From September 2005

dataCloud

dataCloud

Found this cool little data visualisation [via infosthetics] called dataCloud which “displays the live weather conditions of major cities across the globe simultaneously. The information is gathered from airports all over the world and updated several times a day.

It maps the weather conditions onto each city’s name. The type size relates to visibility, the color to temperature, the transparency to Humidity. They move with the speed and direction of their wind and their atmospheric pressure is applied as friction to the movement.”

People have submitted photos from all over the world which are displayed on the background. It’s a really neat idea which is mesmerising to watch but possibly limited in practical application. Check out the Artificial Tourism site for more info!

World Time Zone Map

If like me you’re often left scratching your head trying to figure out what time it is in xyz country so that you know you’re not going to phone someone in the middle of the night or wondering why they are taking so long to reply to an email then help is at hand…

World Time Zone Map – Simple colourful map (see above), my favourite!
Time Ticker – Snazzy flash world map with selectable time regions
World Time Live – Basic but functional
World Clock – Textual customisable display of time offsets

So there you have it – no more excuses for calling friends/colleagues at 2am!

Liberty Interrupted

Finally after three weeks of rather non-stop living I’ve had a chance to stop and inhale! I really don’t want to let the site fall by the wayside so I’ll be making a concerted effort to try and keep up with a few posts a week from now on hopefully.

I would go into some detail about what I’ve actually been doing recently but then I’d have to kill you… or you’d simply die of boredom! Sufficed to say it involved sitting on the beach, fusion and absolutely no sand or nuclear power. I’ve probably learned more in these past days than in a whole year of university but then again maybe this is the beginning of rose-tinting the past!

Docklands

I’m working in London’s Docklands area, very close to Canary Wharf which has an impressive complex below it full of shops and restaurants, most of which I couldn’t ever afford to buy anything in! The office itself affords some rather spectacular views of the City, Greenwich and the Millenium Dome which is just across the river.

Of course after the 7/7 bombings on the tube people are bit edgy but you’ve just got to get on with things. Yes it could, and probably will, happen again some time in the future but you can’t let this effect your daily life or they’ve already won. Unfortunately with the police on high alert some innocent people have got caught up and had their liberty harshly interrupted – read “Innocent in London” for more and this article from a prominent UK broadsheet. It’s a rather scary reflection on the way society seems to be going; we can only hope this doesn’t go too far.

TLA

In the world of business (particularly in the technology domain) there is one thing you are bound to run into a lot – TLA’s or ‘Three Letter Acronyms‘. There are thousands of these things being bounded about with new ones being made up every day. I can imagine this reaching a point where a new language is formed based purely on them. The next stage would be creating acronyms of acronyms but by this point things will have gotten so out of hand that no one will understand you anyway! Problems can also occur when TLA’s overlap so that the same three letters have multiple meanings – you can imagine the sort of mess this can cause. Today I’m working on a HLP utilizing GDD with a PID!

(Something a bit more substantial will be coming soon I promice!)

Alive (almost)

Yes, I am still alive (just)! Had the most insanely busy last week beginning my new job etc but it’s all been good. Unfortunately I’m still running on a 64k ISDN line at home hence the lack of updates and this isn’t likely to be fixed in the immediate future. Living in London is certainly a lot different to what I’ve been used to in the past – basically daily life seems to run in fast-forward mode most the time (so far anyway) which has both good and bad points. The main downside being a lack of time to do anything other than work/sleep/eat! Hopefully once I’ve got used to it things should settle down. I’ll try to check back in a couple of days and update on something more meaningful!

Migrating South

Things are really busy at home right now. I’m currently getting ready to move to London this Saturday (3rd) to start my new job next Monday (5th) – scary but exciting! Added to this I’ve got a million and one loose ends to sort out before this which isn’t leaving much in the way of free time.

Once I move to London I will not have a fast net connection to begin with so wont be on MSN regularly for a few weeks I expect. If you need to get in contact please email my Gmail address and I’ll get back to you ASAP. I hope I’ll be able to keep up with things on the website but I doubt I’ll be able to post so regularly in the near future (for obvious reasons).

Google Purge
Google executives oversee the first stage of Google Purge.

Sorry for the lack of actual ‘content’ in this post today but take a look at this hilarious article about Google announcing its plans to destroy all information it can’t index!! I shouldn’t worry to soon though – it’s already been estimated that it will take approximately 300 years to index the worlds entire information… 😉