Traffic Signal Prankster

A prankster in Sunnyvale, California has been toying with traffic lights across the city for three months. Police say he or she has turned them to face the wrong way, altered the timing, and made them flash red in all directions. There is evidence that whoever is doing it knows what they’re doing, (city spokesman John) Pilger said. The evidence suggests they’re an electrician or have that background. This isn’t a high school prank — via BoingBoing

Homeless Yakuza

An underground society has emerged among Tokyo’s homeless living beneath the shadows of the capital’s skyscrapers and in its parks. Just recently, there’s been a rapid increase in the number of former yakuza gangsters who’ve become homeless. And they’re really aggressive, flashing their tattoos, scaring passers-by and lording over other homeless as they do whatever they like. For many Japanese who associate the yakuza with wealth, even if it is the result of ill-gotten gains, the idea of a gangster living on the streets is close to unthinkable. But the number of homeless yakuza inhabiting parks and living under bridges is apparently skyrocketing, especially in central Tokyo — via Warren Ellis

iPod Gets The Royal Nod

Apparently a sudden interest in technology is catching. My mother is in good company with her recent acquisition of an iPod, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is also a devotee of Apple’s iPod. If the thought of the Queen trolling through Apple’s online jukebox, iTunes looking for hits is a little too much for the frontal lobes, the Sun assures its readers that, like most things, she probably has a footman to do it for her

Howard Forced to Change Immigration Detention Policy

Little Johnny Coward had been forced to review his barbaric immigration detention policy that has seen families locked up for years without hope of release. These minor changes have only come about since the government got outed for illegally incarcerating and deporting Australia citizens. The changes don’t go far enough, the entire system needs to be dismantled and the facilities turned over to a more suitable use; like locking up useless, rascist, xenophobic, hate-mongering politicians

Savage Apple Chicken Words

If you love chickens and post-it notes AND weird humour, then savage chickens is the comic strip for you!

I have been very quiet about the whole Apple switching to Intel processor thing. Partly because I’ve been too busy at work, and TAFE assessments, and partly because I don’t understand the intricacies of system architecture and computer bits and what have you. Again I defect to Ol’ Grubey for what seems to be pretty in-depth light on the subject. But faster laptops = good surely.

I would like the world to know that MS Word screws up images, and that whacking some jpgs of lets say, web site designs that you expect people to code as pixel exactly as possible sites off is really fucking bad. There’s really nothing wrong with sending through images in .jpg, or .gif or .png format without the MS Word fuck-tionality.

Still Cracking Kryptos

Activity surrounding Kryptos, the cryptographic puzzle at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, continues to surge. Elonka Dunin who runs a comprehensive Kryptos site, told The Guardian that she used to see 500 visitors a day but recently got 30,000 visits in 24 hours. Of course, interest in cracking Kryptos skyrocketed once it was revealed that The Da Vinci Code dustjacket references the puzzle and that it’s part of the plot of Dan Brown’s next bestseller, The Solomon Key — via BoingBoing