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From the Washington Post: Dave Barry shares weird and wacky gift ideas in his annual guide.
'tis worth clicking, but if you are in a hurry, then zip down to the bottom of the page and check out the 12 gift recommendations. They are real, I checked.
I bought myself a lovely little netbook last week. It's a Samsung NC10 and even though it cost less than a quarter of what my last laptop cost me, I like it more. It's easy to use, light, shiny, and - best of all - the battery lasts for ages. It's got a nice big hard drive and it runs quickly. I've installed all my favourite software and they all worked fine. But then I got a surprise when I installed the HandBrake DVD ripping software. I'd used handbrake earlier this year when I was travelling a lot to rip DVDs I already owned and watch them on my (since returned and refuneded) Macbook. My wife and I managed to watch a few old episodes of The Wire, me in London, her in Scotland. It took a few moments to get my laptop version and her TV version synced but then we watchedthem together chatting using my mobile contact's free landline calls.
So I like handbrake. But as I said I got a big surprise when I installed it on my netbook. I don't recall this ever happening before on any other software, but HandBrake wouldn't work because the screen resolution was too small. My lovely little netbook runs at maximum 1280 x 600 (or something like that - I can't be arsed checking) but the software need something like 1280 x 768. I've never seen this before and, to be honest, given what I remember about handbrake i can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work at my netbooks resolution. I installed loads of other software and they all worked plenty fine.
So I was annoyed.
I was going to ask if anyone can recommend an alternative to handbrake ... but then I remembered that my netbook doesn't actually have a DVD drive, so there's no point.
I've got 5 copies of Marcus Buckingham's new book The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success.
Email me - clarke.ching@gmail.com - if you'd like a copy. I'll randomly pick the winners out of a virtual hat and the publishers will post the book out.
The book would make a nice Xmas gift to someone who's about to go off to college or start a new job. Even better it's a quick easy read that might help you out if you're a little sick of your current job or career.
If you like QI then you'll like to read this link about their new book (which would otherwise be hidden inside the telegraph newspaper).
