Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

Congratulations to Professor Shuji Nakamura for winning the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize. His work inventing the white LED is remarkable and is helping to pave the way for improvements in energy conservation, and also improving the quality of life of millions of people who are already or will very soon benefit from cheap lighting.

I am personally excited by his work with the white LED, I bought a torch a while ago that uses white LED's and the quality of light in such a small package is incredible. A couple of AA batteries can produce as much light as one of those giant 500,000 candle powered torches, and best of all it can easily be carried in a pocket.

Other versions of these torches include a small solar panel capable of charging the batteries to provide enough light for a couple of hours of use at night. Impoversihed people in remote parts of the third world are now being issued with these where their village doesn't have access to powerlines.

Imagine the future where every child in Africa or Asia has their own personal lighting system to help with homework, every family has light to see each other over the family meal. Add to this solar powered radio's and a personal laptop using a combination of solar power and a dynamo to charge the batteries. Maybe add a solar hot water system, and we're talking about a very different world from the one they live in now. It's all good!

If you've ever released a template you'll know that screenshots are mandatory, but sometimes you just don't feel like clearing your desk, setting up your mini tripod and camera, and then adjusting the curtains to get perfect lighting.

In fact if you're like me you probably just want to click your mouse button and have the image automagically appear already cropped and ready to use.

Good news, no more cameras or hassling wih Photoshop or any other screenshot program, not anymore, now all you have to do is bookmark sitesnat.ch and next time you need a screenshot, click that mouse. For even quicker screenshots, bookmark the javascript link.

Jannis and Martin have put in some serious effort making this work and it shows, the site looks good, works fast, and its free. Check it out, it automatically produces the screenshot, then if you click on that, you can also get the full size version. How easy is that?

I downloaded IE7 the beta preview and installed it on my system just because I was bored and wanted to have a bit of a play. Big mistake, IE6 is now gone, and these two are so different that I just know I'm gonna have problems testing my themes for IE. Ah well, I suppose I could always uninstall it if this becomes a problem.

Having said that, IE7 is such a big improvement over IE6, and I really like the new eye candy. It was really disconcerting to lose the menu bar, at first I thought there was something wrong with the installation, but after a couple of minutes it actually didn't worry me anymore. Afterwards I discovered right clicking on the top bar where you would expect the menu bar to be allows you to add the classic menu if you need it, but you know something, I think I prefer it without the classic menu. Read More

Blogging is the next big technology trend, and I fully expect that almost everyone will have one in the next few years. Ten years ago nobody thought that every business would have a website and now you struggle to find one that doesn't.

If you haven't blogged before now, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. But take a moment to think of how much easier it is to keep in touch when you have instant messaging, email, and sms on your mobile phone.

The big advantage of blogging is that you don't have to send anything to friends and family, they can simply subscribe to your feed and read what you write whenever they want to.

Already it is becoming common to record verbal blog messages, and I imagine it won't be long until video messages gain in popularity, especially given the pace of broadband uptake.

So with that said, who are the bloggers of tomorrow, why will they be the driving force of blogging in 2006? Read More