Nice shot along Takapuna Beach at Sunrise the other day…

…and looking at it got me thinking…

Why are photographs rectangular?  The scene I saw was not rectangular.  And similarly why are books mostly rectangular or square?  These formats seem to have been constrained by the limitations of flat paper, but if they had not been, what shape would these objects be?  The flat, rectangular approach seems very suited to the presentation of text or graphical information, but is that just because we’re all so used to seeing content presented that way?  Now that we are technically able to move beyond the limitations of flat paper, books and bindings, is there a better shape or format for presenting portable information?

What’s on my bookcase now…

• Sun Education Manual: Distributed Programming with Java Technology (UNIX)

• Sun Education Manual: Java Programming Language

• Java Server Programming

• Core Java Fundamentals

• Software Project Survival Guide

• Programmer’s Guide to the Oracle Precompilers

• Visual Modeling with Rational Rose and UML

• Oracle 8 The Complete Reference

• Java 2 Complete

• Korn Shell Programming by example

• Oracle Performance Tuning

• C For Programmers

• Applying UML and Patterns

• Data Structures and Algorithms in C++

• UML In a Nutshell

• Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days

• Tendersoft Tissues

• Blue Sky Mining albumn by Midnight Oil (1990)

• V-Rally Multi-Player Championship Version

• Top Gear Magazine November 2005 : Mazda MX5 Issue

Just so you know where my priorities *really* lie! A comfortable mix of propeller-head and petrol-head.

Ernie and Brian

You may have seen this do the rounds a while back, under the subject “The Humna Brian.”

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.  The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.  Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.  Azanmig huh?

The cleverly-named hot water urn.

So that explains why, despite its friendly name, I could never quite bring myself to drink out of one of these things…

Reconfigure the Laws of Nature…

So this came up a while back, and I thought I’d post it since I found the idea quite amusing…

There’s a “Will it Blend” clip on youtube for the new iPhone, which prompted my brother-in-law (an avid fisherman) to ask the question “Does it float?” What use was any gadget if when dropped from a boat it just disappeared beyond retrieval?

Kirstin said “The new Tamagotchi’s float.”

So I asked a girl in our office who *has* one of the iPhones, and the closest we could get was a setting that will “Disable Automatic Syncing.”