Piece of Mind

No more wiping hands on trousers...

Is it just me, or do you find advances in toilet-related technologies weirdly appealing too?

Check this baby out. The Dyson Airblade forces unheated air through a 0.3mm gap at over 400 miles per hour, to create a high velocity blade of air that wipes hands dry in just 10 seconds.

Must find one - I'd love to try a 'one wet hand, one hand holding whistle' experiment!

Ambient Information

This is very cool technology.

"For some it's the status of their portfolio, or the health of an aging parent. Others want to know if their friends are online, the upcoming weather, the score of a game, if the fish are biting, or if there's heavy traffic on their drive home. These are examples of information that is neither worthy of interrupt (push), nor worthy of investing time (pull). This type of information should be glanceable, like a clock or barometer. We call this ambient information, and we've created the technology to deliver it".

Thanks to Russell Davies for his recent post that got this on my radar.

You can run...

...but you can't, er, evade the sticky GPS?

LAPD to throw GPS at fleeing cars.

The LAPD will outfit cars with a device that propels and sticks a GPS onto a fleeing car.

The department will mount the StarChase LLC device in the grill of some squad cars. "Officers in the car would control a green lazar light, similar to an aiming device that fixes on your target," said LAPD Lieutenant Paul Vernon on Friday. "A small dart-like device is propelled from the officer's car."

The officer also will have a remote unit, about the size of a device that unlocks a car, when they're outside the patrol car.

Each StarChase unit can fire two GPS tracking devices in case the first one misses or does not stick to the vehicle. The GPS device consists of a battery and a radio transmitter embedded in an epoxy compound.

The GPS tag activates at impact. It transmits the car's exact position via a wireless modem. An encrypted cellular backbone delivers continuous position updates to the StarChase server that pushes location-based information to authorized users through a password-protected Web portal.

So no driving away before the Traffic Warden finishes printing out his parking ticket anymore!

Ahh, how I miss my old IT consulting days

Barter inspiration...

I seem to be developing a wee bit of a reputation amongst family and friends for 'knowing a bit about computers'.

I'm figuring out how to best take advantage of this emergent knowledge. 

My shower doesn't need  grouting, but keeping my car nice and shiny during this yucky Scottish winter is another matter entirely... ;-)

More Dilbert here.

Google's new chinese logo?

This software rocks!

I've started using this amazing web-based project management application to help me hit the ground running in my new role at GRP.  If you're responsible for managing ANY kind of project, check it out.

I guarantee you'll you'll be more than impressed.

I'll keep you posted on how I'm using it...

Porn

Funny, and probably true...

The internet is for porn.

Just finished reading my first podcast novel

This is it - Earthcore, by Scott Sigler.

I walk my two dogs - Holly and Rebus - every morning, and as I live near Glasgow that usually means walking in the rain.

So I do whatever I can to take my mind off the weather (the walking boot and gaiters help), and over the last couple of weeks I've been listening to Earthcore.

It's a great read listen. Here's the summary:

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lays the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.

EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.

But Kirkland and EarthCore are not the first to find this treasure. The mountain's history reveals two centuries of disappearances, murder, and insanity.

The discovery of ancient platinum knives, razor-sharp despite lying untouched for 1,000 years, reveals evidence of an ancient culture. If the artifacts are genuine, they show a pre-historic empire that once spanned from the Southern tip of South America all the way up through the American Southwest.

Wealth and fame lie under that Utah mountain, but at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ... and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

You can register and download it for free from here.

ps. Not sure what podcasting is?