The Ekip, a pita-bread-shaped, stubby-winged, wheel-less, unmanned ship that weighs in at 500 pounds. For more than two decades, engineers at a former Soviet aerospace plant have been toiling on a drone aircraft that looks a whole lot like a prop from Plan 9 From Outer Space
Yamaha has a series of very realistic origami motorcycles, freely downloadable from their site. There’s also a cool little article on how the models are made
Lawyer Marisa Kakoulas has written an interesting article on copyright and tattoos
How fast is fast enough? That is the question buyers of Wi-Fi wireless local area network equipment are asking themselves in the wake of new standards and claims by vendors that they can deliver data at eye-popping rates. In reality, the systems for small business and home networks rarely approach those rates
The Heliodisplay is an interactive technology that projects into the air above the machine still or moving images that can be manipulated with a fingertip. The images are two-dimensional, and they are not holograms. The Heliodisplay’s inventor, Chad Dyner, says the technology could one day replace conventional cathode-ray tubes, liquid-crystal displays and plasma screens
The entire town of Tortilla Flat, Arizona, is up for auction on eBay.
THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO OWN YOUR OWN HISTORIC TOWN. TORTILLA FLAT IS ONE OF THE LAST REMNANTS OF THE OLD WEST. THE SCHOOL, GENERAL STORE, RESTAURANT, OLD TIME ICE CREAM & CANDY STORE AND THE POST OFFICE HAVE BEEN RESTORED OR REBUILT. TORTILLA FLAT IS LOCATED 18 MILES NORTH-EAST OF APACHE JUNCTION, ARIZONA ON HIGHWAY 88 AND IS THE ONLY SETTLEMENT BETWEEN THE ‘JUNCTION’ AND ROOSEVELT DAM, A DISTANCE OF 47 MILES. THE SETTLEMENT IS SITUATED IN THE VALLEY ALONG TORTILLA CREEK SURROUNDED BY THE MYSTERIOUS SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS, THE LEGENDARY LOCATION OF THE LOST DUTCHMANS MINE. TO DRIVE TO TORTILLA FLAT IS TO PASS THROUGH SOME OF THE MOST SPECTACULAR SCENERY IN THE WORLD. TORTILLA FLAT’S FINE RESTAURANT, THE SUPERSTITION SALOON, IS FAMOUS FOR ITS KILLER CHILI, HUGE HALF-POUND COWBOY BURGERS AND HOME-COOKED MEXICAN FOOD. IT’S KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AND REGULARLY VISITED NOT ONLY BY LOCAL RANCHERS, COWBOYS AND PROSPECTORS, BUT ALSO BY PEOPLE FROM SURROUNDING TOWNS AND TRAVELERS FROM ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES AS WELL AS THE WORLD. IT IS A DESTINATION PLACE FOR ARIZONA. YOU ARE PURCHASING ALL THE BUILDINGS/LAND IS LEASED FROM THE TONTO NATIONAL FOREST SERVICE CALL 1-888-299-6792 ASK FOR SHERRI PACK EXCULSIVE AGENT TO REQUEST ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.
The first order of business for the new owner will be to fix the busted shift-key on the town’s lone computer.
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands reaffirmed that it is lawful to make the filesharing software KaZaA publicly available. This court is the first Supreme Court or other national high court ruling on the legality of peer-to-peer technologies such as KaZaA. The outcome of the case, brought in a counter-suit by music rights society Buma/Stemra, has been closely watched by the entertainment industry, technology businesses and consumer advocates. This victory sets the precedent about the legality of peer-to-peer technology across the European Union, and around the world
Australian researchers have worked with their US counterparts to develop a way of making public key authentication ubiquitous and more accessible by encoding it as a sound
A new study will investigate results suggesting African rats could test saliva samples far faster than human technicians, allowing early treatment of tuberculosis
Malamutes and Huskies are watch dogs only so far as watching the burglar enter your house and take your goods goes. It’s a trait of both breeds.
Humans, on the other hand, are supposed to be more on the ball with the watching of things. It doesn’t exactly explain why people who lob up at my front door seem incapable of using the bell. I don’t have a door knocker or one of those electronic button thingies, I have a dirty great brass bell mounted at eye level beside the door. You can’t miss it. And yet I quite often find people standing there staring at it, perhaps they think it’s ornamental.
Yesterday I got the bell starers. They were distracted by the Husky, who sat at the door and looked adorable. He didn’t bother mentioning the visitors to me and I didn’t realise they were there until I heard them talking to Husky.
Oh, aren’t you adorable. You’re the cutest thing.
He just sat there, tail wagging and a big doggy grin, agreeing with them.
Curious as to who was talking to my Husky, I answered the door and, instead of spiel, I got asked if my Husky was a Malamute. So I got to use the line:
This isn’t a Malamute, that— enter Malamute hurtling in from the backyard —is a Malamute.
You make your fun where you can.
The luddites at the PM’s Press office have just sent out a 10MB PowerPoint presentation to everyone on the PM’s media list. It consists solely of pictures of the PM’s staff having a high old time on a single page. Printing down to PDF it’s a mere 250+KB. They have therefore unnecessarily clogged up mailboxes up and down the country — those that even allow PowerPoint documents through the firewall. They need a cluebat from Edward Tufte
US federal regulators are expected to set aside a swath of spectrum for a new wireless technology that would let motorists use small display screens to get traffic updates, buy fast food or find a nearby hotel
Swiftel engineers are close to finding the cause of a lengthy outage that left its Victorian ADSL customers without service Monday
There’s a really annoying bird near my house that calls all day and night. I’ve been hearing it for years, but have only recently seen the culprit. It’s a Common Koel, a member of the cuckoo family, and it has a call that makes you want to throttle the bloody thing. Sure, it sounds cute when you hear it the first time, but the novelty wears pretty thin when you hear it all through the night for months on end.
When seen, the male Common Koel is easily identified by its entirely glossy black plumage, tinged with blue and green, and striking red eye. The female has glossed brown upperparts, heavily spotted with white, and a black crown. The underparts are generally buff-cream with numerous fine black bars. Young birds resemble the adult female, but have considerably more buff and a dark eye. The Common Koel is 39 to 46 cm in length, and is a member of the cuckoo family. Adults are rather shy and they are heard much more than seen. The male Common Koel advertises its presence by a loud ascending whistle
coo-eeorko-el, monotonously repeated; the call of the female is a repetitivewook-wook-wook. Males often call throughout the day and well into the night.
No shit. Little bastards.
I’ve probably seen the females before and mistaken them for Wattle Birds — which make far better neighbours.
Photo: common koel 1, originally uploaded by Jim Bendon
Recommendations from fellow sleep deprived Common Koel haters
- birdbegone recommends a bird of prey shaped windsock or kite
- gautch recommends hanging up old CDs
- TIRED AUSSIE recommends an automatic citrus spray
- Chook recommends hanging several aluminium foil mobiles
- Brad recommends playing audio of birds of prey, with the Wedge Tailed Eagle working well
- JEN recommends ear plugs
- TDH had success with playing audio of a Wedge Tailed Eagle call
- daniel recommends a strobe light on a timer
- Floyd had success with playing audio of a Wedge Tailed Eagle call
- Faith had success with playing audio of raptor calls
XML syndication and peer-to-peer meet to extend the power and efficiency of Web-based information distribution
A world first wireless webcasting system has been launched in Melbourne. SquizBiz is a hardware and software package that converts a standard video camera into a wireless webcasting system. It is currently being used by farmers and vets for virtual consultations to overcome the tyranny of distance faced by people living in remote areas
Konfabulator, a web site that offers desktop widgets for the Macintosh desktop, is gearing up to provide similar gadgets for Windows
All I want for xmas =
dual 2GHz G5
23″ Apple studio display monitor
17″ PowerBook G4
Belkin iPod Media Reader
The Adobe Creative Suite
Maton electric guitar, MS2000 DLX in purple grape burst
This Nathan J print, or this one
Nathan J Scarygirl and Toycat figurines
This Shag print, or this one, or any of his books
Anything from Emily the Strange
A new day job (in illustration)
A house
A cat hair picker-upperer that works superbly
If you were wondering why the site was down yesterday, it was due to a corrupt database. Berkeley DB spat the dummy over a locked file and threw a spanner in the MovableType works.
After a very late night of reinstalling MT, all posts are back online. Unfortunately a few comments posted over the last six weeks got eaten in the move. And reimporting the posts has meant they now have exciting new locations, which is a bit of a bugger for anyone linking to the site.
With any luck, the back end will soon be moving to a more stable MySQL database and this sort of problem won’t be happening again.
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