Five Star Wall – Week 1 – January 2012

Posted in Customisation, Linux, Mac, News, Wallpaper, Windows

As someone who moved hemispheres and thus saw a reversal in seasons, it still intrigues me to see winter weather walls at this time of the year. Few of them are as cool as this witner wonderland though. If you’re looking for a cool monochrome wall to adorn your desktop this new year – look no further.

TFI Friday Time Waster

Posted in News, TFI Friday Time-Waster

One Torch to Rule Them All – the Surefire M3LT-S CombatLight

Posted in Gadgets, Lifestyle, News

If you absolutely, positively  got to light up every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes. Oh sure, you might have one of those bright yellow torches you picked up in your local warehouse DIY store and you think you’re the king swinging dick of personal illumination products, but nothing comes close to the build quality or lighting power of this motherfucker of a torch. Daddy-O.

So, the first thing to say about the Surefire is that is puts out 800 lumens of light – if you’d had this puppy in 1969 you could have lit up the lunar lander’s steps for Neil Armstrong (this may be a slight exaggeration). It achieves this by using an ultra high-output 4-die LED emitter which the manufacturers say is immune to failure, because there’s no filament to burn out. It has two power outputs – a standard output and a high output for spotlight duties and running down perps.

The Surfire also includes a strobe mode for ‘tactical’ applications and is equipped with a high-strength aerospace aluminum body with a Mil-Spec hard-anodized finish. Nice. The design of the flashlight includes an ergonomic CombatGrip configuration designed for flashlight/handgun techniques and won’t let you down if you have cold, wet, or gloved hands. The Surefire is yours for $565USD and is available on Amazon. Handgun sold separately.

Plane Finder – Track Flights Worldwide on this Amazing Google Maps Mashup

Posted in News, Websites

If you’ve ever watched a jet’s contrails appear overhead and wondered where the flight’s going and where it came from then you’re going to love this website. The online version of the already successful iPhone and Android apps, Plane Finder displays a live map on which thousands of aeroplanes move across the globe. You can click on any of the aeroplanes on the map to find out more about it.

Clicking on any aircraft pulls up a flight identifier box with flight, plane and sharing tabs. In the flight tab you can see the flight number, origin and destination, aircraft type, speed and altitude. You can toggle the flight path on or off and even view the plane’s route in realtime on Google Earth. On the plane tab you can see further information about the aircraft and view a gallery of images. In the sharing tab you can share the flight’s details with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Plane Finder’s sophistication doesn’t end there though. If you have a look in the map options you can restrict the map to specific airlines, show only aircraft flying at a specific altitude range or speed, search for a plane by flight number or registration or tweak all the map settings. It’s the sort of website that’s perfect for following the progress of friends and family as they fly between destinations and, since it’s live data, will enable you to carefully time your trip to the airport to pick them up.

Five Star Wall – Week 2 – December 2011

Posted in Customisation, Linux, Mac, News, Wallpaper, Windows

The Desktopography site can be a bit hit and miss, but it does sometimes manage to showcase some good design work. This wallpaper is by Paweł Dąbrowski (better known as Polaus in customisation circles) and he’s produced a superb abstract wallpaper for this year’s ecologically themed exhibition. You can get it, here.

TFI Friday Time Waster

Posted in News, TFI Friday Time-Waster

Blotter 2 – Embedded Desktop Calendar for Mac Released

Posted in Mac, News, Software

Blotter is an innovative Mac application that enables you to embed your iCal calendar directly in your desktop. Version 2 has just been released and brings a number of welcome updates and additions to the package, including resizable calendars, any calendar colour and new animations. Full details available here.