toshism

• Multicast over TCP/IP HOWTO
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• Appliance parts, electronics parts & more from PartStore.com
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Twins separated at birth have married each other without realising they were brother and sister, it has been revealed.

The British couple have now been granted an annulment after a special High Court hearing. Judges ruled the marriage had never validly existed.

Full details of how the brother and sister fell in love and married have been kept secret, along with their identities.

They were separated soon after birth. Each was then adopted by different families but neither was told they had a twin.

The couple had no idea they were blood relatives until after their wedding.

Experts warn that it highlights the need for the rights of children to know the identity of their parents to be strengthened.

Source: This Is London & BBC
Tags: Twins | Married

straight stolen from Spluch

Rules of Thumb is attempting to collect all of the world’s Rules of Thumb in one place.

A rule of thumb is a homemade recipe for making a guess. It is an easy-to-remember guide that falls somewhere between a mathematical formula and a shot in the dark. A farmer, for in­stance, knows to plant his corn when oak leaves are the size of squirrels’ ears. An economics profes­sor knows from sad experience that inviting more than 25 percent of the guests for a univer­sity dinner party from the economics depart­ment ruins the conversation. Rules of thumb are a kind of tool. They help you appraise a problem or situation. They make it easier to consider the subtleties of the topic at hand; they give you a feel for a subject.

via Boing Boing

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straight stolen from Laughing Squid

[link][more]

straight stolen from reddit.com: what's new online

• H-Haus – Models
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Just testing out Textmate’s ability to make blog posts through xmlrpc. Pretty neat. I may never have to leave textmate again!

Screencaps comparing the DVD and HD versions of LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring (roll over to toggle the images). Quite a difference. (thx, alex)

(link)

straight stolen from kottke.org

Enjoy this video of a perpetual motion machine in action. I don’t believe it for a second, but it’s fun to see the thing in action and listen to the guy’s patter. Also, the sound the wheel makes as it spins is pleasant.

Link (Thanks, pooty McDooDoo!)

straight stolen from Boing Boing

Apple announced newer faster Mac Pros today. They start at $2799 but you can configure them up to several thousand dollars (including software and accessories).

The really expensive bits are the 32 GB of RAM ($9100), the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 video card ($2850), the four 15,000 RPM hard drives ($800 each), the two 30″ Cinema Displays ($1700 each), a Fibre Channel Card ($1000), and an unlimited-client copy of Mac OS X Server ($999).

That’s a lot of money but you’ve got to remember that in addition to satisfying your computing needs well into the next decade, this baby will heat your entire house and provide a metal cooktop surface hot enough to prepare meals on. Mmm, 15,000 RPM omelettes! (thx, jake)

straight stolen from kottke.org

• Merb | Looking for a better framework?
  ruby framework
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• Forgotten NY
  neat page about NYC
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• Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection >> Home
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Matthieu Aubry, Julien Rouvière and Xavier Maurice have developed a drum system that uses two cameras to track drum sticks in real-time. This allows the player to drum away on virtual drums, the computer analyzes what the player is hitting in the virtual world and plays the corresponding sounds.

“Video acquisition of the 2 cameras simultaneously, at a frequency of 30Hz. At this step, image data are huge: 640 * 480 * 3 bytes * 2 cameras * 30Hz = 55Mb/s transferred on the firewire bus! Because we have the 2d positions of the sticks on the screen, and because we know the position of the cameras in 3 dimensions, we can determine via geometrical algorithms the 3d positions of the sticks. Using a positioning algorithm, we determine if the stick is hitting a drum element. We then compute the sound localization and the volume, depending on the speed.”

(more…)