The days of traditional screens could be numbered if the news coming out of Washington University is anything to go by. It’s testing contact lenses that could project information into the wearers eyes and initial safety tests look promising. More »

from Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/5861749/heads+up-display-contact-lenses-are-one-step-closer-after-passing-safety-tests

from BBC Sport | Motorsport | Formula 1 | UK Edition http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/9645138.stm

This morning about half a mile from home a white van started to slowly pull out from where it was parked. I was parked on the opposite side of the road from me but heading in my direction. I assumed, perhaps foolishly, that he was pulling out slowly to wait for me to pass…apparently not.

He continued to pull out whilst gradually speeding up and moving over to my side of the road to the extent that there was no room for me to pass between him and the parked cars on my side of the road. At this point I was forced to make an emergency stop (which hurt) and then in frustration and anger, and a hope to attract the drivers attention and alert him to what he’d done to hopefully make him more attentive in the future, punched the side of the van.

I am now in even more pain than normal and the van didn’t even stop. Aside from the punching I’d estimate that I have what I could describe as ‘near miss’ incidents at least twice a week.

Having seen several videos on youTube I’m left asking a legal question. If I buy one of the helmet, or handlebar, mounted ActionCams would I be able to submit videos of incidents like this mornings to the police and at least get these idiots fined?

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hey, I like the idea of electric vehicles, and I’d be buying a Mitsubishi iMiev now if I could afford it, but there’s something about this, undoubtedly quick, bike whizzing past…

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Skype 5 on Mac is absolutely awful….it needs a lot more than a few tweaks

Skype today announced that Skype 5 has gone gold, exiting the beta stage that began last November….

I had my 10M connection upgraded to Virgins 50M service last Tuesday. The engineer who installed it said that the Modem took much longer than normal to connect and once he’d left I found that I had to call up and activate it again, despite him having already done this once.

Since then I’ve restarted the modem, so called Super Hub, on an almost daily basisto try and resolve slow speed issues. Testing on speedtest.net gave me readings between 1M and 50M only minutes apart and various times of day but, probably more importantly test on pingtest.net showed me between 60% and 90% packet loss. Those tests were only valid when they completed, which they only managed to do around half of the time.

At 7pm this evening after an hour of on/off connectivity I restarted the ‘Super’ hub again and from the logs on he hub itself it took around 30 minutes before it got a successful connection. (I was later told by one of the customer service representatives that this was impossible).

When testing showed that my speed and connection quality were still poor I phoned customer services. Over the next hour and a quarter I spoke to 3 representatives and one supervisor.

The first representative I spoke was actually worse than I’ve come to expect from Virgins first line support. He continued to, presumably, read from his script, ignoring my answers to his questions, insisting that I restart my laptop, reset my wifi and reload Internet Explorer despite me using a wired desktop Mac. When he was, unsurprisingly, unable to solve the problem and was unable to answer my question as to wether or not he knew what a ping test was he escalated me (allegedly!)

The second representative I spoke to asked me to unplug my modem so that he could run some tests. 15 minutes later having not heard from him again despite asking, and being able to hear people in the background, I was forced to ring off and call back.

It’s possible that steam was beginning to leak out of my ears at this point.

Having been on hold for around 10 minutes when calling back I gave my details to the next representative and asked him to transfer me through to a supervisor. He asked me what the problem was so I told him what I’d been through so far that evening. He apologised (about the only thing the customer services team seem to be any good at is apologising) and told me the last few things I’d tried.

It would appear that the customer services team actually lie on their call notes as I’d not been asked or told about several of the items that were read back to me. Once he’d asked me to try a few more tests (and I have to say this guy did sound like he had a bit of a clue) he put me on hold for 2 minutes and when he came back told me that there was actually a fault on my line.

Somewhat flabbergasted I asked when this was reported and was told the 4th of January! Yes, I’d been through all this with a know fault that was causing my problem. He was unable to tell me when the fault could be resolved and I then asked once more to be put through to his Supervisor. At this point he told me that he would put a note on my account for a reimbursement (although was unable to tell me how much) and transferred me. This transfer only put me on hold for about 5 minutes.

I explained, again, what my problem was to the supervisor who apologised, again, promised to reimburse me (again without being able to tell me how much) and reconfirmed that there was a fault on the line. Having asked how long it would take to resolve the fault I was once more put on hold (nearly 5 minutes again) and when he returned he told me that the engineering team had told him that the fault should be resolved by the 8th of March!

As the modem had only been installed within the last 7 days I asked for them to come and remove it (there is a 7 day no quibble refund) and reinstall my old 10M line that is apparently on a circuit that doesn’t have a fault until they could actually provide the service for which I was paying. I was then told that he couldn’t book an engineer to come out because of the fault in the local area.

So, in summary I had ‘upgraded’ from a working 10M line to a superior 50M line that was connected to an end point with a known fault and they are refusing to do anything about it….

Upon telling him that despite what his system was telling him he should find a way to make this situation right he apologised (yes, again) and offered to put me through to the complaints department. I said yes and he transferred me through to a recorded message telling me that the Complaints department had closed an hour ago.

At the point I put the phone down and walked away from my computer. Any more dealing with this level of incompetence was likely to lead me to start swearing at some and/or start throwing things through windows.

Should Virgin somehow make good and/or try and resolve this situation I will add the details here…until then I would urge people to use a Pigeon delivery service rather than Virgins broadband service.

This evening I was supposed to be watching a bit of TV, eating a Haggis and drinking a couple of nice whiskeys…instead I’m pissed off to the point of no longer being hungry so dinner is wasted. I would like to apologise for the grammar/tone/spelling and anything else that may be wrong with this post but I am barely able to type (and who knows, I may not even be able to post the fucking thing)

If you know where/who this story originates from (I think it may have been a comment on Reddit) please let me know so that I can give credit where it’s due.

This past year I have had 3 instances of car trouble. A blow out on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out of gas situation. All of them were while driving other people’s cars which, for some reason, makes it worse on an emotional level. It makes it worse on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my car, and know enough not to park, facing downhill, on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.

Anyway, each of these times this shit happened I was DISGUSTED with how people would not bother to help me. I spent hours on the side of the freeway waiting, watching roadside assistance vehicles blow past me, for AAA to show. The 4 gas stations I asked for a gas can at told me that they couldn’t loan them out “for my safety” but I could buy a really shitty 1-gallon one with no cap for $15. It was enough, each time, to make you say shit like “this country is going to hell in a handbasket.”

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound affect on me.

He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blow out with his whole family of 6 in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to 4 hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said NEED A JACK and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks English. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn’t careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off. Damn!

No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man’s hand but he wouldn’t take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best fucking tamale I have ever had.

So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow…

But we aren’t done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won’t take it. All I can think to say is “Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor” with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:

“Today you…. tomorrow me.”

Rolled up his window, drove away, his daughter waving to me in the rear view. I sat in my car eating the best fucking tamale of all time and I just cried. Like a little girl. It has been a rough year and nothing has broke my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn’t deal.

In the 5 months since I have changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and, once, went 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won’t accept money. Every time I tell them the same thing when we are through:

“Today you…. tomorrow me.”

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looks like the perfect festival phone – rugged and the battery life is epic