Link Goodness and job fun

My new contract has been indulging a few of my geeky weaknesses. I’ve had a really good time learning about how mobile phone towers communicate with each other and with our phones. The basics are that I’m in charge of testing new 3g towers and collecting data from around the place using a variety of expensive gadgets and software. Part of my job also includes adjusting the electrical ’tilt’ of tower sectors where required. Learning how to do that was the basis of a ‘field trip’ today including a first hand look inside the shed at the base of a local towers which housed a lot of cable, racks and other assorted goodies in a white air-conditioned room.

Onto the links that are grabbing my attention this week.

• LOLcode – it’s real, it’s out there and apparently there are employers seeking LOLcoders with at least a month of experience. It looks like fun, I wonder if they’ll let senior programming students use it when they get to pick their own language.
• Street kids running their own bank – this is so inspiring to me. Why aren’t more children being so innovative and gaining such important skills?
• Model of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin – link is to the set, I highly recommend going through each of the pictures as the detail and attention put into this is incredible.
• Portrait Landscape Sketchbook – this is more novel than anything else, but I still think it’s cool though I’d likely never actually buy one.

BoingBoing Link Roundup

All sorts of interesting links today. I’ll try to keep discussion short and sweet.

• Vampire cupcakes – with fang marks and bleeding when you bite into them
• William Gibson Hates Futurists – good interview done towards the end of his Spook Country book tour
• Guy Fawkes Mask aka V’s mask – folded from a single uncut piece of paper
• Secret Storage Books – recycled hollowed out books for storage
• Stationary with Bite – every office needs something from here
• Magnetix iCoaster – magnetic roller coaster with all sorts of tricks
• Plush XBox 360
• Levitron Anti-Gravity Globe – kind of cheesy and kind of cool, shame it’s so small

That’s the end of the slightly odd-ball but pretty cool links for the day.

Ubuntu 7.10 and more

I upgraded my Ubuntu install this morning. It sounds like a feat but in fact it was so easy that literally anybody can do it. Closing applications, making sure you had an internet connection and then hitting ‘Upgrade’ in the package manager. Walk away for a little under an hour and that’s it. My input was required once – to tell the installer what to do with a customised file.

Upgrade complete and system restarted to find that my settings were just about all intact, including transferring settings between a major application upgrade and the smaller subtleties such as remembering my Firefox session. Overall I have to say that from the onset I am very impressed. Tweaking for the next few days is to be expected to get everything just how I like it, but the new Ubuntu is quite able to used with little problem straight out of the box. Whether you’re upgrading from 7.04 or creating a fresh install using a CD, Ubuntu has never been easier or more accessible to those interested in wishing to use linux for everyday computing.

Here’s my list of interesting links of the week. Enjoy!

• for those wishing to know more about my new OS here’s a non-geek friendly review of Ubuntu’s new release, 7.10 aka ‘Gutsy Gibbon’ (I love the release names)
• B.Stevens has created a cheap and easy way of creating lightrings for photography. Article here and Flickr photoset here. The amateur photographer in me would love to try this out.
• after decades of searching it seems that Carmen Sandiego has been found
• a most interesting article of the Neurology of ‘Alice’(Warning: link is a PDF)
• Chris Gilmour, an Italian artist who creates lifesize everyday objects out of cardboard
• a push button house which unfolds from a shipping container in 90 seconds, the Illy Cafe
• clever and funny clip about how a Triumph is not actually made…

BoingBoing RSS Madness

While clearing some of the many unread articles in my BoingBoing RSS bin I stumbled across some really cool stuff which I thought I’d share.

Firstly, game studio Three Rings Design re-outfitted their office/studio to resemble The Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Go and check out the pictures of the office here.

Secondly, for the simple reason of increasing awareness and supporting people fighting the copyright monster I’m wanting all of you to go and have a watch of this. It’s called A Fair(y) Use Tale and it uses clips from Disney movies to briefly describe copyright and fair use – it’s very clever and even contains a section explaining why they used Disney movies for this.

Interesting Links

I love finding interesting stuff in my RSS feeds, most items currently come from my Slashdot feed.

Among the articles about anamatronic clothing and Zune reviews I found a couple of quite appealing articles. The first is that the complete works of Charles Darwin have been meticulously catalogued and photographed and you can read the text on the left and see the actual page on the right. I thought it was cool.

The second is an article which describes what the earth would be like if all humanlife disappeared. I haven’t had a chance to read it in full as yet, so the link is here for my reference as much as yours. But the crux of it is that within a matter of a few hundred thousand years there would be little to no trace of human life whatsoever. Quite sobering.