10 free Microsoft programs worth checking out

Hmm not often you see someone say something nice about Microsoft's stuff

Wireless Charging

I'd heard that wireless charging was coming but wasn't expecting to see it so soon, this morning on the way to work I passed a billboard advertising the powermat and it makes me want one even though I don't currently own any of the devices that are compatible with it

LRO Images of Apollo Landing Sites

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent some beautiful pictures of the Apollo Landing Sites from about 110km above the surface of the moon just in time for the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Landing on Monday. It's amazing the level of detail that can be seen, the Apollo 14 site is one of the best.

When the LRO moves into its full mapping orbit at the end of August these will be from about 50km. Can't wait.

Also, following @apolloeleven on Twitter is giving realtime tweets of Apollo 11 as it happened, to the minute: Long periods of nothing, then bursts of activity.

An Admin Password For The Universe

A whole bunch of short stories by Sam Hughes on his qntm.org site (that's quantum without the vowels) but the site is titled "Things of Interest". So far An Admin Password For The Universe is my favourite with I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility a close second even though the second is not an "Ed" story.

Ubunto @ Key via synergy

Just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope and love it; best distro so far by a long way. Used to have all kinds of keyboard problems using my Microsoft Natural Keyboard when using synergy but they seem to have fixed pretty much all of them: the most annoying was the right-hand shift key not working.

Still had problems with synergy not passing though the @ key - kept getting an OMEGA sign Ω instead, although the keyboard plugged into the Ubuntu machine works with the @ key just fine. Managed to find a fix using xmodmap: xmodmap -e "keycode 24 = q Q at at at at" sorted it but had to do this every time.

Adding "keycode 24 = q Q at at at at" (without the quotes) to .xmodmaprc in my home directory meant that at the next startup Jaunty asked me if I wanted to load the xmodmap file, choosing to add it and not display that message next time means that it loads on startup every time.

About time

Discworld street names in Wincanton, Somerset.

BBC News article

Must take a camera next time I'm passing that way.

Is this the unluckiest teenager in the UK

Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Teenager's acne spells out arse

Daleks are real

there have been a whole bunch of things that I wish I'd blogged about recently but *this* one has to be done. Found by following Neil Gaiman on twitter: some people clearing out a "pond" in Hampshire found a Dalek.

Right now it's the front page story on the Doctor Who News Page and scroll down to March 4. I will probably have to find a permalink for the story later. Link on ananova but no photo there and what is probably the original story at The Telegraph with photo.

Serenity Movie Fight Rehearsal

Don't normally post links to YouTube but this posting by Batteries4Holden shows the rehearsal for the bar fight in Maidenhead in the movie Serenity rocks. Because you can see more and the lighting is better and the camera is more stable I think it's better than the fight in the actual movie. Bridget Riley is the stunt woman.

QR Codes API

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/types.html#qrcodes

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=256&chl=http://www.cubbyhole.org/bioblog&chld=H

Homework Issues

It's not often that a link that someone sends me actually makes me Laugh Out Loud for real. This picture and the comment underneath are a cautionary tale about the folly of making assumptions and is one of the few links that did. I hope it's true rather than made up but either way it's funny.

More flies droppings

It seems like bad things come in threes. In the last week 3 people who have affected my life have died:

First, Patrick McGoohan at the age of 80 on January 13th. Watching The Prisoner on Channel 4 in digs when too poor to go out.

Second, Tony Hart at the age of 83 on January 18th. Vision On was a part of my childhood.

Third, Mahmut Aygün at the age of 87 on January 20th. Who? The Turkish inventor of the doner kebab who first started selling them in Berlin in 1971. I shall celebrate his life by partaking of a large example of his invention tonight.