Pete's Eats

“Did Noah have to put two of every fish in the ark?”

– Jeremy Keith

Well, I don’t know the answer to Jeremy’s question about the various species of fish, but Noah, according to the bible, actually put seven of each animal if they were clean and two if they weren’t (clean in the kosher sense). The bible reads:

“The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.”

– Genesis 7

The definition of kosher with regard to fish is thus: Fish with have fins and scales are kosher whilst fish which only have fins are not. I guess Eels are so out of luck as far as biblical characters are concerned…

I know how much Jeremy likes to focus on detail, which is why I took the time to write this

Source: QI

Technorati Tags: jeremykeith, pedantry

‘Thieves take couple’s mobile home’

Technorati Tags: crime

Whilst it’s been possible to use a blog to scrapbook all the time, it seems like there is a burgeoning market for web 2.0 apps that are specifically aimed at scrapbookers:

• Plum

“First you google, but then what? Why is collecting and sharing, beyond photos and email, so hard?

Why can’t I put all my favorite stuff in one place?

…then you Plum”

• Scrapblog

“Scrap, Blog, Share”

I’m sure there’s more, but these two just happened to appear in my newsreader pretty much at the same time…

Technorati Tags: scrapbooking, web2.0

Ben Saunders writes:

Four days in April:

On 14 April 2003, on his way to skiing solo from Canada to the North Pole, Pen Hadow reported the temperature that day to be -26°C

On 14 April 2004, during my solo North Pole expedition, the temperature was -19°C. (at an almost identical latitude).

On 14 April 2005, Tom Avery’s Ultimate North dog sled team reported a daily temperature reading of -17°C.

On 14 April 2006, David de Rothschild’s Adventure Ecology expedition (from 88 degrees North) noted it was -6°C.

I’ll leave you to do the calculations.

– Ben Saunders

Scary stuff – brilliantly illustrated by Ben’s post.

Technorati Tags: bensaunders, globalwarming

This is a great little Java app that allows you to explore the relationships between artists based on scrobbler data.

Technorati Tags: lastfm, music

hehe – one for Jim

Technorati Tags: apple, funny

So, I kind of stopped using LastFM and iScrobbler when they messed around with the Mac player and stuff. I’ve been taking another look at it – but the original way it worked was so much better for me… Ah well…

Anyway. I’ve had enough mocking emails. It’s time to address the issue of REM being at the top of my most played track list on LastFM.

It’s my dog’s fault. No, really. He’s a fairly annoying little thing sometimes and when we go out and leave him at home he sometimes makes the most awful noise – constantly apparently. So, I’ve taken to leaving music or internet radio playing to try and prevent the disturbance. It’s a last minute thing as I’m heading out of the door, so I tend to just scroll, click and run (this was before the Roku btw) and one time, JUST ONE TIME, I hit an REM playlist. iTunes was on repeat and we were gone for a few hours – the result? REM becomes the most played group as far as iScrobbler is concerned.

That’s all there is to this – move along now, nothing to see here… :!

Technorati Tags: lastfm, music

I just noticed that Mark/Space have made a version 2.5 Alpha of The Missing Sync available for customers of the version 2.0 software.

The Missing Sync allows you to sync a Pocket PC with your Mac. The latest version of Windows Mobile broke every piece of syncing software for Macs and it’s taken a long time for either Mark/Space or PocketMac to release anything to fix it for us Mac users. (I still think that PocketMac have taken their eye off the ball because the Blackberry sync deal was much sweeter but there you go…)

I haven’t tried this software yet but I will give it a go sometime next week. I’ll update this entry as and when.

—-

On a separate note, since last week I’ve disabled comments for new entries. I’m a bit swamped with comment spam and although MT Blacklist does a very good job of keeping it at bay, it still takes up too many resources for no good reason. I may also go back and disable comments for all previous entries too. The traffic on here is increasing quite a lot recently and I’ve noticed a larger trend for people to be making comments on their own site rather than here and I actually think this is kind of cool – opening topics up for a larger audience and therefore more, if a little distributed, discussion. I’ll see how it all pans out before deciding long-term I guess.

Technorati Tags: themissingsync, sync

It’s been a mad couple of weeks for me. Work has been ‘on top’ and travel has been pretty hectic too. Following on, though not directly, from the LV Mix 06 trip was a few days in San Francisco. I had some meetings to attend as well as friends to try to hook up with and the result has been a bit of a blur. My hotel had a wireless connection throughout but it was flaky at best so I haven’t been able to keep up with email or even the more important things, so if you’re waiting on something from me (like John) then I promise I’ll be on it over the next day or so. And I’m sorry if (like John) it’s important and not yet been dealt with! :!

A big thank you to everyone I met with in San Francisco and Palo Alto! I’m not going to name-check everyone but it was really good seeing John Poisson again after such a long (like a year and a half) break – he’s working on some very cool stuff and I’ll definitely be shouting about it more when I’m allowed I also happened to be sitting on the Caltrain from Palo Alto opposite a particularly well-known (in geek circles I guess) valley company CEO and I think I may have freaked him out a bit by grinning maniacally at him quite a lot. I would have spoken to him but it was the end of a long day for me, he was wearing an mp3 player (not an iPod mind you) and probably has to put up with that kind of crap all the time so I left him with the enduring vision of a big bear-like fella (yes, I’m aware of the implications of that comment) trying to be cool but not succeeding very well. Oh, and being quite Fawlty-like whilst trying to take a picture of him with my phone. Not my coolest moment I suspect. Unlike Jeremy’s totally cool approach to Leo Sayer Malcolm Gladwell recently. (Note to everyone: I *may* be exaggerating my ‘groupie’ behaviour a little bit for comedic purposes…)

The Bay Area has been suffering some particularly crappy weather recently so for the first time ever, on returning to England, I can say I’m looking forward to good old mild but damp Brighton for a bit… You’ll find me in Borders downing caramacs by the pint to try and get over the lag as quickly as possible this week I suspect. See you there maybe

Technorati Tags: Bay Area, San Francisco, travel

I just met with John Poisson for a coffee and he told me about this:

For a couple, plus company, who receive so many accolades there must be few that really make a difference these days – this has got to be one of them! I can only imagine what they’re thinking right now, ‘wow, the cover of Newsweek was GREAT, but Pete’s blog too!?’ – heh.

Technorati Tags: flickr, newsweek