http://www.statusq.org Quentin Stafford-Fraser's blog Thu, 08 May 2008 13:15:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Zebra striping is the practice of using alternating background colours in rows of a table. It's supposed to make the table easier to read. Jessica Enders did a study and discovered that a small majority of people preferred the look of striped tables. But did they actually help? ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/05/07/1851/ As my friends will tell you, I'm not a political animal. I tend to vote for a different party at each election, and I often make up my mind when I'm actually in the polling booth, typically using some highly-sophisticated reasoning like, "Big majorities are bad - they're like ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/05/05/1850/ Am upgrading Status-Q to the latest Wordpress... Let me know if you see any funnies... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/05/04/1849/ I was 11 years old when the first series of Blake's 7 came out, and was instantly hooked. I imagine it would look very corny if I watched it again 30 years on, but I can't help but be intrigued by rumours that it might make a comeback, possibly ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/05/02/1848/ I think this is the best idea that I've seen for distributed computing on the SETI@home model: earthquake detection. As you probably know, many new laptops come with accelerometers in them which let them do things like park the hard disk heads if dropped, before they hit the ground and the ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/29/1847/ One of the useful bits of information in the manual for my new car: Always be careful when closing a door. You could otherwise cause serious injuries to yourself or others. Make sure that no one is in the path of a door. Good. I'm glad they put that ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/26/1846/ Did you know you can destroy your webcam if you lick it too frequently? More information here. Perhaps the word had got about that webcams were originally a way of dispensing caffeine more effectively. Thanks to Andrew Arends for the link. http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/26/1845/ I think my iPod has ideas above its station. I got a new car today. It's rather nice. And it has an iPod adaptor cable. When I plugged the iPod into this gleaming tonne-and-a-half of throbbing sports-tuned German engineering, it said, "Accessory attached". http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/25/1843/ I'm in the process of buying a new car, and I'm bemused by the fact that every dealer wants to sell me a 'paint and upholstery protection' package, typically with a name like 'Safegard', promising a Teflon-based coating that saves my paintwork from nasty pollutants, saves me having to wash ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/22/1842/ Quite a few of my readers will know Seb and Abi Wills. They popped into the Ndiyo/CamVine office today with 12-day old Tabitha. She's very sweet. We did our best to impart a few words of wisdom to set her on the right path. Linux good! Yes! Windows ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/16/1839/ The ASUS EeePC has been a great success. Next week, HP will start shipping a similar machine and, yes, the lowest-cost models are also Linux-based. http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/15/1838/ The Guardian's 'Science Weekly' podcast is rather good, and the episode I've just enjoyed finished off with a great song by Johnny Berliner about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The classics in this genre are, of course, Flanders & Swann on The First and Second Law of Thermodynamics and Tom Lehrer's recitation ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/14/1837/ About a year ago I wrote about my experiments with getting a Sony PRS500 Reader talking to my Mac. Quietly, over that time, it's been getting easier, as Kovid Goyal has turned his rather unexcitingly-named libprs500 from a basic command-line utility to a full-featured GUI application, which can do ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/14/1835/ Walking through Stansted Airport this evening... Rose was there in Borders with the big names. Iain M. Banks, Melvyn Bragg, Jack Higgins, Rose Melikan.... Very strange feeling... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/09/1833/ It's important to keep variety in one's life, I feel, and not get caught up in too much of a repetitive daily routine. Take today, for example. I drove out to a nearby village, had a pleasant lunch with my wife and mother-in-law, and then, a little later in ... http://www.statusq.org/archives/2008/04/06/1832/