Archive for the 'Kewl' Category

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SatNavs Compared

Published on 21 February 2008 in Hardware, Kewl, Nokia, Roads and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I had a journey to go on today: Google Maps reckon the outward leg should have taken 3 hours. The Garmin i3 (aka Psycho SatNav Bitch as ‘she’ tends to taunt me with unrealistic targets, even the way I drive) reckoned around 2¼ hours. My Nokia N95-8GB with Nokia Maps, on the other hand, reckoned 4 hours. Something of a disagreement.

In the end, the combination of the time of day, the occasional spray and muck left over from gritting (even though it hadn’t been icy) and the way I drive meant it took 2½ hours.

The routes themselves were almost identical, the only difference being the route in or around Grantham.

And the other differences were:

  1. the Garmin had the speed camera database to warn me of “accident blackspots”;
  2. as the Nokia was on the cradle and connected to the car kit, every spoken direction muted the radio which is a tad annoying when the voice prompts get a little frantic; and
  3. the Nokia’s display also shows the current speed (good) and the time left rather than the ETA (bad).

Looks like there’s still no ideal solution for me, but the Saga-driver Nokia is closest as it’s so nicely contained within the phone.

New Honda TV Ad: Problem Playground

Published on 4 February 2008 in Adverts, Honda, Kewl, TV, Vehicles and YouTube. 0 Comments

Courtesy of Creative Review Blog, comes a link to the new Honda ad which I reckon is pretty interesting and captures the attention. And unlike CR Blog, I don’t find the voiceover patronising.

See for yourself »

Armstrong & Miller

Published on 1 December 2007 in Kewl and TV. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

One of the funniest shows on television at the moment is the Armstrong & Miller show on BBC1, showing again after a break of six or seven years and having moved from Channel 4.

The plain-speaking divorced Dad makes me laugh, but the highlight of the show has to be the two chav World War II pilots who are somewhat “shtreet” in the language they use:
Armstrong & Miller's Chav Pilots

Standard, isn’t it?

NEC Bike Show 2007

Published on 22 November 2007 in Bikes, Flickr and Kewl. 0 Comments

An earlier start than usual as I was heading off to the NEC at Birmingham for the bike show on Trade Day.

I picked up a friend just after 8.15am and was at the NEC at around 10.30am. Wandered around the other halls until 12.00pm when Hall 1 opened. This was where the big manufacturers were exhibiting as well as where TWO Magazine had their corner plot. TWO bought visordown.com earlier this year and they were running a competition involving their “Wonderwall”: a collage of photos of VD members as submitted by us. If you spotted your photo on the Wonderwall, you would be entered into a draw to win something, in this case a Shark Helmet.

As Hall 1 only opened at 12.00pm and the competition draw took place at 2.00pm (geddit?), there weren’t many entries today … two, as it turned out. And I won! Now all I need to do is ring Nevis Marketing and claim my prize.

Anyway, I took some photos:

New, Smaller Photos Section

Published on 15 November 2007 in Kewl, Photography and WordPress. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

There’s a nifty plug-in to bring a nice touch to a small photo-album page: the Slimbox WordPress plug-in.

To operate it, just use this format:

Single example:
<a href=”img1.jpg” rel=”lightbox” title=”my caption”>thumbnail1</a>
Image set example:
<a href=”img1.jpg” rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]”>thumbnail1</a>
<a href=”img2.jpg” rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]”>thumbnail2</a>
<a href=”img3.jpg” rel=”lightbox[roadtrip]”>thumbnail3</a>

I’m now using it to display sub-sets of my photos on Flickr on this site (in addition to the six latest photos over there in the sidebar).

The Trouble with Blogs…

Published on 5 October 2007 in Internet, Kewl and WordPress. 0 Comments

Addictive things, these blogs.

But if, like me, you’re often out and about and between computers, you too may have suddenly thought of something you would like to share with the blogosphere. And, like me, you may have been frustrated that you couldn’t, because by the time you’ve made it to somewhere with a computer and an Internet connection you’ve forgotten what it was you were going to blog about.

Now I know I can blog by e-mail (or using Shozu) using my mobile phones, but when I’m hacking along the road in my car or on my bike, the last thing I should be doing is composing an e-mail using the tiny keyboard (even if the handset is in a cradle).

No, what would make a killer app. (or plug-in) for WordPress would be a voice to text posting facility, somewhat like the Voice Post feature on LiveJournal but with instant, automated transcription.

Now that would be cool (and remember where you saw the idea first!).

JavaScripted e-mail Links in WordPress Pages

Published on 25 September 2007 in Code, Kewl, Spam and WordPress. 0 Comments

You may want to include an e-mail link in your WordPress Blog’s “About” page or elsewhere, but no doubt you don’t want this harvested and you’ve found you can’t simply add the JavaScript to the post or page as it gets nuked.

So how about a workaround?

Firstly, you need to create an external Javascript file with this code (amended for your own needs, obviously):


function obfuscate() {
var ppclink = "Click here to e-mail us";
var ppcname = "nospamthanks";
var ppchost = "yourdomainnamegoeshere";
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + ppcname + "@" + ppchost + ">" + ppclink + "")
}

NB: the “@” sign is represented in the code as “& # 64 ;” with no spaces.

Save it as something like emailobfuscator.js and upload it to your server.

Then in the post or the page you want to include it in, add the following code:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="/scripts/emailobfuscator.js" mce_src="/scripts/emailobfuscator.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
obfuscate();
//-->
</script>

You will almost certainly want to uncheck the “Use visual editor when writing” checkbox in your User options before this will work.

And the finished result should look like this:

Pleven, Bulgaria

Published on 23 July 2007 in Kewl. 0 Comments

So according to Superbike News ”New Supermoto Era Beginning in Pleven“. It starts off by saying:

“With the FIM SuperMoto World Championship making its debut on the brand new circuit of Pleven, Bulgaria, a new era has begun for the sport.

“The former off-road section, which is now called sky, is covered with tarmac; this solution was never adopted before, but has already proved to be extremely successful.”

I just hope that things have improved a tad since I was there in 1996, staying in central Pleven. At that time, it seemed that tarmac had indeed never been adopted before, judging by the state of the roads.

I was staying in the best hotel in Pleven too on a B&B basis, except they couldn’t be bothered to provide any staff so there was no-one to cook breakfast. Or indeed serve it.

Of course things may well have changed post-EU membership: I still recall meeting armed mobsters in an office conversion from some flats on the outskirts of Sofia…

Mountain Bike Downhill Course

Published on 22 July 2007 in Kewl and YouTube. 0 Comments

So around here, we have the odd skatepark and a little biddy BMX/MTB track.

Not much like this, then:

Some Excellent Stunting

Published on 20 July 2007 in Kewl. 0 Comments

I saw this and immediately felt awed:


overtone