digitaldust

Cue some Straus, dum dum dum dum dum dum

I finally got myself a new phone. After nearly a year of wibbling about what to get, and the stupid joystick thing basically breaking down on me, I finally get my act together to upgrade.

Heather seems to think it looks very phallic, but I cant really see the resemblance personally. Black and orange with numbers on it is a racing bumblebee, not a penis.
I have to say I’m impressed, it’s got a nice camera, the walkman thing is not entirely useless and buried away deep in the menus it has an RSS reader. It has overcome my dubiousness, because the last phone I had was another suckyericson and like I said the joystick was always a pain in the arse. Who would have thought that nowadays you would have a joystick on a phone. Go back 20 years and try telling someone that they would have a joystick on their phone. They would laugh at you, or think you had been playing too much pacman. Mind you I can see what they would be imagining - an old rotary dial phone with a game pad balanced on top - then it would look like a penis.

More new toys are also on their way… *rubs hands with glee*

Success was sudden and unexpected, said Dr. Nicolelis. “We had no idea kinetic skills would develop so quickly. One moment we were having lunch in the lab, the next moment we were covered with monkey shit.”

Researchers at Duke university teach monkeys to use a robotic arm with their brains. Excellent! One of the first direct machine interfaces and it gets used for something primoridal and stupid (to a human). Perhaps the monkey was trying to communicate… saying something like “Get this fucking robot arm off me or I’ll cover you in shit!”

Rik pointed out that it’s most likely an April the first story, sad but probably true. I like the idea of tiny monkeys with giant robot arms swinging through the city hurling hypersonic shit at passers-by because they’re frustrated by their inability to masturbate with their cold, hard, steely fingers.

Phew, now I know what I get every morning, it’s not that I’m lazy or go to bed to late, I’ve got Social Jet-lag. Some crazy german researcher is claiming that 50% of the world has permanent jet lag - rather than just a few people liking to stay up late and have a lie in. Perhaps he needs to use occam’s razor in the morning, it’s the best thing for shaving whilst under the effects of Social Jet-lag.

Professor Till Roenneberg, of Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, said this meant that at least one person in two was “in effect, socially jet-lagged all the time” because their body clock did not conform with their working hours.

…

Prof Roenneberg suggested altering school and work start times to fit better with this pattern would make a “huge difference” to exam results and productivity. He suggested more companies should start work at 10am rather than 9am because the biggest problem is with people who have not fully woken up in the morning.

Suits me fine! I was just looking to see where I could live if I want to live in a timezone an hour behind - but I’ve not got a lot of choice, it’s either Iceland or Morocco. I think I would be quite happy splitting my time between the two if I could.
(via my loose and occasional trawl of gizmondo, no funky gadgets just silly scientists and jet lagged zombies)

It also occurs to me that the term social has nothing really to do with this jetlag/sleep idea. Just that the word is increasingly cool to use at the moment. Social Jet-lag should be being a few hours behind the conversation. Which I also feel quite often, usually to do with the other sort of social jet-lag.