Free VoIP in the UK: Goo­gle gears up for a free-phone cha­llenge to BT
Wire­less Power: Mobi­le­Read — Wire­less power rechar­ging by Slash­po­wer
I pre­dic­ted it, I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble but it seems they have figu­red a way of doing it. I men­tio­ned it to some friends a few weeks back and here it is, ready for com­mer­cial use by the end of the year.

Other things I have noti­ced in tech­no­lo­gi­cal news have been the addi­tion of rat musc­les to sili­con chips and hope­fully deve­lo­ped into gene­ra­tors and the really exci­ting new divi­sion at MIT that is inves­ti­ga­tion biosynthe­tics and making elec­tro­nic cir­cuits using dna and bacteria. 

Quote:
Sili­con Valley: “In total, the core of our team has inves­ted something like 80 man years on this expe­ri­ment, 18 of which are mine. I think right now the key les­son is this — if you’re loo­king for a job with ins­tant and gua­ran­teed suc­cess, this isn’t it.”

– Uni­ver­sity of Idaho pro­fes­sor David Atkin­son, whose years of work on an expe­ri­ment to mea­sure the winds on Saturn’s moon Titan came to naught because someone for­got to turn it on

If you want nothing, don’t ask for something. Today is a day for a writ­ten jour­nal. The gaps bet­ween jour­nal entries seem to be inc­rea­sing expo­nen­tially, it would seem I have less time to write about my life on the inter­web, or in hind­sight I have nothing to write about. Well, at least I’m not like that loser from links​.net, did you all see that? Some guy, let’s call him David for name­sake; David made a video of him­self having a break­down. David fil­med him­self going crazy and pos­ted it on his jour­nal. His cra­zi­ness was indu­ced by 11 years of inter­net blog­ging and no one to lis­ten to “his shit” in real life. The baw­ling video was quite pathe­tic, his speeches and crying were con­tra­dic­ted by the whole fil­ming pro­cess. Howe­ver, look at me now.

My inte­rac­tion and min­gling with words is not of the highest cali­ber today, so I apo­lo­gise now for any gram­ma­ti­cal errors. It’s pro­bably because I had a 9 o’clock this mor­ning follo­wed by three more lec­tu­res — four hours of lec­tu­res in a row from 9:00–13:00. I have another lec­ture this after­noon at 5 but I can skip that one as it has prin­ted notes and there is no exam on it, as such.

Let’s start with the imme­diate issues in my mind; then I can be calm after I have suf­fi­ciently ran­ted. I’m currently anxious about a cer­tain labo­ra­tory assign­ment con­cer­ning my “Ana­lo­gue Design” module. It con­cerns the soft­ware pro­gram, “Orcad PSpice” which is a stea­ming pile of bug rid­den crash worthy shit. My lack of expe­rience using the pro­gram, the program’s lack of built in help fea­tu­res and the steep lear­ning curve all con­tri­bu­ted to my first 3rd for an assign­ment in my degree — appa­rently I plot­ted the wrong things against each other in my analy­sis which ren­de­red ALL sub­se­quent work inco­rrect (who cares for methods, we want results!). The ins and outs of this pro­gram are so com­plex and non-user friendly that there is a whole module telling peo­ple how to use it. This module was taught last year, I mis­sed out as I was on a dif­fe­rent engi­nee­ring string at that point. It took me half an hour to actually design the cir­cuit I wan­ted let alone analyse it. Now I am faced with another PSpice pro­ject, worth 20% of the module. I can’t do it and anything I have done is most likely wrong because that’s how things are going for me. My ina­bi­lity, inep­ti­tude and igno­rance con­cer­ning PSpice will set me back con­si­de­rably. It doesn’t help that the pro­gram crashes every five minu­tes. I like to envi­sage the scene from Office Space, the one in the field; it calms me somewhat before I log out and go home.

Work loads this term are get­ting a little ridi­cu­lous. I have three lab reports to start so that they can be han­ded in next week. I also have some upco­ming labs to report on, lec­tu­res to write up and ques­tions to finish or at least attempt. I need to write an email about sum­mer internships and blab­ber for help to my orca dolphin lec­tu­rer. Ha!

As you pro­bably do not know, one of my current hou­se­ma­tes is moving out next year and we have had to fran­ti­cally try and find a new stu­dent to fill her gap. Our first eager par­ti­ci­pant was a Miss Di who very kindly bac­ked out at the last moment (opting rather for an ille­gal sub-letting option with her friends) when we wan­ted to sign con­tracts. Thus we were given a week to find a new hou­se­mate before the estate agents star­ted get­ting ratty. Luc­kily a friend of a friend knew someone and we met him on Satur­day, he liked the house and is coming over to sign the con­tracts tonight. This has been a major hea­dache for all invol­ved, spe­ci­fi­cally my girl­friend who had taken it upon her­self to sin­gle han­dedly sort and orga­nise everything, bless her. So, not coun­ting my chic­kens, we SHOULD have this lovely (cold) house I am sit­ting in now as accom­mo­da­tion next year albeit at an extra £10 a month.

The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice is now bla­ring from my spea­kers down the aural canals and ratt­ling my ear drums.

Last Wed­nes­day was my birth­day. Hoo­rah! I am 20 and am no lon­ger affi­lia­ted with all that is binge drin­king smo­king whi­ning tee­na­gers. Hoo­rah! My girl­friend pulled out all the stops for me this year; a fine cand­le­lit three course meal (A crab and salad star­ter, sal­mon steak and exo­tic vege­ta­ble main course and tof­fee chee­se­cake for desert), an array of won­der­ful gifts such as a fra­med 40inch God­father pos­ter, a repla­ce­ment for a bro­ken Kit Kat mug that pre­viously ador­ned my exis­tence and a ‘puzz­ling’ IQ card game that I com­ple­ted much fas­ter than I should have. The cele­bra­tions ended on Satur­day when I was trea­ted to a party at the local bow­ling alleys with ten of my friends; a pac­kage that gave us a free drink and a bottle of champs for the win­ner. I bow­led spec­ta­cu­larly well and achie­ved a score of 131 in my second game (I won). Our pro­ces­sion of stu­dent pro­wess moved onto Fran­kie and Benny’s pizzeria/italiana res­tau­rant for pizza, steak, lasagne and helium filled balloons. Thank you Samantha for orga­ni­sing everything.

Samantha is ill at the moment with a very nasty and pain­ful sto­mach pro­blem which isn’t just indi­ges­tion as she had thought. I have an inkling she is in so I am going to wrap up now and go see her. CIAO.

David Moore: “Ours is a gene­ra­tion overwhel­med by frus­tra­tion, unrest, dread, and tra­gedy. Fear is wholly per­va­sive in Ame­ri­can society, but we manage nonethe­less to build our defen­ses in subtle ways– we scoff at arbi­trary, color-coded ‘threat’ levels; we receive our infor­ma­tion from come­dians and laugh at poli­ti­cians. Upon the turn of the 21st cen­tury, we have come to know our iso­la­tion well. Our self-imposed soli­tude ren­ders us poli­ti­cally and spi­ri­tually inert, but rather than take steps to heal our emo­tio­nal and exis­ten­tial wounds, we have cho­sen to revel in them. We con­sume the affec­ted martyr­dom of our pur­por­ted idols and spit it back in moc­king defiance. We for­get that ‘emo’ was once deri­ved from emo­tion, and that in our buying and selling of per­so­nal pain, or the cyni­cal appro­xi­ma­tion of it, we feel nothing.”

BBC NEWS | Enter­tain­ment | Film | Record US box office high in 2004: “Record US box office high in 2004

Tic­ket sales at the US box office reached a record high in 2004, although the actual num­ber of movie­goers fell for a second year in a row.

Movies took $9.4bn (£4.9bn) at the domes­tic box office last year, com­pa­red to $9.2bn (£4.8bn) in 2003. The record high was attri­bu­ted to inc­rea­sed tic­ket price, with atten­dance falling 1.7% to 1.51 billion. Shrek 2 was 2004’s highest gros­sing film in the US, taking $436m (£229m), trac­ker Exhi­bi­tor Rela­tions reported.

Late boost

Mel Gibson’s The Pas­sion of the Christ and the Michael Moore docu­men­tary Fah­renheit 9/11 were unex­pec­ted box office suc­ces­ses in 2004, taking $370m (£194m) and $119m (£62.5m) res­pec­ti­vely in the US.

Reve­nue for the year was falling behind 2003 in the final weeks of 2004, but comedy sequel Meet the Foc­kers boos­ted takings with total tic­ket sales of $162.5m (£85.3m) in the last fort­night of the year.

The ave­rage US tic­ket price was $6.22 (£3.26) last year, com­pa­red to $6.03 (£3.16) in 2003.

Analysts said the two-year dec­line was no cause for alarm because 2002 was an ano­maly with hit films such as the first Spider-Man movie and My Big Fat Greek Wed­ding. That year also inc­lu­ded the latest ins­tal­ments in the Star Wars, Harry Pot­ter and Lord of the Rings series.

‘This is a great year,’ said Exhi­bi­tor Rela­tions pre­si­dent Paul Dergarabedian.

‘We saw such mas­sive inc­rea­ses in reve­nue and atten­dance in 2001 and 2002, there is just no way we’re going to see inc­rea­ses sus­tai­ned at that rate.’

Among films expec­ted to per­form well in US cine­mas this year are Star Wars: Epi­sode III — Revenge of the Sith and Bat­man Begins sta­rring Chris­tian Bale.

King Kong, direc­ted by Lord of the Rings film-maker Peter Jack­son, and and Ste­ven Spielberg’s ver­sion of The War of the Worlds are also expec­ted to prove popular.”