A year or so ago, I bought a Philips PhotoFrame (7FF1M4/37 model) as a present for a relative. It was well received and was used daily with no problems. That made it a great success in my eyes. Until tonight when I bricked it. more »

Was poking through the Old English-plus-translation version of Beowulf I have, and was intrigued that the first line was: Hwæt, we Gar-Dena in geardagum There you go, Dena's in Beowulf! (Even though it means the Danes, here: Gar-Dena = spear-Danes)… more »

If you ever wondered what that gizmo near the bottom of Darth Vader's helmet was, the title above gave it away. (Via Daring Fireball) more »

Squishing fine chocolate truffles with one's thumb? Hanging is too good for him (harumph). (Via BoingBoing) more »

Interesting video from a TV chef on how pasta should be served with the sauce adding to the flavour rather than being the overwhelming focus. I rather agree -- the best lasagne is the one where the noodles act as a structural component separating the… more »

Funny post from a Mac developer on a four letter issue he encountered when generating license keys for his product. (Via Daring Fireball) more »

Another day, another silly misinterpretation of copyright law. Sadly, it's a Canadian case this time. (Via BoingBoing) more »

There is a site that summarizes many of the proteins that creatures have in common with one another. Most of the creatures listed are bacteria, but there are a few multicellular organisms with respective codes: Microsporidia [E], thale cress [A], a worm… more »

Dena and I haven't really been posting a ton, with the new baby in tow, but with five weeks and a bit of baby under our belts, I think I'm ready to share a bit of the whole experience :) more »

I'm sure there many reasons for the decline of the housecall in favour of the centralized clinic, but this post makes for an interesting read. Summary is that a doctor in the US has given up the office and takes the show on the road using modern… more »

Ten hours is how long it takes to fill a 160GB iPod using USB2. Ow. (Via Wired) more »

Oh, for pity's sake. I was leaning in favour of picking up the new larger capacity iPod and then I read that Apple's locked down the hardware such that iTunes is required to put music on it. Why? (Via BoingBoing) more »

It really doesn't matter what the programmer is actually doing; as soon as the words "code's compiling" are spoken, a free period appears to be granted. I suppose I could counter that with "document the change while you're waiting" and watch heads… more »

Every year, a crop of shows are made for the TV networks. Of these, only a few actually make it to air. But what happens to the ones that aren't selected? more »

Another use for dead(ish) computers: make a really hard couch out of their corpses. (Via PopGadget) more »

This is a neat concept: a website built in Ajax that looks just like a Workbench 1.3 vintage Amiga. more »

How very cool! (Via Pharyngula) more »

When my clock radio clicked on this morning, I didn't immediately notice anything different. In fact, it took about four songs and one announcement before I realised that what I was listening to wasn't my MP3 collection. more »

As of right now, their online booking system does not handle infants very well. more »

I wish I'd found the enlightenedsavage site before the civic election. Having read through it, I can't say it would have changed how I voted, but there's an awful lot of good stuff on there. The official City Of Calgary results are here. (Via… more »

Wired's Gadget Lab suggests that the non-release of the iPhone in Canada has more to do with someone else owning -- and not selling -- the "iPhone" trademark rather than the excessive price gouging by our very own Rogers Communications Inc. Could be. more »

I used to be a serious toy, er, miniature car collector; only the lack of money in my then-six year old pocket kept me from buying them all. As an adult, that urge is still there -- although the quality of the cars is significantly down -- but then so… more »

I arrived home one evening to find the answering machine light blinking. The message? Oh, I'm sorry. I think I have the wrong number. Talk to you later! more »

The behemoth that is EA has swallowed another fine developer. Expect "Baldurs' Gate III" to come with cool graphics and an utterly unusable interface. And it'll be as buggy as hell. Assuming there is one. We'll probably get more sports and racing… more »

I don't get it either: Pop song ringtones from T-Mobile and Sprint cost $2.50 apiece; from Verizon, $3. You don’t get to customize them, choose the start and end points, adjust the looping and so on. Incredibly, after 90 days, every Sprint ringtone… more »

Sometimes one wonders about the things people add to the internet. This lyric sheet for Daft Punk's "All Around The World" is a pretty good example. (Via Kottke) more »

Convention has it that any band for which you can name one major single but absolutely nothing else is a "One Hit Wonder". Of course, when one tries to actually define specific examples of that it results in failure. more »

On my Amiga, I used a program called SnoopDOS extensively while trying to figure out what was happening on the computer. One of the features I particularly liked was the ability to monitor file reads so I could see why some programs would blow up or… more »

Specifically that would be on the inane things some people are paid to say. I normally think Tony Long truly lives up to his column's name -- although it should probably be "Ornery Geezer" -- but there's nothing here I would disagree with. more »

It's only taken about 25 years, but it looks as if the cellphone companies have finally decided that having a billion different styles of power connectors is daft. They've now standardized on one: micro-USB. Now if only someone could convince Palm that… more »

The emoticon is just a trifle older than 1982. Who knew? (Via Antigone) more »

Looks like there's been a small revival in the availability of DRM-free music. No major revolution, but you have the advent of Amazon's DRM-free MP3 collection, which contains quite a number of bands, and even the icon of DRM, iTunes, now has "iTunes… more »

As regular readers (all two of you) know, I've been schlepping a large chunk of my music collection backwards and forwards from work on an external laptop drive. It works just fine, but I'd much prefer to play music from it directly without having to… more »

I took the summer off from playing Warcraft; in theory I intended to do things like work the garden, be social, hike and kayak. Well, I managed some of that -- still need to be social -- but y'know, winter's coming and I need an indoors hobby again. more »

So you want to see a little bit of the tree of life for yourself. Maybe use some of the bioinformatics tools on the Internet to see some of the relatedness of life on earth. Can you do that as a layman? Sure you can, and here's a little introduction as… more »

I really thought we'd progressed past this. more »

Here's a handy table showing quite how much caffeine is present in soft drinks. Keep in mind that these are for the American varieties as Canadian law does not permit adding caffeine to non-cola beverages so Mountain Dew (for example) up here is merely… more »