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Mirror Displays

When I previously wrote about the Retina display in the new Macbook Pro I was so excited that I forgot to even check whether the display reflects light [1]. A TFT display with a mirrored surface apparently permits more intense color which is generally a good thing. It also makes it easier to clean […]

Love of Technology at First Sight

After seeing the Retina display I’ve been thinking about the computer products that I’ve immediately desired. Here is the list of the ones I can still remember:

My first computer which was the TEC-1 [1], in 1982 or 1983. A computer with a full keyboard and a monitor (Microbee), in about 1984. A hex-only keypad […]

Cheap SATA Disks in a Dell PowerEdge T410

A non-profit organisation I support has just bought a Dell PowerEdge T410 server to be mainly used as a file server. We need a reasonable amount of space and really good reliability features because the system may have periods without being actively monitored, it also has to be relatively cheap.

Dell servers are quite cheap, […]

The Retina Display

Last night I played with an Apple Macbook Pro with the new Retina Display (Wikipedia link). Wikipedia cites some controversy about whether the display actually has higher resolution than the human eye can perceive. When wearing glasses my vision is considerably better than average (I have average vision without glasses) and while kneeling in front […]

A Quick Review of the Mac Mini with OS/X Lion compared to Linux

A client just lent me a new Mac Mini with OS/X Lion to play with. I think it’s interesting to compare it with regular PCs running Linux.

Hardware

The Mac Mini is tiny. It’s volume can be compared to that of a laptop. The entire outside apart from the base is made from aluminium which […]

Acoustiblok/Thermablok

Acoustiblok is an interesting product for blocking sound, it works by dissipating sound energy through friction within the sound barrier materiel [1]. They sell it in varieties that are designed for use within walls and for use as fences. As it isn’t solid it won’t reflect sound so it can be used to line the […]

The Royal Caribbean Official Android app

I’ve just played with the official Android app [1] for the Royal Carribean cruise line [2]. The cruise line is apparently great (I’ve never been on one of their ships but the reviews are good) but the Android app isn’t.

Net Access

The most obvious and significant problem with this app is that it’s entirely […]

Nando’s Voucher Interpretation

Every year my parents buy a book of vouchers for various businesses in Victoria. It’s one of those deals where businesses (mostly restaurants) pay for advertising space to have their tear-off vouchers in the book (which typically allow a discount of between $5 and $30) and the customers buy the book for something like $40 […]

An Introduction to Android

I gave a brief introductory talk about Android at this month’s LUV meeting. Here are the slides with a brief description. All the screen-shots were made on a Samsung Galaxy S running Cyanogenmod version 7.1 [1] (Android version 2.3.7). With that build of Cyanogenmod you can press the power button for about 1.5 seconds to […]

Airtasker – Outsourcing Small Jobs

Airtasker.com is a new company that is dedicated to outsourcing small jobs [1]. It’s still in a “beta” phase and has no way of making money – the worker is paid directly by the employer and there’s no facility for either of them to pay Airtasker, I would really like to know what the business […]