I have a Gaggia Bean 2 Cup machine. In the morning I just have to wander into my study and press one button, and it grinds, tamps, and brews the perfect cup of espresso. Then I just have to empty the grinds bin every few weeks. Unfortunately leaving the beans in the beans-dispenser for too long can be a problem, so I top them up every few days.
For beans, I import Nannini beans in 2lb bags, from Siena, Italy. Keep them sealed up for freshness, but I haven't gone to the trouble of using pressurised CO2 containers. I may look into that though.
If you ever find yourself in Tuscany, be sure to visit the Nannini cafe in Siena. Ask for a machiato if you don't like your coffee black.
Maybe I just use my phone +too+ much. But its how I keep in contact with my friends round the country. I'm just busy chatting about it on another forum.
Because its a company phone I can't really change it, and although its appalling I don't think I could go back to a black and white interface with no blue-tooth etc. Maybe if I work hard my boss will listen and get me a 3650!
Don't forget phlog an on-line community developed by a friend (and regular slashdot reader). Whenever I call him up, he's always busy "phloging" which always makes me laugh. Images of him, whip in hand when really he's probably sat with his perl book. It looks fun, though I cannot use it as my T68i communicam is next to useless (see my previous comments on this subject). Go have a look, what he really needs is to be slashdotted. LMTH (laughs manically to himself)
Thats if they can get through to you. Its possible to have full signal and not receive calls. This may seem to point to a network issue, but I do believe the T68i has issues receiving calls. Turning it off and on makes it work again. Sometimes when I receive an SMS, the phone hangs for about 2 minutes - if its near a speaker you can hear the normal text message sounds being repeated constantly, and then I receive the message that failed 10 to 20 times over the next 48 hours, each time hanging by phone for several minutes. Also when I send messages, they will refuse to send even though I can make and receive calls. Again, doing a "Windows" on it resets it to working again.
I've never met anyone that actually liked the interface. Do you actually find it fast enough? Have you not had the experience, which several friends have, where mysteriously it loses your entire addresss book, and you have to retrieve them from the SIM, only for them to reappear again a few months later?
If we all bought them from the same store at the same time I could understand maybe it was a bad batch, but these phones were all purchased at differently locations, different stores, months apart.
Yes I probably could, and am considering doing this when the Nokia 3650 is released next month. Unfortunately purchasing it without a contract is something like £300 (approx $460) and I can't justify that right now. My phone was bought for me by the company I work for, so I'm hoping they won't notice the expense on my credit card statement!
How much does she use it? I know about 4 or 5 people with this phone, and they all detest it. One wants to start a hate website devoted to it. Doesn't she find it too slow? Once you've ended a call you have to wait another 10 seconds to make another call - when I'm putting test calls into a system this cuts my productivity down seriously. The last number recall is so slow its a lot faster to type the number myself - unless of course I have just made another call in which case the number buffer only holds one keypress.
If I used it only occassionally it wouldn't be too bad I guess, but due to my job I have to use phones constantly. And due to my girlfriend I have to make frequent use of its appalling T9 implementation.
*sigh*
This phone is ruining my life... I want my old Nokia back.
I have owned a T68i for 5 months, and I must say it is the worst purchase I have ever made. I cannot believe Sony is ruining their brand name with such an awful product. The reception is terrible, the UI is awful, the speed at which it responds to anything is horrendous. Unfortunately due to my contract I have to wait another 7 months before I can get a replacement.
The reviews for the T68i are obviously done by people who do not actually use phones. Superficially it is very light, has fairly good battery life and a good feature set. Trying to make a call from it is awful. For some reason the sequence to lock the phones keypad is different from the sequence to unlock it. In fact, the sequence to lock it regularly deletes numbers from my phone book, because it is the same sequence (clear and then yes). Even when locked the phone can be turned off by accident.
The only thing I have ever seen with a worse UI, is the communicam I mistakenly bought to test a friends website (http://www.phlog.net). This camera is unusable. Its no good for anything. I tried wedging a door open with it and it wasn't even any good for that. Sometimes things are so bad they're funny... unfortunately this phone even surpasses that level of "badness".
I know various people with this phone and they all hate it. They all have the same problems.
I can only think that any other phone in there product line is going to be just as bad, as they have zero idea on how to program an interface. The 68i was supposed to be an improvement over the T68. It wasn't.
I really could go on for a long time, but there's probably better things you could all be doing that reading my post.
Just make sure you don't buy a T68i, and please talk to a serious phone user who already has the P800 before purchasing it.
This seems to be a system in development for the UK. We have a lot of motorways, and other major routes, which do not go anywhere near cities, major offices, and especially not pedestrians. In the cases where they do (for instance, the M6/M5/M42 through Birmingham) I would have thought the software would learn that 70% of the phones in a specific area are slow-moving/stationary due to being inside an office block and that if the percentage does increase, it is a possible traffic alert.
There are less advanced ways but more reliable means of doing this, using bridge-mounted devices to measure the speeding of vehicles (on the motorway below the bridge). We already have a system in the UK that does this - I'm not sure about the rest of Europe.
On a slightly off-topic note, there is currently a game in the UK played via your mobile (link from www.channel4.com) called x-fire, that uses this kind of mobile location methodology to determine how close you are to other players in the country. It's electronic paint-ball! Kind of fun. [originally this came from Sweden I think]. It disturbed me that a company could access the location data of my cell-phone without me having to sign a release-form. Just a simple phone call to an automated system is all it takes to set yourself up in the game.
There was an article in NewScientist on the 9th February (subscription required to view the article), "What Lies Beneath", about emergent systems. It discusses that we may never know the true nature of the universe; of what it is made of.
Robert Laughlin (Stanford University) is researching this. What we observe in the universe is model-independent, and we cannot actually see the model itself.
"The laws that govern large-scale phenomena will not be deduced from the laws that govern tiny particles, he says. "It's in the same way that flocking behaviour can be characterised without understanding everything about birds, or superconductivity without understanding atomic theory."
This idea is called emergence. It's a familiar phenomenon in the theory of condensed matter, which is Laughlin's background. Solids and liquids sometimes play host to strange entities that bear little resemblance to the atoms making up the substance." ... "If what you see is model-independent then you can't learn anything about the underlying equations by observing it," says Laughlin. "You could call this the dark side of emergence." ... "What we emerge from is unknowable," says Laughlin. "The underlying equations of the Universe cannot be determined from what we know."
The article goes into greater detail than I can here, but it definitely an interesting read.
If all this is true, we can never really know the true mechanics of the universe. It may actually be a simple "4-line" automaton. It could be a billion other things - we'll probably never know.
It makes perfect sense for the record companies to allow us to pay 2 GBP per track. I'm sure they would love too have this avenue open. Unfortunately, something appear to be stopping them doing this.
Is it an infrastructure problem? Do they want to hire a bunch of slashdotters to implement it for them? Or are there internal pressures preventing it from happening? I know that if I owned a music-store, I would lobby my suppliers to prevent this from happening. Who is going to shop at HMV for their music, when they can have benefits of instant downloads?
If a customer can download a low quality version first, and then decide to only pay for half the tracks they are definitely going to go this way. Most of the CDs I own are at least 40% filler.
Whatever the reason, someone is scared of this happening. Hopefully these people will either be replaced or made to see sense before digital music rollercoaster loses momentum, and lobbyists get laws passed outlawing the equipment required for playback.
The original hi-res colour version has only recently become available in the UK. I have held off buying one wondering what Sony was going to release next, and now comes this super-slim one. Do I await its release in the UK, or purchase the one already out? If I wait for the new one to be released here, will they quickly follow that up with a new release in the US?
Maybe its Sonys Clié division's policy to only release in other countries a 6 weeks before a new version is announced. If so, I'll never buy one!
I've not played this game, but just reading the article scared me in places. It reminds me of being stuck in the SunSpire in Unreal. I knew the exit was past a room, but there lurked badly animated spiders. Even a badly animated spider jumping at my face is enough to make me hit pause and go sit somewhere else for a while.
Game design which actually frightens you is very good design, and very rare. This article makes me want to go out and buy it.
You could say this guy has too much time on his hands, but at least he's writing and (hopefully) making money at it; how much time did I just waste +reading+ about someone playing a videogame?
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Gaggia Bean 2 Cup machine. In the morning I just have to wander into my study and press one button, and it grinds, tamps, and brews the perfect cup of espresso. Then I just have to empty the grinds bin every few weeks. Unfortunately leaving the beans in the beans-dispenser for too long can be a problem, so I top them up every few days.
For beans, I import Nannini beans in 2lb bags, from Siena, Italy. Keep them sealed up for freshness, but I haven't gone to the trouble of using pressurised CO2 containers. I may look into that though.
If you ever find yourself in Tuscany, be sure to visit the Nannini cafe in Siena. Ask for a machiato if you don't like your coffee black.
I'd concentrate on finally finishing Mario 64 for the DS...
I hear google pigeons are quicker...
though obviously they cost more to feed.
Maybe I just use my phone +too+ much. But its how I keep in contact with my friends round the country. I'm just busy chatting about it on another forum.
Because its a company phone I can't really change it, and although its appalling I don't think I could go back to a black and white interface with no blue-tooth etc. Maybe if I work hard my boss will listen and get me a 3650!
You not busy phloging? Managed to break away for a bit?
Don't forget phlog an on-line community developed by a friend (and regular slashdot reader). Whenever I call him up, he's always busy "phloging" which always makes me laugh. Images of him, whip in hand when really he's probably sat with his perl book. It looks fun, though I cannot use it as my T68i communicam is next to useless (see my previous comments on this subject). Go have a look, what he really needs is to be slashdotted. LMTH (laughs manically to himself)
Thats if they can get through to you. Its possible to have full signal and not receive calls. This may seem to point to a network issue, but I do believe the T68i has issues receiving calls. Turning it off and on makes it work again.
Sometimes when I receive an SMS, the phone hangs for about 2 minutes - if its near a speaker you can hear the normal text message sounds being repeated constantly, and then I receive the message that failed 10 to 20 times over the next 48 hours, each time hanging by phone for several minutes.
Also when I send messages, they will refuse to send even though I can make and receive calls. Again, doing a "Windows" on it resets it to working again.
I've never met anyone that actually liked the interface. Do you actually find it fast enough? Have you not had the experience, which several friends have, where mysteriously it loses your entire addresss book, and you have to retrieve them from the SIM, only for them to reappear again a few months later?
If we all bought them from the same store at the same time I could understand maybe it was a bad batch, but these phones were all purchased at differently locations, different stores, months apart.
Yes I probably could, and am considering doing this when the Nokia 3650 is released next month. Unfortunately purchasing it without a contract is something like £300 (approx $460) and I can't justify that right now. My phone was bought for me by the company I work for, so I'm hoping they won't notice the expense on my credit card statement!
They probably will though.
How much does she use it? I know about 4 or 5 people with this phone, and they all detest it. One wants to start a hate website devoted to it. Doesn't she find it too slow? Once you've ended a call you have to wait another 10 seconds to make another call - when I'm putting test calls into a system this cuts my productivity down seriously. The last number recall is so slow its a lot faster to type the number myself - unless of course I have just made another call in which case the number buffer only holds one keypress.
If I used it only occassionally it wouldn't be too bad I guess, but due to my job I have to use phones constantly. And due to my girlfriend I have to make frequent use of its appalling T9 implementation.
*sigh*
This phone is ruining my life... I want my old Nokia back.
I have owned a T68i for 5 months, and I must say it is the worst purchase I have ever made. I cannot believe Sony is ruining their brand name with such an awful product. The reception is terrible, the UI is awful, the speed at which it responds to anything is horrendous. Unfortunately due to my contract I have to wait another 7 months before I can get a replacement.
The reviews for the T68i are obviously done by people who do not actually use phones. Superficially it is very light, has fairly good battery life and a good feature set. Trying to make a call from it is awful. For some reason the sequence to lock the phones keypad is different from the sequence to unlock it. In fact, the sequence to lock it regularly deletes numbers from my phone book, because it is the same sequence (clear and then yes). Even when locked the phone can be turned off by accident.
The only thing I have ever seen with a worse UI, is the communicam I mistakenly bought to test a friends website (http://www.phlog.net). This camera is unusable. Its no good for anything. I tried wedging a door open with it and it wasn't even any good for that. Sometimes things are so bad they're funny... unfortunately this phone even surpasses that level of "badness".
I know various people with this phone and they all hate it. They all have the same problems.
I can only think that any other phone in there product line is going to be just as bad, as they have zero idea on how to program an interface. The 68i was supposed to be an improvement over the T68. It wasn't.
I really could go on for a long time, but there's probably better things you could all be doing that reading my post.
Just make sure you don't buy a T68i, and please talk to a serious phone user who already has the P800 before purchasing it.
This seems to be a system in development for the UK. We have a lot of motorways, and other major routes, which do not go anywhere near cities, major offices, and especially not pedestrians. In the cases where they do (for instance, the M6/M5/M42 through Birmingham) I would have thought the software would learn that 70% of the phones in a specific area are slow-moving/stationary due to being inside an office block and that if the percentage does increase, it is a possible traffic alert.
There are less advanced ways but more reliable means of doing this, using bridge-mounted devices to measure the speeding of vehicles (on the motorway below the bridge). We already have a system in the UK that does this - I'm not sure about the rest of Europe.
On a slightly off-topic note, there is currently a game in the UK played via your mobile (link from www.channel4.com) called x-fire, that uses this kind of mobile location methodology to determine how close you are to other players in the country. It's electronic paint-ball! Kind of fun. [originally this came from Sweden I think]. It disturbed me that a company could access the location data of my cell-phone without me having to sign a release-form. Just a simple phone call to an automated system is all it takes to set yourself up in the game.
There was an article in NewScientist on the 9th February (subscription required to view the article), "What Lies Beneath", about emergent systems. It discusses that we may never know the true nature of the universe; of what it is made of.
Robert Laughlin (Stanford University) is researching this. What we observe in the universe is model-independent, and we cannot actually see the model itself.
"The laws that govern large-scale phenomena will not be deduced from the laws that govern tiny particles, he says. "It's in the same way that flocking behaviour can be characterised without understanding everything about birds, or superconductivity without understanding atomic theory."
This idea is called emergence. It's a familiar phenomenon in the theory of condensed matter, which is Laughlin's background. Solids and liquids sometimes play host to strange entities that bear little resemblance to the atoms making up the substance."
...
"If what you see is model-independent then you can't learn anything about the underlying equations by observing it," says Laughlin. "You could call this the dark side of emergence."
...
"What we emerge from is unknowable," says Laughlin. "The underlying equations of the Universe cannot be determined from what we know."
The article goes into greater detail than I can here, but it definitely an interesting read.
If all this is true, we can never really know the true mechanics of the universe. It may actually be a simple "4-line" automaton. It could be a billion other things - we'll probably never know.
It makes perfect sense for the record companies to allow us to pay 2 GBP per track. I'm sure they would love too have this avenue open. Unfortunately, something appear to be stopping them doing this.
Is it an infrastructure problem? Do they want to hire a bunch of slashdotters to implement it for them? Or are there internal pressures preventing it from happening? I know that if I owned a music-store, I would lobby my suppliers to prevent this from happening. Who is going to shop at HMV for their music, when they can have benefits of instant downloads?
If a customer can download a low quality version first, and then decide to only pay for half the tracks they are definitely going to go this way. Most of the CDs I own are at least 40% filler.
Whatever the reason, someone is scared of this happening. Hopefully these people will either be replaced or made to see sense before digital music rollercoaster loses momentum, and lobbyists get laws passed outlawing the equipment required for playback.
- http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/prod/deskstar.htm
"...delivers Non-stop leadership..."The original hi-res colour version has only recently become available in the UK. I have held off buying one wondering what Sony was going to release next, and now comes this super-slim one. Do I await its release in the UK, or purchase the one already out? If I wait for the new one to be released here, will they quickly follow that up with a new release in the US?
Maybe its Sonys Clié division's policy to only release in other countries a 6 weeks before a new version is announced. If so, I'll never buy one!
I've not played this game, but just reading the article scared me in places. It reminds me of being stuck in the SunSpire in Unreal. I knew the exit was past a room, but there lurked badly animated spiders. Even a badly animated spider jumping at my face is enough to make me hit pause and go sit somewhere else for a while.
Game design which actually frightens you is very good design, and very rare. This article makes me want to go out and buy it.
You could say this guy has too much time on his hands, but at least he's writing and (hopefully) making money at it; how much time did I just waste +reading+ about someone playing a videogame?