Matthew says:
Swedish graduate student Emil Ernerfeldt created the program Phun, a 2D physics playground, and has made it free to download for non-commercial use.
He demonstrates it in a zenful YouTube video, where he creates devices like cars and piston engines in seconds using simple shapes.
Download app here.
straight stolen from Boing Boing
Through a clever use of the “selection” CSS attribute, you can make blocks of text that turn into blocky artwork when selected.
LinkUpdate:
Erik sez, “Thanks for linking to my little demo of css3. After making that one, I made one that allows you to supply an image and text and it generates it for you.”
straight stolen from Boing Boing
straight stolen from reddit.com: what's new online
Adam Shepard had $25 and the clothes on his back. As a challenge, he set himself a year to get an apartment, a car, and $2500 in savings.
To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education. During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.
The whole thing is recounted in Shepard’s book, Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream. (via cyn-c)
(link)
straight stolen from kottke.org
Police in central England are hunting for a badly scorched would-be copper power cable thief after finding a hacksaw embedded in an 11,000 volt power cable on Saturday night.
The thief, who also left a lit blow torch at the scene, is expected to be badly charred, spiky haired and not exactly the brightest bulb in the socket.
“The sheer stupidity of cutting through power cables should be glaringly obvious to everyone,” said Phil Wilson, customer operations manager with local power company Central Networks.
“At the very least putting the hacksaw through the cable would have created an almighty bang and the line would have burned for quite a few seconds, showering them with molten copper… We can only assume they left in a great hurry or they were injured and were dragged away by an accomplice.”
But searches of local hospitals have so far not found the culprit, a spokeswoman for Derbyshire Police said on Tuesday.
Source: Stuff
straight stolen from Spluch
Dave Park says,
Amplive made a remix of Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ and was planning to release it without the band’s permission leading to a cease and desist order on December 18. Today it was announced that both parties had since met and Amplive was now given permission to release the album. Downloadable MP3s are now available.
straight stolen from Boing Boing
Technical Writing Geek writes “The Haiku project, which began shortly after the death of BeOS in 2001, aims to bring together the technical advantages of BeOS and the freedom of open source. ‘The project has drawn dozens of contributors who have written over seven million lines of code. Although Haiku is nearly feature-complete, there are still numerous bugs that must be fixed before it is ready for day-to-day use. The design principles behind Haiku are very closely aligned with those of BeOS. The central goal of the Haiku project is to create an operating system that is ideally suited for use on the desktop–this differs significantly from Linux and other open-source operating systems which are intended for use in a diverse range of settings including server and embedded environments.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
straight stolen from Slashdot: Developers
It’s a perpetuum mobile!
straight stolen from Blame It On The Voices
While this looks to be very useful, and quite clever considering the shape of both ends, I can’t help but think of chimpanzees using a simple stick to get ants out of a log. It’s much more civilized, of course. The title is what threw me into chimp thoughts.
“This beautiful, functional tool comes in a transparent box featuring a typographic wordplay in black lettering along with suggestions for use. STIR POT – FLIP STEAK – SCOOP JAR – SLICE CAKE – BUTTER TOAST – CHECK SAUCE – SCRAPE BOTTOM – STOP DOOR – SCRATCH BACK – FEEL GOOD. It’s uses are limited only by your imagination.”
[posted by katie]
straight stolen from Better Living Through Design
Office pranks, ah these can be quite fun. They can actually become quite competitive also, employees always trying to outdo the other. I have come across some very unique and fun pranks, but this one has to be one of my favorites.
Scott from OdeToCode.com decided to “hack” an office HP Laser Jet Printer. His prank of choice, was to change the LCD default system messages to something completely different and fun.
“I wasn’t sure if I should put this article under “Code” or “Humor”, since it contains both. Ultimately it is much funnier than technical, but full source is included for you to use in your own environment.”
Link: OdeToCode
straight stolen from Hacked Gadgets – DIY Tech Blog
Canon made this 5200mm lens several years ago, capable of taking photographs of objects “18 to 32 miles away.” That little knob on the right? That’s the camera. It even came with its own sighting scope!
Brochure [CanonFD.com via Kottke]
straight stolen from Boing Boing Gadgets
