Picasaweb embedded slideshow interval
I moved all by best photos over to Picasaweb, so I could have the really nice embedded slideshows here on mat.su. The main thing that I didn’t like was the fixed four second interval between photos, so I took a peek inside slideshow.swf (the flash file that the slideshow is run on), and I found out that if you add interval=x; in the embedded code right before the RGB variable like this (…) interval=7;RGB=0xFFFFFF& (…) the delay between photos will be the one you determine, in seconds (and yes, you can change the RGB values of the background – the standard is 0×000000 – black – and as you can see I changed it to 0xFFFFFF – white – to go with my wordpress theme).
Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
For the past few days I haven’t been able to access some very specific websites from my home ADSL connection – at first I thought it was the servers in question being down for some reason, but from yesterday on I haven’t been able to access Wikipedia, which lead me to call my ISP’s technical support – the answer: “We can’t either, it’s probably a problem with our network”. The biggest trouble is that my 3G connection is from a mobile provider in the same group of companies, and it’s suffering from the same problem… which I suspect is connected with their aggressive transparent http proxy servers policy (more correctly, intercepting proxy servers).
Flexible power
The major area falling behind in today’s technology is in the power department. It’s not just a question of how long the batteries last – but on how fast they charge, how reliable they are. Imagine that you could have an electrical car that had the same autonomy as a gas powered one, but that could be charged in about the same amount of time as it takes to fill a gas tank, for instance. Or batteries that could have any arbitrary shape, taking the best advantage of the available volume in any device.
These are a few of the things that could become possible with a proposed new technology by Pulickel Ajayan et al from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Basically, it’s the combination of cellulose and nanotubes, creating a flexible robust battery – with a twist. It can be built in a way that it becomes a hybrid of a battery with a capacitor – able to hold the amount of power batteries can, coupled with the ability to charge and discharge as fast as capacitors are able. Being flexible, these batteries could be easily produced in all shapes necessary to take the best advantage of any design. Let’s see how soon this technology can be mass produced.
