Monthly Archives for August 2011
Muston Scarecrow Festival, North Yorkshire, England
Scarecrows with a difference (via Guardian)
More photos here:
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Happy 30th Birthday IBM PC!
(The IBM 5150 - launched in 1981)
My haven’t you grown… old. This cutting-edge piece of technology was a wonder to behold back in 1981. The basic version connected with a Cassette drive and it had a measly 64K of RAM memory (today it’s more like 16,777,216K, if I’ve got my maths right). This ground-breaking machine would set you back US $1,565 ~ $3,000.
Here’s to you IBM.
And here’s an article on how someone’s just tried to spend a week doing modern-day tasks on his original IBM 5150. As you do.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/237878-3/can_you_do_real_work_with_the_30yearold_ibm_5150.html
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I predict a #riotcleanup
The rioting in London and other areas of England is shocking to see, particularly from an ex-Londoner’s perspective. Familiar street names that are usually welcoming, family-friendly areas were turned into anarchic, hellish scenes over-night.
Despite all the negative news and panic that was sweeping the country both on and offline, the positive power of social media and online communities also played an important part. It’s heart-warming to see the community pulling together in response to the chaos. Facebook, Twitter, etc aren’t the cause of any of the recent troubles, but they certainly play a part both positively and negatively.
Celebrities have also joined in to share their outrage about what’s happening and to encourage further support in the community – from the Kaiser Chiefs’ lead singer Ricky Wilson (pardon the headline pun), to Kate Nash and even Wayne Rooney.
Here are a few positive examples of what’s been taking place over the last 24 hours online – particularly around the community clear-ups after the riots:
Image above taken from: http://yfrog.com/kj5oewj
http://www.riotcleanup.com/
@Riotcleanup picked up over 80k followers yesterday on Twitter.
A Facebook page titled ‚ Supporting the Met Police against the London rioters’ has nearly 1 million fans already.
Guardian article covering this topic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/clean-up-riots
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