At the risk of changing the focus of this blog entirely to energy/alternative fuel source news, I will be pushing out a few links in that direction. Not only will this give me an opportunity to keep up on news in this area, but I feel it's important because I'm really concerned about peak oil and the energy crunch. I think there's still a window to do something about it, but North America needs a comprehensive alternative/renewable fuel program today. Everything from food production to the strength of the economy to personal freedoms are threatened by massive oil shortages, and it's questionable if we'll have the 10-15 year window we need to implement the sweeping changes necessary to prevent a sweeping society collapse.

Anyway. Onward and upward. EcoGeek has a couple of interesting posts about potential biofuels that aren't soy and corn. One plant, Jatropha (wikipedia), is being farmed heavily in India, producing nearly 10 times the biodiesel of corn and growing in areas that were previously unusable for farmland.

The other post was about camelina sativa (wikipedia), also known as false flax. While the article says there hasn't been a lot of long-term study surrounding this plant, over 40,000 acres have been planted in Montana, and the company Great Plains has been working with it for over a decade. Like jatropha, camelina has an oil content of approximately 40%, and can produce up to 100 gallons of oil per acre. It's also a good rotational crop for wheat, and can be grown in fields that would typically be left to fallow.

At Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, there is an area called the Devil's Swimming Pool that allows people to swim safely right next to the vertical drop of the falls. It looks ridiculously frightening, but is apparently completely safe.

The blog Fogonazos collected some pictures and videos from around the internet of people swimming in the Devil's Pool. Snopes also says this is the real deal.

A 25-year-old man named Israel Sarrio had his arm severed in an accident. Doctors managed to reattach it, but were forced to amputate it again once infection set in. In an effort to keep the arm alive, the doctors attached it to his thigh for nine days to ensure the wound was clean, then reattached it to his shoulder.

Sounds like bullshit -- but no. The money shot is here, but the full story, and more pictures, can be found here.

Flickr user Dean Allen has kindly posted a mouth-watering set of pictures showing how he made bacon from, uh, scratch, I guess. It's amazing, thoroughly interesting, and makes me want to go eat bacon.

The Boston Globe has posted some breathtaking pictures of Jupiter and its moons from various NASA space missions dating back to 1979. A few of the pictures try to give a good sense of just how big Jupiter is, but I don't think the human mind can really comprehend it fully. One photo, for instance, shows the Great Red Spot, saying it's 20,000 km across. The diameter of the Earth is roughly 12,756 km, meaning you could almost fit two Earths side-by-side in it. The picture itself was taken from over two million km away. Crazy.

Hotspot Shield VPN is free, and allows in people in countries from outside the US -- like me -- to access services that only broadcast to the US -- like Hulu. These kinds of broadcasting sites are really making me question the continued usefulness of my TV.
(Via Chipbit.com)

We used to make oobleck all the time in high school, though we didn't have a name for it. We just always called it non-Newtonian fluid. For creative kids, we could have done better. Part of the appeal is that it's pretty weird stuff, and it's insanely easy to make. You literally combine the cornstarch and water, and you're done -- no need to let it set, no cooling, just mix and go.

And, once you've made it, you can do some cool things. Check out this crazy video of oobleck on a subwoofer. And, because it's every kid's fantasy once you've fooled around with this stuff, this video of people playing with a whole frigging pool of it.

In preparation for the Dark Knight, Scientific American talks with E. Paul Zehr, associate professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria, about the possibilities of there really being a Batman. Zehr's literally written the book on this topic. This is great stuff.

This is a very cute, very fun, and very addicting game about launching a hedgehog into outer space. Kottke managed four days, but my best is nine.

(Via Kottke)

"Are you fed up with telemarketers?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to find an easy way to annoy them?"
"Yes!"

(Via Neatorama)

Men's Health has a list of the 20 worst foods in America, and they are staggering. I won't give away #1, but here's their worst dessert (because most health-conscious people would skip dessert anyway):

9. Worst Dessert
Chili's Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream

1,600 calories
78 g fat
215 g carbs

Would you eat a Big Mac for dessert? How about three? That's the calorie equivalent of this decadent dish. Clearly, Chili's customers get their money's worth.

Fans of the sitcom WKRP don't need to wonder anymore about the song lyrics over the closing credits.

Work Friendly disguises your browser as Microsoft Word, allowing you to read websites at work without having to suspiciously look over your shoulder every two seconds to see if you've been caught.

If you're as tired as everyone else in the word of carrying around a separate club card for every store you frequent, try Just One Club Card and combine eight bar codes on a single card. There are options for a number of Canadian and American stores, as well as an advanced mode to create bar codes for stores not already featured.

The bar is a fun game that has you working in what appears to be a British establishment, tending bar and serving a variety of drinks to customers.

The bad news: it looks like climate change will have its most pronounced effect this year, as the North Pole becomes free of ice for the first time in human history.

The good news: Russia and Canada get to fight over the oil below it, estimated to be almost 18% of the world's reserves.

This is a short but very cool collection of photos showing how the army corps of engineers changed an airplane factory to a rural subdivision during WWII in order to hide it from the Japanese.

CNN Money compares the platforms of McCain and Obama, and Obama hits all the right notes, especially on Point #2 (Gravest threat to the US economy: Islamic extremism vs. US energy policy). But the best part for me, and the most telling, is Point #7: Who do you admire:

McCain The ones I admire the most are those that have been on the leading edge of the information technology revolution. Bill Gates, obviously, springs to mind. Paul Allen.

Obama Steve Jobs is somebody who is an example of the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that we have to build on as part of what makes America such a great country.

So now it all comes together: Obama's a Mac, McCain's a PC.

It turns out Rambo gets exponentially tougher with every movie that comes out.

Now, to be fair, he wasn't in a good frame of mind in the first film -- all PTSD. But once they got him squared away for the second film, he's been almost parabolic. If they release a fifth film, we can expect about five people killed per minute.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Wikipedia says this sentence is grammatically correct for all sentences consisting of at least one "buffalo" (using Chompskyan theories of grammar).

Bonus linguistics post: Yuen Ren Chao's poem "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den"

(Thanks lonelysandwich!)

A cool new skyscraper in -- where else -- Dubai, will have 80 independent rotating floors. But check out this green hotness:

The slender building would be energy self-sufficient as the turbines would produce enough electricity to power the entire building and even feed extra power back into the grid, said the Italian architect at the unveiling of the project in New York. (Via BBC News)

The Huffington Post has a video and some more conceptual drawings, while the Wall Street Journal does its bit by covering the whole hard-on for skyscrapers Dubai seems to have these days.

EcoGeek raves about Nanosolar, a new startup developing the so-called "Third Wave" of solar technology. Founded by two Stanford Ph.D. candidates, Nanosolar offered to bring the cost of solar energy down cheaper than coal. And now, after raising $150 million in capital and building a factory in Germany, they're talking $2/Watt -- squeeking just below coal's $2.1/Watt.

This is big news. And important news. The real alternatives to fossil fuels rely on renewable energy sources. And the real answer to re-greening the planet comes from developing countries switching from coal-fired plants to something sustainable. If the cost of solar power drops below that of coal, we'll see countries like China and India moving away from fossil fuels, and this is where the huge environmental gains are going to be made.

You can read more about Nanosolar in this New York Times article, this National Post article, and on the company's website.

An interesting article in Scientific American on the evolution of the English language, and a nice contrast to this one in Wired.

I blogged about this before, over two years ago. But I recently read a frightening article in Maclean's called After Cheap Oil that brought this back to my attention. Some of the gems:

• High oil prices are causing a downturn in the auto industry, forcing Ford to cut jobs
• Rising prices will turn suburbs into ghost towns and drive Wal-Mart out of business
• At $200/barrel, someone making $12/hour would work roughly a day and a half to fill their tank (my own car would cost about $100 to fill at this price)
• Increasing fuel prices puts more emphasis on alternative fuels like ethanol, which in turn strains the global food supply
• The airline industry will fall apart, resulting in a 90% reduction in the number of airports by 2025

Unfortunately, it's all doom and gloom. Life After the Oil Crash lists the facts point after meticulous point, including the research, economics, and alternatives. And he doesn't end with anything positive.

"What can I do to prepare?"

Attempting to prepare for a catastrophe of this magnitude is daunting to say the least. What you can or will do to prepare for this situation will depend on your age, health, marital status, geographic location, financial situation and other factors too numerous to mention. About the best I can do is point you to some articles and resources you might to be profitable reading in terms of generating your own options and plans. I maintain a continually updated repository of such articles at the LATOC Prepare page.

Best of luck,

Mattthew David Savinar, Esq.

But there may be a slim upside. Savinar writes that some combination of alternative fuel sources could be used to delay the inevitable, but it's not some kind of magic bullet. And Curtis Rist wrote in Discover that natural gas can be turned into fuel, and estimates suggest that could provide up to 60 years of fuel. There have also been a couple of recent discoveries I've blogged about which will have some impact.

But the most important thing is acting now. We have to lobby our governments to support energy reduction and research into alternative energy sources.

That is, if there's any window at all to be acting in.

Science fiction once again becomes science fact as LS9, a research company in Silicon Valley, genetically engineers a strain of E. coli to eat biomatter and excrete crude oil. Honest to God crude oil. And the reaction is carbon negative, so more carbon will be taken out of the atmosphere by creating the fuel than will be put in by burning it.

This is amazing news, and definitely an interesting development in meeting rising energy demands, even if its current spacial needs are a little taxing:

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

This training program suggests that, with a little dedication, you can be doing 100 perfect push ups in six weeks -- even if you can't even do 10 right now. The best part? The training is only 30 minutes a week.

Push ups can be performed no matter where you are, and best of all, they are completely free - no expensive equipment or annual gym fees required! If you're looking to develop a great chest and shoulders, you could do much worse than follow along with the hundred push ups plan. Your core strength will also go through the roof too!

(Via BuzzFeed)

Rod Hilton at the Editing Room has a script posted lampooning Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As I hated the movie, I think this version is bang on -- and decidedly better.

Wired has a post today highlighting the many accomplishments of Eratosthenes, who estimated the circumference of the earth on July 19, 240BC (amongst other things).

Researchers at Rensselaer and Rice University have created the darkest man-made material ever, absorbing over 99.9% of light. The secret: a thin coating of vertical carbon nanotubes.

All materials, from paper to water, air, or plastic, reflect some amount of light. Scientists have long envisioned an ideal black material that absorbs all the colors of light while reflecting no light. So far they have been unsuccessful in engineering a material with a total reflectance of zero.

The total reflectance of conventional black paint, for example, is between 5 and 10 percent. The darkest man-made material, prior to the discovery by Lin’s group, boasted a total reflectance of 0.16 percent to 0.18 percent.

Lin’s team created a coating of low-density, vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays that are engineered to have an extremely low index of refraction and the appropriate surface randomness, further reducing its reflectivity. The end result was a material with a total reflective index of 0.045 percent — more than three times darker than the previous record, which used a film deposition of nickel-phosphorous alloy.

A completely non-reflective surface would look like a two-dimensional, featureless, black shape.

Ping.fm is an aggregating service for your social networking sites. Now you can post to Twitter, Pownce, Brightkite, and Plurk (amongst others) all from one convenient interface. This is just what I needed!

After testing out a few tools from the 140+ Twitter Tools post on Mashable, I decided to post my favourites so far:

Twitter Karma - Displays your followers and the people you follow on a single page, in a better format than Twitter provides.
Twitter100 - Displays all the people you follow and their latest posts.
TwitBuzz - Shows links posted to Twitter in a Digg-like interface.
Tweetstats - An amazing site that analyzes your profile and provides you with a wealth of statistical information about your tweeting habits. It even includes a tweet cloud!

August Zachrisson used GPS and a suitcase to make the largest drawing in the world. For someone so tech-savvy, I'm surprised that his site is all graphics. But whatever.

These are the kinds of artistic projects I like to see: ideas that really push the envelope of what technology can do, or that bend the expected uses of that technology. Who would think to use a parcel delivery service to affect a drawing on a world map?

Mike Sacks takes pictures of his TV. I thought this was something that might get pretty old pretty quickly, but there are some good ones (Cheryl Tyler, Head of Hooters Girl Casting). I mostly like how it points out all of the garbage they put on TV that passes for news (Joe Winiecki - Forced to change shirt).

(Via Kottke)

Here's an inspired page in what I think is Russian, where individuals have photographed themselves acting out childrens' drawings. Delightful!

Because I find all kinds of boob technology interesting, I'm posting this link to Maidenform's new Breakthrough Backless Bra. But the real story is how Elaine Cato set about making it because she wanted to look good in a sexy, backless dress.

Michael Moore is telling people to vote for a Democrat in the election. He also says some bad things about Clinton and some nice things about Obama:

There are those who say Obama isn't ready, or he's voted wrong on this or that. But that's looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what's going on is bigger than him at this point, and that's a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

The Toronto Star reports on a Canadian and Japanese team that has successfully removed gas from methane hydrate. This by itself isn't news -- the gas releases itself at room temperature. What is news is how the team has managed to get a sustained flow of gas from the material, making it usable.

Heat or unsqueeze the hydrate and gas is released. Hold a core sample to your ear and it hisses.

More significant is the fact that gas hydrates concentrate 164 times the energy of the same amount of natural gas.

And gas hydrate fields are found in abundance under the coastal waters of every continent. Calculations suggest there's more energy in gas hydrates than in coal, oil and conventional gas combined.

I'm reminded of Curtis Rist's Discover article in 1999 about how we'll never run out of oil. Hilariously, oil is now more than $100 a barrel.

Yet more reasons to hate Coke:

Dangerous levels of the known carcinogen cadmium have been found in the sludge produced from the plant in the southern state of Kerala.

The chemicals were traced in an investigation by BBC Radio 4's Face The Facts programme and prompted scientists to call for the practice to be halted immediately.

However, Vice-President of Coca-Cola in India, Sunil Gupta, denied the fertiliser posed any risk.

"We have scientific evidence to prove it is absolutely safe and we have never had any complaints," Mr Gupta said.

The BBC did their own analysis of the "fertilizer", and found out it was worthless.

Virgins! If you support internet neutrality, Tania Derveaux wants to sleep with YOU! Furthermore, she'll do it on her own dime, and she's got a pretty nice rack. The terms of service are pretty good, too. Adobe, you should think about adopting them.

(P.S. - You should support internet neutrality anyway, even if you're not getting laid.)

Flickr user Sean (Ajka_Hungary) posts a very powerful request from his step-father to please stop smoking.

Wired reports that brain scanners can now detect your free will. Freaky.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

Here's a fun little game that has you naming as many elements of the periodic table as you can in 15 minutes. An even better game, in my opinion, involved US presidents.
(Via Kottke)

Accelerating Future has ten futuristic materials that seem more suited to science fiction than science fact. #9 on the list reminded me of this while my jaw was dropping:

"Transparent Aluminum?"

"That's the ticket laddie."

"Oh, it'd take years to figure out the dynamics of this matrix."

"But you'd be rich beyond the dreams of averice."

"So. Is it worth something ta ya...or should I just...punch up clear?"
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Broken wall + Sense of humour = This

I didn't really find Wired's Top Ten April Fools Pranks for Nerds that interesting, but the video they posted for #3 is hilarious! I would love to see the return of creative computer viruses, and not just a bunch of code that eats data. Come on, people, that's been done to death.

Tim Harford writes in Reason Magazine about why poor countries are poor. The short answer? A corrupt government creates corruption all the way down the line.

The corruption is not only unfair; it is also hugely wasteful. Gendarmes spend their time harassing travelers in return for modest returns. The costs are enormous. An entire police force is too busy extracting bribes to catch criminals. A four-hour trip takes five hours. Travelers take costly steps to protect themselves: carrying less money, traveling less often or at busier times of the day, bringing extra paperwork to help fend off attempts to extract bribes.

The blockades and crooked police officers comprise a particularly visible form of corruption, but there are metaphorical roadblocks throughout the Cameroonian economy. To set up a small business, an entrepreneur must spend on official fees nearly as much as the average Cameroonian makes in two years. To buy or sell property costs nearly a fifth of the property's value. To get the courts to enforce an unpaid invoice takes nearly two years, costs more than a third of the invoice's value, and requires 58 separate procedures. These ridiculous regulations are good news for the bureaucrats who enforce them. Every procedure is an opportunity to extract a bribe. The slower the standard processes, the greater the temptation to pay "speed money."

It's a long article, but very informative. I really liked how he tied all the pieces together, and how surely the rot of bad government will reach into practically every aspect of its peoples' lives.

Jason Kottke has some interesting links to the New York Times and NPR on cooking with food from 99 cent stores -- including a cookbook!

To bypass the NYT registration, you may wish to use a service like BugMeNot.

CDNN ran a story on the sex life of the giant squid. And while it's interesting, it's interesting mostly for this comment here:

But having such a big penis does have one drawback: it seems that co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded on the Spanish coast had accidentally injected himself with sperm packages in the legs and body. And this does not seem to have been an isolated incident since two of the eight males that had stranded in the north-east Atlantic before had also accidentally inseminated themselves.

(Via BoingBoing.)

The Morning News has a great post that takes famous song lyrics and puts the words in alphabetical order. I've only done half so far, because it's fun and I want to devote a good amount of time to it.

5. 9 a all american amusement an and are at baby back be beach beyond bold bones born boulevard boys break broken but cages can ’cause chrome-wheeled comb come could ’cross day death die don’t down dream dreams drive drones drop engines everlasting everybody’s feels four friend from fuel-injected get girl girls glory go gonna gotta guard hair hands hard hemi-powered heroes hide highway highway’s how huddled i i’ll i’m if in is it it’s jammed just kids kiss know last-chance left legs let like line live lonely look love machines madness mansions me mirrors mist my n never night no of oh on one ooh out over palace park place power rap real really rearview ride rider rims rips rises road ’round run runaway sadness scared scream so someday soul sprung stark steppin’ strap streets suicide sun sweat that the their then there’s these this three through till to together tonight town tramps trap try two us velvet visions walk wanna we we’ll we’re wendy were when where while whoa wild will wire with wrap you young your

Like all good on teh intarwebs, it's from the delightfully kooky mind of Matt Baldwin. (Thanks, Tamara!)

This is a really, really cool picture of Chicago at night.

I loves me some Star Wars parody. This magnificently awful (read: Sweded) version of A New Hope is a masterpiece! (via BoingBoing)

Maximum PC employs a few audio "experts" to see if compressed MP3 files make a big difference to sound quality.

With the possible exception of the USB Key that survived a washing and drying cycle, no other Maximum PC Challenge has ever surprised us as much as this one. It’s downright humiliating, in fact, that in many cases, we were unable to tell the difference between an uncompressed track and one encoded at 160Kb/s, the bit rate most of us considered the absolute minimum acceptable for even portable players.

They also come out pretty solidly in favour of variable bitrate encoding, which I'm sure is no big surprise to anyone.

Israelis are suing their government for laser cannons. It sounds like something out of science fiction, but there is a working laser cannon in storage in New Mexico, and the Israelis want it. The hell?! When did we get laser cannons?

A new study suggests that Daylight Savings Time is actually worse for the environment. Up yours, Bob Hughes. Now can we finally put this debate to rest?

"There is a reason we continue to get daylight savings under the rubric of energy conservation because as a policy, it costs individual consumers nothing and asks them to conserve nothing. So it's wildly popular," he says.

"Unfortunately, it's entirely ineffective."

Previous studies on daylight savings have had similar findings. But most have been based on simulation models, not concrete data. An exception was a study on the extension of daylight savings in two Australian territories for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, which showed more electricity used.

Discover lists 14 different distributed computing applications that use extra processor cycles for other purposes. I've been using the SETI@Home client for over 10 years, but there are other projects that are a bit more personal, like Folding@Home, FightAIDS@Home, and the Help Defeat Cancer Project.

BBC News has a brief eulogy for Netscape Navigator. I started using Mosaic early in 1994, and migrated to Netscape almost as soon as it was released. Those were heady times, where platform choice was less about using an efficient tool and more about being on the side of everything good and wholesome. It was a sad day when the mighty Netscape, who once stood toe-to-toe with Microsoft, was sold to AOL. We should have known that the good guys only win in the movies.

There's more on Netscape at Wikipedia.

Wired has 10 interesting science videos showing a number of weird chemical reactions.

Joe Mathlete Explains Maramduke

Marmaduke has finally died, thus completing the 2006 American Icon Yuletide Expiration Hat-Trick that James Brown and Gerald Ford kicked off several days ago. It remains uncertain whether he committed suicide, was murdered by his owner-girl (who did a fantastic job at making it look like an accident), or simply lost his balance in one of his frequent auto erotic asphyxiation binges.

Like any comic strip that reached its nadir about two decades ago but whose shambling bulk nevertheless marches on zombie-like through newspapers world-wide, Marmaduke is ripe for a send-up. Joe Mathlete combines just enough sarcasm, dry wit, and profane, disturbingly sexual content to make you remember how badly this sucks, and why doesn't God just let it die already. Now if he would only do the same for Family Circus, Garfield, and Dennis the Menace, he could probably quit his job. I'm sensing the beginning of a cottage industry here.

Link

Sony's Aibo is Returning

That's the rumour, at least. Aibo was always a neat looking toy -- maybe a little too cute, but hellishly robust in features: camera, visual recognition, wifi, voice recognition, and a solid AI. Now, according to the totally reputable Stuff magazine, Sony is going to give Aibo another chance and have it interface with your PS3 and PSP.

The old Aibo was totally drool-worthy for anyone with an interest in robotics -- the new Aibo, with redesigned, cooler body and proposed interface options, is even moreso. I mean, it's no voice-command R2-D2, but that's only because I have a real dog.

Link to story on Engadget
Link on Wikipedia to more Aibo sites

Splashback

This is one of my favourite games, and it's strange it didn't manage to get posted sooner. Maybe because I was never really any good at it, I don't know.

You start the game with 10 drops of liquid and a board filled with blobs. You can click in any square to add a drop of liquid to a blob. Too much liquid and the blob will explode, sending a drop in all four directions and adding an extra drop of liquid to your tank. The object is to clear all the blobs from the screen.

I find this game interesting because there's often a chance for good strategy, adding drops in such a way as to get the largest chain reaction. It's also fun to watch the screen clear as blob after blob explodes. I'm not sure about the whole alien and little girl thing, though. She's got this kind of knowing look on her face like we're down with something. Are we supposed to be down with the alien? I'm not. He's got a gut like my old man.

Link

Shuffle

In Shuffle, both you and your opponent start with a row of marbles, with the object being to knock your opponent's marbles off the board. Each round you win shortens your supply by one marble and moves you a step toward the center of the board. The first person to win four rounds wins the set.

Anyone good at pool will be good at this game. I'm not good at pool, and lasted only ten rounds before finally getting clobbered.

Link

Poloroid-o-nizer

Nothing but a fun little utility that takes an image from the web and turns it into a poloroid.

I have a friend experimenting with poloroid film right now, so this is a little more topical than I thought it would be.

Link

Peanuts by Charles Bukowski

Peanuts, re-imagined in the style of Charles Bukowski. This is dark, funny, and brilliant -- exactly the kind of thing the intarwebs were made for.

Link (via Memepool)

Rose and Camellia

You play Reiko, newly widowed and shunned from her home by the aristocratic members of the family. In order to secure her place in the house, she must defeat the other family members in a slap fight -- or what the game refers to as "the elegant art of feminine conflict".

The game is easy to play, but takes some time to get used to. Fortunately, it's also just silly enough to hold you attention, without being so silly as to lose credibility. I had great success on the Easy level; the harder levels require more patience than I was willing to put in.

Link (via Memepool)

Hypnotist Puts Man in Video Game

Thanks to the always delightful BoingBoing, I was reminded of an incredible video they'd posted about two years ago. In it a hypnotist named Derek Brown manages to hypnotize a man playing a video game about shooting zombies. He's then moved across the street to a warehouse set up to look just like the game he was playing -- including roaming undead. The result is that the man thinks he's been put in the game.

Like Cory, I don't know if this is real or not, but the man looks horrified enough to make me believe it's the real deal. It's certainly a great video either way.

Link to video
Link to BoingBoing post about video

Picnik

Picnik is one of the internet's coolest utilities. I didn't think I'd end up using it too often when I first heard about it, but I end up using it several times a week. It's just too convenient and too cool not to.

Picnik is a photo editing utility. The program itself is all flash-based, and the interface is smooth, fun, and very easy to grasp. It's not really geared toward top-end photoshop users, but it's more than sufficient for minor photo editing, and there's lots of room for novices to expand into. They're also adding more features all the time, so I suspect any digital scrapbookers out there might also find this to be very valuable.

All the regular editing features are provided, like resizing, cropping, levels, and colour adjustments. There's also a "pro" account you can upgrade to for $25/year which adds access to all kinds of fonts, shapes, photo frames, and digital effects like turning your photo into a pencil sketch and creating HDR images. Again, probably not really worth it to the gearheads, but way, way worth it if you're looking to ramp up the fun level of your image editing.

There's way too much great stuff about the site to mention here. But for me, the true convenience is how it can access your photos from Flickr, Webshots, Picassa, Photobucket, and even Facebook -- so you can load, edit, and save all through the Picnik interface, without having to download anything. And that's how it should be.

Link to Picnik

Vector Magic

Vector Magic is an awesome utility developed at Stanford that turns ordinary bitmapped photos or line art into vector graphics. It's fast, it's free, and it apparently outperforms Adobe Live Trace and Corel PowerTRACE -- which also makes it wicked.

You can see pretty much what it's capable of in the picture above. There are some more great samples to view on the Vector Magic site. The bitmap I played with didn't come out perfectly, but it was pretty darn close, and any modifications it needed could be done easily in Illustrator. This is a really handy site for anyone doing a lot of desktop publishing. I'm looking forward to playing with it as the software develops.

Link to Vector Magic

Word to Your....

You gotta know that a site featuring a giant caricature of Vanilla Ice is going to have some good stuff on it.

It's a collection of funny/goofy/strange pictures with the phrase "Word to your..." written on them. They're funny because the phrase overstates the obvious. Kind of like this description.

Anyway, I think this one here with Virgil, Wrestling Superstar is my favourite.

Link

Proxy.org

I've been looking for a good anonymous proxy for some time now. Mostly so I could watch streaming video of Grey's Anatomy online. But it turns out proxies have another use -- and this is protecting your privacy.

You may not realize it, but websites capture a lot of information about who's visiting them. There may be times, such as when you're surfing from work or some other registered domain, when you don't want people to be able to trace your referrer or your IP address. You should be using an anonymous proxy at times like these.

Proxy.org is a site that sends any URL you enter through an anonymous proxy, so you can surf those sites with confidence. It chooses a proxy randomly from a list of over 4000 proxies; unfortunately, quality does vary a little, so you may not be able to post to someone's blog or run scripts through the proxy you're given. In those cases, I recommend hitting the service a few times until you get a good proxy assigned to you. Or -- what the hell -- find a proxy you like and stay with it!

Link to Proxy.org

Multibabel

Lost in Translation is a fun little tool, held together with a Perl script and powered by Altavista's Babelfish translator. It takes the text you enter and translates it through several languages before returning it to English.

It's described on the site as the game of Telephone, but I think it's a lot more like Engrish. The one big fault is that sometimes a word will be translated which is not easily translated back, so you will end up with foreign language artifacts in your final English text.

Some examples:

• I think we're alone now, there doesn't seem to be anyone around. translates to Nontask that we are only hour, I look like here, all same that one to be around.


• She's buying a stairway to heaven. translates to Stairs of purchase one with the sky.


• You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. translates to They can control, when it appreciates, but you cannot never go.

Link to Lost in Translation
Link to Babelfish

Calvin and Hobbes

Is there anything better than a complete listing of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons?

How about a comic strip search engine so you can find the exact strip you're looking for?

Link to Calvin and Hobbes archive
Link to Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search (C.H.E.S.S)

True Porn Clerk Stories

As soon as I start sharing websites with friends, I ought to start putting them up here.

The prologue to this website says that the stories were collected starting in 2002. It seems to me that I learned about it before then, but even a usenet search doesn't pull up anything prior to 2002.

Anyway. Some good writing here, interesting insights, and a great read.

This is the one porn impulse that I honestly don't get. (Oh, all right. I don't get peeing on each other or hurting each other, but I think I understand intellectually how one might get there.) I don't understand the need to degrade someone. But that need is definitely, sadly out there. One of our best-renting titles of long standing is called Grudge Fuck.* It rents right back out as soon as we can replace the tag. Every time.

Much as I hate to say it, it seems to be a straight guy thing.

There's definitely a Captain Kirk-style exploration up and down the imaginary social ladder in both the straight and gay sections. In addition to the dozens of variations on (oddly - or sadly) still taboo interracial pairings, we have More Dirty Debutantes and White Trash Whore on the straight side, Straight off the Street and The Other Side of Aspen on the gay side. You can fuck rich or fuck poor on either side of the invisible barrier between the straight and gay sections. But you can only fuck lesser in straight.

I think it's because there's not enough otherness in gay porn. There's still bondage and S&M stuff, plenty of dominance and submission, but even the most submissive sub is still a man just like the dom, just like the viewer. How much separation can there be?

Link

50 States Game

Place all 50 states in their correct positions on the map. The game keeps track of your average distance "wrong" as well as how long it takes you. I managed to make it through once without any errors, but some of it was luck.

While it isn't the most amusing game in the world, it's good to reference every now and then, just to keep my US geography fresh.

Link

Guess-the-Google

A grid of 20 pictures is presented, each representing a single keyword. Your goal is to determine which word, plugged into Google, will produce search results with these images.

There are some tricky ones sometimes, but the game is really as easy as it seems. It's also a lot more addictive than it seems. Be prepared to spend a lot of time here.

Link

Have a Slogan

A fun little site that does nothing more than pair a randomly chosen word with a randomly chosen corporate slogan. It's a cute little time waster that generates some genuine laughs.

If you're really looking for a slogan for something, I suggest you bounce on over to Sloganizer. It's a lot more serious and a lot less fun, unless you sloganize a word like poop, or assholes.

Link to Have a Slogan
Link to Sloganizer

The Juggernaut, Bitch!

This video continues to crack me up! This is a must-see for anyone raised on comic books or Saturday morning cartoons. Actually, if Saturday morning cartoons were this good I'd go back to getting up at 6:00 a.m. and watching a morning of cartoons from inside a fort made from sofa cushions.*

The video starts to drag about four and-a-half minutes in, so you may wish to stop it there and read about the ending on Wikipedia.

Link to Juggernaut, Bitch video
Link to Juggernaut, Bitch on Wikipedia

* Those who know me know this to be a long-time career option

Strangest Disaster of the 20th Centruy

Things like this story is what this blog was originally about.

I used to do a remaindered link section on my other blog on Sundays, where I'd round up the interesting links I wanted to share with people. I do a lot of surfing: more than any of my friends, and, some of them tell me, more than anyone they know. Because of this, I end up with a lot of interesting sites that I want to share with people. And because I don't do e-mail forwards, it all led to this.

Anyway.

This is a great story about a natural disaster that resulted in the death of nearly 1,800 humans and thousands of animals. I'm not going to say what it is here, because the story is very well-written; but it's not earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, viruses, or exploding tanks of molasses (which was my original guess on what the disaster was). It's even stranger than when Lake Peigneur got sucked into that salt mine (and if you're not going to read about it, at least watch the video)!

Link

LOLPresidents!!1one

In what is comically one of the BEST! THREADS! EVAR!, Fark has turned the LOLCats meme toward US Presidents.

It probably helps the humour if you're already familiar with (and enjoy) LOLCats, but there are still some great pictures there even if you're not a fan.

Link to LOLPresidents
Bonus: Link to LOLCats site I Can Has Cheezburger
Bonus: Link to LOLCat Builder

Desktop Tower Defense

Another terrifically addictive game that overwhelmed me so much I was playing it at all hours -- evenings, lunchtime, even my coffee breaks.

Your goal is to arrange your defenses to prevent the Creeps from crossing the screen. You start with a limited amount of money, but you get more with each Creep you kill. You get to register your name if you survive 50 levels. If you survive 50 levels.

Link

Juggler

A simple, fun, and addictive flash game that requires you to keep the juggling balls in the air. Kinda reminds me of breakout, with balls and paddles but without the bricks.

Not as much fun as juggling in real life, but easier to do at your desk.
Link (via Darren Barefoot)

Scott Adams's Blog

Scott Adams is well known for drawing Dilbert, but he also keeps a blog. Two posts in particular that are worth reading are how he's "In Over [his] Head" and "Good News Day", when he talks about losing his ability to speak. He's an interesting guy. You should also check out the comments on that speech one just to keep some perspective on what he went through.

Link to In Over My Head
Link to Good News Day

Extreme Resolution Photography

xRes is a consortium of digital artists dedicated to exploring the creative opportunities available through gigapixel digital photography. And this site is extremely cool: in addition to some absolutely beautiful photography, they also have some QTVRs of gorgeous panoramas, and my favourite part, incredibly high resolution pictures you can actually pan around and zoom in on. The picture above is from one of those: a high resolution shot of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. If you look closely at the bottom of the left picture, you can just make out two specks that turn out to be the people pictured on the right side.

The photos are all lovely, but the real interest is the incredible detail captured in these shots.

Link

Cool Stop-Motion Video

As the always link-worthy BoingBoing showed in a subsequent post, Tony vs. Paul is not breaking any new ground. But the video is very well done with a number of jaw-dropping moments -- that is, if your jaw's not already dropped by the staggering amount of work that went into this. The part where Tony briefly levitates over the swimming pool is amazing!

Also of interest is that the video linked to on BoingBoing wasn't the one posted by Tetricide, the video's creator. It looks like there's some furor over this in the comments, but so far it doesn't look like BoingBoing has issued a correction.

Link

Two (And More!) Great Cartoons

I found two great cartoons while browsing through some of the links on BoingBoing today. One of them was the classic One Froggy Evening, the cartoon that introduced Michigan J. Frog on a public replete with malaise, begging for something new. It's a great short: wonderful animation, terrific story, a subtlety to the artwork that's likely lost on the children it targets, and it's all done with no dialog. If there were ever a case to be made that modern animation suffers, this would be Exhibit A. Case Closed!

But more importantly, I found Tree for Two, the cartoon pictured above. The Big Cartoon Forum lists this as a significant Sylvester cartoon, but for me it's so much more.

I used to have this cartoon on betamax. And, not surprisingly to anyone who knows me, I used to watch it constantly. And, not surprisingly to anyone that knows me, I knew all the parts of this cartoon: the dialog, the comedic timing, the flaws in the tape -- all the nuances you pick up with repeated viewings. Then, one day, my mom taped over this cartoon with Another World, or something equally crappy, and I was distraught, thinking I would never see it again. It wasn't that I loved this cartoon so much, but because there was a small piece in it that I'm positive slipped right past the censors. And I don't want to ruin this cartoon for anyone, but once I tell you it'll be stuck in your brain forever, like the arrow in the Fed Ex logo. But at the same time, I've been waiting since my teens to show this to someone! So, with my humblest apologies to Sylvester fans the world over, here it is:

At 1:48 into the cartoon Sylvester quite clearly says "What the fuck". Now it might be a coincidence. But it's clear as day. And, hilariously, somewhat appropriate to the situation.

The BoingBoing post references Cityrag as compiling a video list for the 50 greatest cartoons of all time, and it's definitely worth a look. Funny how it hadn't occurred to me to look for cartoons on YouTube before now -- but this should not come surprisingly to anyone who knows me.

Link to One Froggy Evening
Link to Tree for Two
Link to 50 greatest cartoons on Wikipedia
Link to 50 greatest cartoon video list on Cityrag (via BoingBoing)

10 Ways

One of the most difficult things about this blog is finding things to say about some of the sites I come across. 10 Ways seems almost to defy description. At its heart it's about experimentation with a visual medium, but it definitely transcends the static pictures it plays with. The image above, from Information, uses the idea of photomosaics to suggest that images underlie other images. Philosophy aside, I could spend hours here.

Link to 10 Ways
Link to 10 Ways:Information

Psychic Tests

Though not a big believer in psychic phenomena, I do have a few experiences that leave me scratching my head. Plus, I like spending my time fooling around with this kind of stuff. And who isn't curious about ESP?

There are a number of different tests here, mostly "guess the card" and remote viewing. They do a good job of breaking down the odds of how well you've done, and then you get to rank yourself against others at the end. I think I tend to do better when I'm really drunk or really tired, so I'll post an update if I'm successful at completing the tests in either of those states.

I also heard a rumour that they'll pay you for research if you exceed the norms, but I can't say with any validity whether this is true.

Link (via Linky & Dinky)

Virtual NES

I think people forget to hearken back to our halcyon days of youth, where graphics were cumbersome and sound effects were tinny, but where gameplay reigned supreme. I had an old-school Atari 2600 which, at the time, was the zenith of home video game systems -- and sure beat the hell out of our Telstar console. But next to systems like ColecoVision, it was a definite step down. A few years later, Nintendo would emerge as the leading video game console, crushing the other competitors under its flimsy white and grey plastic heels.

I remember renting NES consoles every weekend and staying up all night playing games. And although I do find it kind of disturbing that I can now play upwards of 350 NES games in java on my computer, I do like the idea that I don't have to scrounge through yard sales, pawn shops, or classified ads to look for used cartridges.

(My NES currently sits under our TV, right next the PS2. My Atari console is still MIA.)

Link

10 Minute Mail

Need an e-mail address fast? This site has taken over from Mailinator as my new favourite disposable e-mail site. 10 Minute Mail provides you with an e-mail address that expires in 10 minutes -- but you do have the option to renew your address for another 10 minutes if the mail you're expecting hasn't arrived. Perfect for those times when you need to register for some crap-ass service but don't want to give up your real address.

Link

Holiday Excuse Generator

It's that time of year again. And in addition to working, volunteering, and living your life, you've also got to squeeze in shopping, social functions, and parties with every group of friends you have. So if you need an excuse to help keep your sanity or prevent alcohol poisoning, this one's got you covered. It has the option of sending your excuse out once it's generated, and has some cute eye candy to keep you interested while it's finding your perfect excuse.

Link

Make Your Own Ginger Ale

Believe it or not, I found a recipe to make your own ginger ale. Using only five ingredients, you too can be sipping delicious homemade ginger ale in front of a crackling fire. It sounds super easy and like a lot of fun -- I'll post an update if I try it.

My mom has a ridiculous story of my grandmother and her homemade rootbeer, but I didn't see any soda-like confections coming out of her kitchen. Maybe she was a closet bootlegger.

Link

Update: It turns out I posted too soon. There are all kinds of WikiHows on brewing your own soda pop, and they all use the same techniques. Maybe I should have a pop-tasting party at my place this summer.

Link to cream soda recipe
Link to rootbeer recipe
Link to cola recipe

Hungry for a Month

This guy decided he was going to spend $1 a day on food for a whole month. Nothing super special to the writing, but it's a really interesting idea. Y'know, like lent or something, except you're giving up food instead of M&Ms. But I guess M&Ms are food, so you'd better hope they cost less than a dollar and can feed you for a day.

Link

All the TV You Need

sI found some links similar to this a couple of months ago, but they got taken down because of Fox and their stupid complaining. The complaining didn't solve anything, of course, because the links were still out there waiting to be picked up by someone.

And now someone's picked them up. Go quickly and watch all your favourite Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy episodes (among others)! Then mail me a DVD of them, would ya?

Link

Free Online File Conversion

Zamzar is a very user-friendly site that provides a file conversion service for files up to 100Mb in size. It's very easy to use: browse to the file or files (multiple files have to be the same type), choose the filetype you want to convert to, provide your e-mail address, and blammo! The files get e-mailed directly to you! And with even stupid Hotmail -- I mean Windows Live Mail -- offering 2Gb of space right now, this shouldn't cause anyone any hardships.

Link

The Hug Shirt

One of the coolest uses of modern technology I've heard about, and one that I hope will pave the way for cooler and even better stuff.

The hug shirt is designed to transmit a hug from one wearer to another. There are sensors under the red parts of the shirt that record things like body temperature, pressure, duration, and heartrate. The data is then transmitted by Bluetooth to your cell phone, which is then sent to your friend's phone, and by Bluetooth to his shirt.

Wild enough for you? This is definitely one of the better arguments in favour of me owning a cell phone.

Link

The Art of Willard Wigan

I was fortunate enough to see a micro-miniature show at the Dunlop Art Gallery in 1997. I'd actually seen some of the works on the internet before I saw them on display. It was bizarre to think that sculptures that small could ever be created.

Then I found Willard Wigans. The work he does is baffling, and rich with ten times the detail of anything I'd seen either in person or on the internet. Pictured at right is King Henry VIII and his six wives, all in the eye of a needle. For something so amazingly finite, it's almost as though you could look at it for hours and continuously find something new.

Willard has photographic prints of his work for sale, but for me it's enough to look at the pictures on his website and let my eyes bug out in wonder. (NB - not that I need any help in letting my eyes bug out.)

Link

Two Winter Time Wasters

This first game, Snowcraft, has been around since 1998. I remember spending my lunchtime playing it while I worked at SEDA. I eventually completed the game, but it was very frustrating. In fact, this game is as frustrating as it is fun.


The object is to defeat the green team by hitting them with snowballs. It takes three hits to remove a player, and they do pause to wipe snow off themselves when they're hit. To move your players, just drag them around the screen. Release the mouse button to throw a snowball: the longer the button's held down, the further you can throw.

In Snowball, you use the arrow keys to control a snowball rolling down a very long hill. It gets larger and harder to control as it rolls, and you can absorb dogs, people, and other objects as you grow. Hitting a tree with reduce your size, and hitting a house will stop the game. You can see my best score in the picture.

Two simple, addictive games for your continued amusement. If I don't hear from you I'll forward your mail.

Link to Snowcraft
Link to Snowball

Dark Side of the Rainbow

This is what the internet is all about.

Remember a few years ago when A&E played The Wizard of Oz and told you exactly when to start your copy of Dark Side of the Moon? And it seemed like a really cool idea, but you didn't have a copy of the album because you always thought Pink Floyd kinda sucked? Well now someone has kindly done all the hard work for us and simply uploaded the movie complete with Pink Floyd soundtrack to Google Video.

I've read about this a lot in the past, and although Pink Floyd maintains that it's all just coincidence, fans have compiled more than 100 links between the movie and the album. I hope it's as interesting as I've been led to believe.

Link

xkcd

I have to admit that I've been addicted to this web comic since the first day I saw it. The art might not be that good, but the comics themselves are as clever as anything I've seen. I read through the archives on the first day, and there was a startlingly good mix of gut-shaking funniness and tear-jerking poignancy.

I think this cartoon is my favourite. And pretty much sums up my life's philosophy.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Dicewars

I guess it's time for playtesting to be over.

This is a highly addictive Risk-type game played with dice instead of armies. The number of dice on your land determines the strength of your attack: if you roll higher than your opponent, then you win the territory. Armies are replenished randomly at the end of your attack, one per connected territory.

There's a lot of luck involved, but maybe that's part of its charm. It's definitely part of the frustration. Although you can play with up to eight computer opponents, be sure to try some of the lower levels: it's sometimes a lot tougher to defeat two or three opponents than seven.

Link (via Games1.org)

When you want a restaurant in your home

Sometimes what you want from a restaurant is not someone else doing the cooking (although I always seem to want to have someone else do the cleaning!), it's a specific dish that the restaurant makes. Of course, it's irrlevant to those of us in Regina to have access to Olive Garden recipes, but there is a host of other things to be found here - so search away.

http://www.copykat.com/