Richard Giles Blog

A Current Affair ran a story tonight on mobile phones affecting male fertility, Men and mobiles: calls to take caution.

I hate to put a dampener on their findings, but I’ve kept my mobile phone in my front pocket almost every day for the past 9 years, and it took only a couple of months for this.

Update : The Register has a clearer article on the subject, and a much better title, Mobile phones rot your balls.

Great news from Graeme.

He’s set up a free Wi-Fi service for the cappuccino strip in Fremantle.

We need more of this and I’ve got to say that I admire Graeme for making such a long overdue service available! Thanks Gra, and fantastic work. Your whuffie just rocketed up.

Now to find an excuse to spend some time there. Weren’t we meant to have a meeting soon Gra?

On Thursday it’s my birthday, and I’d like one of these.

Via Gizmodo.

While at the post office today I noticed that Australia Post have released Star Trek: The Next Generation Souvenir Stamp Sheet. I’m not sure what prompted them to release this now, but there are bound to be some interested collectors.

For geeks, face your browsers toward space.com for live updates on the first privately-built spacecraft that will carry a human into space.

Be quick, the lauch is happening right now!

As Engadget says, “once SpaceShipOne gets in to sub-orbital space, the Vulcans see this, they land, we get world peace, then we fight the Borg.”

Update : SpaceShipOne is airborne.

I listened to Cory Doctorow’s speech on why Microsoft should abandon DRM, which is just as applicable to other corporations, on my iPod on the way home from work today. Through the wonders of Creative Commons his written speech has been converted into an MP3 by Jason Kottke and can be found on his blog. If you prefer audio input, or haven’t got the time to read it like me, then go and grab the track. It’s a very compelling argument and worthwhile for anyone interested in technology, arts or law.

Australians know the frustrations in dealing with Telstra, our major telco. So, Max Barry’s blog entry, Max vs. Telstra, on his recent problems will come as no surprise. Saying that, it’s still very worth reading because Max happens to be a satirical author, and he weaves a great tail. If you haven’t read Jennifer Government: A Novel, it’s a great look at what could happen to the world if corporations had their way.

As The Cult of Mac Blog says, is Phillip M. Torrone up to something? His blogs still worth keeping an eye on, just because of the shower webcam and robot he can control to patrol his house from the other side of the world.

For the gamers amongst us, the Engadget guys have started Joystiq. It’s worth the visit just for the animated logo (mouse-over to get it moving).

I’ve known of this phenomenon for a while now, but given I mentioned it last night at the Perth Weblog Meetup, and today I read the CIO article, Blogging for Fun and Profit, which links to it, I thought I’d make mention.

Microcontent News wrote about The Tipping Blog : How Weblogs Can Turn an Idea into an Epidemic back in 2002. It’s still very relevant, but you could change some of the links now to more prominent bloggers.

I keep getting tempted to buy the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference which it is based upon, so I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet soon.

Thanks to Bret for the Algae reference.