The legend that rice porridge was used in mortar to make robust ramparts has been verified by archaeological research in the north-western province of Shaanxi. During recent maintenance work on the city wall of the provincial capital Xi’an, workers found that plaster remnants on ancient bricks were quite hard to remove. A chemical test showed that the mortar reacted the same as glutinous rice to a reagent
The Babylon 5 feature film has been cancelled
The US Fish and Wildlife Service is suspending a red wolf breeding programme on Bull Island designed to help spare the species from extinction. The service says the program is no longer as important to wolf recovery as it was in 1987 when the government first brought breeding pairs to Bull Island, near Charleston. Pups born there would grow and learn to survive in the wild before being moved to North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge on a vast, undeveloped barrier island
Firefox 1.0.1 has been officially released by the Mozilla Foundation, with some important security fixes. An announcement and release notes are available
Stock markets have jumped at the news that famed US digital video recorder maker TiVO may be the subject of an takeover bid by Apple
AOL is expected to launch an Internet phone service in the United States next month, leapfrogging rivals in a fast-growing market as it seeks to evolve from an also-ran provider of dial-up Internet access to a broadband services powerhouse
iPod Stuffs:
New iPod mini and iPod Photo range. Checkout that battery life! Nice. I’m glad the colours in the mini are more vibrant, however … (see colour point in next paragraph).
This wallet for iPods is one of those things I would buy if it came in any decent colours, like, black, purple, turquoise/cereluan blue or rasberry red.
Tim Burton Fonts. I think you’ll find the first font very Smashing Pumpkins-esque also.
The Matt Groening Apple Guide. I don’t know about y’all, but I love Life in Hell (the comic strip by Groening). I think it was Juice magazine in Australia that I was buying as a 14 – 17ish teen, not only to read about your rock stars, but to read the Life in Hell comic strip. Being 14 -17ish I also found it necessary to cut out and stick appropriate ones on my folder. Seeing Matt and Apple join forces certainly makes you feel fuzzy inside.
TAFE:
I’m doing a statement of attainment or something like that at TAFE in fine arts. It’s one day a week and all I do is draw. There are of course (pardon the pun) pros ‘n’ cons.
PRO: less time at work
CON: 20% less pay
PRO: I’m not doing any coding, boring client work or duking it out with bad co-workers
CON: 30% more work
PRO: I’m drawing all day
CON: I lug arround heavy shit to the top of un-airconditioned rooms
PRO: I’m eligible for student discounts on yoga classes
CON: I’m not eligible for student discounts on travel
A rigorous study in Italy has confirmed claims that professional soccer players have a higher than normal risk of developing a type of motor neuron disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The reason remains a mystery. ALS involves the death of motor neurons, the nerve cells responsible for voluntary movement, and eventually leads to paralysis and death
Hydroelectric power is environmentally friendly — everyone knows that. Except they are wrong — it can seriously damage the climate. Hydroelectric dams can produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels. Claiming that hydro projects are net producers of greenhouse gases is not new, but the issue is now climbing up the political agenda
An elderly Thai monk who mistook a tube of superglue for eye drops can see again after doctors unglued one eye. Phra Kru Prapatworakhun, 81, had been unable to see for nearly a week after applying the superglue, which he found in his temple’s medicine cabinet — via Ben Templesmith
John Howard has caved in to his bestest buddy in the whole, wide world and has agreed to send more Australian troops off to be slaughtered in
the retarded monkey boy‘s illegal occupation of Iraq. This from a men who swore he’d never, ever increase troop numbers. Liar
Marchex just paid $164 million to buy Name Development, an obscure company that displays pay-per-click keyword ads on 100,000 domains. It’s not a stock swap either, as $155 million of that was in cash. The seller reportedly built the portfolio by scarfing up expiring domains (including hardware-update.com, previously owned by Microsoft and linked from within the Windows 2000 OS) and replacing the content with pay-per-click ads
Apple today unveiled the second generation of its iPod mini digital music players. A new 4GB model is priced at AU$299, while its 6GB bigger brother will retail at AU$359. Both models are available worldwide immediately in a choice of silver, pink, blue and green
ISPs and content hosts will be required to report online child porn to the Australian Federal Police from 1 March under amendments to the Criminal Code Act 1995
You’ve got to love the Japanese sense of humour. This train warning sign, done in Lego, features girls in sailor uniforms and a drunk businessmen. They don’t beat around the bush with polite mind the gap
warnings either, the sign translates as:
Don’t cross the yellow line! Or you become food for the shinkansen.
The Shinkansen is the Bullet Train, apparently it likes to dine on unwary schoolgirls and plastered salary men. Tasty! — via boingboing
Just a few weeks after a major power outage took out LiveJournal, almost all of Wikimedia Foundation’s services are offline due to a tripped circuit breaker at a different colocation. Among other services, Wikimedia runs the well-known Wikipedia open encyclopedia. Coincidentally, the foundation is in the middle of a fundraising drive to pay for new servers. They have established an off-site backup of the fundraising page until power returns”
A woman has sued Hewlett Packard, claiming the ink cartridges for their printers are secretly programmed to expire on a certain date, in some cases rendering them useless before they are even installed in a printer. For anyone who’s run into this problem, there is a workaround
Matthew Reed from TigerLilly Tattoo and DesignWorks, the Oregon tattoo artist who inked NBA star Rasheed Wallace’s arm, is suing for copyright infringement because Rasheed’s tattoo is featured prominently in a Nike TV and internet ad campaign. It only seems fair that he be compensated for Nike making money from his artwork — via boingboing
Now that Firefox has become more popular, we’re starting to see some fully themed skins, with non-native buttons, scrollbars etc. Since it’s hard to pick them from the crowd at Moz upate, here are my favourites (the links point to the Win32 versions, but you’re smart enough to find them for your OS du jour, ja?).
The American Bar Association has claimed that thousands of suspects unable to afford lawyers are wrongly convicted each year because they are pressured to accept guilty pleas or have incompetent attorneys
RSS – Posts