Posted: Wed 1 September, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Art, Geeky, Media |
Nabbed via @Mattverso on Twitter (and hosted originally on imgur), I think this is seriously cool…
Batman vs. Penguin
I love images like this, where you can turn them round and see something else. I can’t remember the precise name for them – but they’re cool as hell.
In a similar vein, the 20th Anniversary collector’s edition DVD of Princess Bride was equally cool.
The lettering is the same both ways
Posted: Tue 17 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, People, Thoughts, Work-related |
Over the next few days at work, we again have potential investors visiting the office, and so the word has gone round to be as smart as possible.
While I don’t have any real problem with this, and generally look vaguely presentable, my main argument is that these visitors – Americans – aren’t expecting the techies to be suited and booted.
I wasn’t hired for this role because of how I look in a suit, or because I’ll be dealing with customers. I was (to blow my own trumpet briefly) hired for my brains and my skills in writing websites, databases and the like. Suited and booted is – for the most part, and unless I’m in an interview – irrelevant to my skill-set or reason for being employed.
Personally, I wouldn’t ever trust a techie in a suit. Sure, they/we can wear suits for other stuff – interviews, smart events, weddings, social stuff etc. – but in the office? A techie in a suit isn’t a techie.
What do you think? Would you trust a techie in a suit?
Posted: Sat 7 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Driving, Geeky, Thoughts |
Via a couple of other sites, I saw a thing today about Volvo’s “Vision 2020” project, which says (among other things)
By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo”. This statement from 2008 clearly formulates a long-term vision to create cars that will not crash. Volvo Cars’ strategy to achieve Vision 2020 includes cooperating with social partners, integrating preventative and protective safety systems into the car and, in particular, to better understands people in traffic situations. Driver behaviour is a contributing factor in over 90 percent of all accidents.
That’s pretty ambitious.
There’s a lot of technology out there making cars safer – ComputerWorld has an interactive view of car safety features in this ‘zero-fatality’ concept as well as a feature about how ‘zero-fatality’ cars are being designed and built.
But zero fatalities? That’s a leap. It might not be the driver (or even the inhabitants of the car at all) that die- but what about pedestrians hit by the car, for example? Sure, there’s stuff there to warn you of their presence, but if you ignore it, will the car slam to a halt anyway? And would that be potentially even more dangerous for other road users?
I still find the concept of driverless cars to be fascinating, the machine-logic necessary and so on, but I think it’s close to an impossible dream. After all, to do it properly would be one hell of an implementation, as (I think) all cars would need to have the auto-driving implemented at the same time. It would be far too complex otherwise, with the potential for auto-driven vehicles in direct conflict with human-driven vehicles.
Maybe that particular change will be driven by the HGV and road-train market – being able to reduce costs and improve efficiency would be paramount.
Posted: Thu 22 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Geeky, People, Security, Stupidity |
Yesterday I noticed a new spam / scam / phishing email that seems to have appeared.
It purports to come from Amazon, and tells you that your order has been despatched, along with some links that are clickable. The links actually go off to a russian site, but I’ve no idea what that does, and have no intention of finding out.
The biggest clue that it’s a spam/scam are
- the prices are all in dollars (which is a bit of a giveaway for us in the UK)
- you haven’t ordered anything from Amazon
- it’s got a link to “see the ordered items”, rather than just listing them in the mail
- the email address it’s been sent to isn’t the one you’ve got listed with Amazon
But all told it’s one of the better spam/scam/phishing-type emails of the moment. Best to publicise it and be aware of it.
Posted: Thu 15 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Security, Work-related |
All quiet round here at the moment, as my brain is utterly failing to process stuff.
I’m stuck with reading a metric butt-load of security stuff (as written about at the tail end of last week) which is about as interesting as you’d expect.
Check out this – it’s the first paragraph of the documentation, which (as I understand it) is meant to make you want to read more…
CLASP — Comprehensive, Lightweight Application Security Process — is an activity-driven, role-based set of process components whose core contains formalized best practices for building security into your existing or new-start software development lifecycles in a structured, repeatable, and measurable way.
In any game of Buzzword Bingo, that paragraph/sentence will get you “House!”
There’s 600+ pages of this shit to wade through, so posts here might be a bit slow
Posted: Fri 9 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Stupidity, Work-related |
Part of my current work deals heavily with web security, data security and the like. As part of that, I subscribe to a number of information lists, mail services etc.
I signed up to a new one today – one of the better regarded (and indeed recommended by another security auditing agency) ones.
What concerned me during the signup process was this :
You may enter a privacy password below. This provides only mild security, but should prevent others from messing with your subscription. Do not use a valuable password as it will occasionally be emailed back to you in cleartext.
Seriously? Sending – and one assumes storing – a password in clear text is such a bad idea. It’s also a major no-no in every security list – including their own one. D’oh!
Obviously a case of “don’t do what we do, do what we say”.
Posted: Tue 6 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, iPhone, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness, Work-related |
Since getting the iPhone a while back, while I’ve been surprised by some of the apps that are available, I’m also occasionally surprised by the apps that aren’t available, particularly when it seems like such a good idea.
Among those have been :
- National Lottery. You’d have thought that an app for sending out the numbers to iPhones (and other phones) every week would be a no-brainer. Particularly if you could also put in the numbers you regularly use, so it could check automatically for whether you’ve got any matches. I don’t think it even needs the ability to buy numbers etc., as there are plenty of other avenues for doing this already.
- Eurodisney. Herself’s off to Eurodisney soon, and we both thought that an app would be really useful for this. Being able to (for example) have a map – including “You are here” through the GPS, and a list of the rides/attractions you really want to see, plus being able to see what’s closest to your current position. Again, that seems like a no-brainer. (The really cool version would include ‘augmented reality’, and let you use the phone to see what’s around you, along with labels, routes etc.)
They’re the main two that surprise me. There’s a few others too that I haven’t totally thought through yet, but I’m sure I’ll write about those as and when I get round to it.
