Wildlife

Stray dog taken to Sweden after epic trek around Ecuador

By
25 November 2014
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Wildlife
945 views

They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. It seems that applies to dogs too.

As four Swedish athletes sat down to eat some canned meatballs ahead of a dangerous rainforest trek in Ecuador, they gave one to a stray pooch.

That dog — who’s now been named Arthur — then followed them to complete their entire 430-mile Adventure Racing World Championship.

They’ve now taken him home to Sweden after getting him checked out by a vet — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Photo: Krister Goransson/Peak Performance

Wildlife

First Fifth-Generation Rhino Born at The Wilds

By
25 November 2014
42 second read
Leave a comment
In Wildlife
1097 views

A male southern white rhino born at the Wilds on 12 November is the first fifth generation white rhino born on record outside of Africa.

The Wilds, a 10,000-acre conservation center in Southeast Ohio, produced the first fourth generation white rhino outside of Africa in 2009. The Wilds remains the only facility to produce fourth generation calves; seven have been born to date — via Youtube

Weird

Fine for man who taxied plane down Newman street and stopped at pub

By
24 November 2014
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Weird
1134 views

A 37-year-old man who taxied his light plane down the main street in the WA Pilbara town of Newman and parked it at a pub has been fined.

Anthony Philip Whiteway pleaded guilty in the Newman Magistrates Court to committing an act likely to endanger the life, health or safety of a person.

The plane had no wings, but its propeller had been running when it was taxied down the street earlier this month.

Mr Whiteway had just bought the aircraft and was taking it home when he stopped at the Newman Hotel.

Police said there was an exposed fuel line hanging from the side of the plane that was attached to an insecure jerry-can inside the cabin to enable the engine to run.

They said Mr Whiteway, who does not hold a pilot’s licence, left the engine in a potentially dangerous condition with the ignition on.

He was fined $5,000 plus court and towage costs — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Wildlife

Hello / Dung Hoang

By
22 November 2014
23 second read
Leave a comment
In Wildlife
1032 views

Hello originally uploaded by Dung Hoang

Meet Simba, one of three kittens delivered by Mr Stork early this spring. He’s a bit shy but is an awesome climber. Pandora is one happy mother cat

Craft, Entertainment, Wildlife

Hyper Scootaloo / morisato54

By
20 November 2014
1 min read
Leave a comment
In Craft, Entertainment, Wildlife
1205 views

Kids can often seem to have inexhaustible reserves of energy especially in the eyes of an adult. And Scootaloo is simply bursting with pep when it comes to lending a hoof to Rainbow Dash even if it’s just to take out the trash. I just wish I had a little helper to get these automata done sooner!

Scootaloo and the stand are carved out of Philippine mahogany while the gears are made out of narra hardwood. She’s hand painted in enamel and protected with flat lacquer. Scootaloo stands at 3 1/2″ while the entire piece measures 5 3/4″ high, 2 1/2″ wide, and 4 3/4″ long. Everything took 71 1/2 hours to make — via Youtube

Design, Entertainment

Predator House / Kalmar, Sweden

By
19 November 2014
42 second read
Leave a comment
In Design, Entertainment
1144 views

This lovely villa is up for sale in Kalmar, Sweden, and from the outside, it looks pretty normal. That is until you start noticing the Predator masks adorning the walls, before coming to the giant Predator statue, right next to the door that leads into an Home Theatre seen in the header image above, designed to look like a Predator Spaceship — via Kinja

Health, Technology

The man who can hear Wi-Fi wherever he walks

By
18 November 2014
2 min read
Leave a comment
In Health, Technology
1313 views

Frank Swain has been going deaf since his 20s. Now he has hacked his hearing so he can listen in to the data that surrounds us.

I am walking through my north London neighbourhood on an unseasonably warm day in late autumn. I can hear birds tweeting in the trees, traffic prowling the back roads, children playing in gardens and Wi-Fi leaching from their homes. Against the familiar sounds of suburban life, it is somehow incongruous and appropriate at the same time.

As I approach Turnpike Lane tube station and descend to the underground platform, I catch the now familiar gurgle of the public Wi-Fi hub, as well as the staff network beside it. On board the train, these sounds fade into silence as we burrow into the tunnels leading to central London.

I have been able to hear these fields since last week. This wasn’t the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation, but an upgrade to my hearing aids. With a grant from Nesta, the UK innovation charity, sound artist Daniel Jones and I built Phantom Terrains, an experimental tool for making Wi-Fi fields audible.

Our modern world is suffused with data. Since radio towers began climbing over towns and cities in the early 20th century, the air has grown thick with wireless communication, the platform on which radio, television, cellphones, satellite broadcasts, Wi-Fi, GPS, remote controls and hundreds of other technologies rely. And yet, despite wireless communication becoming a ubiquitous presence in modern life, the underlying infrastructure has remained largely invisible

— via redwolf.newsvine.com

Design, Entertainment

Buy The Original Batmobile You Never Knew Existed

By
17 November 2014
34 second read
Leave a comment
In Design, Entertainment
1113 views

This is the real original Batmobile. Built in 1963 in a barn, it’s a ’56 Oldsmobile 88 with a body fashioned after the 1950s comic book Batmobiles. It’s the very first car DC Comics ever licensed, and it’s for sale, hitting the auction block with Heritage Auctions in December — via Supercompressor

Art, Entertainment

Doctor Who Series 8 Retro Poster Collection / Stuart Manning

By
17 November 2014
40 second read
Leave a comment
In Art, Entertainment
1398 views

We are proud to announce an all new stunning art collection celebrating series 8 of Doctor Who. Created especially for publication in the Radio Times by artist Stuart Manning in time for each episode, the posters were all individually designed in a retro style. Particular attention was paid to create striking imagery combined with gorgeous period typography — via Big Chief Studios

History, Technology

How did the Enigma machine work?

By
15 November 2014
2 min read
Leave a comment
In History, Technology
1375 views

Like all the best cryptography, the Enigma machine is simple to describe, but infuriating to break.

Straddling the border between mechanical and electrical, Enigma looked from the outside like an oversize typewriter. Enter the first letter of your message on the keyboard and a letter lights up showing what it has replaced within the encrypted message. At the other end, the process is the same: type in the ciphertext and the letters which light are the decoded missive.

Inside the box, the system is built around three physical rotors. Each takes in a letter and outputs it as a different one. That letter passes through all three rotors, bounces off a reflector at the end, and passes back through all three rotors in the other direction.

The board lights up to show the encrypted output, and the first of the three rotors clicks round one position — changing the output even if the second letter input is the same as the first one.

When the first rotor has turned through all 26 positions, the second rotor clicks round, and when that’s made it round all the way, the third does the same, leading to more than 17,000 different combinations before the encryption process repeats itself. Adding to the scrambling was a plugboard, sitting between the main rotors and the input and output, which swapped pairs of letters. In the earliest machines, up to six pairs could be swapped in that way; later models pushed it to 10, and added a fourth rotor — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Wildlife

Little squid / Fabien Michenet

By
14 November 2014
2 min read
Leave a comment
In Wildlife
1035 views

Planktonic animals like this juvenile sharpear enope squid are usually photographed under controlled situations after they’ve been caught. But Fabien is fascinated by the beauty of their living forms and aims to photograph their natural behaviour in the wild. Night diving in deep water off the coast of Tahiti, he was surrounded by a mass of tiny planktonic animals. Apart from the occasional sound of a dolphin, it was silent, and he became fascinated by this tiny squid. Just three centimetres long, it was floating motionless about 20 metres below the surface. It was probably hunting even smaller creatures that had migrated up to feed under cover of darkness. Its transparent body was covered with polka dots of pigment-filled cells, and below its eyes were bioluminescent organs. Knowing it would be sensitive to light and movement, Fabien gradually manoeuvred in front of it, trying to hang as motionless as his subject. Using as little light as possible to get the autofocus working, he finally triggered the strobes and took the squid’s portrait before it disappeared into the deep — via Natural History Museum

Design, Wildlife

Audi ist dem Marder auf der Spur / Audi Deutschland

By
13 November 2014
28 second read
Leave a comment
In Design, Wildlife
1239 views

European car owners are confronted with the very real possibility that wild animals will invade and eat their vehicles. To combat this danger, engineers at Audi rigged a car with multiple cameras and recorded what happened when martens were allowed access — via Youtube

Previous 144 145 146147 148 Next