Blended face

Face of the Future also lets you blend, or average, different faces together.

This is a composite of two pictures of myself, a picture of a stranger, two pictures of Sylvester Stallone (his features dominate) and a couple of pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Freaky.

Face moprhing with 'Face of the Future'

Upload a picture of your face to 'Face of the Future', and you can instantly transform yourself into a different ethnicity, a piece of portrait art, or a caveman. You can even alter your age to see what you would like as a a baby or an old man/woman. Amazing stuff.

Here are my results using a photo from almost ten years ago:


And here are my results using a current photo:


Here is the complete choice of filters that you can apply:

Age: Baby, Child, Teen-age, Young-Adult, Old adult
Ethnicity: Afro-Caribbean, Caucasian, East Asian, West Asian,
Artwork: Manga, Boticelli, El Greco, Modigliani
Additional: Feminise, Drunk, Ape-man (50% chimp)

Have a go and see what you look like.

RMF Golf - We need to improve our short game!

I've put together a collection of photos and clips of our play so everyone can pick apart their game.

And now for some professional advice on how it's done. The 5m video below contains two instructional videos and a couple of clips of iron play from Ben Hogan and Sergio Garcia.

Seve's swing was too fast too capture as photos. Check out this 12 second clip..it's beautiful:

RMF Golf Day May 10 2008 - A short film and a couple of pictures

RMF Golf Day May 10 2008 - 35 pics

Why Oh Vaio? Heat, flash graphics, and BIOS problems

I love my Sony VAIO laptop. It's a PCG-FX604 (a name that just roll's off your tongue), with a 20GB hardrive, 512MB ram, and a 1.1Ghz processor. A simple machine, yes, but more that adequate for my needs.

But the beast is suffering from some rather serious problems. It can't handle Flash graphics (produces the blue screen of death, or BSOD). I got around this by installing Ad-blocker and Flash blocker add-ons in Firefox, but in this day and age most web-sites include some Flash based funkiness, and I am missing out. The solution may be to 'flash the BIOS' with an upgrade - but I'm still not 100% sure what this means and am uncomfortable with the process. Still, even though it's a potentially dangerous procedure on these old VAIOs, I'll probably try it in a few weeks.

A new problem is that my machine overheats and turns itself off quite frequently. I fear it will turn itself off for good one day. Is the old horse telling me something? Perhaps. When I put my hand underneath the unit after it's been on for a good few hours, it's burning hot, and the fan unit barely blows. We are talking severely tired lungs. I blew into the fan vent really hard to try and clean out any clogs, but this did nothing other than giving me a face full of dust for my efforts. I have to research this problem further but the first step is probably to take the machine apart and give it a thorough cleaning ... but would I be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again? I'll try this after I try to fix the BIOS problem (if my pc is still alive). In the meanwhile, a temporary fix I am trying is to change the power settings to 'Minimal Power Management'. This actively manages the CPU speed and CPU voltage so it isn't always running at 100%. Hopefully, this will reduce the heat intensity.

I'm sure I could run this computer for a few years longer if I can fix these problems. If.

Kayaking in Halong Bay, Vietnam (12 pics)

I was very happy to see these photos in my inbox. One of our fellow travellers was brave enough to take a camera on the kayak!

It's all about Goran & Eames with Law & Order : Criminal Intent

My current favourite show comes on Hallmark of all channels. It's called Law & Order : Criminal Intent, and is an somewhat standard detective formula that is superbly executed. If you haven't come across this series before, here is a selection of clips put together by a fan. Watch Detective Goran's mannerisms and acting closely. This guy knows empathy, he knows passion ... he's got issues.

His partner, Detective Eames, doesn't get much of a look-in sometimes, but she is the perfect counter balance to the intense Goran; a tough cookie in her own right, I love her one-liner and facial expressions in response to Goran's eccentricities.

I'll research the actor (Vincent D'Onofrio) in more detail later but let me say the combination of this complex character with such believable acting is quite possibly the best thing I have seen on the screen.

My phones over the years

12 Radio Times magazines for £1

Also received my first copy of the Radio Times magazine this week. The offer is 12 issues for a £1. After this you are on at the regular rate, although you can cancel after the 12th issue.

It's not a bad magazine for sofa browsing, but it's nothing particularly special. However, I did learn that there are two, yes two, JCVD movies on terrestrial television in the week ahead, so I've already got my £1 worth.

Thank you Martin.

Cheap, dodgy hayfever drugs over the internet

Just landed in the post:

120 Zirtec generic tablets for £5.00 (including shipping), and 28 Piriton generics for a further £1.60. I bought these tablets on special offer from Chemist4u. Last year, the cheapest tablets I found were just over £1 for seven (Dr Reddy brand in Boots), so I'm mighty chuffed with this purchase - it works out to a shade over 4p per hay-fever tablet.

I don't recommend buying important drugs over the net, but Martin's Money Saving tips have never let me down so far. Also, hayfever is not exactly a life threatening condition, but it is a son-of-bitch when you develop the symptoms and haven't diagnosed the problem.

If these differ from Zirtec in any way, I'll post an update on this page. Otherwise, assume they are working fine.

There comes a time in a man's life ...

... when his mobile phone contract is up for renewal.

My current phone is a Nokia 3120. No camera, no internet, no GPS, no 3G fandango. It's small and hardy, a real work horse. I don't worry if I drop it (I drop it). I don't worry if it gets scratched. The 3120 is a phone that knows it's purpose and it serves it perfectly well. I love it.

Nokia 3120

However, my phone contract - I'm with Orange - expired recently and it was time to look around for a good deal.

I looked at the N95 but the large size put me off. I was enticed by the LG Viewty but it scratches easily and I'm not sure about the long-term reliability of an LG phone. In the end, I decided that the new generation of phones were pretty funky but the extra functionality was just bells and whistles (albeit nice bells and whistles), and the trade-off with stupidly short battery lives just wasn't worth it. A simple phone would be just fine for me. I decided on the Nokia 6300.

The next step was to shop around for the best deal in the market. I found some superb cash back deals, where the phone and monthly fees work out to be free over the life of the contract. Too good to be true? Kind of. I read more about these cash back deals on a few internet forums and decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle. The cash back route works out fine for many people, but I couldn't risk not being rebated and losing hundreds of pounds. Then I realised that I hardly use my phone so the pay-as-you-go option could do away with the contract business altogether. I'm currently getting free broadband with my mobile phone package, but I could pay for this separately and still save money. Yup, time to leave Orange ... after all these years.

I called the disconnections people at Orange and asked for my PAC code, which enables you to port my phone number to another network. I expected to be hit with offers to stay on board and this is exactly what happened. After a brief discussion, I was offered a deal to stay with Orange on an 18 month contract. Here's the deal:

- 400 minutes a month
- 100 texts
- Continued free broadband
- £13 a month (or without broadband for just £8 a month!)

What's more, the first free phone they offered was the Nokia 6300, the phone I had my eyes on all along. I gobbled it up. The 6300 will arrive next Monday, and it will be my first ever phone with a built-in camera! Happy days.

Nokia 6300

I've been rolling with Nokia phones on the Orange network my whole life. Most things change. Some things don't.