If you’ve ever had to scale an image down for the web – or especially to make an icon – you might have noticed that the image actually gets a bit blurrier sometimes. This is surprising! We all know when you scale images up they get blurrier, but you would think when you scale down they’d get sharper, right? Well, no. Scaling down means taking a mathematical average between neighboring pixels and this will make fine details get softer as the colors of the background ‘bleed’ into them.

To help show this I’ve made up some example images.

Continue reading why images get blurry when they get smaller…

After hearing about Dizzee Rascal’s appearance on Newsnight and hearing his new track, I just had to combine the two. With apologies to all involved, I give you “BonkersNight featuring J-Pax”!

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direct link for download

A brilliant modification of a Wall-E toy to make a robot that explores and is generally amazing!

Even better, there are Instructions for building your own…

I love it! Robots, hacking stuff, all put together in the one post – whoohoo!

So, now that I’ve (hopefully) sold my old home and bought a shiny new one (fingers crossed on the paperwork all going smoothly) I clearly need a new project to keep me busy!

Well, not really, but I certainly need a solution to the age old question of “where is all the tech going in the new flat”.

My current solution of 19 inch rackmount equiment in a DIY box on wheels is actually rather good, although very ugly and only suitable for hiding in a cupboard – which is what I’ve currently done [I'll find some pictures later]. However the nice lounge in the new Victorian flat does not have such a handy location that I can box in. Also, I wanted to do something a bit more… interesting. Also quiet, and not the “I will overheat your Xbox 360″ kind of quiet that I currently have… I have open the door to the cupboard to stop the 360 basically melting, and as that is far and away the loudest thing ever it pretty much defeats the whole point. So, some kind of sound proofing AND ventilation is required there.

You can get some great professional silent rack mount boxes from people like Kell Systems. They look and sound great, and for an office I would absolutely buy one, because (a) I would’t be paying for it and (b) it does look like OFFICE furniture, rather than home furniture.

So, my plan is to buy a nice old cabinet or set of drawers, fit rack motunts to it, stuff it with sound dampening boards/foam and then add some quiet fans to it to ensure nothing melts.

I did think finding an appropriate old cabinet would take a while, but fortunately my lovely other half Bobble is an eBay genius and found an excellent one! Even better was that no-one else had spotted it so I snapped it up for a mere ten pounds. Yay! Ok, so its going to cost 70 pounds to transport it back home, but its still a bargain to me.

Take a look – a lovely retro 50s or 60s (not sure when) TV cabinet. Excellent wood panelling and importantly, plenty of space and already has some ventilation holes! Perfect!

So, once I get this baby home I’ll measure up and no doubt make some SketchUp designs of what will go inside… hee hee!

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Originally uploaded by sirljohns.

A brilliant mod of a GameBoy to hold an iPod – and all the buttons work as well due to a custom iPod dock internally. The iPod wasn’t harmed either… fantastic!

The full set on Flickr has more details.

In flat news, I’m just about to finish painting the study after spending a very dusty last weekend preparing it. I’ve already drilled holes for the shelves and cut the Conti board, so the shelves will go up pretty quickly when I’m done.

Now I must away to painting!!

Finally emailed off some renderings and plans to the builders tonight to try and get a quote from them. Hopeful that it doesn’t take too long and we can get building early in the new year!

Overall plan – hard to see at this size but notice I’ve only shown details in the rooms the builders need to know about. They don’t need to see the stuff I’m going to build in the study…

An overview of the parts of the flat that are changing the most – the kitchen and the lounge.

The kitchen before – two doors, built in cupboards, poor use of space.

The kitchen after: removed a door and regained space from cupboards.

An overview of the finished kitchen, including extractor ducting.

Alternate angles of the kitchen – we’ve played with a few layouts ‘virtually’ and now have settled on the Fridge at one end and and the oven at the other. This works out better when considering movement between food storage, preparation and cooking areas.

The bathroom currently has a second toilet (no idea why) and a shower, but a small bath can be fitted in, with an overhead shower. Much better, especially with lots of excellent tiles and Italian plumbing.

The WC before – the white box on the right is an old coal store type area, with an outside hatch! That’s being ripped out to give us more space, for a sink.

Afterwards, a sink, a suspended pan and a hidden cistern behind a simple thin wall.

That’s all for now! Hope you’re not bored senseless with flat plans… but that’s my spare time at the moment