Month: May 2007

Camp essentials – Aeropress

One of the things I miss at a camp is proper coffee – freeze dried stuff just does not measure up anymore.

Sp last week I bought a Aeropress from Whittards in Guildford

200705281351

And it’s actually quite remarkable – as it is 100% manually operated it’s perfect for a camp, and the coffee it makes it actually very good.

The downside is of course that it’s no speed-daemon, it takes a lot of fiddling around with small devices to make a cup, but I made a lot of them over the weekend, and everyone seemed to be quite happy with the result, so this is now a part of our standard camp equipment!

As a aside – it uses microfilters, and the documentation says that they have supplied a years worth of them, but I have not counted.

Technorati Tags: ,

The most ambitious blog I’ve ever seen

Pop over to this blog and you will see a guy that is documenting his life using a camera and a gps unit continously. You can even see a map with a arrow pointing to where he is at any given time, and a trail of photos taken by him over the last 3 years.

He says that this is one way of keeping him out of Gitmo, as his life is a open book, so the spooks do not need to spy on him, he’s giving them everything they need on his website.

Weird and wonderful!

Technorati Tags: ,

OpenID

I just signed up for a OpenID account at myopenid.

A OpendID definition from the ever useful wikipedia :

OpenID is a decentralized single sign-on system. Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID “identity provider”, sometimes called an i-broker. Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can employ OpenID software as a way for users to sign in; OpenID solves the problem without relying on any centralized website to confirm digital identity.

OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption amongst large sites, with organizations like AOL acting as a provider. In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a mandatory priority in Firefox 3[1] and Microsoft is working on implementing OpenID 2.0 in Windows Vista.[2]

My interest is of course in seeing how this can be implemented on a fairly large scale to reduce the complexity in registering for a large range of sites for the user.

Technorati Tags: ,

Way to go Waterloo (os is it Kitchener/Waterloo)

My inlaws live in Kitchener/Waterloo (Ontairo, Canada) – and I just spotted this on one of my RSS feeds :

Waterloo wins Intelligent Community of the Year:

“In Waterloo, 75% of adults use the Internet, while 76% of businesses and 47% of households are on broadband. … It introduced the award-winning Waterloo Information Network in 1998, and offers a wide range of online services to better connect government and its stakeholders. They are active in CAP, the national program that places Internet access terminals in public locations.”

Technorati Tags:

AppleTV booting from a USB drive

This guy has apparently managed the fantastic deed of booting a brand new AppleTV directly from a external USB drive without opening the box! Wow!

0xfeedbeef.com/appletv – USB Booting:

This document will describe how to boot from USB on a “virgin” AppleTV. It assumes that you, for the most part, know what you’re doing.

If you find this information useful, please help develop future enhancements by donating here, or at least clicking on one of the ads.

Technorati Tags:

The tale of a Honda Civic and it’s iPod connection

As we just bought my son a Honda Civic (2001) one of the first questions is of course “How do I connect my iPod to the stereo”.

The car comes with a radio & cassette-player, plus a one-slot CD-player.

So we bought a Harman Kardon Drive + Play 1 off a Amazon.co.uk associate company for less than GBP 50, and will blog the trials and tribulations of installing this.

200705201639

we also found a excellent site with a description on how to take the Civic’s console apart, and off we went.

More later :

Technorati Tags: ,

Interesting HiFi device for the digital age#10 Slim Devices Transporter Digital Music Player Review#10 —#10

Slim Devices have been making opensource MP3 software and non-transportable players for connecting to a standard stereo for several years now, and I have earlier blogged their announcement of a high-end player, called Transporter.

But this is the first review I have seen:

Slim Devices Transporter Digital Music Player Review — Audioholics Home Theater Reviews and News :

Slim Devices Transporter Digital Music Player Review

#9by Clint DeBoer

The reviewer seems to have done a reasonably detailed job, and his conclusions are really that the device is very, very good.

So now – can I afford one??

Technorati Tags:

HDMI – seen from a audio enthusiasts point of view

I’ve always wondered about the HDMI standard – and at long last I found a fairly sensible article about it. Well worth reading

What’s the Matter with HDMI? — Audioholics Home Theater Reviews and News :

How the designers of the HDMI standard screwed up, and what’s to be done

about it.

Basically it says that some standards (like HDMI) were not created to make life easier for the users.

Technorati Tags: , ,