"Worried that your 4X4 lacks off-road credibility as you mount kerbs and flatten speed bumps in the city?

A firm from Shropshire reckons to have found the answer - spray-on mud."

Guess it had to come, didn't it?!

Later in the same article, it says "Drivers of large 4X4 vehicles have been coming under increasing attack in cities such as London ... Driver groups have hit back, complaining that they are unfairly blamed for traffic problems, and argue that they are often used to carry a larger number of people."

Often used - what utter tosh?! I see these tanks on the way in to work every day (I car-share) and I don't even recall seeing one with more than the driver in.

BBC NEWS | Business | Canned mud for 4X4 city slickers

An incredible, stunning set of photos from China. I don't have any more information on these yet, but they're well worth viewing (the text is all Chinese).

Wake Our Consciousness

Added Tuesday, 14 June, from a Chinese friend:
These photos "were sent by a friend who has been asked to promote the awareness of the hardship in 'developing China'. There are some photo exhibitions and nationwide contests all the time in China. The photos appear to be collected and published by the web site (a charity web site) from different sources. It is entitled 'Wake Our Consciousness - The Most Shocking Photos 2003'.

They are not from a single photographer. Some of them even don't know the photographer."

"A few weeks back Gordon mentioned a new web-based service called Audioscrobbler, which sounded pretty interesting to me. Essentially it builds up a profile of your musical tastes..."

Looking at this as a replacement to Kung Tunes, which is no longer in development by its author. Audioscrobbler offers more than simply listing the music you've been listening to on your favoured computer music player (I'm an iTunes devotee, on Mac at work and Windows at home). The link here is for a script that can take a feed from Audioscrobbler and parse it as RSS (instead of RDF - yuck) via the Magpie script.

Fuddland | Weblog | 2004 | 04 | 27 | Audioscrobbler

My first (proper) cricket game of the season saw an impressive performance by Aspley Guise at the OU, finishing on over 250.

Relished the opportunity to shoot photos of not one but three local bands last night in a tiny bar at my place of work. Lighting was extremely poor, but it was immediately obvious that flash would be both too intrusive and would completely ruined the atmosphere. So instead I cranked the 1D up to its 'high' ISO setting of 3200, switched the 70-200/2.8 zoom to manual focus and hoped for the best. About a third of the shots were acceptable but of those only one or two could be described as good.

"Singing benches let loose in city

Robotic bins that move and chuckle, benches that flock together and sing when the sun comes out, have been unleashed in Cambridge.

The 'interactive' technology will allow the street furniture to respond to members of the public. You'll find that one bench may be particularly attracted to a particular bin. They will chuckle and giggle sometimes or make rude noises.'"

How long before we see chatty doors?

"Mr Bogen hopes the cutting edge technology would help keep the bins and benches safe from theft. The project cost £110,000 and was funded by the Arts Council and the National Lottery."

Big dose of reality for Mr.Bogen - stat.

BBC NEWS | England | Cambridgeshire | Singing benches let loose in city

"Action demanded to curb 'happy slapping' mobile phone craze.

New mobile phones should be fitted with technology which blocks their use in schools in an attempt to crack down on the craze for 'happy slapping', an MP said today.

Adrian Bailey, MP for West Bromwich West, ... urged the Government to take immediate action before someone was seriously injured or killed."

Quite right too that he should be concerned, but how exactly are you going to stop phones working in schools? Some kind of signal jammer? What if the school has a dirty great mobile phone mast on the roof? That these incidents are occouring is simply another sign of the increasing lack of discipline in schools today, which is itself typical of the 'nanny state' we find ourselves living in as a result of this Government.

UK Education News & Teaching News - TES - The Times Educational Supplement 2

"Transport Secretary Alistair Darling is set to outline his plans to use road charges to reduce traffic congestion."

"He has suggested using satellite systems to charge different rates to use different roads - from 2p a mile on country lanes to £1.30 in busy areas."

"The DfT wants to float the idea to gauge public reaction."

I'll give you my reaction - you can shove it where the sun don't shine.

BBC NEWS | UK | At-a-glance: Road charge plans

"Former US presidential hopeful John Kerry did no better at university than his rival George Bush, records show.

'So much for the notion that President Bush is a dunce compared with Senator Kerry,' said the New York Daily News."

OK, so they're both idiots.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Kerry and Bush had similar grades

Here's another Blog/photo/GPS crossover service, where people can upload images, together with the GPS location of where they were taken, and some meta data to allow searching. Not clear just yet what the point of it is, though - I guess it might be a little more fun if you could do the whole process with your mobile phone...

GEOsnapper :: GPS Photography


Looks like there have been only limited posts from users in the UK to date. I posted three taken near my place of work and clicking on the link 'View nearby photos' produces a slew from London - about 60 miles away.

This is just one of a number of new services that allow you to upload a combination of photos and GPS data to share with others. Generally they appear to be a bit of a cludge, often using Google's mapping service indirectly. I guess Google will launch a service like this of their own before long and all these third-party sites/services will disappear.

gMapTrack: Your Locations, Trips and Trackers with Google Maps

Blogging this purely because its another group of people interested in getting GPS position data from mobile phones, which is what we were doing with Lorenzo's Everest audio blog. The new AGPS system developed by the mobile phone companies shows promise but at the moment, there's no way to access the data.

geobloggers: Garmin handheld GPS is dead!

Apple Mac lovers around the world (or at least those who tune in to Steve Job's annual state-of-the-Apple-nation broadcast) were stunned to hear they are switching to Intel processors.

"The news ... could spell a period of confusion for consumers, some analysts are warning. The first Apple computers with Intel chips will be on the market next year. But Graham Barlow, editor of MacFormat magazine, said some people may not buy a new Apple machine knowing that a new processor was coming out next year."

My immediate thought is: since OS-X is basically Linux, why should I pay the premium for Apple hardware when I can run Linux on a PC? I reckon this move could well turn out to be the beginning of the end of Apple computers.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple Intel move 'could confuse'

"Although California has the largest population of the United States, in terms of carbon intensity, it is atypical. Whereas national annual per-capita greenhouse-gas emissions average 20 metric tons, Californians per-capita emissions average 12 metric tons, according to the California Energy Department."

A very interesting article that shows not all Americans have George Bush's attitude to the environment.

California, low-carbon leader

"Greenpeace activists have been taking part in a series of protests across the UK aimed at disrupting sales of four-by-four vehicles."

In their defence, Mark Foster, spokesman for Land Rover stated:
"Most of the vehicles we sell are diesel and the best seller is a Freelander which does 37mpg and its CO2 emissions are just the same as a Mini Cooper".

From their websites:
Freelander TD4 Diesel - 37.2 mpg combined and 205 g/km CO2
Mini Cooper S - 40.9 mpg combined and 166 g/km CO2
...so Mr.Foster isn't far off.

However, lets now compare the current Range Rover (the model featured in the BBC News photo) and a Mini Cooper S and look specifically at their urban figures which, lets face it, is where most Chelsea tractors get used:
Range Rover - from 12.6 mpg (supercharged petrol) to 19.6 mpg (TD6 diesel)
Mini Cooper S manual - 29.1 mpg

Now lets compare weight:
Range Rover - 2570Kg (that's two and a half tonnes)
Mini Cooper S - 1215 kg

I read recently that a child hit by a Chelsea Tractor at 30mph is twice as likely to be killed as by a 'normal' car.

And lastly, their comparative CO2 emissions:
Range Rover - 299 to 376 g/km
Mini Cooper S - 166 g/km

All this data is from the makers' own websites. Not such a rosey story there. You've had to be pretty arrogant (or Jeremy Clarkson) to not be able to accept that Chelsea tractors are pretty unfriendly to the environment.

BBC NEWS | UK | Greenpeace demos at 4x4 dealers

Today's motocross event at Toddington produced a fairly decent crop of images including this one of #56 Pete Chapman, who I have nicknamed Hot Dog.

Just days after my friend Lorenzo nearly met his death near the summit of Everest "a 21-year-old student has climbed into the record books by becoming the youngest Briton to reach the top of the 'seven summits'."

Famous British explorer Ranulph Fiennes was also forced to abandon his attempt on the summit.

BBC NEWS | England | Bristol | Student climbs into record books

An absurd new 'pay-as-you-go' road toll scheme is being proposed by the Government. The plan is intended to reduce the use of cars but, as usual, no suggestion has been made that an alternative to using cars would be provided. And the toll would not penalise gas-guzzling vehicles, unlike the current petrol tax.

Congratulations to Katie, a neighbour's daughter, on the birth of a son, Max.

"An atlas of environmental change compiled by the United Nations reveals some of the dramatic transformations that are occurring to our planet."

Someone make sure Bush gets a copy.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Changing planet revealed in atlas