Web Dev Ireland

I remember doing research for an assignment in college back in 1999 and I stumbled across a research company called Cambridge Technology and they were looking into holographic storage using lasers to put information onto an optical cube.
The idea as I understood it was if you had lasers(two or more) put information into a 3d shape they could store huge amounts of info in the tiny cube because they were working in three dimensions you had a huge amount of space to put the information i.e you not only had a flat surface to put your data on you also had the depth of the cube to put data into.
The researchers very optimistic about the technology because it would give speed comparable to RAM but it would be non-volatile (i.e. if you turn the power off the data is not lost) and have massive storage capacity. I thought this was amazing and so “futuristic”, well it turns out the future is here people!

The Register has an article today on holograpic disks with Maxell already announcing a 300gb holographic storage system to be launched next year. This is only the start of the holograpic disk, with disks upto 1.6Tb!!!(yes thats Terra-bytes) envisioned by Maxell. Data transfer will start at 20Mbs and rise to 120Mbs (thats plenty to play even the most hi-def films).

Other companys, such as toshiba have put their money into a format with the catchy name HVD - Holographic Versatile Disc. This will be a standard DVD/CD sized disk with staggering specs (1Tb storage with 1GBs throughput) .

I’m glad to see this technology finally come to fruition.

I have recently being getting a lot of comment spam in the blog.
WordPress luckily has some “minor” spam protection as default, but I still have to moderate the spam manually. What solutions do you all use out there in the blogging community?
I would love to know how people deal with it and maybe then I could post an article to help other bloggers like myself.

In my current job I spend quite a bit of time moving between client sites where I don’t always have admin access on the PC’s I use. I refuse pointblank to use Internet Explorer if I am to use the machine for more then a day. Luckily Firefox doesn’t need admin rights to install as all it does is unpack itself to a folder and doesn’t need registery entries to operate. So I can use FF all the time, woohoo .

The only problem is that to install the Flash plugin you do need admin rights, sigh.
I don’t really mind not having flash installed, but what does get on my nerves is that little yellow dropdown that reminds you that it’s not installed everytime you access a page with flash on it (which is quite a few in this ad driven age).

additional plugins are required to display all the media on this page

Now this is great for a lot of newbies i’m sure but it’s not something I like to see, especially when I have no way to install the plugin.

So here is how to disable this message

1. Type about:config in the address bar
2. Search for plugin.default_plugin_disabled by typing it into the filter text box.
3. Set the value to false by double-clicking on the text (or you can right click on the line and click toggle)
4. Restart Firefox

I hope this helps someone else besides me.

According to wired.com they have categorised the 10 worst software bugs in History. I quiet like their explanation of how the word “bug” became the defacto description of a flaw in a computer program. I’m not sure if it’s true or not but I like it none the less.

a club that began in 1947 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark 1 system. The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer’s logbook with the words: “first actual case of a bug being found.

Certain bugs come to mind as being particulary bad, the therac-25 X-ray machince that gave six people lethal doses of radiation is a pretty good reason not to ever get x-rayed again. :p

Read the article on wired.com

It’s worth a few minutes of your day.

I’m sure some people have seen this before but I was looking at the ISS five year aniversary pictures on nasa.gov. It’s pretty spooky to look at the photo again.

Be warned that the photo is 2.2MB and is probably not suitable for any but the most dedicated on dial-up.
You can see the plumes of smoke trailing off miles into the distance.

For anyone who is a big fan of Dilbert like myself you will love the fact that Scott Adams has started to write a new blog. What makes me even happier is that it is written with the same wit as the comic. Adams dark sense of humour comes across fantasticaly.

Visit it and subscribe to the RSS feed.
It will no doubt become an unmissable read .

Well i’m back from Frankfurt since friday and haven’t had a chance to post since. Work is finally picking up, which is nice. This does however leave me with less time to blog

I have a couple of photos I took in Frankfurt that I will put up in the Gallery. Didn’t really get out of the hotel much during the training. But in typical Irish fashion a group of us made a break for it at midnight for a “few” beers on the town. We had only finished work at midnight(started at 8am) but we wanted to make the most of it. So we stumbled back to the hotel at 6am and got an hours sleep before the training began the next day again.

It was fun giving a presentation to 120 people after only an hours sleep, but everyone seemed to think it went great saying it was my “irish charm” that got us through.

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip

This one was the view from my hotel room window.

To commemerate the 100,000,000th download of firefox a LUG has launced a weather balloon to 100,000 feet! Yes the Oregon State Linux Users Group has gone all out and launched the balloon satellite, while having a BBQ and a bit of a shindig.

Loading up the balloon

Launching Firefox one
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Work are sending me to Frankfurt tomorrow evening for a three day training course. Should be good fun.

I will be staying at the Intercontinental, Frankfurt pictured below.

I’m not sure if the room will have high-speed internet access. The “superior” rooms do, but i’m not sure if work splashed for that. I will try to get on and post to my three loyal readers (including myself in that figure).
I must take lots of photos and bring them back.

I am not the greatest lover of flash in the world, but I will say that this flash advert by IKEA is stunning.

Be sure to use the little arrows to click around the page.

Probably not suitable for anyone on dialup.

Amazing IKEA flash video