Toms View of the World

I’m going to die.

Given that every trip I make to or from work on my bike involves at least 2 near-misses with idiots in cars - I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

To the idiot in the Honda Civic yesterday - Don’t park close to a junction (rule 243), and when you do pull away, look in your mirrors in case there’s a vulnerable cyclist about to pass you (rule 152), and then use your indicators (rule 103). No doubt you were taught to Mirror-Signal-Manouever when you learnt to drive - why don’t you do it?

To the idiot in the Taxi, those road markings mean GIVE WAY. This means you stop. You don’t drive out right in front of the cyclist who is already half-way across the junction.

To the idiot in the Ford Ka - I was going uphill - you pulled onto my side of the road to pass a parked vehicle - why did you not give way to me and force me to take evasive action. Is another persons life really worth saving 10 seconds on the school run? Can you imagine when your child explains to her teacher “Sorry I was late, Mummy killed a cyclist”

I already make the assumption that everyone else on the road is out to kill me, and I ride as defensively as possible - but sometimes it’s just not possible to avoid these morons.

The folks over on the Google Blog have posted a nice article focussing on how the internet has changed communication between friends.

Having kinda grown up around computers and discovering the internet in it’s very early forms at University, I’ve not really noticed much of this - but the truth is, in the last ten to fifteen years communication has taken a very timely change.

15 years ago, if a friend of mine was on holiday on the other side of the world, he’d send a postcard, and I’d get it a few days after his return.

Now, he can just log onto a local wifi network, and update his Facebook status “Live”, and every one of his friends will know exactly what he wants to say in a matter of seconds.

If he wants to send me a message directly, international SMS is also near instant.  I’ve had conversations over SMS without even realising the person I’m txting is on a different continent.

However… (more…)

Well, if you’re one of the seemingly numerous people who beleive that the new Large Hadron Collider at the CERN research centre on the France/Switzerland border is going to create a mini black hole when it’s switched on this afternoon.

It’s just a partical accellerator.  Admittedly a very very big particle accellerator.  Hopefully it might produce some interesting science - but I really don’t think it’s going to suck the planet into a black hole.

Links:

Earth “not at risk” (BBC News)
The Large Hadron Collider Safety (CERN)

(Image from www.cepolina.com)

There’s a new browser joining the war - and while a little lacking (so far) in plugins for things like Del.Icio.us (although, admittedly it has only be out for about 10 minutes as I write this) - Google Chrome is already impressing.

It’s fast.  Really Really fast.  Even with my (half) decent broadband connection, GMail is usually a bit of a slug in Firefox 3 - but in Chrome, it’s like using a desktop mail client.  Seriously.  For an early beta, it’s impressive - I’ve not seen any rendering errors on the sites I’ve visitied so far.

Even now, the rendering engine seems more polished than that of Firefox or IE, this is one beta I’ll be watching closely - and it’s close to becoming my primary browser.  The real test will be tomorrow on my much lower spec’d work PC…  it’s hardly unreasonable for it to be quick on a quad-core machine with 3Gb of RAM - it’s the old 1Ghz Pentium 4 that’ll be the real test!

From The BBC Magazine

““They say every man will have an affair, but I really don’t think mine will.
Actually, I know he won’t”"

and yes, when I read the full background details on the link above, I did have to look up “uxuriousness”

Here’s a nice explanation from the Mythbusters guys showing the difference between a CPU drawing a picture of a face, and a GPU (that’s a dedicated graphics card) doing the same thing…

Needless to say, this is Mythbusters, so over-engineering the final solution kinda goes without saying… but it’s impressive. Especially in the slow-motion…

Video after the jump… (more…)

We’ve all by now no doubt experienced the process of booking with “budget” airlines:

• Flight, Free
• Check-in surcharge - £10
• Checked Luggage Surcharge - £15 per bag
• Online booking surcharge - £5
• Priority boarding surcharge - £10
• Airport Taxes - £60

Seen here is what might be a budget airlines safety annoucement in a few years time…