Book Review: Electric Universe

Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World by David Bodanis

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Quite enjoyed the way that the author showed how we stumbled across all of the principles that we take for granted today. It took many years for things like telegraph, electricity, radio, radar to be discovered and mass produced. There was lots of dead end research and lucky breaks along the way to piece together how electrons and magnets rule our modern world. It certainly wasn’t clear to me from my university physics classes that the early researchers had so little idea of what they were dealing with. Just what were those electrons, how can you measure them, how can you harness them for good (and evil too) ?? Just why do we call them volts, amps and watts ? A bit of interesting `dark’ background to Samuel Morse and Alan Turing too.

This is no mere physics book. It links together the luminaries of the field in a way that makes for a book almost like a novel.

I’m really getting into these sorts of factoid type entertaining reads. So many trivium to fill my wee head !

View all my reviews.

 

How’s this for a White Balance Model ?

 

Book Review: What Would Google Do ?

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have to admit that the title of this book put me off from the start. Could it be a serious book based on a blatant rip off of WWJD. So I was a bit grumpy to start with, but the author won me over by the end of the book.

Jarvis does a pretty good job of pulling apart some of the things that Google has done and tries to apply it to other industries.

Google is perhaps give a bit too much credit as being the saviour of all businesses. Google got lucky with Adsense – it was a search company without any income until Adsense and Adwords was created. That was a stroke of genius that has made the company immensely rich. Going from that to youtube, google maps and gmail – and including them as brilliant innovations that will make google more $$$ is a bit of a stretch I think. Google still feels a little like a one product company to me. Time will tell which of their spaghetti on the wall sticks.

For those who don’t know much about the history of Google, or haven’t read The Search or The Long Tail for eg then this book is a good place to start and indeed complement them quite well.

View all my reviews.

 

False Economy of shared hosting

So I’m really happy with siteground.com as a host – they are cheap and their support is fast and accurate, even brilliant.

But I do have to wonder what sort of false economy or empty marketing is used to promote a shared hosting service with 768000 MB of storage and 750 000 MB of bandwidth a month.

I had a process go haywire and they were close to shutting me off for using too many shared resources. So I know they monitor how much of the box your little account uses.

Leaves me wondering how anyone could possible use that much bandwidth without trigger a trap – or indeed how you would ever backup that much data.

 

Book Review: The Shack

The Shack by William P. Young

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not what I expected. Really challenged my idea of who and what `God in 3′ would look like. Also challenged my idea of good and evil and suffering. Not sure I’m about to change my view on these things, but it sure has made me think about the bigger picture some more. Even disturbed me a bit to think so afresh.

View all my reviews.

 

ProCycling Twitterers

I’m really enjoying the fast and relevant tweets from a handful of professional cyclists and their support crew. This is really changing how one can follow cycling. Some are even posting pictures during the race. The Tour Down Under was a hoot to follow this way.

Here are some suggestions on who to follow.

Lance Armstrong

http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong, Lance Armstrong.

Johan Brunyeel

http://twitter.com/johanbruyneel, Team Manager for Astana – posts updates during the race from the race car.

Liz Kreutz

 

 

 

 

http://twitter.com/LizKreutz, Lance/Nike Photographer, posts lots of photos and links back to her professional photography blog.

 

Michael Rogers

http://twitter.com/mickrogers, Michael Rogers

George Hincapie

http://twitter.com/ghincapie, George Hincapie

 

 

 

Team Astana

http://twitter.com/TeamAstana

Trek Ben

Ben from Trek, bike supplier to Astana.

http://twitter.com/trek_ben

 

over the air syncing for google contacts and google calender to ipod touch

Phew what a mouthful for a title.

I have never been at all interested in contact management or calendar management on the iPod touch. That is until today I discovered that I could sync both of these in both directions to my google account. Since I’ve gone totally google for personal email, and I use google calendar together with Julia, I figured I’d just do all my calendaring and email via a web browser.

Well thanks to a freebie beta service at https://www.nuevasync.com/ I have a new front end for my contacts and calendar while on the move.

I can sync over the air from the iPod calendar app to my google calendar. Also contacts from gmail are now contacts on the iPod.

Here is a snapshot of my google calendar as synced down to the iPod.

 

Contacts from gmail synced down to the iPod.

 

I couldn’t bear the thought of having to use the bloat known as iTunes for this syncing. Thank goodness you can do it over the air.

The setup is quite a few steps, but it seems to be working for me. It uses the microsoft exchange features of the new firmware it seems, not quite sure how that bit works, but it does.

I can only get my personal calendar synced at the moment, not sure how to get Julia’s there as well – that would be really nice. The NuevaSync web site suggests that this should work ….

Since switching back to the the iPod mail app to access gmail via IMAP the contacts stored locally are a great bonus. It is now possible to easily email anyone using the in-built ipod mail application.

A related nice change to the gmail IMAP interface is the ability to archive messages using the delete icon. Previously deleted messages would be trashed on gmail, but now they can be archived for future searching. More info on this feature via a recent tweet of mine ;

I love that I can now use the trash icon in gmail imap client on the ipod and it no longer trashes, but archives – noice http://bit.ly/eBU8

http://twitter.com/pascoedj/status/1117898602

You know this makes the iPhone just that little bit more compelling as a phone. Maybe for Christmas 09 when my current contract expires and the next gen iPhone (smaller, less touchy, more buttons) is out.

 

twitterific inserting it’s own tweets ?

So the baconbaconbacon tweet in brown doesn’t appear on twitter.com/home. Can it only have come from the twitterific client triggered on the work bacon ? weird. I don’t follow someone called baconbaconbacon by the way ….

 

human spam robots from India – bellamclaine@gmail.com judymclaine@gmail.com

I am getting quite a bit of human initiated spam from India. Spammers are looking for blogs that have comments turned on that mention particular keywords. The paragraph they leave then tries to fool you into thinking they are a real poster. All they want is the link back to their spam site. Of course links are all nofollow’ed on wordpress anyway so there is no google juice, just potential users clicking through to their sites.

I have wp_hashcash installed, so the spammers are using a real browser with javascript turned on. Cheap labour I guess. This sort of manual spam is hard to detect automatically via the usual channels like akismet or javascript puzzle solving.

Here are some traces for others to see.

New comment on your post #232 "Free-Electron Laser targets sebaceous glands"
Author : Elena (IP: 61.17.27.146 , 61.17.27.146-bb-dynamic-baroda.eth.net)
E-mail : bellamclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://Cheapcellulitetreatments.info
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=61.17.27.146
Comment:
It  a nice site collecting all info about Cellulite.
I want to know more about Cellulite because my friend is to much fat.so i want to know how can we less cellulite in our body.

New comment on your post #579 "just how do you kill demodex mites ?"

Author : Gracy (IP: 59.162.118.105 , 59.162.118.105.static.vsnl.net.in)
E-mail : bellamclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://eyescosmetics.info
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=59.162.118.105
Comment:
It  a nice site collecting all information about eyebrow & Eyelash Cosmetic.
Beauty is more important for every women so i m care about my eyes.

New comment on your post #361 "topical kinetin (kinerase) moisturizer for anti-aging"
Author : Laura (IP: 210.211.252.200 , 210.211.252.200.bb-dynamic.vsnl.net.in)
E-mail : bellamclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://antiagingskinproduct.info
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=210.211.252.200
Comment:
This is a informative post about Anti Aging and there side effect.
Thanks for sharing such an informative post.

lAURA

New comment on your post #196 "Octadecenedioic Acid: an alternative to azelaic acid, adds skin lightening"
Author : Kettie (IP: 210.211.252.134 , 210.211.252.134.bb-dynamic.vsnl.net.in)
E-mail : bellamclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://antiagingskincareproducts.info
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=210.211.252.134
Comment:
This is a informative post about Anti Aging and there side effect.
Thanks for sharing such an informative post.

New comment on your post #271 "cleansing your SD skin with a sonic brush (Clarisonic)"
Author : Harry (IP: 210.211.252.134 , 210.211.252.134.bb-dynamic.vsnl.net.in)
E-mail : bellamclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://antiagingfacialproducts.info
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=210.211.252.134
Comment:
It  a nice site collecting all info about Anti Aging.
I want to know more about anti aging because my friend grand Pa is suffering from the same problem and i need this information.
Thanks for your time to post this article.

New comment on your post #271 "cleansing your SD skin with a sonic brush (Clarisonic)"
Author : Harry (IP: 210.211.252.134 , 210.211.252.134.bb-dynamic.vsnl.net.in)
E-mail : bellamclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://antiagingfacialproducts.info
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=210.211.252.134
Comment:
It  a nice site collecting all info about Anti Aging.
I want to know more about anti aging because my friend grand Pa is suffering from the same problem and i need this information.
Thanks for your time to post this article.

New comment on your post #401 "COL-118/Sansrosa $150+ a month ?"
Author : Laura (IP: 123.237.169.139 , 123.237.169.139)
E-mail : judymclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://www.cloroxcoupons.info/sitemap/
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=123.237.169.139
Comment:
It  a nice site collecting all info about Coupon.
I use to buy some of these coupon and i need this information.
Thanks for your time to post this article.

New comment on your post #38 "Subantimicrobial Dose Doxycycline for Acne and Rosacea"
Author : John (IP: 59.162.118.99 , 59.162.118.99.static.vsnl.net.in)
E-mail : judymclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://www.medicalquestionsanswers.com/category/acne/
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=59.162.118.99
Comment:
Best care is better than a good treatment. treatment is needed but when it caring than we get better rec=sult of any treatment.Its a good post.

Thanks
John

New comment on your post #383 "Clinuvel trialling CUV1647 (melanotan) for skin cancer for transplantees"
Author : Judy Mclaine (IP: 123.237.169.65 , 123.237.169.65)
E-mail : judymclaine@gmail.com
URL    : http://www.skincancerall.com
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=123.237.169.65
Comment:
This post is very useful for me because my friends mother is suffering from the Skin cancer. This would help me to tell some important caution about Skin cancer.
Thanks for your time to post this article.

 

giving to those who have everything: usefulgifts.org

I had a party for a significant birthday on the weekend. I really didn’t want people to go out and buy me a gift. What do I need as a gift that I don’t have already, or couldn’t go out and get if I so wanted ?

One thought was to suggest firstly that people didn’t need to buy me a gift. If people really wanted to purchase something I asked that they buy a truly useful gift at TEAR Australia’s http://www.usefulgifts.org.

What a lovely surprise resulted. Not only did people ignore the request not go buy something, they shopped at the web site and gave cash on the day. The total gifts given were as follows ;

4 x Safe Water, 4 x Food Security, 4 x Goat, 1 x Toilet, 1 x Tree Seedlings

I am touched and humbled by your generosity guys, thanks so much. It is the best gift I can think of. Not only have I always wanted a small flock of goats in my honour, but now I have a toilet with my name on it also !

Here is a shot from the party, with a real cow, sheep, horse, pig, dog and cat-thing that was also purchased in my honour.

Photo by N. Takayama

In the interest of transparency, here are the PDFs that the web site sent when a gift was purchased. One goat was purchased via a printed form.

ecard1511124141-3.pdf
ecard1511124141-2.pdf
ecard1409124747-2.pdf
ecard0106124848-2.pdf
ecard1511124141.pdf
ecard1409124747.pdf
ecard1204121717.pdf
ecard0911120808.pdf
ecard0106124848.pdf