- RIP Martin Milner. Famous for Adam 12, but once played an assassin on an episode of Route 66 that was supposed to air on November 22, 1963 but was pre-empted by the JFK assassination.
- Russian bears treat graveyards as ‘giant refrigerators’. Choice quote: “In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others”
- HAARP resumes operations
- “there’s never been a worse time for someone who doesn’t care about computers to use a computer to automate a task.”
- Observational Signatures of Self-Destructive Civilisations
- Cubesat feared lost in Antares explosion last year washes up on a beach. Still works!
- Famous CIA spy ship Hughes Glomar Explorer heads for the scrapyard.
- The Real Reason Netflix Won’t Offer Offline Downloads. Choice quote: “One of the things I’ve learned is that every time you offer a choice, you paralyse some people who can’t decide if that’s what they want to do or not. Now, that sounds really stupid and self-serving, but it is in fact true”
- Southern California grocery store invader Haggen goes bankrupt so fast it might as well be corporate performance art.
- Mystery ice chunk plows through roof of Modesto home amid triple-digit heat.
- Amazon Web Services in plain English.
- Q & A with experimental geographer and artist Trevor Paglen. (his new exhibition is terrific!)
Category: Tech
Separated At Birth, Part XVII
Japan Ministry of Defense’s spherical flying machine
Chris Knight’s “Filed under ‘H’ for toy” flyer from Real Genius
Separated At Birth, Part XIV
Soap bubbles photographed at 150x (as seen in Discover Magazine’s “Far Out: The Most Psychedelic Images in Science” gallery)
Wassily Kandinsky’s Several Circles
Shining a torch in the dark crevices of the Uncanny Valley
“There Will Come Soft Rains” is one of the few pieces of fiction that can still give me a category 5 case of disturbed unsettlement. This video comes pretty damn close. Thanks Sterling! Yeesh…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYGhmJD9LKc[/youtube]
I wonder if those guys were aware of this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2Fs1hwYQo[/youtube]
Model Arms Race
I used to joke that the SRL/Make Magazine crowd would rule the Earth after World War III, but after seeing this radio controlled missile transport and launcher in action I’m not going to joke about them anymore.
Obviously they need to hook up with this guy who built a radio controlled B-52.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbITzCI2AU0[/youtube]
The only thing missing is a radio controlled Slim Pickens whooping it up. Of course, if a scale WWIII isn’t your cup of tea you can try your hand at recreating Dr. Strangelove using common household objects.
Bambi vs. Godzilla vs. Super Mario vs. Homer vs…
I haven’t looked into the emulation / 8-bit world for a long time… Most of my gaming time has been limited to short runs of MAME OS X (finally a universal version!) and that’s about it. I don’t understand how I’ve missed M.U.G.E.N all these years. It does for 2d fighting what GURPS did for RPGs: provide a common set of parameters so that characters from different games can compete against each other.
What does this mean? It means you can finally see what happens when Godzilla meets the Mario Brothers.
[youtube]zQQcGc5c1Tk[/youtube]
Social Network Fatigue
Irritating side effect of Web 2.1 tech developments: I’m using “quartzcity” (or some variation) everywhere as my online name, so now whenever something new shows up on the web I’m obliged to immediately register to prevent someone else from grabbing it as a user name.
I suppose I should be posting this to Twitter, but Jaiku is superior in every way.
Optimus Mini Three
The Optimus Mini Three looks kinda cool – a three button keyboard with tiny organic LCD screens as the buttons. Sure it’s gimmicky, but it, er, pushes all the correct nerd buttons.
If I had one though (and this is completely contingent about there being Mac drivers for it – which don’t exist yet), I’d program it to display a random selection of display graphics from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I always dug those screens in the background that displayed cryptic status reports for “ATM” or “NAV.”
Anti-Spam Doomsday Machine
I believe I’ve said this before but the best way to fight spam, whether it’s email spam, comment spam, or trackback spam, is to shut down your server for a couple days. Take that!
18 Monospace Fonts Compared
I live in text editors and this screenshot of 18 different monospaced fonts is a terrific guide.