www.gamma.net.nz

Continuing with the World Cup hosts theme check out Bicycle Portraits, lots of interesting every day stories.

Awesome Township Tech tune, unfortunately the genre seems a little thin on the ground cause I would like to hear some more. Good Scream remix of this too. Theres plenty of kwaito out there tho. More

play vid

Wow the presenters on this show are total dicks

presenter to guest:

"so that makes you a hipster then"

presenter to audience

a hipster is someone doesn't give a darn

via Cycling Auckland

According to an article over on Patently Apple Apple have filed for a bike computer / ipod integration patent.

On August 5, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals various concepts behind a newly advanced Smart Bicycle System in development. The premise is rather like Apple's Nike + iPod system for runners except for cyclists. While the system is for individuals, it's also designed to work with teams of cyclists so that they could communicate with each other on-the-fly about course difficulty or perceived problems. The Bicycle system monitors speed, distance, time, altitude, elevation, incline, decline, heart rate, power, derailleur setting, cadence, wind speed, path completed, expected future path, heart rate, power, and pace. The system could utilize various sensors built-into the iPhone in addition to working with sensors already built-into the bike itself. Apple's patent is extraordinarily detailed and packed with interesting twists that the sporting cyclist will really appreciate

I wonder if the developers of the existing cycling apps are pissed? (more likely pleased to receive attention).

Seems apple are making a habit of patenting app developers ideas, here is a side by side comparison of an app and an apple patent application.

What's the best thing about Windows?  You can run Ubuntu on top of it.

Okay, so I am stuck with a locked up enterprise computer running Windows XP (... and yes we run IE6.0).  However, when I wanted to start to learn some OCaml during my spare time on my work computer I did not want to use MS Based Technology, I am not comfortable with it as a development environment. I new I had to get some flavour of Linux on it.  Linux, for me,  is the ultimate development environment, and I prefer working with it.  At first I looked at installing into full hardware virtualisation, like VMWare, Xen and VirtualBox.  I ended up trying to install Kubuntu under VirtualBox from Oracle.  It was damn slow, my Enterprise Dell Latitude D620 has no hardware virtualisation support, so the software does it, and this tends to be real slow.  Kubuntu was painfully slow using to use and for some reason it would only run in a 800x600 window.

Then I discovered Portable Ubuntu Remix (PUbuntu).  I don't know how it works, but it's great and I'm hooked.  In summary it has the following features:

• it runs Ubuntu 9.10 on top of Windows (I use it on XP, but I think it works on all versions).
• the total size is just under 4GB, so it fits on a USB nicely - this is great.
• it runs as a standalone, no need to install anything - this is awesome.
• it looks, feels and behaves just like Ubuntu.
• it comes with Synaptic / apt so you can add/remove any software, and it uses actual Ubuntu repositories, not specially developed ones.
• it's relatively fast, you can tell it's not native, but for browsing and writing code you don't notice any lag.
• It's super stable.
• The clipboard is shared between Windows and PUbuntu.
• It uses Windows as a window manager - not the best, but it is sufficient.
• Windows file system is accessable - I don't know if this is a good thing or not ;)

One cool feature it could have is to enable hibernate  This would allow me to hibernate just PUbuntu and bring it back up again to the same place when I start it again.

I really don't know what technology it uses to do this, it's not documented that I can find. And only the sourceforge page exists, the original webpage just redirects to back to sourceforge.  But it is actually running Linux, running dmesg shows the full and typical Linux log and it says it's running version 2.6.33-co-0.8.0.

... actually a little digging shows that it is running on top of coLinux, which allows you to run linux on top of Windows.  Either way I am highly impressed and use it every day now, but not at work.

Dunedin police say they know the two women who allegedly abused and assaulted a pair of cyclists over the weekend. New Zealand representative cyclist Shane Melrose, 30, and Logan Edgar, 19 were riding two-abreast on Loan Metal Rd towards Outram, 11km northwest of Mosgiel, on Saturday when a car forced them off the road. The driver sounded the horn and the passenger shouted abuse out the window before the vehicle stopped suddenly, forcing Mr Melrose into gravel on the wrong side of the road. "It came up pretty quickly and tried to collect us with the front door," Mr Edgar told The Otago Daily Times.  He was caught behind the open car door when a woman got out and began slapping and punching him, he said.She also threw a bottle at him."The woman was going nuts. They dragged my bike into the front passenger seat and took off," he said. "It's stranger than fiction." Mr Edgar said he was frustrated by the attack and theft of his $12,000 bike and hit the car, breaking his hand. Police yesterday found his undamaged bike in a ditch.Dunedin Senior Sergeant Bruce Ross today said he knew who the women were and they would be spoken to shortly.

Source:stuff.co.nz

None of the mainstream news stories I read covered the story with enough detail for my liking. So here it is from the horse's mouth

Results of a survey of 4000 Britains:

1. Wheel 
2. Aeroplane
3. Light bulb 
4. internet 
5. PCs
6. Telephone 
7. Penicillin
8. iPhone 
9. Flushing toilet
10. Combustion engine.

Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.

Found via lastfm.