13amp blog

I went to Domino’s Pizza yesterday and was slightly confused by what time it closed.

Edit - I’m not the first person to notice. This sign has been up since at least April!

Here is my new Dualit toaster. It’s silver. It toasts. That is all.

That’s right! The iPhone and iPod Touch firmware 2.0 has now been jailbroken, so there’s now an even wider range of software available. This tool jailbreaks the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPhone 3G. Sadly, it only unlocks the original iPhone, so 3G iPhone owners will have to wait a little longer before they can use a different network provider.

Note that the tool is currently Mac only. So, get down to to your local Apple store and distract the staff!

Don’t you just love those old TV programmes and movies where the main characters are made to look decades older? Whether it’s a severe bout of the alien disease “geriatricitis” or an unintentional time-travelling trip, the actors are subjected to hours of meticulous prosthetics work as artists work their magic with latex.

But just how realistic is it? For some of the earlier prosthetics (20+ years ago), let’s compare the “fake old”actor with the “real old” actor.

Here’s Diana Muldaur, or Dr. Pulaski from Star Trek The Next Generation in 1989, compared with what she looks like now. Good effort, I think.

Now, let’s see Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine McFly in Back to the Future. She was brought forward 30 years and met herself in 2015. Not quite as good, but give her 10 years and we’ll take another look!

Another one from Star Trek TNG (they had a lot of latex to spare after molding Worf’s forehead). Here’s Patrick Stewart, after living a lifetime on planet Kataan with no sunblock. Again, not a great effort but real-life Patrick seems immune to the effects of aging anyway.

If you can think of any more, let me know and I’ll post them up. (Remember to supply photos!)

The Asus Eee 901 is a tiny laptop running the latest Intel Atom processor. It has an 8.9″ screen, bluetooth, wi-fi and most of the things you’d find on a regular size laptop. The Linux version (the PC901) will be available in the next week or so with 20Gb of flash memory. The Windows XP version is now available, but with only 12Gb of flash memory.

I’ve pre-ordered the Linux one and can’t wait until it arrives. However, as you can see from this picture on the Asus website, most of them are being held back for models to use in Taiwanese railway stations.

Here is my car. It’s an S2 Lotus Elise 111S in Krypton Green. I bought this last year and I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of the colour - although people seem to love it, or hate it, in equal quantities (like Marmite!)

Ever wondered just how popular wi-fi access points are in your area? I took a wardriving trip around Cambridge this morning to find out. I used this hardware:

• Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000
• Planex 802.11b CF card
• Bluetooth dongle
• Bluetooth GPS receiver

For software, my Zaurus runs pdaxrom. I use Kismet to passively scan for wi-fi access points. The device just listens, it doesn’t try to connect to the access points. For each access point, the GPS position is logged. Once back home, the data can be converted into Google Earth format with Kismet-Earth.

On this 30 minute journey I logged 1000 access points (one every two seconds!), about 80% of which were encrypted.

Google Earth is always a good laugh at finding amusing buildings and roads. Here’s a not-so-famous landmark of Cambridge - I call it the M11/A428 Testicles. The left testicle is the slip road from the M11 (the main route from London to Cambridge) onto the A428/A14. The right testicle takes you from Cambridge onto the A14 westbound.

I wonder what’s in the woodland?

Okay, so not here quite yet, but the long-awaited iPhone and iPod Touch 2.0 firmware upgrades are very nearly upon us! They are quoted to be “end of June”. The iPhone upgrade will be free and the iPod Touch upgrade will be charged for (hopefully a nominal fee). New features include:

• A new installer application
• Microsoft Exchange support
• MobileMe (revamped version of .mac)

Steve Job’s keynote speech on the new software is here. A bit long (make cocoa beforehand) but well worth watching.

Several hessian coffee sacks arrived with my new espresso machine last week. Each would hold 600,000 green coffee beans and would weigh 60kg! I’m not sure what to do with them, but they are too nice to throw away!