The results from the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 are out.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=788

"The Copenhagen Consensus Center analyzes the world's greatest challenges and identifies cost efficient solutions to meeting these challenges. The Center works with multilateral organizations, governments and other entities concerned with mitigating the consequences of the challenges which the world is facing."

After searching around on the net trying to find an easy way to create and apply patch files, I came up with the following free solution that creates linux compliant patches.
1. Download and install patch and diff from the GNUWin32 Project http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/patch.htm and http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm

2. Navigate to the place that the exe's were installed (eg. C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin)
3. Create a new file called patch.bat and put the following code in the file:

@echo off
"C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\patch.exe" < %1
pause

I listened to a podcast (http://www.lullabot.com/audiocast/podcast-55-john-albin-wilkins-and-zen-...) from Lullabot (Drupal expert company) about themeing, in particular the zen theme/zengine. There are some really nice Drupal themes that look like Drupal at the zengarden http://www.mezzoblue.com/zengarden/alldesigns.

The how to on how to use the zen theme can be found on the drupal.org site http://drupal.org/project/zen

I came across this really cool Javascript Framework yesterday. The framework is a little different from the other common ones (YUI, ExtJS, JQuery etc). While it does all the normal things such get AJAX calls, DOM abstraction, Event management, it also does some other things that I have never seen before. There is a pivot table, SQL query designer, database designer, vector graphics drawing facilities, drag-and-drop lines (and curves!).

The framework is unfortunately quite complex and the documentation is scant.

OAT Javascript Framework: http://oat.openlinksw.com

In mid April this year I attended a fireworks course down in Christchurch run by the good folks at Firework professionals Ltd. http://www.firework.co.nz. The course ran for two days and covered how fireworks are made, how to handle them safely, how to plan a show, who to get approval from, how to electrically fire a show. About half of the course was theory and the other half was practical. Over the course of the two days we got to fire Mines, Falls, Fountains, Gerindolas, Catherine Wheels, Crackers, Roman Candles, and Starshells.

this is the results of this afternoons procrastinating....

Check this out. Its not what you quite expect.

version alpha 1

This script started out as a much bigger project to make a dual-screen media player out of a web browser. To do this, I first had to be able to make access the local file system and make a playlist. I found that is was very hard to do in Firefox but easy to do in IE. Accessing a file system from a web browser is not a very safe thing to do, which is why Firefox does not allow it.

I go to to talking to one of my friends the other day about cheap double glazing. This is achieved by attaching a sheet of plastic to the inside of your existing windows with double sided tape. This creates an air gap between the room and the existing glass (this works best in houses with thick window frames).

I came across a website that has some really cool projects that use the Wii Remote. You can make an interactive whiteboard, do 3D head tracking, and multipoint tracking. Projects and source code is available from here http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/
I think I'm inspired enough to go buy a remote and have a go!