Besotted with a chair

Having spent two days slumped in elimloth's recliner, I'm in love with it... it's a Norwegian company called Ekornes and not only do they do the Stressless recliner with separate footstool that I am currently coveting, with the option of a Stressless PC arm on the side, they do sofas with individually reclining seats, corner pieces and mixed reclining and fixed seats, with nifty ideas like swivelling cupholder trays that reveal a storage cubby for the remote controls. If it's all as comfortable as the recliner, I want to replace my office recliner chair and the sofa as well. The catalogue has lots of details (I'm giving the link because I don't want to have to download it just to be able to look at it again without typing in all my personal details the way I had to the first time, and the way I had to just to get the details of one dealer )Allders in Croydon). As you can tell, I'm a lot keener on the products than I am on the Web site; if I hadn't tried the chair I wouldn't have bothered to go through the rigmarole. And *nowhere* on the site is there any clue about the prices!

Spamming my savings account for £20?

I actually don't mind companies offering me a bribe to do their marketing for me; it shows they understand the power of personal recommendation. And I have told plenty of people about HiSAVE/ICICI before as a good deal. The rates are down from the really high 6-7% I used to get, but 3.75% isn't bad for a no-notice account with no fancy penalties and I looked around and decided to leave my cash there. The urgency has gone from checking if banks are protected, but they're directly governed by the FSA and with a large backing bank in India they feel safer than UK financial institutions with similar rates. So, if you were thinking of opening a savings account and you'd like to be paid £20 for the privelige (and give me £20 as well), let me know and I will drop your name into their system.

Time to get a high-speed camera

I've been umming and ahhing for the last week or so about getting one of the Casio EX-FC100 high-speed compact cameras (1000fps video 300fpd still images - so you can choose from 30 frames in a burst mode or merge frames automatically to stabilise night shots and zoom images, which would be a big help taking photos of speakers at conferences with something I can keep in my pocket). This rather lovely video of high-speed slow-motion New York is done with the previous generation bridge camera that Casio had last year.

New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo.

EDIT: I should have included the attribution - I found it on http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2009/02/wonderful-slow-motion-stabilized-video.html which I clicked through to from the screamingly funny (but not NSFW) Penny Arcade cartoon on Project Natal (later known as Kinect) http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/5/.

Microsoft to sell Pear computers

Wandering through building 37 on campus, I spotted a model building; 'what's that?' I aked. 'A model of the new Microsoft store,' answered my source. Or a new story on TechRadar. I've not seen this image anywhere before, so maybe I have a tiny scoop (make mine salt caramel gelato): I'm not sure how many journalists get the offer of being left to roam around the main Windows team building unescorted ;-)

Head over to the TechRadar story for a few more details - including a shot that zooms in on the make of the model laptop at the front of the store...

I know this is called a 'store'; to me it's much more like an experience parlour, same as the Apple shops (where everything I ever want is out of stock when I go in, but that's just me). There are way cool things on Windows; Microsoft wants somewhere with brighter employees than Frys to show them off. It needs a fridge of Talking Rain at the back...