Street View Madness

I love street view and this post is about the funniest thing seen so far on street view. So get cracking and find me something more interesting.

Denis sent me this site of fine street view sightings including a very realistic break in and UFO sighting but I love the clean humour of a guy passed out on the street. Excellente!

Street View Australia

So google have gone and driven around the whole of Australia and released their Australian street view. Just click on the street view button on the right and see what you can do. I've found my house and a few other interesting things but get with the program and see what weirdness you can find.

Aaaah google is there anything you can't do with your giant advertising revenue stream.

Whaa, Christmas Lights

Yep, Perth, the most isolated place on earth and home to nothing but a few little lighting stores that enable people to create stupendous lighting displays like this little sucker. I dunno how much power it consumes but my guess is that there is a $40,000 electricity bill coming their way fairly soon. Oh yeah, you need sound for this too so don't watch it on your 386 with inbuilt pc speaker mmm,k?

Google image fun

Although google is already a good search engine, I won't say great because I still think the other searches besides the web one don't actually work particularly well, it is pretty useful. This fun google image matcher is a game where you try to match words with a partner to describe a particular picture. Obviously this is a way for google to get lots of stats on what people think a particular image is and over time it should make the whole image search thing a whole lot easier. cool, eh?

Tank for hire

I can't believe that I can't just hire a tank right here, instead I have to go over to the middle of nowhere (UK) and hire a tank. Looks like it could be a barrel of fun, literally if they load that gun up with some depleted uranium weaponry. They can crush cars for you, drive you to a wedding, teach you how to drive a tank, in fact all kinds of wholesome family fun. So get cracking and get me one of these for my next birthday.

Free radiohead

Aaah if radioheads were always free I'd have a collection of over 400 by now. Well for once a major band is doing the right thing by its fans and not releasing an album through a money hungry, RIAA loving major label. Instead they just set up their own website where you can download their latest album for whatever you feel like paying. This revolutionary concept is brought to you by radiohead and the letter a. Actual release date is October 10.

More google earth fun

Yay! Google earth contains even more bonus easter eggs, including and in-built flight simulator. I mean its not quite that revolutionary because you could kind of do it yourself by just flying around with the keys after adjusting the view angle but its still kind of neat.

I'm just waiting for the google human technology where you take a normal human and then can zoom in all over their body to see muscles, tissues, blood flow and maybe even zoom right in to the genome. Now that'd be kind of cool. (Patent pending)

Illusions to elude you

Once upon a time I blogged a whole bunch of illusions, I can't be stuffed finding that post now so here is a whole bunch more illusions. I especially like this one, it really looks like I'm going insane and will soon be blind from the waist down. In fact, maybe I've already gone insane and founded my own cult, the millions of dollars I'm raising will be to develop my own giant squid farm, I hear they are quite a delicacy.

Simpsons' Town!

Yay!! Its a complete map and guide of all the shops/stores and two dollar pieces of junk in ye olde springfield towne. The interactive map is actually the coolest bit about this because it means that you can scroll around and look at the perfect geography that makes up this fine town. Sure, it doesn't really make sense and doesn't keep it completely factual but it makes for some interesting web browsing anyway.

Thanks Ingi!

Solar power kicks ass

Why oh why, can't we have giant pyramids of light all over the world fuelling our insatiable need for more power. Well if the future is anything like the Spanish countryside we soon will. This ray tower is just plan cool (not) and focuses the light of 1000 mirrors onto some water which is turned into steam and drives a turbine. I saw a documentary about how it all works and it makes a lot more sense then traditional solar cells which try to convert the suns rays directly into power. Its 100% green and with all this free land in Aus we should be building a few of these suckers to power us into the next billenium. So get cracking government. Stop worrying about nuclear and get started on some serious solutions to the problems!

Ye olde internets

The internets have been around for decades now and some people often wonder what did my internet look like in 19 diggity two. We had to say diggity back then because the kaiser had stolen the word twenty. Anyway if you want to see what cool 1996 net action was available. Then get cracking to this olde page. In fact this is just some guys pathetic ramblings about the issue, if you are really keen to see more you can head to the internet way back machine which archives a whole bunch of stuff.

Thanks Mykl!

Cyborgs are one step closer

For years humankind has dreamt of leaving their feeble bodies behind and replacing them with a far superior cyborg body. Well now that dream is one step closer to reality with a robotic jacket that can be controlled by healthy muscles. So fairly soon we'll all be wearing these mega suits that will provide us with 8000 times strength and the ability to crush small animals in a single finger. Excellent, then they incorporate some of that infrared cyborg eye technology and the world will be a better place.

Cyanide and happiness

Yes cyanide and happiness can peacefully co-exist in a web comic that will keep you all amused for the next 8 hours. Sure the jokes aren't high class but they are damned funny. So I recommend you all quit your jobs, smoke something interesting and enjoy this amusing comic. If after 30 minutes without a job you feel unsatisfied then perhaps you can work at the box factory because I don't give a damn. Who listens to advice from a blog anyway.

Lego millenium falcon

Chewie here tells me you're lookin' for passage to the Alderaan system? Well maybe you are and maybe you aren't but this lego millenium falcon is cool enough to satisfy any fanboys' trip to Alderaan. Yep at $499 it ain't cheap and you'll have to spend 5 minutes putting it together (All lego these days only has about 5 pieces) but it'll then sit gathering dust for years. Nah, actually there are 5000 pieces and it'll take an army of robot controlled ants to put it all together. I can't quite decide if its stupid or cool so I think it ends up with both tags.

Bacon Bourbon

Well back to posting about random cr@p on the net. This time it contains two of my favourite ingredients bacon and bourbon together in bacon bourbon. Results are as expected I guess, there is definitely a hint of bacon and the taste is perhaps a little strange. My guess is that these two ingredients, although extremely tasty probably don't go well together. Salty, meaty whisky isn't exactly my idea of a good time and bacon is just so much better when eating in large quantities fried up on its own.

iRiver S10 Review

Well, rather than posting random cr@p off the net I thought I'd do something more constructive and review the iriver S10 player that appeared magically yesterday.

First impressions: This thing is tiny! Literally about the size of a stamp with a full colour screen that enables you to click a direction to select songs etc. (No bodgy ipod shuffle lack of interface where you can't do anything). The screen is easy to read and the unit is very responsive. Sound quality it excellent. The only gripes I had are the extremely short headphone cord length and the included software.

In a bit more detail
Connectivity:
I think one of the biggest pluses in any mp3 player is not to be forced to use some proprietary software. In iriver's case they have a tradition of allowing their players to be used as usb drives. This is one huge plus and enables you to just drag and drop any files, music, pictures and stuff you like directly onto the player. Put music directly into the music directory and the player will find it and be able to play it. This aspect of the S10 works extremely well. The mini usb connector/adapter is cool but probably would be a nightmare to replace if you lost it. Its also tiny so be careful.

User interface:
The player itself feels well made and the user interface is reasonably intuitive. I had a brief glimpse through the manual and was soon able to work out all the controls. There is a clock (with alarm), picture viewer and fm radio all of which are easily found. Settings for the s10 are easily understood and even a novice mp3 user should be able to get the thing fired up.

Sound quality:
Like other iriver players I have used the sound quality is excellent and reasonably customisable. There is a bunch of settings for controlling the SRSwow (random sound processing stuff) and additional bass etc can be quickly added in. This thing sounds good out of the box and a bit of customisation is enough to make anyone happy.

Software:
The included iriverPlus3 software is pretty poor. It took forever to scan the music that was on my external drive and crashed once before working. I tried playing an mp3 directly through the software and it got stuck halfway through so I think there are quite a few issues. I also tried updating the firmware of the player and it kept telling me the network was unavailable. I guess this is one of the reasons that I thought the direct windows explorer functionality was so important because proprietary software usually sucks. The software did manage to update itself and if you had a small amount of music it probably would work reasonably well.

Battery life:
It's always disappointing to have a proprietary battery in a player because when the battery dies there is no way to replace it. If you want to travel with the unit you'll either need to take a laptop to charge it or buy a universal usb charger. The claimed battery life of the S10 is around 8 hours and I haven't tested it fully yet. Charging takes 1.5 hours for a full charge and about an hour will get 80% charging. Seems pretty reasonable for the size of the unit.

Recording:
There is a microphone for recording and you can directly record fm radio. These are both semi-useful but not essential features. It appeared that when recording you can only record to WMA files but more fiddling will have to confirm this. There is no line in so you can't record directly from another source but in a player this size you wouldn't expect it.

Overall: 8/10
Ignore the inbuilt software and use explorer its really an excellent little player. Tiny size, good sound, colour screen and nifty user interface. A shiteload more features than a shuffle which appears to be the only real competition in the tiny, tiny mp3 market and up to 2gb storage make this a pretty useful music machine. Cool style, excellent screen and big sound are a huge bonus in this little postage stamp.

Minor gripe: Oh yeah, they expect you to use the headphones in a lanyard style with the unit hanging round your neck. All well and good if you want to do that but useless if you want to have the unit in your pocket or somewhere else the headphone cord is just too short. So you might have to use other headphones.

The internets will improve our driving

I've noticed a few of these sites popping up over the web in the last few months and here is the first one I've seen for Australia. The basic premise is that if someone does something bad, good, exciting (mostly bad) on the road you jump online and enter the details into rate the plate. Over time a history of individual drivers is built up and hopefully people will eventually go in and check the site and realise they have been driving like a prat.

It's a really good idea and should help people learn about their own driving habits without entering some road rage situations. Some of the comments on here are downright funny, but also quite scary. So from now on be alert because the internets are watching your driving!

Thanks Mykl!

Virtual Tennis

In about 1983 there was a commodore 64 game known as virtua tennis, it was actually quite fun. You got to play as one of three or four top players at the time and you had a selection of about three shots (forehand, backhand, and smash) that would work depending upon where you were standing in relation to the ball at the exact moment you pushed the joystick button.

Well enough reminiscing its only 2007 and now they are broadcasting the Australian Open in second life. This is probably more accurate virtua tennis because each shot is captured by the cameras and technology around melbourne park and rebroadcast into the online world. It all sounds kind of weird and you can in fact wander round the whole of melbourne park and buy merchandise (both real and virtual) etc all in the virtual world. Supposedly this is the web of the future whereby pages aren't really pages but are instead a complete virtual world that you can navigate. The only shame about this melbourne park thingee is that it's invitation only. So if you got any spare ones send me one over and I'll conduct a full review including tasting all the virtual beer available.