30/06/07
29/06/07
Chris:
At the risk of sounding really sad, I've been hanging out this evening at the virtual pop festival in Second Life called SecondFest. The Glimmer Twins are on at the moment, and the Cinematic Orchestra are playing tomorrow night. It's er, different. Less muddy, for one thing.
Justin:
You ever had a song in your head that you don't know the name of? the proper lyrics? and when you hum it to people they look at you like you're an idiot? well, I just exorcised one of my song-demons. It's Dance Hall Days by Wang Chung. (youtube)
28/06/07
Justin:
People like to talk about what has the coolest effects out of Windows Aero and Mac OS - but check out Ubuntu Beryl!
Justin:
Bar Skanks Announce Plans To Kiss - this one is going out to all the silly girls in da house.
27/06/07
Justin:
Tony Blair is handing in his notice to the queen right now. - he was a good Prime Minister and will be missed.
tim: indeed. I thought he was pretty good at hs job actually
25/06/07
Justin:
The US embassy owes the City of London one and a half million quid in unpaid congestion charges and wont pay because it says the charge is a tax which diplomats are exempt from. I'd slap them about.
Marcus:
Charlie Brooker on Glastonbury. (via)
Marcus: "It suddenly occurred to me that if you fashioned a thick block of concrete the precise shape of the backstage compound, and dropped it from a helicopter, crushing everyone below, you'd improve the quality of life on the planet by at least 3%."
Marcus: "The whole site resembled a warzone: I couldn't believe the mud, which seasoned visitors were already shrugging off as nothing compared to '97."
Marcus: As somebody who camped backstage at Glastonbury in 1997, I agree with both of these statements.
24/06/07
23/06/07
Marcus:
Theremin cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy". I thought theremins sounded more ghostly "wooh wooh"-ish - this sounds almost like a voice. (via)
Justin:
Bruce Li fights a gorilla! (you tube)
arshad: an example of the most realistic depiction of martial combat...
22/06/07
Chris:
Just how cool is this? Somebody watched the "slitscan" sequence that Douglas Trumbull developed for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and decided to write a computer program to warp the images back into their original format. The results are fascinating.
Marcus:
Site News: Jeepers weepers creepers, I just accidentally erased the main linkbunnies page template in favour of a silly Facebook app version I'm messing about with. We're now back with the testbed version of the main page - normal service should be in operation, but apologies for any weird bugs. Thank god for (slightly rubbish) backups.
chris: Can we have our cat back, mister?
21/06/07
Zanna:
There is something wonderfully creepy about photographer Grace Weston’s surreal arrangement of innocent objects like children’s toys.
justin: These are brilliant.
Zanna:
Exposure sought for nude man.
zanna: Both women described the man as about 6 feet tall with a lean build and light hair and eyes. He appears to be in his late 20s or early 30s and has no visible tattoos or piercings. Sound like anyone you know? Justin?
Marcus:
Manhunt 2, banned in the UK, is also in severe amounts of trouble in the US - Nintendo and Sony won't allow games of its rating (AO) to be played on their systems.
20/06/07
Marcus:
OJ Simpson's "If I Did It" book has been leaked online. Download it from a torrent at the Pirate Bay. (via)
19/06/07
Dave:
BBFC has banned Manhunt 2. Although I found the original game dull, unecessarily violent and pretty disgusting, I don't think it is right to ban games like this.
Justin:
Primary schools in the UK are going to start teaching Phonics - about time too; this is how I learnt when I was a kid in Canada, and when I came to the UK I was way ahead of my peers at reading.
Marcus: UK primary schools have been teaching phonics for decades, and I was taught synthetic phonics at school. And I am 102.
18/06/07
Justin:
My brother-in-arms Arshad has created a You Tube video of a quick character sketch - fascinating.
Dave:
Free the fixtures. A campaign to stop the FA charging a fortune for independent websites to print football clubs' fixtures. Why should we have to pay for essentially advertising their games for them!?
dave: More info
Dave:
Looks like uber-c*nt Uwe Boll has started ruining a Far Cry movie. Boooooooo.
gareth: I don't understand how he keeps getting support to do more movies.
Marcus: Because, tragically, they make money.
Dave:
Going to Glastonbury? No? Aww - I am. Jealous? Don't be. Looks like the weather is going to be sh*t. Again.
16/06/07
Marcus:
Site news: Since August 2006 the more diligent linkbunnies contributors have been tagging their posts with handy keywords. I've finally provided a menu link to a gargantuan tag cloud, which provides an interesting and informative way of browsing through the sorts of stuff we talk about. Just look at "funny", for instance. Lots of funny.
Marcus: Still got quite a lot of general site-tidying to do, but our ramshackle, lazily-thrown-together look is part of our appeal, right? Right?
Marcus: Also, Kim Jong-il has been replaced by a cat. I got tired of all those Google Image Search bastards hitting this site. However, if it can be shown that a photo of Kim Jong-il was in fact the major source of our traffic growth, which wouldn't surprise me, he will return.
gareth: Wow, funny is a behemoth of a tag.
Andy:
Probably a repost, but heres some very innovative technology.
Marcus: Yup, done this one. Video here is a bit distorted too; the original's widescreen has been stretched to 4:3.
15/06/07
Marcus:
Is Brian Tregaskin really Aphex Twin hiding under yet another pseudonym? Probably. MySpace page with music. (via)
Marcus:
Apple font smoothing vs Microsoft font smoothing. Interesting comparison and rationales behind the two methods. When I saw Safari on Windows my first thought was "aargh why have Apple used that awful font smoothing?" It really jars on Windows, even though I use it every day on my Mac and think it looks lovely. (via)
14/06/07
Marcus:
YouTube: Americans who have no idea when Al Qaeda flew planes into the Twin Towers. An Australian TV show interviews Americans on the streets of Manhattan and asks them on what date the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre took place. This truly beggars belief, and I'm not sure a laughter track is appropriate. Perhaps a weeping track? (via)
gareth: I kinda have to wonder how many people they interviewed, and what percentage actually had outrageous answers like that. Surely not everyone is that dumb?
Marcus: Oh, I don't doubt for one second that most people they asked would have known the correct date (but obviously there's no value in showing those people). The horrifying thing is that there was anybody who didn't know.
Dave:
Why are people leaving World of Warcraft?
andy: I wondered what all the hype was about this game. I figured, i don't have a current GF or anything to do, so i gave it a go. Now i'll never get a GF. Bloody addictive Massive multiplayer online game thingy. Updates take longer than playing the actual game though. Anyone else tried this game?
Justin:
A mayor in the US state of Louisiana says he will sign into law a proposal to make wearing saggy trousers an act of indecent exposure.
Dave:
Errr - happy birthday to us for 2 days ago ;)
Marcus: Crikey - now we are three. 2004? Remember that? Spacehoppers, deely boppers, Jim'll Fix It, the Rubik's Cube, Weebles, TISWAS, the list goes on. Ahh, those were the days.
Dave:
NEVER piss off your ex-girlfriend.
Marcus: Jesus, what a psycho. It's also a disgrace she got away with wounding - I'd call that, at the very least, actual bodily harm.
Marcus: Although a quick bit of "research" (ie Google) has me confused about whether wounding is more or less serious than ABH, or is in fact synonymous with GBH.
Marcus:
Finder Browser is an excellent freeware Mac Finder plugin which gives you the ability to preview all the images in a folder with backwards and forwards buttons. For me this fixes one of the main idiocies of OS X. (via)
Justin:
Over the past three decades black culture has grown so conflated with hip-hop culture that for most people under the age of 45, hip-hop culture is black culture. Except that it's not.
justin: "Like neurotics obsessed with amputating their own healthy limbs, middle-class blacks concerned with "keeping it real" are engaging in gratuitously self-destructive and violently masochistic behavior."
justin: I think a lot of people do that - dumb themselves down and I hate it.
Justin:
China Threatens War Escalation Over Bush Handshake
justin: They have loads of missles aimed at Taiwan, bless 'em. I think it's now more clear exactly what all that missle defence squabble was about - the US wants to be able to back a soveriegn Taiwan. But then, that would be a first step to a free Tibet wouldn't it? 'cuz I don't see it happening any other way - as Chairman Mao said "change only comes through the barrel of a gun"
13/06/07
Marcus:
BBC: Prohibition lite. Interesting article from a Washington correspondent on the "selective Puritanism" of the United States.
Chris:
Holy crap! Aviation behemoth EADS Astrium are going into the space tourism business and developing their own vehicle to do it. I think the twenty first century envisioned by Arthur C Clarke may finally have arrived.
Marcus:
The nine rules of (American) journalism. (via)
Marcus: "2. Be balanced. No matter what anybody says, find somebody to say the opposite. If a scientist claims to have a cure for cancer, find somebody who says cancer does not exist. If a man says 'My name is Fred,' make sure you find somebody who says 'No, your name is Diane.' Etc."
Dave:
Safari on Windows is crap.
Marcus: To be fair, it's a just-released beta that even has a special prominent button to report bugs.
Marcus: That said, I've used both the Mac (current and beta) and Windows versions of Safari. Aside from one or two cute features (resizeable text boxes and search term highlighting), I find Safari over-simplified, lacking in extensions (and most of the ones there are you have to pay for, for pity's sake) and generally a poor man's Firefox. Only Firefox is free too. So where does that leave Safari?
Marcus: This whole thing about leveraging iTunes (presumably including Safari in the download whether you want it or not ala Quicktime) on Windows smells bad too. I confidently predict that, post-beta (at the moment you do actually have to make a conscious decision to download Safari) Apple will inevitably make a claim to "10 zillion copies of Safari downloaded", simply because they piggybacked onto iTunes.
Marcus: Windows users have iTunes for a reason - it's a better, trendier music app than WMP, but most importantly it's the only easy way to sync music on iPods. That is what makes iTunes a killer app. What killer app does Safari have? Er, it's a bit faster at Javascript, maybe.
Marcus: An idiot can use Internet Explorer. An idiot could also use Safari, but then that would require running a different program that's not discernibly different in function to the original. Thus the idiot will, even should they ever accidentally try Safari, not bother switching to it. Well, a few might. But anybody who predicts large numbers of Windows users will switch in their millions to Safari because "it's better than IE" can step outside for a fight right now.
Marcus: The only way I can see that happening is if Apple pull off some kind of naughty "would you like Safari to be your default web browser? Yes/Yes" trick dialogue box when you first run a new download of iTunes.
Marcus: That's enough Safari ranting. For now.
gareth: I sense much anger in this one.
justin: I felt something, like a million potential Safari users crying out and then being silenced (by Marcus).
Marcus:
Microsoft (or somebody working for Microsoft) embedded teensy tiny photo holograms on the label surface of the Windows Vista installation DVD. Cool Easter egg.
Marcus:
Phantom Vibration Syndrome (when you think your mobile phone just vibrated in your pocket - but it didn't) is a very common phenomenon. There's an interesting neurological reason for it too. (via)
Dave: This is something that happens to me all the time. Even when I travelling without a phone for 4 months I often felt it ringing in my pocket. This helps put my mind at rest - it's not cancer.
andy: call it odd, but i can feel the vibes of a cell phone in someones pocket all the way across the office, even when they don't notice it. Some call it ninja karma.
Marcus:
I Am Legend (trailer page) has an intriguing 28 Days Later/12 Monkeys-style premise. Released in December, it will star Will Smith (ngh) in an adaptation of the 70s vampire/zombie novel of the same title (The Omega Man is a previous adaptation). Hopefully the director et al won't I, Robot it up. (via)
gareth: I was grinning until Will Smith was said. Now I'm utterly heartbroken.
chris: Agreed. Without spoiling the film, the lead character in Richard Matheson's book is a complete bastard, and I can't see "lovable" Will Smith wanting to play such a git. He'll be telling jokes and playfully punching other members of the cast on the shoulder, I just know it.
12/06/07
Justin:
Public donates to UW scientist to fund backward-in-time research - guy reckons he might be able to use quantum entanglement theories to communicate backwards in time. I personally think 'time' is a construct so his idea is stupid, but what do I know?
Marcus:
No Flash support on the iPhone? If it's true, and not just FUD, that's nothing short of retarded given the whole "use Web 2.0 to make iPhone apps" schtick and the ubiquity of Flash on the "real internet" that the iPhone web browser touts. (via)
Marcus:
Watch-Movies.net is a very naughty website providing links to full-length streams of copyrighted movies which the MPAA would definitely not like you to see for free. (Thanks to reader Devid!)
Marcus: They seem to be using Google Video for at least some of the hosting - here's 300, for the thirty seconds it will presumably last online (it's called 3oo to temporarily fool automated copyright searches).
Marcus:
A chandelier made out of gummy bears. Surely they'd all melt after a while from the lightbulb heat?! (Thanks reader Tara!)
Zanna:
Judge denies exposing himself to woman on train. Twice.
zanna: Recalling his police interview, arresting officer Adrian Watts told the court he had said: "It would be a very extraordinary thing to do, to have walked on to a crowded commuter rail service with one's penis hanging out. If that had happened I would have expected somebody to point it out."
11/06/07
Marcus:
Obvious way to hack into somebody's iPhone courtesy of a comment on Engadget. I really do think Jobs et al are smoking crack if they think the best way to develop iPhone apps is through the web browser.
Marcus: Last comment on the WWDC Keynote - Daring Fireball has insightful commentary on the main announcements, and includes the interesting titbit that those Google et al search boxes in Firefox and Safari earn the companies money for each page searched (Mozilla Foundation apparently made $50 million this way in 2005).
gareth: titbit eh?
Marcus: Yeah, this is England, we don't get all embarrassed saying the word "tit" and having to censor it by ending it in a d.
Marcus:
Let the traditional Steve Jobs keynote adulation-a-thon begin!
Marcus: Ooh, Cover Flow built into the finder - like Engadget says, "thumbnails on crack".
Marcus: Leopard will be 100% 64-bit.
Marcus: Core animation looks like the mutts nuts - dozens upon dozens of simultaneously-playing thumbnailed video madness.
Marcus: Safari for Windows? Really? Jesus, I can't even handle Safari for Mac. Who the hell opts to use Safari above Firefox or even Camino? Honestly?
Marcus: Developers will have to use AJAX websites to develop for the iPhone. Whoopity-doo. Lame.
Marcus: Wow. As keynotes go, that was a whole not of nothing. Started off strong before turning into a bunch of rehashed seen-before Leopard features and other stuff that was more like a footnote than an announcement. Zzz. Why did they even bother taking down the Apple Store?
Marcus: Oh, I see the Apple website now has different buttons, presumably to more closely match the new-ish Leopard look. Awesome. Totally awesome. Ahem.
Marcus:
Marks & Spencer's £150 "iPod Suit". It contains a special pocket for an iPod and control buttons woven into the lining. Not stupid and pointless at all. (via)
justin: If that interests you - then.
Marcus:
The Stephen Fry channel on VideoJug. Learn what he has to say about the internet, Web 2.0, and lots of other stuff it's hard to imagine Stephen Fry talking about. Yet talk about it he does - in an engagingly astute and well-informed manner, too. Very Stephen Fry. (via)
Marcus: Lots of fantastic commentary - particularly interesting is that he "was probably the second person in Britain to own a Mac, the first being Douglas Adams", he's been using the internet since the 1980s, and he's a friend of Apple designer Jonathan Ive, who let him fiddle around with an iPhone before most of the planet got to touch one.
Dave:
I found this on the video site Marcus uses below - it's some guy doing some mad stunts in a wheelchair. Very impressive.
Marcus:
Steve Jobs' WWDC 2007 keynote address is at 6pm GMT today (not 5pm, whoops). My sources close to Apple tell me Jobs will announce new products such as iFlying Car and iImmortality. Or possibly just some new computer software and stuff. Anyway, you can receive the Word of Jobs as it happens over at MacRumors Live. I'll be reading it avidly, gulping down the Kool Aid using a yard of ale glass. Join me.
justin: It doesn't matter - the foppish unterclass of computer users (Mac owners) will no doubt be squabbling around on their knees desperately trying to get the full force of this bukake-fest of a conference.
Marcus:
B3ta user gets an Olympic goatse logo broadcast live on BBC London News. Classic. (via)
Marcus: The original YouTube video has been taken down (boring BBC!), but at the time of writing it's still available to view on LiveLeak. It makes an appearance at exactly one minute into the video.
Marcus: Just in case you spent the last five years living in some kind of hutch in a cave with no real internet access, here's Wikipedia's page on Goatse.
Marcus: BBC Editors blog post.
10/06/07
Andy:
I just thought i'd share this wonderful video clip, so that everyone can appretiate it!
Its been a while since i posted, cos i've been doing 'top secret 'stuff.
Marcus: I remember the media uproar about this last year. I believe there was an attempt to establish who the girls were and if they'd been injured, but I don't know if it was successful.
Marcus: The hate-fuelled illiterate comments underneath the video are somewhat ironic, though. I can only imagine what they'd be saying if it was DIRTY PAEDO CHAVS.
Andy: Chances were they were injured, but i would'nt mind a go... its like buckaroo!
As for the chavs, i love em, its a great culture, keeps me in a job, plus it fuels my elitism. :)
zanna: ahem.
andy: Repost! haha
Marcus:
Prince once smacked around Sinead O'Connor for covering Nothing Compares 2 U (YouTube). (via)
Marcus: "He can pack a punch. A few blows were exchanged. All I could do was spit. I spat on him quite a bit."
Marcus: Sounds like a lost episode of Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories.
09/06/07
Marcus:
New York Times: "omg my mom joined facebook!!". (via)
Marcus: Everybody I've ever met, from widely disparate social circles, seems to be on Facebook. Many of them joined within the past month (myself included). I suspect it's very close to reaching critical mass, in the 20-35 UK demographic at least.
Marcus:
BitTorrent search site TorrentSpy has been ordered by a judge to track and report on what its users are searching for and then send details to the MPAA. (via)
Marcus: The TorrentSpy lawyer says "it is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users".
Marcus:
My name is L Ron Hubbard: could My Name Is Earl actually be a Scientologist free-for-all? Argh, I hope not. (Via Dave).
Marcus: "So when Earl crosses something off his list of bad acts is he just clearing out his preclear closet? Maybe we're unwittingly witnessing an overt motivator sequence? Ruh-roh!"
Marcus: Flyblog noticed this over a year ago. Argh!
Marcus:
Appeals Court Rules Cops Can Steal Cars and Lie to Victims To Conduct a Warrantless Search. A drugs sting worthy of The Wire.
08/06/07
Marcus:
How to barbecue the best steak ever. Includes a neat guide to determining the "doneness" of the steak by comparing it to your thumb muscle (see the diagram for an explanation). (via)
Marcus:
The Simpsons' family members digitally recreated from altered photos of actual people. Creepy as hell. (via)
dave: That makes me feel a bit sick.
Marcus:
MySpaceMP3.org: download any MP3 hosted on MySpace. This will probably last about a day before being stomped into oblivion by a hefty team of lawyers, so get in while the going's good. (via)
Marcus: I've had extremely limited success in locating music to download - after testing a couple of dozen famous bands, the only thing I could get listed was four Nirvana tracks. Perhaps it's better for unknowns, but, er, I don't know any unknowns.
Justin:
A wheelchair user has been taken for a high-speed ride along a US highway after his handlebars became tangled up in the front grille of a lorry.
Dave:
It was only a matter of time... Thundercats Live action movie - coming soon...
justin: Wow, I know it's your birthday, but duplicating a news item on the same day? Birth-dave? more like Daved-and-confused - ho ho ho (HO!!!)
07/06/07
Justin:
Catcam - see what images are captured by a tiny camera strapped to a cat. Compelling.
Dave: Best. Post. Ever.
Justin:
Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton has been released from jail after serving just three full days of her sentence.
justin: So for being caught drink driving mind, she is effectively grounded for two weeks. I got grounded for two weeks when I was a kid.
Marcus: Ngggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh.
Dave: c*nt.
justin: "I got grounded for two weeks when I was a kid." - admittedly though it was for drink driving.
Marcus: I'm not putting this in a separate post because I don't want this turning into a Paris Hilton blog, but an amusing postscript nonetheless.
Marcus: "The judge said that she would have to serve her full 45-day sentence." Mmm, that's some tasty scheudenfreude.
Marcus:
Selfkiss: photos of people snogging themselves thanks to some clever Photoshop trickery. Freaky but strangely compelling. (Click on the first photo to get into the gallery, then click the tiny arrows on the bottom right to advance.) (via)
Marcus:
"The Lost Arcade Games of the Soviet Union" photo gallery. Interestingly, no games had high score tables - "That kind of competition wasn't encouraged".
Marcus:
Web design: make Wii-style rounded buttons of any width using a simple image file and a bit of CSS. (via)
Marcus:
Art installation of most of the alphabet rendered in the artist's poo. Er, lovely. (via)
Marcus: What I can't figure out is where J, O and W got to, given the artful arrangement of some letters (nobody defecates a natural "d"). Did the artist run out of time? Is there some deeper meaning to the omission of these letters? Enquiring minds need to know.
Marcus:
Google Video: How to wheelie a motorcycle. Decent instructional video for those of us who ride and want to look cool. Because wheelies are cool. Just like when you were 10 and did them on a BMX. COOL.
Marcus: NB may also be illegal, and cause unpleasant injuries to body, bike and ego if you mess up.
Marcus: Another good (and much shorter) wheelie instruction video on YouTube.
Marcus: And this is what happens if you ride around doing wheelies without any kind of safety gear (NSFW, and rather unpleasant injuries at the end).
Marcus:
New UK "Get a Mac" ads. Whilst I generally find these a bit crap (despite loving Mitchell & Webb), the Microsoft Office one was amusing in a Peep Show-esque way.
andy: I like the one with the bloated dude and the skinny mac guy, " i just come with the software you want - itunes, iphotos, iwoteva, " what about itorrent, imule, and icopydodgydvds? heh...
06/06/07
Justin:
Some guy tries to steal account details from another Half Life player and ends up getting pwned.
Marcus:
Independent: "Scientists have set a new record in sending information through thin air using the revolutionary technology of quantum teleportation". 89 miles, in fact. Cripes. (via)
justin: The only thing these scientists are going to transport through thin air is my foot into their ass.
Marcus:
NetNewsWire 3.0 is out for the Mac. The best RSS reader I've ever used just got even cooler - and it's a free upgrade if you've still got an active Newsgator Premium account.
05/06/07
Chris:
I don't often get carried away by a Microsoft product, especially one that isn't even at the beta stage yet, but I've just spent quite a while this evening playing with the preview of something called Photosynth. Imagine taking a set of photos from Flickr, building a data set of points in the physical space, and then letting you navigate that 3D space seeing the photos mapped on to it, all zoomable in high pixel count goodness... It's difficult to explain hpw cool this is without seeing it, so why not watch Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrate Photosynth at TED instead?
chris: Perhaps what impressed me most about the demonstrator is the fact that it's running quite happily under Firefox on my machine here.
Zanna:
A crackdown on illegal raves to prevent "irreparable damage to the countryside" during the summer festival season was launched last night by the Local Government Association. Now what am I going to do with my summer?
Dave: Raise offspring?
Dave:
Next year's Battlestar Galactica series (4) will be the last :(
Marcus: Sod it. At least it will go out in style, not just moulder and get crap running to season 19.
Dave: I must admit that this is the conclusion I came to as well. As sad as it will be to see it go off the air, at least it's going out on a high.
Justin:
Sparta? No. This is madness - a lot was made of the inaccuracies of the entertainment movie based on the comic book "300" - but this article highlights the best of them. It doesn't matter though. THIS. IS. LINKBUNNIES!
04/06/07
Marcus:
Toogle: turn Google-searched images into ASCII-art that consists solely of the search term and colour shading. Fun. (via)
Justin:
BBC news readers ask Falkland Islanders questions about living on the Falklands. Non UK (or Argentinian) readers may like to note that the UK got into a military conflict with Argentina when they literally invaded the Falkland Isles - which were OURS.
03/06/07
Marcus:
A Band of Brothers sequel has been greenlit for broadcast in 2009. The Pacific will deal with the American fight against Japan in World War II. (via)
Justin:
Can smoking Cannabis damage your lungs more than smoking?
justin: Ask yourself: do you use tobacco in a spliff, without the filter? do you hold it in your lungs for longer?
Justin:
Pilot for Family Guy 1 and 2 plus the pitch. - plus this is what it looks like when they record the speech for Family Guy
Justin:
A parody re-release trailer for David Lynch's 1984 cult-classic DUNE. Features redubbed scenes.
Gareth:
Lucid Movement has a lot of impressive high-FPS slow motion videos of various things that happen to look really cool in slow motion.
02/06/07
Zanna:
5,000 of the world's rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted boat near the coast of China.
zanna: According to the local media, the cargo included 31 pangolins, 44 leatherback turtles, 2,720 monitor lizards, 1,130 Brazilian turtles as well as the bear paws. Photographs showed other animals, including an Asian giant turtle.
All of these south-east Asian species are critically endangered, banned from international trade and yet openly sold in restaurants and markets in China's southern province of Guangdong, which is famous for its exotic cuisine.
Bear Paws. Yum.
Justin:
Piri Reis Map - did you motherf*ckers know that some map was found drawn in 1512 that detailed the land masses underneath the ice on Antarctica? no - then you better read all of this. Because it's pretty mad.
Justin:
Milkscanner - make a 3d scanner using some milk, Lego, a webcam and some free-to-download software.
Justin:
I have often fantasised about using two mice - and lo, that fantasy has become made real. It's on the Mac now but WIndows and Linux versions to follow soon apparently.
justin: At last Mac users get two mouse buttons!
Dave: Good job that's not completely pointless.
gareth: That seems really interesting, I think it'd feel akin to using two hands to manipulate something in real life. They need different coloured cursors for each mouse though.
justin: I dunno though, you have much less dexterity with your left hand so could you be clicking menus etc. accurately? I wouldn't use it for 3ds Max or Photoshop as key commands are way quicker - but maybe some art applications might benefit.
01/06/07
Dave:
Remember a while back the ATHF had an odd advertising idea - put lots of "martians" around Boston. Then there was this big terrorism scare? No? Basically Boston thought they were going to be bombed. This is what they thought happened.
justin: Classic.