Mr. Speaker

Send an email to mrspeaker@gmail.com with a subject line that begins with sms (and a space), and the remainder of the subject line will be delivered to my mobile phone as a text message. Go on… give it a try… Yep, it worked. Pretty nifty hey? Ok, Ok, just one message is fine, thanks. Jeeez.

Want this service for yourself? Read on!
(more…)

I’ve mentioned “spinner” on this page a bunch of times - I hope that’s what they are called… “little animated-gif indicator AJAX thingos” doesn’t sound quite right.

Anyway, just thought I’d mention this “issue” I’ve noticed quite a bit with people implementing spinners like so:

1. Load spinner image in HTML
2. When AJAX procedure completes, use javascript to hide the spinner.

This is hunky dory - but accounts poorly for us wise folk using the no-script extension.
(more…)

Talented people. God I hate them. How dare they sit around making our meagre accomplishments look meagre? Well, they dare. They dare.

Case in point: Graffiti Wall for Facebook. It provides you with a skeleton tool set - a colour picker, a brush size selector, an opacity selector, and 152592 pixels on which to use them…Not much you can do with that, right?

Well, let me tell you, people… are… freaks. Yeah thanks guys. Way to take the fun out of it.

So what can one do if one is filled with artistic desire, yet has the drawing skills of Ken Done? Is the answer to take a drawing class at the local TAFE, read up on techniques, watch instructional YouTube videos, and practice 1 hour everyday?
(more…)

Possession of low-voltage consumer electronics. A love of very noisy things. A do-it-yourself aesthetic - Do you possess these items and/or attributes? Then come join the Circuit Bending hoedown! It’s disturbing and easy! Here’s the how and why (no, actually, the how and what)…

Circuit Bending is the art of messing with the electronics inside of stuff that makes noise, in order to make new and more useful random noise. The goal is to augment gadgets, kids toys, guitar pedals and cheap synths with new knobs, buttons, switches and “body contacts” that boldly go where no manufacturer would ever be bothered going.
(more…)

3 years without even a mention of Star Wars on this nerdy blog.

That is pretty impressive.