How to tell if there's a partial solar eclipse occurring in Seattle: the weather looks even greyer than usual.

(It looked a bit dark out gone 6pm, the sun being completely hidden by clouds rather than just the moon. I think it got a bit brighter again afterwards, although that might have been wishful thinking.)

The August 21st, 2017 eclipse has a big long smear of totality across the northern USA. Seriously, drop whatever you're doing and go and see it. I saw the August 11th, 1999 eclipse from a patch of woodland somewhere on the French-Belgian border, and despite heavy cloud it was an amazing experience. The whole thing about birds going into trees to roost? Absolutely true. I've yet to decide where to go to see the 2017 eclipse, but it's going to be somewhere cloudless and definitely non-Belgian.

No, 110*sqrt(2) as I originally had it. My error-checking has errors. AAAARGH.

That's 110/sqrt(2). My typing is defective.

Voltage is fixed at 110VAC

Erm... Alternating current? Also, it's 110V AC rms, so it peaks at +/- 110*sqrt(2) = 155V.

Also, one slightly sweaty hand contacting a neutral pin while the other slightly sweaty hand touching a screwdriver touching live equals the possibility of a nice, healthy current across the heart.

(Admittedly I was brought up on manly European electricity instead of this puny American stuff, but I still wouldn't risk it.)

I managed to pre-order one in the USA through the Farnell export site; this was about 8:20am GMT. The page has now gone to a register-your-interest form, so probably not much use now.

Price GBP 24.55, estimated delivery date 16/04/2012. No idea what postage will cost, I'm prepared for something horrendous to get it to Seattle.

What people are missing is that they're now build-to-order. Instead of before, where the Raspberry Pi organisation had an initial batch of 10,000, the sale of which would fund the next batch to arrive at some indeterminate point in the future - RS and Farnell are ordering the things from the manufacturers themselves.

I was watching with amazement as both RS and Farnell got nuked off the intertubes within seconds of the announcement. This board is popular. The previous plans for ordering wouldn't have worked at all.

Would Apple have coped better with such a launch? Probably. But as the Raspberry Pi twitter feed says: "Apple has a market cap of $500bn. We have Liz's collection of fridge magnets and a few coins down the back of the sofa."

I'm really looking forwards to my Pi arriving. Given that I was expecting to wait at least until the summer to get one, things are going well!

Extremely fun games, raving reviews, appallingly bad graphics.

Erm... I bought my delightfully GREEN boxed copy of Darwinia partly because it had wonderful visuals (and audio). It's got great graphics. Most definitely not photorealistic, but for some reason 'photorealism' is the only thing that equates to 'good graphics' in many people's minds.

World of Goo? Lovely smooth bouncily awesome. Machinarium? Gorgeous hand-drawn beauty. And so on.

The Belkin WiFi phone sounds like a good idea.

No, it's not - I've got that exact one and it's shitting terrible. 'Unstable' is an understatement - it'll randomly lock-up and not take calls whenever it feels like it, refuses to connect to random WiFi devices that work perfectly with everything else, run out of battery after not really doing anything, crash whenever it feels like it, suffer from poor audio quality (and, until a firmware update vaguely fixed it, terrible echo), you name it...

Wondering if it was a new model, or at least the old model with updated firmware - I checked the downloads. The latest firmware's from 2007, and from experience I can tell you is still as buggy as anything.

My second-generation iPod Touch running Skype felt like a wondrous device from the distant future in comparison - that is, until I left it on a bus. Also, it wouldn't really act as a phone - no Skype running in the background, and so on...

I make do with a laptop these days.

So, after the second one, he continued to throw more money at the same combination? Isn't that the definition of insanity?

I've got this nasty habit of buying high-quality CompactFlash cards for my cameras. Despite trying many things, including not bothering to copy new photos onto other media each day, changing cards in extremely damp or dusty environments or even running one through the laundry, I've failed to lose any data.

Dear Slashdot, how do I jolt myself from this utter complacency about the reliability of flash media and rediscover the joyous horror of data-loss?

What I have for my British Nationwide account (a building society rather than a bank, but that's mainly semantics) is a small, calculator-lookalike card-reader that takes my ATM card and PIN and is used to sign any transactions or other significant operations involving money.

Say I want to transfer money to a non-Nationwide account, I have to:

Login by entering my customer number, passphrase and three randomly selected digits of a secret six-digit code,
Set up the transfer, put my ATM card (with chip) into the card-reader and enter my PIN.
Press 'Sign', enter the reference (typically the account number), press OK, enter the amount of money being transferred, press OK and then type the eight-digit code it gives me into the online banking service to authorise the transfer.

It's still vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, but someone would have to be a bit thick to wonder why what appears to be their online banking service suddenly wants them to transfer lots of money somewhere.

Also, yes, it takes forever to do anything.

a bunch of maps put together in your free time, no matter how awesome, are not likely going to do well against another applicant who has paid experience. "Look at this cool map I made for X game" is not nearly as eye catching on a resume as "Worked on X game, Y game, Z game...." even minor jobs look better when you have been paid for it.

Counter-example - I found myself with a job at some company called 'Valve' after releasing a couple of maps put together in my free time. I didn't even apply for said job, they found (and interviewed) me...

Previous games industry experience: zero.

University degree: physics.