Status-Q

Mac users will appreciate these poster designs.

Following on from my previous post about dull politicians, I'm glad to see that Boris Johnson got off to a good start.

He denounced as ridiculous the lights at Trafalgar Square. ""They are red for one minute 45 seconds and go green for only 12 seconds!"" He vowed to fix this as the audience shouted ""Yeah! Yeah!"".

The latest product to use the DisplayLink technology is Samsung's 2263DX, which is, I suppose, a monitor and a half.

I haven't seen one in the flesh yet, but it looks cute. Ideal for buddy lists, twitter status, today's calendar...

I'm one of those people who has no idea how many free texts I get on my phone, because I never get anywhere close to the limit.

It may be something to do with getting into the Blackberry thing early, so it's always just been cheaper for me to send emails. Or it may be that I just never really like small keyboards, so while I read a great deal on my phone, I don't write very much (despite my E61 having a nice QWERTY keyboard).

When I do want to send a text to someone, I often go to my laptop and right-click on their name in Address Book because it's just so much easier to send it by Skype.

Anyway, what prompted me to post was the discovery that my mother is changing her phone plan because 100 texts a month aren't enough for her. I probably don't send that many in a year! So am I way uncool, or is it cooler not to be sending texts now that my Mum is being so prolific? How many texts do you send?

If you run any Ubuntu or Debian systems, or have users who do, you should read this if you don't already know about the OpenSSL security bug. I fear it's going to be important.

Here's a fun way to increase your visibility when cycling at night:

It's called Monkeylectric, and a search will find various other videos and photos.

Here it is on my bike handlebars:

We had fun today thinking of other things to do with it.

And I mounted my little Ixus on it and recorded video in unusual places. (Such as the view from the top of my head while walking home from lunch - I got to see what the world would look like if I were several inches taller)

If you need to find a present for someone with any interest in photography or video, I'd strongly recommend one of these. It's fantastic. It's also very tactile - a great stress-relieving executive toy...

UK readers can get them from Amazon.

A quick note to let you know (if you didn't already) that Camvine is looking for really good technical people and sales/marketing/bus. dev. people. (One of each, at present).

Contact me if you'd like to know more about life in a fun Cambridge startup...

Hap has given us a wonderful book which includes some extracts from the "Travellers Manual for French Persons in Germany and German Persons in France", written by Mme de Genlis at the end of the 18th century. It includes the following useful phrases, which you may want to look up in other languages in case you need them next time you get off your RyanAir flight: