I’m in the late stages of a prolonged and extensive spring clean. One of the things I’ll be getting rid of is my Trangia-style stove and cook set. Why? Mainly because of this cat food tin.
Cognitive Conga: a blog
Dancing the conceptual kerfuffle shuffle
Ratiocination, n. An instance of [reasoning]. Also: a conclusion arrived at by reasoning. Doubt the applicability of this at your peril leisure.
Archive for the ‘hacking’ Category
Catfood for breakfast
Friday, July 2nd, 2010Unit conversion in Google Docs spreadsheets
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010You may already be aware that Google’s search interface can be used as a calculator. Google Calculator, as this feature is known, offers access to the kinds of functions (addition, multiplication, and more) offered by conventional electronic calculators. Unlike conventional electronic calculators, however, Google Calculator is able to utilise information about the external world, such as exchange rate data or measurement unit ratios. This allows you ask Google what 1lb is in kg, or what $250 (US) is in pounds sterling. You can combine the traditional calculator functions with these information look-up functions, too, which means you can do things like calculate what a $250 (US) item would cost in pounds sterling if you paid import duty of 17.5% on it. There’s a bit of a learning curve but it’s fairly gentle despite Google’s documentation of the syntax of these functions being a bit patchy.
Commercially copying the fab lab
Monday, April 19th, 2010Many urban Americans will be familiar with Kinko’s, a retail chain specialising in the photocopying, faxing, scanning and printing of documents. The branches I’ve seen offer a choice of self-service or full service for at least some tasks – photocopying, for instance – and many branches also offer graphic design, internet access, and other services. In short, each branch of Kinko’s works like a fab lab for 2D information on screen or on paper. You can copy this information, move it from electronic storage to paper storage or vice versa, manipulate it, and send or receive it.
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Bundles of musical joy
Thursday, November 26th, 2009I’ve not tried every online music store nor every music file format, but far as I know, there’s no file format that replicates the experience of buying a physical record, whether that record’s on vinyl, CD, cassette, or some more esoteric format. All I mean by “replicates the experience” is that the file format should provide the songs in the highest quality the medium will allow, should include all the album artwork and liner or inlay card that would come with the purchase of the physical album, and should provide a recommended playlist order for the tracks complete with a recommended gap between each track.
Dear Mr Brodman
Sunday, June 7th, 2009I sent an email just now to the CTO of T-Mobile USA, Cole Brodman (whose email address is, I have inferred from a few bits of publicly available information, probably cole.brodman@t-mobile.com). If you're interested in open mobile communications, you might want to send him an email too. Feel free to use mine as a basis for your own.
(more...)Rimmed & shafted
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009My bicycle is a Dahon Piccolo, and - for the most part - I've been happy with it. It has a fairly compact fold, which I value highly, and it's nippy. Its rear end, however, has caused me some problems.
(more...)Flat
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009There are three common, separate kinds of puncture that may afflict standard bicycle tyres (that is, those with inner tubes; tubeless tyres are rather different, and I have no experience of them).
(more...)svn revert to revision
Friday, March 27th, 2009Sometimes I wish there was a '-r' argument to Subversion's svn revert command, so that I could revert my working copy back to a given revision. There isn't one, however, so how else can this be achieved?
How to paste text into Vim
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009Darling Dear
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009DARLING DEAR
YOU ARE MY LOVING LUST: MY BEAUTIFUL HUNGER. MY AFFECTION LUSTS FOR YOUR WINNING HEART. YOU ARE MY DEVOTED FERVOUR: MY SYMPATHETIC LONGING.
YOURS AFFECTIONATELY
M. U. C.
... and people say the British are not romantic.
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