Haje’s Brain

So, by now you probably can’t have failed to notice that I’m taking off on a grand tour of Europe – I’m expecting it’ll take about 3 weeks, and that by the end of it, I’ll have done about 3,500 miles.

Of course, being a complete and utter geek, I’ve been looking into how I can keep all my friends and family posted while I’m on the road – and I think I’ve found a solution. Brightkite is a brilliant website which does location-based blogging, but which is also deliciously Web 2.0 in that it spreads its love around. So, I think everything is set up correctly, which means that I can use the rather brilliant Brightkite for iPhone app – it uses the GPS unit built into my iPhone, allowing me to micro-blog (up to 140 characters) and post photos directly to the Brightkite site. From Brightkite, the feeds are picked up by other services, and depending on what you’re interested in, you can choose to see what I’m up to. (more…)

There, I said it. But I also mean it. I woke up this morning to about 3 – okay, perhaps 5 – centimetres of snow on the ground. Enough to persuade me that riding a motorcycle to the station might not be the
wisest option. So instead I take the bus, who – despite driving very carefully indeed – nearly spins out on the first sharp bend.

Anyway, so I made it to the station in about 45 minutes instead of 20 minutes (very careful bus driver), and I arrive to discover that all the trains are either 45 minutes delayed (!) or cancelled altogether. Now, I don’t want to appear cynical, but a train weighs… what… 200 tonnes? 300? I completely fail to understand how a loosely conglomerated alliance of snowflakes can stop a six thousand horsepower colossus of steel. (more…)

If you’re active in today’s society, you can’t have missed the word ‘gadget’. The word itself is confusing, and means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

How come an item can be a gadget one week, and not the next? What makes one mobile phone a gadget, while another isn’t? Does something have to be high-tech to be a gadget? What draws people to gadgets? (more…)

This morning, I stumbled across a news story about how:

1) Last year, the top 10 NHS litigation claims are responsible for £68m of its budget.
2) all 10 of these claims were related to problems with complications in birth or pregnancy.

This bothers me on a whole series of levels. The average annual brutto salary in the UK is just over £20K. This means that the top litigants, who were on average granted £6.8m of compensation, were given 323 annual wages as a lump sum.

Now, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that civil litigation suits can be a way to keep businesses in check, but the NHS is a government organisation which currently is running at a £512m overspend. The past year, the NHS spent £593m on litigation cases. For a government agency run on taxpayer’s money, this is completely ridiculous. The UK only has about 60 million inhabitants, which means that each and every individual pays £10 every year, just to cover the litigation suits. (more…)

So, the online bookmarking / social network site Reddit was down for a couple of days, and admits to having a lot of their data stolen. They further admit that the data will have included logins, passwords, and e-mail addresses.

The part that was stolen, according to the news story, was “media of ours that contained a backup of a portion of the reddit database was stolen recently”… Not being funny, but what the hell is a media company doing having unencrypted ‘backup media’ (CD or DVD, presumably) laying around? That’s hardly what’s known as being diligent in protecting your users. (more…)

Jesus, we’ve come a long way since the 1960s. Surely, they can make a taxi that doesn’t look completely ridiculous? With the launch of TX4, I guess the answer is ‘no’.

For some reason, we get tons of press releases about how great black cabs are, and how hard all other hackney carriages suck. Of course, it’s a bit tiresome, but we could live with that, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the LTI taxis themselves are complete dinousaurs, with ancient engines and ridiculous performance. (more…)

Quite frequently, when I search for parts for my car on eBay, I come across auctions for power boosting chips promising the world. Based on the description, however, it becomes quite clear what it actually is, and what it does:

you would be buying a Performance Boost Resistor, which would add 5-20 BHP to your engine. it will fit any fuel injected vehicle that has an ECU, but not turbo or diesel models. it takes about 5 minutes to fit, and can be removed without any adverse effect to your engine. so you can put it in your next car.

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As someone who keeps close tabs on automotive press releases, I can’t help but notice that there is a massive PR campaign running which alternates between stating how fantastically great LTI black cabs are, and how terribly horrible all other types of taxis are. (more…)

In a recent court case in Florida, a jury awarded $61m to the parents of a Lance Crossman Hall, a 17-year-old who died as a passenger in a Ford Explorer. The driver fell asleep before the accident.

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Estates with small engines? It’s been done. Small cars with no roof? Done. Long cars with swimming pools? How 2003. Cars with special houses for dogs? Yeah, we’ve seen those. You wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Vauxhall’s new MPV creates a brand new niche with potential

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