Drive South

Gliffy

2006-06-28T14:59:00.000+01:00

Online diagram tool - great for doing a quick diag. Who needs fat, bloated software that costs a fortune? (so long as you only need to do something simple!)

Gliffy

Mapchester - OpenStreetMap

2006-05-12T11:13:00.000+01:00

Mapchester - OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is mapping Manchester13/14th May, 2006.
Providing a free alternative to the Ordnance Survey made by citizens!

flashbag

2006-04-12T17:31:00.000+01:00

plusminus design: flashbag

Freaky optical illusion

2006-04-12T16:20:00.000+01:00

link to orginal source.

US Death and Taxes

2006-03-17T11:44:00.000Z

Wow $399Billion on the US Military vs. $383Billion on everything else. I hope the UK budget isn't as fucked up.

deviantART: Death and Taxes: ... by ~mibi

Vanity post

2006-03-09T12:27:00.000Z

Innocent googling turns up unexpected crap - like this.

Movecast: Movecast 1 - Rain

Someone used one of my Flickr photos in a truly appalling music podcast video thing. Whilst I am flattered that so meone wants to use one of my images - the music is bilge. My heart almost stopped whilst listening to it. What's even worse is that someone would want to spend so much effort making a video for this shite.....

Porcupine - what a Google OS could look like!

2006-03-07T22:17:00.000Z

Check out this online demo of an operating system. It even has a Microsoft-like 'Start' button. Imagine if Google took something like this and developed a full blown OS? Couple it with GDrive for storage + GMail + etc.

Who needs their own PC hardware? - just a VERY large Google server farm....

read more | digg story

Spatial-Literacy.org UK Surname Mapper

2006-01-20T18:09:00.000Z

This site allows you to search on a surname to view a coloured map of the surname's population density in the UK census' of 1881 and 1998. Fascinating to see where your roots are and how little surnames really travel One of my grandparents surname is still located in a single English county after 110 years!

Spatial-Literacy.org

'Wristwatch' biosensor to track alcohol use

2006-01-20T18:02:00.000Z

Just what I need on my watch - a transdermal alcohol biosensor. Incorporate it with a heartrate monitor and GPS and then I'll know how far to run to the nearest pub, how much fitter I am and how much beer I can drink .....

read more | digg story

Wonky eyes

2006-01-10T10:37:00.000Z

Wonky eyes that makes your eyes go wonky.......

Cool fish Picture

2005-11-01T19:15:00.000Z

I think this should win the prize for best BBC photo of the year.

Update: It did!

419er Anthem: I Go Chop Your Dollar

2005-11-01T17:25:00.000Z

They have to have an anthem of course.....

I Go Chop Your Dollar : Nkem Owoh (aka Osuofia, aka Ukwa)

Lyrics:
I done suffer no be small
Upon say I get sense
Poverty no good at all, no
Na im make I join this business

419 no be thief, it's just a game
Everybody dey play em
if anybody fall mugu,
ha! my brother I go chop em

Chorus:
National Airport na me get em
National Stadium na me build em
President na my sister brother
You be the mugu, I be the master

Oyinbo man I go chop your dollar,
I go take your money and disappear
419 is just a game, you are the loser I am the winner

The refinery na me get em,
The contract, na you I go give em
But you go pay me small money make I bring em
you be the mugu, I be the master…
na me be the master ooo!!!!

When Oyinbo play wayo,
dey go say na new style
When country man do him own,
them go dey shout: bring em, kill em, die!

That Oyinbo people greedy, I say them greedy
I don't see them tire
That's why when they fall into my trap o!
I dey show them fire"

I simply can't believe it! Happy Birthday is copyrighted!

2005-10-19T10:21:00.000+01:00

The 'Happy Birthday' song is copyrighted and earns Time Warner $2 million a year in royalties......... Here's a campaign to rightfully enforce strict payment of the royalties to Time Warner. ifonly I'd known all these years - in fact, as a law abiding citizen, I'll think I'll go back and pay for all the times I've sang it publicly.

unhappybirthday.com

Cool illusion

2005-10-17T15:22:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Mark Levinson for this.

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.
If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time,
all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky!

It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see.

Bumhead

2005-10-14T10:46:00.000+01:00

Just testing if animated GIFs work. 16 frames of creative genius. Wallace and Grommit eat your heart out!

Jarhead

2005-10-13T17:35:00.000+01:00

This is so good I have to make one - just have to find a "flattened rendering of a face that would be applied to a 3d model". And some hair.

Jarhead

ADSL2+ Speed vs Distance

2005-10-13T15:57:00.000+01:00

Apparently the speed of ADSL2+ drop dramatically after a couple of km. I don't think the new ISP I've signed up for (Be Unlimited) will give me the 24Mbps download speed in the marketing blurb. Won't find out until December...

Illusionist art

2005-10-12T17:14:00.000+01:00

Some excellent eye-popping art of nested faces within faces and illusions. The Escher one's of water flowing uphill everyone knows, but the other ones of faces I don't - any ideas?

Link Escher et al...

What's the point of it all ???????

2005-10-12T15:42:00.000+01:00

What's the point of a blog? As an act of publishing, unless you write original, creative content there is little point in bothering to make one. There is even less point reading everyone elses tedious content - which mostly seems to just reference each other in a pointlessly sycophantic loop going up its own arse.

Because I do not have time to be a journalist along with my day job, real-life, I shall just use this as a dumping ground for things I find along the way. A bit like an anti-social bookmark holder along the lines of del.icio.us. Or call it a lifeblog - i.e. only of interest to me, as an aide-memoir for stuff?

Call me a curmudgeon or a luddite . Am I in the process of an act of neo-luddism or am I just an old-fart?

BreadKrumbs

2005-10-11T18:53:00.000+01:00

Graffiti no Vila Mariana
Originally uploaded by Ovelha Elétrica.

Cool way to leave a trail of virtual breadkrumbs through Flickr leading you from one photo to another. Just messing around on this one. Click on the photo and the BreadKrumb is left in the comments section underneath. Looks like early code but will surely grow into to something more than just Flickr - being able to leave BreadKrumbs in any 'comment' box on any site??

Here's the link to the BreadKrumb people or cat or whatever

Pointless Self-Referencing Bitty Browser

2005-09-22T15:40:00.000+01:00

Hey - just trying this out - a self-referential Bitty Browser - just to see if it works!

&lt;table&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&lt;b&gt;SouthDrive&lt;/b&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a&gt;Open "SouthDrive" in a new window&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a&gt;About Bitty Browser&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a&gt;About Turnstyle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;

Blenheim 10K

2005-09-20T10:02:00.000+01:00

Blenheim 10K Bolt

Arghh - only 1.5k to go!

Santa's Tombstone

2005-09-16T15:51:00.000+01:00

Santa's Tombstone
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

Fibonacci strikes again

2005-08-26T17:19:00.000+01:00

fibonacci strikes again
Originally uploaded by hurleygurley.

Cool photo of mother nature the mathematician!

Rome 2005

2005-08-19T17:40:00.000+01:00

This is a mosaic of my Flickr photoset of Rome when I visited this March (2005) just before Pope John Paul died . The mosaic is created by using the tool at flagrantdisregard.com. Still got a crick on my neck from taking shots of the beautiful ceilings which seem to feature heavily!

1. St Peters Square from the cupola, 2. St Peter's, 3. Pope blessing the crowd at St.Peters, Easter Sunday, March 27th 2005, 4. St Peters - Jesus and Twelve Apostles, 5. Santa Maria in Trastevere, 6. Inside Santa Maria in Trastevere, 7. Mosaic - St Peter's cupola, 8. Fountain in St Peters Square, 9. Altar - St Peter's, 10. Roof - St Peter's, 11. Roof - St Peters, 12. Roof of St. Peter's cupola, 13. Stairs Vatican Museum, 14. Pantheon, 15. Michelangelo's Pieta, 16. Swiss Guard St Peter's, 17. St Peters from the Vatican Museum Pinacoteca, 18. Stained Glass - Vatican Museum, 19. Vatican Museums, 20. Raphael's self potrait in "The School of Athens", 21. Raphael's Disputa del Sacramento, 22. Galleria delle Carte Geografiche, 23. Colosseum, 24. Near Teatro di Marcello, 25. Fontana del Moro, 26. Bernini's Fontana di Quattro Fiumi, 27. Near the Pantheon, 28. Colosseum, 29. Roman Doors, 30. Tempio di Antonio e Faustino, 31. Statue on Il Vittoriano, 32. Roman Forum - Arco di Settima Severo, 33. Roman Forum, 34. Curia - meeting place of the Roman Senate, 35. Capitoline Wolf, Romulus and Remus, 36. Capitoline Hill - Cordonata di Michelangelo, 37. Chiesa Di Santa Maria in Aracoeli, 38. Chiesa Di Santa Maria in Aracoeli, 39. Colosseum, 40. Trajan's Markets, 41. Vittoriano, 42. Vittoriano

2005-08-19T17:16:00.000+01:00

Picos de Europa

This is me in the Picos mountains last week in northern Spain. They're fantastic and bloody huge though I didn't even know they existed until a couple of months ago. Conveniently, after getting a cable car and hiking for 2 hours, the Spanish provided a bar (in the middle of nowhere) which sold excellent cold beer and tapas.