As we all know, Halloween is a worldwide holiday, taking place on October 31 and linked to celebrating the spirits of the dead. Still, this is pretty much all that the celebrations have in common in the parts of the world where they are held. While Halloween was imported in most of the countries during the last part of the 20th century, the customs have been adapted or linked to local tradition, events and beliefs. Today’s access to media helps the holiday and its most popular customs in being embraced by more and more nations. Still, the international symbol of the holiday remains the Jack-o’-lantern.
Halloween eve, on October 30, called Mischief Night in the US (with the Devil’s Night variation in Detroit), or Miggy Night in some regions in England, is practically an opportunity to cause mayhem, from its metaphorical acceptance (throwing eggs or letting neighbors’ cattle roam loose) to its literal one (setting fires, or performing actions leading to an increase in gang criminal activity). Read the rest of this entry »
fitpc
What’s all this then? At first glance it looks like it might be some sort of wireless gadget but believe it or not it is a complete PC, and no, that’s not a giant key. It’s called Fit-PC Slim and the whole thing measures just 10 x 11 x 3cm, which isn’t much larger than a pack of 20 cigarettes. Inside the box they have managed to squeeze an AMD Geode CPU running at 500MHz, there’s 512Mb RAM, a 60GB hard drive, Wi-FI and audio adaptors plus all the usual inputs and outputs. It comes pre-loaded with Linux or XP; there’s no fan, so it’s completely silent and all it needs to run is a simple 12-volt power supply. Amazing stuff, though you might now be asking why, and I have to say that I have no easy answers, but for someone out there it’s just what they’ve been waiting for!
I get a lot of emails and letters asking why the colours in printed photos sometimes don’t match what’s on the screen? Sometimes it’s the printer, but more often than not it’s simply that the monitor hasn’t been properly set up. Monitor calibration is essential if you work with graphics or photo editing software but how many of us ever take the time to adjust our monitors, apart from twiddling the brightness and contrast controls? Not many, I bet, but there’s no excuse any more. A freeware program called Calibrize takes you gently by the hand, and in three simple steps helps you to adjust your display; from start to finish it only takes around 2 minutes and the new settings or colour ‘profile’ is then saved and applied every time you start Windows. It’s also handy for those who, like me, use two monitors, making it easy to accurately match the two displays.
Those of you who have been around computers for a few years may well remember the Fruit Wars of the early 1980s, indeed one of the very first home computers I wrote about was the Tangerine, back in the late 1970’s. In fact it was little more than a very large printed circuit board, smothered in logic chips, and you had to add your own keyboard and light bulbs, but it was a start… Anyway, soon afterwards we had more useable machines from the likes of Apple, and Apricot, not to mention quite a few lemons, though to be fair I don’t remember anyone actually using that name. But the rest, as they say is history, with only one fruity PC maker managing to survive.
Anyway, this preamble is by way of reintroducing the Apricot brand, last owned by Mitsubishi though by the late 1990s it had all but disappeared. Read the rest of this entry »
Visitors to Russia should be on the alert for cheap iPhones, according to an item on Englishrussia.com. The scam is simple; someone comes up to you in the street, apparently in distress because they don’t have enough money for a train or plane ticket. You look like a helpful sort of person and they offer to sell you their iPhone for a bargain price, so they can get home. It looks just like the real deal, and the seller offers to show you it is working, he (or she) switches it on and the Apple logo appears on the screen, but it quickly disappears; the battery is dead they explain, but it will be okay when you charge it up. Having parted with your money you hook said iPhone up to a charger, only to find that it’s a clever fake. What you have bought is a very convincing iPhone case, with a simple backlit screen with the Apple logo illuminated a small battery powered light bulb. Oh yes, and you get a small chunk of metal, to give it the right weight.
