Diversions
Found this rather explicit toilet sign in a restaurant in Malaysia. Wonder if they also do signs for squat toilets.
Tags: Malaysia
Ran across this interesting info (that all fathers should know) over on 10ticks:
At present the world record for skimming a stone is set at 38 bounces. French scientists from the Institute de Recherche sur les Phenomenes hors Equilibre have studied the art of skimming. A throw involves four factors- the translational and spin velocities, the angle at which the stone heads for the water and the angle at which it hits the water surface. To get near the world record, Christophe Clanet, the head of the team recommends the angle to approach the water is about 20 degrees, spinning at...
I've upgrade my blogging software to Subtext 1.9 after having some posting troubles. Links aren't working properly but I seem to be up and running again. Got a lot to catch-up on.
Not very often that a film breaks new ground but Renaissance le Film looks set to do that. It's almost pure black & white - minimal gray scale. It's part live action (motion capture) and part animation/modelling using Maya, SyFlex and Air. Genre is sci-fi/action. I caught a brief article on it while flipping through the April issue of 3D World magazine. Terrific graphic style. Check out the trailer (Firefox worked more easily). Read more at imdb.
It comes out March 15th in France and hits the rest of the world later this year.
Can't wait to see it.
I used to work with some of the guys who completed this Microsoft Atlantic Challenge 2005. Read the daily logs and check out the pictures for an insight to crossing the Atlantic. Part of me is envious; part of me thinks it's nuts. Nevertheless, my hearty congratulations to them!
Nice article on your shopping rights in the UK. There's also the DTI Fact Sheet on the Sale of Faulty Goods. No, haven't had any problems lately. I was just following links from the latest issue of Money Saving Expert.
The Internet is great for discovering artists who are really "out there". Check out Mark McGowan. Is it art? Well, I'd rather call it "colourful protest" or some such thing. I do like what Spencer Tunick is up to. You can sign-up to join in too....
Yes, now you can play monopoly with real taxi's whizzing around London. You can even win your mortgage or rent paid for one year. Check out Monopoly Live!
Dang! I missed it. Anyone catch the World Nake Bike Ride last Saturday? I'll have to remember to enter next year...
Those clever people who brought us The Meatrix have produced another fabulous short called Store Wars. It's a parody of Star Wars done with live action food puppets and a few computer-aided special effects. I won't give away any of the jokes so go see it now and "Learn The Ways Of The Farm".
Brilliant.
If you sometimes like to see rankings of countries according to some statistic then NationMaster is for you with over 4,000 different stats. Richest? Luxemburg. Longest Lives? Andorra. Most Educated? Norway. Most Trigger Happy? South Africa. Most Car Thefts? United States. Most Murders? India. Most Televisions? Christmas Island. Quite a few surprises.
Simple idea. Someone hides a box with a logbook and some goodies in it. Then they publish the GPS co-ordinates of it. Everyone else then tries to find the box. Finding the box could be simple or tricky; getting to the box may be quite hard. If they do manage it, they sign the log and exchange goodies leaving the box where they found it.
This geocaching has grown to a bona fida sport with active communities searching for over 171,000 caches hidden in 215 countries! Sound like a brilliant excuse to buy a GPS unit, meet new people and get some exercise (or...
Notch up another bizarre item on ebay. Read the questions and answers too. I've now got a great idea for Jenny's future career...
I've just set up own MSN Spaces blog site. I'm not planning to blog there much but I like the way the pictures get integrated with MSN Messenger. If we're on each others MSN Messenger contact list and you're running version 7 or higher, you can just click on my picture to see them. Nice integration and secure too.
There's a fun little test you can do over at Political Compass that will plot you on a political landscape. It uses two dimensions: Left/Right and Authoritarian/Libertarian (I never knew it was the French National Assembly of 1789 that came up with the Left/Right categories).
I came out smack in the middle of the Left Libertarian quandrant right next to Gandhi, Ralph Nader and the Green Party. No surprise there. Fifteen years ago I would have been much further Right.
Dirt cheap international phone calls from the UK. No registration. DialAround.
Amazing! Find your old school photograph.
A weird snippet from this months excellent The Ecologist magazine:
"A US chef has developed a range of paper meals. Using a special ink created from liquidised food, Homaru Cantu prints edibles pictures of actual meals on sheets of soya bean and potato paper."
I searched around the Internet to find out more. Turns out he uses a Canon i560 inkjet printer. He's got more idea's too. Personally, I think mixing chefs with technology is a bad idea.
And the longest domain name...
http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk/
What a great little idea! Find your local Freecycle Community and use it to "find homes for stuff too good for the land fill". The rule is that it's got to be for free. If you want to sell, use ebay, a local paper or go to a car boot sale. If you can't sell it, give it away. If you can't give it away, recycle it. Free your inner packrat!
Locally, I've discovered a pretty active East Berkshire Freecycle Group.
...by 80%. Wow!! Those cleverJapanese are at it again with something called B2Up.
A friend brought to my attention the ChangeThis website which tries to "facilitate the dissemination of thoughtful ideas". They "focus on rational and thoughtful arguements that help people change their mind to a more productive point of view". Looks interesting.
The 2005 bloggies were announced this week. Worth browsing through some of the 30 winners.
Ran across the MoneySavingExpert.com website. Looks useful if you live in the UK. I found it because it has an excellent way for looking up airfares. You give it an airport you want to fly from, a date range and a maximum budget and it will find out where you can go. Only problem is that it returns only airport codes which are rather cryptic. Check out the FlightChecker.
Don't ask me how I ran into this free Kama Sutra (and more). Considering it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share it. Take care with some of those positions though!
Johnny Carson passed away a couple of days ago. I certainly remember watching at lot of his shows. Here's his views on democracy:
He compared it to buying "a big house you can't afford, with money you don't have, to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties.
"Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold on to, usually a mop or a leaf blower. It means that with proper timing and scrupulous bookkeeping, anyone can die owing...
I haven't been playing for a quite a while but I still like to look at guitars. Here's some fantastic guitar creations.
Yep. It works. Find thousands of unsecure webcams around the world. The modern peeping tom.
A very clever Flash animation in the spirit of the Christmas season worth checking out. Produced for UNICEF with the voice done by none other than Sir Roger Moore.
A new word (for me)! Defenestrate means to throw somebody or something out of the window. Turns out to be one of the top 10 words of 2004. That is, Merriam-Webster claims it is the 10th most commonly looked up word (excluding swear words). Amazing given how obscure the word is. The most looked up word is "blog".
Wow, a company that custom builds real castles! Have to remember it when I want to build my own home. Check out the castle for sale in Idaho.
Well just in case you missed it, today is World Toilet Day according to the World Toilet Organisation. I kid you not. I don't think I'll describe how I celebrated!
On a related note, there's a fascinating read to be had at The Humanure Handbook (a guide to composting human manure). Well written, humourous and thorough as it tackles a rather taboo topic.
Cool idea. If you have a venue, call Ben or Chis on 07967 824 802 and there's a good chance they will drop by with their mobile cinema so you can see seven UK short films. It's a grass roots film festival on the road. Ends November 20th.
Ran across a reference to an Oreilly book entitled Digital Photography: Expert Techniques. I'm always looking to improve my Photoshop skills so it caught my attention since Oreilly books are generally very good. Even better, you can download Chapter 3: Bringing Out the Best Picture. I learned a few things about using Photoshop to get levels, contrast and colour balance correct.
It also recommends always shooting in RAW mode to maximize the amount of detail and colour information you capture. If you also have a Nikon Coolpix 5400, you can upgrade to version 1.4 of the firmware to get this feature. Isn't it...
Time to start thinking about Christmas. Ran across this article on average spends for Christmas gifts:
Wife: £114
Husband: £75
Mom: £47
Dad: £39
Grandparent: £21
Grandchild £64
Ok, I confess I'm a bit of a science geek and have a big warm spot for science education. It doesn't take much to convince me to buy anything that can be justified as teaching the kids about science.
I recently discovered the PowerMagenetStore. Magnets are, of coure, one of the coolest things to play with and this place sells N38 Neodymium rare earth magnets. I ordered 18 of them for £13.25 and they quickly arrived in the post.
They are incredibly strong. A 1/2" cube easily holds up Jenny's wok (not that she appreciated it). Let two 1/2" cubes stick to each other...
Here's another little thing I found ages ago that I meant to blog about. I haven't tried Smart Music Studio out but it's description sure is intriguing:
SmartMusic Studio is an interactive, computer-based practice program for woodwind, brass, string and vocal musicians. SmartMusic Studio Intelligent Accompaniment®accompanies you while you practice so it can improve your musical performance in less time by making practicing more fun.
The interesting thing is that it actually changes tempo to follow you; you don't just play along with a recording. It looks slick but since I don't play a monophonic instrument, it's not of any use to...
You can also view the top 100 urinals. No, I don't know what the judging criteria is. The site does claim that it's the "best place to piss away your time on the Internet".
Visit JibJab to watch a great little animated satire of Bush vs Kerry called "This Land". Loads more stuff at Atom Films.
A guy tries to sell ex-wife's wedding dress on ebay and is on his way to his 15 seconds of fame. Check the hit counter. Amazing how fame can strike when you don't expect it.
Humour alert. Transcript of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on a political analysis and deconstruction of Lord Of The Rings.
Useful place to find out what the popular articles on the 'net are based on links from 14,000 or so sites. Dangerous as you can easily kill your morning following links from it!
Fascinating.
"Investigators found he had been in internet contact with more than 200 people who shared his fantasies."
Truly, the greatest power of the Internet is for like minded people to find each other and discover they're not alone. But if it's between two consenting and mentally fit adults maybe it's ok? It's just very much on the outer edge of society. A market place for killer and victim. Now there's a thought.
You can either pay for it at Rent My Chest or have it free at Read My Boobs. Can you rent space anywhere else? I can feel a business plan coming on...
Oh those crazy Japanese. Check out this re-enactment. Could be the start of a cult of "Mr Smith".
I recently bought a second-hand copy of Battlefield 1942 from Amazon UK (list was £30 but second hand it was £15). I thought I'd give it a try after finding out how popular it was as a LAN Party game. I'm not big on First Person Shooters (FPS) as a genre; rarely played them until Halo came along. And I'm crap at Halo. I prefer real-time strategy (RTS) games. In an RTS, you essentially play god while in FPS, you're just a foot soldier. Maybe this implies something about one's personality....
Unfortunately my P4 1.6a is choking quite badly and I've had...
Cool tool from Microsoft Research providing an analysis of traffic on netnews.
Ok, it's pretty weird but I guess it's not a bad way to remember someone:
"The company, operating in Hove, Sussex, but with a US parent, charges up to £11,000 to take a sample of ashes, extract the carbon and create a "memorial" diamond."
I offered to do this for Jenny but she declined. I wonder if you get to choose the colour...
Interesting list of children raised by animals and the stories behind them.
"a searchable directory of images, visualizations, and animations of the Earth" Cool.
I was talking to R* about big numbers and we found this nice website illustrating the names of large numbers using pennies. It went down very well and is great for visualising what the numbers mean. Ever heard of a novemtrigintillion?
I participated in this blogging survey and the results are now back. Quite interesting. There may be some broad conclusions you can draw from the results but there probably needs to be an analysis of the categories of bloggers out there rather than thinking of us as a single homogenous community. It's an interesting thought to use bloggers as a PR channel. Quite a risky approach for a company but it could pay off really well. It's probably most suitable for complex products that aren't easily summed up in a soundbite.
Fascinating way to organize and navigate a website. Click in the box and try it out. Make sure you've got the sound turned on. The short blurbs associated with each flying image are great. It's kind of like "infotainment". Too bad each image isn't a small video. You could take this concept a long way. Cool.
I always find it interesting to check the website stats at the end of the month. Let's see. More visitors this month: 1122 compared to 1001 the month before. Nice to know people really do arrive at this blog. The number one visiting country this month by a significant margin is Hungary. This is followed by US edu sites and then the UK. Top articles remain the "Writing Code" and StrengthsFinder ones but the diving travelogue of Jordan got a lot of reads. Hmmm. In fact, there were a lot of Hungarians visiting Jordan when we were there. Indeed, I was told...
The nominee's for the twelve different categories of the BAFTA Interactive Awards have been announced. Find out the winners on February 19th. I gotta spend sometime going through them. I usually get myself a new computer game around Christmas and this is a good short list.
Another discovery. Interesting reading if you've got the time. Great weblog history article. I'm still checking out how other bloggers design their websites and surveying the tools most commonly used.
Useful site for UK bloggers. I just submitted my site. Also take note of the UK Bloggers Christmas Party next Saturday in London. There's also UK Blogger Mailing Lists.
I don't know how old this is but it's an excellent tutorial on how to select the correct urinal. I got one answer wrong though.
One in three Americans considering a trip to Scotland believed that haggis was a creature. No surprise really but it's just a PR stunt for a Haggis maker.
If you play guitar or bass and haven't heard of Power Tab, then you have got to download this software and try it. I only discovered it last week. Of course you probably know there's lots of ASCII (text) guitar tablature out there (e.g. OLGA) but there's also tablature available in Power Tab format. Power Tab is a free Windows program that displays the tablature perfectly and even plays it for you. The tab files often have both guitar and bass scores together. After you download and install it, go to Power Tab Central and start finding the songs you...
Superb visualization for Windows Media Player or Winamp. You can download lots of different dancing stick figures or even make your own. The coolest part is you can make your own from a photograph. I ought to do one of the kids. I love the political ones. Check out the dancing President Bush.
It's always quite interesting to visit the website stats at the end of the month. This website had 1001 unique visitors in October which is a small increase from August and September. Top country is always the Netherlands but I assume that's due to indexing servers being hosted there. Next comes the UK and Australia. The Writing Code Is Stupid article is still popular with 207 viewings making it the most read article on the site.
If you haven't heard of Extreme Ironing, you really should check out these pictures. Amazing what people get up to just for the challenge of it.
I just discovered the Mailing Preference Service. They claim that by registering with them, your address will be scrubbed from up to 95% of direct mailing lists in the UK. I'm giving it a shot. Or if you want, you can add yourself to direct mailing lists (home, leisure, clothing, financial, sport, travel, children, community services).
One of those people with too much time....
The idea is to visit each location a latitude and longitude integer degree intersects and take a picture of it to post on this website. Anorak travellers unite! Think I need to go get a GPS system...
MIT has put course materials for 500 of it's courses online. Verying interesting. Some courses even have the lecture notes and video while others mostly give you a reading list. Worth poking around your favourite academic subjects.
Remember the SETI screensaver that allowed you to participate in the search for extra terrestrial life? Now you can do something for our planet instead. Download this application or service and help crunch a climate prediction model. You need a decent machine and you have to let it run a lot (6 weeks for a P4 1.6).
If you're into making music using a computer you should check out Free Mix. I stumbled upon it today. Yes it's a Russian site but scroll down the page.
I really like this Musical Bill Of Rights from Music For People. Everyone is capable of improvisational music. Performing music from a score is like painting by numbers.
I was browsing through our issue of Kindred Spirit when I ran across their ad for Wild Animal Essences. To the best of my knowlege, it's water that contains the "vibrational essences" from either a dolphin, elephant, dragonfly, dove, hummingbird, mountain lion, jaguar or owl. For example, the owl essence is
"For accessing one's highest wisdom. Enhances intuition. Encourages clarity of mind and seeing the truth even in the darkest moments. Assists a compassionate voice even when facing directly things that need your attention."
So HOW do they make this stuff? Is it bath water? I dug a bit deeper and found the...
Interesting website site. "You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about." So for the movie "After Life" it suggests I should watch one called "Sonatine". Click the link and check out the dynamic association map. Also does books, music and websites. Very cool.
Fantastic. A plan by the Pentagon to use the power of markets for cheap and efficient intelligence. Buy a futures contract on the odds of an assasination? Could have given the bookies a real run for their business. Amazing that someone didn't think through the moral issues of betting on violence and atrocities! Check out PAM.
Just did a bit of shopping to replace a camera battery. The price differences are just stunning. On the high street it sells for £39 while I found it for as low as £23 on the website of Cell Pack Solutions. If you need batteries check them out. Free shipping in the UK.
Here's a useful website covering music festivals in the UK. Still looking for more local ones to attend. Off to WOMAD next week.
According to our local paper, 4 Privet Drive is up for sale. It is, in fact, 12 Picket Post Close, Bracknell. It's just down the road from us. It goes on auction July 22 at a guide price of £250,000. It does indeed have a cupboard under the stairs.
It's official: marriage kills creativity. That's my excuse!
But, regardless of age, the great minds who married virtually kissed goodbye to making any further glorious additions to their CV.
Ah! The social implications of phones equiped with cameras. Skirt shots, Toilet shots, digital shop lifting and more. Gee, who could have predicted that? <sarcasm>
Congrats Vancouver! That means some great investment will be forthcoming in local facilities. Will have to plan on coming back that winter. Nice to have so much notice!
Blogging going mainstream. Would be great to read what my parliament representitive actually does if it was frank and honest. Yeah, right! Well, some might be good such as Tom Watson.
There are new free ebooks from Microsoft. I'm impressed. Got Bill Brysons "Short History of Everything" and this "Open Innovation" book looks interesting. Meanwhile, Jenny is downloading "The Joy Luck Club" which is a favourite book of hers. Looking forward to what the other freebies will be.
Download Bullfighter for free - a text analysis program from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu that tells you how "readable" a document is. Essentially a bull sh*t detector.
I'm quite happy to report that my readership hasn't died off yet. Thanks everyone! I was expecting to end June with about 200 unique visitors for the month compared to 168 last month but then Andres Aguiar posted a small link to my Writing Code Is Stupid article and I hit 215 uniques visitors in just the last day! So I've had 409 unique visitors in June visiting 1948 times. Cool. Nice to know you're out there!
It's official. You put the milk in first and then the tea. I've always done it the wrong way.
Interesting to see that the Apple iTunes Music Store is doing so well at 99 cents per song. Maybe the music industry isn't dead but certainly the way it does business is going to have to change. Piracy and file swapping has it bleeding heavily. Looking forward to seeing the Windows version from Apple. I'm sure there are few people in Microsoft kicking themselves for not being first out with a similiar offering. It would be great to integrate it with Windows Media Player. I suspect they wanted to wait a bit and get it integrated into the new digital rights...
The Harry Potter phenomena continues. We were in Oxford today and saw lots of people sitting around reading it. Of course I'll get a copy as well but I haven't read the fourth book yet and we're still in the middle of listening to the third book so no great hurry. Amazing event though - it's broken all kinds of records for book selling and ecommerce. There have been 13 million copies printed and JK Rowling is set to make £30 million from it. It's simply amazing how she went from being nearly broke to being richer than the Queen. It's...
A friend sent this link (thanks Joe) of a Matrix parody mpeg (6Mb). Very clever. If you like the movie, check it out.
Egypt has banned Matrix Reloaded because it may cause "crises" and "harm social peace". The press complained that it "reflects Zionist ideas, and promotes Jewish and Zionist beliefs." On the one hand I appreciate the need for cultural sensitivity but this seems rather extreme. Too bad they named the city Zion in the movie.
Cool shockwave animation. Play with the penguins.
Great site for anyone who is serious about a nice cup of tea and a sit down (with a biscuit).
Just discovered what Bukkake is - maybe I'm a bit behind. Didn't know that sexual fetish had a name or a huge following. And don't go find out what scat is; you don't want to know.
Give this website a URL of another website and it will generate a poem for you.
The Washy Talky? Oh puhleaze!
Finally! The first autonomous robot vacuum cleaner! The Electrolux Trilobite. Cost is £999. You can even download a ring tone and a screensaver?
If you've got some time, it's worth checking out the 2003 nominee's of the webby awards. Lots of great websites to explore. It'll easily kill your day. It's also worth checking out the winners and nominee's of the 2002 BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards. There goes another day!
Ever hear a song on a TV ad you really like it but have no idea what it is? That happened to me tonight with the Ford Fiesta ad and Jenny found it for me after discovering the songofthesalesman UK website. Turned out to be "Walk'in On The Sun" by Smash Mouth (from the "Fush Yu Mang" CD). I used Kazaa Lite to then download the MP3 and listen to the full song and some of their others as well. I'll definitely have to go buy the album since I still prefer CD over MP3.
I also find now that I can...
A very very british site. Definitely guys only. The agony Uncle is quite funny and extremely sexist. Some very good links to gadgets and other guy oriented things.
Someone pointed out this site to me. You can order numerous things to eat which many would not consider to be edible - chocolate covered scorpions, smoked rattlesnake, canned water bugs, etc. The website has superb graphics but unfortunately it's *very* slow.
Ha. Finally caught one of them. Always knew they were running around our planet....