I’m not a big fan of writing about “look what I found” type stuff, but this is absolutely brilliant.
The video below contains footage of various simple events shot at 5000 frames per second on a high speed camera, and therefore delivers an unusual view of the world. The karate chop is mind numbing.
Tempus II from Philip Heron
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Oh help. Oh help, help, help! Fate has reared its ugly head.
Many years ago I studied A level mathematics at college. It would be fairly safe to say that it was never my strong point, and indeed the (appalling) results from my final exam seem to back up this observation.
Don’t get me wrong because I am very grateful for the education that I received, and it has been instrumental in getting me to the position that I am in today. The overwhelming majority of what I learnt at school, college and university has come in useful at some point or another, and I was able to learn it because I could always see a practical application for the theory. However, looking back there were a few topics which I consider to be completely and utterly useless and a total waste of time.
One such example is the countless hours that I spent studying imaginary and complex numbers. I didn’t see a need for it at the time and therefore I didn’t really put a lot of effort into understanding it. This was doubtless the reason that the exam results were not too good, but ever since then I have been smugly convincing myself that my life was not enriched by the topic whatsoever and that I really haven’t missed out.
Unfortunately it now all seems to have gone wrong. I have today been sent a series of presentation slides which contain material that I will need to present in a few months time. The material is for a highly technical engineering training course, and I am expected to be the instructor. Training is nothing new for me, because I have spent a very large amount of my working life training other engineers in one way or another. The presentation in question teaches the audience how to use digital to analogue converters, and the source data is sadly made up of complex numbers. Lots of them in fact!
Therefore it seems like it’s “humble pie” time. I shall now have to go back to basics and learn all about those “useless” things that I have long since forgotten. I have started already and I have found some fairly decent tutorials on YouTube, but my brain is reeling constellation diagrams, imaginary axes, I and Q components, and frankly it’s just not nice. My head hurts and I don’t want to play any more.
If you fancy joining me, then I suggest you start here…
I have learnt several new things over the weekend:
Blimey, one only has to give seeds half a chance and they’re off like rockets…
I have just been rendered completely speechless.
Apple have released a completely new product, the iPhone 4, and yet it has no more storage space than the last one. What on earth were they thinking? The only reason that I have not bought an iPhone so far is that my iPod Touch (32GB) is already full and I need not only a new phone, but also an iPod with more storage. I was hoping to solve both problems at once, and if there had been a 64GB iPhone 3GS I would own one by now.
I am phenomenally disappointed. I desperately wanted to like their new product but now I have been forced to think again.
The gardening effort last year was a huge success, so this year I am being more adventurous. I’ve planted tomatoes, peppers, chillies, courgettes, carrots, mixed salad leaves, sweetcorn, basil, and cucumbers.
I have no idea how I am going to fit them all on my balcony when they’ve grown a bit more (I have no garden), but that’s a challenge for another day. The results so far look quite promising…
I am not an eco-warrior by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, my impact upon the world’s resources would doubtless make many a hippy burst into floods of tears. However, on the flip side of the argument I am not that environmentally reckless either. I always recycle just about everything possible; paper, card, metal, plastics, glass. I take my used batteries to be recycled, and the same applies to my empty printer cartridges. I don’t often throw things away when they break because on the whole I have the skills and patience to repair them. But I found myself descending into a state of irritated muttering yesterday when I unwrapped four new shirts that I have bought. Why? Well because of the absolutely ridiculous amount of packaging that was used to market and present them. Here is a photo of the unnecessary waste material from just four simple shirts:
It’s madness! What the hell is wrong with a simple coat hanger? I could at least re-use that in my wardrobe. AND it wouldn’t leave the new shirts in a crinkled mess. AND I wouldn’t have needed to devote ten minutes of my life trying to remove it all from my new clothing. Well then Next, are you listening? I like your clothes but would you kindly stop taking the piss and think about your packaging; a shirt does not need to be molly coddled in this way. Just hang it on a hanger and I’ll still happily buy it.
I’ve noticed that supermarkets are getting just as bad. I was in my local store the other day and I found a pre-prepared plastic tray containing cling film wrapped new potatoes. Errr – what?!?!?! It’s a flippin’ potato for goodness sake. Just dig it out of the ground, wash it under the tap for 30 seconds, and then cook it. It’s hardly complicated, is it? Then I saw bags containing grated cheese. Agggggghhh! Don’t even get me started on the pre-grated cheese.
Sadly this reflects rather poorly upon our society, and it proves just how lazy we’re all becoming as a species. Fortunately there is an alternative, and it’s one from which supermarkets need to learn. Local food businesses do still exist, and they still sell very good quality fresh produce but without all of the faff. Take my local greengrocer for example – One enters the store, one takes a brown paper bag from the hook on the wall, and then one proceeds to fill one’s bag with whatever items of earth covered fruit and veg happen to take one’s fancy at the time. The bag is then weighed at the till, during which one can have a very decent conversation with the shop keeper about what’s in season and ought to be tried, and one then hands over considerably less money than would be necessary at the supermarket. It’s fantastic, it’s fun, it’s sociable, and it’s actually a rather refreshing experience. So with such an agreeable alternative on offer, how on earth have we descended into this absurd state of affairs whereby every item of food has to be packaged and presented in such a prissy, namby-pamby way?
Well I’m revolting; and not in the modern accepted sense of the word that will have some of you tittering under your breath. I’ve decided to abandon the supermarkets for my basic needs whenever possible, and I’m going to use my local independently owned butcher and greengrocer whom both have shops which are very near my home. In fact they’re in the same street, within easy walking distance, and I now get service from friendly people who know what they’re talking about. Sainsbury’s – watch out – because I’m sure that I’m not alone.
Today I have discovered a product which is nothing short of astounding. It works like an ordinary SD card which can be used in most digital cameras, but is fitted with a wi-fi radio. Why? Well because the moment you get home the card will automatically connect to your home wi-fi and transfer your photos directly to your PC or Mac. Better still, when you’re out and about the card will monitor your local surroundings for any available wi-fi hotspots, and then use them to automatically geo-tag your photos using Skyhook wireless technology (the same technology that the iPod Touch uses to determine its position without needing a GPS module).
I’m gob-smacked - I absolutely love this as an idea, because I hate having to manually transfer photos to my Mac. Further research has revealed that a range of products are available from the same company, some of which allow you to transfer photos home from worldwide hotspots as you travel. Brilliant. Just brilliant!
Do you want one? Well why are you still reading this? Go to the eye-fi site immediately. http://uk.eye.fi/
Like many of you out there, I’m required to routinely file expenses with my employer. We use an on-line expenses system which on the whole is very efficient, but one of its quirks is that it demands that a town or city is specified for each and every line on the expenses claim. In many cases I admit that this is perfectly sensible, but for some claims there are items where the location is either completely irrelevant, or in some cases it’s simply none of the company’s business. Private company car mileage is one such example; where I go in my own time is my business provided that I pay for my private mileage and don’t fiddle the system. I therefore feel no need to put a valid location in the box, but the system won’t let me file the expenses claim without doing so. Highly irritating!
So what should one type into the box? Should I be unimaginative and use my home town for each of the items where the location is irrelevant? No, that would be be far too boring. But today I found an answer to the dilemma, and at the same time I found what is perhaps the best website in the world. It lists all of the names of towns and cities in the world which have stupid or rude names. Henceforth, I shall in future be submitting expenses claims that feature just some of the following:
Duck End, Essex
Fan-Y-Big, Brecon Beacons, Wales
Twatt, Scotland
Fattiehead, Scotland
Little Snoring, Norfolk
Pratts Bottom, Kent
And if I stretch my imagination even further, I could use places which are not in the UK. I wonder if one day I can visit a part of the world which will feasibly allow me to include the following:
Bald Knob (New South Wales, Australia)
Balls Falls (Ontario, Canada)
Long Dong, China
There’s even an utterly unspeakable town in Spain called C**t, and a dubiously named Austrian town called F**king. No, I’m really not joking! Oh my goodness I hope that we’ve got some customers in these places, because I’ll be arranging a visit just as soon as I am able.
If you’d like to join in with the fun, you can find the full list here.
Right then, today I’ll start with a question. What are these?
Yes, correct. They are small sachets of salt and pepper. Specifically in this case – they are sachets of salt and pepper which I picked up for free in a motorway service station yesterday, and which I intended to consume with the nutritionally questionable pie and chips that I had purchased just moments before. However, having sprinkled the aforementioned condiments on my meal I then began to read the packaging. No, I wasn’t reading it because I’m sad, but simply because I was travelling alone and therefore I had very little else to do with my life at that precise moment in time.
It was the title of the packaging that caught my attention; “Lo salt”.
Now we’ll ignore for a moment that the manufacturer can’t even spell the word “Low”, but even when we’ve cast that factor aside there is still a glaringly obvious issue. What on earth is the point of having low salt salt? The whole point of the exercise is that it’s salt! One chooses to use the product because one considers that one has insufficient salt for the activity in question. It’s like marketing low oil oil, or low wax wax. Why oh why would anyone want to do it?
Intrigued, I read the packaging further… Apparently this particular product boasts that it contains 66% less sodium. I paused mid-mouthful. So what, I asked myself, was I eating apart from the salt that I wanted? The packaging, as perhaps you might imagine, failed to provide the required answers so I chose to visit their advertised website and soon found that I was eating one-third sodium chloride and two-thirds potassium chloride, plus some anti-caking agent. Furthermore, this product has apparently been specifically designed to help lower my blood pressure. Well guess what Mr or Mrs LoSalt? My blood pressure is now significantly higher than it ever needed to be; not because of the chemical composition of your product, but because I am now worrying about precisely what your ingredients are doing to my innerds!
What I wanted on my chips was just salt. Good old-fashioned, plain, simple, sodium chloride salt. If I want to consume less salt, then I shall adjust my diet in a very quick and simple way; I’ll sprinkle less of the damn stuff on my meal! Frankly, I think you’ll be forced to agree that my solution is quicker and considerably easier to implement as well. I’m an engineer and therefore I am taught to make the solution to every problem as simple as possible. This problem is arguably an extremely simple one, and therefore the solution to it certainly does not require the intervention from a bunch of trumped-up, ponsy, nannying do-gooders who are fascinated by the unnecessary faffing about with the fine details of my diet. And to add insult to injury, this new miracle wonder-product is doubtless costing the service station a fair amount of cash, which in turn is escalating the cost of my pie and chips.
Well thanks, but kindly stop it. I want salt – is that clear? Right, thank you.
