Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

2005 was a busy year for travel. While the first part of the year was spent travelling to Jersey for family reasons (which also entailed more trips later on in the year), September and October saw us spending a lot of time on the west coast of the US.

Time for a list or fourteen.

Countries visited: USA, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Scotland, Jersey
Number of transatlantic trips: 7 (Sarasota, Las Vegas, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Seattle)

Airlines flown: British Airways, Flybe, Delta, Virgin Atlantic, United, Alaskan, Alitalia, Lufthansa, KLM
Aircraft types flown: Boeing B737-500, Bombardier CRJ, McDonnell-Douglas MD-80, Boeing B747-400, Airbus A340-200, Airbus A340-600, Boeing B767-300, Airbus A320, Airbus A321, Boeing B757-200, BAe 146, Bombardier Dash 8 Q400

Best hotel: Wynn Las Vegas

Times through the Channel Tunnel: 2
Hire cars driven: 4
Convertibles driven down Highway 1: 1
Fast cars driven across Northern Italy: 1

Ferries used: 2

Highest point reached: 5420 feet above sea level.

Best airline food: Delta
Worst: KLM

Airlines I won't fly again: Flybe

Now, let's see where 2006 takes us - and how we get there!

Even the mundane looks beautiful in the sunset.

The building that looks like Japanese temple is actually the Wandsworth waste transfer station, which loads rubbish onto barges to float down the Thames to landfills in Essex.

New Year's Day sunset over the Thames from Wandsworth Bridge.

Wandsworth, London.

January 2006

The 20 most viewed images in my photostream.

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Some fun tools on that site.

Nullriver's PSPWare turns a Sony PSP into an effective portable media player (as long as you have a decent sized memory stick).

It's a simple enough little piece of software, with tools for synchronising content with your desktop PC and down converting video files to display on the PSP's screen (yes, it even does wide-screen). It'll even sync iTunes and browser favourites (it still doesn't take OPML and fill out the PSP's RSS reader, but that's still new enough that they haven't had time to write the code...)

Well worth registering at only $15. It's given me a whole new place to watch my fansubs!

Mac and Windows versions available.

Thanks to codepope for the recommendation

I have just ordered a nice shiny new SPV C600. It was a free upgrade, and was dispatched within the hour.

Should arrive tomorrow morning.

I guess I really need to update this icon!

There's now an official patch from Microsoft for the WMF vulnerability in Windows. Fixes are available for WS2K SP4, Windows XP SP1 and SP2, and WS2K3 (also for Itanium and x64 releases).

Go here to read the bulletin and download the fixes.

It looks like the page is still rolling out to all the edge servers, so keep trying.

Update: stevewpalmer points out that the patches will be on Microsoft Update now.

The Celestron Sky Scout has to be one of the coolest gadgets ever.



It's a personal planetarium. Point it at an object in the night sky, and it will tell you what you're looking at, from a database of 6,000 objects. It'll even help you find something you're looking for. Turn it on and you'll get a list of the 10 coolest things you can see right now. It uses GPS to find where you are, and then magnetic and inertial sensors to know where you're pointing... Best yet, it's updateable.

Out in March, and no prices yet.

[via Gizmodo]