Stupid Bets and Drunken Challenges

Posted on September 19th, 2005 in Books and Films, Personal by Jim Prince

Yes Man

It was my Birthday on Friday and amongst my presents was a book by Danny Wallace called Yes Man.

I am now beginning to build up a sizable collection of books based on events following the antics of people who take on stupid bets or drunken challenges.

It all started with Tony Hawks book Round Ireland with a Fridge. This was followed by Playing the Moldovans at Tennis and One Hit Wonderland.

I’ve also read Are You Dave Gorman? by, well, Dave Gorman as well as Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure.

Whilst all of these books were good they are beginning to feel a bit familiar since the general theme is always the same. Tony/Dave/Danny takes on stupid challenge, Tony/Dave/Danny gets into several embarrassing situations, Tony/Dave/Danny has life changing experience.

I think that maybe it’s time for a new genre, but what?


Stuff and Nonsense

Posted on September 12th, 2005 in General, Personal by Jim Prince

Because "a static blog is a dying blog" here are some random bits and pieces that have caught my attention this week.

Apple have a new iPod in the diminutive form of the iPod nano. Fills a gap in the range nicely and looks great. It reminded me of the iPod Flea spoof.

I’ve been playing about with Windows Vista and VMWare Workstation. Visit Talis Infrablog for more details.

Engadget has a great post on 1980s Technology. Check out the first Sony Discman with a staggering price of ¥49,800 when it was first released.

A very funny flash annimation has been doing the rounds. You can watch ‘The very model of a modern labour minister : a tribute to charles clarke and his id cards’ here.

And finally Issue Ten of The Fig is a Blogging Special, "Nice One".


What’s that ringing?

Posted on September 8th, 2005 in Technology, Work by Jim Prince

Sparc 5I just found this quote from an old Amazon press release.

"When Amazon opened shop in July 1995, IT staffers set up a bell to ring every time a book order reached Ernie, the sole Sun Microsystems SPARCStation 5 box that served Amazon’s Web site."

It’s a good job they don’t still use the same system otherwise they’d all be deaf.

Interestingly Talis’ website also ran on a SPARCStation 5 when I joined the company in the late 90’s. At the time it ran Solaris 2.5.1 and Netscape Enterprise Server.

We moved to LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP) a few years back. Although, we do still have a couple of SPARC 5’s in service! They were great machines in their day.


Barbecued workbench

Posted on September 1st, 2005 in Personal by Jim Prince

WorkbenchI recently had the spectacularly stupid idea of using a disposable barbecue on a wooden workbench. I realise that this was not my finest hour, as I’m sure the photograph will testify.

Luckily the fire brigade wasn’t required and I’ve managed to replace the burnt wooden clamps with some spare MDF I had lying around. It’s just a shame I didn’t have anything to cut it on!