Exasperated Calculator

Evidence based scheduling.

Some good ideas for project management here. Somewhat harder to apply in a world where a significant part of your task is working out what to do, though.

Coming soon: weather prediction on the Wikipedia/Digg model.

It’s going to be very, very interesting to see if this works or not. My guess is ‘no’ - expertise reigns in these fields.

A nice column from Nicholas Gruen on fiscal policy.

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of an independent fiscal policy authority, but (outside of the obvious political concerns) I’ve never been able to find a way to have tax rate adjustments that are both frequent enough and obvious enough to consumers without massive administrative burdens.

How to draw Bugs Bunny.

John K is completely mad, but very enjoyably opinionated. His blog is worth a read.

A calculator with PC style keyboard.

Also works as a USB keyboard, which makes it a very, very tempting purchase…

Announcements: ALP: Measures to encourage landlords to install energy efficiency improvements in the properties they rent out ($150m).

28 days to go.

Things not to do at Disneyland. (Slightly NSFW picture at that link).

Jon Saffran did it best, of course.

How to make a floating head hologram.

Clever trick.

Plug and play for bare hard drives.

It’s always been a great annoyance that bare (i.e., designed for installing inside your computer) hard drives are so cheap, but buying an enclosure and swapping them around is tedious, and external drives are much more expensive. This looks like a good middle ground.

A history of the C64.

No gaming platform holds a dearer place in my heart. It wasn’t so much the platform, but what the programmers did with it, of course.

String theory in two minutes.

Sadly, two minutes are all also all you need to hear about the experimental confirmations of string theory. Assuming your local string theorist can keep the excuse for the total lack of results down to only two minutes, that is.

Announcements:

• ALP: $489m for solar panels in schools.

• Coalition: $75m grant program for innovative renewal energy technologies.

Polls: Morgan: ALP 56-44.

29 days to go.

Might as well face it, you’re addicted to Civ.

This game is one of the few to have encouraged me to play through the night. Something about that ‘one more turn’ nature.

[Make your own business cards using acid].(http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/08/how_to_make_your_own_embo.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890).

That’s the acid ferric chloride, in case your mind took you somewhere else entirely.

An application to get your contact details out of Facebook.

My biggest worry about Facebook is the closed system nature - while anyone can write an application, you don’t get to control your own data. This is a partial solution, but not a complete one.

Plasma and LCD flat panels use a lot of electricity

Frankly I doubt they’ll ever be banned in their current form, as some people suggest. Still, there is a lot consumer electronics manufacturers could be doing to make it easier to save energy.

Underground coal fires contribute as much to global warming as all the cars in the US.

One of the real problems in designing the long run policy on this stuff is deciding how to assign property rights to emissions like these. A price imposing scheme (be it a tax or permit system) needs these property rights to work fully.

Announcements:

• ALP has policies on petrol for volunteers ($69m) and talked about its broadband package.

• The Democrats (remember them?) propose abolishing HECS contributions.

• Coalition just announced some Perth specific stuff (I’m only tracking national announcements here).

Polls: Galaxy senate poll shows some strange results.

Other: Paul Keating escapes from the box he was being kept in.

30 days (a sphenic number) to go.

GPS receiver in 1985 GPS receiver today

A powered crescent wrench.

I can only think of this as another step towards the eventual robot domination of the world. Good-o.