Time to take your Tablets?

November 10, 2009 · Posted in brain dump . . . · 1 Comment 

Tablet PC’s are nothing new. They’ve been kicking around being used by TV presenters for a couple of years but they seem to have been a spectacular failure as far as their uptake from general users so far.

Now the big hype machine of Apple (or I should say the big internet rumour machine and Apples rumour squashing machine) is gearing itself up for the release of the iTablet (or whatever they decide to call it) at MacWorld in January. Pictures of backplates are emerging from suppliers, stories of orders for huge numbers of 10 inch touch screens are being talked about and Apple is saying nothing, as usual. (Google is currently showing 11,000,000 results for a search for Apple Tablet) Read more

Playing golf can ‘damage hearing’

January 6, 2009 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

Playing golf can ‘damage hearing’:

I was in the market for a new Driver sometime soon (actually about 3 months ago but other things got in the way).  I tried some new drivers last year when the square drivers first came out and they were not only very loud but sounded horrible … fingers crossed that my search for a new model won’t permanently damage me.

GelaSkins, Protection with Style, not Bulk

November 27, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

GelaSkins, Protection with Style, not Bulk:

If you’ve currently got one of the more traditional covers or wallets for you iPhone/iPod etc and you’ve only got it in order to prevent scratches, then you might want to look at these GelaSkins.

They are, aparently, easily removeable, have some great artwork on and seemily fit just about anything.  I might have to get myself a couple, I’ll let you know if I do and report on how they work out …

Jet Pack Crosses 1,500-Foot Long Colorado Canyon, Breaks World Record

November 26, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

Crazy: Jet Pack Crosses 1,500-Foot Long Colorado Canyon, Breaks World Record:


A couple of days ago I posted a story about an insane man trying to back-flip a truck … now here’s another one jumping a Canyon, with the aid of a jetpack.



The flight takes around 21 seconds, which isn’t bad, but when you consider that the ‘range’ of this jetpack is only just over 30 seconds (and you take a look at the size of the Canyon) you can see just how risky this little stunt was.



Looks damn good fun though … where can I get one from? It would make my morning trip to work significantly more interesting 🙂

HomePlug PowerLine PL-85PE 85Mbps Ethernet Adapter

November 24, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

HomePlug PowerLine PL-85PE 85Mbps Ethernet Adapter:

Do you own a really big house?? No, me neither … OK, so do you own or live in a 1950’s council house that seems to have unfeasably dense walls that mean from one room to the next your full power 802.11G wifi network is down to 20% 2 rooms away from the base station? Ahhhh, now we’re talking.

I’m running an Airport Extreme basestation capable of transmiting 802.11N and the one thing in my house that’s capable of using it is my AppleTV.  Unfortunatly unless the planets are in some particularly strange alignment we always seem to suffer from breakup or stuttering when watching programs on it.  This is particularly annouing when you realise that I’ve spent quite a lot of time ripping my entire (OK, so I’m still working on it) DVD collection into iTunes and have at my disposal just inder 1.5TB of films and TV to watch on it.

Enter the HomePlug PowerLine series of gadgets.  Now I know broadband over powerlines has been promised for many years and seems to have spectacularly failed to deliver, but using these devices as a localised for of that seems to work really nicely!

You simply plug one of them in near your network and connect it with a standard ethernet cable.   Then you plug a second device in right over the other side of your house and take the network back out of it using another standard ethernet cable … magic!

The blurb that comes with the devices and on the website claims that it also encrypts your network just so that your neibhors can’t access it, but I think I’ll be locking mine down by MAC address or something similar in the next day or so, just to be sure.

Other than that the results were perfect.  I’ve been flicking around on AppleTV like a madman earlier today without even a hint of skipping … w00t!

Kitty Cat Hitches Ride on Back of a Roomba

November 19, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

Kitty Cat Hitches Ride on Back of a Roomba: Welcome to the anthisis of the previous post … a cat sat on a running Roomba.  Now I don’t know if I’m just overly anthropomorphisising (real word or too many endings?) here but it looks to me like this cat is perfectly happy accepting this lift, but is somewhat bemused that he’s not ending up anywhere new or interesting, like at the food bowl.