March 2009 Archives

April Fools' Day and its many jokes and tricks have been around for a very long time, according to Wikipedia there are references to it in the 15th century 'Canterbury Tales' by Chaucer. (At the online British Library you can even read the original tales from the first edition printed by William Caxton.)

In 1957, the BBC fooled a large part of the nation with its spoof report in the normally-serious Panorama programme about growing spaghetti on trees in Switzerland, while in 1998 the Burger King chain placed an advert in 'USA Today' to launch their left-handed Whopper. You can read about many other well-known April Fool pranks here.

Computers have not remained immune from such activities - although not all have been harmless japes. The famous Jerusalem family of viruses which mainly used Friday 13th as their payload date were based on the earlier Suriv viruses which triggered on April 1st. In 2003 a website posted news about a person catching a virus from their computer.

* * * * * * * * * *

This year, 2009, experts are waiting for the Conficker worm to activate. Gizmodo posted a nice article last week which gives some background to what's happening.

* * * * * * * * * *

And before someone starts to tell you that Apple machines do not have the same problems that many Windows machines face, you might like to learn that in 1981, the Elk Cloner virus was written to infect the easily-compromised Apple II. It was probably the first large-scale computer virus outbreak in history. (Coincidentally, that happens to be the favoured subject of one Apple 'fanboy'.)

Even your mobile phone can be vulnerable.

While thinking about who to feature for Ada Lovelace Day I couldn't help but include Beatrix Potter in the list I compiled.

Although she doesn't fall within the 'technology' remit she does represent a woman who, in her time, was pre-eminent in many ways - and she was ignored by a mainly male establishment.

Most people know of her from the children's stories she wrote, for example 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' and 'The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle'. Yet her contributions to botany and conservation have, at least until recent times, gone largely unnoticed.

Despite parents who actively discouraged her from academic development Beatrix became one of the first people to recognise that lichens were actually a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae.

Later in her life she was able to use the wealth gained from her books to buy land which she would bequeath to the National Trust. This helped to preserve large tracts of the Lake District.

Wikipedia has a good article about her with several useful links including this one at Visit Cumbria.

At 'Project Gutenberg' you can find the text of many of her stories.

This post fulfills the pledge I made back in the middle of January to write about a woman I admire who worked in the field of technology - I have selected the late Daphne Oram.

Growing up in the 1950s & 1960s, as I did, I listened to a lot of BBC radio and watched at least some BBC television. I didn't know it then but a lot of the music, atmospherics and sound effects were created by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop - for many people the 'Doctor Who' theme WAS the Radiophonic Workshop.

Daphne Oram was instrumental (pun intended) in setting up the Radiophonic Workshop in 1958. She left soon after when she realised that her vision of a vibrant, experimental workshop was not going to come about under the BBC's rigid heirarchy.

She continued work at her 'Oramics Studio for Electronic Composition' in Kent producing material for radio, television, theatre and film where she also developed 'Oramics'. An innovator in electronic music, Daphne Oram continued to work and teach into the mid-1990s until ill-health forced her to retire.

You can read more about here via the Daphne Oram Archive or this Wikipedia article which has some other, useful links.

* * * * * * * * * *

View the list of Ada Lovelace Day postings and other related items

To finish the week we have another shipping container article.

This post at 'Fast Company' discusses their use as cheap, transportable AND recyclable living spaces.

What do you think of the idea?

ADDITIONAL - added 21/3/2009
Have just seen this article at Make about converting surplus shipping containers into medical clinics.

The BBC Box that was featured on Monday has transported many different products. Who knows - it may have taken boxes of LEGO 'Millenium Falcon' models at some point.

The model is fabulous in its own right costing over £300, with more than 5,000 pieces, almost 1 metre long and ½ metre tall. But someone has bettered that by producing a stop-go animation of its building using LEGO minifigs doing the construction. Fantastic.

It is now 6 months since I first posted an article about the "BBC Box".

You can still view the latest location here and by zooming out of the map can clearly see where it has travelled.

While it has stopped at many, many places on its travels - sometimes a simple overnight halt during road transport, at other times for unloading and loading - it has reached the following locations as it visited almost every continent :

• London
• Glasgow
• Straits of Gibralter
• Mediterranean Sea
• Suez Canal
• Arabian Sea
• Bay of Bengal
• Singapore
• China Sea
• Shanghai
• Pacific Ocean
• Los Angeles
• New York (via Albuquerque, Amarillo and Chicago)
• Mancha Nueva (Dominican Republic)
• Puerto Cabello (Venezuela)
• Santos (near Sao Paolo, Brazil)

There's another six months of its one year journey to go. Will it get back to the UK when the 12 months are up?

The Geneva Motor Show opened towards the end of last week and continues into the coming weekend. I came across several postings about this and decided to highlight a couple of them this week. (There's an excellent gallery of photos here.)

Gumpert - who have been featured on Top Gear - are showing their 800hp 0-62mph in 3 seconds, Apollo Speed. It was taken round the test track by the Stig in 1:71.1 - the fastest time recorded so far.

You can read more about the Apollo Speed at Wired, the Geneva Motor Show site and at Gumpert's own site.

The Geneva Motor Show opened towards the end of last week and continues into the coming weekend. I came across several postings about this and decided to highlight a couple of them this week. (There's an excellent gallery of photos here.)

Koenigsegg - who have been featured on Top Gear - are showing their 512hp electric car, the Quant. In addition to being able to fully charge in 20 minutes it also has solar panels.

Read more here at Gizmodo, Jalopnik and Koenigsegg's own site.

Several sites caught the story of a teenager sacked after saying her job was boring - here and here.

Interestingly - and not boringly - there's an exhibition on in London over the next month with the title 'Only Boring People Get Bored'. (This is a well-known quote.)

Searching for this quote on Google will show many entries - including this one.

But if you really are bored there's always bored.com to take away your misery.

It has been suggested that iPhone and iPod Touch users do not have a very long attention span.

This article at The Inquirer - which points to the full article at Pinch Media - analyses how long 'apps' stay on the gadgets.

The "Appy Place" blog even published a 'Hummingbird Manifesto' to celebrate this factoid.

You can't really argue against this either with an 'app' such as 'Toast' proving quite popular or even the totally pointless 'I Am Rich' app being downloaded at over $900.

NOTE - someone has created an 'I Am Rich' for the Android system now.