http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2 Rants and Raves about Technology by the Grumpy Old Techie Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:52:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en About two and a half years ago Battery Centre sold me me a silver calcium battery for my car. According to them silver calcium batteries are the best thing in lead acid battery technology since Gaston Planté made the first one in 1859. They are probably right and most new ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2009/06/17/battery-centre-needs-the-battery-university/ If you are an IT professional providing customers with Internet connectivity solutions you know that the internet is a scary place. Back in the dark ages (before 1993) when things started out everyone using the internet trusted each other. Unfortunately things changed drastically and trust is a thing of the ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2009/05/05/the-internet-is-a-scary-place/ The big media companies and their cronies are getting more and more desperate to try save their totally outdated business model. Modern computers make it ridiculously easy and cheap to copy and distribute any media. The media companies are however trying very hard to overcharge people for what they ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2009/04/04/will-they-ever-learn/ I have written about my favourite mail client Mutt before and still consider it the best around. There is another contender around that I heard about on the linux-elitist mailing list. It is also console based and is called "Sup" short for "What's Up" Those of you that use gmail will ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2009/03/23/whatsup-there-is-another-decent-mail-client-on-the-block/ While browsing through hack a day yesterday I found this Nokia smartphone vulnerability. If you go to the link you will notice that it was the Chaos Computer Club that published the vulnerability. I have written about them before and think they do great work to raise awareness about ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2009/03/11/curse-of-silence/ On every Mac you buy you will find iLife bundled with it. When I bought my first Mac in 2004 I immediately fell in love with iPhoto the photo management application in iLife. I looked at the other parts of iLife i.e. iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and Garageband but never really ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2009/03/09/ilife-apples-killer-app/ About 6 years ago I started installing advertisement monitoring systems in Africa for a small media company. A media company of course has good relationships with their customers i.e. television and radio stations. [caption id="attachment_939" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Kampala"][/caption] The first installations I did was in East Africa, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2008/08/26/africa-from-the-rooftops-east-africa-trip-1/ About two weeks ago I googled for info on "Saturday Voices" (Saterdagstemme) at "Die Boekehuis" in Johannesburg. "Saturday Voices" is a regular event at "Die Boekehuis" where well known (and not so well known) authors, poets, critics or academics launch and discuss their work.  To my surprise I found lots of ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2008/08/12/do-you-need-the-web-to-sell-4000-year-old-technology/ I get lots of e-mail, about 300 messages a day (excluding spam). Ok admittedly I don't really have to deal with all of it immediately but if you let it go you very soon have thousand of e-mails waiting in you INBOX. For years I used a mail client called Mutt. ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2008/08/06/all-mail-clients-suck-this-one-just-sucks-less/ I guess everyone that has an interest in matters internet related already know that there is a new kid on the block in the search engine market. Go have a look at http://www.cuil.com if you haven't done it yet. Cuil claims to be the world's biggest internet index. I don't ... http://www.grumpyoldtechie.com/wordpress2/2008/07/29/cool-new-search-engine/