictures, the movies, the text, everything about these infants of the digital generation is spread over the internet before they have the chance to decide whether they want maintain their privacy, a commodity which should be so carefully guarded.

Who owns these tweets? These photos? These first words? The ownership, distribution and secondary or even tertiary uses of this data is vague. Once on the internet can anything actually be deleted? What will come back to haunt you in years to come?

Perhaps yummy mummy with a tech fetish wants everyone to know when baby kicks, but does she realize that the

Problem number one of the day - why does my keyboard insist on printing @ instead of " and vise versa?

Ah - that would be because I haven't set up my keyboard preferences. The problem is that US and UK keyboards send different signals for the same key sets.

In the menu click on System -> Preferences -> Keyboard and then click on the Layouts tab to bring up this:

As you can see the default is set as USA. If you are lucky your keyboard type will be in the drop down list under "Keyboard model."

To change the layout click on Add to bring up this:

You will see when you select the different layouts the different keysets appear. You could really confuse people by changing this! You can also alter the type of keyboard (querty, dvorak, mackintosh) by changing the variants tab.

Top tip: This will not change the keyboard layout for applications that are already running but next time you open them all your keyboard gremlins will be gone.

Well, there's typepad, and wordpress and blogpress and countless other blogging apps for the iPhone. But none are really up to scratch. As a blonde I am demanding when it comes to my technology. So developers listen up - I'm looking for an app that will upload to blogger/blogspot with text and photos - needs to work quickly, accurately and flexibly. Is anyone going to take up the challenge?

When it comes to picking an iPhone case, where do you start? Do I want a hard cover, soft cover, all over cover in metal, plastic, leather, silicone?

I chose the Ultracase Astheric case. It is a polycarbon, leather cloth and (all important) glitter half case for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. As it only covers half of the phone I have a screen cover aswell and just have to hope I don't drop it down more than one flight of stairs. It certainly protects the phone from daily wear and tear, minor scratches and the occasional (OK, regular) low imact fall.

It shiped from abroad so took a few days to get to me but appart from that I love my bling iPhone case!

http://ultra-case.com

This CollegeHumour video shows what the matrix might be like if it ran on windows - complete with blue screens of death, progress bars and that anoying bloody paperclip. Sooner or later everyone comes to the same conclusion - "I'm going to learn Ubuntu now."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8yrOAjfKM&feature=channel

Accoring to distrowatch.com there are now 804 different Linux distributions. From its humble beginnings Linux has morphed into a beomoth which has the potential to challenge the giants of Microsoft and Apple. But is 804 one (or 800) distributions too many?

When you start out with Linux it is difficult to know where to begin. The choice of first distribution is rarely an educated one and is more often determined by chance. I started with susi because that was the box which was lying around the house. Today many people start out with ubuntu bacause it is pre-installed on their shiny new netbook. Some day hundereds of children in the developing world will be inteoduced to a customised vertion of Linux through the one laptdop per child initiative. Many people pick a distribution based on what their friends recommend or what discs they are lent. But with all this variety, your first foray into linux can be met with anyhing from pleasure  to horror or even shear frustration. The variety, complexity and lack of overriding structure can be enough to scare some people off Linux for life. And thus there are some who lament the fragmentation of Linux and call for greater structure and regulation.

I am not one of those people.

For me Linux is about variety and custiomisation. I love the fact I am not tied down to one persons view of how a computer should work, look or interact. There are 804 distributions for me to experiment with and each one has its own neish. However

Today I am a fan of Spotify.

Internet radio is not new.  Spotify is new. It is currently only available as an invite-only beta (let me know if u want an invite ...)

What is new is the dimension of choice. I have a Canadian friend who always says if you have cheese, you have choice. I have no idea what he is talking about, but there is certainly nothing cheesy about Spotify.

Spotify is, however, rather cheeky. On the download page it states cleary that Spotify is supported in Windows and Mac operating systems. However, under the "other platforms" tab it says that "if you want to go ahead and download the windows or mac application for now we’ll keep quiet about it." So I did. And it worked oh so easily. I'm running Spotify via Wine in my Ubuntu installation (oh how did I live without Wine?)

My favourite part of Spotify is the collaborative play lists. From across continents I can share my favourite music with my friends.  Yet another way to feel connedcted in this lonely digital world.

Ofcoarse there are the occasional adverts. For 9.99 per month with the "premium" version you can have advert-free music.

Asside from some occasisonal inexplicable freezes which may have more to do with my wireless network than Spotify I am impressed by this new form of internet radio. All I need now is better speakers for my computer ...

I'm not the only one lamenting the inexorable rise of twitter.

Suddenly everyone is twittering. Barak Obama tweets. Any politician worth his salt has a twitter page. Celebrities are at it (arent they always). Every man, woman, child, company, pet .... has a twitter page.

Twitter has fed into the unmet needs of the nosy neighbour in the digital era. Twitter pages have a certain air of keeping up with the Jones; not only in the content of the posts but also in the design of individual pages.

For me, twitter is just facebook without the interesting bits.  

Savvy advertising gurus have embarrassed this new advertising medium. Both directly and subtly Twitter is being used to advertise products, brands, individuals, politics and ideas. The internet is constantly opening up new methods of reaching consumers. What will come next?

And some of the best advertisers are the publicists of prominent celebrities.

Ashton Kutcher tried to beat CNN to be the first person with a million "followers" on twitter. He has now outstripped CNN and beaten them to 2 million "followers" as well! But does he actually say anything interesting? Anything important? Or actually - is anything that appears twitter page actually written by him? There was certainly a great deal of impressive advertising involved in this coup - it was on the front page of the times website for goodness sake!

Is twitter a good way to get your news updates? Bite sized chunks of news are delivered directly, in real time by all of

The netbook is a strange entity. Halfway between smart phone and laptop markets, it is in a vortex which satisfies neither entity.

There are technical definitions as to what constitutes a netbook but I think that there are three main requirements:

1. Small

2. Cheap

3. Internet access

Price tags typically sit below 500 pounds, and in some excellent cases below 100. Part of that ethos stems from the whole one laptop per child thing. However, not all netbooks are cheap. Take the Asus with swaski crystals inlayed into the keyboard or the sony P series (I know they say it isn't a netbook but what the hell is a “lifestyle computer” anyway?). These are fashion statements not computers. We have come a long way from the off cream box that was once your desktop.

As with everything, size does matter. The 10 inch netbooks are the commonest ones I have spotted around town, in coffee shops and on buses. 9 inch netbooks fit nicely into my new handbag. And 8 inchs would work on the Sony if the screen resolution was better.

The dell mini I've been borrowing has a 9 inch screen which is more than ample. It performs surprisingly well. It can have open office, chat client and browser running merrily at the same time. I want to really stress it out though – do you think it would manage music streaming? Iplayer? Wine? Wow under wine? It's poor little processor might melt ...

What I particularly like about the netbooks is that so many of them come with linux as

Palm is about to enter the the realms of the mobile-internet-touch-screen-smart oober phone with the new Palm Pre.

Well, almost about to.

It was supposed to be launched in “early 2009” but the latest rumored launch date is the 7^th June. Lets hope the latest rumor doesn't disappoint.

The Pre is supposed to have, well, everything. So far none of the smart phones do all the things I want my take-over-the-universe phone to do. Even the iphone falls short of my ultimate phone with its inability to have a blue tooth keyboard attachment or decent document editing on the go.

I think that the Pre looks stunning. It is like a cute rounded pebble. However, this has not gone down so well with the macho tech crowd. It is thicker than the iphone, but includes a fold out qwerty keyboard. I've never been sure about how useful keyboards like that actually are and some of the forums are suggesting that this will be the achiles heel of the Pre. The screen looks a reasonable size. Reasonable, not huge. But then my hands are quite small anyway. I'm not sure you would really manage to watch a film on it. But then is it really good for your eyesight to watch a film on the iphone? Just because you can do something, doesn't mean it's always a good idea ...

When it comes to useful applications the iphone has an impressive head start. The app store has an extensive community of commercial and individual programmers. However, it has been suggested that the Pre may be

LOLcatz has an answer for everything ...

Oh shiny. Deep red metalic sexy computer that fits in my pocket.

Um really? Do I want a laptop that fits in my pocket? I may need a new handbag to put it in.

On the internet the new sony P series looks amazing but that may be the photoshoped shiny images.

In real life I wasn't so sure. Either side of the screen are tacky half inch bars of plastic. I can work out why they are there - the keyboard was made large enough to be good for typing (which I like) but the screen size had already been set. The widescreen 1600x768 screen is good but its just rather a shame that its surroundings are a tad tacky. There must be a better use for that space. When I get mine I need to find some good stickers ...

So screen I don't like. Keyboard I do like. Size I definately like (have an appropriate bag lined up to buy as well). Joystick nipple navigation I definately don't like. But for the sake of size I can put up with the lack of a touch pad as long as there is an appropriately cute, small bluetooth mouse. At only 638kg I can put up with a lot of things.

With wifi, 3g mobile, bluetooth and gps I will be permanently connected to everything in the world (maybe my iphone is redundant ...) But beware privacy wary celebrities who fancy buying this - theoretically your laptop could be tracked. Hmm - for me that may be useful. I want to be able to track all of my belongings with GPS as I keep loosing them. (Anyone seen my ipod??)

And the

Maybe I spoke to soon about how easy printing was with ubuntu. Bloody wireless printing has stoped working and I can't work out why. But then I cant get it to work in windows either. Maybe it is a problem with the network, or the printer. Gonna try the classic switch it off and back on again. Bloody printers ...

Someone has made a keyboard just for us!!!

It's big, it's pink, and the keys are titled just for blondes.

It seems that there are rather a lot of "useless" keys on the keyboard. I particularly like that the right control key is called a "totally useless key". There's LOL, OMG, smilies and all the other things a blonde needs to type regularly. Other cool keys are the escape which says "NO!" and caps lock which says "warning size xxl letters".

It may be uggly, it may be tacky, but put it on my christmas list (it will go perfectly with my jewel encrusted mouse).

http://www.keyboardforblondes.com/

Today I discovered wine.

Not the half bottle of rose in my fridge, but Wine with a capital "W".

Wine stands for "windows is not an emulator". Bad joke isn't it? The wine developers have succumed to cheap alcohol related humour with their logo and entire website covered in alcohol related graphics. They are rather particular about how you write the name of the program aswell. Apparently it's Wine not WINE. It seems that recursive anacronyms are so last season.

Installing wine was easy - I just selected it in synaptic and clicked apply. Working out what to do with it once it was installed was more complicated.

(Again reading the documentation may have helped but life is too short)

I copied the program I wanted to use off my windows partition and into the "D directory" created by Wine. Supprisingly when I double clicked on it - it worked!

Woot - I now have World of War Craft running in linux using Wine. It actually works better than when I'm using windows - but that may have more to do with windows needing reinstalled ...

www.winehq.org

http://wiki.winehq.org/

Today's challenge was to get my new printer working in linux.

Previously this has been a tedious task, however today I was pleasantly surprised.

Printing in linux is all about CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System. In the past getting a printer working involved various tedious command line complexities. However, today I used the a CUPS configuration tool, system-config-printer. It was very logical to find in the ubuntu menu.

system -> administration -> printing

Then all I had to do was click on the new printer icon (oh and remember to switch on the printer!) and it discovered my siny new HP. I had thought that because it was a network printer there would be more hastle and configuration but not so. The five tabs allow you to adjust the details of the printer but the defaults seem just fine.

Read more:

http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/overview.html

Blondes like shiny things. I know it. You know it. Everyone who has ever bought a blonde a present knows it. However, in the true spirit of the scientists that we are, now we have scientific proof of this glaringly obvious fact.

American scientists investigating brain activity with functional MRI scanners found that visual areas in the brain respond more to valuable objects than to junk. They suggest that objects which have been associated with material value int he past may have more visual representation when seen again.

Well - duh - shiny!

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/uoc--eot121808.php

The term “Bond Girl” is synonymous in modern culture with women who are glamorous, gorgeous and, most of all, sexy. Everyone wants to be a Bond Girl and if you are fortunate enough to star in a Bond film, it becomes an infinite component of who you are.

It is difficult to live up to the image of the first film Bond Girl, Ursula Andres. When she stepped out of the glittering turqoise water onto the white sand of the Jamacan beach she set the bench mark for all future Bond Girls. Her white bikini has become an iconic style article and last season, the Dr No bikini was once more desirable beach ware. Amusingly in the novel there is no bikini. The elegant beauty who emerges from the water wears nothing more than a leather belt for her knife.

The first Bond Girl whom Ian Flemming penned was a much colder creature. Vesper Lynd, who lent her name to Bond's cocktail, was a challenging enigma for Bond. Both harsh and elusive, and warm and passionate, she is the first woman for whom Bond expresses desires. He even contemplates marrying her at one point in the book. Bond, married in the first novel? It obviously was not going to be a success. In the 2006 Casion Royal Vesper Lynd is played by the French actress, Eva Green. She brings a sultry, Gothic chill to the role making her betrayal and treachery all the more real.

To create the perfect Bond Girl the recipe is relatively simple, even if the compilation remains elusive. Take one drop dead

This month Superdrug launched “Taxi man”, the first high street cosmetics range for men. The creator, Peter Kelly said that “It’s about subtle make up rather than wanting to create the drag queen look.” However, are modern men masculine enough to wear mascara?

The male grooming market is expanding dramatically. Last year £700 million was spent on male grooming products in the UK and the industry is growing by over 5% per year. The credit crunch may even fuel this expansion as people look for cheaper luxuries to replace extravagant holidays and cars.

In the past male grooming products composed of shaving creams, hair products and moisturiser. However, Superdrug’s new range brings make-up to the male masses. The “guy-liner” and “manscara” are designed for application by larger fingers. Peter Kelly said they had created “essentials any guy would borrow from his other half.”

Male cosmetics are already a component of high-fashion beauty counters.  Jean Paul Gautier released a male cosmetics collection in 2003 and Yves Saint Laurent have Touche Eclat for men.  Harrods and Selfridges stock beauty products for men and most spas offer male orientated sessions. The men of the twenty-first century know how to be pampered.

Male grooming is not a new concept. The Romans used rouge and chalk, the Elizabethans had egg and honey masks and scented oils were used as far back as 10000BC. More recently male make-up was largely the dominion of

It has finally happened. Nowhere is safe. Not only have we filled the our solar system with parts of disused space ships, littered the moon with flags and buggies and congested the expanse of space with radio waves, now we have sent a computer viruse into space.

The W32.Gamimma.AG worm has escaped the confines of planet earth. Inside a laptop it was carried by astraunauts into the international space station in July. How it got onto the laptops remains uncertain but it is likely to have been transmitted through a USB stick. Interestingly the laptops did not have antivirus software on them. Was that because NASA did not think that the antivirus software worked or because they did not think computer viruses were a threat?

The virus itself steals passwords for internet games which are popular in the Far East. It is a windows based virus (as so many are) which spreads by copying inteslf onto removable media. NASA have stated that no comand or control systems were at risk from the virus and indeed all data from the space station is scanned before transmission.

Despite Gamimma's categorisation as a "low level threat" this incident does lead to concern that computer viruses are becoming ever more prevalent, more intrusive and potentially more destructive. 

Last night a small office on the west end of Princes Street was the venue for this months Scottish JUGS meeting. That's Java User Group if you've not heard of a JUG before. I hadn't. Apparently throughout Europe, and the world, there are hundereds of Java User groups with membership ranging from 15 in the case of Edinburgh to 30000 in Brazil. That's an impressive number of Java programmers.

The topic last night was Maven, with an introductory talk given by Andrew Williams. We covered the basics of what Maven is, what it can do for small groups and large companies and some basic demonstrations. It was really quite interesting and I think that Maven certainly would appeal to my OCD tendencies. There was some discussion about how difficult it is to start out with Maven as the although the documentation for the plugins is good it is difficult to know which plugs you need. While the optimum help documentation/system is still in the construction/argument stage we decided it would be best just to email Andy ...

The sponsers were Cirus, a webdesign company, which has some beautiful offices. The sponsors also provided much appreciated beer and nibbles!  There were the usual tshirts, pens and software to give away, but I didn't get anything this time :(

Roll on the next Scottish JUGS meeting. The next meeting will be in August/September - a social in the pub. After that another talk/workshop/brainstorm - who knows. There's a free book and licence for some software for anyone

Last year World of Warcraft, or WOW, was the pastime of pale faced computer geeks who never left their basement flats. This year WOW has hit the big time. Prime time television adverts featuring the actors of "Mr T" and "Mini-me" have helped increase player numbers to almost 11 million world wide. But what has made it so popular? And why is it so derided by others?

WOW is a world wide phenomenon. When it was launched three years ago by Blizzard Entertainment they could never have expected it to grow so rapidly. Interestingly my first knee jerk reaction was to assume this was the creation of a Japanese, manga inspired computer game manufacturer but no, this company is based in California. Their customer base is now global and it is particularly popular in North America, Asia and Europe.

As a model of online gaming WOW is an incredible economic success. The company's profits are well over £50 million and with player numbers rising, this can only increase further. The initial outlay to start playing wow is about £10 and then there is the £15 a month subscription to allow you to play online. However, ingenious WOW players have tried to recoup some of these costs by selling intra-game possessions, attributes and characters on sites such as eBay.

But what has made it so popular? Is it the characters? the game play? the community? WOW is am enormous step up from the dungeons and dragons games and online text only roll playing games my friends

Harrison Ford is back!

Indiana Jones cracks his whip once more to save the day in an extraordinary adventure. I am an Indi fan of old and love the film because it was so true to the characteristics of the origional films. The action scenes were very impressive. However, the vilian was a tad predictable and shallow.

If you liked lego star wars you will love lego Indiana Jones. I've got it for the wii rather than the play station this time. It is complete with the classic music and well known plots. However, going through the stories while smashing up lego bricks is even better!

http://indianajones.lego.com/en-us/games/default.aspx

For the guy who has everything from the woman with money to burn. The ipod is the gift I would most like to see in my stocking this Christmas.

The ipod is apple’s first foray into the mobile phone business. But at over £600 they have priced themselves out of most of the mobile phone market. Some argue that it is value for money because to buy a mobile phone, ipod and electronic organiser would cost a lot more. In addition the ipod is much smaller than all of these combined and would allow me to purchase an even smaller handbag. But do you really want your phone and music player and diary with you all the time? I quite like not having to worry about dropping my cheep phone into my beer on a night out or loosing it half way up a mountain. Furthermore, rumours suggest that the iphone is not protected from the effects of beer.

In all honesty, the iphone is not the wonder phone it was advertised to be. As a reference tool it is limitless with the internet at your finger tips. However, some of the larger more complicated sites cannot be viewed on the iphone. Even stalwarts such as the BBC website have managed to crash iphones I have tried out. Even more importantly, when you are somewhere that does not have a wireless network or mobile reception, the iphone becomes no more than a shiny, and rather expensive brick. I need more than just the ability to read articles and websites. I need to be able to write aswell. I need a pda

The Nintendo Wii is big news this Christmas. It is the most searched for term on ebay hitting over 30000 where as the play station and xbox only reach under half this.

However, the Wii is not new news. Like many of my geek friends the Wii has been sitting under my TV for nearly 6 months now. It was actually launched in the UK on the 8^th of December 2006. So why has it taken over a year for sales to take off?

Decreasing supply to increase demand

Since it was launched the Wii has always been difficult to acquire. Nintendo say they are producing consoles at maximum capacity. So either it is a cunning, and effective marketing ploy or they must have seriously underestimated the demand for the wii.

So why is the Wii so popular

The Wii provides affordable entertainment for the whole family Or at least it used to be. The Wii was initially marketed in a price bracket below the new playstation and xbox. However prices are gradually creeping upwards. The wii is now shipping for £257 on amazon, if you can get hold of it which is now more than other similar consoles.

Innovative, new, unique

Games consoles had stagnated in recent years. Portable devices were getting smaller, games were getting more violent and consoles were acquiring DVD capabilities. But no one had really made anything truly innovative. Enter the wii-mote. It is a totally unique way of controlling a game. Instead of pressing buttons for up or down you move the controller up or down. So you can

The festive season is upon us and in the next few blog articles we feature the must have tech gifts for this Christmas.  So look out for comments on the wii, ipod and other weird and wonderful gifts.

Ok - so I can't spell the name of the company, and I still don't understand what it is they actually do - but their website is certainly pretty.

So what, I hear you ask, is my connection with this company? It certainly isn't for the coding stuff, although the training might be a good start for me ;) No, I know about it because HandyAnde, the main driving force behind my understanding of computers, is part of their merry team. 

www.sonatype.com

ps I promise to write more about sonatype and maven when I actually understand what they are ... something to do with building ... hmmm ... where's my cement?

Joss Whedon has been the god of the SciFi community since he developed the immortal Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The seven exciting series's shot him, and Sarah Michelle Geller, to fame amongst both geeks and mortals. Even so, it comes as quite a surprise that Serenity has been voted the top SciFi film of all time by the readers of SFX (http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=lord_of_the_fireflies). 

Firefly, the predecessor to Serenity, was first aired by Fox in 2002. It features a crew of cowboy slash spaceman in a post civil war space system where they battle as heros and theives against villians such as the "alliance" and the dreaded "reavers". I have to admit the first time I watched it I found all that quite difficult to understand as well. So it was not really a surprise that Fox axed the series in 2004 before it had even reached Brittish cable, let alone terrestrial, television. 

Serenity picks up the story where the series left off and catapults it towards an incredible climax. The plot is much faster, the action is more dangerous and the effects are more believable and so it has sparked considerable interest in the initial series. And the important question - what will come next? Short sited Fox has missed that band wagon but I would not be suprised if we don't see another series or film based in this bizarre world .

So why has there been so much hype behind Serenity? It has a lot to do with a considerable net presence of the fans of both firefly

I got fourth prize in the open office template competition!!!! For the "most origional and aesthetic entry"

Who would have guessed it? The new chip and pin system for credit and debit cards can be hacked ... Honestly, this is hardly the headline news that the papers are making out today. Surely it was obvious from the start that any technological advance would eventunally be exploited in the leucrative underground market of identity fraud. 

This is a topic that has arisen on several occasional recently as I attempt to make cocktail party chatter at weddings, work socials and other awkward occasions. It is not, supprisingly, one that I bring up myself but accidental destruction of computers and their peripherals seems to be a popular topic of idle conversations. 

Yeh! Someone appart from me actually reads this site :)

Well i could have guessed that really from the 9654 hits linuxforblondes.com has had since I set it up a year ago. Oh - thinking of that - we should have a birthday party soon ... I should really put up a hit counter as not many people seem to brag that they read "linuxforblondes". Shame.

So check it out - our first review/recomendation . It is on the Fort Wayne (USA) Linux Users Group mailin list ...

"Here is the site that you can send all your friends that continually bug
you about - what is linux, how do I use it? and the like. ... Despite the
name it is not condescending, is user friendly and starts with the
**VERY** basics (like what is an OS) and more." 
www.mail-archive.com/fwlug@fortwaynelug.org/msg00070.html

... exactly what I set the site up to be - so smilies all round.

Santa Clause is an enigmatic symbol of the comercial Christmas season with his white beard, red jacket and jolly ho ho ho. December is a busy time of year for santa with visits to local suppermarkets, pantomimes, charity events and even his own marathons to run (in only speedos and a santa hat in one crazy american state). However, have you ever thought about the maths and physics behind Santa and Rudolph's epic journey on Christmas eve?

Lets start with the basics. There are 2 billion children under the age of 18 in the world. Thankfully only 15% of these are Christian so if they were all good little children santa would have to visit 380 million children on Christmas eve. World wide there are 3.5 children per household so santa has to visit 108 million houses on christmas eve. These homes are spread throughout the world in many different time zones so if santa travelled from east to west he could spread out Christmas to last a cool 31 hours. Nevertheless, that still means that he only has 1000 seconds per home visit to dive down the chimney, fill the stockings, devour the mincepies and sherry and clamber back up to Rudolph and his slay on the roof.

Next there is the journey to consider. If the 108 million houses are scattered equally around the earth then that means that there is about 1.25 killometers between each house. So santa's epic Christmas Eve journey covers 120 million killometers. To cover this distance Santa will have to travel at a whopping

I think cocktails are on my brain at the moment. It must be the christmas time of year with all these office parties and mulled wine get togethers. But there is no way that anyone will be able to sell the idea of vodka jellies to me as the height of sophistication. 

"The art of Vodka Jelly: Bespoke Cocktails for a New Generation" by Tom Tuke-Hastings attempts to persuade the latest generation of socialites that vodka jellies are more than just the sugar filled, slimy, impossible to eat concoctions which students know so well. I have to admit they look beautiful (unlike his website which I will not post a link to here for fear of imortal embarassment). Count me in for trying the passion fruit vodka jelly as the combination of impossibly sweet and critically bitter will be delicious. Not so sure about rubarb and custard or caviar and vodka jellies. I think some of these could be rather an aquired taste but they could be a laugh at an informal gathering where you are board of doing all the normal punch things.

My main issue is - how the hell do you get these beautiful looking jellies out of the shot glasses without smashing them. Believe me I have tried everything ... 

Buy the book

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black"  Henry Ford at the beginning of the 20th cetury

Pink! It's got to be pink pink pink!

For years computers were pale cream and dirty off white boxes which you hid in a cupboard in the corner. It alwasy seemed so depressing when you spent so much time themeing your desktop to look good that the outside was as stylish as your white-good fridge. When I made my desktop I was keep to find a case and monitor which would look good in the corner of my room. I think I succeeded although others are not so sure - my case is black with blue led strip lights and cut out windows in the side so you can see the insides in a mixture of blue, red and green light. 

At last I can get a laptop to match!

I have always liked sony vaios. My brother had one when he went to University and I was always jealous of how stylish it looked in slick metalic pale purple. I have been using an F series Sony Vaio intermittently resently and it's good as long as I don't have to use windows. The keyboard is slick with a nice rebound action and the screen is big and clear. In general it is a bit big for me at 19 inches as something that large I don't really find portable when I have my pda and folding keyboard which fit in my hand bag. However, I'm tempted back into the laptop market by the new sony viao C series and its multicoloured cases! Pink, green,

Slash dot was running an article yesterday about the top twenty movie hackers and the top ten movie servers. The obvious crew were in the short list with Jack Stanfield, Gus Gordon, and Neo featuring alongside real giants such as WOPR, The Source and Hal9000. But I ask you - who wants to see computing doen well in the movies? Surely what we really want is computing done badly so we can watch, and laugh, and nudge our friends so they drop their popcorn while we say "That would never happen in real life." The much more amusing article is entitled "things that code doesn't do in real life" and it's filled with just these sentiments. From streaming code, blipping text and childhood geniouses it rips to the core of bad plots and crazy directors.  

• Top ten movie hackers - http://www.drivl.com/hackers.html
• Top ten movie servers - http://www.vibrant.com/blog/servers-in-the-movies-our-top-ten/
• Things code doesn't do in real life - http://www.drivl.com/code.html

My list of the top five hackers would be a bit different ...

1. Neo (he just is ok)
2. Stanley Jobson (Swordfish)
3. Crash Override (Hackers - terrible film but he was good)
4. Boris Grishenco (Goldeneye)
5. Jack Stanfield (Firewall)

I am an origional blonde so cocktails are obviously my drink of choice but this week in Vienna your martini will be more than just shaken or stirred. It is the Robotexotica festival where some lucky robots (and their creators) will walk away with the 8th annual cocktail robot awards. http://roboexotica.org/en/acra.htm

Some of my friends throw the most amazing parties. Yes their company is good. And their flat is large and filled with lots of consols to play and computers to admire. But the reason I really go? It's their cocktail making machine. One bored student studying for their masters degree decided that an excelent combined computing and engineering project would be creating a machine which could automatically measure out and mix your cocktail. I wish I had been there for the trial mixing sessions! It does make sense though. Busy bar staff with inadequate training can concoct the most depressing cocktails. With the cocktail machine they are mixed perfectly every time and with a few wooshes and gurgles your drink appears as if by magic. It is an eminently portable machine consisting of a waiste high cabinet with a touch screen on top for selecting your beveredge, bottles of alcohol underneath, and a lot of crazy tubing and pumps. They have even installed a bar code scanner and provide everyone with RFID cards (for a nominal fee).

I had thought that my friend's cocktail making machine was a unique idea but that was before I was directed to