I woke up this morning in a cold sweat. “Why?,” you ask unnecessarily (because I am going to tell you).

Why? Because I have 37GB of photos from the last 6 years on my computer and when I boot it on a cold day it makes a noise like the hard drive heads are about to fall off the servo postiony thingo.

“But, don’t you have backups Ash?,” you continue, annoying me with your constant questions. The reason I don’t currently have backups of our photos is because I don’t have enough space, even on the ~750GB of HD space in my current machine to mirror the photos *and* all my current projects. Of course I could buy another HD but even with mirroring that seems lame to me (I currently mirror all of my projects between drives). I am a futurist and there needs to be a futuristic solution to this. Preferably one that allows me to recover my data even if my house burns down.

I was going to continue pretending you are talking to me but I can’t be bothered so instead I’ll just get to the point. To solve my problem I have started using the Amazon S3 service + JungleDisk to backup all of my photos (and everything else eventually) to the cloud.

In case you have been living under a rock in space, cloud computing is the best thing since sliced cheese and twice as awesome. Using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) I now have an ultra reliable infinite sized network disk to store my files on. To backup my data I am using JungleDisk which makes the S3 service appear as a network drive on my computer. From there I can drag files into S3 or schedule an automated backup.

All this awesome isn’t free of course but it is cheap and the cost depends entirely on how much you use. It costs about 10c US per GB put data into it and uploading my entire photo archive of 37GB is going to cost me approx $6 US per month to store. Which is a freaking bargain when you think of each of the options available.

>> Buy another disk and put it in my pc

The disk will be about $120 (possibly less) for 500GB. I need to install it somewhere. I need to mirror to it. When my computer catches on fire it’s all gone. I can’t access it from anywhere else easily (at high speed).

>> Buy another computer and put some disks in there and start backing up to that

Same as above but it costs more.

>> Use S3

Slower to back up to (as its on the net). Monthly cost depending on how much you store. If my computer catches on fire I simply download it again from the net. I can access it from any computer like it was a local drive (using JungleDisk). S3 is so multiply redundant that I will never lose my data unless I purposefully delete it. It’s in the cloud man!!! (Ok, yes I am a trend whore but hey what you gonna do?)

So I went with S3 because if you are gonna do something do it properly and if you are gonna do backups do them really properly. JungleDisk also has a USB version so I can mount a network disk to my stuff really quickly from my USB drive which is cool.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted as to how it works out. The only issue is upload speed at the moment but that will become irrelevant once most of my data is actually up there.

In a belated attempt to preempt the next big thing (belated because I am about 7 months too late) I have been trying to register a good Android related domain.

So far all of the good ones have been taken with at least androidmobile.com and androidplatform.com taken by Google itself (MFs).

Looking through most of the rest of the records, it is interesting to see that most were registered on the 5th of Nov 2007. I can’t remember but I have a feeling that if I looked back thru some archives of the net I would find that that was the day Android was announced.

Now… All I need to do is get my shit together and ensure that the next time something as big as this happens I am not so carried away by the possibility of being able to hack my phone to Rick Roll me every time I receive a call that I forget to actually get in on the action.

Next time, next time…

Hehe Continuing the lego theme…

Check out the Brothers Brick site for some awesome custom Lego creations. Love the pimpin’ car.

Also, Gizmodo went to Lego recently and shot some cool footage of the Matrixesque brick loader droids flying around the giant parts storage “Cathedrals”. Yes that was an extremely random sentence. It wasn’t just you.

Click here for clarification.

More info on the artist Liam Kemp can be found here.

(If you don’t know what the Uncanny Valley is, check it out here - Wikipedia)

It looks like this now:

I wonder if they are trying to soften or informalise their image by using the lower case G?

Awesome!

I remember when this started but hadn’t heard much about it since then. Of course I helped out!

Check the video for an explanation. Man I love the internet.

Seriously, what hope do old people have? I am just glad I wasn’t born 10 years earlier or I would just be freaking out on a daily basis.

"What the fuck are you talking about Ash?", I hear you say?

http://manbabies.com/

Seriously. The internet is art. Who knows why it does what it does?

I don’t. And I’m hip, bitches!

You need Torrent2Exe then, innit? Obviously your dad needs that ‘Scarlett Johansson’ movie for ‘research’ and you don’t want to waste your bandwidth on porn research do ya???

The answer is no, so get Torrent2Exe and let em get it themselves!

Not the cheapest robot in the world. But pretty cheap. Cheapo is an experiment in budget robotics.

I am not sure how much Cheapo cost but it wasn’t much. Ok the Arduino controller and servos cost a little bit but not that much. And the stuff that I built his body out of cost about $1 I think.

The poor little guy is not much to look at now. But just wait until I get some sensors and onboard power in there. He still won’t be much to look at, but he will be smart as a cookie. Like literally, a cookie that you would eat. And once I upload my proprietary "Interactive Droid Executive Layer" firmware onto him… Well, who knows cos I haven’t even written that crap yet.

Now all I need to do is find some JST connectors for the friggin infrared sensors I have sitting around in my toolbox… I will give you eyes Cheapo. So you may better bring me beers.

Mmmm. Beer.

Ok, so I have just got back from another fruitful night of discussion (over beers) with Dan as to how we are going to a) revolutionise the software world and b) become GaJILLIONaires. The only problem is that I got so mentally lubricated (read: drunk) that I for some reason I mistakenly believed that a 7-Eleven donut was exactly what I needed at this time of night.

Now I have a sugar headache and feel like I am all hopped up on goofballs with nowhere to go. I have a feeling the only way to channel this sudden rush of low quality sweetener to my brain is to write a really insightful and witty blog post about it then attempt to fall asleep.

Damn, that’s 0/0 so far…

Poor little Pleo, it didn’t stand a chance!

BotJunkie: Pleo vs. Battlebot at Maker Faire

(I’m publishing via Windows Live Writer just to see how it goes so there might be some craziness for a bit :))

Otherwise known as: “The never ending pain that wouldn’t end but then suddenly ended leaving me in pain” .

Note: Gallery of ouchiness is down the bottom.

We did it! We finished the Oxfam Trailwalker! 100 kilometers in 29 hours and 45 minutes. Not a bad effort if I say so myself. We’ll have to make sure that we beat that next year when we do it again……….

Ahahahahahaha! Sorry! Did I say “do it again”? Sorry, I mean’t to say “NEVER DO IT AGAIN EVEN IF PAID LOTS OF MONEY BECAUSE IT WAS LITERALLY HELL ON EARTH!” Yeah that is what I meant. Sorry about that slip up there.

This morning, after I woke up at 08:00 after falling asleep on sat at 17:30, I started to think about how I could properly communicate to you the experience that is doing Oxfam Trailwalker. It was difficult to think properly because my knee joints and other parts of my body had fused together into solid lumps. These lumps, apart from practically guaranteeing me a role in any movie or theatre production requiring the authentic portrayal of Cro-Magnon Man, also had the annoying tendancy to transmit oversized packets of, what we in the endurance walking game call, “ouchy pain pain” to my brain unit whenever I attempted to hobble anywhere. Funnily enough it was this pain that ended being the very thing that helped me explain the event to you… Spooky!

Five easy ways to reproduce the authentic Oxfam Trailwalker experience in the comfort of your own home:

1) Become old and infirm

Getting severe 8th stage arthritis in your knees and other joints is the only way to simulate the whole ‘knees-fused-into-a-giant-pain-ball’ thing I am talking about. If is what Daniel Johns felt like when he had is crazy random arthritis issues a couple of years ago then, shit, that would have sucked.

2) Rub various tender parts of your body with coarse grade sandpaper. For a couple of hours.

The human body is an amazing thing. The problem is that it wasn’t designed to do anything for 29+ hours straight. To recreate the amazing feeling of walking for 100kms you need to reproduce the effects of pants, socks, shirts, etc. rubbing all over your bits for that amounts of time.

Women, rub between your thighs and buttocks. Men, rub thighs, buttocks and the seam of your balls. Yeah you know what I am talking about. Who the f**k puts a seam there anyway? It’s not like I can unzip my ball sack and take them out or anything (although of course that would be awesome).

3) Smash a glass into pieces. Then put the broken pieces of glass in your socks, put your shoes on and walk around all day.

Going for a light jog after putting the glass in your socks will add that extra smidgeon of realism but it’s up to you really.

Seriously, my little toes started hurting 5kms in. Which was annoying because I had walked 35 kms a couple of weeks before with no issues. By Checkpoint 4 it like walking around with buckets of acid attached to my feet. After getting my blisters popped by the podiatrists and bandaged it was like walking around with buckets of glass on my feet… that someone had poured acid into because they were using all of the other recepticles in their mad scientist laboritory to store Skittles. I don’t know why they would do that but I am sure it has happened somewhere. That didn’t make sense really but you can see what I mean.

Anyway by Checkpoint 7 I was fine. The other awesome thing about the human body is that if you damage all your nerves enough your brain just interprets the pain as a sort of tingling instead. I had a lot of tingling going on interpersed with the most pain I have ever felt. For about 12 hours.

4) Get a meat tenderiser and smash your feet with it.

Just do it. It makes it more ‘authentic’.

5) Stay up for 29 hours and 45 minutes while doing all of the above.

I was actually fairly ok with staying up all night because I am an internet addict that stays up past 12 every night reading the crappy comments on the crappy articles on crappy social news sites. Also I drank a constant supply of V and the exercise kept me pumped. Not to mention the constant pain signals eminating from every part of my body below my neck.

The main issue for me was stopping at the checkpoints. I knew that as soon as my pain level dropped below 400 or I lay down I would pass out within about 5 seconds. Luckily it was fairly easy to do a quick series of star jumps whenever I felt tired to renew the pain and keep me alert.

So there you go. An easy way to reproduce the Oxfam Trailwalker in the comfort of your own home! Please feel free to follow these steps to run your own min Trailwalker event but if you do remember to donate at least a grand to Oxfam to faithfully reproduce the fundraising aspect.

Think about it. Somewhere in the world some poor child is currently performing their own Trailwalker. But not for the kudos of finishing it and not with the training or support/equipment we had, probably just to get water for their family. That is why we did it! And that is why you should donate!

A massive thanks to those who donated to Team Viper. Also thanks heaps to Steve and Suze for their awesome support through the day and night. We couldn’t have done it without you guys!

Last but not least enormous respect and thanks to all the other members of Team Viper - John, Megan and Rox. You guys rock! Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! (at last I don’t need to train on Sundays!)

LOL.toTheMax()

Welcome to Helllll…!

Roxy, me and a two of our friends are taking place in the Oxfam Trailwalker 2008! It starts at about 11am tomorrow (Friday) and I am super excited/nervous. I said ’super’ there because I have been watching too many Microsoft dev videos and that’s how they all talk.

Anyway, the Trailwalker is 100km long and will take us approximately 30 hours to finish. We are walking all through the night and into the next day. It is gonna be mega-hell on earth but you know, you just gotta do these things sometimes because… I dunno. It makes sitting on the internet afterwards all the more sweeter.

Also don’t forget the $2,500+ we have raised so far for Oxfam. Thanks everyone who has donated!

• Follow us on the Team Tracker!!! ( We are called ‘Team Viper’)
• Follow me on Twitter here
• Follow all teams on Twitter here
• Click here for information on the trail if you would like to know more

See you mofos on Sunday!!! Think of us when you are enjoying your beers on the Friday/Sat! (We’ll be in the rain in the forest probably )

I don’t understand.

Funny new stuff from weebl.

A Walk In The Woods

…it comes with a couple of magnets that you have to put on either side of your room to stop the tides from going haywire and destroying the planet.

Holy shit… that’s a lot of FPS y’all.

Check it out here.