My wife and I just had a baby! As a result I probably won’t be posting for a while as Adrian needs me more at the moment. Here’s a picture

Ain’t he cute? More pictures in my Flickr account (being updated every now and then).

One day while at the local supermarket I noticed on a product a strange looking square barcode. At home that night I tried to find some information about it but with no luck - Until tonight! While browsing through make I saw a guide for making a cutout “QR Code” business card. Wikipedia to the rescue and now I’m up to scratch. Turns out these things are used in the production process of products, but are starting to appear in other places, viral marketing style with the purpose of giving people who have the ability to read them extra information, addresses, and advertising.

A quick google search turned up a fantastic application compatible with my handset (Nokia N73) and by looking at the download page many more handsets. From what I can tell the product is free after registering on their website (it might be shareware, I honestly don’t think it is though - didn’t see any mention of purchasing or trial). What Kaywa Reader does is use the camera built into the handset to “see” the Code, then decode it and display information on the screen (text and internet addresses). See if you can decode the QR Code I included in this post! I’ll certainly be on the lookout for these codes everywhere I go from now on.

This hilarious (because it’s true) list of Murphy’s Laws brought a smile to my face, I hope it does for you as well. There’s many more on the website (from all walks of life) but here’s some of my favorites from the technology and computers sections:

Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he’ll have to touch to be sure. great discoveries are made by mistake.

Computers don’t make errors-What they do they do on purpose.

To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

Clicky to go to the list of categories.. there’s probably something that you can relate to!

Feast your eyes on the latest controller for the Nintendo Wii:

Does it look familiar? Are you having flashbacks of the 90s? Clicky to view more (sorry, it’s a Japanese limited edition).

I just have to laugh at nVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who made the bold statement “We’re Going to Open a Can of Whoop Ass” (not the good kind of laughing at either, the bad kind - which makes me reconsider investing in their products). Sure it started with Intel claiming the graphics we’ve become used to aren’t up to the challenges the future will bring, but Huang fired back with references that Intel’s solution would only be capable of office based tasks and not gaming/high-definition. Then it was Intel’s turn, who emailed journalists reminding them of how most Windows crashes are caused by nVIDIA’s incomplete drivers.

I’m not going to tell you what Huang’s response was, you’re just going to have to read article from DailyTech to find out.

My system’s running an Intel CPU and nVIDIA graphics card. I get the feeling I should probably start getting used to ATi graphics solutions.

I’d never heard of this before tonight but it’s certainly interesting, I’ll quote wikipedia:

Polybius is a supposed arcade game featured in an Internet urban legend. According to the story, the Tempest-style game was released to the public in 1981, and caused its players to go insane, causing them to suffer from intense stress and horrific nightmares. A short time after its release, it supposedly disappeared without a trace. No evidence for the existence of a game, other than the ROMS (see below), has ever been discovered.

You can read the article from wikipedia here, and I’ve even found a playable reproduction of the game here.