A couple of days ago, I set up a webserver on my phone. Some may see this as a foolish and geeky activity. Some may not understand the boon to productivity and convenience such a thing provides…
I created a bunch of accounts for various friends and sent them out. Now my friends could see exactly where I was thanks to the GPS on my phone; they could send me messages; see whether I was talking on the phone and how much juice I had left in my battery. They could even activate my camera without my knowing and take a picture of the inside of my pocket!
All of which is pretty cool, but kind of useless. However, one thing that is kind of neat is that I installed a couple of yahoo widgets that let me do things like use my laptop to send an SMS through my phone via the web server, or see what missed calls I have.
Ah, I hear you ponder, but isn’t your phone always with you? Aren’t there blue-toothy or usb connectiony things that allow pretty much the same thing?
Here, gentle reader, is where I point out the error of your ways. Right now I am lying in bed annoying my wife by writing this blog entry. My phone is in my office, having its tasty electrons replenished. I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to reply to a text message from an American heiress. What to do? I suppose I could have gotten out of bed and walked to the other room, but what if I’d fallen down the stairs or encountered a burglar or a wildebeest?
Thanks to the webserver on my phone and the Yahoo widget and Tim Berners-Lee I was able to send the message without even wrinkling the duvet.
Of course, if it wasn’t for the stupid web server, the battery on my phone wouldn’t need to be charged and I could have kept it close by while I slept.
Category: Geek
I went to France in the backseat of a 1966 Ford Mustang this summer. The Mustang, itself, isn't particularly relevant to this tale, but I just like mentioning it. It was a cool car. Chicks dug me when I was in that car. I'm not sure how they knew I was in it, being as I was in the back seat and all, but I'm sure they did. I could just sense it. I was dug.
France is, however, relevant to this tale. France contains wine, you see. And English ex-pats, trampolines, and cheese.
I may have drunk a little too much wine in France and I ended up having an argument about cheese with my host.
There is, as I am sure you know, a grand British tradition involving chasing a wheel of cheese down a hill in Gloucestershire. It is a very steep hill and many people are injured each year in this dubious sporting activity. It is so steep that my host, a certain Mr. Jordan, maintains that no one has ever caught the cheese.
He made this statement as we kicked soccer balls at a young boy bouncing on a trampoline. I considered his thesis, thought for a moment, and then carefully pointed out that he was a fool and had floppy hair besides.
He pointed out that I was Canadian and so obviously could know nothing about cheese and that my parents were quite possibly elk.
The debate continued along these lines for a bit until we each realized that the other's position was intractable. And so a wager was agreed – €20 each, to be held by a certain Mr. Hampson until we can agree an answer.
My central argument is that hills and cheese and people are all organic entities created either by random cosmic chance or by an obviously mentally unbalanced God. If that is the case, surely, in the last 60 years of cheese rolling, the cheese has got hung up on something or maybe rolled in a bit of an arc or smacked into a passing hedgehog. Any of these scenarios would have caused it to slow down enough to be grasped by one of the multitude of crazed Gloucestershirians flailing down the hill.
The problem for my opponent, of course, is that it is very difficult to prove a negative. How can he be certain no one will pop out of the woodwork with a video of someone catching the cheese.
There is also the question of what is meant by "catching" the cheese.
Mr. Hampson, alluded to above, contacted the Cheese-Rolling society of Gloucestershire to ask if anyone had caught the cheese and received the following reply…
Not to my knowledge. Although the cheese has on some occasions been 'rolled' badly (last year one was overtaken by runners at one point as it rolled flat rather than on its edge) it always picks up speed and gets to the bottom first.Runners are moving so fast and quite out of control, that they couldn't stop to pick it up if it got stuck anyway!
Actually catching it is really not a priority, just survival!!
"Not to my knowledge" is not very definitive. And anyway, he writes, "last year one was overtaken by runners at one point...". I would argue that "overtaken" is the same as "caught".
In any case, I'm putting a shout out to the multitude. Please come forward if you have ever caught the cheese. Video evidence is preferable, but I will be satisfied with hearsay or rumour.
If it is generally agreed that I have won the bet, I vow to donate the winnings to Children in Need at http://www.justgiving.com/ibcbikeride/. I hereby challenge the deeply misguided Mr. Jordan to be so generous.
Category:
I am, once again, doing a mad cycle ride. This is the biggest one yet. I’ll be starting in Wales, cycling coast to coast across England, popping across the North Sea and then riding for another two days across Holland to reach Amsterdam. I plan to hang out there for a couple of days, take a deep breath (hopefully of air not too laden with THC), and then sprint pell-mell for London.
Did you notice the phrase “coast to coast” up there? This is not an exaggeration. We start in Cardiff on the Bristol Channel. This is so much the Western Coast of England that it’s actually in a completely different nation. Then we head East across the entire nation of England until we run out of land and smack into the North Sea. The plan is to do this section of the trip in just three days.
The only Canadian equivalent would be starting in Hyder, Alaska and cycling until you hit Halifax. So, in a way, it’s as if we were travelling 6,742km over three days! Assuming we didn’t have to stop to sleep or take pictures of enormous easter eggs, we would have to maintain an average speed of more than 187kilometers per hour in order to be able to accomplish this superhuman feat.
It doesn’t stop there, though. We then have to cross the North Sea. Keep in mind that no one has ever successfully accomplished this on a bicycle.
And then there is the Netherlands… This is a country that by all rights should be under the unrelenting suffocation of the sea. At any moment, the dykes could fail and we could all drown. Not to mention the threat from windmills, which are, effectively, gigantic cuisinarts. And the cheese! My God, People! The country is awash in cheese and tulips. To be honest, I’m not sure what the danger is here, but isn’t that the point? Who knows what dangers await in this land of curds and petals?
So, assuming I make it to Amsterdam, which, as we all know, is a city filled with dopers, prostitutes, and museums, I then have to find my way home. The plan is to take five days to get there at, as I have mathematically proven above, 187 kilometers per hour. However, the timetable to return gives us only two days. Again, using almost irrefutable mathematics, this would mean I would have to cycle at more than 280 kilometers per hour. To put this in perspective, this is the top speed of a BMW M5. Let's see Clarkson top that with any of his infernal combustioney toys.
Surely, all this means that you should take out your VISA card and donate a few quid at http://www.justgiving.com/ibcbikeride/.
You can also follow our progress and our preparations at http://www.ibcbikeride.co.uk/.
Category:
