I thought that might be coming. Take care Ken. Hope you still stop by once in a while. You will definitely be missed.
Poor old Wired. Used to be so cutting edge and now it seems the whole machine has had it's power cable ripped from the wall.
Their recent article, Hacking the Matrix, An Exclusive Look at the Technology Behind the Game, is so dumbed down as to be, well, dumb, actually. And really quite wrong.
I suppose I knew it was going to go bad when the article claimed that, "every cast member was cyberscanned into a 3-D synthespian." Cyberscanned? Synthespian? Ick.
Obviously, I was intrigued to see what they'd write about the technology behind Bullet Time, only to find that, "Of course the game has it." Gosh.
I also expect that Shiny's artists were disappointed to learn that, "A typical game character's repertoire consists of 300 to 600 moves, most of which are animated by programmers." I think the animators may want a mention for that, but hey, maybe they got credit for the "cyberscanning". Or possibly they're still trying to figure out how "A modeling technique called alpha-mapping animates each lock."
(ta to a workey type person)
Interesting factoids, some I knew, most I didn't.
And, I can't lick my elbow...
(by the way, there's no guarantee that any of these are true, though I suspect they are - nevertheless, I have no source reference for them)
Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton.
Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
A snail can sleep for three years.
No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH."
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
All polar bears are left handed.
In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
Almost everyone who reads this will try to lick their elbow.
Via Sore Eyes, Laurie Garrett (who wrote that email about the Davos Summit) comments on her amazement that her personal missive is now public property. She really shouldn't be surprised, however she makes a point that should get the backs up of those who feel they're riding the crest of a new wave of democratic thought:
Ten years ago, before the Great Dot Com Crash, Silicon Valley pundits waxed eloquent about the great “community” of the internet, and the “new global democracy” it represented. But People, this is a fraud. Do you imagine for a moment that the participants in the WEF—whether they be the CEOs of Amoco and IBM or the leaders of Amnesty International and OXFAM—waste their time with Internet chat rooms and discussions such as this? Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?
My personal opinion is that Ms Garrett is a bit out of touch with the media that dominates a significant proportion of the western world, but it is certainly worth remembering that the leaders of this world don't use technology and don't understand it. Most of them don't have a computer in their office nor do they use email. They have people to do that for them and unfortunately, those people don't have much influence either...
Actually, my personal experiences with the internet do not show any support for improved democratic processes. People are as polarised in their thoughts online as they are off. Nothing about this media is going to do anything to change the way people think. There will always be "us" and "them" and no collection of circuitry is going to change that.
What it does do, and what needs encouraging, is it makes information more freely available, but at the moment, is only for those who can afford it. The challenge is in ensuring everyone has access to that information, not just the technological or financial elite (there are loads of people without internet access - even in the US - we mustn't forget that). One elite group is just as bad as any other in my opinion and the internet is fragmenting into elitism very, very quickly and that improves the democratic process not one whit.
In gaming at least, a reticule is the pattern on an eyepiece usually used for targetting. I was interested to know the etymology of the word and found that it also refers to a small drawstring handbag or purse, usually made of netting. Presumably that's the source of the cross-hair reference. It's also spelled "reticle" and it seems that the latter spelling refers primarily to the eyepiece definition, whilst the former is more likely applied to a handbag.
There's also the synonym graticule, which additionally means a "design or draught which has been divided into squares, in order to reproduce it in other dimensions."
So. There you go.
Read the full text of US Senator Robert Byrd's Senate Floor Speech at Free Pie. Says the senator (seemingly the lone voice of reason in Washington):
"In that scant two years [since Bush took office], this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.
In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned, peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.
Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good."
(via Be the water, not the rock)
"Need a zero-volume bottle?
Searching for a one-sided surface?
Want the ultimate in non-orientability?
Get an ACME KLEIN BOTTLE!"
Viridian notes The Mood at Davos.
"charming personal gossip about the rich and powerful that the gossiper didn't intend for us to hear. So I feel kind of bad about letting on to it to 1,800 people. On the other hand, Viridians need to hear this, so that you can go buy duct tape, survival weapons and bags of rice."
(via Linkmachinego)
Nicely Toasted has been wapilized! Now you can read my blog and my new wapLog at nicelytoasted.net/wap. Or if you don't want to connect to see the fruit of my random labours, you can see it emulated on a WAP browser.
For some reason, a Site Meter access has racked up 642 views of a single one of my archive pages. It doesn't show up on my server logs, however. This has been going on since 11 am this morning and I even tried disabling the page for a while to no avail. Has anyone ever heard of this happening before? Any way to turn it off?
It's really going to make my site stats look impressive, however...
A beta version of Small Ball Football joins ickle Small Ball Baseball. My tiny team, Toast Wednesday, drew in its first match against No Tengo Chances. They kept possesion and made the shots, but were just a bit slow. They're currently running their little arses off in the background and will hopefully do better next time...
(Sorry, still no Mac version)
A website of photos of... yes, dogs in cars. Cute.
I like 18, 28 and 36 the best...
Baghdad Snapshot Action is a collection of photos of regular people in Iraq's capital city.
(from the always fabulous Idle Type)
All the boys are playing Battlefield 1942 and the new mod, Desert Combat. It's not my thing, but good fun to watch others play. Desert Combat has the AC-130 Gunship, so you can see if you can do better than these guys (how much does one of those missiles cost, exactly? Wouldn't it make more sense to take out the vehicles rather than some poor sod hiding in a ditch?).
One of the clans has also done a movie called P.O.W. which is quite good. Unfortunately, it's at FilePlanet and you'll need to register to get it...
Waste about a minute of your day with another one of those little mini-you makers. They didn't have my hair, so I had to edit, but they did have the Guinness!
(via The Art of Rhys-isms)
No, not the distributed behavioral model. Living near a river, I see a lot of waterbirds... (cleek for beeg)
'Cause it's just a Friday Five and only of interest to me... (proper bloggers aren't supposed to do the meme thing, are they?)
1. What is your most prized material possession?
I don't prize material possessions, however, my digital camera is the one that's currently giving me the most pleasure.
2. What item, that you currently own, have you had the longest?
I have no idea. Probably some old photos. I'm not hugely sentimental.
3. Are you a packrat?
Yeah, to my shame. I pack things away to lofts and outbuildings though.
4. Do you prefer a spic-and-span clean house? Or is some clutter necessary to avoid the appearance of a museum?
Spic and span? With house rabbits? No, I have fur, hay, chewed up wood, torn-up newspapers and god-knows what else all over the place. That said, it's not bad considering all that.
5. Do the rooms in your house have a theme? Or is it a mixture of knick-knacks here and there?
Kinda themed, actually, but more by colour. Lounge is lilac with bamboo mats and ethnic stuff; dining room is egg yolk yellow with Italian ceramics and venetian glasses; kitchen is beech and white; bedroom is blue and grey; office is terracotta and black; bathroom white and silver; the child's is lime and turquoise (bright? oh yes).
Isn't it disturbing? But somehow I can't look away... Find more of this madness at a website I won't even try to name (but comes via b3ta, of course).
And for more of the same, only different, check out this romantic tale of love and passion...
kollaboration is "an innovative, annual talent show involving talented young adults and youth who desire to display their talents for a good cause. Kollaboration is also about bringing the whole Asian community closer together."
Check out the Freestyle Dance highlight. Amazing.
(cheers to Marcus)
That paragon of intellect, the tabloid Sun, has really pissed off the French with a front page photo of Chirac's head superimposed on the body of a worm.
Catherine Colonna, the president's spokesperson, commented, "Insults often say more about the people who make them than about those they claim to describe," while the French culture minister added "I'd say they've been very badly brought up."
I expect they hit that one right on the head. Kinda like that Tom Delay fella.
"Primal Art - a Portrait of the Artist as a Video Gamer" runs from the 6th to the 9th of April at The Institute of Contemporary Arts on The Mall, London SW1 and features art from our friends at Sony Cambridge.
The Independant has an interview with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in which he states his support for the tooth fairy and Father Christmas, "Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three."
I met Richard Dawkins once, you know. He's lovely.
(via Linkmachinego)
DNA evidence extracted from a slain cockatoo who tried to protect its master has landed the murderer in jail.
This is going to take some time to read through, but via interconnected comes this fascinating Chronology of Game Theory.
The BBC now has what they call their Gamesblog. Nothing particularly new on there at the moment (and, inexplicably, no direct links to anything they talk about), but maybe it'll pick up...
I'm not really a celebrity-hound, but news that George Clooney has crush on Carol Vorderman warms my heart's cockles (whatever they are).
Lucky, lucky, lucky Carol...
The BBC News Online has a new look and I'm not liking it much...
I knew it was coming - they mentioned it yesterday and I wasn't surprised to see the layout mimic other online news pages (without the ads, thankfully). Still, I'm not convinced that all the others are right either.
The beeb has gone for a newspaper style layout which tries to keep all the news "above the fold" as it were, to prevent the need to scroll.
But webpages aren't newspapers and they are read fundamentally differently. The old BBC let me skim down the news top to bottom, and then the features down the right - again, top to bottom. Now my eye has to bounce all over the place to find a story I'm interested in and when I come back to the front page, I don't know where I left off.
Bollocks. Change, eh? Who'd have it?
I suppose it'll be no surprise to learn that rumours are flying about that "accidentally" booted boot that sent David Beckham to casualty on Saturday.
Arseblog's forums discuss some locker room gossip that suggests the row between Becks and "Sir" Alex is hetting up. One gunner reckons Arsenal should pick Beckham up and I for one would love to see that. He may not be the brains of Britain, but in a match like Saturday's where almost everyone was taking the piss and diving in a most unseemly way, he was a class act that just got on with it.
And we know he looks good in red...
The Aussies are bidding for their national animal to be the next in line for gene sequencing, reports Nature. The Tammar wallaby is in the running against the cat, pig and rhesus macaque. I'd vote wallaby, myself.
GameSpy.com's Developer Diary tells the often tragic tale of the epic search for a publisher.
Now I remember why I avoid warblogs like the plague. For anyone to say that the anti-war demonstrators' "lack of concern for Arab lives and freedom is, well, racist" just proves how unbelievably manipulative and, well, psychopathic, some people are.
In one particularly galling example of how historical references can be perverted to suit a position, David Pryce-Jones said in his Telegraph editorial: "When he was in Rome recently, Barham Salih, the Prime Minister of Kurdish Iraq, said that he saw around him a parliamentary democracy in a country liberated by America from the fascist Mussolini. So it would be with Saddam."
It sounds so easy, doesn't it? He makes it sound like America swept in and set up those poor clueless Italians with a nice democracy and they lived happily ever after. The reality, (which becomes clear when you live there amongst the history) was actually much different and far more complex. I too, am getting pretty cheesed off with the references to WWII frankly...
A fantastic looking programme that I hope will end up over here soon is showing tomorrow on America's NOVA: Lost Treasures of Tibet (website is quite nice as well).
NOVA PRESENTS LOST TREASURES OF TIBET Tuesday, February 18, 2003, at 8 PM ET on PBS
Before Leonardo da Vinci painted "The Last Supper," Tibetan craftsmen were creating stunning artistry of their deities in the remote Himalayan kingdom of Mustang. Now NOVA goes behind the scenes with the first conservation team from the West, as they undertake the painstaking restoration of these ancient masterpieces and the beautiful monasteries that house them.
Located in present-day Nepal, Mustang contains some of the last remaining relics of an almost vanished world of ancient Buddhist culture. Across the border in Tibet, Chinese occupiers have destroyed up to ten thousand monasteries since taking control of the country in 1950. Therefore, the survival of Mustang's monasteries-called gompas-is more important than ever. But preservation is extremely difficult because of the centuries of neglect, weather, and earthquakes that have brought many buildings to the brink of collapse. Inside, their exquisite murals are in a near-ruined state.In the course of their restoration work, conservators from the West come face to face with a thorny problem of culture clash: local people want missing sections of the murals completed. Westerners are aghast at the idea, but their hosts are equally shocked at the thought of worshiping unfinished deities.
NOVA follows the struggle of an international team headed by British conservationist John Sanday to restore the greatest gompa of all-Thubchen, the royal monastery in Mustang's capital of Lo Manthang. The first order of business is fixing Thubchen's roof-no small feat since two hundred tons of dirt have been piled on its flat surface over the centuries to seal out leaks. To bear that much weight, the hidden ceiling beams must be more than two feet thick-an apparent impossibility considering that Mustang is virtually treeless. Sanday solves this riddle when his team excavates down to the beams and discovers an elaborate jigsaw puzzle of construction that uses interlocking small timbers to create a lightweight, load-bearing structure.
Ancient Tibetan craftsmen were equally inventive in engineering an ideal wall surface for their murals. Six layers of plaster were applied to the walls, starting with a coarse grain and becoming progressively finer. The same method was used for secco (dry plaster) murals in Europe during the Renaissance-although there is no evidence that Tibetans and Europeans exchanged information on the technique.
As for Thubchen's paintings, they are badly obscured by eons of butterlamp soot, animal glues, and abrasions from yak tail dusters. To deal with the disfigurement, Sanday calls in Rodolfo Lujan from Italy, one of Europe's premiere experts in art restoration.
After painstaking treatment to stabilize the plaster, which is badly flaking, Lujan and his assistants start removing the grime. What emerges is startling to behold: brilliantly colored scenes depicting the life of the Buddha. The artists have left no signatures, but Lujan places them in a class with the Italian Renaissance masters. "Maybe the quality is even better than . . . a Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael," he marvels. Which makes it all the more difficult when he is asked to take his own brush in hand to complete the missing sections of this priceless masterpiece.
...and it's Guinness-flavoured: Guinness Fudge. (over 18 only - you may have to copy and repaste the link after you confirm your age)
Fiendishly hard and very addictive is this little Skears game. Or you may wish to try the sequel, Skears 2.
Onur Güntürkün, a German neuroscientist, has been studying the way people turn their heads when they kiss and has determined that most people kiss the right way since twice as many people turn their heads to the right when kissing and prefer their right foot, eye and ear to their left. Apparently, this develops during the final weeks in the womb.
Still doesn't explain why it always seems to go wrong. I try and remember the cultural kissing rules: one cheek in Britain, two in Italy, three in Holland, and after watching Holidays in the Axis of Evil, it appears that it's seven or eight in Iraq.
And speaking of kissing, a big kiss, kiss to Clayton and his lovely EL who have found true love in front of our very eyes. All the best to them and a very happy Valentines day to you all!
The New York Sun is actually suggesting that anti-war protestors are traitors.
I've never heard of this rag and I'm loathe to give them any attention, but really...
(via Affinity)
B-Movies are the bomb and Canopy Games are releasing a game based on the best B-movie monsters - I Was An Atomic Mutant.
Check out the (32Mb) PC demo as well.
Hurrah. Someone else has said that gaming 'is good for you'.
"It gives people an option of actively participating in some kind of fantasy role they could not do in real life that allows them to play with their own feelings," said Prof Wright [of Loyola University]."It is an area that's bricked off from everyday life that you can enter and leave at will," he said. "It offers you a way to play with things you may be scared of in a safe way where there are very few consequences."
Which, of course, is just what Gerard Jones says in his book, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Heroes and Make-Believe Violence. And gamers will tell you it can be a good way to blow off steam.
Hey, what ever happened to that PS2 we bought Bush? Did he break his toy already? Tsk.
I'm a little confused:
At one point on Wednesday, the Labour Party Chairman, John Reid, said the threat was of the same nature as the attacks on New York on September 11th..."This is about a threat of the nature that massacred thousands of people in New York".
But he later said his comments had been taken out of context and he meant the threat to London was "of the nature" of the New York atrocities.
Erm. What am I missing here?
(From the Beeb)
When I was growing up, my gran always had an Information Please Almanac and it was a bit of a saviour when I stayed at her house and had nothing to do. I loved losing myself in the numbers and statistics. Of course, I also read the dictionary for fun, so you can take that for what it's worth.
Anyway, the online version is quite interesting and I enjoyed flipping from year to year, checking out the key world events of the last 20 years.
Women in Black is an international network of women opposed to war and violence.
It was founded in 1988 by Israeli women protesting against the occupation of Palestinian land. It has since become a worldwide movement of women of all nationalities. Women in Black hold vigils to oppose violence and human rights abuses in all parts of the world.
I really, really don't like posting all this serious, worrying stuff. I'd prefer to save my concern for the environment (well, no, I wouldn't really, but you know what I mean). I can't understand how a war can ever do anyone any good - the costs are simply too high and frankly, we should have evolved beyond this by now.
The Stop the War Coalition is organising a march on London and at the Labour Party Conference in Glasgow this Saturday at 1pm.
I would very much like to go back to posting natural history links and random nonsense, thank you very much.
I've been buying Fair Trade coffee for about a year now, but only recently gave up Starbucks in the morning due to personal cost-cutting measures. Starbucks coffee is not brilliant at best and the prices are obscene, but after reading about the young victims of the coffee trade wars, I think the fact that they have the audacity to charge £2.50 plus for a cup of coffee when the world market is in decline is even more shocking.
Fair Trade coffee is not much more expensive than the others and you can get it all over the place these days, including an excellent selection of Fair Trade coffees, teas and chocolates at Oxfam (and the retail profits go to the charity rather than to Starbuck's or Sainsbury's stockholders).
Luckily for me there's an Oxfam right across the street from Starbucks. Nice opportunity to thumb my nose as I pass.
From the wargamers on the TMP Message Boards, let's Name That War!
"As the troop buildup in the Gulf continues, it seems that war is almost inevitable. So far no code-name for the operation has been made public. Once actually used as top-secret codes for upcoming military actions, these operation names are now an important part of the mass-marketing for public approval of military strikes.I guess the guys at the Pentagon who are responsible for naming operations haven't been able to come up with anything catchy since all the good ones (Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Just Cause, Ensure Freedom, ...) have already been taken.
Let's lend these folks a hand and give some suggestions for naming the operation we will be wargaming in the future."
I quite like 'Operation Hey, your shoes untied'.
Or 'Betty'. 'Betty' was good.
I know very little about British Parliamentary process, but news that the UK's longest serving MP has been kicked out of Commons after a dispute with the Speaker over the Iraq dossier seems like very serious stuff to me.
Not permanently kicked out and possibly only a misunderstanding, but it shows that tensions are getting high.
Looking for some hot, babe action? Some non-PC hardcore fun? Some minging live action semi-naked women?
Go on then, download the Bikini Karate Babes demo.
More complete rubbish than the city dump. Funny though.
Buy, buy, buy! You'll be doing your part for the war effort. You know it makes sense!
The All-American White House Gift Boutique is open for business. Do check out the Wartime Morale Posters and the excellent Bush Quotes-Wear...
(via PolitX)
Some handy hints from Ross Levine: "Thirteen Ways to Prepare For War".
(via IdleType)
Diamond Geezer nicely sums up the newspaper situation in the UK.
I had a little browse around some illustrator's sites today. It's interesting to note how "regional" illustration styles can be.
bengal - A French games artist at Darkworks Studio (the "Alone in the Dark" guys). His art style is, well, French.
tek9z - Disney-stylee character designs with a Belgian accent.
Blanc Foncé - Gothic realism - definitely French and also a Darkworks Studio artist.
Agent44 - Retro-esque. American of course.
Nivbed - Freaky fantasy style with a bit of a rabbit fixation (gotta love that!). I can't be sure with this one, but I expect he's American.
Since today's Friday Five is about food, I'm gonna do one. (See "more")
1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn't have breakfast, why not?
I never eat breakfast and haven't done since I left the states. When I lived there, I ate a huge breakfast of porkchops, eggs and potatoes nearly every day, but breakfast in restaurants was unknown in Italy and uncommon here in the UK (beside being fairly revolting as well) so I got out of the habit. I can't manage cooking for myself that early.
I do often have elevenses, however.
2. What's your favorite cereal?
Cap'n Crunch definitely. I always bring back a couple of boxes when I visit the states.
3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change?
Almost never at the moment. I think I've sort of had my fill of restaurants, to be honest. When I lived in Boston, we ate out at least 3 days a week and in Italy almost every night (how could we not!). When we bought this house, my first job was to completely rip out the kitchen and it stayed that way for 6 months. So, we kept the local restaurants in business for a while.
4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that?
I'm really not in the mood to cook, so I'm going to make angel hair pasta with fresh tomato - very easy - just chopped tomatoes, salt, pepper, chopped fresh basil and some olive oil tossed with the hot pasta. It's perfect for the summer, but dead easy anytime.
5. What's your favorite restaurant? Why?
Now that's difficult. I've been to rather a few very fab restaurants around the world, but my all-time favourite was Sake on Route One north of Boston. We went there so often the owner really got to know us and would send his wife to babysit my daughter while he made the most amazing sashimi creations.
I also loved Egg Heaven in Long Beach - that's where I had those huge pork chop and egg breakfasts.
Now, of course, I'm in England and there are, sadly, few restaurants to really rave about but my favourite has got to be the Wrestlers, which is actually a pub, but they serve the most amazing Thai food...
Character Profiles is an art service that will turn your photo into a comic book character in a variety of styles, from Anime to Fantasy to Superhero. It's intended for personal use only and looks like a great Valentine's gift (if you're into that sort of thing).
I found their "Sales Agreement" rather amusing. I'm not sure how legally binding it is, but the note at the bottom is quite sweet: "Artists spend enormous amount of time on each piece and time is money. Without them, we'd be selling you air, and you've already got that..."
Another interesting Cambridge Discovery Lecture at the Department of Earth Sciences, this time given by Charles Darwin's great, great grandson:
Darwin and the Brain of an Ant
13 February 2003
Sedgwick Museum, Dept of Earth Sciences
Downing Street, Cambridge
Doors open 6.30pm. Talk starts at 7.00pm.
Randal Keynes talks about Darwin and his friend John Lubbock's
interest in ants, bees and wasps, and shows how it feels to be an insect.
Gabriele Jordan, formerly at Cambridge and now at the University of Newcastle, and Jay Neitz, a molecular biologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee are both searching for a woman with a very special kind of vision. New findings about colour vision suggest the existence of tetrachromats - people who are able to see an additional range of colours between red and green, possessing, as they do, four instead of the requisite three cone photopigments.
What's even stranger is that these people are exclusively women due to the particular characteristics of the X chromosomes.
(via interconnected)
-----------------
I've quoted a large chunk of the Red Herring article below as it explains the specific circumstances in which this occurs quite well.
Dr. Neitz and Dr. Jordan each plan a more definitive search for tetrachromats. Dr. Neitz plans to take advantage of the fuller understanding of the underlying genetics of color vision. His will be the first experiment that will use genetic techniques to identify women with four different color photopigments.What will he be looking for? Let's start with the basics. The genes for the red and green photopigments are adjacent to each other on the X chromosome; strangely, blue is way off by itself on another chromosome. Women, of course, have two X chromosomes and therefore two sets of red and green photopigment genes. Men have only one X, so they have just one shot at getting the red and green photopigment genes right.
Unfortunately for men, it turns out that those genes are prone to a kind of mutation that occurs when eggs are formed in a female embryo. When the eggs are created, the X chromosomes from the maternal grandmother and grandfather mix with each other in random places to make the egg's brand-new X chromosome. Because the genes for the red and green photopigments are right next to each other, those genes sometimes mix. That's perfectly normal. But every once in a while, the mixing occurs in a lopsided way, and the result, 30 years later, could very well be a man who has to check with his wife every time he dresses.
A lopsided mix can have three outcomes: (1) the egg in the embryo has an X chromosome that's missing either a red or a green photopigment gene, (2) the X chromosome has two slightly different red photopigment genes, or (3) the X chromosome has two slightly different green photopigment genes. In any of these cases, if that egg gets fertilized and becomes a male, the man will get that X chromosome and be color-blind.
Here it gets interesting. Suppose a woman inherits one X chromosome with two slightly different green photopigment genes. And let's say her other X chromosome has the normal complement of red and green photopigment genes. Because of a well-known biological phenomenon called X inactivation -- which causes some cells to rely on one X chromosome and others to rely on the other -- that woman's retinas would have four different types of photopigments: blue, red, green, and the slightly shifted green. (It would also be possible, through a different genetic sequence, to produce blue, green, red, and a shifted red.) X inactivation is only possible in women, so there has never been, and probably never will be, a male tetrachromat.
True tetrachromacy would require a few other characteristics in addition to retinas with four different photopigment receptors. For instance, there would have to be four neural channels to convey to the brain the sensory inputs from the four receptors, and the brain's visual cortex would have to be able to handle this four-channel system. If a woman were born with four types of photopigments, would her brain wire itself to take advantage of them? No one knows for sure, but some experts strongly suspect it would. "Yes, definitely," says Jeremy Nathans, a pioneer in color-vision research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. One reason to think so is the brain's great plasticity in other respects. People with special skills -- musicians, bilinguals, deaf people who learn sign language -- often show characteristic brain patterns.
Dr. Nathans also believes, however, that for full-blown tetrachromacy, the fourth photopigment must not have a peak in sensitivity that is too close to the peaks of either the red or the green photopigments. That's the rub, as far as he's concerned -- he suspects that most female tetrachromats would have only mildly superior color vision, because the genetics indicates that the fourth photopigment would almost always be very close to either the red or the green. Every now and then, however, an oddball photopigment might appear, well separated from both red and green. "The genetics do not rule it out," Dr. Nathans explains. "It would be a rare event. But who's to say it hasn't happened? There are a lot of people out there."
More interesting articles on colour vision:
Processes in Biological Vision
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found that meditation is 'good for the brain' in a small-scale study. Electrical activity in the frontal regions of the brain became more active in the participants who practised mindfulness meditation.
This mirrors another study by a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania in March of last year that found increased frontal activity in Buddhist monks whilst meditating.
They wouldn't be hanging out just there.
Although you'd think the bunny hoopla would have put them off the kitchen (1.4mb .asf).
(Please don't think I'm cruel - they are very happy bunnies really and I'm sure they like our games. That said, trying to lure them with a lemon was a bit mean... ;-) )
Mr Arseblogger has told me about a fab idea in blogfc.com which is both a full-on blog and web hosting service as well as a football community. They offer technical support, custom email addresses, full ftp access, chat and forums, SQL dbs, CGI scripts and all sorts (plus it's cheap). Also, if you're one of the first 25 people to sign up, you could win a year's free hosting.
Such a cool idea.
No, according to Pravda, Saddam Hussein possesses a crashed UFO. What's more, the friendly aliens were so happy to find such a neighbourly place to crash that they are very kindly creating monstrous genetically modified scorpions to do Saddam's bidding.
Well that explains everything. Let's go get 'em!
(via wKen)
It appears that Cambridge is hoping for a tech revival. A BBC Education article points to the university's "airily laisser-faire" attitude which has allowed staff to wander from university to industry and back again. This in turn seemed to foster more research-orientated companies that were better able to ride out the "global tech slump" than their glitzier internet counterparts.
All would seem well if it weren't for the university's new plans to gain control of all intellectual property produced by its academics. Opponents of the scheme believe that will only serve to stifle creativity.
Oh, and then there's that nasty A14. The one that was a snow-covered carpark last week? Did I tell you about my colleague who left the office at 5:30 on Thursday, only to make it home to at 7am the next morning - a drive that normally takes less than an hour? Or the other who left home at 7 on Friday morning and only made it to the first exit by 3pm (where he could turn around and go home)?
Good thing it only snows once every 5 years, I guess.
I just had to take this one... unfortunately, I'm really not a huge Linux fan. I mean, games on Linux? Phhft.
(via Polynomia)
And now I have one. Would you like to visit the beautiful Sultanate of Yoyolotl? Better go quick before I fuck it up!
Get your own country and run it into the ground at Nation States.
(via Frimlin)
