The Oxford Bodeian Library‘s collection is one of the main tangible things that makes Oxford a world-class research institution. The troves of primary sources, obscure titles, and first editions make it a mecca for historical and literary research. This is a promise which I don’t think the Oxford Libraries live up to in practice, because … [Read more…]
It always impresses me the number of machines that can be made to work again just by banging on them. The gasman was at my house today looking into why the radiators on the top floor don’t heat. The first thing he did was take the plastic knobs off the valves and then proceed to … [Read more…]
They used to call them 3D accelerators, and eventually “graphics processing units” or GPUs, but these days graphics chips are so programmable that we might as well start calling them “general processing units.” (DVDs play the same game with “digital video disc” taking on the wider “digital versatile disc” moniker .) Graphics chips are becomming … [Read more…]
My iPhone was gimped, but not yet dead. The problem was with the “home” button, and being the only button on the front face, you can imagine it gets used frequently. It had lost the crisp, original clickyness and trying to press it was like using a sausage to play a snare drum. Sometimes I’d … [Read more…]
There’s another problem with passwords which deserves its own post: what do you do when you forget one? It’s bound to happen, right? With so many passwords floating around in our heads, we inevitably forget one entirely or forget which password goes with which account. Sites can’t just tell you to get lost when you … [Read more…]
Every new site that provides a personal service needs to authenticate you the next time you return. They need to make sure you are able to access your account and others are denied. The standard way to do this is to have you create a secret password to identify yourself when you return. And there … [Read more…]
Maybe Microsoft should move its headquarters to 1 Infinite Loop. This morning, while trying to send out some mail in Microsoft’s Outlook 2007, I noticed that after nearly 10 minutes, the message I tried to send was still sitting in my Outbox. When I clicked “Send/Receive,” like ya do, Outlook decided to get stuck in … [Read more…]
Quantum computing has had the attention of the US Government for over a decade, ever since the discovery that quantum computers could be used to break a widely used cypher. The cypher, called RSA, forms the cryptographic backbone of secure communication on the web. If you’ve ever typed a URL that started with https:// (the … [Read more…]
I couldn’t help but put together a nice “synth” of Oriel College’s First Quad in Photosynth. My main camera is down at the moment, so it was the trusty iPhone to the challenge. Since they’re mostly viewed onscreen, it turns out that the iPhone does make pretty decent fodder for the “synther.” However, I did … [Read more…]
If you don’t have access to a Windows installation, this post is not for you (yet, Microsoft claims to be working on a Mac version), sorry! Photosynth is really cool. It’s a tool from Microsoft to visualize spatial environments using overlapping photos. It really is something else—way better than a static slideshow, it manages to … [Read more…]