Naquada

A German student who plugged his laptop into a socket at a train station is facing legal charges for “stealing electricity” worth less than a penny.

Jan Michael Ihl, a 23-year-old student from Trier, found the socket by an abandoned information stand and used it to find out the address of a hostel he was staying at in the town of Kassel.

But he had not got very far out of the train station when three police officers arrested him for “illegally extracting electricity” from the train station.

The officers said they had watched as Ihl crouched by the plug socket and constantly looked over his shoulder before running away.

The matter has now been handed over to the public prosecutors who will decide if it is worth taking the student to court.

After conducting his own calculations on how much electricity he “stole”, Ihl, who is also an energy specialist for environmental organisation Greenpeace, said: “The whole thing is ridiculous. I ’stole’ electricity worth less than one cent.”

Source: Ananova

Personally I’ve unplugged vending machines when I’ve needed juice… but this is an interesting point to ponder on…

I took these photos a few months ago, they are of an old tree in the grounds of Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex.

I loved the texture and twisted patterns of the tree, the hires versions of the photos I’m working on to turning into some posters and cards..

It snowed heavily today… which made me think about what we were planning for the summer..

Knock down our old bar-b-q and replace it with a 100cm diameter Mexican Fire pit

Mayantex sell these little puppies for

I’m struggling at the moment with working out in my head what ideas to try and develop more, and which ideas I should ‘park’ because of lack of time..

I have really a million and one ideas in my head, all buzzing round, and I’d love to develop just some of them. Alot are centered around the company I work for, others arent..

I get annoyed sometimes about ideas I have that I really just dont have the time to develop further, or to try and form into ideas that are more solid than random thoughts in my head.

So the question is when should we park ideas, and when should we continue and make the time to develop them more..

When I was magishing, I came up with lots of ‘clever’ ideas, tricks that were fresh and unseen, some of these I developed into workable solutions, others remained random scribblings in my notebooks.

I absolutely love thinking.. looking at things and suggesting new or better ways to do them.. turning problems and design faults into solutions.. and working along the lines of ‘..what if’ and ‘..why can’t’

I’m starting to think that may be my ideal job would be to be able to sit down and just get paid to think..

if anyone has that ideal job.. do let me know..

a little while ago i brought the latest dido album.. Now I have almost 3,000 cd’s and we put all of them onto our MP3 jukebox; basically a custom built PC with dual 180gig drives and itunes, hooked up to the TV..

I use this to sync with my 20gig Ipod and 10gig Ipod.. a perfect solution..

however. BMG music have taken it on themselves to choose how, when, and where I can listen to CD’s that a I legally buy..

if you brought the Dido album (amongst others) before christmas you’d have found it had the CD-AUDIO logo on it… its important to keep this in mind.. the CD-ADUIO logo means the CD is a 100% redbook audio CD, licenced from phillips.

Putting the CD into my PC installed some nasty audio player (without actually asking me!), the first problem is that the CD will ONLY play on a PC through this audio application. the second problem is that this audio application ‘pings’ BMG, now what it tells BMG I’m not sure… I’m still waiting for BMG to tell me what information is collected and sent back to BMG from my machine.

the main thing I was annoyed about was what although I own the CD, BMG choose what I can listen to it on. They didnt seem to understand my main ‘HI-FI’ was a PC…

Putting it into a Apple Mac crashed the Mac completely.. nice move guys…

The bottom line here is that although I own the CD, I cannot listen to it on anything except a ‘real’ hifi, and I cannot move the CD onto my Ipod to listen to..

BMG use a system called CACTUS 2.0 by MIDBAR. I spoke to a few people at BMG and explained that Really I wouldn’t be pirating the CD given that I buy ALL my cd’s, and that I felt ‘cheated’ that they seem to think they can choose where and when I can listen to the CD..

BMG explained that I could download the CD digitally from their website after paying for it (meaning I’ve now paid twice to listen to it!!) but only in WMA (windows media format).. hey the world doesnt revolve around Microsoft guys… i dont use WMA on my Ipod!!

The new version of the Cactus protection does allow you to make digital copies of the CD.. however the quality is crippled at less than 160k (a less than perfect copy) again not really a perfect solution..

I am still waiting for my call from MIDBAR that I was promised by BMG to explain the situation. My promise to them to return ALL my BMG cd’s and albums and charge them an admin fee for doing so is looking more and more interesting…

BMG have now also removed all the CD-AUDIO logos, since they are not licenced to since the CD’s are not 100% redbook CD’s. I advised Phillips about this and they asked BMG to remove the Logos from their CD’s

I’d advise you to be aware that ALL BMG and its partners use the CACTUS protection, basically any cd’s with the following logo on them;

I picked up a copy of the Outkast Cd today.. saw the BMG ‘nasty protection’ logo and put it back on the shelf.. Sorry BMG but you’ve lost me as a customer.. give me one reason why I should spend money on your CD’s..

Of course, every protection system and encryption system is breakable (believe me I’ve broken lots in my career..) so you can get round this protection by reading this

I’ve been asked by BMG to beta test CACTUS 3.0.. probably something I wont do.. I have no interest in helping BMG work out their own problems…

Well… its been quiet on the blog side for a bit… mainly because I’ve been busy…

This was my mileometer in my car today..

I reset it wednesday morning before i headed out.. 800.1 (the points important!) in 48 hours..

it amazes me still that given the total technology age.. we all still get in cars and drive round the place to see each other… as opposed to video conferences, phones etc..

maybe tomorrow might be easier!!!

it seems that Microsoft have hit on a fantastic addition to the 2003 office system…

I upgraded from Office XP to Office 2003 tonight… to be presented with the following view of my email…

it seems Outlook is now able to see the emails I’ll be getting tomorrow…

fantastic I say!! I’ll now be able to see all the emails i’ll be getting and answer them before they arrive!! man is my manager gonna love me!!

Just to say, I didnt change this image except for bluring the names and subjects…

Sometimes lifes hard… works hard.. nothing really goes your way… and you think ‘why??..’

I’m lucky in that I’m surrounded by people that give me support when I’m low, and tell me I’m good at what I do.. I see customers that ask for me by name, and I see a company I’ve been with for six years growing around me..

From PocketPCThoughts the full story can we read here

The new font Times New Roman 14, “takes up almost exactly the same area on the page as Courier New 12, while offering a crisper, cleaner, more modern look,” it said, adding that after February 1 “only Times New Roman 14 will be accepted.” There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department’s legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president’s signature, it said.

Well nice to know the US are concentrating on the important things in life huh ?

Some Facts about the Courier and Times New Roman..

Times Roman 14 uses much less paper and ink than Courier 12 (apparently!)

Both Times New New Roman and Courier cost $21 on average

Howard Kettler designed the Courier typeface for IBM in 1952

Times New Roman was developed in 1931 for The Times of London under the leadership of Monotype

Well I have a tough week coming up.. which means I’ll probably be blogging less that I would have liked to have been…

Right now i should have been on a flight to paris for some training, but there are a few more important things to do back at the office..

If all goes according to plan, life should be returning to normal pretty soon!!