David Forster

One for all my photographer friends out there. Found a link to this site in my RSS aggregator this morning. Wish I could take photo’s like this!Courtesy of SimpleBits

Link via Owen’s blog.Google Earth Hacks has loads of downloads, information and hacks for Google Earth. Take a look. Be sure to investigate the forums as there’s a LOT of great images and information in there!

I saw the new version of War of the Worlds last night. Overall I thought it was very good, although the ending seemed a bit hurried. The alien (can’t call ‘em martian anymore) tripods (war machines) are awesome, and you really get a sense of just how invincible they are.

I think Spielberg has taken a lot of cues from the book and the 1953 movie and mixed it all together really well. Of course, if you wanted to read the book, It’s in the public domain and you can get it free from Project Gutenberg. I’ve also got the double CD of Jeff Wayne’s musical version and have been listening to it all morning.

One thing: I know Spielberg wanted to make more of a ‘people and feelings’ movie but I would have liked to have seen a couple more battle sequences, perhaps one with a tripod and a warship, like the confrontation with the ironclad ‘Thunderchild’ on the album (pictured right).

We’re installing IP phones at work and I found one on my desk this morning. They seem pretty neat. Mine’s a Cisco 7912G.It’s receiving it’s power over the ethernet… I wonder if you could modify an RJ45 connector to make a mobile charger or MP3 player power supply? The other power input to the phone, which isn’t being used is a whopping 48V – the IEEE 802.3af standard, so there’s a lot of voltage (or current when stepped down) to play with!It’s also acting as an ethernet switch – it’s plugged in between my PC and the network port behind the desk, but no traffic to the phone appears to be arriving at the PC’s network card. I might bring a small hub in from home and rig it up so that phone data is sent to the PC as well, then get Ethereal capturing and analysing the packets. In theory, you could write an application that notified you of incoming calls on your PC etc.Browsing through the configuration menus on the phone also reveal some bits and pieces. There’s a TFTP server somewhere – presumably for software updates – and the directory information is supplied as XML from the same server (generated from an ASP file – although it’s not well formed XML)

Well, I’ve just gone into London on the bike and come back out again. I went to pick up a friend who was stranded at London Bridge. It’s a slightly odd feeling in the city. There are still people walking around and going about their business, but further in it’s quiet and relatively empty, except for police cars tearing around in all manner of directions.

I went past the houses of parliament and was surprised that there wasn’t much of a police presence outside. I stopped a policeman to ask him for directions and he seemed shocked, and kept on apologising because he couldn’t help me – I felt sorry for him for some reason, let him get back to his colleagues and found my own way.

On the way out I passed the MI6 building in Vauxhall, I bet they’re busy in there this morning! Traffic coming out of the city is, unsurprisingly, extremely heavy. I even got stuck on a bike on the A4 near Earls Court. I ended up crossing the central reservation with a load of other bikers and going down the wrong carriageway!