Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

OECD Factbook

Geotermal NY Times

Open source to record geographical coordinates over time: The Antimap Log. It is a shame that there are no more applications to visualize your own GPS data. The AntiMap Log records latitude, longitude, compass, speed, distance and time with this format
40.706006 -3.624071 360 0 0 761
40.706006 -3.624071 314 0 0 794

What is this photograph about?

The guys on the picture seem to know each other. The physicality of the portrait is clear not only from they rubbing shoulders in a packed group, but also from details like one hand and neck on a mate’s shoulder. And why do they all wear month-long beards?

It also strikes me the fact that every one of them poses with a different attitude and facial expression. We could describe their mood, from left to right as
- despondent with his lifestyle and thee attire on his head
- content and fraternal
- amused and ready to dash for the first beer
- dreamy and non-chalant
- resigned to being part of the group by fate or by accident
- mistrusting his own senses or intellect to comprehend the situation or its context
- pleased to have managed to dress up as a member of the crew of the Life of Brian

These are the possible captions that might explain the absurdity of this picture
- A team of Arab posing with a passing by gay mechanic in an oil well
- A group of Saudi princes posing with a gay model in an oil extraction conference
- A group of activists demonstrating for the rights of gay workers in oil drills
- The crew of an oil drill in Saudi Arabia who tragically their washbags at home and were ostracised by their worker fellows

Guess no more. These odd looking fellows were from left to right are: L. Gordon Cooper, M. Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Virgil I. Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald K. Slayton. They were the Mercury Seven, the original Mercury astronauts. They had just participated in some survival training exercises in Nevada in 1960.

A New Year prediction: Google’s shares will hit their highest prices ever and Google will not change any of the following claims about itself:

- We are here to organize the world’s information
- We listen to and care for the users experience
- We invest in innovation with the smartest engineers
- Our advertising platforms with Adwords as the flagship is the best match of publishers, advertisers and audience

I was a smartphone virgin until last week. Well, almost. I had borrowed an Android Samsung Galaxy from time to time to muck around. Other than that, I used to be a proud owner of a Nokia 6100 for the best part of 7 years. It was, and still is, the sturdiest, smallest and lightest candy bar mobile phone ever built.

This week I went from a 128-by-128 pixel 12-bit (4096 colors) LCD display direct to the -read without pausing to breath- a 3.5-inch-diagonal-Multi-Touch-display-with-a-960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi 800:1 contrast ratio 500 cd/m2 max brightness fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating screen. WHOA.

Seven days later after having to borrow a microSIM for the only purpose of activating my iphone, I am finding a few bits particularly surprising things about it. That is all this post is about. A disclaimer: I am very happy with my shiny new toy. I looked forward to owning one and I am overall very satisfied with my purchase.

I was now unfamiliar with Apple and its peculiarities before owning an iphone. I use an iMac at the office. So I cannot claim that not being able to play music files with the open source .ogg format was exactly a surprise. But there are a few quirky things about the phone and/or its operating system that took me by surprise.

Bluetooth: You can only pair your phone to your computer by bluetooth to use the personal hotspot feature, nothing else. So, unless you’re setting up personal hotspot it won’t pair. File transfer by bluetooth is not supported.

Mail: It is not possible to attach files to an email. You may share and send files from other applications but not from Mail.

iTunes: Syncing my music and podcasts files was irritating and confusing. I wrangled against this software for too long before giving up.

Contacts: There is no way to import contacts from a csv file directly into the contacts app on the iphone. You can only import contacts from a csv file into the supported application on your computer like Google or Windows contacts.

Battery: I knew about the short duration of battery charges. This is common to all high-end smartphones. What I didn’t know is that you cannot take with you a spare and charged battery in case your iphone runs out of power and you do not have access to a power main or computer.

Some other quirks are minor, like the fact that it is not possible to delete ‘Stocks’ and ‘Game center’ apps. or add them to groups like any other icons.