digitaldust

It’s been a long time coming but Shaun of the dead has a trailer. It looks hilarious, same brand of humor as spaced, Simon Pegg wrote it and stars in it, along with Nick Frost and Jessican Stevenson. I cant find any definite release date yet.

I just found a link to where Royal Dutch Shell publishes some of their scenario planning online. Shell invented the concept of Scenario Planning back in the 70s when hit by the unexpected oil shortage. They are meant to be a bunch of expected results based on wildcards that one can test one’s plans against.

A microsite about their long term strategy. Which has to be read with some objectivity as it is all PR and they wouldn’t publish anything that would be damaging or give any real competitive advantage.

But there is some interesting stuff about social connections over the next 50 years. While maybe not “right” it is split into thoughtful issues and does have some pretty diagrams.

I just found that MSWord has Hubbard in it’s dictionary. I feel a shiver run down my spine.

I know that the dirtiest things out there are door knobs and small change. One can try one’s best to do without money but at some point one must touch a toilet door handle. Now I’m wondering what part of a door handle is the best to use? Which bit has less germs and dirt on it?

I’ve seen all stuff about cleaning hands better. I see lots of those posters that show which bits of your hands get missed when washing, those pretty pictures with colour coded bands showing topographical distributions of bacteria. I wonder if anyone can produce the same for toilet door handles? Show where is the safest bit of a toilet door handle to turn/push/pull.

Not that I’m worried about getting my hands dirty, though L Ron Hubbard seemed to be.

Mice produce sperm from monkeys.

This must be the 21st century equivalent of the birds and the bees. Though exactly how the mice are going to have sex with the monkeys is piquing my interest.

Downloadable from the beeb. Now I really didn’t know about this!

I found this article about wi-fi access points on motos cruising around rural Cambodia (via boingboing).

While I was there and in the rest of SE Asia about 4 years ago I sensed that the locals were doing all they could to boot strap themselves online. In the two months between successive visits to Bangkok the number of internet cafes along Kho San Rd had doubled. While that’s admittedly touristy and not reflective of the general public I did seem plenty of Thais there. While I was in Udon Thani I only saw a couple of white people and I hung out in some internet places and a PSX arcade and was the only white person.

One of the lasting memories of Vientiane is the spaghetti of multicolored wiring strung between buildings. In some places the phone, power and whatever else almost lent a festival air to the roads with their decoration.

But speaking about old skool methods of physical transport… Heather and I joined lovefilm.com. For £10 pounds a month they send us DVDs as fast as we can watch them. There’s a bit of a lag due to the British postal system, but the turnaround is good. It beats trying to download them via the internet, not that I would try and do that of course. And it’s less than half the price of a broadband connect.

Just like tape swapping or keen file rippers swapping DVDs through the post. Personally safer, reliable bandwidth, cheap and easy.