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slowfoxThe Windows 7 buzz is warming up: ZDNet has the happy news that Windows 7 is to sell in the UK for half the US price: apparently £65 for Home Premium (of all the variant flavours, this is the one to go for, apparently). If you've recently bought an HP with the 'free Windows 7 upgrade', however, El Reg are on hand to warn that 'free' might not be as 'free' as you might expect at £22.
Wired ran a rather poor 7 reasons to avoid 7 article, which basically seems to amount to them suggesting that people not buy Windows 7 because it's not OS X.
If you do plunge for 7, you should probably install Firefox on it: what better endorsement could there be than this report from El Reg that suggests that exploit operators overwhelmingly use Firefox themselves?
In It Could Only Be Texas news, one police officer was fired, three others suspended for taking a photograph of a scantily clad (there are clothes, honest) waitress posing on the boot (trunk) of their police car, holding an assault rifle.
In It Could Only Be Texas Except This Time It's Wisconsin news, USA Today had this article about 'rednecks' deliberately launching their cars into the air and thus crash into a gravel pit. It's the brainchild of one Bob Moravitz, who laments "You don't get to do this kind of stuff very often."
I mentioned The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy back in my Geekology of Series posts, but only recently stumbled across news that Eoin(pronounced 'Owen') Colfer has been writing the sixth book of the trilogy, And Another Thing.... Unfortunately, despite Colfer's track record, the early word on Book 6 of 3 is that it's... poor. Shame.
The Torygraph, having let me down last week, is back with its crop circle coverage, this time claiming that a 400ft owl in a Wiltshire field is obviously Hedwig. *blinks* I suspect that Steve Killick's tongue was very firmly in cheek when he observed "It is very exciting to think that there are fans of Harry from other galaxies."
In this week's pet news, a kitten survived a 20 mile car journey trapped under a car engine. A slightly more heroic (alledged) tale is recorded in The Sun, which regales its 'readers' (srsly, I doubt anyone 'reads' that rag) with the story of how a guy was rescued from a fire by his neighbour's cat. For those of you unfamiliar with The Sun, let's just say that their fact checking department can sometimes be found a little... wanting (which is not to say that it didn't happen, but just be aware of the source). Putting some points on the board for the dogs are Diesel, a Staffy who caught two trains in search of his owner and Angel, a boxer who 'fell off the back of a lorry in a B&Q car park' after a 1,300 mile trip from Spain. And lest you actually believed that rubbish the other week about how dogs are smarter than cats, El Reg brings us the news that Oreo the cat has been awarded a High School Diploma, and thus conclusively wins that particular argument, methinks.
All of these, obviously, pale in comparison to the beasties that may be found at CuteOverload.com (warning: VERY cute!), although the leading pic in the Grauniad's summary of the Silly Season Stories runs it close.
The Beeb had this awesome pic of a King Penguin chick examining footprints in the sand: palpable thought process evident, good, good pic.
Now we're on picspam, take a look at this amazing 3D pavement chalk-art stuff from the Telegraph. The same paper also provides this rather calming set of smoke pictures, created by photographing smoke from Joss Sticks. Slightly less ephemeral than smoke patterns, celebrity faces created as sculptures using phone directories (it is rather galling to find that the Telegraph's website is actually rather good).
ABSOLUTELY HUMONGOUS PAGE LOAD ALERT (but so worth it): click here and look carefully. What you're seeing are not photographs: they're composite, blended photos of sequences of pictures all taken from the same place, but merging different people into the end shot to meet a given theme (all dressed in black, all carrying a jiffy bag, all wearing caps etc). Some of the themes I haven't quite placed, and some of the final images are a bit odd. But intriguing stuff.
Remember the teeeeny, tiny turtle? Well here's a teeeeny tiny bat!
chinawolf mentioned the mathematical model of a zombie infection (PDF) in a post earlier this week, and The Times and The Telegraph both got in on the act. Plus TWiT were talking about how the podcast contributors that week were totally prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse, but perhaps not other, possibly more likely, scenarios. Back to the zombie paper - one of the contributors is called Robert J Smith? - yes, with a question mark at the end of his name.
Andcarolanne5 pointed me at excellent YouTube video of Bach's Fugue in G Minor - what's cool is the graphical representation of the music (aside, obviously, from the coolness that is the magesterial presence of J S Bach), definitely worth a look!
Following on from Selfridges' early start to Crimbo this year, we learn that Rochdale's Christmas lights are up (but not switched on).
From Engadget, how about this steampunk mouse??? Would go perfectly, they suggest, with this Frankestein casemod: look at the size of that thing! Feasting upon Engadget's Steampunk tag actually pulls up some magnificent finds, such as this mechanical cheetah!
On the infographics front, I found this long exposure photo of the path a Roomba takes as it hoovers a room.
The Discovery Channel had this article noting that the ocean temperature hit the highest recorded average temperature in the last 130 years last month. The Grauniad warned that the Nile Delta is under threat from rising sea levels and ever-neutral Switzerland has invaded Italy, because the watershed that determines the body twixt the two nations has moved up to 150 metres because of melting glaciers and snow fields.
In film news, I was gratified to learn that Hollywood is embracing apocalyptica: they namecheck 2012, The Road, The Book of Eli, 9 and the mysteriously titled Zombieland. Wonder what that one's about?
In slightly less apocalyptic fare, LEGO is developing a live action/animation movie (yes, kill me now). Here's some Grauniad pic-spam of the stuff through the ages, and here's Jonathan Glancey musing on the stuff's popularity. James May's House of Lego is old news, but as part of the same TV series he's recreating the 2.75 mile Brooklands circuit with Scalextric!
Following on from all that business about Canada pretending that Northumberland was part of its own fair territory and Stratford 'borrowing' parts of Shropshire in their respective tourist stuff, The UAE have apparently appropriated Durdle Door, in Dorset, for one of their own. Durdle Door is pretty cool, actually, and worth a look, should you be in Dorset (but not the UAE, nor, as the article closes, Turkey nor the US!).
Geekologie had this post on HP's triumphant reclaiming of the Aboxalypse Now Crown which had, perhaps briefly, been held by Sony (see p5 of the Reg link). Nice try Sony, but what you've got to remember, when taking on HP in the Aboxalypse, is that they started it.
And finally,chinawolf, in an epic post of VividCon recommendations, linked to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
charmax's Seven Nation Army vid: Terminators, Agents, Cylons, Cybermen, Daleks, Transformers and, um, Robots all set to a White Stripes remix. Awesome.
Wired ran a rather poor 7 reasons to avoid 7 article, which basically seems to amount to them suggesting that people not buy Windows 7 because it's not OS X.
If you do plunge for 7, you should probably install Firefox on it: what better endorsement could there be than this report from El Reg that suggests that exploit operators overwhelmingly use Firefox themselves?
In It Could Only Be Texas news, one police officer was fired, three others suspended for taking a photograph of a scantily clad (there are clothes, honest) waitress posing on the boot (trunk) of their police car, holding an assault rifle.
In It Could Only Be Texas Except This Time It's Wisconsin news, USA Today had this article about 'rednecks' deliberately launching their cars into the air and thus crash into a gravel pit. It's the brainchild of one Bob Moravitz, who laments "You don't get to do this kind of stuff very often."
I mentioned The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy back in my Geekology of Series posts, but only recently stumbled across news that Eoin(pronounced 'Owen') Colfer has been writing the sixth book of the trilogy, And Another Thing.... Unfortunately, despite Colfer's track record, the early word on Book 6 of 3 is that it's... poor. Shame.
The Torygraph, having let me down last week, is back with its crop circle coverage, this time claiming that a 400ft owl in a Wiltshire field is obviously Hedwig. *blinks* I suspect that Steve Killick's tongue was very firmly in cheek when he observed "It is very exciting to think that there are fans of Harry from other galaxies."
In this week's pet news, a kitten survived a 20 mile car journey trapped under a car engine. A slightly more heroic (alledged) tale is recorded in The Sun, which regales its 'readers' (srsly, I doubt anyone 'reads' that rag) with the story of how a guy was rescued from a fire by his neighbour's cat. For those of you unfamiliar with The Sun, let's just say that their fact checking department can sometimes be found a little... wanting (which is not to say that it didn't happen, but just be aware of the source). Putting some points on the board for the dogs are Diesel, a Staffy who caught two trains in search of his owner and Angel, a boxer who 'fell off the back of a lorry in a B&Q car park' after a 1,300 mile trip from Spain. And lest you actually believed that rubbish the other week about how dogs are smarter than cats, El Reg brings us the news that Oreo the cat has been awarded a High School Diploma, and thus conclusively wins that particular argument, methinks.
All of these, obviously, pale in comparison to the beasties that may be found at CuteOverload.com (warning: VERY cute!), although the leading pic in the Grauniad's summary of the Silly Season Stories runs it close.
The Beeb had this awesome pic of a King Penguin chick examining footprints in the sand: palpable thought process evident, good, good pic.
Now we're on picspam, take a look at this amazing 3D pavement chalk-art stuff from the Telegraph. The same paper also provides this rather calming set of smoke pictures, created by photographing smoke from Joss Sticks. Slightly less ephemeral than smoke patterns, celebrity faces created as sculptures using phone directories (it is rather galling to find that the Telegraph's website is actually rather good).
ABSOLUTELY HUMONGOUS PAGE LOAD ALERT (but so worth it): click here and look carefully. What you're seeing are not photographs: they're composite, blended photos of sequences of pictures all taken from the same place, but merging different people into the end shot to meet a given theme (all dressed in black, all carrying a jiffy bag, all wearing caps etc). Some of the themes I haven't quite placed, and some of the final images are a bit odd. But intriguing stuff.
Remember the teeeeny, tiny turtle? Well here's a teeeeny tiny bat!
chinawolf mentioned the mathematical model of a zombie infection (PDF) in a post earlier this week, and The Times and The Telegraph both got in on the act. Plus TWiT were talking about how the podcast contributors that week were totally prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse, but perhaps not other, possibly more likely, scenarios. Back to the zombie paper - one of the contributors is called Robert J Smith? - yes, with a question mark at the end of his name.And
carolanne5 pointed me at excellent YouTube video of Bach's Fugue in G Minor - what's cool is the graphical representation of the music (aside, obviously, from the coolness that is the magesterial presence of J S Bach), definitely worth a look!Following on from Selfridges' early start to Crimbo this year, we learn that Rochdale's Christmas lights are up (but not switched on).
From Engadget, how about this steampunk mouse??? Would go perfectly, they suggest, with this Frankestein casemod: look at the size of that thing! Feasting upon Engadget's Steampunk tag actually pulls up some magnificent finds, such as this mechanical cheetah!
On the infographics front, I found this long exposure photo of the path a Roomba takes as it hoovers a room.
The Discovery Channel had this article noting that the ocean temperature hit the highest recorded average temperature in the last 130 years last month. The Grauniad warned that the Nile Delta is under threat from rising sea levels and ever-neutral Switzerland has invaded Italy, because the watershed that determines the body twixt the two nations has moved up to 150 metres because of melting glaciers and snow fields.
In film news, I was gratified to learn that Hollywood is embracing apocalyptica: they namecheck 2012, The Road, The Book of Eli, 9 and the mysteriously titled Zombieland. Wonder what that one's about?
In slightly less apocalyptic fare, LEGO is developing a live action/animation movie (yes, kill me now). Here's some Grauniad pic-spam of the stuff through the ages, and here's Jonathan Glancey musing on the stuff's popularity. James May's House of Lego is old news, but as part of the same TV series he's recreating the 2.75 mile Brooklands circuit with Scalextric!
Following on from all that business about Canada pretending that Northumberland was part of its own fair territory and Stratford 'borrowing' parts of Shropshire in their respective tourist stuff, The UAE have apparently appropriated Durdle Door, in Dorset, for one of their own. Durdle Door is pretty cool, actually, and worth a look, should you be in Dorset (but not the UAE, nor, as the article closes, Turkey nor the US!).
Geekologie had this post on HP's triumphant reclaiming of the Aboxalypse Now Crown which had, perhaps briefly, been held by Sony (see p5 of the Reg link). Nice try Sony, but what you've got to remember, when taking on HP in the Aboxalypse, is that they started it.
And finally,
chinawolf, in an epic post of VividCon recommendations, linked to charmax's Seven Nation Army vid: Terminators, Agents, Cylons, Cybermen, Daleks, Transformers and, um, Robots all set to a White Stripes remix. Awesome.
I actually looked at some this week!
Date: 2009-08-22 08:28 am (UTC)The 3D chalk artwork is amazing, and I really enjoyed the Seven Nation Army video (though I prefer the original of the song)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-22 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-22 02:11 pm (UTC)(I hope the story is just for the UK...)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 12:47 am (UTC)Those 3-D chalk pics are amazing - I agree with the comparison to ceiling frescos. I am, however, even MORE amazed with the phone-book carvings. These both represent people with amazing skills but WAY too much time on their hands. :P
Of the composite photos, my favorite was the one of everyone yawning. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 08:35 am (UTC)These pictures are amazing, but I actually like the ones from Julian Beever (see some of his works here) more, because they're funny, and often include real people in an odd way :o)