Missing Episodes Recovered!

By
12 December 2011
2 min read
Leave a comment
In Entertainment, History
721 views

Two classic episodes of Doctor Who — thought to be missing forever — have been returned to the BBC archive.

Episode 3 of the William Hartnell adventure Galaxy 4 and Episode 2 of Patrick Troughton’s The Underwater Menace were purchased by film collector Terry Burnett at a village fete near Southampton in the early 80s. He had been unaware that the canisters contained material missing from the BBC.

Thanks to the kind loan by Mr Burnett, the classic footage has been shown today at the British Film Institute’s annual Missing Believed Wiped event at the National Film Theatre in London. Host at the event was Doctor Who writer and actor Mark Gatiss who said: Christmas has come early for Doctor Who fans everywhere. It’s always wonderful when a missing episode turns up but it’s been years since the last one so to have two is just brilliant. Add to that a proper bit of action from the legendary Chumblies (and the horrifying Rills!) plus the utterly mesmeric Patrick Troughton on great form. Well, what more could we all ask for? — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Design

Kenneth Laurent House / Frank Lloyd Wright

By
12 December 2011
1 min read
1 Comment
In Design
1267 views

If a house shows just how overpriced the UK market is in comparison to the US, it is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kenneth Laurent House in Rockford, Illinois, which is up for auction this month.

More on that price later, but let’s look at the detail. The house was built between 1949 and 1952, a one-storey house for a wheelchair-bound war veteran covering around 2,500 square metres and sat in a plot of 1.3 acres. it became the template for further Frank Lloyd Wright houses throughout the 1950s.

To be honest, words only get you so far with this property. You really need to see the images, of which are there are plenty at the auction house site. That price? The estimate is between $500,000 – $700,000, which works out at around £320,000 – £448,000. If this place was in the UK, you could probably triple that price – and more. The auction date is 15 December — via WowHaus

Italian cat inherits €10m fortune

By
11 December 2011
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Weird, Wildlife
676 views

Tommaso, a four-year-old, one-time stray from Rome, is thought to have become the world’s richest cat.

Since the death of his 94-year-old mistress last month, he has become a property magnate — or perhaps mognate — with flats and houses worth an estimated €10m scattered from Milan in the north to Calabria in the south.

In a handwritten will, signed on 26 November, 2009, Tommaso’s mistress — the childless widow of a successful builder — gave her lawyers the task of identifying the animal welfare body or association to which to leave the inheritance and the task of looking after the cat Tommaso — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Use This Excel Spreadsheet For Project Management

By
11 December 2011
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Technology
770 views

Full-blown project management demands dedicated software, but for simpler tasks a spreadsheet can do the job. Microsoft presentations and spreadsheet expert Glenna Shaw is sharing a project plan template which lets you plan your project and track milestones.

As well as letting you define project parameters, the spreadsheet is designed for easy integration with PowerPoint so you can easily produce update presentations on your progress. One detail to watch for: the spreadsheet calculates holiday dates for the US, so follow the instructions in Glenna’s post for deleting those (and adding Australian ones if you wish) — via Lifehacker

Collection of 4300+ Swatch Watches Sells for $6,650,000

By
11 December 2011
39 second read
Leave a comment
In Design
667 views

One of the most complete collections of Swatch watches in the world sold for HK$51,707,500 or nearly $6,650,000 in Hong Kong recently. Swiss businessman Peter Blum and his wife Linda assembled the collection over a period of years. The collection’s 4363 pieces includes a large number of prototypes, hybrids and production variants never brought to market — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Haemophilia gene therapy shows early success

By
11 December 2011
41 second read
Leave a comment
In Health, Science
763 views

Just one injection could be enough to mean people with haemophilia B no longer need medication, according to an early study in the UK and the US.

Six patients were given a virus that infects the body with the blueprints needed to produce blood-clotting proteins. Four of them could then stop taking their drugs.

Doctors said the gene therapy was potentially life-changing

Rats Feel Each Other’s Pain

By
10 December 2011
46 second read
Leave a comment
In Science, Wildlife
651 views

Empathy lets us feel another person’s pain and drives us to help ease it. But is empathy a uniquely human trait? For decades researchers have debated whether non-human animals possess this attribute. Now a new study shows that rats will free a trapped cagemate in distress. The results mean that these rodents can be used to help determine the genetic and physiological underpinnings of empathy in people — via Slashdot

Plaster models of distinctive buildings / Chisel and Mouse

By
9 December 2011
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Design
690 views

Chisel and Mouse offer an interesting product — they make detailed plaster models of distinctive buildings, such as the model of Deco-style Hoover Building No.7 which is pictured above.

The range of this Sussex-based company also includes models of both Bankside and Battersea Power stations, as well as another 1930s icon, Broadcasting House. These models are larger than you might expect — to give an idea of scale, the Hoover Building stands at 18cm high.

The models vary in price, going from £59 up to £95, which is the price of the Hoover model — via Retro To Go

Domesday Book put on touchscreen at Bletchley Park

By
9 December 2011
1 min read
Leave a comment
In History, Technology
785 views

The first Domesday book was published on vellum in the 11th century. 900 years later when the BBC wanted to mark the anniversary of Britain’s oldest surviving dataset, they gathered a whole new clutch of information about Britain in photos, videos and text, and because it was 1986 saved it all on laser discs.

Unfortunately the laser discs of the BBC’s Domesday project have kept less well than William the Conqueror’s dried calfskins. Few machines can read the discs any more, so BBC have just refreshed how they store the cache of maps, pictures, stories, videos and comments taken from over a million people. They’ve set up a giant 52″ touch screen in the computer museum at Bletchley Park and loaded all “Domesday Reloaded” information on it in an app.

Unveiled today, the Domesday Touchtable will let four users at a time browse through the 50GB of info including 25,000 photographs. There are two Domesday Touchtables in the country – the second is in the BBC’s Manchester MediaCity campus — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Nothing Else Matters / RF-Biketech

By
8 December 2011
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Design
767 views

If you’re a fan of 1980s superbikes, the closest thing you can buy today is the Yamaha XJR1300. It’s a throwback muscle bike, with an air-cooled DOHC parallel four motor that pumps out a smidge under 100 hp and a whopping 108 Nm of torque. It’s not sophisticated and it won’t lay waste to a 600 sport bike, but it packs a solid dose of old-school cool. So I’m surprised we haven’t seen more café racers based on the XJR1300, like this one from RF-Biketech. They’re a Kawasaki dealer based in the small Bavarian town of Nüdlingen, but turn out a steady stream of customs and café racers. This bike is called Nothing Else Matters — via Bike EXIF

Obituary: Harry Morgan

By
8 December 2011
40 second read
Leave a comment
In Entertainment
699 views

Actor Harry Morgan, best known for playing Colonel Sherman Potter in US TV show Mash, has died aged 96.

The star died at his Los Angeles home after suffering from pneumonia, his family confirmed.

Mike Farrell, who played BJ Hunnicutt in the military series, said of Morgan: There was not an un-adorable bone in the man’s body — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mythbusters Stunt Goes Awry, Sends Cannonball Rocketing Through Homes

By
8 December 2011
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Science
647 views

A cast iron cannonball rocketed through two homes and landed inside a minivan Tuesday when a Mythbusters TV experiment went wrong.

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are hosts of the scientific experimentation show, which airs on The Discovery Channel. The pair was reportedly trying to figure out how fast a cannonball would travel, when it misfired and shot hundreds of feet in the air.

This cannonball was supposed to go through several barrels of water and through a cinder block, and then ultimately into the side of the hill, said JD Nelson of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.

Instead the cannonball flew over the foothills surrounding Camp Parks Military Firing Reservation, before spiralling back toward Dublin like a cruise missile — via redwolf.newsvine.com

White Rhino / The Wilds

By
8 December 2011
29 second read
Leave a comment
In Wildlife
714 views

On 2 October, Zenzele, a nine-year-old Southern White Rhino who was also born at the Wilds Conservation Centre in southeast Ohio, gave birth to her second calf. The birth is particularly significant because this is the second fourth-generation calf born at the Wilds — via ZooBorns

Previous 351 352 353354 355 Next