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  • Jonathan Dann 20:33 on April 18, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Google – Advice to Reduce Carbon Footprint 

    Google Directions

    In keeping with the focus on cutting one’s carbon emissions, and lowering one’s carbon footprint, our well loved search engine is going to far.

    When searching for the best way to travel from New York to London, go to Google’s maps (click the image above) and read their directions, especially number 23. Although driving is recommended while on terra firma, they recommend swimming across the Atlantic! Presumably this will make up for all those nasty emissions we put out during the rest of the year.

    The final kick in the teeth? After swimming for 3,462 miles, you’re fatigued, delerious, dehydrated and hungry, and what do you hear…

    “Bonjour!”
    Ahh, if Google ruled the world.

     

  • Jonathan Dann 14:43 on April 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    DRM-Free Tracks to be Sold on iTunes 

    Gracefulflavor

    I understand why people don’t particularly like DRM on their tracks, but let’s not forget that it allowed the iTS possible. I’m hesistant to hail this is a killer move; but a great option, yes.

    I wonder how long it will take for all the non-DRM tracks to be available over sharing networks like BitTorrent. Call me naïve but I do think that too many people will take advantage of this to get more free music. I know lots will be careful enough to not put them in a shared folder for the world t see, but there’s many stupid people out there.

    I’ll get slated for this, but I like DRM, it has allowed me to get the music I want, simply and cheaply. The iTS enabled me to buy music, rather than paying for overpriced CDs. Having the option to choose your player is great, but I love iPods, and I think its very important that people don’t steal.

    Anyway, if I wanted to put all my stuff on another player I’d burn it and rip it(which would take forever), I’d never share it, I have a conscience. Please don’t think I’m implying everyone who has non-DRM music is a criminal, but there are enough people out there who copy music to damage iTunes sales in the long-run.

    The best part of this is the higher bit-rate of these unprotected tracks. I’ll buy some for that reason alone, but don’t expect to get them off me!

    UPDATE: Just listening to the news on BBC Radio 1, only the biggest radio station in the UK, broadcast worldwide; and what was their headline?

    “Why it will now be a little easier for you to share music with your mates.”

    That’s irresponsible.

     

  • Jonathan Dann 22:08 on March 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Jenga 

    At the end of a long week.
    For those of you who don’t know, I’m training to be a Medical Physicist, and as part of this I had to go to Coventry University to study Anatomy and Physiology.

    Our tutor said that the week was going to be intensive, hellish, too hard, and boring (yes, that’s an Oxford comma: it has it’s place). We all went thinking we were going to hate it, but came out loving it. One of the best parts of this course in most of our minds.

    Oh, and the photo is the leftovers from our last meal in the canteen there before going home. The tower lasted long enough. As physicists, we all know that if you get each bottle in the centre of a pizza box, the tower will hold. This is why we’re not engineers, the theory is good enough for us.

     

    • rob 19:38 on April 15, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      hehe, nice, i was wondering if this picture had gone up…

      also, loving the oxford comma :-)

  • Jonathan Dann 19:08 on March 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Do you know Kung-Fu? 

    This guy does! Watch this one first.

    Then Part 2.

    Why is it whenever it gets close to exams, there arises something so awesome that I won’t want to revise. You’ll not thank me for this, you’ll get addicted to playing it (read the hints at the bottom of the page if it gets too hard).

     

  • Jonathan Dann 01:56 on March 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Klingon Language in Mac OS 10.4? 

    Klingon Language in 10.4

    Can somebody please tell me why I have KLINGON language support on my computer! Well, when I turned it on, no programs had a Klingon interface, but still. I think someone somewhere has way too much time on their hands. And yes, the reason I know that it says Klingon is because I used to watch Star Trek avidly, like you wouldn’t believe. I’m kinda glad those days are gone now, I still appreciate it but one day I just stopped watching. I think the sun was shining outside, so I went out.

     

  • Jonathan Dann 16:02 on March 15, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    This is Going too Far 

    I was sent this link by a friend of mine, and I have really no words to adequately describe how amazed I am. Shock, awe, and sadness don’t even come close to it. If this is really a cross-section of the average US citizen, the mind boggles. How so many people can be totally ignorant of the outside world is beyond me.

    In all seriousness, I know that many Americans are smart people, but if I were one of them I’d be embarrassed at this.

    View the video

     

    • Klyne 02:39 on March 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      I especially liked the part where the old man (who I suppose is a hard-ass republican) said:

      “We’ll make a big blast crater out of the f**ckng middle east”

      Hilarious!

    • kimona1 18:49 on March 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Oh. My. God.

  • Jonathan Dann 20:28 on March 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Chinese Paintings 

    I thought I’d like to share this with the outside world. I haven’t blogged for a while, much work has kept me busy and I hate being in front of my computer at the moment, even though its a pretty Mac. It’s a bad sign when you’ve sat in the same place typing for so long (feels like weeks) that when you stop you don’t know what to do with yourself.

    Well the Chinese Government in their infinite wisdom have decided that the appropriate re-distribution of the people’s money is to paint a mountain green! I invite you to read this. My favourite part is the bewildered local forestry official saying:

    “This is an order from above,” she said. “You should ask the leader from above. I don’t have any information on this.”

    They just did their job. Maybe the Chinese want the American satellites operators to think they are off-setting their carbon emissions.

     

  • Jonathan Dann 12:44 on February 11, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Snap Preview Disabled! 

    I found this thing so annoying, so I disabled it. No longer will popups appear all over this site, all hail the wordpress settings!

    Anyone else who wants to, its in
    Dashboard > Presentation > Extras

    Rebel against stupid web 2.0 things that drive you insane!

     

  • Jonathan Dann 18:27 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Global Warming Fiasco in US School 

    School Board Folds After One Idiot Parent Objects to Global Warming Video

    Please read the above. This incensed me so much that I had to write my own commentary on the subject below:

    Let me make something clear from the outset, I’m a Christian. Now thats out of the way, I’m also a Physicist in academia. Do I have any porblems reconciling the two? Not really, I believe that God has given me an equiring mind and senses that are the only Earthly things I can trust. As a result, when I’m experimenting I must trust my senses, which tell me that a raidoactive isotope has the half-life it does. The amount of the isotope in my possesion now easily inferrs the amount there was in previous time; now if this isotope happens to be carbon-14, it is simple to find out how long ago my coal sample was formed. This coal used to be a tree and would have had died with a relatively standard amount of carbon-14 in it, so the amount there is now tells me how old it is, if that is greater that 14,000 years, then the world is older. It’s very simple.

    Global warming is a scientifically corraborated and accepted fact, our senses show that it’s happening, and will get worse if left unchecked. When Christians argue that global warming is the manifestation of the predictions in Revelation that, as put by Frosty Hardison, ‘everything will burn up’, and therefore should be ignored, irritates me greatly. Should Christians disregard looking after our planet because we’re living in the end times? I heartily diagree for two reasons: firstly, we have no proof that we are living in the ‘end times’ as described in the Bible, Christians have continually pointed to world events as indications of this, and we are still here; secondly, I cannot believe that God, who created this Universe (in seven days or over billions of years) would want us to disregard our responsibilty to look ofter the gift he has given us. Who can possibly be so sure that we are living in the end times that they are so prepared to risk leaving a broken world for their children? The movement of Evangelical Chritians in the US, and somewhat in the UK too, would appear to show that members of the Church are so self-confident that this is a risk they are willing to take. It’s embarrasing that I may inadvertantly be lumped in with thaat crowd of small-minded, unquestioning people.

     

    • DaveK 18:59 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Well said, thank you

    • Jonathan Dann 19:08 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      You’re welcome DaveK.

    • outolumo 22:33 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Not going into quiet presumptions in your C-14 logic I personally think that a look in the night sky (with some information of elementary astronomy) gives a way less denied idence of the old age of the Earth.

      I too agree, that counting that these are the end times is just about the greatest folly of all – we might have a reason to HOPE that. But our standing orders are to take care of the Earth, not destroy it.

      Having said that, I also doubt that whatever we do there might be little left of the world as we know it when all this mess is over. Let’s hope there still are future generations.

    • Jonathan Dann 22:36 on January 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      I know carbon dating is more involved than the way I’ve decribed it, but it was just to give an example, and not everyone would be able to grasp a full explanation. My minor at uni was in Cosmology, so I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that! Thanks for your thoughts.

    • (((Billy))) 23:18 on May 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Well said. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly elected officials will knuckle under to right-wing ‘crusaders.’ But if a liberal has an objection, they are vilified in many different ways.

      And for the earth’s age, I believe comparing potassium/argon ratios, or lead isotope ratios work’s quite well for the older dates.

  • Jonathan Dann 21:11 on January 9, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Macworld 2007 

    Well, I have to say it was a let-down. After all the rumours of upgraded Mac computers, more on the upcoming Leopard operating system and new iLife and iWork applications, the keynote at the expo in San Francisco was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone looks excellent, and seems to be the phone I’ve been wanting for such a long time. Finally we have one that is intuitive and simple to use, but does so much you want it to do. The touch screen is a fantastic addition, and the only way to allow a complicated phone to be operated. I don’t mind about the price of it, or the availability in the fourth-quarter of 2007 here in the UK, but I was expecting more about the Mac. The Apple TV isn’t bad too, but I would never need anything like that, especially since the rumoured TV and Movie download service from iTunes in the UK didn’t come to fruition.

    For a computer company, I think many people will be disappointed at the lack of computing innovation at the expo, and the loss of ‘Computer’ from the the name ‘Apple Computer Inc.’ may, for some, hail the beginning of the end for the Mac. I’m not so pessimistic, but I would definitely be loathed to return to using Windows after 3 years of an iMac doing everything I wanted to do, and more.

     

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