Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

Beautiful jellyfish photos – I love jellyfish, they’re so beautiful and these are ace photos of them. Nature was on fire the day it made these!

Small vehicles, massive loads – if you’ve ever been to south-east Asia you’ll have seen people carrying amazing loads on little bikes, just like in these photos. Quite remarkable!

Airmail laptop wallet – different, cool, useful…awesome

Long exposure pics – I love long exposure photos and these are brilliant.

Facts:

A.S. Douglas wrote a version of Tic-Tac-Toe for the EDSAC as part of his PhD at Cambridge University in 1952.

The oldest 3rd generation language is FORTRAN (Formula Translation) which was developed in 1953 by IBM.

Peter Norton Computing introduced Norton Utilities in 1982, it was used by the computer savvy people and served as a prime hacker tool.

The theory of the Relational Database was introduced by Ted Codd at IBM in 1970.

Leibnitz invented the binary calculus in 1672.

Quotes:

“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” (William Bragg)

“We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins” (Ellen Ullman)

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” (Edsger Dijkstra)

“A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no particular advantage.” (Robert S. McNamara)

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Arthur C. Clarke)

Tune of the Day:

Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano – Danny Brillant

Cool video footage of the week:

You will go aaaaaaaaaaawwww…oooooooooohhh….Just so you know.

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

Dell’s Wasabi inkless portable printer – sounds all wrong but no, it’s real!

Human Consciousness Project – lots of good ideas and super interesting research on the forever elusive concept of consciousness.

Visual cv – this is a very cool way to present your cv, a time line, colours, it’s all visual…maybe lacks a little extra content but this is cool.

A magnet-powered hamster wheel – wow, let your hamster roll in style. Very funky indeed.

44 Creative and Smart Advertisements – a nice list of visuals showing all of the coolest and amazing ads out there, a must see.

Facts:

A joint industry-government committee develops ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), the first universal standard for computers. (1963)

With ARPA funding, Larry Roberts and Thomas Marill create the first wide-area network connection. (1965)

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

25 crazy laws from around the world - In New York, the penalty for jumping off a building is: Death. (!?)

The Gigapan system – Excellent image manipulation

Introducing the warship - Dr. Richard Obousy shares his concept for a futuristic, yet scientifically accurate, warpship design.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Emoticons – Nice article on the history of those little things that mean so much to us

The Grammar vandal blog – Excellent posts giving all sorts of companies and people a telling off for using bad grammar

Facts…

20 transparent plastic Macintosh SE were produced in 1987 to verify internal component layout. Ten were built and given to members of the development team.

A litre of vinegar is heavier in winter than in summer.

Quick silver is not silver, but it is another name of mercury. It is so heavy that piece of iron floats on its surface.

In 1982 Time magazine named the computer its “Man of the Year.”

The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by  Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo in San Francisco.

Quotes…

“It’s hardware that makes a machine fast.  It’s software that makes a fast machine slow.” – Craig Bruce

“The best way to get accurate information on Usenet is to post something wrong and wait for corrections.” – Matthew Austern

“Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined.” – Kreitzberg and Shneiderman

“A program is never less than 90% complete, and never more than 95% complete.” – Terry Baker

“I think it’s a new feature.  Don’t tell anyone it was an accident.” – Larry Wall

Tune of the week…

Thriller – Michael Jackson

Cool video footage of the week…

Even hardware has Easter eggs.

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

The 1st Spaceport ever – construction begins today! I want to go on it!

The importance of stupidity in scientific research – “What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don’t know what we’re doing” – and if you know what you’re doing, it’s not research. Nice essay.

3D doodling – brilliant, totally pointless and somewhat addictive – yes. I did have a pair od red-green glasses handy, don’t you?

Spezify search engine – this is a fun layout like a collage layering pictures, tweets, snippets from posts etc…

The Layar Android application - allows for sets of viewable data to be displayed in the viewfinder of your phone (not your landline)

Facts:

In a December 1977 executive meeting Apple president Mike Markkula put “floppy disk” at the top of his wishlist. This move gave Apple an edge for years to come.

Johan Van den Brande has created the BREADBOX64 which means that you can now tweet on your old commodore 64.

The web was coded in the space of 3 months (in C).

Since space is essentially empty it cannot carry sound, therefor there is no sound in space.

Lee Stein invented the first online electronic bank in 1994 entitled, “First Virtual Holdings”.

Quotes:

I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong… In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth. (R. Feynman)

Should array indices start at 0 or 1?  My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. (S.Kelly-Bootle)

Development is maintenance. (B.Marick)

Any clod can have the facts; having opinions is an art. (C. McCabe)

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it. (A. Perlis)

Tune of the Week:

Cannonball – The Breeders (Yes, you will need to turn this one up)

Cool video footage of the week:

This is an old favourite of mine – wonderfully funny and so very witty

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

My Milk Toof - the strange and amusing journey of a couple of milk teeth

Faces in Places – photos of things in daily life that look like a face – also odd but cool.

LunchBreath – very cool arty mindmaps from an artist who has a lot more time than most of us on his hands

Maybe you shouldn’t buy that – an excellent collection of all sorts of expensive and useless things that you shouldn’t buy

This weird computer – Is that a UV light?

Facts:

Women are roughly 20 percent of IT professionals.

Nearly 75% of tomorrow’s jobs will require use of computers

There are more atoms in a bucketful of water than there are bucketfuls of water in the Atlantic Ocean.

Kangaroos and Emus can’t walk backwards.

Dynamite contains peanuts as an ingredient.

Quotes:

“The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.” (Bill Gates)

“Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container.” (Nathan Myhrvold)

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” (Confucius)

“Less than 10% of the code has to do with the ostensible purpose of the system; the rest deals with input-output, data validation, data structure maintenance, and other housekeeping.” (Mary Shaw)

“Simplicity, carried to the extreme, becomes elegance.” (Jon Franklin)

Tune of the week:

The A-Team theme tune – DJ Yoda (a little retro action for today)

Cool video footage of the week:

The Commodore-64 commercial. I had one too. I have no idea what ladies in bikinis have to do with it though.

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week:

An isolation chamber-chair – Looks brilliant for those times when you just want to get away but can’t – this is a thinking chair

If God texted the 10 commandments – quite funny and pokes fun at our weird modern language

The Obama Cairo Speech StreamGraph – nice visual of the words used in the speech at various times and also term prominence

Inner ear radio reciever – it’s a chip and not available yet, not sure I want one, but way interesting

SIMILE widgets by MIT – totally open source and really cool, you get to create great data visualisations

Facts:

Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC

Printer manufacturers print invisible yellow dots on consumer\’s prints that check to see if a person is printing counterfeit money.

“Yahoo” is shortcut for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

The full chemical name for caffeine is 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine

Quotes:

“It’s hardware that makes a machine fast.  It’s software that makes a fast machine slow.” (Craig Bruce)

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” (Stephen Hawking)

“In a room full of top software designers, if two agree on the same thing, that’s a majority.” (Bill Curtis)

“Simplicity, carried to the extreme, becomes elegance.” (Jon Franklin)

“Don’t document the problem, fix it.” (Atli Björgvin Oddsson)

Tune of the week:

Island in the Sun – Weezer

Cool video footage of the week:

This has been around for a while but it makes me laugh every single time. A true classic. Wait for it…

(Don’t forget TGIF over at SFS!)

Without further ado…

Stuff I really like this week…

Tattoo sleves – these would be great fun. Wear them round your parents house or to work if you’re in a conservative office environment.

Home decor for absolute geeks – wonderful stuff, I need to implement some of these.

The awesome-geek-themed cars list – wow – can you see yourself driving one of those?

The O’Reilly Geek Atlas - ”you’ll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now”

Oddities from NASA’s image archive – wierd and fabulous images to ponder over.

Facts:

Early names for the Web: Information Mesh, Mine of Information, The Information Mine (TIM!)

The code for the web and the wed browser was written on NeXT. It was a computer built by NeXT inc headed up by Steve Jobs.

The first ever browser was called “worldwideweb” and could only run on NeXT.

The first ever server address was nxoc01.cern.ch

Pages viewed on that server:

August 1991: 100 a day

August 1992: 1,000 a day

August 1993: 10,000 a day

Quotes:

Question authority; but, raise your hand first. (A. Dershowitz)

Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem.(R. Feynman)

Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end. (K. Gibran)

At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will find at least two human errors, one of which is the error of blaming it on the computer. (T. Gilb)

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. (D. Adams)

Tune of the week:

Peaceful – Georgie Fame (sing along now people)

Cool video footage of the week:

Aaaah…the excellent Eddie Izzard on computers! ”

(Don’t forget TGIF over at SFS!)

Without further ado…

Stuff I realy liked this week…

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages – “Alain Colmerauer designs the logic language Prolog. His goal is to create a language with the intelligence of a two year old. ” – priceless. And somewhat true.

The Physics clip at Geekologie – This is pretty awesome. See, this man can bounce.

Dale Chihuly glass – Just amazingly colourful and rich pictures. I love these.

The Elumens VisionStation® VS/V3 – the geek desk to rule them all.

Pacman mural – I’d love this in my house.

Facts:

The original Yahoo! URL was: http://akebono.stanford.edu/

Domain registration was free until 1995 when the National Science Foundation decided to change this.

One third of the world population has never made a telephone call.

The first Sci-fi video game was Spacewar! created by a group of students at MIT in 1961.

Your eyeballs are three and a half percent salt.

Quotes:

The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take. (R. Carlson)

We don’t have time to stop for gas, we’re already late.(on how Software Projects are often Run) (M. Cleron)

Unless in communicating with it [a computer] one says exactly what one means, trouble is bound to result. (A. Turing)

It’s easy to cry “bug” when the truth is that you’ve got a complex system and sometimes it takes a while to get all the components to co-exist peacefully. (D. Vargas)

In general we are least aware of what our minds do best. (Marvin Minsky)

Tune of the Week:

Baddest Ruffest - Backyard Dog

Cool video footage of the week:

Wow – this is dedication to a passion…love it

(Don’t forget TWIG over at SFS for more fun)

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

Day-for-Night solar-powered geek dress – Made up of over 444 white circuit boards, it charges itself in daylight, with RGB LEDs on each tile set to change color when you wear it  in low lit conditions.

HTTPanties – Cool underwear for the geeky girls!

Geek dress code – a useful little table for non-geeks (so you won’t stick out at those conferences)

Top 10 geek vacations – and yes I have been to Bangalore

The Watchmen cup cakes – mmmmm…

Facts:

First programmable computer was the Z1 developed by Konrad Zuse (1936-38)

First commercially available computer was the UNIVAC (1951)

Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in 1963

USENET (the decentralized news group network) was created by Steve Bellovin, a graduate student at University of North Carolina, and programmers Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. (1976 – earliest social network?)

Programming language used to create the web was C (took 3 months)

Quotes:

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. (G. Galilie)

We flew down weekly to meet with IBM, but they thought the way to measure software was the amount of code we wrote, when really the better the software, the fewer lines of code. (W. Gates)

Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance. (J. Horning)

Any clod can have the facts; having opinions is an art. (C. McCabe)

Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity. (E. C. Zeeman)

Tune of the week:

Pure shores – All Saints

Cool video footage of the week:

“You are GREAT! You have amazing cheekbones” – make you smile :p

(After this why not head over to SFS for TWIG if this is not enough geeky fun for you)

Without further ado…

Stuff I really liked this week…

Hospital food from around the world – nasty and yummy platters of goo.

Star Trek USB Voip Handset – …oh come on…it’s cool.

R2 D2 Trash Can – I’m not sure how practical it is but it’d look good in my kitchen.

Nutritional scales – imagine all the stuff you could weigh! Shoes, hammers, your dog, fingernail clippings…Come on, you know you would.

ReadywhenUR SMS kettle – text your kettle and it’ll start to boil soon as it gets the message – what more can I say.

Facts:

Computer technology use accounts for 2% of anthropogenic CO2 (same as the aviation industry)

The “Love Hurts” virus hit in spring 2000 and infected affected millions of computers and caused more damage than any other computer virus to date.

An IC that cost $1000 in 1959 now costs less than $10.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen formed Traf-O-Data in 1971 to sell their computer traffic-analysis systems.

Quotes:

Any performance problem can be solved by removing a level of indirection. (M. Haertel)

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. (R. Hamming)

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. (D. Knuth)

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. (A. Maslow)

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. (C. Mingus)

Tune of the week…

Be Young Be Foolish Be Happy – The Tams

Cool video footage of the week:

Apple Mac booting up (1986)