the museum in the palace of culture and science is a very strange place. totally bonkers.

it's mostly an old school exhibits-at-arms-length in glass cages types of place, but there was one hands on area.

unfortunately it was a demonstration of radioactivity which i thought i'd like to avoid. (it's worth noting chenobyl isn't too far from poland)

still, they had some bonkers exhibits like this type writer which used piano keys for the letters.

and an exhibit which banned the use of thumbs

and an ancient walkman

and some old mobile phones which were surrounded by pennies, seemingly for no other reason than the glass case they were in wasn't done up properly so there was space to drop pennies in (so people did)

and this thing is a pilot training simulator thing (with penny farthings for authenticity)

here is an early apple mac

and the fantastic trolley computer

and i thought this sign was particularly telling. it was in the space section and announced that this rocket was a genuine exhibit (unlike all the others i assume).

the music had a really weird atmosphere and was quite fantastic - you must go next time you are in warsaw (although i wouldn't make the trip just to go).

signs for modern life. there's always a new sexy model available

(in the museum in the palace of culture and science)

the fight against aliens is taking place on the streets of london:

any ideas what this vehicle is for ?

here is an advert sent for spam and rice, which is apparently quite big in Honolulu. Dan sent it to me and it is a good one (although it's taken me about a month to share it with you !)

by the way, if you got spammed/virused big time from an email address which is associated with one of my domains then i can only apologise. it was absolutely nothing to do with me and i suspect it was just one of those nasty virus things which uses some random email address to hide its true origin. things like that are SO annoying.

anyway, i've now got a nice collection of angry return emails if anyone is interested. it's interesting how they vary in text and style.

ever had to make someone redundant ? lacked the necessary technical equipment ?

you need a fire phone

available at a street corner near you soon.

i was intrigued to see these dumped fence panels down the little path i cut through to get to the train station in the morning.

i like how the front panel has slipped down and made a nice shape which i'm sure can be described mathematically. but i can't remember what it's called.

this was a nice touch. it's a dangly tea bag outside the window on my train this morning. it had been dipped in milky tea so left a trail behind as it swung backwards and forwards as the train accelerated.

so, what we ended up with was a time based wind splodge showing the trains' acceleration ! what a great idea.

sadly these photos don't do it justice, but i think you can see what i was getting at.

the sound systems they use in country fairs are amazing. they're built for voice rather than sound and must be decades old in design.

they make me think of cold war nuclear announcements. and tellytubby land.

a soggy street cabinet containing lots of important phone lines and broadband connections. not sure who you're meant to tell when you see things like this in the street. so i'll tell you.

here is an ancient telephone and a modern wall plug in the Oak Tree Inn:

in the UK there are two main domestic financial institutions where you can stash your cash - banks and building societies. there is a difference, but i don't know what it is !

anyroadupdown, banks used to be the kings when it came to extracting your cash and they had the whole hole-in-the-wall thing sewn up (if you see what i mean).

but the building societies got themselves together with their LINK network and soon they were allowing other building society card holders to use each other's machines.

the latest 'craze' is cash back in supermarkets which are neutral on the whole bank vs building society debate (as far as i'm aware).

but there's another force going on. it's portable branded cash machines. they've appears in 24x7 grocery shops and here are a load in a motorway service station. note the branded bin in the middle. probably for making deposits.

these machines seem to run off a mains socket and a normal telephone line. i may get one set up at home. be ideal for if i realise i've run out of cash in the morning before heading off to work.

here is tony trying out wifi things in our house.

our home cable modem internet access and digital tv died last night at about 7.15pm. ntl aren't particularly well know for mending stuff so i expect it will be out for a while which is a shame. i'm all over the place work-wise this week too.

so apologies in advance for any spasmodicism this week.

oh dear

update: it's mended again. hoorah

i'm starting to really love spam after a period of finding it very annoying.

it's thanks to the random combinations of words they put together to get through the spam traps. here are two i received today.

how would you charade them ?

i had 200 digital photos developed at Boots using their overnight service and it only cost £20 !

They have a special offer on until mid-September and they print the name of the file on the back of each shot which you can use to make a date stamp.

Welcome to About Cookies, a guide to controlling cookies on your computer

spotted this on TummyMonsters

cool thing. go to a site. replace the URL with javascript:resizeTo(800,600); and there you have a resized browser window.

great if you are working on a big monitor and want to check what a site looks like on a smaller monitor.

I don't know about you but I've scoured the internet looking for drivers for my Sony DSC-P71 cybershot camera. [SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF PAGE]

In the end I gave up and tried to find the original disk. Half an hour later I found the driver disk. If others are interested, here are the drivers:

(now moved to Driver Guide to save my server some bandwidth) You may need to register, but it's free.

If you have Windows 2K you want to install the USB Update (15KB) after you've installed the main driver. this was sourced from the sony website.

This driver allows you to access the memory stick in your camera as if it was an extra drive on your PC. An ideal way to drain your batteries !

Not worked out how to use the camera as a webcam in this mode. Suspect it's not possible. Sony say their cameras aren't decided to be used as webcams on their online FAQs.

Whilst downloading the file, why not have a quick look at the rest of the blog or leave a comment to say where you are from ?

If you find the driver useful then be thankful. you can thank me by saying "hello" and smiling at three strangers over the next few days.

If you have any problems accessing the file, let me know !

UPDATE: you could also try this bit of the Sony site for the Windows 2K and Windows ME drivers which might work on WinXP and 98 respectively (maybe!)

LATEST UPDATE: Sony now host these drivers on their own site. go here or start on the sony front page then go to the Support / Download drivers section. i've recently found them here (including a TWAIN driver)

some neat (nobodysaysthatinengland) web tricks
davidgagne.net

apologies for any loss of viewing earlier this evening. the server threw a wobbler. or something

DSL/Cable Webserver - Introduction

=CEILING(4.42,0.05)

scriptygoddess