blueDonkey.org

Check out this interactive web tool decoding US zip (postal) codes.

Click on the map to start, then click the word ‘zoom’ on in the bottom right area of the map. Now type a zip code in one digit at a time and map will zoom in step-by-step to the place referred to by that zip code. A useful tool, but also a fun demonstration of the power of interactive web technologies.

Saturday was the opening of a new Apple store at Stonestown Galleria. According to the report at IFO Apple Store people were in line at 5:30am. I turned up at the doors to the mall just before 10am (already early for me on a Saturday morning!). The line at that point was from the front of the actual store to the main mall doors, but it took less than an hour to get into the store.

The store itself is pretty small (half the size of the Victoria’s Secret store that used to occupy the space before they moved over the other side of the walkway). Not everything they sell is on display either (e.g. the Canon digital SLRs) – they do stock some of them though, and will get them out if you ask.

The specials for opening day were a minimalist black t-shirt (nicely boxed) and entry into a sweepstakes to win a bundle of stuff, including one of the new iMac G5 systems.

Sunday night I went for a walk along the shoreline near Crab Cove (never made it that far as the gate was locked by the time I reached it). On the way though I snapped a few shots of the sun setting. The best place would have been over the other side of the island where the sun was turning the relatively heavy clouds over the Oakland hills pink & red, but I was on the bay side of the island…

This shot, with the crescent moon overhead and the amazing gradient from burning reds just over the skyline up to the deep blues, appealed to me. What do you think?

Heading home from work tonight I noticed that the sky over the city was unusually clear, so I stopped off at Treasure Island and snapped a few shots with my little Canon S100. (Tonight is one of those nights when I wish I had bought the nice digital SLR that I’ve been looking at.)

Still, a couple of the shots are not too bad. They are not as sharp as I’d like, but I didn’t have a tripod with me, nor is the tiny lens on the S100 really ideal for long distance night photography. Better than nothing though.

As always, click the thumbnail for a popup window with a larger shot (something that WordPress does not make as simple to achieve as MovableType did – but I can fix that…).

Finally I decided the time was right to switch from Mozilla 1.7 to the new Firefox browser. As a browser it is impressive, but I do still miss having the integrated email client (the main reason I reverted back to the mainstream Mozilla version last time I tried Firefox. I now have Thunderbird as my email client, which again is great but separate.

Part of my reason for trying Firefox again now though was to see if it has the same memory leak problems that seem to be present in the Mozilla 1.x series of browsers. So far it does seem to be better, but only time will tell. If you’d like to try the latest version, whether you run Windoze, MacOS, Linux, Solaris or even AIX (and I’m sure more will follow), click on the button above.

IBM has posted an article on its developer site about running Linux on an iPAQ.

I have had my iPaq, a 3835 model that I picked up cheap in an online auction, running Linux for a couple of years now. My installation is now a bit out of date, but it runs happily with my Linksys compact flash Wi-Fi card in the sleeve. It is a little bulky by comparison to the newer models (mostly because of the need for the sleeve to get the CF slot).

If you have an iPaq that you no longer use on a daily basis, either because you have moved on from the whole PDA scene, or simply because you have upgraded to a newer model, running Linux on them can be a fun experiment. Not something for the novice yet though.

If you want more information, check out the excellent resources at handhelds.org. You will find all the software you need there to save your PocketPC installation and install Linux, as well as detailed instructions for every supported model.

Another photographer’s website for your enjoyment; Jeff Maion specialises in adventure and travel imagery (to use his phrasing), and some of these shots are spectacular. Click on the places on the map to jump into galleries of images from that area.

The folks over at Tech Digest report that Samsung has debuted a cell phone, the SPH-V5400, with a built-in 1.5 GB hard drive. As well as an integrated 1 megapixel digital camera, it also includes an MP3 player and an FM transmitter. Yes, transmitter! It can transmit those MP3 files over FM to a nearby receiver, such as the one in your car. This is a feature that other MP3 players could do with.

So, why buy a standalone MP3 player? Well, I can still see a couple of good reasons:

1. It is still a very small hard drive; the iPod mini is 4GB and the new Creative MuVo2 is 5GB (it will also be shared with the camera, so it is going to fill up fast too if you use both features a lot)
2. I don’t want to have to convince the aircrew on my next flight that the cell phone is off while I listen to MP3 tracks from it (even assuming it has a mode where the phone portion is off)

Engadget has pictures of the new phone for those interested.

Browsing through some blogs earlier today I discovered this site: New York City Photography: Color & Black and White.

I found the site via his blog, which is complete with selected photos, covering everyday life and events in New York City. Make sure you check out the recent photos gallery for more candid shots on the city streets, as well as some more artistic shots from around the city.

Ping-o-Matic! is a service that can be pinged when a new entry is added to your blog, and they will then ping a number of other aggregator services.

“So what?” you ask… well, they also have a list of the last 100 sites that pinged them. I spent a very long time just selecting a link, opening a new tab and going to the link. A few don’t work, a few are in foreign languages, but most are blogs to check out. Some personal, some small businesses. The only down side is that they are not clickable links at the moment.

For clickable links, you could try weblogs.com instead (Ping-O-Matic! pings weblogs.com).

Update: Seconds after posting this, I try to go back to weblogs.com and I am presented with a username/password box. I guess that they are having server troubles (it is an MS IIS that they are running on according to the error I got by not giving them a username/password).