Some ideas for things to code
i) A predictive text engine for using SSH from a phone
Port of putty to a microsoft smartphone
ii) Add rtsp:// wget so that streams can be downloaded for listening to later (podcasting)
Could use this library or Helix client.
iii) A P2P VNC like application sharing program. To help other people with their computers
This is already possible a way to get through firewalls is often needed. See here for how to do this using VNC + SSH. Why did Microsoft not get this right with the "Remote Assitance Wizard" in WinXP. Maybe Skype could add this.

A power cut at work
In a small company (and a short powercut that the server survived on using UPS) everyone was back up and running in minutes. Comapre this to my last company that would take hours to restart servers and services (and normally forget a few). See this interesting article on the power loss at a LiveJornal datacentre.

Understanding SANs
At work a SAN (Here is a basic guide to SANs from Brocade) has just been installed for testing. I am coming tounderstand that Fibre channel is just another way to make networking expensive before ethernet catches up (as are Infinband adapters ref. Virgina Techs BigMac Cluster). But I don't understand why people want to use iSCSI (SCSI over IP). Either you are moving the maintaince cost of disks in machines (which you can fix anyway using NAS) and if you want to share the data then you also need cluster filinf systems. For databases where speed is important I can see the point, but surely not for most things.

Talking of Apple in my last post I am very tempted to buy a Mac Mini just to try it.
I like the idea of something that uses modern graphics hardware, does fonts properly (well at least as well as Acron machines) and I was once told by a colleague that it has the fastest xterms around. There was a very good technical article many mons ago on kernelthread.com
Hmmm ... maybe I'll wait till APril and buy myself a birthday present

Why can I not buy gift vouchers for iTunes in the UK?
Seems bizarre (and I will complain to them) but is this just another example of a US business not thinking globally. So I had to buy some credit from www.mycokemusic.com which uses technology from OD2 (and is a web-driven music store)

On the subject of iTunes I cannot understand why Borders are not in this business. OK they are book sellers but they have had listening posts in their stores that can play any track from any CD for ages.