Category: Link Log

Is this not the end of the Voicemail?

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Podcasts should, like people making a Terminator TV series, plan for a final episode. Even if it’s ‘go on hiatus’ think about what you leave if it is the last one. As it is with genre TV, as it is with The Voicemail: This isn’t the last episode of The Voicemail, but it’ll be the last one you’ll hear for a while. In it, James and Stefan discuss what’s been happening in their respective lives since the last time they recorded, what news items caught there eyes during the show’s brief hiatus, and what they’re looking forward to in 2017. Goodnight,

Landing a rocket in front of a camera

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Basically you try, try, try again. Keep trying until you get everything lined up. And in the process you’ll also be working on a reusable first-stage rocket. The Verge’s Sean O’Kane on that picture: It appears that there was some post-processing done on this photo, which adds to its dramatic nature. But even without the added contrast and vignetting, the photo is still a rather lucky sum of a number of fast-moving parts. The rocket is in the middle of using its engines to remove itself from its free fall from space. The drone ship had been positioning and steadying

Why It Is Important That China Has Perfected The Ball Point Pen

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Not your low-cost ten-a-pen pen, but the more high-end pens with well fitting barrels and balls for smoother writing experiences. Ballpoint pens aren’t actually new to China. Its 3,000 pen manufacturers make around 40 billion of them a year and fulfill 80 percent of the world’s demand. There’s just one problem: China doesn’t possess the advanced alloys and machines necessary to make a high-quality pen ball and socket. As a result, 90 percent of China’s pen tips are imported. Pens made from Chinese components are widely acknowledged to be inferior — a point made by Premier Li Keqiang in a 2015

The twenty albums on the first iPod

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Fifteen years after the reveal of the first iPod (with a world changing 5GB of storage), Nobuyyki Hayashi recalls the presentation,the first sample machines handed to journalists (for the flight home), and the twenty hand-picked albums that were loaded up on the iPod. Of course there was a big push to not ‘steal music’ so alongside the iPod were CD copies of those twenty albums. Hayasi still has them, and it makes for a fascinating playlist. I love the fact that Jobs and his team included two albums from The Beatles (‘A Hard Day’s Night‘, and ‘Abbey Road‘), a band that would be one of

Trivial Posts #30: Reality is but a figment of the imagination

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I’m travelling a lot in November, so a quiet week at home with virtual reality, reality TV, and a picture show are exactly what I need to prepare to gather a clutch of air miles. What have I been reading to while away the hours? I’m glad you asked… You can sign up to have this posted out to you every week, subscribe to the newsletter version here. VR’s Biggest Problem I posted this on the blog over the weekend, but it deserves another airing. Virtual Reality has a problem that is not far from the surface. Can anyone ensure a harassment-free environment, asks

An Old Problem Threatens Virtual Reality

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Virtual Reality is (still) the brave new world, and like any new world it’s going to get polluted. If the experiences of – and I fear it will be – then VR has a problem. And it’s one as old as the digital hills. Female harassment: So, there I was shooting down zombies alongside another real-time player named BigBro442. The other players could hear me when I spoke, my voice the only indication of my femaleness. Otherwise, my avatar looked identical to them. In between a wave of zombies and demons to shoot down, I was hanging out next to