Sponsor's Message

I don't know if they still do this, but when I was a kid at school, our science teacher showed us how reactive metals such as sodium, lithium and potassium are by dropping a small speck of such metals into a dish of water. The results were impressive with lots of noise, steam and flames.

Now read about the guy who bought 1.5Kgs of sodium on eBay and dumped it into a lake.

Designing and implementing a game that is simple enough to be downloaded in seconds as part of a webpage, and which is challenging enough to be fun to play is not easy. Here's one that I think is pretty good -- it's apparent simplicity belies its addictiveness (Flash plugin required).

In the name of public safety our society often places bans or restrictive conditions on the ownership of items that are dangerous. Guns, cars, explosives -- there's a long list of things that fall into this category. Sometimes however, even the most seemingly innocent things can pose a huge threat. Why not join the movement lobbying to ban screwdrivers.

Readers Say (updated irregularly) From Yesterday... Rating websites... - Peter xtramsn... - Mike Have Your Say

Weekly Miscellany
It's the end of another week and my desk is littered with a million loose ends.

The somewhat belated review of the Dynalink Rural modem is almost done -- and I'm sure there are plenty of readers who will be interested in the results. I've actually been waiting for my phone lines to "noisy-up" a bit and the rain we had a couple of days ago seems to have done the trick nicely.

For those of you who have always wondered what Aardvark's castle looks like, you're in luck.

In order to fund the completion of my X-Jet engine I've decided to realise the capital I've got tied up in my house. As a result, I'm putting it on the market at a give-away price -- but there's a catch -- you've got to let me stay on for another two years while I finish that work (and the two books I'm writing).

If you're interested -- or just want to have a nosy around, check out the "house for sale" pages.

Now some advance info on the Tivo-like PC project...

I've come to the conclusion that there's a lot of really bad software on the market and that companies which make hardware are least competent when it comes to writing the software needed to properly use it.

I'm amazed at how truly awful of the Windows-based commercial PVR (personal video recording) software I've looked at really is. There's a huge market there for someone to come up with an application that actually works as advertised and can be used without constant head-scratching.

Of course the hardware vendors don't help much by producing flaky drivers, but surely someone can do better than most of the stuff I've been looking at.

However, fear not, there are some little gems out there that make it all worth-while. First impressions of the Hauppauge hardware is quite favourable and I should have had time to get right into the guts of it over the weekend.

The Linux PVR options are (unfortunately) pretty few and far between. What's more, they're not the sort of thing your grandmother is going to be able to install and run without having a seizure.

I'm still confident however, that the outcome of this project will be a system that will free you from the burden of advertising and cruddy videotapes forever. Already CDRW disks have replaced VHS tapes around here and I'm discovering that the practical maximum number of reliable rewrites (30-40) is actually quite a bit less than the figures advertised.

More next week...

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