Tag Archives: technology
Tech shops in the real world
Such has been my state of distraction that a blogworthy thought that occured to me a full ten days ago hasn’t yet made it into the blog. It was only because it cropped up in conversation in the pub last … more…
The e-waste land
You know those mountains of obsolete and unwanted computers, TVs, toasters, hifi, keyboards, and other techno-crap we knew must be piling up somewhere in the world? This is about one of those places, and what all that toxic garbage is … more…
Museum of London – the Thames in Prehistory
This is a flint handaxe, reckoned to be 300,000 years old, discovered during the construction of the Regent Palace Hotel in 1912, in Glasshouse Street, Picadilly. The site advertises the opening of a new gallery, London before London, which I … more…
Paul Auster represents for the manual typewriter
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | The keys of life It was an Olympia portable, manufactured in West Germany. That country no longer exists, but since that day in 1974, every word I have written has been typed out … more…
The Antikythera Mechanism
I’m a little spooked by Cory’s latest post, about an ancient Greek ‘computer’ hauled out of the Aegean Sea by divers in 1900, now known as the Antikythera mechanism. With only the most basic researches, I’m finding literature on the … more…
‘Reversible data hiding’ embeds data in pictures without distortion
‘Reversible data hiding’ embeds data in pictures without distortion Scientists from the University of Rochester and Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) have invented a new way to hide information within an ordinary digital image and to extract it again–without distorting the … more…
Phones and laptops to shrink?
Phones and laptops to shrink? A new electrode material for rechargeable lithium batteries could mean smaller, lighter, longer-lasting laptops and cell phones. Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have made a substance called … more…
Girl to get tracker implant to ease parents’ fears
Girl to get tracker implant to ease parents’ fears The parents of an 11-year-old girl are to take the extraordinary step of having her fitted with a microchip so that her movements can be traced if she is abducted… Mrs … more…
Museum of Ancient Inventions
Smith College Museum of Ancient Inventions: Museum Directory There are some extraordinary things documented on this page, some of which cast the innovations of the industrial revolution in a rather different light – not least the aeolipile (steam engine) and … more…
R.I.P. Betamax videos
BBC NEWS | UK | R.I.P. Betamax videos – So, SONY have decided to stop making Betamax VCRs. This is quite a shock – I thought they’d already done that, about 1987…