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How has the user experience changed in 20 years?

Reading Risks Digest this morning I came across a link to an article comparing a 1986 Mac Plus and a 2007 AMD Dual core. The question posed was how has the massive increase in computing power has changed the speed at which the most commonly performed tasks are performed.

“The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry…”– Henry Petroski

Of course, some of you might already have guessed the outcome, and some might not agree with the tests as presented, but the fact is that the tests actually look pretty fair when you consider what most office workers do with their PCs.

Anyway you can read the article for yourself here on hubpages

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More Filming

We had CBBC come and film us last Monday for a new series starting in the new year. Wonderful World of Weird features a number of reporters travelling around the UK looking for weird and wonderful things to add to the map of the weird.

You’ll have to watch the show to find out if we were judged weird enough, and apparently it airs in February in a 7:30am slot, so you’ll have to be up early.

I’ll put some photos up soon.

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Homeland Security

The US Dept of Homeland Security put together its wonderful threat level avisory system as a result of the undeniably horrific attacks 5 years ago.

As a result, we’re not allowed to take drinks onto planes, we are forced to use plastic cutlery, unless we’re in first class, and a tee shirt is a security risk!

Now, call me a radical thinker, but doesn’t this mean that the terrorists have actually won, they’ve managed to take away a lot of our freedom, certainly in air travel, but are you really going to die as a result of terrorism?

Some of the nice folks over at Wired News have put together a nice survey of the things that threaten ongoing life in the 11 year period 1995 to 2005 and have come up with the following nice little graphic – it really puts things into perspective – especially the fact that being shot by law enforcement is more likely to kill you than terrorism…

S E V E R E
Driving off the road: 254,419
Falling: 146,542
Accidental poisoning: 140,327
H I G H
Dying from work: 59,730
Walking down the street: 52,000.
Accidentally drowning: 38,302
E L E V A T E D
Killed by the flu: 19,415
Dying from a hernia: 16,742
G U A R D E D
Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536
Electrocution: 5,171
L O W
Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949
Terrorism: 3147
Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554
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Mentos and Coke

eepybird have been doing some really fun stuff with Mentos and Diet Coke, and it has just been featured on Mythbusters as well.

Some people have too much ime on their hands – says the man who is writing software to computer control a welly chucking machine 😀

If you’re a Kari Byron fan, she’s just done a spread in FHM

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Scrapheap challenge roadshow again

I had a phone call from RDF media last week, informing me that our team for the second scrapheap challenge roadshow had been accepted, and that we could start building our welly wanger.

20060619Welly/DSC_1077.jpg

This is a different team that entered the Sofa Speedway, and I’m the team captain this time, together with Andy Shaw and Ian Izett, we are building a computer controlled welly chucker, that will have an on-board microcontroller, witha USB interface to a laptop that will perform all the complex calculations that are required to be able to control the distance that the welly will be thrown.

It’s all taking place at The Great Dorset Steam Fair on the 30th August, so we’ve got to get busy with the building and programming, so that we can have enough time to train the artificial intelligence in the control software to the physical aspects of the machine.

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Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow

We got back last night very tired from the filming of the Scrapheap Challenge Roadshow down a Beaulieu.
We all had a really great weekend, thanks to all the Scrapheapers down there – there was a really good atmosphere, and we got to meet some really nice people.
There are a number of galleries of photos uploading at the moment, some may be of interest to some people. I will write a longer article (or get Clairey to) as we have to write something for the newsletter later, but for now you’ll have to make to with pictures of all the wacky vehicles that were there.

Robert Llewellyn was really friendly, even though he appeared to be besieged by autograph hunters all day, Edd China was great, showing a lot of interest in all the vehicles as part of his judging duties. I didn’t get to meet Lisa Rogers, but she looked blooming – if you don’t know what I mean you’ll have to watch the show.

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CentOS threatened with FBI for “hacking” a web site.

A Jerry A. Taylor appears to need to get a clue – despite the fact that he has “22 years in computer systems engineering and operation” , when his hosting provider mussed up, he decided to threaten CentOS, as obviously the fact that the web server was displaying a nice message from them it was their fault.

You really can’t make up stories like this, and this guy is set to become an internet legend.

One of their websites still hasn’t been fixed when I write this.

I actually can’t believe how civil the guys at CentOS kept being in the face of a complete and utter… I would have probably taken them up on thier offer to send in the FBI, and let them be had for wasting police time.

Centos full email exchange

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Really hard interviews.

I was listening to Steve Wright on Radio 2 this afternoon, and he was talking about the problem of finding a job in Japan at the moment. Apparently they have an unemployment problem over there, and are thinking of clever ways in which to narrow the number of applicants for each vacancy.

Interview on top of Mt. Fuji
One company erected a table with 2 interviewers and an oxygen bottle at the top of Mount Fuji, and told the applicants that they have to climb the mountain in order to get to the interview. 11 out of 20 applicants made it to the top of the mountain, for 4 jobs. A story on a business web site about this here.

I doubt if many of my students will be subjected to such bizarre practices, but they may be asked some of the so called “Impossible Questions” – we present some of these at the Gregynog careers weekend, but I ran into a good chapter of a book online which offers some advice here.