Zeitgeist

I started this with a massive outpouring of self-indulgent angst and realised I have a whole other thing going on for that crap.

This blog is all about the facts. And so forth.

Starting with Star Wars Tattoos.

I realised when I saw it that I would probably do this myself given half a chance:

Then I realised that would be kind-of mental and I should just focus on the scarification I want to have done. See also: kind-of mental.

All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (U.I.), along with other estimates from scientific studies. (Despite their vast numbers, bacteria don’t take up that much space because bacteria are far smaller than human cells.)
Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones: Scientific American

Treefingers is like an anonymous group Twitter. Or something.
"Welcome to the first release of Treefingers, a site that allows you to post, well, anything. The site is an experiment of what people would say in a (mostly) unmoderated environment that does not focus on a central topic."

Fisher/Yates (Knuth) Shuffle: Not a dance, but "an algorithm for generating a random permutation of a finite set — in plain terms, for randomly shuffling the set".

Former ‘No Nukes’ Protester: Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power. Obviously somewhat biased, but interesting:
"A family in four in France, where they reprocess nuclear fuel, would produce only enough waste to fit in a coffee cup over a whole lifetime. A lifetime of getting all your electricity from coal-fired plants would make a single person’s share of solid waste (in the United States) 68 tons, which would require six 12-ton railroad cars to haul away. Your share of CO2 would be 77 tons."

I think I support Nukes. Just so you know. As an interim until we get solar working properly. But we have to stop using coal NOW. We can argue about that another time.

Rails 2.0 has been released. I know you're as excited as I am.

Death Star Cafeteria. Oh the joy.

Human History in less than 100 words

Favourite Programming Quotes 2007.
Just so you know the types of things we're talking about:

To Iterate is Human, to Recurse, Divine. – James O. Coplien
My contribution "You're all so embarassing". I also like "Recursion is Funny". Because it ~IS~ funny.

John 3:16. John 3:16 (chapter 3, verse 16 of the Gospel of John) is one of the most widely quoted verses from the Christian Bible. It has been called the “Bible in a nutshell” because it is considered a summary of some of the most central doctrines of traditional Christianity:
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

The post election afray continues. It's been like some sort of weird multiple orgasm that just keeps going and going and eventually is a little bit painful. They lost, he lost, he quit, they fought over the leadership, everyone now thinks he's been quite bad for the country, and so on.

The End.

Zeitgeist

This week I have been mostly thinking about Hypothetical Megastructures, as most of my Facebook friends are probably already aware because I've been spamming them mercilessly.

My other obsession is sniggering when I ever I see or hear news about the Liberal party. Sucked in.
Way to implode.

This is like, totally all about the science, I am sorry ... I've been hoarding.

Megastructure
"A megastructure, in science fiction and speculative (or exploratory) engineering, is an enormous self-supporting artificial construct.[citation needed] The definition is often informal and varies from source to source, but generally requires at least one dimension to be in the hundreds of kilometers.[citation needed] Other criteria such as rigidity or contiguousness are sometimes also applied, so large clusters of associated smaller structures may or may not qualify.[citation needed] The products of megascale engineering or astroengineering are megastructures."

Matrioshka Brain
"A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure, based on the Dyson sphere, of immense computational capacity. It is an example of a Class B stellar engine, employing the entire energy output of a star to drive computer systems. This structure has clear structural analogies to Russian Matrioshka dolls, from which the concept derives its name."

Matrioshka Brain is also an AWESOME band name.

Dyson Sphere
"A Dyson sphere (or shell as it appeared in the original paper) is a hypothetical megastructure that was originally described by Freeman Dyson as a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture its entire energy output. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival of technological civilizations, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life."

Stellar Engine
"Stellar engines are a class of hypothetical megastructures which use a star's radiation to create usable energy. Some variants use this energy to produce thrust, and thus accelerate a star, and anything orbiting it, in a given direction. The creation of such a system would make its builders a Type-II civilization on the Kardashev scale."

Kardashev Scale
"The Kardashev scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is, first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. It had three categories, based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal and increasing logarithmically"

The Decline and Fall of the Animal Kingdom
"The animal kingdom's decline came in the form of a three-page paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Its lead author, Carl Woese, had spent the previous few years trying to find a way to figure out the relationship of all living things, including microbes. A taxonomist can classify a giraffe, a bat and a human as mammals simply by looking at them. They have hair, for example, and they nurse. But microbes are harder to make sense of. They might simply look like a rod or a sphere."

E8 Polytope
"The E8 polytope is a semiregular polytope, the highest finite (and nonprismatic) semiregular figure. It was discovered by Thorold Gosset, who described it in his 1900 paper as an 8-ic semi-regular figure, with "semiregular" meaning that all of its facets are regular polytopes: 2,160 7-orthotopes and 17,280 7-simplices."

Nuke to the Future
Discussions about building what is essentially a nuclear battery. Insane.


Anyway, I am off to continue testing my Mongrel cluster for capacity. Two instances can handle about 30 requests a second. Cool.

First Post

I am starting the Zeitgeist again.

It will be intermittent, rather than on Wednesay. Just so you know.

Zeitgeist

Hello.

Not at WorkWork today, so feeling much better, thanks for asking.

I think I've had too much coffee.

I was wondering the other day, while re-reading "Gun, Germs and Steel" for the millionth time, what would have happened if the giant marsupials had not become extinct when humans settled Australia.

What would happen if the Aboriginal people could have fought the English on Giant Armoured Wombats?

Yep, definitely had too much coffee.

“Jamie Langridge, the 2007 Bud Light USARPS champion, made use of several well-known strategies during his Final Sixteen run, but combined and utilized them in a manner uniquely his own. His style of play can best be described as "complex adaptive," as he switched effortlessly between runs of alternating and repeated throws.” - USA Rock Paper Scissors League > Article

How to beat anyone at Rock Paper Scissors

“ITS ROCK-HARD surface can take a full- on assault from a baseball bat, yet remains flexible enough to allow you to kick, leap and roll with perfect ease. Crafted from cutting-edge science, its unique molecular structure means that while providing armoured protection against crude concrete and even barbed wire, it remains light enough to allow you to run at high speed.” - Holy Batcapes The Age Of The Superhero Suit Is Upon Us

See what I did there with the segue?

“A Millwall or Chelsea brick is an improvised weapon made of a manipulated newspaper.” - Millwall brick - Wikipedia

Oh, a rock made of paper you say?
Did you like what I did there too?

In my mind I increasingly sound like Stewie from the family guy.





Psychology Today: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature. Not sure about some of them.

Crazy Icelandic people drive up a hill for fun:


USS Hunchback - Wikipedia. Best name for a ship ever.

“The investigators at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Cost Analysis Improvement Group say its more like $203 billion to $234 billion in inflated dollars. likely to grow, And remember, that's just for a third of the Army. So the final cost could be closer to three-quarters of a trillion dollars.” - Danger Room - Wired Blogs

“Extra-terrestrial life may well be so weird we would not immediately recognise it, space experts said yesterday.” - Aliens exist, not as we know it


This stunning false-color view of Saturn's moon Hyperion reveals crisp details across the strange, tumbling moon's surface. Differences in color could represent differences in the composition of surface materials. The view was obtained during Cassini's close flyby on Sept. 26, 2005. (via Catalog Page for PIA07740)

Aw, cute:


Stacy, Attack of the School-Girl Zombies. OMG:


The End

Zeitgeist

Wednesday.

I lack focus, I'm afraid. Working on the TopSecretProject ... a bit bored of it, still waiting for various components to come together. I just want this sucker launched. End of July for a beta is the goal.

In the meantime I am playing with the Facebook API ... it's rather cool.

Other than being code geek, not a lot going on.


This is incredible: Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon's new map for war and peace A new doctrine for waging war and, crucially waging peace and a system for managing politically bankrupt states. The failure in Iraq is because although the US can wage war, it cannot transition a state. The question is: What happens between war and peace?

International security strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. He suggests the military re-form into two groups: a Leviathan force, a small group of young and fierce soldiers capable of swift and immediate victories; and an internationally supported network of System Administrators, an older, wiser, more diverse organization that actually has the diplomacy and power it takes to build and maintain peace.

“Hasty pudding, also Indian pudding, is a porridge-like dish of cooked grain.”

- Hasty pudding (Indian pudding) - Wikipedia

Hasty Pudding is a band waiting to happen.

And if you are making a Hasty Pudding or some Porridge, you may need a Spurtle

“An M2M system would enable machines to make intelligent choices, execute self-guided adjustments, and communicate with one another, all without human intervention, in a way that they presently cannot. As envisioned, an M2M intelligence system will work with a broad spectrum of machines, from wireless tools and sensors to robots, spacecraft, and computer grid systems. The goal is nothing short of machine self-dependency.” - Partnership to Develop Machine-to-Machine Intelligence System

“15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up” - 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense: Scientific American

“Flying saucer -- the term -- was coined 60 years ago, when salesman and pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in a "V" formation over Mount Rainier, Washington. Arnold told a reporter on June 24, 1947 that the UFOs flew erratically, fluttering and tipping their wings, like "a saucer if you skip it across water" -- and a worldwide subculture was born.” - Out of This World: 60 Years of Flying Saucers

“Life-sized Gigantor memorial to be erected” - Life-sized Gigantor memorial to be erected

“Archaeologists have revived the debate over whether a spectacular Bronze Age disc from Germany is one of the earliest known calendars.” - BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Calendar question over star disc

Drawing with HTML (via leclercalexis2).

What the hell!?

“Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?” - A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

New Theory on Old Debate: Comet Killed the Mammoth - washingtonpost.com

“(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

“Scholars have come to learn that there was more to the culture of Kush than was previously suspected. From deciphered Egyptian documents and modern archaeological research, it is now known that for five centuries in the second millennium B.C., the kingdom of Kush flourished with the political and military prowess to maintain some control over a wide territory in Africa.” - Archaeology - Kingdom of Kush - Egyptian Civilization - New York Times

The River by Bruce Springsteen.

That's some good Blues Harp ... and the Harp Tab if you want it.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

An actually-on-Wednesday Zeitgeist. Good for me.

Nothing to report. WorkWork. TopSecretWork. Usual stuffs.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - Wikipedia : “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs.”

ClientCopia - stories about stupid clients. Stuff gets boring fast, but still a few amusing moments for a lunch hour.

From the Department of the Obvious:
“What happens when you take a 40-year-old CIA memo on losing a war and replace the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq”? The result is a set of conclusions that are just as true today.” Foreign Policy: The FP Memo: The Endgame in Iraq

I'M IN YOUR NEWSPAPER WRITING MAH COLUMN:


Tommy and I invented LOLporn last week. Oh yes. Imagine some rude pictures with captions like "YOU HAS A FLAVOUR" and "I AM IN YOUR ****" and ... well, probably something about a "BUKKITS" but I am not touching that one.

Work gets a little boring.

Artifacts from the Future - Fido Fusion:


Jesus holding a dinosaur proves creationism. Or something:


For making your blog much betterer:
Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing

I like this one:
Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right

CritBuns - Supporting creativity where others can't. It's a chair cushion thingy for sitting on the floor.

I want this:


The Best Thought Experiments: Schrödinger's Cat, Borel's Monkeys

“Suppose that, many years from now, we have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. In other words, the computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a set of rules (as all computers can be described as doing), correlates them with other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that proponents of strong AI would like to draw is that the computer understands Chinese, just as the person does. Now, Searle asks us to suppose that he is sitting inside the computer. In other words, he is in a small room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a rule book, and returns the Chinese characters that the rules dictate. Searle notes that he doesn't, of course, understand a word of Chinese. Furthermore, he argues that his lack of understanding goes to show that computers don't understand Chinese either, because they are in the same situation as he is. They are mindless manipulators of symbols, just as he is — and they don't understand what they're 'saying', just as he doesn't.” - Chinese room - Wikipedia

Some space thing that I can't remember (Galaxy M81, maybe?):


This article is AWESOME. Read it!
“As Bruce Sterling puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach."” - Charlie's Diary: The High Frontier, Redux

The gist:
Space is basically really really BIG. The amount of energy it would take to get someone and some equipment to the nearest star is REALLY REALLY BIG too. And it gets worse from there.

“Zugzwang (German for "compulsion to move", IPA: [ˈtsuːk.tsvaŋ]) is a term used in combinatorial game theory and in other types of games (particularly in chess). Zugzwang means that one player is put at a disadvantage because he has to make a move — the player would like to pass and make no move. The fact that the player must make a move means that his position will be significantly weaker than the hypothetical one in which it is his opponent's turn to move. In combinatorial game theory, it means that it directly changes the outcome of the game from a win to a loss.” - Zugzwang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joy Division live:

Thursday Zeitgeist

Thursday. Normally Thursday is my Friday, but today Thursday is just Thursday. Working tomorrow. Work-work not TopSecretProject-Work.

Right.

My brother and his girl are staying with us at the moment, he's in town touring with
Bobby Flynn ... Idol runner-up from last year. Saw them play live and they are very very good. Bobby is incredibly talented. And my brother is an extraordinary drummer. Check em out.

Not so many links this week, but the whale one is pretty amazing. How old do those things get?

19th-century weapon found in whale

“A Krasnikov Tube is to create a space warp behind the space ship as it travels at near lightspeed to some distant star system, and then use the "tube" thus created for the return trip. This distortion of space has an interesting property for the return trip: it gets you back home shortly after you left, no matter how far you go.” Krasnikov Tube - Wikipedia

“Tay al-Ard (طی الارض or طيّ الارض or طیّ الارض - literally "folding up of the earth") is the name for thaumaturgical teleportation in the Islamic religious and philosophical tradition.” Tay al-Ard - Wikipedia

Astronomers find most massive star ever discovered

Colour schemes of Butterflies

Woman jailed for testicle attack

"Testicle Attack" would be a great metal or punk band name. If you're into such things.

Visualizing Global Web Performance with Akamai

Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?



Muhammad is No 2 in boy's names in the UK

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Day late, because the script I use to parse the RSS of my Tumblr link blog and generate the HTML for the Zeitgeist is not on my laptop and I couldn't be bothered writing another script. Sorry about that.

And yes, I am that guy ... parsing RSS to generate HTML for your edification. I am sure you're jealous of my elite hacking skills, because we all know that chicks dig skills.

Nothing much else to report. Working on stuff, hanging out. Usual.

Oh dear. First rule of boxing - don't just stand there. Need to fast-forward to the 30 second mark. And ignore the bad music. It's a weird thing that people do to these fight videos.


That's Don Frye, who looks suspciously like my father-in-law. He is awesome, over 40 and still fighting. Like some sort of MMA Rocky ... brawler with a magic chin. He's also mental. There's a fight we're the ref stops it before he taps out in an arm-bar because it looks like he WON'T tap out. Am arm bar is basically where you get someone's arm between your legs and bend it the wrong way with your bodyweight. If you don't submit your elbow snaps. The guy must be nuts.

My occasional addiction to MMA (now through the unified UFC and Pride) continues unabated. I must be nuts.

Category:Ship Types

The Profit Calculator

Splash, Splash, You're Dead: The Military's Next-Gen Water Gun: The SPP-1 flying-nail pistol came into service in 1971. It is more compact than the Underwater Defense Gun and half the weight, and even now is standard issue for Russian combat divers, including a section of the Presidential Security Service that patrols the flooded sewers connecting the Kremlin to the Moskva River.

“Number of stars in the visible universe = 30 billion trillion (3x10²²)” - The Universe within 14 billion Light Years - The Visible Universe

Or our nearest neighbours: The Universe within 12.5 Light Years - The Nearest stars

The Traveler's Dilemma. Game Theory

Schneier on Security: Cyberwar

Steam Trek: The Moving Picture (Star Trek Parody)


HowTo: Make your own M41-A Pulse Rifle, the rifle from Aliens

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine

“Russia has repeatedly claimed that the majority of these manufacturers produce AK-47 without a proper license from IZH.[17][18] The Izhevsk Machine Tool Factory acquired a patent in 1999, illegalising manufacture of the Kalashnikov rifle system by anyone other than themselves.[19]”: AK-47 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nessie caught on tape (via goochcamper)


Further investigation has reveleaed that Nessie was caught on tape by a guy who thinks Aliens talk to him. May not be reliable, is all I'm saying

Q&A: Seth Godin Says 'Know When To Bail'

“Speedy solar storms carrying a billion tons of charged gas through space let out a thunderous scream before they unleash satellite-stopping radiation storms that slam into Earth's magnetic field.”- Radio ‘Screams’ Forecast Dangerous Solar Storms

Startup Search. Directory of web technology startups. I am not in there. Yet.

The LOLs never stop: LOL BOTS

Desktop Tower of Money: 3 tips to profit from casual games

Glyphius Copywriting Software Review

Wednesday Zeitgeist

I humbly present to you the biggest Zeitgeist ever. Somewhat of a backlog of links. Some of these might be duplicates, I guess. My links are a bit all over the place.

I continue to work on my Hare-Brained Scheme(tm), it's coming along nicely thanks for asking ... and it's not that hare-brained either, I am very excited about it all. Other than that ... Mrs Android is busy as a bee on her thesis, which is not very much fun at all.

I am slightly addicted to World of Warcraft. So much fun. I've been playing with some people from work, hanging out and grinding away, killing the wildlife and collecting items.

Gunpowder Scarification

Weta Originals Rayguns - GOLIATHON 83Infinity Beam Projector - I want one so bad. but $1000 ...

$1000!?

IFRAME remoting made easy

AJAX file uploads in Rails using attachment_fu and responds_to_parent

Sax Solos

NASA - Crescent Rhea Occults Crescent Saturn

Web 2.0 free buttons maker!

Blaine Cook on Scaling Twitter (via Google Video)


VASSAL is a game engine for building and playing online adaptations of board games and card games.

Strange alien world made of 'hot ice'

Sacrelicious!
Bible Fight

Waterboarding

Line Rider Super Mario Bros. 1-1 (via shadon1nja)


Hacknot - The Three Ages of The Developer

Kardashev scale
Kardashev scale

The Kardashev scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is, first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev.

Things I learned setting up my new server
Using J and K for navigation in Google Reader comes straight out of VI (and probably other pointy-headed *nix apps).

Zombie Last Supper via www.myconfinedspace.com


'Cheese': The New Cheap, Deadly Street Drug

May 14, 1939: A 5-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Mother on Record
May 14, 1939: A 5-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Mother on Record

High Power Job



Google Operating System: How to Add Search to Google Reader

gears of war (mad world) (via gears0fwar)


The Underbelly of a Web App

Chris Anderson: Technology's Long Tail (video)

Infinite Loop:


Gmail Manager - manage multiple Gmail accounts from Firefox

Cool business card designs

“A new study suggests that culture may shape the way our brains process visual information.”

- Can culture dictate the way we see? - being-human - 04 May 2007 - New Scientist

Growth of Twitter vs. Blogger

Octopus-Dumpling soda via news.3yen.com


Nanoweb - The PHP Web Server

Because sometimes evil wins.

It's Pikachu!


LOLTrek


The Incredible Edible Belgian Chocolate Anus

Web 2.0 Map. There be dragons ...


Universe - Using the metaphor of an interactive night sky, Universe presents an immersive environment for navigating the world’s contemporary mythology, as found online in global news and information from Daylife.

Army Tests Fighting Robot

"Designed to fly on a Black Hawk, the [MULE] will carry two 7.62mm machine guns and two Javelin anti-tank missiles and feed camera data from its on-board sensors."

“Notifications, the way you want them”

- brightkite.com

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality

Shirky: Social Software and the Politics of Groups

Code Guardian Part 1 (via CeeGeeProductions)


Open the Future: The Early Signs of the Long Tomorrow - "IBM researchers James Frye, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan, and Dharmendra S. Modha assembled a simulated mouse cortical hemisphere (that is, a functional half of a mouse brain) on one of the smaller BlueGene/L supercomputers. They then ran the simulation -- at ten seconds of computer processing equal to one second of brain function."


EarthNow! Landsat Image Viewer

Baseline Rhythm Calculator

Zeitgeist

Greetings. Wednesday is the new Friday. Or at least it is if you are me and only work 3 days a week. Rest of my week is work on Top Secret Project. Hopefully ready to launch pretty soon. How excitement.

Otherwise, nothing to report.

A sexual arms race waged with twisted genitals has been discovered in waterfowl.

Jazz Mutant - some weird-ass music console mixing effects pad thingy. Bjork has one.

I want a Kaoss Pad. Just so you know.

For your perusal and edification: Dragon Precinct. Fantasy Crime Fiction. I kid you not.

Eta Carinae - the most massive star that can be studied in detail



The Homunculus Nebula surrounds Eta Carinae. The Homunculus was created in an eruption of Eta Car whose light reached Earth in 1843.

Homunculus.

I just love that word.



I read "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" and all I learned was this word:

Revanchist
1. The act of retaliating; revenge.2. A usually political policy, as of a nation or an ethnic group, intended to regain lost territory or standing.

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality: "physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it"

On that note ...

The End.

Zeitgeist

Yesterday started as a Zeitgeist and ended up something else. So I'll try again.

Flurb - A Webzine of Astonishing Tales. Rudy Rucker is involved. He is a terribly interesting sci-fi writer and mathematician. His *ware Tetralogy features sentient plastic. Nice.

I don't believe in God and all I got was this lousy Atom thingy:


I'd like to see something more aggressive, perhaps. "My God invented the Bomb and proved your God didn't exist and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

From: Available Emblems of Belief for Placement on Government Headstones and Markers. Our dear friends the scientologists don't want you to know what their emblem looks like for copyright reasons. You can see it here though. I didn't want Tom coming to my house with a Cease and Desist.

Important things to remember #89364589345:



Laura Bush has reassured us all about Iraq: Laura told Anne Curry on the Today Show, that the American people need to know that "no one suffers more than their President and I do."

I want a t-shirt that says: "What would Bartlett do?"

Things I am thinking about:
Information Software and the Graphical Interface.

Ah. So much fun. Godzilla vs The Mushroom Kingdom!




Lame Technology Mascots. This is why Software people should steer clear of design:

Clippy "It looks like you're writing a fax":


Duke the Java Blob Thingy:


17th Anniversary of the Hubble Telescope:



Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered Outside Our Solar System

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it and because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X"

The End.

Random Zeitgeist

Yet another Random Zeitgeist. Working hard on my Top Secret Project. Keep staying awake with a head full of plans and schemes. Means I spend my days surly and grumpy. So no substantive change there.

I thought I had more stuff. Anyway, lunch time ... slow foods with Mskp today.

God vs Satan


T. Rex Protein Analysis Supports Dinosaur-Bird Link

Nine Inch Nails Full Album Preview. Um, it's really good.

That crazy Japanese television:

From a show called Ninja Warrior.

I am currently looking at virtualisation and grid services for the Top Secret Project. This is cool: Joyent Accelerator. Twitter runs on it => upwatrds of 11,000 requests a second.
Or there's the MediaTemple Grid.

Wednesday Half-Assed Zeitgeist

Bah.

This week is too long.

Nothing to report.

Eating many parma tonight. That should cheer me up.

Lego. Lego versions of Halo vehicles, to be precise

Greek God Family Tree

Geeks replicating Mario Cart on tricycles

Pulp Sci-Fi Book Covers

I really like The Genial Dinosaur:


The End.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Ah Wednesday, everyone's favourite day of the week. Better than working, that's for sure.

We're all doomed: Scientists have estimated the asteroid (named Apophis after the Egyptian god of destruction) has a one-in-45,000 chance of striking Earth on 13 April, 2036. You'll never believe the plan they've concocted.

Have to love Giant Squid:


Intellidrugs:

Forgetting to take medicine may be a thing of the past as researchers close in on creating an artificial tooth which automatically releases medicine. The Intellidrug device is small enough to fit inside two artificial molars in the jaw, the Engineer journal said

Dates are really really hard to program: Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line

Albino Peacock:


Mother coached children to fake retardation

Speaking of retardation: New world record burger - 123 Pounds, $379 USD

First launch from Cape Canaveral(Using a "V-2 missile base" ... ?) :


Io: The Prometheus Plume:


And while we're dealing with space:
Scientists assess DNA Hair sample from Human being apparently not from Earth

What the FUCK!!!!!?. Arguably NSFW.

Release the Freaks: the premier destination for character art presenting an unparalleled collection of designer toys.

Speaking of freaks:


Why can't programmers program?

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Well, it's offical. I've had enough and I'm looking for a job. I think it was the patronisation by the CEO this morning that finally tipped me over, not to mention the lack of direction, mismanagement and promise of reward that has been 12 months in the making and still not happened. So if anyone needs a Senior Dev, with stacks of experience with Java and PHP and an obsession with Ruby on Rails and the user experience, drop me a line.

Zeitgeist is small this week, I am afraid. Been working on some stuffs. A computer game. Computational History. A lame twitter joke thing. Usual schemes.

Fixed Earth: these guys think the Bible is correct and that science is some sort of zionist conspiracy. I don't even understand much of it. They appear to think that evidence that stars move in the night sky is proof that stars move around the Earth, as opposed to evidence that the Earth itself revolves.

Hubble image of Death Throes of a Star:
The Hubble telescope is obviously an integral part of the Zionist Conspiracy.

While we're on Science:
Yep. Tesla coil car theft prevention. Now that's fucking science.

Science and Faith as flow charts:


The "Real" Iraq. Jeebus. Very violent, about the sanitisationa nd control of the media.

Ah, Nine Inch Nails has a new album coming and an incredible ad campaign / game ... apparently it started when someone decoded a secret message on a T-Shirt planted at a NIN concert:
Another Version of the Truth.

Random facts about sex.

Lonely Robot:


And finally, a Duck (for Elaine):

A mutant duck.

Good eating on a mutant duck though ...

Mmmmmmmmmmm .... duck.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Merry Valentine's Day. My wife and I will be enjoying tonight with a secret rendevous.

This week is l-o-n-g ... work has finally and truly jumped the shark. Very much over it and lacking inspiration for something else right now. Need a benefactor or patron to fund computational history. Any takers?

On with the show:

Rather Literal Love song:


Robots on Mars:


A ship for carrying other ships (a meta-ship, if you will):


And it can sink itself to get under ships and then lift them up:


The largest lego set ever sold. Over 5000 pieces:


Corporate jet traffic after the superbowl:


A pulse of light can be stopped, transported, and restarted again using a cloud of super-cold atoms.



Stephen Colbert rocks my world:


The evolution of life and intelligence on Earth has finally reached the point where it is now deemed possible to engender something almost out of nothing.

The Periodic Spiral envisions a remedy to the flaws in conventional periodic tables by illustrating hydrogen's ambiguous relationship to the noble gases and halogens while recognizing its relationship to the alkali metals; it also fully integrates the lanthanons and actinons into the design.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Small zeitgeist today because I am a very important corporate executive who shall be in meetings for the next 2 days.

Kill me now. Please.

Universe Map

Crazy-ass computer animation:


Iran leader announces AIDS cure

NASA says Low Earth Orbit is crowded full of junk.

I want one of these so very badly. Hare-brained scheme for this year is to build one myelf. My wife misunderestimates my capacities in this regard.

And if I had one I would certainly play this:


Yes. Watergate Caper. You apparenlty have to break in and steal the secret democratic files. What a jape! I am going to make a game called "AWB Adventure".

Ah, Microsoft.


You are terribly embarrasing:
(via the BlandCanyon via Audrey

ReadyMech: free, flatpack toys for you to print and build.


I LOVE them. LOVE.

Off to my meeting. Damn it.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

The Ghetto of Hate was magically transformed into the Ghetto of Love for much dancing and ... to be honest, not sure what hapened after about 10. Dancing. Carousing. Our neighbour had a shower and kicked a rock for some time while swearing manically. Um, sure.

Nothing much else to report. Business as usual.

This week I have been mostly thinking about: Operation Barbarossa. Or in multimedia. Oooh...

Tokyo at night using HDR (High Dynamic Range):



China has 900 missiles aimed at Taiwan.

Star Wars using hands:


BlackWater. If I was really really rich I would have m own private army too.

Scariest Ideas in Science

Amazing photo of a terrible F1 accident:

Oh yeah.

Genealogy of Influence ... relationships of various great thinkers & etc.

State of the Union Tag Cloud

Las Vegas Police Website. In the style of Sin City. And I thought it was just like CSI.

Guitarist from Anthrax can't play own song in Guitar Hero: "Dude you are totally going to have to write easier songs 20 years ago".

Ricahrd Hammond's crash on Top Gear. Madness. Rated higher than the UK Big Brother eviction.

AssRaelis. Kosher, yiddish erotica. NSFW.

Which Sci-Fi Author are you?. I am Frank Herbert, apparently.

Interactive map of Middle East groups and their relationships. Nodes have repelling force - move Israel around and see what happens.

Mirin Dajo, a fakir. He actually has steel rods pushed through his body.


Wow ... no smiles at ALL:


Ah, Microsoft. You should totally like, buy a Mac.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Half-way through the week. Not that I count the working days or nothing, just preparing for the Very Big Party on Friday. It will be wicked.

This week I mostly saw Pan's Labyrinth and highly recommend it.

Big news today is that Dear John has reshuffled the cabinet, an all new line-up of head kickers, assholes and pigs. Good on you, John. With any luck, by the end of the year this will be your legacy:



And in honour of Vandstone, unceremoniously dumped to a plum diplomatic role, preferebly in some hot country filled with the relatives of the poor bastards whose detention she presided over, I present a Two-Faced Pig:

Did you like what I did there?

Whenever I get sad I think about this:


Fuck that would be a FORCEful band.

While I am thinking Star Wars:
Interior Map of the Millenium Falcon


And this guy has thought about Star Wars WAAAAAY too much: A New Sith, Revenge of the Hope

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.

And for good measure:


I would love to pimp my bike to look like that. wonder how hard it would be?

The Douce Card, for handing to people. This would be wickedly useful at Trivia for those moments when certain teams attempt to trash talk us.


Ricky Gervais on Spinal Tap and The Office

Incredible images of the world in 2100

US Navy develops railgun. Force compared to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph ... with a 200 to 250 nautical-mile range.

Alan Smitheee Presents...



Fermi: Why Aliens haven't found us yet .

Only 50 years of fish left

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers.

Dawkin's The God Delusion:
Part I
Part II

Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a single photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.

Animated Soviet Propaganda. Ironically, this movie appears to be American propanganda about Soviet propaganda. This may, of course, not actuall be irony. I get so confused.

Tetris Vandalism:


The other big news, of course is that Ruby on Rails 1.2 has been released.

Good news! Someone has developed InfiDisk for EC2 ... allows you to mount your S3 account as a filesystem, caches the data in the local instance memory and storage and streams data to S3. Now I just need to work out what to use it for and I am rocking.

Oh, I am still seeking a quorum for the first Nomic Adventure. We'll do it on Game On, Gnolls. We need at least 3 people.

And for good measure, Google Maps hacking: