www.gisvold.co.uk

Youth activating concentrate

tor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:39:37 +0000

Just heard in a TV ad - " Youth activating concentrate" for some cosmetic cream!

The mind boggles at the lies..and that someone actually are buying this stuff.

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Energizer battery charger contains backdoor? REALLY?

tor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:17:21 +0000

If this is true then this is yet another good reason to use Macs/

WHAT? Un-freaking-believable! Energizer battery charger contains backdoor
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LEDs Arduino and Ikea

tor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:13:46 +0000

I want one of these tables from the following article:

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The future of social network intercommunication

tor — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:46:35 +0000

From a blog posting at status.net on distributed networks of the "social web" - very interesting as it looks like someone has taken a pragmatic view and actually reused some of the existing simple protocols :

Luckily for us, there have been a number of advances in the distributed social Web in the last two years. In Fall of 2009, we started re-designing OMB. We abandoned any attempt at backwards compatibility, so we were really able to come up with a system built of shiny new components that make more sense.
These components are:
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a walk along the Wey

tor — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:25:16 +0000

We went for a short walk along the river Wey today

(Click for larger)

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Wireless displays for Arduino/Jeenode

tor — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:12:01 +0000

As part of my home monitoring system I needed a display that I can use at different places in the house, preferably without a full computer attached.

And ideally I should not need Ethernet cables run around the whole house, so I decided to use a Jeenode to supply the intelligence, with a LCD display attached using one of the Jeenode LCD-adapters.

So I knocked up some code on one of my Jeenodes to do the display part, and some code (in Ruby) on one of the Mac's - and this is the end result :

(Click for larger)
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Postbox new beta

tor — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:44:35 +0000

My default email program was just upgraded :

About the Postbox 1.1.2 BETA
Submitted Mar 05 by Sherman Dickman
A new BETA version of Postbox is available for testing which contains a number of improvements and bug fixes for Windows and Mac. Additionally, Postbox now works with Things and OmniFocus to make you even more productive!

To get started, please download and install the Postbox 1.1.2 BETA, and for Mac users, the most recent version of Things (1.2.11) or OmniFocus (1.7.5).

[From Postbox Support : About the Postbox 1.1.2 BETA ]

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Shapelock

tor — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:21:30 +0000

From my favourite magazine - Make :
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on my way to work

tor — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:37:18 +0000

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my walk to work today

tor — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:54:54 +0000

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The LCD Jeeplug

tor — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:13:47 +0000

Getting a LCD display working with a Jeenode is easiest done using a LCD plug - but it took me much longer to get it working than I had expected.

And it all turned out to be a stupid mistake on my side :

If you can see the small potentiometer (on the top right hand side of the main chip) - it's really difficult to turn, and it controls the contrast. It turned out that it had not moved when I put a screwdriver in and turned it...

At the start I did not solder the correct 3 bridges on the card either....so lessons learnt and so on.

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on my way to work today

tor — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:41:32 +0000

Amsterdam - Keizersgracht.

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Setting up status.net

tor — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:41:22 +0000

I am currently experimenting with setting up status.net - a twitter clone service on our servers, and so far I have learnt 2 major lessons :

- Does not work on osx server (fine on a bog standard osx machine)

- The standard setup needs you to execute a sql query to give any user admin rights

insert into profile_role (profile_id, role) VALUES (1, 'administrator');

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Barbecue Lodge - I want one

tor — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:17:39 +0000

As we are looking at doing some buildingwork on the house I have looked for outbuildings on the web - and came across these barbecue lodges - which may just fit into our garden....

Used in the Arctic by reindeer herders for hundreds of years, these arctic barbecue huts are ideal for any weather – chilly summer evenings or snowy winter days.
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My world today

tor — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:31:05 +0000

It's rained a bit..

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Am I the only one to see the irony in this

tor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:05:23 +0000

....eeehhhh - no price in the UK so far..

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Mango, open source M2M

tor — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:55:33 +0000

I've just come across Mango - a piece of software that may be of interest to me in my house monitoring experiment:

Mango, open source M2M

Welcome to the home of Mango, the world's most popular open source Machine-to-Machine (M2M) software (also known as Industrial Control, SCADA, HMI, or domotics). Mango is browser-based, Ajax-enabled M2M software that enables users to access and control electronic sensors, devices, and machines over multiple protocols simultaneously. Easy to download and install on many platforms, Mango provides an interface with which diverse data sources can be created and configured while providing downstream management of user access, alerts, data logging, and automation.
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I got some new headphones/earphones

tor — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:13:46 +0000

For years I've used a set of ER6 earphones from Etymotic, and overall been reasonably satisfied.

On the negative side it's very hard to get a good enough fit to get decent bass from the earphones.

On the positive side the mechanical noise reduction (by getting them inserted properly into the ear) is fantastic, your fellow passengers on the train or plane can't hear what you are listening too - nor are you disturbed by them.

So this time around I went for the new Etymotic HF2 - with a twist, as I now have the option to get a set of custom earbuds made in Guildford (!) to get a perfect fit. But the earbuds cost the same as the HF2's - turning them into a set of very expensive earphones indeed.
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New lightsensor (for Arduno etc)

tor — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:57:22 +0000

This is a particularily interesting lightsensor - as is reacts to the same range of light as the human eye - and additionally uses a I2C bus that makes interfacing it to a Arduino or a Jeeduino. Indeed the Jeeduino is getting a "shield" that works with this sensor:
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startmonkey

tor — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:42:23 +0000

You have to love these guys - I have a powergorilla - with the extra solargorilla for a sunny day (!) - and i can't fault it. It keeps me watching movies for hours on a plane while powering my laptop, while recharging my iPhone.

So their next product is:

startmonkey
Dead car battery? We've got the power...

Introducing the startmonkey - the world's smallest "jump start" system for car batteries.

In 2009, the RAC were called out a whopping 177,916 times to jumpstart cars! A flat battery was the number 1 reason they were called out for breakdown assistance during last year.
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