I’m sitting in Costa Coffee in Glasgow and I’ve just experienced the most disturbing noise I’ve heard in ages. The most annoying, ear bleeding alarm beep, pounding my ear drums to the point where I had to put my fingers in my ears to alleviate the pain. Through the whole experience, nobody batted qn eye lid. Not a squeak.
The staff seemed completely oblivious to the whole thing, they continued serving customers although they could barely hear each other. Customers continued to drink their coffee, as if totally unable to feel the pain in their eardrums. A woman casually moved outside to use her mobile phone as if moving outside a nightclub.
What has the world come to? Have we become oblivious to alarms? Apparently on women’s self defence courses the first thing they teach you is to shout fire not help. Aparrently nobody will help if you shout help, but they will if you shout fire. How often do you hear a car alarm go off and walk obliviously by? Have you ever stopped to investigate a burglar alarm going off? Are you supposed to call the police in those situations?
Why do we still have alarms if we ignore them? Would an alarm going off stop you breaking into a car or a house? Would a personal attack alarm stop you attacking someone? Have we become alarm saturated?
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Sent from my Treo
I’ve just discovered a nifty wee gadget on the Good Energy (new window) energy saving page. It’s called an Electisave and it helps you to save electricity.
It works like this. Firstly, you clip a sensor onto the power cable that comes into your house, next to your electricity meter. Then you pop the batteries in the mobile reader. Done, that’s it set up. It works a bit like an electricity speedometer, it tells you how much electricity you’re using at that time (technically it’s updated every 6 seconds, but hey, let’s not split hairs).
So, say for example you turn off a light, you’ll see how much your electrcity usage drops by, and the Electrisave will even work out how much money you’re spending or saving at the same time. Parents, great way to see when the kids have got their TVs off when they’re supposed to be in bed!
So, you think your tv doesn’t use that much juice, get yourself an Electrisave (new window) and find out!
I can’t quite believe it, but I think I’ve just upgraded porridge. I know, amazing as it sounds, it might actually be true!
The recipe is simple, just follow these easy, 4 minute steps…
1) Pour some porridge oats into a bowl
2) Add some water
3) Microwave for 2 minutes
4) Stir
5) Microwave for a further minute
6) Pour raisins and stir
7) Enjoy…
Ahh, breakfast at 3pm, the life I lead… 
Good Energy, the UK’s only 100% renewable energy supplier have a great little page on their web site with some really easy tips to save money on your electricity. Check it out here (new window).
If you pay a premium for renewable energy, you can probably save that premium by rationalising your energy consumption. Or in other words, turn your lights off when you’re not in and have more cold hard cash to go to the pub / shopping!
I’ve just posted a couple of new FAQs, one on BitTorrent and one on my recommended BitTorrent client Azureus, check them out if you’re into that sort of thing!
Awww, I thought my mummy would finally start reading my blog if I could force her to see it every time she used Google (cue Dr Evil voice: moohahahah), but alas, Google’s new personalised homepage service is not available in the UK yet.
Google have launched a service which allows you to see the news you want, the weather in your area, any new Gmails (I might have made that word up!), even specific RSS feeds, all on the Google search home page.
You can add your own collection of bookmarks, which I’ve always thought would be a great idea. If all your bookmarks are online, you can access them from anywhere, any time, with or without your PC on. Makes perfect sense to me, might have to look into online bookmark sites.
Ahh well, bring on the UK version so I can have my blog appear on mummy’s search page…
Oops, almost forgot, to play with the personalised homepage service visit http://www.google.com/ig (new window) and for a How To on wikiHow click here (new window).
I was just reminded today of two fantastic web sites for coders and software developers. ScriptLance (new window) and RentACoder (new window) work along similar lines.
You can register either as a coder or a buyer. As a buyer you input the details of a project you have, in some detail, and then invite coders to give quotes to complete the work. As a coder, you look through the list of live projects and provide quotes for the ones that fit your skill set. The web sites even handle payment for you, and some offer an escrow service, so the money is held by a third party while the project is being completed, so the buyer can’t run off and not pay and the coder can’t get paid and not deliver.
Ahh, the life of a coder. A laptop on the beech, enter a few quotes, write a bit of code, sit back and watch the dollars roll in…
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