Published February 1st, 2006 by Jim O'Halloran
Printable paper rulers
Print your own paper rulers! Cool, could come in handy for those occasions where I need a ruler in the office and I don’t have one.
Miscelaneous
Published October 17th, 2005 by Jim O'Halloran
For the geek with everything else…
A company called Canford make a 3U rack mountable wine rack. I can’t imagine the average rack would be a good environment for wine storage (too warm?), but the idea is cool. The 3U wine rack holds 4 bottles.
Published October 13th, 2005 by Jim O'Halloran
Commander System: Redialing Last Number
If you’re on a Commander phone system and want to redial the last number you called, pick up a line (press 0 to get the next free line), and press the “DC” button, then “*”.
It’s been 5 years since I last used one of these phone systems and it took me a while to figure it out again. Now its been recorded here for posterity.
Published April 9th, 2004 by Jim O'Halloran
SCSI Connector Guide
Had a problem this morning where I needed to price up a new SCSI drive, but I had no ideas whether I needed a 68 pin or 80 pin connector. Fortunately this page was available to help me out. Handy!
Published March 22nd, 2004 by Jim O'Halloran
GPS for PDA’s
Been doing a bit of digging on GPS receivers for PDA type devices. Without much looking I’ve found a couple of receivers, one from Haicom which is definately availabe in Australia. The other is from TeleType and comes in a few different models.
Also found was a document which describes some of the serial output from a GPS device.
The GPS receiver sends data in a string or sentence. This might look something like this
$GPGLL,5330.12,N,00215.31,W,134531,A
First, there is a NMEA code ($GPGLL), then the latitude, North or South, Longitude, East or West, Time (hhmmss), Data Valid (A), Carriage Return and Line Feed.
Published December 8th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Mark’s Infinite Hotel
Frm Mark Pilgrim’s “The infinite hotel“…
Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on forever. All the rooms are full. A man comes in and asks the desk manager whether any rooms are available, and the desk manager replies, “All our rooms are full, but
I’d be happy to accommodate you.” How does he do it?”
My head hurts now.
Published November 7th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Matrix Revolutions: The Abridged Script
This abridged script contains huge spoilers, but is incredibly funny.
Warning: This contains major spoilers, essentially the whole plot of the movie. If you don’t want to know what happens, don’t read it until you’ve seen it.
Ready? Read on…
Published November 6th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Matrix Revolutions
My wife and I plus a few friends went along to our local Megaplex last night to see the final Matrix movie. We opted for the 8 1/2 hour marathon, seeing The Matrix, then Matrix Reloaded before the first screening of Matrix Revolutions at 12:30pm. I’ve been a huge fan of the Matrix films ever since the first one was released, this would have been the 4th or 5th time I’ve seen each of the first two at the cinemas… There was a fair crowd of prople like us who were seeing all three, but it looked like some of us would have to move into a different cinema for the last one, which meant joining the lineup and loosing the seats we’d had for the previous few hours.
Fortunately the cinema managers decided that everyone who was seeing all three could stay where they were, and everyone who was seeing just the last one was shuffled of into a differnet theatre. So all the hard core fans got to see the last one without having to line up, and without ending up in a crowded cinema full of people! Cool!
I think in the end Greater Union had 6 screenings of Revolutions at 12:30 last night, which is pretty incredible for just 1 cinema in little old Adelaide.
Although the tockets obviously sold well, its a pitty the film itself was so ordinary. Now, lets see if we can do this spoiler free.. They spent the first fiml introducing us to this “alternative reality” where every rule can be broken. Then delving deeper into its “back doors” and “keys” in the second, the third takes place almost entirely in the “real” world! The Reloaded left us thinking of Matrix-within-a-Matrix scenarios, and all sorts of possibilities. Revolutions decided to skip all of the philosophy, and abandon much of the Matrix itself and instead plays out as a pretty conventional, and in many respects stereotypical battle. Huh?? No great dialog, and even the camera work which was so unique in The Matrix was pretty boring.
I was a bit disappointed by Reloaded when I first saw it, but I was disappointed all the more by Revolutions. Reloaded grew on me after I saw it a couple of times. So I’ll probably see Revolutions again just to see if it improves, but first impressions aren’t good.
Greater Union Marion: 10/10 for the way they looked after the fans.
Matric Revolutions: 4/10 maybe
Published November 5th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
How to spot an “expert”
Jeremy mentions a run in with a self proclaimed “database expert”.
A few months ago, I found myself in a drawn out stupid argument about MySQL with a self-proclaimed database expert. Along the way, I mentioned that Sabre was using MySQL in a pretty serious way. Not only did he tell me how completely wrong I was (because he knew people there and must be right), he refused to entertain the possibility of a company with such mission-critical systems using little old MySQL.
Well, Mr. Database Jackass, I’ve got news for you. You’re wrong.
A while ago, I stumbled acros a simple way of recognising such “exports”… Ask them “How much do you know about XYZ?” (Where XYZ is their topic of interest)… If they answer “nothing” or words to that effect, chances are they know nothing about it. If they answer “everything” or similar chances are that you’re dealing with one of these idiots. Most people who are really knoledgable on a subject will answer “a bit” or “a fair amount” or something like that. Why? Because these people know enough about their subject matter to know where their knowledge is weak and recognise that you next question might touch on one of these weak spots. Most self proclaimed exports don’t know enough about the subject to know that there are things they don’t know.
Published October 15th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
How to Build a simple input device
This page describes how to build a simple three button keyboard or “alternative input device”.
This page describes how to build a simple alternative input device that connects to the serial port. This device can have three buttons and stay simple; more buttons are possible, but they would make things more complicated. The hardware is as simple as three light switches. The software is a little bit more complicated, but not much.
This could come in handly for a couple of projects I have in mind.
