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The Americans blow in like a whirlwind. Loud. Taking up space. One of them can speak Chinese. We know because he feels the need to give his order in the loud baritone of Americans abroad. In an intense loud, fast exchange we learn of their latest business venture, the gossip, who’s a PITA and a comparison of Starbucks to McDonalds. Then, whoosh! They’re gone. Silence. The insipid jazz and disconnected prose drip from the walls and creep into the remaining vacuum. Equilibrium is restored. Peace.

Pingdom have put together a nice gallery of pictures of early computers starting from 1944 (Colossus and Z4) to 1964 (Univac 1108). Lovely.

In case anyone else is wondering why their utf-8 email is not coming out as it should when using Django…

SVT (the Swedish public service broadcaster) have a nice little iPhone app which they’re waiting (of course) for Apple to approve. To help the processs along they’ve made a site called dearstevejobs.com. Good luck to ‘em.

Tools are not everyones cup of tea. You either like taking things apart and building things or you don’t. I’ve spent hours looking at tool catalogues. “Oh there’s a tool for that,” you think to yourself. Usually too late after struggling with the Haynes Book Of Lies and giving up. Countless hours spent with the Capri manual, endless cups of tea in a freezing garage. Ah, those were the days before t’Internet. Now we can browse tools we can’t afford online. There’s even tool blogs. There are a few DIY stores in Shanghai,…

In 1983 Steve Jobs in a characteristically brilliant speech introduced the Mac as the solution to IBM’s dominance in the PC industry. “IBM wants it all.” He says a few times. A clip of the speech is available on YouTube (embedded below):