Put wikipedia on your iPod.

All sorts of good stuff at the Kircher Society Blog. I plugged this a few weeks back but they just keep adding all sorts of interesting curios. The living house stuff currently headlining is great. Very Hundertwasser-esque.

Looks good - Lik Sang reviews the new Nintendo DS Lite. I'm finally getting the hang of Final Fantasy Tactics on my old GBA in an effort to make more use out of my gadget stash.

Handy - these Solar Rolls look like they'd come in handy for travel away from convenient power sources.

Looks like Apple have just updated their Mac Mini line with the new Intel processors in Solo and Duo configurations.

The new iPod dock looks pretty dull. Without stereo speaker seperation how can you get any decent definition in sound ? Oh well I guess Apple wants a slice of the accessory pie.

Microsofts new consumer gadget - Origami. I wonder if its for real or not - looks to bridge the gap between a PDA and a tablet.

These guys seem to be getting some exposure - Vyatta. The next article claims its the the first open source router which isn't really true but it does sound promising - Business 2.0 - The Black Box That Would Conquer Telecom.

New Apple stuff - New Mac Minis on the way ?. As usual rumours abound and no one really knows what will appear until the day itself.

Interesting - Systems Admins Toolbox. The parallel update tools look useful (fanout & urpmi).

Work - Why I passed up an opportunity to work at Apple.

Best webcomics of 2005 - Webcomics Review 2005. Amazingly most of these are free. I've started reading Nahast & Bohemian Overdrive.

Amusing - Make your own Einstein Chalkboard.

Handy - Cool OSX Apps. Particularly like the iTunes statistician - it'll tell you which albums, tracks, artists and genres are the most popular based on how often they are played.

Cool - Richard Dawkins new documentary on religion - The Root of All Evil. Wonder if it'll ever play in NZ ?

CSS - Live Step by Step CSS evolution.

Procrastination - Red-Square. Keep the square away from the moving objects and walls. I can only manage 16 seconds.

Cool - An enzyme based computer could live inside you and release drugs based on conditions going on. This is the sort of thing drug companies will go ape over.

Handy - Bluetooth Serial Adaptor. No extra drivers required - essentially you can send your serial port 'bits' into any Bluetooth capable device. Might be handy for tweaking unix / cisco configurations from your PDA/mobile phone.

(bands on my little iPod Shuffle for the week ending 26 February 2006) -

Post inspired by Jesse.

Looks wonderful - watchmakers notebook. Small handmade items produced by craftsmen are more like art in todays high-tech mass produced world.

Apparently a classic chess game - Anderssen - Kieseritzky London, 1851 [The Immortal Game]. Run through each move step by step.

Useful for debugging - interview with the Valgrind author. This was used a lot in my previous job by the developers.

Free - Virtual Breadboard for circuit design.

Java 3D modeller - Teddy.

Nifty urban art - Derelict Detroit Buildings Painted Tigger Orange. Via We make money not art.

(bands on my little iPod Shuffle for the week ending 21 February 2006) -

Post inspired by Jesse.

Aha - I finally clicked as to why this article wouldn't publish. I thought I'd broken my static blosxom setup. In fact the local server system time is two months out - so blosxom doesn't publish anything after the 20th of December 2005! I guess I just need to wait for the SDF guys to twig to the problem :-)

Cool - Steve Wozniak in NZ for Segway Polo.

Emulation - Comprehensive list of Emulators on the Mac. Includes PC, Mainframe, PDA, Console and Arcade.

ZFS - Systems Admin Magazine has another article on the benefits of ZFS.

Logging - Howto setup centralised logging.

Clone - An open-source multiplatform Elite clone - Oolite.

Neat - TouchAmp has been open-sourced. Lets you control Winamp remotely via a Palm serial connection.

Nostalgia remade - Monkey Magic.

x86 Emulation - Q is a Mac port of QEMU. Lets you run x86 OS's in a VM.

Interesting - A Historical Look at the VAX: The Economics of Microprocessors.

Useful database advice - Data crunching tips.

Awesome - Meebo have implemented SSO (single sign on) - I can now login to all three intant messanger services at once with a single Meebo login. Meebo is a web based IM system that lets you connect to AIM, GTalk, MSN and Yahoo and presents a nifty ajax type desktop with messages in popup windows. Really handy for those places that block IM traffic but allow http.

Lego Art - Nathan Sawaya is a Lego Artist.

Security - Preventing SSH Dictionary Attacks With DenyHosts.

VoIP - OpenWengo VoIP Firefox Extension.

True - The death of handwriting. My handwriting has always been fairly appalling.

Via New Scientist - First test of the space elevator.

Brings back memories (nightmares) of university Signal Processing courses - FilterInfo is freeware which lets you design analog / digital filters - it will even generate source code for you.

Ren & Stimpy creators weblog - JohnKStuff.

Some Nintendo DS news - apparently it will get a tv tuner & opera browser. More in this Japanese News Video. Although apparently the tv reception capability only works for a particular type of broadcast which isn't in widespread use (even in Japan yet).

Nice SameTime/Quickplace plug - Toyota board drives paper away. Excellent use of collaborative technologies.

Getting information out of Active Directory can sometimes be like pulling teeth - Hyena makes life much easier. Shame its not free :-(

On a related note - Softerra LDAPBrowser lets you pull information direct from the Active Directory LDAP schema (or any other LDAP source). Plus its free. Saves messing around with nasty vbscript queries. Someone really needs to wrap up some Active Directory queries in php to idiot proof this - they'd be onto a winner.

In terms of AD scripting take a look at Microsofts Script Center or (better) the Active Directory Cookbook which has examples in vbscript & perl.

Via Berkeleys ScienceMatters newsletter - Nanodevices That Assemble Themselves.

Wow - Yellow-mold controlls a robot.

Another guide to a useful type of cable - 5 in 1 Sys Admin Cable. Someone needs to make & sell these things. I was pleasantly pleased to find a cisco serial adaptop which converted the utp style jack into a serial null-modem type connection so I can connect to my Cobalt Qube via serial port. So I guess I have a a 2 in 1 lead (Cisco serial & Null Modem lead).

Brief article on Using Ethereal.

Interesting - How Unix/Linux knows what command to run.

Useful - Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing. I tend to write long rambling sentances.

Minimalist web design at the CSS Trapist Monestary

Hardware hacking - How to build parallel port prototypes. Rudimentary guide to sending control signals via the parallel port.

Cool - Stonehenge recreated using 140 refrigerators.

Nifty - Lego Suicides.

Astronomy - USB Camera attachment for Telescopes.

Still has the jaw/chin even when he was young - Tom Waits is in this year book which is up for auction on eBay.

If anyone remembers the original 70's Incredible Hulk - you'll be interested to hear that Lou Ferrigno is now a sheriffs deputy in LA.

Another collection of Win32 software - Open Source CD. LetMeType looks handy . . .

As Atari seem to be on the verge of going under (yet again) this site collects some information about their console, pc and arcade games - Atari Museum. The sites a little clunky with some broken links but it shows some interesting hardware for its day.

Nostalgia - Old Computers. I've used/played-with a Sinclair ZX81, Apple 11 and 11e, Commodore PET, Vic20, Commodore64, Commodore128, Kaypro II, Apple Lisa and finally an original Apple Mac.

Cool - (Trying to) Destroy a Toyota Hilux. The infamous Top Gear destruction sequence via Google video. Toyota should use this in their ads.

Nice to know the CIA are looking out for the younger audience - CIA Kids. Be sure to take Gingers guided tour of their facility.

Interesting - Playstation 3 Details Emerge.

Interesting - Islam Online hosts a very rational Q

OS X app that lets you stream OS X media to your XBox 360 - Connect 360 from Nullriver.

Nifty - Guimp - Worlds smallest blog. 18 x 18 pixels and includes tiny versions of your favourite classic video games (pong, defender etc).

The other Steve at Apple - Forget Jobs lets worship Wozniak.

Emulate a G4 on Intel via the venerable - Sheepshaver. Due to the more modern emulation it should run Mac OS 9 ( Basilisk only emulates the older 680x0 chips and will run OS 0 - OS 8).

Interesting -Charles Stross has a blog. From where you can download a pdf of his latest novel Accelerando.

Apparently Star Control 2 was a classic real time strategy game that has recently been recreated as an open source project and its available now as The Ur-Quan Masters.

Handy - Fifty writing tools.

This site has some wonderful stuff to help you procrastinate - Kircher Society. The Moniac (a hydraulic computer that models an economy) is fascinating and theres a working Moniac in NZ too.

Nifty - Someone at the Gaurdian actually devoted column-inches (or web space) to slagging off Lotus Notes. Nice rebuttal from Ed Brill though. I guess the problem has always been that 80% of Notes users only care about email and calendaring (which up til version 6 have been pretty dire) and don't care about all the other cool stuff an organisation can do with Notes. So it gets a bad-rap with end-users.

A couple of good articles over at IT Managers Journal - Creating a better IT/business environment and Why Offshoring Fails. Both are actually pretty good reads and not as dry as they may at first seem.

Actually theres another one on ITIL which is huge in NZ at the moment. I can't help thinking back to the days of studying TQM and ISO9001 in my third year Quality Management uni course though.

Just a reminder . . .

In case you have old cgi related bookmarks be sure to bookmark the right page - http://mogwai.chaosnet.org/osxom/ and for the xml/rss feed http://mogwai.chaosnet.org/osxom/index.rss. The site will be undergoing a bit of an overhaul over the next few days too so some odd things will appear/disappear as I learn the ins and outs of static mode rendering and css.

I did try to set a custom 404 to let people know about the change but that seemed to knock the whole site offline so its been removed - hopefully anyone interested in the site will peek back here and bookmark the new urls.

Via Boing Boing - A lego Difference Engine. Wikipedia Difference Engine article.

Interesting buzz around the Firefox based open-source iTunes killer - Soundbird. Site seems to be getting hammered at the moment but it looks promising. The Boing Boing article points to mirrors for the curious (only win32 at the moment). Seems a little rough around the edges but the potential is there.

Useful - Domino 7 Upgrade Resources.

Cool - Rollable OLED's have arrived. Maybe the pc of the future won't be a tablet but a roll that flattens to become digital paper/screen.

Gratuitous rumour mongering - Apple to buy Palm ?. Almost as odd as the old 'Sun to buy Apple' rumours of the past.

For the outdoors type - Aidan sent me a link to this cooker which looks like it would save a lot of weight and be quite fun to make. Seems small to actually cook anything significant but maybe its super-efficient ? Does remind me that I need to dig out my old multifuel cooker for our earthquake kit.

Interesting rough and ready guide to converting a photoshop image into a css layout for the web.

Interesting - The megahertz myth and the UltraSPARC T1. Looks like Sun is onto a winner. 1 T1 is faster than 27 Xeons (at least)!

Wow - IBM Power6 to 6GHz. Looks like Sun should watch its back :-)

I'm now a fan of LUA - heres the proof: LUA Makes You Safer. Of course if you have developers or people that actually need extra rights then you need to rely on their good sense to avoid nasty spyware.

True - The case for mocking religion. Religious zealotry is just stupid (and the cartoons aren't that good either).

Nifty - 3D Painted Rooms. These are either really good or they're fake. I can certainly imagine someone eschewing the usual drab office scheme for something cool like this though.

Interesting - Sculleys Dream: The Story Behind the Newton.

Nice - Mac-alike Firefox themes.

A nice powerpoint presentation on how to act as a Lotus Notes Advocate. A tough job at the best of time.

Handy tips - How to look like a unix guru.

Nothing new but its nice to see someone else spell it out - The End of Originality - Or, why Michael Bay's The Island failed at the box office.

Its interesting to see these things are coming into 'style' again - 'Exotic' Programming Tools Go Mainstream. I remember Prolog from my Comp 101 days - back then we used MacProlog on a Mac Plus with two 400kb floppy drives.

I saw the first episode of IT Crowd. Mildly amusing but mostly tired and cliched. The canned laughter was horrible and the guy with the afro just over the top geeky. I wonder if it will improve ?

The 100 Best Companies to Work For. Needless to say the one I work for isn't on it. Related - What do Gen-X-ers Want ? - Here's how some of FORTUNE's 100 Best Companies to Work For keep young up-and-comers happy. Not to be called Gen-X would be a start although the points raised are pretty valid ...

In case you have old cgi related bookmarks be sure to bookmark the right page - http://mogwai.chaosnet.org/osxom/ and for the xml/rss feed http://mogwai.chaosnet.org/osxom/index.rss. The site will be undergoing a bit of an overhaul over the next few days too so some odd things will appear/disappear as I learn the ins and outs of static mode rendering and css.

If you didn't already know the good folks have released VMWare Server as freeware (you do need to register though).

If you're a fan of the Silent Hill Playstation games then the movie might be worth watching - Silent Hill.

Useful - Tim Bray discusses his backup technique and Arstechnica covers Painless Backup with rdiff.

Handy Bash Tips. Particularly the append to history and the ability to ignore simple typos when changing directory.

Retro - GLTerminal replicates the look and feel of an old CRT terminal from the 70's complete with screen curve.

Interesting - 100 best first lines in literature.

Due to my host experiancing some issues with site spam from insecure weblog setup I've shifted my blosxom based site to statis rendering. The site will be much faster but posts will be further apart as I don't have daytime console access to rerun the static render after each update.