Tim has next to no relevancy to most of this blog’s discourses, but I think he is someone that needs to be shared.

I’ve been watching Tim Minchin’s So Live DVD and it reinforces my opinion that he’s an incredibly intelligent and witty comedian/musician. So much so, that I presume to suggest that you might be equally impressed with him.

If you want a taste, head over to his website or search for ‘Tim Minchin’ on YouTube. My favourite of his pieces is Darkside.

His music might be a bit confronting, both language and theme, but that doesn’t take away from his genius.

Teleportation has long been confined to science fiction but has only recently become reality, albeit on a much smaller scale than seen in Star Trek.

In 1998 a team of physicists at the California Institute of Technology teleported a single photon and in June 2002 scientists at the Australian National University managed to do the same with a laser beam. While that’s not earth-shattering, it certainly proves the concept. Photons are not the only particle that has been teleported either, both beryllium and calcium have since been successfully teleported.

So what about something that could actually be useful? Are we any closer to being able to hop onto a pad in our lounge and suddenly appear at the shopping center? Not much closer, but perhaps a little bit. And without raising all the associated philosophical complications of teleportation, something like that would be pretty cool.

I think development and further scientific research is going to take a very long time, but at least progress is being made and that takes it out of the realm of pure speculation and means practical teleportation (say of macroscopic objects) might just be a possibility.

Does science fiction pique your interest? I certainly find modern technology fascinating, and just thinking what could be around the bend is incredible. Here are some promising and interesting areas of development. Some may become a reality in the years to come, some might never be possible and yet others are already possible and available.

Printing just got so much cooler: 3D printer/fabricator and super-fast paper printing.

Sure typed pages are much easier to read compared to handwritten notes, but the printing has done so much more than improve legibility, it changed the way we communicate on paper. Hand written messages are now vastly outnumbered by their printed counterparts, which can be spat out of laser and inkjet printers at phenomenal speed.

There must be no new or novel developments left in the industry, surely? Well fortunately there is, and it’s more revolutionary then just evolutionary. 3D printers or fabricators are now a reality and are available to buy. These machines ‘print’ three dimensional objects. Perhaps one day you will be able to ‘print’ your own clothes or food, but for now it’s much more limited. Still, it is rather cool.

Now that’s all fine and interesting if you have a spare $10,000 to $100,000 for your next printer, but what about the good ol’ fashioned paper-based machines? Is there anything revolutionary going on there? Well, yes, there is.

Memjet technology is behind the blisterringly-fast print speeds shown in the video above. The video is not set at a fast speed, it is the actual speed of the printer. Want a page printed? Well it can be printed in fractions of a second. What about a poster? That’s easy too.

These two new developments are certainly keeping the printer market interesting, and something to watch in the coming years.

After growing tired of the rather diminuitive last WordPress theme, I have changed the site across to use a custom variant of the Integral theme. I will be customising it further over the coming days, but wanted to get a fresh look out as soon as possible.

Personally I think it’s definitely a change for the better. Posts are given a modest increase in screen real estate, with a wider container for them, and the layout remains reasonably minimal.

Upon reflection of the site’s content it seems that though it may be useful and interesting it does seem a little… well, dull.

This is the first even semi-personal post I have written, and hopefully far from the last. Most of my blog entries have been productivity-focussed. Short snippets which were straight to the point, designed to quickly provide information on interesting topics and articles and serve them up. Now I want to take a step forward and add more than just dry factual contents and begin to build a personality and feel to this blog.

I think the rather more clinical nature of posts to date is a result of my education. It is bad form to express first person views or opinions in essay writing, contractions are not endorsed and the general feel for an article can tend to be unengaging (insightful perhaps, but still not captivating). Jamie Harrop asked whether bloggers should get personal and write about parties and the like. This may be appealing, but it is not the level of depth where this site shall venture, at least not yet. Instead this new format should provide more verbose entries which will be much more useful to readers.

I hope you enjoy the coming entries and the new format that they will take!

I keep track of a lot of different icon, stock photography and design websites and one of the latest and better finds I’ve had is Dezignus.com. Stanly has posted a huge collection of graphic design articles, but my favourite are his collection of icons.

And since it is getting closer to Christmas, why not have a look at these festive icons?