Ben ik nou gek? Word ik gewoon oud? Of ligt het toch niet helemaal aan mij?

Now take a look at this: Mike Davey built a Turing Machine. And what a beauty it is… What? Don’t know what a Turing machine is? And you don’t know who Alan Turing is? Well no one special: he just happened to kickstart automated computing by formalizing algorithms , computability and programmable machines as we know it today. That’s all. Jeez what’s wrong with you?

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Here are some more videos of different programs the Turing Machine is executing.

Oh my goodness, take a look at this. You like to play the old fashioned boardgames like Settlers of Catan? Yet you don’t want to appear as the oldtimer that you actually are? Maybe you should go OLED like some researchers of the Queens University did. Digital game pieces rock the world. Check the article on cnet and watch this great video. They use projection in the video but you’ll get the idea

This will make a lot of games more exciting… well except for solving a puzzle since you can just throw the pieces on the table and let the oleds display the image correctly.

Oh My Funny Goodness… take a look at this. As a huge PacMan fan I love everything that has the friendly yellow round gobbler on it… but to be honest… this is a “little” over the top. Still… it’s cool…

More pictures can be found at Zu Zu Top. What? You want to play PacMan now? Here you go!

Whahahaa… nice. The EFF (electronic frontier foundation) has filed a request at the DMCA to allow jailbreaking of Apple’s iPhone. Users must be able to install any software they wish.. not just the software apple approves of.
Just this week apple removed any voice-based application from the App Store to protect their exclusive deal with AT&T because it “duplicates features that come with the iPhone”. This just proves the necessity of people having the right to install any software they want.
Soooo Apple had to respond to the DMCA why jailbreaking would be bad…. well.. hold on tight.. according to Apple the iPhone is not just a phone… it’s a weapon of mass-disruption. I call “FUD“

Now this has to be the ultimate mod for a macbook. EdsJunk cracked his MacBook open and added a second monitor to it. So instead of the dull backlit apple logo you can now display anything on it. Here’s a video of the result… oh boy…

Mijn goede collega Harry stuurde onderstaande foto van het display van zijn onboard navigatie systeem voorzien van een logisch analyse.

Dat is nog een eens Pech op de Weg !

Omtrek van de aarde is +/- 42000 KM
Dus….
Ik moet nog ongeveer 100 keer een rondje rond de aarde en dan kom ik tussen Laren en de Vechtbrug in een file van 8 KM en….
er is geen alternatieve route.

Schat ik kom wat later !

Today I talked about how cool it would be if you could have all your books on an ebook reader with my friends Karel and Bas. It’s definitely something that we would love to have. Amazon just released the Kindle 2 ebook reader. However that would require you to carry around another device. But if you are the lucky owner of an Apple iPhone you can get the Kindle reader for free on your iPhone. Matthew Miller wrote a nice article on this and has some beautiful screenshots. This seems pretty useable but unfortunately the iPhone will drain its power while on a Kindle only a page change requires power. Here’s a nice video of the Kindle 2 and the Kindle software on the iPhone…

It seems the ‘home computer’ of the old days is making a comeback. Asus is pushing its EEE line of small embedded computers. After the EEE netbook they also released an EEE desktop computer. The new product in line is an EEE media player, presented at CES 2009. A computer integrated into a keyboard (like the homecomputers of way back when) but this model also features a small display.

Here’s a nice preview of the product.

Har har har… you might think the IT industry at large may have learned a small lesson from the millennium bug (Y2K bug). Well most professionals probably did but Microsoft still manages to screw up bigtime. In this case the Zune 30GB version has a leap-year bug. It will not start up properly due to the bug. Fortunately there is a fix at hand… Just let it run out of battery capacity. Recharge the battery and start it after noon GMT and your Zune will be fine. You got to love those Microsoft products.

With the Zune you get the full Microsoft experience. Think of continues thrill and exitement the Zune is offering you… is it going to work or will it blow up in my face? It’s like rebooting after a blue screen of death… you’ll never know whether your system will successfully restart or not. Microsoft gives just that little more excitement…

Do you still feel comfortable with Microsoft products being used in nuclear submarines?… Happy New Year, enjoy it as long as it lasts.

Oh this is nice. Some hackers have been able to boot Linux on their iPhone. A lot of the iPhone hardware is not supported (yet) but it boots and you can enter shell commands (using USB). Nice hack…

Today I got a link from my good buddy Emiel about a wasp sucking machine. It turns out the inventor (Matthias Wandel) has a website with a lot of strange contraptions and weird thingies that he built. I must admit I highly admire the creativity and craftsmanship of Matthias. He reminds me a lot of Wallace (from Wallace and Gromit). Not convinced? How about his Jenga Pistol or his Binary Marble Adding Machine or how about his 1-pin dot matrix printer? Check out his website it is really great. If there is ever going to be a MacGyver award it should go to Matthias Wandel. From his creations you can see this incredibly cool guy combines craftmanship with a lot of humor. I’ll be spending a lot of time on his site.

Forget about the blackberries and the iPhones of this world. It’s old technology. Within a few weeks anyone using an iPhone will look like a dinosaur, the blackberry people will feel like fossils. New technology is here, baby! Make way for the new generation. The new generation of mobile computing and communication will be Smart Mobile Utility Telephone or SMUT for short. You’ll find an image of my new SMUT below.

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Now what would make your workspace a lot more fun? There is plenty of gadgets, toys and other geek stuff on sale to put on your desk. Some of these things are downright amusing nevertheless they start to bore me after a certain amount of time. The only thing I had on my desk that never ever bored me was this super cool plasma light. Take a look at the picture and image you see this in full motion…

The beams slowly find their way on the inside of the bulb. The beam walks a path for a while and then dies. New beams will replace the one that just passed away. When you put your fingers on the bulb the beams are attracted to the spot where you touch the bulb. When you do that long enough it will burn the bulb and your finger at the same time. Nothing beats this plasma light until I came across this ubergeek desktop thingy on YouTube. It is, of course, Japanese. I don’t know if you can purchase it anywhere or what it costs but I think I like this. It is not very well suited for the workplace since it requires you to play music but still, when you do play music… Ah just watch this video.

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How’s that for a lucky bastard. Yesterday I got my brand new Apple MacBook Pro to replace my somewhat aged, but still well functioning Dell Inspiron 9100. My employer got me the 17″ version with the high resolution screen (1920 by 1200). It has plenty of memory (4GB) which might come in handy for all my virtualization needs. This is my first Mac and already I’m loving it to death.

First of all the hardware. This is such an elegant machine. I used a Dell inspiron 9100 which has a height of 5 cm. People always thought the Dell came with a builtin docking station. I’ve had my share of mockery but the Dell was fast with a desktop Pentium4 3.2 Ghz. Now this Mac is from another planet. It’s height is only around 1.5 cm. Sure it is bigger since it is a 17″ machine but it is all pixels, baby, just what I need.

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