Mild Surprise

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4 January 2013
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Bargain sites are useful for highlighting specials, but don’t readily identify the pricing history for a given item. Shopping tracker site Mild Surprise runs twice-daily price checks on items for sale online at JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and Officeworks, and highlights goods that have seen the biggest price changes.

That in itself makes for interesting shopping fodder, but what makes Mild Surprise really useful is the ability to create a watchlist of individual items and set a price threshold. (That requires registering for a free account.) You can also search for products to check out their pricing history.

The interface and design is very basic right now, but this could potentially be a very handy resource for bargain hunters. The site developers say they are working on adding additional retailers

Ancient Traveller Pendant / marybird

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2 January 2013
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Ancient Traveller Pendant / marybird

This unique pendant was made using a very nice fossil Orthoceras Cephalopod cabochon as it’s main element. In the area above I placed an 8mm round haematite cabochon, a 4 mm round black onyx cabochon and a 5 mm round grey moonstone cabochon along with many sterling ball decos. All the stones have been bezel set with fine silver wire. All fabricated by hand in my own studio. The sterling has an oxidized and polished finish. One of a kind — via Etsy

Panda Blood May Hold Potent Assailant Against Superbugs

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1 January 2013
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In Science, Wildlife
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Pandas have long been the face of conservation efforts by environmental activists, but a recent finding may boost even further the need for pandas to evade extinction. Researchers have discovered a powerful antibody in panda blood that could serve as the next frontier in the fight against increasingly prevalent superbugs.

The compound is called cathelicin-AM. Discovered when researchers analysed the creatures’ DNA, it has been found to kill fungus and bacteria. It is believed that the antibiotic is released to protect the animal from infections in the wild and, in studies, it has been found to kill both standard and drug-resistant strains of microbes and fungi. The compound also worked extremely quickly, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six.

Gene-encoded antimicrobial peptides play an important role in innate immunity against noxious microorganisms, lead researcher Dr Xiuwen Yen, from the Life Sciences College of Nanjing Agricultural University, in China said to the Telegraph. They cause much less drug resistance of microbes than conventional antibiotics — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Clifton’s Cafeteria / moby

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31 December 2012
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Clifton's Cafeteria / moby

ok, here’s clifton’s cafeteria.

my hope, which might seem naive, is that it’s not actually being torn down, but is instead being cleaned up somehow.

call me naive.

clifton’s was where ray bradbury hung out and wrote and ate (for free, as they’d give food to people who couldn’t afford it), and it was also where the los angeles science fiction society had their meetings — via moby los angeles architecture

Customise And Cut The Bloat From Windows 8 With WinReducer

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29 December 2012
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For Windows 8, there’s WinReducer 8. While it’s still in its infancy, it is being updated regularly. You can remove unwanted accessories, fonts, drivers, languages, themes and services and enable tweaks to hide the Charms bar or show file extensions in Explorer (among many others), saving you trouble of applying these changes every fresh install. You can even configure the unattended install settings, if you’d like to cut that step out also — via Lifehacker

Apache: Aliasing and Redirection

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29 December 2012
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It’s common for a client to send a request for a file that either does not exist on the server, or exists in a different location. This can occur for a variety of reasons. You might move your files around the server (or to a completely different server), or you may want to present a logical file system structure to connecting clients.

Normally, these actions result in error message, but Apache’s aliasing and redirection capabilities, available thanks to the mod_alias module, allow you to handle these scenarios by directing clients to the new resource location — via Nettuts+

FX 633334453532254 / Chris Bathgate

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29 December 2012
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FX 633334453532254 / Chris Bathgate

I have been sporadically making these small editions over the last few years. This set is my sixth and rather than making them all the exactly same as I usually do, I decided to go with different colours for each as a sort of colour experiment — via Chris Bathgate

David Wright House Saved

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28 December 2012
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In Design, History
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The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has facilitated the purchase of the David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix, Arizona, through an LLC owned by an anonymous benefactor. The transaction closed on 20 December for an undisclosed price. The property will be transferred to an Arizona not-for-profit organization responsible for the restoration, maintenance and operation of the David Wright House.

Planning has begun for the restoration of the house and grounds, and additional donations from the public will be sought for the costs of restoration at the appropriate time. The new owner will request that the City of Phoenix grant landmark designation to the house. The goal after restoration is to make the house available for educational purposes.

This purchase is a magnificent and generous action, said Larry Woodin, president of the Chicago-based Conservancy. It is a gift to the people of Phoenix, a gift to the worldwide architectural community and to everyone that cares about the history of modern architecture. We are enormously grateful to this benefactor for making sure there will be a new chapter in the life of this important and unique Frank Lloyd Wright building — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Refrigerate Cookie Dough for Tastier Cookies with Better Texture

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28 December 2012
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In Food
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If you’re planning on baking some holiday cookies, you might want to get a head start a little earlier. Refrigerating the dough ahead of time not only makes it easier to bake whenever you get a chance to, it also improves the cookies.

Many cookie recipes suggest you refrigerate for a short time before baking, but Kathleen Purvis’ research for The Telegraph has found that refrigerating for more than a day can give the dough more time for the flavours to develop:

The difference starts with the liquid in the egg, which hydrates the starch in flour. Giving the flour more time to absorb that liquid makes the dough firmer, but it also lets enzymes in the flour and the egg yolk break down carbohydrates into the simple sugars fructose and glucose. Separately, they taste sweeter and they caramelize faster when baked.

— via Lifehacker

Caring for Nicky, the Blind Baby Rhino

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28 December 2012
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Caring for Nicky, the Blind Baby Rhino
Photo credit: Marcus and Kate Westberg

Nicky is just like any other baby rhino. He likes to play and is curious about the world around him. Only the world doesn’t look the same to this little black rhino because he was born blind.

With his lack of vision, Nicky is particularly vulnerable and at risk from predators in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya.

To keep him safe from harm, Nicky has been living at the family home of Mike Watson, Lewa’s CEO, since he was one month old. He has his own boma (enclosure) with a padded play area and a straw-lined room for sleeping. His best animal friend is a yellow Labrador, one of the Watsons’ family dogs — via National Geographic

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