High def radio

High-definition radio seems to be an interesting but maybe little talked about technology. Probably because everyone talks about satellite radio instead. But it essentially means excellent quality radio can be sent through the same analogue signal as radio now. Except many more channels can fit through. The killer app is "multicasting" in this way, apparently. A real potentially great broadcasting medium for podcasts.

The main market of course is car radio systems. With the amount of processing power and connectivity in cars nowadays, you can imagine the possibilities of turning your car into a studio within which you can record and upload your podcast while on the move, and receive and listen to others on the move, or through high def radio. Or something.

Talking about evolution

I can't wait to get my hands on The Sims and SimCity legend Will Wright's latest game, Spores. In it, you get to create your whole worlds and the species that inhabit it. Watch the subsequent carnage or creativity.

Home robots by 2010

We have always wanted a robot at home. Aibo is great, but he requires a heck of a lot of attention. He also runs out of power quite quickly. Not like children. Anyway, here, according to Engadget, Toyota has promised home helper humanoid robots that can serve tea or take care of the elderly available within the next five years. Imagine the Flickr streams!

Fat lady

Fat lady,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

A week since my last post - a record. We went to the seaside this weekend over the Bank Holiday. Weston-super-mare to be precise. Went for a walk along the beach and took the kids* down the pier to the amusements. And very amusing they were too.

Lots of sand, wind, donkeys, ice cream, fish 'n chips, frisbee, rides, and some cats. Good time. Check out the photos here.

Back to work tomorrow. Oh how I look forward to the London Tube with people sitting on you and leaning on you, and smelling, and knocking against your knees with their Selfidges bags.

*Not our kids.

Me, me, me

This is NOT my cat and it's NOT my picture...,
originally uploaded by Katie Bug.

This cracked me up this one. Me, me, me!! Hug me now!

RFID Used Clothing

RFID Via Engadget
Now that's what I call social networking! Stick a RFID (radio frequency ID) tag in your trousers, stick 'em in a charity shop and let people access the history of those trousers, stored in the tag, online. The rationale is that people who have similar tastes in clothing probably have similar tastes. Full stop. Now if you could then link that in somehow to Flickr and Google maps, you'd be sorted!

Blograffiti art

There are some quite impressive sketches on the Blograffiti Wall if you look through all the actual graffiti and the penises.

Catty lovies

catty lovies,
originally uploaded by cakie.

That is pure love for you.

Naughty thing

Me. Yes I am a naughty thing. It has been 4 days since my last post. It has been a bonkers week. Mind meltdown. Busy at work. Late nights. Lack of sleep. I am even at work now - it is Saturday. But I am just about to leave.

So I shall no doubt find some kitty therapy later tonight to blog.

Big Brother

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! She chortled in her joy.
I just found out that the channel in the UK which carries 24 hour coverage of Big Brother, E4, is to be aired for free on the digital TV platform, Freeview. Which we have.

We have always had E4 and were in a dilemma when we moved here and only had freeview. This is Good News, since by all accounts this years contestants are a bunch of weirdos.

Barbeque range face

Barbecue range face,
originally uploaded by chidorian.

This Lifeless Face made me feel a bit sad! He has been burnt and it looks like he may be shedding some BBQ tears. Aww.

Everybody Yell

Everybody Yell,
originally uploaded by What What.

This is what happens when you get bored.

Posing

The next day...,
originally uploaded by fofurasfelinas.

This is a most sophisticated feline in a pose which oozes total laidbackness. Typical.

Best photo in the world

DSC_4619,
originally uploaded by junku.

I absolutely love this photo by Junku on Flickr. It captures everything that a cat is about in such amazing detail and pure focus - in more ways than one. Simply brilliant. Click on it to appreciate it in its full Cat Glory.

Human or doll?

DSCN1233,
originally uploaded by GriXx.

You decide.

Google Learns How to Play Dodgeball - Yahoo! News

Google Learns How to Play Dodgeball - Yahoo! News
An example of the online and the offline becoming interconnected. Google has bought a US social networking site Dodgeball.com.

Here's what they say:

New York-based Dodgeball.com formally launched last year as an expansion of a grad-school project started at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. The service lets users "check in" their location at a bar, club, restaurant, or other local gathering spot, then transmits that information as a text message to the mobile phones of selected other Dodgeball.com users in the area.

We are going to be so connected soon that life will become like the visions of cyberspace and earthspace combining seamlessly in some scifi I have read. I can't wait. But it will profoundly change us and the way we think. I hope we can get our heads around it. Maybe we will have grown another one anyway by then, a la Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Microsoft, Massachusetts Shut Down Spam Ring - Yahoo! News

Microsoft, Massachusetts Shut Down Spam Ring - Yahoo! News I actually think that companies like Microsoft actively "helping the authorities" to close down large spam gang rings is a good thing. If it also means that they will help authorities more in a similar way to catch malicious virus writers - like phishers - then that would be even better. Net security firms doing that is all very well. But one could argue that those firms have a reason not to eradicate viruses altogether. It is what they are mostly about.

Stare

Stare,
originally uploaded by 18mm.

If looks could kill.

Pussy power

Washing,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

This is Sibsi. She is the fluffiest and prettiest cat I ever saw. She belongs to my friend's mum. She sent me this picture and I asked if I could put it online. It has now had about 35 views in the space of about 8 hours plus 4 comments. Pulling power!

Robot building

ilestmignon,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

This robot head is in S/U station Warschauer Str in Berlin, says We Make Money Not Art. The building obviously looks like the head and shoulders of a giangantic robot.

Cool. The coolest bit is that people can look through a special box inside the building and their eyes are projected out of the robot! Heh.

Summer Fairy

Summer Fairy,
originally uploaded by elfintech.

And lo and behold there is a Flickr Fairie group.
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Mushrooms

Mushrooms,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

I found these in our garden the other day. They pop up every so often. Nice to have a bit of Nature around the place. Especially in London. I waited for fairies.*

*I wonder if there is a fairies group on Flickr.

Emperorbenedict

emperorbenedict,
originally uploaded by aglets.

Interesting. I thought he reminded me of someone. By the way that is not an unreligious thing to say in my mind. And if you have never watched Star Wars you won't know what I am talking about anyway.

Cosy, warm and uh..smelly.

cosy, warm and uh..smelly.,
originally uploaded by |_in|\|ek{ }.

Heh. Perfect for pussies.

Paris Hilton and Flickr

I swear I was just washing my hands!,
originally uploaded by Paris the Heiress.

Paris Hilton is just getting every darned where online. First her sidekick penchant*, then podcasting, now she has a Flickr account. No really.

*Actually, her sex video was her first entry online I guess. But I refuse to link to that.

Buddies

buddies,
originally uploaded by liberalmind1012.

Cats are unbelievable posers. Far more so than dogs I would argue.

Devil Duck's Diagramatic Dictionary

These are fun. Diagramatic Dictionary. Pictures really do say 1,000 words.

Genealology

Harold + Marion Skinner,
originally uploaded by snapscot.

I was flicking through Everyone's photos on Flickr* when I came across some nice black and white shots. I realised they are in fact old family pictures that have been scanned. But what a Great Idea.

We have tonnes of old albums, like everyone else, full of amazing photos from Life Abroad. What seems like a First Lifetime for me.

I bet loads of people still have not got around to digitising their entire back catalogue. If they have, Flickr is a great tool to share them. I know that there of course are loads of sites doing online album space etc. But the beauty of Flickr is that someone like me can stumble upon them and imagine an entire family history based on the photos.

*Everyone's photos is a constantly changing photostream because it is essentially all the photos that have been uploaded by the community recently.

Catcrobatic

DSC_4641,
originally uploaded by junku.

Junku's cats are at it again with their incredible Catcrobatics. The camera action is very good too. Check out Junku's photostream.

Lysander the Alien

Lysander the Alien,
originally uploaded by Lorraine Marie.

Proof - is any more was needed - that Cats Are Aliens. That, or maybe too much catnip in this case.

Milk money

under my feet.,
originally uploaded by cordell.

Times are bad for some pussies.

Cow and chicken

cow and chicken,
originally uploaded by snailbooty.

Cow and Chicken are part of Snailbooty's photostream on Flickr. Lots of odd characters here. I suspect it is someone who has a studio. And art stuff. And talent. And probably a nice little business doing this kind of thing all day. Nice.

Biography of the day - Blair

Since he has squeaked back into parliament with a small majority, here is the Encyclopedia Britannica's biography of the day on Tony Blair. He went to my school don't you know.

Naked cats. Aliens.

Gatitos,
originally uploaded by Pablo Corral.

I think these are the kind of cats that Norm Augustinus, an Offbeat Writer from the US has.

I have been listening to his podcasts which are very amusing and make me laugh out loud on the tube, forcing people to move gently away from me.

Check them out here. They are Funny.

But these cats. Are they really aliens? They are strange.

Election Night. Exciting.

_41113935_blair203ap,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

Watching the live coverage of the UK General Election. Blugg and I voted at about 2120. Polling closed at 2200. It was our first vote together. Aww.

Will probably stay up until about 0200 to watch it. By then we should know who is going to win. If this was America though, you'd stay up until then, go to bed thinking you knew for sure what the result would be. Then you would wake up and the result would be completely different.

You never know. We might wake up tomorrow to find Sooty is our new Prime Minister.

Bluggcast

Check out the latest podcast from Blugg and Doctoe - the Aliens who love technology and cats.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lifeless face

face 10,
originally uploaded by _boris.

I am loving this lifeless face - the front of a car - from Boris on the Lifeless Faces Flickr group. Loads more by him, and lots of door nobs - they were always my childhood friends.

Need for graphs

loglog-contacted vs contacts,
originally uploaded by GustavoG.

Flickr's GustavoG has been at it again, compiling graphical representations of the Flickrverse. I think they are great. This set of graphs represent people's contacts relationships on Flickr.

As a lapsed human/social/cultural geographer I am endlessly fascinated by mapping and naming and what people do with New Territorities. It is the desire to know and to name and maybe there is something about power in there somewhere. Certainly power gets "given" in a sense to those top people who might have zillions of contacts and who feature on the maps and graphs. Does that make people feel more powerful?

Giant inflatable screens

9895782824624335,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

I want one. Badly. Wait, I need $10,000 and a pool first. I'll get there.

THEN I can get one of these... A SuperScreen Outdoor Theater System 13-foot by 16-foot inflatable screen with portable DVD player, dual 15-inch speakers, and a DLP projector. Via Engadget.

Shadow play

shadow play,
originally uploaded by akimba.

Mysterious cats of the night.

Dinos in love

paper_curtain4,
originally uploaded by dishpantheism.

A great little story of love, companionship and betrayal in the form of a Flickr photostream using... er... plastic dinosaurs.

Now don't cheat and go to the last photo to see how it ends.

iPod Shuffle covers

charteroakrags,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

I just bought two of these. Not for my iPod Shuffle. I don't have one of those, stupid.

That is what they are designed for, but they will fit my no-name ebay special MP3 player from Hong Kong that Blugg bought for me. It has 1Gb on board, plays and records FM, MP3, Wavs and has a nice OLED display. Now I won't have to worry about someone snatching it from my neck.

Garden fun

Garden,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

So now I have done the Grown Up Thing and started to spend my money on items such as Garden Furniture.

I think the new table and chairs, at which I shall eat Eggs Benedict, Drink Coffee and Wine, and Read the Shit Newspapers, are well worth the money already. I have just come in after sitting out there during today and this evening. Beats sitting in front of the telly. I have my radio out there.

And my herbs and other new plants. Discovered one of them - which I only just bought last week - had a mammoth, and I mean mammoth fly infestation. At first I thought it was just shadow or something. Then I realised it was a swarming mass of incubating FLIES. I have since annihilated them. It almost made me boak up my scrambled eggs.

Durrrrhhhhh!

Durrrrhhhhh!,
originally uploaded by tygress_janie.

Ha ha. I have just stumbled upon the Cats on Catnip group on Flickr. This one just needs to go straight to the Priormeowry. A terrible mess.*

The shameless debauchery of it. Tsk.

Hey. I have just had a great idea. Maybe we should start to grow catnip in the garden in an effort to lure all the neighbourhood pussies into the Party Garden.

*Kind of the feline equivalent of snorting cocaine off a minor celeb's tits

WEEE man

WEEE man,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

I love the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronics) Man scultpure that is currently on show in London before it moves off down to the Eden Project. It is a 7m-high, 3.3-tonne giant designed to show just how greedy and wasteful we all our with the white and shiny things that are supposed to make us happier.

Fun to spot the crap that contitutes its body. I can't wait until it comes alive and tramples us all with its hob rings and aerials.

Happy?

Linda da mamãe!!,
originally uploaded by _Ika_.

Er...Not happy.

Jenga stalemate

Jenga stalemate,
originally uploaded by The Kitten's Toe.

We had a Jenga stalemate tonight. That has never happened to me before. But I think my friends were cheating by making sure it was all steady...

That's two nights in a row we have played Jenga.