Keys Corner

RSS feeds available from Time

By John, on May 21st, 2004

You can now get much of the content from Time magazine via their 9 rss feeds.

Harry Potter’s invisible cloak becomes reality – almost

By John, on May 18th, 2004

Optical camouflage was demonstrated last week at Nextfest, an exhibition of emerging technologies in San Francisco, where it was possible to see in a somewhat blurred manner through someone wearing a coat covered in beads which act as cameras and projection screens at the same time – the cameras transmit the view behind the wearer to the front and vice-versa. The coat was made by University of Tokyo’s Tachi Lab – you can see some demonstrations of the coat here.

Oil prices could remain permanently high

By John, on May 17th, 2004

The BBC reported in April, that oil prices were set to rise in the long term. The healthy American and Asian economies are giving us a taste of what is to come, the Guardian reports today:

…While the current war in Iraq has undoubtedly affected the oil market, the level of petroleum prices is being driven in substantial part by strong economic growth in North America and much of Asia, especially China, which suggests that overall consumption has permanently moved up a gear. That means that unlike the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s, there may be no retreat in prices back to the $20-a-barrel level seen as recently as 1998.

If that is all, then the world – and especially the heavily industrialised, oil-reliant economies – will have to adjust to a background of long-term higher prices. While petrol use is relatively inelastic, it is still subject to the iron law of economics that higher prices generally mean lower consumption. That will entail a switch back to the fuel conservation policies of the 1970s, as well as having the more positive effect of making alternative, environmentally friendlier energy such as hydrogen and solar power more cost-effective in comparison…

I’d been holding off on ordering heating oil, but if the Guardian is right, I could be waiting a long time.

Black death spread by humans?

By John, on May 17th, 2004

Chris Duncan, at Liverpool University and Sue Scott, have published a theory in their new book, The Return of the Black Death, that the Black Death was not passed on by fleas on rats carrying bubonic plague, as was thought until now, but that the disease was haemorrhagic plague – an equally infectious disease, but one carried by humans and not fleas.

Duncan and Scott became convinced that rats were not the cuplrits after examining comtemporary accounts of the plague – in Penrith, in Cumbria, they examined original parish registers dating back to 1538 and noted that after a stranger died of the plague it was 22 days before a rash of further deaths occured. Twenty two days was an exceptionally long incubation period. Further research showed that the average incubation period was 27 days, which is about that of haemorrhagic plague. The reported symptoms also fit haemorrhagic plague better than those of bubonic plague.

Worryingly, the authors predict it will inevitably re-emerge sometime in the future – a killer which could have even more potential to spread around the world than the Sars virus.

Good collection of links on moving from MT to WP

By John, on May 17th, 2004

Carthik has a useful collection of links on migrating from Movable Type to WordPress.

(Via Burningbird)

Size isn’t everything

By John, on May 15th, 2004

Here, in contrast to the Lamborghini from Friday’s posting is a slightly smaller variation.

(Spotted in Girlscamp)

Palm Pilot / Mac OS X 10.3.3 error message

By John, on May 15th, 2004

I have spent some time trying to get the data transfer working between the Palm Desktop 4.2.1 on my Mac and my Sony Clie. After one of the latest OS X updates (I don’t know exactly which one), I started get the error message _Transport Monitor Could not complete your request (16)_ each time the Mac booted and I couldn’t activate hotsync from the Palm Desktop hotsync / setup menu. Every time I set hotsync to _active_, the error message flashed up and the radio button flipped back to _disabled_.

I didn’t find any useful information in Google – most people with similar problems had had success after completely deleting and reinstalling the Palm Desktop, but this didn’t work for me.

I finally discovered that if I disabled the usbmodem_port under _connection settings_ (under hotsync / setup), I could activate hotsync and synchronize normally. After one successful synchronization, I was able to reactivate the usbmodem_port with no further ill effects. Hopefully this might help anyone else with a similar problem.

Nice birthday present

By John, on May 14th, 2004

To mark the 152^nd annivesary of the existence of the Italian State Police, the House of Sant’Agata Bolognese has donated them a Lamborghini Gallardo police car complete with flashing lights and medical equipment including a special defibrillator which performs electrocardiograms and automatic diagnoses of arterial pressure and the presence of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood.

Not surprisingly, it will be the only Lamborghini in service with the police.

(via gizmodo.net)

The Toyota way

By John, on May 12th, 2004

There are some interesting articles about Toyota in this month’s press – unfortunately if you want to read them in full, you are going to have to buy the magazines or pay to download the article from the Internet. Toyota is an interesting company because it focuses on getting the best out of its staff and its suppliers.

I’ve summarised some of the main points from both articles below.
Continue reading The Toyota way

DiBa internet banking works with Safari now

By John, on May 12th, 2004

A big thanks to Ole Saalmann, who let me know a couple of days ago that the Diba’s internet banking now works with Apple’s Safari web browser! He’s right – I just tried it out. That’s a huge improvement as previously it didn’t work with any of the browsers I had on my Mac, and I had to fire up a PC when I wanted to use the internet banking, which was a pain as the PC is in the cellar. One less reason to keep a Windows PC!