Posts by Andy J Poulton

Paul Allen buys lovingly restored vintage V-2 Nazi ballistic missile

3D Printing designs anyone?

need I say more?

'Extreme' solar storm speeding straight towards Earth

Re: Danger to people?

You sir, owe me a new keyboard. Laugh out-loud in the most literal sense - literally

Wish you were here? NASA rover beams postcard from Mars

Re: 3000 days

And now we know the REAL purpose of the next mission to Mars.

Curiosity is due to touch down in less than 30 days and I've just had a look at some hi-res images from a secret source. I thought it had been sponsored by the AAA - [American Automobile Association] but now I know differently, it's an AAA tow truck complete with a set of traffic lights to set up so that it can tempt homeless Martians out from their caves to clean off the solar panels.

Trekkie pays £45,000 for rusty shuttle

To boldly row - and other stuff

Surely [and don't call me Shirley] it should read

"To boldly row where no one has rowed before"

Anyways, I was just thinking what an ace shed this would make - much better than a boring wooden 8x6. I'm just going to the shuttle dear sounds so much better than I'm just popping out to the shed - -and imagine the phone calls, "hang on, he's in the Shuttle - I'll just beam over to him right now"

NASA counts down to nuclear tank invasion of Mars

Uh Oh, hope the bankers keep their noses out.....

Bit worried that RBS/NatWest may have a hand in the software development - even if the Lander has a soft touchdown it'll be at least 2 weeks before we hear Will.I.Am's composition

Acer Iconia Tab W500

Compaq 1100 anyone

Blimey I had one of these years ago.....my trusty Compaq TC1100 running windows XP with a full touch interface - although it needed an active stylus and was a touch slow with a Transmeta processer.

Had all of this though, removable keyboard, virtual keyboard and even a docking station that allowed the screen to be used in portrait or landscape mode and has a CD drive.

Just goes to show - - there's nothing new

Acer Android tablets priced

Hmmm, £300 for a 7 incher

It better be good, I shelled out £300 for a 10.1 incher, Archos 101 to be precise and the price has fallen since then. OK, so it runs 2.2 not Honeycomb but I suspect that rooting may sort that one out.

It has 16Gb on board, a useful MiniSD card slot, a full USB socket for USB memory, keyboard, mouse, HDMI to drive a monitor, projector or to act as a pretty useful media player for the TV, N wifi and full access to Marketplace [supplied with the Tablet - not a hack]

11 Hours battery life, bluetooth and great usability and the lack of 3G is easily overcome with a BlueTooth tether to my phone

Paris = well all this talk of 7, 8 and 10 inchers is kinda self explanatory

Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

Despite the scaremongering......

Although this is a disaster on a gargantuan scale, there can be no denying that there is also no denying that we [in the UK] are deep in the mire with regards to the ole 240v

We have to close coal fired stations despite sitting on coal because the EU tells us to, wind power is clearly destined for a supporting role [what happens when the wind does not blow], wave power is a little slow in producing commercial quantities of power, tidal power ....what happened to all those barrages?

Solar power - the sun kicks enough out and does not "stop", unlike wind, although a cloudy day poses a problem.

Gas - similar problem to coal really so where does that leave us?

IMHO it's nuclear or start turning the lights out and the problem will be exacerbated as electric cars become more popular - after all, all that happens is that the CO2 problem moves from car exhaust to power generator - and we won't have enough leccy unless something is done and nuclear just fits the bill nicely just don't build it on a major fault.

And, we have yet to experience any casualties from this incident, there may be some in the long term but I bet they will be low in number compared to the losses caused by the Tsunami and will be small compared to deaths through airline crashes. After all, when a plane crashes, no one suggests we should stop flying [apart from an occasional green], 3,500 [approx] people die on UK roads EVERY YEAR - but I don't hear too much of a clamour in relation to banning cars.

Let's get real, STUFF HAPPENS. Plan and manage to mitigate risk but let's not cut off our noses to spite our faces, after all, if we do, we'll all be huddling around camp fires to cook our food and we'll sleep when the sun does and rise when the sun does

Buzzmeisters value Twitter at $4.5bn

Making money on Twitter

At the last time of reading Dell were developing a pretty fair revenue stream through Twitter. £6.5m IIRC. OK, so it's not huge in comparison to Dell sales but I'd settle for the sum - and that figure is a good year out of date so I'd expect it to be more by now.

Not at all bad for some free marketing

Archos 101 8GB Android tablet

Keep taking the Tablets

I've had my 101 for about 3 weeks now. It took a lot of choosing, Not. I looked at the competition, Toshiba Folio - looked good, withdrawn from sale the day before the money was to be spent [a close shave], Viewsonic and others and the 101 looked to beat all comers [with the exception of the Advent Vega].

However, a morbid distrust of anything to do with DSG [and 0 availability] made the decision easy. Battery life is great, MicroSD is fine by me, I can swap cards with my phone and with an adapter I can use the same memory in my laptop and netbook - although the netbook is fast becoming redundant.

A full USB port enables me to use a compact external keyboard when flying my desk and the on-screen keyboard is adequate when out and about.

Now that I've rooted my Hero I can tether my 101 to my phone for genuine Martini web access [anytime, anyplace anywhere] and a simple micro USB lead means the phone does not go flat during the day.

It synchronizes with MS Exchange so I have my diary and email with me [and the diary is so much easier to use on a decent sized screen that i may downgrade my phone to a simple candybar as long as it will tether - 101 and phone = as much mobile productivity as I need]

A mini HDMI port also means I can use the Archos as a media player, wireless streaming content from my office PC to household TV

There was an app in Archos's own App Store to install the Android Marketplace

The only thing I don't really like is the lack of a rear facing camera - it's a bitch using the front facing camera to read QR codes. Oh, and the mini USB port is different to everything else that I have that uses mini USB so I'll have to be careful not to loose the cable and when the Mini USB port is in use - you cant swap out the Micro SD card.

These are really minor gripes for a device that is as capable as it is

And what is the name for an Android "fanbois" because that's what i am? Droidians?