simonb.com: blog > articles from August, 2009

Lego have annouced a 23% increase in sales. Hurrah! Good to see proper toys on the rise. Now, how about a little Meccano.

read more

So I got an email from Microsoft about renewing as a registered developer. Copy the link over to a PC so I can do it on IE since I'm pretty sure there's going to be a few bits which are PC/IE specific. The web page says log in with the LiveID used for the account. Mmmm. I never used a LiveID to register. Strange. Maybe they made one for me. So I enter my email address and what I think it my password. Nope. "Either the email address or password are wrong" How helpful. So I go through the forgotten…

read more

The Orwell Prize have put George Orwell's diaries on line via Wordpress. So now you can subscribe to the RSS feed to get new Orwell every day. Read them here.

read more

Take a look at the source code the the Fujinon Binoculars site. Oh dear. At one point I count 250 lines that all say the same thing:

<FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 8pt">

One can only hope this was generated by a loser CMS. Still it make for pretty source pictures. The picture above was generated by saving the source, loading into BBEdit, saving as styled HTML (that is a new web page just showing the source - kind of a source in source loop), taking a screenshot of the resulting HTML with LittleSnapper and re-sizing the result. Click on the image to…

read more

The Leica a la carte configurator allows the customer to customise bits of a M7 or MP camera. It's a great example of a web app done right. Good design and simple navigation. Most importantly it's done sans-Flash. Phew!

read more

IceT demonstrates his method of Mac repair. Macisfaction. Not suitable for Mac lovers. Contains scenes of a distressing Mac nature. It's one way of getting the hard drive out of a Macbook. Try handing that over to a Mac Genius. Other methods of Mac repair are available. Embedded below from YouTubular.

read more

The Extrapolator: linear amplifier for everything he hears

read more

It's rainy season again. Every year the same places flood. Every year many people die. This has been going on for millennia. How long does it take to get prepared?

The Big Picture has pictures of Typoon Morakot.

BTW: Here Comes The Flood is the title to a brilliant song by Peter Gabriel. There are lots of examples of the song on YouTube. Embedded below is a version from the 1979 Kate Bush Christmas Special.

read more

Seen in an elevator on Huaihai. Your guess is as good as mine.

read more

We're not fans of producing work on spec or for free. We're not the only ones, Spec Watch is a site exposing the dark side of crowdsourcing design. In general you get what you pay for. Follow Spec Watch on Twitter.

read more