I’ve got to find somewhere in Australia where I can get this amazing knife holder. It’s one of those so-obvious products that I should have thought of years ago.

These guys either have balls of steel, or they’re just dumb-ass stoners. In Victoria (BC, not Australia), a bunch of guys in a share house started a smallish grow-op. That’s fine, but they’re mere steps from the main police station. According to the article, “As many as 100 officers walked past the house on their way to work every day…”

Here’s something I didn’t know. In a recent interview with Peter Jennings, Bill Gates said: “We’re responsible for the creation of the PC industry”. Millions of Apple II, Commodore, and TRS-80 users would beg to differ on that point, Bill.

Oh well, he also said “Security is, I would say, our top priority”, and “But if any one company has done a lot of unique work, breakthrough work, risk-taking work, that’s gotta be Microsoft.” So perhaps he was just going for laughs in the interview. Come to think of it, a lot of what happens in Microsoftland makes a lot more sense if you look at it as a kind of surrealist comedy. Bill Gates is the straight Steven Wright-like character and Ballmer as the nutty clowny-head. We should have all realised this when they made Microsoft Bob (which still sounds like a bad haircut).

People really, really have too much time on their hands. So we’ve got a guy who’s insecure about his – ahem – male parts (oh, who am I kidding – jurgen.ca has already been banned in the Glen Eira library system for saying “shit”, and here I am with “penis” in the title of this entry – I might as well say it: cock).

Anyway.

So yeah, this guy goes and sues the company that sold him this herbal tablet that they claimed would give him a whopper of a Johnson. This is either a really stupid man, or someone in for a quick buck (that’s BUCK, NetNanny). Either way, he really needs a hobby. Perhaps he should start a blog.

As always El Reg has all the gory details.

A Spanish couple have a yearly ritual: take head shots of themselves and their kids, once a year. The photos have made their way onto the web, of course. We all have family albums, but seeing this change over a period of nearly 30 years is dramatic and impressive. Although, I really think Diego should shave his beard already.

Old-skewl greetz to Gary for this little gem.

There are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

There are about 65 black boxes around the world that can see into the future. Really.

They’re called “random event generators” and they churn out a random 1 or 0 several times per second. The law of averages says that they ought to turn out an equal number of 1s and 0s over time. Most of the time, this is the case. However, there have been some fairly odd things happening with the boxes.

For example, the scientist that started this, Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University, would ask random people in the street to thing really hard and “convince” the box to produce more 1s than 0s. And it would. Not a lot more, but more than usual. He was stunned, and tried all he could to prove it wrong, but couldn’t.

The boxes were left running. They went nuts during Princess Diana’s death, when millions of people around the world were watching her funeral. They also fluctuated during the 2000 US election, and they regularly register New Year’s celebrations with more wildly fluctuating numbers.

Now here’s the freaky part. On September 11 2001, the machines went berserk. But nothing had happened yet. A full four hours before aeroplanes hit buildings on the US East Coast, the machines somehow “knew” something was going to happen. They also predicted the recent earthquake and resulting tsunami in southeast Asia.

Take a deep breath here, gentle reader.

The article goes on to talk about the very nature of time – we see time as going forward. But there’s nothing in physics to indicate that time doesn’t go backwards, or that time is in itself another dimension. When something disturbing happens in what we perceive to be the future, there’s nothing stopping these waves of feeling to hit us in the present. Rather like waves from a rock dropped into a pond, repercussions from major events can travel in all time directions.

This is lovely! Someone’s put together a colour picker that grabs pictures from Fllickr based on their colour values. If you don’t already know what Flickr is, my friend Richard will be annoyed at you. In its simplest form, it’s a photo sharing service. But they’re much too clever to leave it at its simplest form. If only there was some good deep integration with iPhoto…

Go play in it, but check out the colour picker thing first.

If you’re in Melbourne Australia and interested in Asterisk, you’re invited to join us for a casual evening to talk about Asterisk, VOIP, networks, and just generally get geeky about IP phone stuff. Ultimately, I think it would be interesting and useful to turn this into a monthly get-together, so I’d like to talk about that too.

Anyone with an interest is welcome; from Asterisk Gods to newbies who have recently downloaded it, from people administering several hundred seats to people playing with it at home and annoying their families.

When: Next Thursday evening, the 17th, at 7pm.
Where: Niagara Hotel, 383 Lonsdale Street (between Queen and Elizabeth) in the city.

The Niagara’s a relaxed, comfortable place. I’m going to try and get us a table, and put an old analogue phone on it, so you’ll know who we all are.

Hope to see you there!

I just read an interesting, if a little conspiracy-laden article about the much-hyped Cell Processor from IBM, Sony and Toshiba. It gives a bit of background, then talks about Apple’s possible involvement and/or benefit in the Cell ecosystem. If it’s as good as they say it is, there are lots of interesting implications of placing a Cell chip into a Mac.

I’ve got this lovely huge window in my bedroom, overlooking the rooftops of Prahran East. I couldn’t sleep last night, because from about 7pm-6am, there were two guys standing outside someplace (I couldn’t see them). One had a garden hose and one had a huge bucket of water. First the garden hose guy would spray my window lightly, then the bucket guy would throw water from the bucket at my window, then the hose guy would turn the nozzle to “extra fast” and spray my window some more. The bastards continued with this alllll night long. I hardly slept. I think I must have passed out around 2am, and woke around 5:30 or so.

The best part of the whole thing is that it’s now 7am, the birds are singing, there are large patches of blue in the sky. It’s as if bloody Melbn is doing its famous “Who, me?” act again. “What rain? Oh, that wasn’t me! It was only a dream. Silly people. What dark clouds? No no, there’s nothing up my sleeves… La la la…”

The Age this morning tells me that Melbn received February’s monthly rainfall in just one day. In fact, more rain fell yesterday than had ever fallen since records were first established. There were also a couple of deaths due to falling things, and a number of flash floods and blackouts. Yikes!