Monthly Archives: November 2007

Electric paper airplane launcher kit

Fun looking $14 to launch paper airplanes -
This is a fun educational aid product designed to demonstrate scientific concepts taught in school curriculum. Ready for take off! Kit contains everything you need to learn how spinning motors and plastic discs are used to launch a paper plane at up to 31 mph (50km/h). An ideal [...]

Cow Falls from Sky, Barely Misses Couple

A Chelan County fire chief says a couple were lucky they weren’t killed by a cow that fell off a 200-foot cliff and smashed their minivan. District 5 Chief Arnold Baker says they missed being killed by a matter of inches Sunday as they drove on Highway 150 near Manson.The 600-pound cow fell about 200 [...]

Pac-Man + Zork = Pac-Txt

One day, this guy named RicMoo came home from a party where they had joked about mashing up Pac-Man with Zork [wiki]. Being a little drunk, RicMoo decided to actually make the game:
Wth?! Why would anyone invest the time and effort to build such a useless game?
Well, I had just got back from a party [...]

Screensaver displays security cam images

Michael says: SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screen saver that shows about 400 live security camera videos from public accessible Axis network cameras. It shows surprising scenes from underwater pool cameras, cows in milking machines, to shopping malls and street cameras. Link…
straight stolen from Boing Boing

Lottery Confusion

A British Lottery scratch-off game sold by Camelot stores had to be pulled from circulation after the math involved confused too many players. The Cool Cash Lotto ticket dealt with temperatures, often below zero. To win a prize, the temperature number under the scratch off had to be lower than the one displayed on the [...]

Robert Bruno’s Steel House

That’s architect and sculptor Robert Bruno’s steel house/sculpture in Lubbock, Texas. Bruno spent 23 years building this strange home that looks like a giant pig out of 110 tons of steel!
Links (lots of pics): Robert’s official website [Flash] | Article at Dallas Art Revue, Sociothought, video at Ursi’s Blog
straight stolen from Neatorama

Google Sketchup for Dummies

SketchUp is Google’s free 3D drawing program. It’s easy to use, but it’s even easier when you watch someone with a lot of SketchUp experience use the application and explain what they’re doing. Aidan Chopra is an experienced SketchUp user. In fact, he wrote Google SketchUp for Dummies. (Here’s PC World’s generally glowing review of [...]

Man with Horn-Like Growth on His Head

Ma Zhong Nan, a 93-year-old man living in a small village in China, recounts how a horn began to sprout on his head five years ago. Ma was combing his hair one day and carelessly injured his scalp. Because it was just a small wound, he did not pay much attention to it. Little [...]

Nightmarishly complicated shower in Japan

Cartoonist Lars Martinson reminisces over a a shower he had to use in Japan. It sounds like something out of a bad dream. It was an imposing metal unit, and its operation required the use of five different cranks and knobs. That evening my girlfriend provided the necessary explanation: “Turn this knob to start the [...]

Scary MBR-nuking program inspired by XKCD geeky webcomic

Dustin sez, “After reading Friday's XKCD (#340) [Ed note: in which the punchline involves a love-letter written to the narrator's master boot record], I was inspired to write a program that does exactly that — it writes a 'love note' to your computers MBR, except in a neat twist it displays the 'love note' on [...]

An appreciation of the Real Super Mario Bros 2. The…

An appreciation of the Real Super Mario Bros 2. The game was released in Japan in 1986 but was considered too difficult/weird for US gamers and a different Mario 2 (based on a Japanese game called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic) was released to the US.
In most games, you trust that the designer is guiding [...]

Anthony Bourdain on the best method for finding good food in…

Anthony Bourdain on the best method for finding good food in any city: provoke the nerds.
Take the city you want to go to and just google up some restaurant names that serve the dish you’re after. Then got to chowhound or another foodie site, and rather than asking about restaurants, you put up an enthusiastic [...]

Bacon-Wrapped Turkey

Scaramouch says you can improve almost any food by wrapping it in bacon. For Thanksgiving, you might want to try Bacon-Wrapped Turkey this year. Here’s the recipe, with a video….
straight stolen from YesButNoButYes

Ghostly Gas Station Cloud

(Live Leak link)
A ghostly image has been observed by both witnesses and by security cameras. Surveillance video at a gas station in Parma, Ohio shows a “blue cloud” hovering over the pump area. Some people think it’s a ghost or an angel, but no explanation has been found so far. Link to story. -via Arbroath
straight [...]

Google Releases Android SDK, Developing Open Mobile Platform

Today Google released the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Android (what was previously rumored to be the mysterious Gphone), a free, open mobile platform being developed by The Open Handset Alliance. Here’s a demo video of Android showing some of the applications that will be available on the new mobile platform.
In order encourage developers to [...]

20-minute video about how to turn a sphere inside out…

20-minute video about how to turn a sphere inside out without creases or sharp corners. Way more interesting than it sounds…watch until about 1:45 to have your mind blown a little bit. (via 3quarksdaily)
(link)
straight stolen from kottke.org

links for 2007-11-15

Mike Clark’s Weblog
attachment_fu image upload tutorial
(tags: rails attachment_fu plugin upload rubyonrails tutorial)

links for 2007-11-08

Computer Science Study Guides - SparkNotes
(tags: programming reference code tutorial tutorials)

links for 2007-11-07

Hessian Binary Web Service Protocol
(tags: webservices framework hessian rpc opensource programming)

American Science & Surplus : Items Just Off the Truck
(tags: science surplus electronics hardware)

links for 2007-11-05

drawing polygons on google maps
(tags: code google googlemaps programming tutorial API)