31/01/06
Gareth:
A thought provoking article from Gongogo the gorilla: I enjoy the occasional traq dart. In all reality, who doesn't?
30/01/06
Justin:
Earl Grey Tea - nicest of all the teas. "At the time it was believed the addition of fruits would counteract improper impulses that tea was widely believed to have upon the female temperament."
justin: Thats the thing about the Victorians - they knew how to keep women from drunkenly parading around the streets dressed like harlots and vomiting kebab and Archers all over public property.
gareth: It is indeed a great tea.
29/01/06
27/01/06
26/01/06
Marcus:
"A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China`s Anhui Province." (via)
Marcus: Between this and scientists currently f*cking about trying to make mini blackholes, I predict a rosy future for Planet Earth. Very rosy indeed.
justin: I like the fact it will be "only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world" - because when the Chinese cut corners, they really know how to cut corners.
Marcus:
21st Century Computing: a 1989 computer magazine article predicts computer life in 2001. (via)
Marcus: "A typical morning in the year 2001: You wake up, scan the custom newspaper that's spilling from your fax, walk into the living room. There you speak to a giant screen on the wall, part of which instantly becomes a high-quality TV monitor. When you leave for work, you carry a smart wallet, a computer the size of a credit card. When you come home, you slip on special eyeglasses and stroll through a completely artificial world."
Marcus: Mind you, it correctly predicts the advent of HDTV.
Gareth:
Live Every Day As If You're Dying Of A Contagious Disease That Turns People You Bite Into Zombies
25/01/06
Justin:
Pixar has been purchased by Disney.
gareth: Steve Jobs seems to be doing pretty well for himself these days.
24/01/06
Gareth:
What does your IP score? At school, I've a measley score of 6.
gareth: The Poker hand generated from the IP is really interesting as well.
gareth: It's a bit slow loading, due to the ridiculous server requests caused by being featured both on digg and slashdot.
Gareth:
Rands on NADD: Nerd Attention Defecit Disorder. Something I'm sure most people that use linkbunnies are sufferers of.
23/01/06
Justin:
Hasselhoff is the antichrist.
Hasselhoff: "There are many dying children out there whose last wish is to meet me."
gareth: The photographic proof is nice!
Gareth: 
Justin:
Has the UK been spying on Russia with secret gadgets? You bet your ass we have.
gareth: More on the spy rock
justin: Why would they need to visit a rock? Surly they could upload data from anywhere. Some old KBG agent on the news last night reckons this is a classic stunt to piss people off.
Gareth:
Spiders are apparantly able to procure the means to stick themselves to just about any surface, plus 170 times their bodyweight. It's application to post-it notes is breathtaking, albeit an odd application.
22/01/06
Gareth:
IE7 Beta 2 has leaked, and it's not terrible.
gareth: Their implementation of a tab switcher looks pretty cool. Reminiscent of.. . er, that Mac OSX one for switching current open windows. I forget the name.
gareth: It feels weird to go from Firefox, with all it's amazing functionality and extensions to IE. Although IE is much faster loading, and takes a bit less memory.
gareth: Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, this is build 5299, one of (if not the) newest builds. Should be quite close to the real thing.
gareth: It has a couple nifty features - a "restore last tabs group" function as well as the standard IE popup blocker. There is also an intergrated anti-phishing function that seems a good idea. Although it seems only to be a function that checks the url against a Microsoft database of reported scam sites. Having Microsoft receive the url of every site you visit is a but unnerving, in my opinion. Although the feature is completely user-controlled (hopefully!)
gareth: Here is the white paper on Microsoft's Anti-Phishing plan.
Gareth:
Dan Hsu tears Peter Moore (of Microsoft) a new one, using words alone. Well, several little tricks as well. He is most definitely vicious. He also makes the xbox 360 look like absolute crap, which I suppose it kind of is.
gareth: I like the Penny Arcade comic
20/01/06
Justin:
Everything you wanted to know about the Golden Section but were affraid to ask. Ifyou don't know what that is, I strongly urge you to read this.
Gareth:
For no apparent reason: the phrase "Oh My God, there's an axe in my head!" translated into 112 different lanaguages.
Laura: A friend of mine used to collect foreign phrases, his favourite two were "The monkeys! The monkeys! No! No!" and "I have a hedgehog".
19/01/06
Gareth:
Angelina Jolie's kids have blogs. Zahara and Maddox.
justin: "Once upon a time, there was a little boy living in a refugee camp. Then, a princess came and took the boy to her castle in England. The princess and the boy lived happily ever after. The End."
gareth: Heh, the comments are either one of these three: "Is that really Maddox?" "Maddox you're cute" and "No it isn't Maddox"
Justin:
A colleague at work was telling me that hell isn't actually ever mentioned in the bible. Looking into it, you can see that that might be the case. "the wages of sin are death." - not hell according to most of the bible.
gareth: Aren't the wages of everything death? (given enough time)
Gareth:
Be ready for Valentines day with a helping hand from Knickers. Nice of them to do such a thing. NSFW, probably. (Via)
Gareth:
Just incase you hadn't noticed the millions of white headphones on people in the streets: Apple is dominating the competition to the iPod.
18/01/06
Marcus:
"Add your favourite tv shows to ted and ted will automatically download torrents of new episodes!" (via)
Marcus: Kind of interesting, except it's Java-only (ngh) and can only get its torrents from TorrentSpy and TorrentReactor - no way of using Mininova. Still, a good move in the right direction.
Marcus: A better solution is probably to use uTorrent (which I'm hearing good things about) with its built-in RSS feedreader/torrent downloader.
gareth: uTorrent is great - uses very little memory and absolutely no processor.
Justin:
It's now illegal for yanks to annoy people on the internet.
Marcus: How come Fox News is still online then?
Justin:
How the planet Pluto got it's name - yes, it was named by a child, but no, not after the Disney dog.
justin: Article also highlight the difference in educational standards of 'then' and 'now'.
17/01/06
Marcus:
"Brokeback Mountain Director Following Up With Films About Gay Indians, Gay Cops, Gay Construction Workers".
Marcus:
"A parrot owner was alerted to his girlfriend's infidelity when his talkative pet let the cat out of the bag by squawking 'I love you Gary'. "
Marcus: "The parrot also made smooching sounds whenever the name Gary was said on TV."
Marcus: Gets my award for the linkbunnies.org annual Kerrrazy Pet News Story Award anyway.
Marcus:
.WMV video: Honda's Asimo robot running around, holding a woman's hand, exercising, and any day now tearing off heads in a show of crazed robotic fury.
Gareth:
Anonym.OS is an OpenBSD 3.8 Live CD with strong tools for anonymizing and encrypting connections. Standard network applications are provided and configured to take advantage of the tor onion routing network.
gareth: Obviously a LiveCD is not the most feasible implementation for most users, but the idea of entire Linux distros based around anonymity is interesting. Definitely a challenged to Vista, with all it's forthcoming Big Brother control.
16/01/06
Marcus:
Charlie "Nathan Barley" Brooker on how sh*t King Kong was the second time he saw it. (via)
Marcus: "The cast are just plain weird to look at. Jack Black looks like he's playing the lead in Young Prescott, Adrien Brody resembles a cross between Ross from Friends and a disappointed sundial, and Naomi Watts spends the entire film gawping, sobbing, screaming or turning into Nicole Kidman in your head."
tim: I have to say I agree, didn't like it muh the first time... mind you I still want to see that glitter film with mariah carey. car crash tv...
Gareth:
PedestrianLevitation.net: "...visualises the real movement of people, and adds a virtual movement based on the assumption that the mind of people is not subject to gravity or any other physical limitations."
Marcus:
You've got to love the BBC's choice of photo for Education Secretary Ruth Kelly as the "whoops, we let loads of paedophiles work in schools" fracas continues:
Marcus: 
Marcus: Does that photo say "whoops, we let loads of paedophiles work in schools", or what?
gareth: It kind of reminds me of a baby that's just soiled itself, but I guess that's spot on really.
Marcus: Aw. They changed it.
tim: cue gag about 'taking your work home with you'
15/01/06
13/01/06
Justin:
A Vampire wants to be President of the US - poltical correctness gone mad... once upon a time WE would have impaled HIM!
tim: he's quite convincing actually, I like his pitch. I'd vote for him (and his legions of darkness)
gareth: If he got in office, I'm pretty sure Buffy the Vampire Slayer would show up and assassinate him.
Marcus: "Any Terrorist who is caught in Minnesota while I am Governor, will find out what the true meaning of my nickname 'The Impaler' means.
Right in front of our State Capital. Then Fed’s can take the terrorist’s body from the impaling stake. If the US Department of Justice (DOJ)
wants to charge me with brutally murdering a terrorist, they may do so. I do not see an American Jury convicting me."
Marcus: "As I have previously stated, I am evil. However, I prefer to unleash my evil side upon terrorists and criminals. Not the innocent."
gareth: I'm pretty sure he misunderstood the word 'evil'. Also, I'm very sure that he's an absolute nutter.
justin: An American jury would never convict a Vampire called "the Impaler" for impaling untried terror suspects outside the White House. I did start saying this in a sarcastic fashion, but then even as Iw as typing I thought "he's right you know!"
Justin:
They've made glow-in-the-dark pigs!
Marcus: I was going to post this with similar excitement yesterday - after all, what is cooler than glow in the dark pigs, except maybe talking cats?
Marcus: Then I realised that the headline was actually misleading. They don't glow unless you shine a blue light on them - and that's kind of rubbish.
justin: Luckily I carry a blue light around with me wherever I go.
gareth: They're pigs who are green when you shine light on them. For all we know, they could have just painted the pigs green. I mean, they have a green tint in daylight!
12/01/06
Marcus:
BBC News: "A senior British Army officer has sparked indignation in the US with a scathing article criticising the US Army's performance in Iraq."
justin: He's not the only one - quite a few have, even a general or two.
10/01/06
Tim:
What can strangely hairy northeners do with their hacked apart scooters? join the hardly rideable club!
Justin:
Check out the magic sand game!
justin: I cant stress enough how cool this is... try mixing a waterfall with a plant, or fire with oil, then a plant... ooh, just mix it all up and see what happens.
Marcus: Awesome!
09/01/06
Gareth:
I don't know what I'd do if I backed into Arnie while he was cruising with his son on his Harley. I'd probably die of a heart attack.
gareth: Actually, I'd probably die of shock when Arnie would rip my heart out with his bare hands.
justin: They've realeased a picture - the scar looks pretty bad.
Justin:
This is what I'm talkin' about - a hyperdrive anti gravity engine thing.
chris: The New Scientist was going on about this last week - it's interesting, 'cos the theory involved makes accurate predictions of particle mass. As New Scientis says, the most popular theories in use today only get to between one and ten per cent of the observed figures. However, I'm not getting too excited just yet because Burkhard Heim's original papers were never peer-reviewed and to quote one scientis who looked at them, his papers were "largely incomprehensible." Oh, and Sandia's Z machine that the Register article mentions looks like this. Now that *is* impressive.
I'll get me coat.
Justin:
Look at the the new Windows Vista.
gareth: Oh wow, tabbed browsing in IE. Way to show up late, Microsoft.
Justin:
Trailer for Disney's The Wild - warning - you have to watch an advert before you are allowed to watch the advert.
justin: Looks amazingly similar to Madagascar.
07/01/06
Gareth:
This guy for some reason decided to see what Doom3 would look like on an SLI configuration of two Voodoo 2 12mb cards (which is about 11 years old, I might add)
06/01/06
05/01/06
Justin:
This Sony e-reader don't look too bad. - basically, they're saying it's the digital book we've all been waiting for.
04/01/06
Justin:
I know what my next monitor is going to look like.
gareth: I've actually used one of these puppies in a university grad student lab. They are incredible.
Gareth:
The Onion: Teachers mocking students. Do this a lot, Marcus?
Marcus: Only once an hour or so.
03/01/06
Chris:
Wow - sketch something on their site in the box provided, and Retrievr will search Flickr for pictures that look like it. OK, it's not perfect, but the fact that there's a workable prototype out there made my jaw drop. Definitely cool.
justin: I keep seeing a lot of the same images no matter what I sketch.
chris: It works on colours, so if you just draw in b&w, you'll only see b&w stuff. And at the moment it looks at a limited pool of flickr images (stuff that made it to the interestingness pages, I think). Still pretty impressive, though.
justin: No boobs.
Gareth:
A Christmas wreath that allows you to play Simon with it. Some construction photos.
gareth: I suppose it really isn't at all difficult to do, as long as you have a screw driver and a bit too much time, but it was a pretty original idea.