Microsoft Announces End of the Road for Encarta - ReadWriteWeb

It's the end of an era! Microsoft have made the inevitable decision to stop making and selling Encarta!

Those of us old enough to remember the oddity of owning a computer without access to the internet will remember how important and useful Encarta actually was.

Sadly, Wikipedia and Google together provide a free and relatively easy method of finding anything you want. Encarta was well put together and in many ways far superior to Wikipedia, you were far more assured of it's accuracy. Wikipedia is of course a growing and developing site, with many of the articles written by experts in the particular field, but it's also open to abuse... beware you students who submit Wikipedia articles as coursework...

If you have access to an Encarta CD, look after it - it's an important part of IT history!

Microsoft Announces End of the Road for Encarta - ReadWriteWeb

ASDA Razor

I'm not a fan of shaving. I'm lazy and I can't stand the faff. You shave; it takes ages, hurts, makes you bleed and you still end up with a face covered in hair. Joy!

I've heard some good things about the King of Shaves Azor, so was holding out to buy one of those. Unfortunately we shop as ASDA, one of the few places that don't sell it (yet, presumably). So I was forced to rethink, and quick, because I'd already thrown my last razor away...

As well as shaving, I'm also not a fan of spending money. There was just no way I was going to pay Gilette money and end up with the same result... Frankly the Sainsbury's own disposables had been doing almost as good a job! So I thought I'd try out the ASDA Triple Blade Razor. I was impressed!

Honestly! I know this sounds a little "out-there", but it's a surprisingly good razor. It's a good weight, it picks up the hairs well, it's smooth, it's close (but doesn't slash my skin to pieces). It even manages to cope with my patch of multi-directional hairs which even caught out my old Mach3! I'm still going to try the Azor when this runs out, but this one's pretty good.

Moral Code for Military Robots?

Just read an interesting article on Times Online about some research being undertaken by the US Navy regarding AI in field robots. Interesting stuff, although it's all been talked about for quite a while now.

Two key questions come up:
1. How do you stop the robots from going all Skynet on you?
2. Who's responsible when the robots go wrong?

You can see the article here: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5741334.ece

AI to help you get to work

I'm catching up on some of my e-mails, I have something like 30 e-mails from Google News alerts relating to Artificial Intelligence. Even though I've sort of left that behind, I like to keep myself up-to-date. Anyway, more point is, I may make a few posts on my findings from those e-mails...

This one relates to the use of AI (fuzzy-logic) to aid a GPS navigation system. It's called CADRE and you can see more here (Science Daily).

Everything is now a computer...

I loved this article on Wired.Com

It's about a computer system that uses your phone, a camera and a small projector to make everything more interactive.

It's cool, but on the other hand it means there's even less chance of breaking free from your phone.

All those poor people who can't break free of their Blackberrys will never be able to escape!!

Yahoo Pipes

I've recently created myself a new "homepage". A single page combining my presence on the internet into one bitesize chunk. This means that anyone can come and see what I'm up to! This is, of course, a public site, so I don't want to give too much away (or say anything that my employer or future employer may find offensive, disturbing or generally off-putting).

I'm getting my current Facebook profile picture and status using a Facebook "badge", my 4 most recent blog posts using feed2js, my pictures using Yahoo Pipes (and Picasa Web albums) and finally a list of top links again using Yahoo Pipes (and Google Documents).

I can't believe Yahoo Pipes! It's so incredible! For instance, the list of links is actually a spreadsheet on Google Documents with 3 colums (Name, Link and Description). It's then published as a CSV which my Pipe then takes and reencodes as an XML compatible feed. What's even better is that you can then stick that on your page as a "badge" like the two I have on mine. Brilliant!

As an aside, I've also updated my profile on here so that it no longer says that I'm getting married, but that I am...

Whats the obsession with skinny?

I've just seen an advert for Heat or some trash like that, moaning about Charlotte Church being a normal sized woman. Oh no, she's just given birth and she's not trying to kill herself by being stick thin.

What is the obsession with disgustingly thin women? Why are the media constantly trying to kill young girls? Let's be blunt, the media say thin is good, the girls don't eat and they die. It's horrible and upsetting and I can't believe it's allowed, but I guess that's the cost of free press.

Get over it people. The average British woman is size 16 or something... not -14...