Geeks earn $4600 a day selling penis pills online

Geeks earn $4600 a day selling penis pills online: "Thousands of tech-savvy Eastern Europeans are earning up to $US4000 ($4600) a day for each spam campaign selling illegal penis pills, fake anti-virus software and counterfeit luxury products."

James May's Lego house demolished

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | James May's Lego house demolished: "A two-storey Lego house built by 1,000 volunteers for BBC Two show Toy Stories is no more despite efforts to find a new owner to save it from demolition."

World's Most Sensitive Astronomical Camera Developed

World's Most Sensitive Astronomical Camera Developed: "A team of Université de Montréal researchers, led by physics PhD student Olivier Daigle, has developed the world's most sensitive astronomical camera. Marketed by Photon etc., a young Quebec firm, the camera will be used by the Mont-Mégantic Observatory and NASA, which purchased the first unit."

Mozilla Programmers Join Palm in Apple War

Mozilla Programmers Join Palm in Apple War - Tom's Guide: "While the current battle is over in regards to iTunes, the war still rages on between Palm and Apple, as two programmers have left Mozilla and are now signed on with Palm. Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith, who previously worked on Mozilla's Bespin tool as well as created elaborate Web interfaces for the Ajaxian website, said that it was time to use browsers to 'bypass Apple's controlling role in mobile applications' according to CNET. However, neither programmer mentioned Apple by name in their blogs."

Computer hacks jump in '09: study

CBC News - Technology & Science - Computer hacks jump in '09: study: "A survey of 600 information technology professionals compiled by Telus Corp. and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto showed that the number of attacks jumped to 11.3 per organization in the past year, up from three in 2008."

Google gadget lets websites go multilingual

AFP: Google gadget lets websites go multilingual: "A 'translator gadget' powered by Google Translate offers to transform pages for visitors if the language settings in their browsers are different from the language of a particular website, according to Google product manager Jeff Chin"

Geek Alert: Process Hacker Lets You Tweak Your PC For Free

Geek Alert: Process Hacker Lets You Tweak Your PC For Free - washingtonpost.com: "Learn far more about your running software than you ever knew there was to know with potent--free--tool Process Hacker"

Chipmunks took Wall-E for a ride in 2008

Top Selling DVDs of 2008: "This unknown fact was slipped under the rug maybe to avoid public humiliation. This proves that potty jokes still sell."

How to Create a Toon Shaded Effect in Blender

How to Create a Toon Shaded Effect in Blender - Cgtuts+: "In this beginner/ intermediate level tutorial, we are going to take a look at creating a simple toon shaded render for our characters in blender. Among the topics that will be covered are: basic lighting, creating and adjusting the toon materials, rendering, and composite nodes."

What is front-end development?

What is front-end development? | Help | guardian.co.uk: "In our visually and tecnhologically sophisticated society, access to information and knowledge seems easier than making sense of it or decide its veracity - on the web, pages and appplications are built by front-end developers to present and put data or relationships in context."

Banking Trojan steals money from under your nose

Banking Trojan steals money from under your nose | InSecurity Complex - CNET News: "Researchers at security firm Finjan have discovered details of a new type of banking Trojan horse that doesn't just steal your bank log-in credentials but actually steals money from your account while you are logged in and displays a fake balance."

Pixar Animator Gives Characters a Lego Makeover

Pixar Animator Gives Characters a Lego Makeover: "Pixar animator and BURN-E director Angus MacLane's most famous works may be computer-generated, but in his spare time he works in the more physical medium of plastic bricks, rendering his favorite characters in Lego."

Ignoring RIAA lawsuits cheaper than going to trial

Ignoring RIAA lawsuits cheaper than going to trial - Ars Technica: "The same federal judge who oversaw the Joel Tenenbaum file-sharing trial earlier this year passed out default judgments this week against other file-swappers who never bothered to show up—and they now owe far less than Tenenbaum."

How to Cross the Ocean on a Freighter Ship

How to Cross the Ocean on a Freighter Ship | The Art of Manliness: "If you’re tired of ho-hum traveling by plane and want to experience a trip aboard a freighter ship, here’s what you need to know to get started."

Secret Bookcase Entrance

Low Voltage Projects (dajjhman): "this project, torn down after the Homecoming Dance at my High School, was to build a Wayne Manor style secret entrance to the exclusive Senior Lounge. Instead of a real bookcase, sue to construction and time concerns, we used a flush wall door and covered the area in bookcase wall paper. To open the Door, a bust of William Shakespeare is flipped up and a hidden switch in the bust activates the motor attached to the door. the door opens, the switched is turned off, and the person may enter. We planned to make our own bust, as I do have the materials and skills, but someone found a place that sells them so they bought one as a convenience."

ChartFlight – Computer-generated Data Flights

ChartFlight – Computer-generated Data Flights | BlenderNation: "As one of the few 3D applications, you can run Blender on a webserver to do cool things. Here's a good example: ChartFlight."

Monitor home energy with AMEE

Monitor home energy with AMEE: "Electricity is invisible. To understand how people use it, you need to make it visible. This tutorial will show you how easy it is to build a Web-based energy monitoring system yourself, using a Current Cost real-time energy monitor and AMEE, a neutral Web-based API for energy data, combined with some XML, Ruby, Rails, and Ajax."

TinyProjector

TinyProjector: "TinyProjector is a very small portable character projector, based on inexpensive laser diodes, projecting a single line of text onto nearby walls and tables. TinyProjector might be useful for projecting text from portable and wearable devices like cellhones and PocketPCs that will be connected, e.g., via wireless serial connection."

How to lock down a laptop to a table with LAlarm laptop alarm

How to lock down a laptop to a table with LAlarm laptop alarm: "The following procedure locks down a laptop to a table or other immobile object. It requires 1) a USB flash drive and 2) a neck strap (or similar material), which will be used to fasten to the USB flash drive one end and ties around a table leg or other immobile object the other end. It is useful when you do not have access to a power outlet."

Calculate your computer's carbon footprint using AMEE

Calculate your computer's carbon footprint using AMEE: "As the use of IT continues to increase, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems will make up a large proportion of CO2 emissions. ICT providers are trying to find ways to reduce these emissions through efficiency, cloud computing, or other approaches, but the monitoring of such systems is also an essential requirement. The Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine (AMEE) platform provides a standard framework for tracking carbon emissions and implements a variety of calculation methodologies. Investigate some approaches to calculating ICT emissions that are possible using the AMEE platform, and check out Ruby scripts that enable the automatic monitoring of such systems."

Tip: Data scoring: Convert data with XQuery

Tip: Data scoring: Convert data with XQuery: "The process of converting data is one of migrating information from an unsuitable source or format to a suitable one—often not an exact science. Data scoring is a way to measure the accuracy of your conversion. Discover a simple scoring technique in XQuery that you can apply to the result of a small text-to-XML conversion."

DIY Street-View Camera

IEEE Spectrum: DIY Street-View Camera: "Create Google Street View-like panoramas with cheap webcams and open-source software"

Worst of the Worst 2009

ROTTEN TOMATOES: Worst of the Worst 2009: "Over the last decade, we've collected reviews for thousands of movies. Most films, even profoundly mediocre ones, can expect to receive at least cursory support from the pundits. However, once in a while, a film will take such a critical drubbing that further attention is warranted. That's where our Worst of the Worst list comes in. We've compiled a veritable cornucopia of dull, foolhardy, and outright terrible films, from legendary duds (Battlefield Earth) to chuckle-deficient comedies (Epic Movie), from hapless sequels (Basic Instinct 2) to scare-free would-be fright fests (Alone in the Dark). We've pored over the reviews to bring you the lowest Tomatometers of the decade -- including several (All About Steve, Whiteout) that were released within the last several weeks. In other words, we suffered for our work -- now it's your turn."

Techniques Tuesday: Bubba Makes Covered Buttons

Techniques Tuesday: Bubba Makes Covered Buttons « Flipt Studio: "Down in Nashville, Tennessee, Bubba Austin, owner of A &W Upholstery, shows you how to make covered buttons like a professional. If you need several covered buttons for a project and the fabric store kits aren’t strong enough, run into an upholstery shop with your fabric. For a few dollars, they’ll probably be happy to make the covered buttons for you. Bubba has a few How To videos on eHow you may enjoy."
Upholstery Techniques -- powered by eHow.com

What global warming looks like

What global warming looks like — Crooked Timber: "Some amazing time lapse sequences of glacier retreat and a spectacular ice-shelf collapse"

How accurate was Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" about the future?

How accurate was Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" about the future? - currybetdotnet - 18 February, 2009: "I recently re-watched Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie masterpiece '2001: A Space Odyssey', and I was struck by how accurate many of the film's portrayals of the future were."

The Deepening (NSFW)

The Deepening: "Dive into the most kick-ass 'select your own adventure' ever. Your decisions determine whether Stevenson and Bukowski will save the day or bite the big one, simple as point 'n click. So, strap in and GO DEEP."

What's inside future low-cost Apple MacBooks?

What's inside future low-cost Apple MacBooks? | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News: "The low-cost MacBooks may appear sooner than expected and would be 'the most affordable notebook offerings in the Mac maker's history,' according to an AppleInsider report."

10 easy ways to play with Linux without leaving Windows

10 easy ways to play with Linux without leaving Windows: "While I haven't made the switch to Linux full time, I find myself spending more and more time experimenting of late. In particular, I'm enjoying projects like Moblin and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix."

Interfacing a Microcontroller with a PS/2 Keyboard

NerdKits - Interrupts: Interfacing a Microcontroller with a PS/2 Keyboard: "A very important step when moving from basic microcontroller programming to advanced microcontroller programming is the introduction of interrupts into your code. Interrupts are pieces of code, much like functions, that are executed when outside events occur. Interrupts can be used to react to all sorts of outside inputs including pin changes driven by outside devices. With the use of interrupts, you give your code the ability to react to events as they happen (interrupting your other code), instead of waiting for your code to get to a place where it can handle an event (which is known as 'polling'). It is a programing idea that can take some getting used to, but the power it gives you in an embedded system is well worth the effort."

5 Things You Can Do to Put Linux in the Driver Seat

5 Things You Can Do to Put Linux in the Driver Seat - Linux Servers and Apache News Story: "This is a plea to all hardware manufacturers: Please create Linux drivers for your hardware. OK, so Linux isn't the Stormin' Norman of the Desktop arena but that doesn't mean its users don't want or need drivers for hardware. I don't blame the kind volunteers that donate their time to program bits and pieces of the Linux kernel and associated programs but I do blame the hardware manufacturers for not supporting a huge user base of Linux users. I'm tired of it and it's time for action."

FRHACK OS v1 alpha1 – Pentesting/Security LiveCD

FRHACK OS v1 alpha1 – Pentesting/Security LiveCD | Darknet – The Darkside: "FRHACK OS is an updated/modified version of the latest BackTrack 4 ISO with many updated tools and fixes."

Why Good Writing Matters – And How You Can Improve

Why Good Writing Matters – And How You Can Improve - Dumb Little Man: "In today’s world, being able to write well is of vital importance, whatever your industry. You could be a computer programmer, a small business owner, an administrator ... whatever your job, it’s likely to involve a lot of words."

The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior

The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle"

Upcycled Dumpsters: Urban Guerrilla Eco-Art

Upcycled Dumpsters: Urban Guerrilla Eco-Art | WebUrbanist: "How many different ways can you upcycle a dumpster? In a project called ‘Skip Conversions’, eco-conscious artist Oliver Bishop Young proved that what used to be grimy, unsanitary trash receptacles can be transformed for a myriad of uses including swimming pools, skateboard ramps, gardens and even public toilets."

Ten years of Web development

Ten years of Web development: "Ten years of developerWorks has created a vast amount of material. It's interesting to pore back through the technology that we've explored and see how much things have changed. I'll be looking at our colorful past along with what was going on in our popular culture at the time to get a sense of perspective. Join the ride."

Build an Advanced Drifting Car Rig in 3ds Max

Build an Advanced Drifting Car Rig in 3ds Max – Day 1 - Cgtuts+: "In this advanced level tutorial, you will learn all of the steps necessary to build a fully functioning car rig in 3D Studio Max. This rig features working suspension, steering and body roll, as well as some functionality for drifting and powerslides. You will learn how to set up internal functionality through links, constraints, expressions, and parameter wiring. The final result will be a robust rig with easy, and accessible controls."

10 Insane Interiors and Radical Room Designs

10 Insane Interiors and Radical Room Designs | WebUrbanist: "It’s been said there’s a fine line between creativity and insanity, and the more creative designers get, the more insane their creations become. These 10 insane interiors and radical room designs show what happens when one moves beyond the fundamental to, well, just mental."

Was Walt Disney a fascist?

The Straight Dope: Was Walt Disney a fascist?: "I've heard rumors on and off for years about Walt Disney. I've heard suggestions that he was a fascist, a communist, a racist and an antisemite. The first two are of course contradictory. Web searches didn't help to straighten out anything in my mind. Was he a political nut? Did he hate blacks and Jews? Or are these typical malicious lies we like to tell about great men so we don't have to feel so unaccomplished?"

Chuck Jones: Four Months At Disney

Chuck Jones: Four Months At Disney (Wade's Wayback Machine) by Wade Sampson: "“When Warners shut down the [animation studio], I went to work at Disney’s for a while. I couldn’t stand it. [Walt Disney]asked me what kind of job I wanted and the kind of job I wanted was his. But I got to know him and like him,' animator and director Chuck Jones told well-respected and well-liked animation historian Joe Adamson in a 1980 published interview. 'Walt called me in when he was going to underwrite the Chouinard Art Institute and the all-new California Institute of the Arts."

The Slow Secret: How to Make Lasting Changes in Your Life

The Slow Secret: How to Make Lasting Changes in Your Life: "How many times have you rushed into making changes in your life — a habit change, learning a new skill — only to have it flop?"

Solutions for Ten Potential Travel Disasters

Solutions for Ten Potential Travel Disasters - Dumb Little Man: "A vacation is supposed to help you escape from the stress and chaos of your everyday life. It should be all long walks on the beach and lingering over candle-lit dinners or exploring colorful bazaars and hiking nature trails. It should not be having an IV drip inserted into your arm or hanging around a police station for two days straight. Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law dictates that it’s when you’re relaxing poolside with piña colada in hand that disaster will strike."

Applying Special Effects in 3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3:

Applying Special Effects in 3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Part 1: "In this two part article series by Gastón C. Hillar, we will use advanced physics and add special effects to the scenes. We will learn to generate gravity effects, add fluids with movements, and use transitions to determine different states in a game."

15 Cool Urban Art Projects and Dreamy Product Designs

15 Cool Urban Art Projects and Dreamy Product Designs | WebUrbanist: "Chilean artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz never fails to amaze viewers with his offbeat and sometimes bizarre designs and art installations. His urban art has been seen all over Santiago, while his innovative product designs have long been a favorite of design blogs. His projects have won numerous awards, and Errazuriz himself has received a Fulbright grant, a Chilean Presidential scholarship, a New York University scholarship and a Deigo Portales University scholarship."

The Five Key Items in Your Productivity Toolbox

The Five Key Items in Your Productivity Toolbox - Dumb Little Man: "When it comes to getting things done during your workday, you need to choose the right tool too. So what are the key items in your productivity toolkit – and how can you use them?"

Microsoft munches super startup carcass

Microsoft munches super startup carcass • Channel Register: "Microsoft has eaten the carcass of Interactive Supercomputing, a creator of HPC development tools for parallelizing applications."

Open source code quality improving

Open source code quality improving • The Register: "The quality and security levels of open source code are continuing to improve, according to the latest annual audit by code analysis tools vendor Coverity."

Zend ushers PHP onto cloud of clouds

Zend ushers PHP onto cloud of clouds • The Register: "Backed by Microsoft, IBM, and three other outfits beckoning developers into the sky, Zend Technologies has unleashed an open source API for fashioning PHP apps that float on multiple clouds."

9 Secrets of Truly Happy People

9 Secrets of Truly Happy People - Dumb Little Man: "I’ve been lucky enough to meet some truly happy people over the years, and believe me, there are definite secrets to their success in this area. Let’s take a look!"

42 Exemplary XSI Tutorials

42 Exemplary XSI Tutorials - Cgtuts+: "t took me a while to round these up, but from the farthest depths of the interwebs, they are here at last. This time I have imported the motherload....42 stupendous tutorials to keep your XSI mania at bay!"

Trace the growth of XML over 10 years

Trace the growth of XML over 10 years: "XML was born in 1998 when it became a Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation and the IBM developerWorks Web site was launched the following year. Over those 10 years, the XML zone has hosted over a thousand articles, tutorials, and tips. We've covered technology, tools, standards, products, best practices, predictions, evaluations, and developer experiences, and have supported a variety of forums. A 10-year birthday is a good time to look back at some of the authors who made the XML zone what it is."

Pizza workers strike over Internet porn

Pizza workers strike over Internet porn | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: "I cannot imagine how much fun it is to work at a pizza-making plant."

Become The Change You Believe In

Become The Change You Believe In | Self Development: "The only thing that matters is what you think about yourself. Start thinking that you are more than what you are everyday. The only limits you have are the ones you created within yourself."

Universal, 2 Gyro Image stabilizer

Universal, 2 Gyro Image stabilizer: "This image stabilizer can be used with any lens and camera. It works the in same way as the Hubble telescope keeps pointed to the same object during multi day exposures."

YouTube - 36 Skaters Make Downhill Neon Video Game

YouTube - 36 Skaters Make Downhill Neon Video Game: "Crew of Freeborders take over an SF street to create a real life video game. http://www.freebord.com."

GNOME 2.28 Release Notes

GNOME 2.28 Release Notes: "GNOME 2.28 is the latest version of the GNOME Desktop: a popular, multi-platform desktop environment for your computer. GNOME's focus is ease of use, stability and first-class internationalisation and accessibility support. GNOME is Free and Open Source Software and provides all of the common tools computer users expect of a modern computing environment, such as e-mail, groupware, web browsing, file management, multimedia and games. Furthermore, GNOME provides a flexible and powerful platform for software developers, both on the desktop and in mobile applications."

Are Twitter direct messages safe?

Are Twitter direct messages safe? | IT Project Failures | ZDNet.com: "A twitter colleague sent me a direct message that apparently ended up in another user’s mailbox. This error suggests that private information sent on Twitter could be exposed to non-intended recipients."

How to Track Breaking News Alerts Online With Twitter

How to Track Breaking News Alerts Online With Twitter: "Forget about the newspapers, radio, and television. When it comes to breaking news alerts first, the Internet reigns supreme and Twitter is king. Whether an earthquake rocks some part of the world or a famous figure dies, the popular free social networking and micro-blogging service will let you know about it within seconds of its occurrence."

Learn Qt programming with our free tutorials

Learn Qt programming with our free tutorials | TuxRadar: "We've put up three tutorials using Qt, and we think you should try them. Why? Because they use Nokia's awesome new Qt Creator tool for quick design. Because Qt is easy to learn, cross-platform, super fast and lots of fun. Because each of those tutorials is a complete, finished project that does something useful and is easily extended to fit your needs. But most of all because coding is fun and everyone should give it a try at least onc"

A Computing Future from Microsoft: Large and Cheap Displays

A Computing Future from Microsoft: Large and Cheap Displays - O'Reilly Radar: "Chris Pratley, the head of Microsoft's Office Labs, gave the PICNIC audience a peek into the future they envision when planning their products. What is that future? It was encapsulated in the above video that they made a year ago. Some of the technologies (Augmented Reality and realtime language translation for example) have already come to the fruition (and they are going to need to make a new video soon before it all happens)."

10 myths about HIV and Aids

10 myths about HIV and Aids - Telegraph: "Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, drew fierce criticism from Aids campaigners in 2005 when he told a court he had showered after having sex with a woman with HIV, believing this would reduce his chances of contracting the virus."

Master the Art of Listening and Watch All Your Relationships Thrive

Master the Art of Listening and Watch All Your Relationships Thrive - Dumb Little Man: "No wonder listening is an undervalued art. Research shows that we speak at a rate of about 125 words per minute, yet we have the capacity to listen to approximately 400 words per minute. So what are we doing with that extra space in our minds when someone else is talking? Are we really listening?"

Fine Art Photography: Work of 24 Famous Photographers

Fine Art Photography: Work of 24 Famous Photographers | WebUrbanist: "When a photographer creates a picture that matches the creative vision of the artist, successfully tells the story the artist needed told, the photograph is considered fine art. However, there is not one standard and universally accepted definition of fine art; what achieves satisfaction for an artistic photographer can be as diverse as tastes in art by people in all cultures. Fine art photographs are often one of a kind, from an era long past, and taken by photographers made famous previously in the world of photography. As the years progressed, photos considered fine art have evolved as the photographers and technology changed the way pictures are taken. So too has society’s perception changed regarding what is considered fine art. Thus photography that is fine art is now decided upon by each individual and what that person considers to be beautiful. It is the photographer and the beholder of the picture that decide if the photo is treasure or trash. Here is a collection of fine art photography: the work of 24 famous photographers."

Sneak Peek: The Disney Family Museum

Sneak Peek: The Disney Family Museum | Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation: "Animator Steve Segal had an opportunity to preview the new Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, which is opening to the public next week. He sent us this eyewitness report of what to expect"

How to Make a Skateboard

How to Make a Skateboard: "i'm going to show you people how to make a skatebaord, tell you the materials you need and where to get the materials."

Details of computer tablet emerge, but is it real?

Details of computer tablet emerge, but is it real? -- latimes.com: "The device shown in a Web video and code-named Courier is reportedly from Microsoft. The company neither confirms nor denies the product's existence."

DIY: How to sync up your computer to your television set

DIY: How to sync up your computer to your television set | Brand X | Los Angeles Times: "The demand for set-top box devices, which enable users to watch online shows on their TV, is slowly climbing. But obstacles such as confusing setups and steep prices [up to $1,000] have significantly hindered the uptake. According to research by the Dell'Oro Group, in fact, sales declined during the second quarter of this year. But in the next four years, set-top box sales are expected to increase sixfold and sales of a new breed of Internet-enabled TVs are predicted to rise as well, according to research firm iSuppli."

1st Successful Amateur Hi-Def Video from The Edge of Space.

BEAR-4: "The balloon and camera were launched at 7:44 AM, the balloon burst at 10:51 AM at 107,145 ft. and the camera landed via parachute at 11:40 AM, 89 miles from the launch site after a 3 hr. & 56 min. flight. The camera recorded a total of 4 hrs. & 22 min. of Hi-Def Video before it stopped recording 53 secs after landing, when its 32GB of memory was full. The only thing better would have been if the camera had recorded for several minutes more to captured the sound of us approaching and video of us opening its container."

New Light on the Plight of Winter Babies

New Light on the Plight of Winter Babies - WSJ.com: "Researchers Stumble Upon Alternative Explanation for the Lifelong Challenges Faced by Children Born in Colder Months"

Invasive plant species takes root in Canada

CBC News - Windsor - Invasive plant species takes root in Canada: "An invasive plant that has destroyed large swaths of land in the southern United States has been discovered for the first time in Canada."

How to create a bootable USB Ubuntu drive

How to create a bootable USB Ubuntu drive: "The Ubuntu desktop distribution is full of nifty tricks. One of those tricks is the ability to create a bootable USB Ubuntu drive quickly and easily. Used to be this trick wasn’t so easy. Not only did you have to format the USB drive, you had to manually create the file systems, copy the files, add a boot loader, and hope that it worked. Sometimes it didn’t, so you’d have to start all over again. All of this was done via the command line."

How To Pimp Your YouTube Channel and Other Miscellaneous Advice

How To Pimp Your YouTube Channel and Other Miscellaneous Advice - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW): "This may seem like shameless self-promotion, but if you read all the way to the bottom of this post, you'll benefit in ways that you wouldn't imagine. Besides, I figure that you'd want to know how to pimp your YouTube channel and get other miscellaneous advice. I could always blog about this topic, but the details have just been dished out in three videos and a podcast."

Now This is the Droid We're Looking For

Now This is the Droid We're Looking For | Popular Science: "To get rid of the mess of wires from his many videogame consoles, PopSci reader Brian De Vitis decided to repurpose his R2-D2-shaped cooler. The engineering student modified its legs and repainted it to look more realistic. Then he stacked the motherboards from the eight consoles on shelves inside, added a sound system, and rearranged the inputs so he could plug in controllers from the outside. To watch all the gaming action, he added a projector in the rig’s dome, just like the real R2’s."

7 cool Linux projects

7 cool Linux projects | TuxRadar: "As autumn begins, the nights start drawing in and you're no doubt itching for new things to do with your Linux box. Well, we asked our projects expert to rustle up 7 great things you can do on your penguin-powered machine - host a photo album, make sweet music, create stop-frame animations and more. Read on to get cracking!"

Top Open source zone articles of the past decade

Top Open source zone articles of the past decade: "Check out which Open source zone articles developerWorks readers found most interesting in the past 10 years. And get to know your Open source zone editor a little bit, too."

Don't Look Down: 10 Peculiarly Precarious Modern Buildings

Don't Look Down: 10 Peculiarly Precarious Modern Buildings | WebUrbanist: "he world’s worst skyscraper disaster is still fresh in our minds, and every year sees a new calamity in our global obsession with building storey after storey, higher and higher. You would think that all architects would be careful to make their buildings look as stable as mountains. You’d be wrong. Thanks to modern building materials and behind-the-scenes architectural wizardry, the new field of precarious-looking urban architecture is on the rise – as these ten vertigo-inducing examples illustrate."

Introducing Quercus, a Java-based PHP framework

Introducing Quercus, a Java-based PHP framework: "Quercus is a new approach to authoring Web services and applications using a mixture of Java™ technology and PHP. With the Quercus framework, Java and PHP are integrated with each other, thus allowing you to conveniently incorporate versatile Java libraries like Spring and Hibernate into applications. This article provides a brief introduction of the framework along with some code samples. Explore the features and advantages of the framework using a simple HelloWorld sample. And finally, understand the framework architecture and look at a real world example in more detail."

The Clojure programming language

The Clojure programming language: "Lisp is a programming language known for its expressiveness and power, but it was often thought of as not being well suited for general use. That has all changed with Clojure, a Lisp dialect that runs on the Java™ platform. Now you can harness the power of Lisp anywhere you have a Java Virtual Machine handy. In this article, you will see how to get started with Clojure and learn some of its syntax, as you take advantage of the Clojure plug-in for Eclipse to help you along the way."

"Long sleepers" show higher dementia risk

"Long sleepers" show higher dementia risk: "How could something that feels so good - a long night's sleep - have negative consequences? Unfortunately, that is one possibility that results of a new study suggest: Older adults who sleep nine or more hours each day may have a higher risk of developing dementia than those who spend fewer hours in bed."

I'm not crazy! 115 million cases of dementia by 2050

115 million cases of dementia by 2050 - The Globe and Mail: "The prevalence of Alzheimer's and other dementia-related diseases is climbing steadily worldwide, report says"

Integrate your PHP application with Google Contacts

Integrate your PHP application with Google Contacts: "The Google Contacts Data API provides a powerful, client-neutral API to read and modify a user's private Gmail contact information. Learn to retrieve, add, delete, and modify contacts through a custom PHP application with this API in an application context."

Bonus Video Podcasts for The Essential Motivation Handbook

Bonus Video Podcasts for The Essential Motivation Handbook: "We’ve created three bonus podcast videos addressing reader questions on motivation, as a thank-you for those who buy the ebook."

Google Finally Acknowledges UFO Drawings

Google Finally Acknowledges UFO Drawings - Tom's Hardware: "A few weeks back Google featured a drawing on its homepage that showed a UFO abducting the second O in the Google logo. An official tweet cleared up the confusion as to what the Google Doodle was referencing (Zero Wing, apparently) but several more UFO Doodles have appeared since. Sure, there was always an encoded tweet on hand to help decipher the special occasion, but today Google has officially acknowledged the UFOs on its blog, rather than just tweeting it."

Hacking USB Serial Ports

Openschemes.com - Articles » Hacking USB Serial Ports: "Today we’ve got a super-simple gadget hack of a commercial USB serial port adapter.
There are times when you need a low-voltage RS-232 port for interfacing with a microcontroller, some hobby project, or for poking around in some interesting system. And during many of these times, you may not want to go dig out the Arduino board or can’t find the right capacitors to build a MAX232 board. Or perhaps you are in a town or even a country without an awesome electronics junk store like Halted - you poor things! What can you do?"

Simple Cloud API project offers portability hopes

Simple Cloud API project offers portability hopes: "Nirvana in the cloud world, as in the ability to easily move from cloud service to cloud service without vendor lock-in, might be on its way for application developers."

Mauritius Pitches Sea-Cooled Data Centers

Mauritius Pitches Sea-Cooled Data Centers « Data Center Knowledge: "Can the island nation of Mauritius become an international data center hub? Economic development officials in the island chain in the western Indian Ocean believe that Mauritius can become a key hub connecting Africa, Asia and the Middle East. A key part of that pitch is the ocean itself, and its potential to help data center operators slash their cooling costs."

Space foosball: foosball gets virtual

space foosball: foosball gets virtual on [technabob]: "Space Foosball is a modern-day spin on the old foosball table does away with those mechanical men and ping pong balls and replaces them with pixels and a physics engine."

Six Monitors, One Video Card. Hands-On with AMD's Eyefinity

Six Monitors, One Video Card. Hands-On with AMD's Eyefinity | Maximum PC: "Today’s graphics cards can barely handle one 30-inch monitor in gaming. Pushing around 2560x1600 pixels is a challenge for current-generation GPUs. While it’s true that each new generation of graphics cards can push performance, we weren’t quite prepared for the preview AMD gave us of its upcoming DirectX 11–capable graphics hardware."

5 Practical Keys to Living The Life of Your Dreams

5 Practical Keys to Living The Life of Your Dreams - Dumb Little Man: "I’ve studied these principles over the last 15 years. From this study I’ve come up with five keys that are necessary for you to live the life of your dreams. This article recaps those five keys. Read them, study them, and then put them into action; soon you to will be living the life of your dreams:"

Why Developers Get Fired

Why Developers Get Fired — Datamation.com: "Those are words that no developer wants to hear, especially with an exclamation point. Perhaps you are thinking it could never happen to you."

Free Linux, Proprietary Linux

Free Linux, Proprietary Linux - Computerworld Blogs: "Linux's heart is open source. But developers can pick and choose how much, if any, proprietary software they want to include in their distribution. Recently, the Free Software Foundation announced its two latest additions to its listing of open-source purist distributions. This news lead me to thinking about both these distributions and the best of the distributions that go the other way and contain a great deal of proprietary programs."

ASUS Eee PC with NVIDIA Ion surfaces in Asia

ASUS Eee PC with NVIDIA Ion surfaces in Asia | Electronista: "ASUS' upcoming NVIDIA Ion-based Eee PC notebook, the 1201N, has appeared on Asian retailer PCpop's webstore recently. The PC is due for an October release, according to a recent roadmap leak and the listing confirms some of the device's specs, including its 1.6GHz Atom CPU."

How to save the PC: A petition to Microsoft and Apple

How to save the PC: A petition to Microsoft and Apple | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: "Somewhere right now as you’re reading this, there are computer users whose hearts are sinking as they look at their screens, waiting, hoping, some even praying, that their computers will safely reboot from a fatal error and everything that they have saved on the computer - letters, photos, emails, their latest presentations and project files - will magically reappear. For a lot of them, their hopes will be in vain."

Computer Animation Defeated By Stop-Motion

Computer Animation Defeated By Stop-Motion: "Animated movies are just as popular as ever, and thanks to Pixar’s vision the computer-animated movie has been the favored format for over a decade. That’s not to say it’s the best format. Give me hand drawn Disney animation over Pixar any day of the week. As the novelty of computer animation has worn off and as the price tag of computer animation has grown, the trend is beginning to balance."

Katamari Damacy wedding cake topper (complete with spouses)

Katamari Damacy wedding cake topper (complete with spouses) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!: "Lori, the owner of ctrl-alt-doll, fashioned our wedding cake topper with incredible detail and artistry. The PlayStation2 game's Prince rolls a heart-adorned Katamari (sticky ball) upon which we are both rendered in chibi-style Fimo. We're both dressed in very iconic Austin-and-Zak outfits: I sported my anarchy tee, motorcycle boots/vest, jeans, belt, sparkly glasses, and flame-tipped dreadcurls; Zak wore hir collar, Tux (the Linux penguin) shirt, cargo skirt, and white ankle socks. The minute details are breathtaking."

Model and Texture a Posh Living Room Scene in Maya

Model and Texture a Posh Living Room Scene in Maya - Cgtuts+: "In this tutorial you will go through the process of modeling and rendering a Living Room in Autodesk Maya. You will also learn to use Mental Ray (along with the new architectural materials), create realistic fur, and implement studio lighting to create nice and soft shadows and highlights."

8 Ways Doing Less Can Transform Your Work & Life

8 Ways Doing Less Can Transform Your Work & Life: "Do less, be happier.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupe"

'Star Trek' Creator's Vintage Mac Computer Up for Auction

'Star Trek' Creator's Vintage Mac Computer Up for Auction: "Beginning October 8th, the Profiles in History auction house will be offering a one-of-a-kind item with which one lucky 'Star Trek' fanatic can wholly demonstrate his unconditional love for the show's iconic creator Gene Roddenberry. The item is an 'early production Macintosh 128 (#776), which was then upgraded by Apple for Gene to a Macintosh Plus.'"

When a computer decides you must choke to death

When a computer decides you must choke to death | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: "Perhaps you are skeptical about the notion that computers will, one day, actually control us."

Survive and Thrive: How to Transform Anxiety into Inspiration

Survive and Thrive: How to Transform Anxiety into Inspiration: "Are you anxious at times? I am. Let’s face it, there’s plenty of anxiety to go around: lay-offs, relationship crises, pandemics, violence – and that’s just for starters."

The MGM Chapter

Michael Sporn Animation - Splog » The MGM Chapter: "Last Saturday, I posted a couple of pages of a Terrytoon walk cycle from the book by Gene Byrnes, The Complete Guide to Cartooning. This book has a full chapter on MGM cartoons which is credited to Fred Quimby as writer. The book was a strong inspiration for me when I was a kid, and it still sends a chill up my back and gets me wanting to animate when I look at a couple of those images."

World's nastiest trojan fools AV software

World's nastiest trojan fools AV software • The Register: "One of the world's nastiest password-stealing trojans evades detection by the majority PCs running anti-virus programs, according to a study that examined 10,000 machines."

Billionaire SAS co-founder keeps on coding

Billionaire SAS co-founder keeps on coding: "SAS Executive Vice President John Sall, who developed the data visualization tool JMP, remains its chief architect"

Safety first for IT executives in China

Safety first for IT executives in China - Software - Technology - News - CRN Australia: "US Government recommends weighing laptop before and after each visit."

6 Tips To Boost Your Home Business Despite A Recession

6 Tips To Boost Your Home Business Despite A Recession - Dumb Little Man: "The following tips and suggestions will guide you through a bad business spell and hopefully help you to come up trumps at the other end."

Dice Reader

Dice Reader Version 2 - Made by Steve Hoefer: "This version uses 5 IR emitter/receiver pairs to read five of the nine potential pip locations on a die face. Five is the minimum number of locations you have to look at to definitively read the orientation of the die. I had to file down the edges of the detectors to get them pip-distance apart and place the emitters directly behind the detectors so they'd get maximum reflection from the surface (And there is really no other place to put 'em.) On a white area of a die it returns a really nice signal. Which means what I'm really detecting is a lack of a pip, counting the white areas rather than the dark ones."

10 Reasons Why Chrome OS Will Outshine Nokia, Linux on Netbooks

10 Reasons Why Chrome OS Will Outshine Nokia, Linux on Netbooks: "Google's Chrome operating system is poised to hit the Web. But can it beat out competing Linux distributions? You bet, especially on netbooks where Google will make a special push because it believes Chrome OS is ideal for lightweight PCs."

Linux botnet discovery points to lazy administrators

Linux botnet discovery points to lazy administrators - Program - Linux - Builder AU: "Recently, a Russian security researcher discovered a 100-node Linux 'cluster' that was running a botnet which was, in turn, connected to a group of desktop machines. Altogether these machines were serving up malware."

Art academy: learn to paint on your nintendo dsi

art academy: learn to paint on your nintendo dsi on [technabob]: "Ever wanted to learn how to draw and paint, but don’t have the time or money to deal with real world art supplies? Well if you happen to own a Nintendo DSi, you can sign up for the Art Academy without so much as buying a tube of paint."

Sometimes I Make Things...

Sometimes I Make Things...: "JTAG (pun intended) is a small program written in C which reads input from a Wacom SD-510C tablet, pictured below, and displays the animated dripping image using the functionality provided by the SDL and SDL_gfx libraries. This project was inspired by the Graffiti Research Lab's awesome Laser Tag project. Since my laptop's video card and webcam aren't exactly too great, I wound up with a ridiculously low frame rate and trouble tracking the laser when running their software. Since I don't exactly have money lying around for a better laptop and webcam, I dropped $40 (including shipping from CA...) on an old Wacom tablet and wrote my own software."

Bear and rabbit usb hand warmers perfect for furries on [technabob]

bear and rabbit usb hand warmers perfect for furries on [technabob]: "Both Bear and Rabbit USB Hand warmers are available from Gadget4all for $22.50 (USD) a pair. I dare you to bring these to work and wear them during a board meeting while you’re typing on your laptop. When the CEO asks WTF is going on with you, just tell him your hands were cold. I’m sure he’ll understand."

Twitt Like a Pirate - Your Pirate Translator

Post Like a Pirate - Your Pirate Translator: "Happy talk like a pirate day. Have fun twitting like a pirate with this cool app."

Creating a near-space imaging vehicle in under 30 hours (aka a beer cooler, that ran linux) What?

DK LABORATORIES: "Seeing the curvature of the earth from the eyes of your own machine, is awesome. Myself and a group of friends sought out to build an imaging balloon for cheap, in the course of 1 weekend, and to document our findings for subsequent launches and for the Internet. I wanted to do this, made some phone calls, motivated some folks and did a bunch of leg-work. The results speak for themselves"

14 Super Places to Swim: From the Bizarre to the Beautiful

14 Super Places to Swim: From the Bizarre to the Beautiful | WebUrbanist: "It’s been said, Don’t wait for your ship to come in – swim out to it. This positive slant on the big picture of life is something that swimmers can really get into. Across this world, there are thousands upon thousands of places to swim. It’s good for your health and good clean fun. But if you are bored of ordinary swimming pools, there are too many other unusual or cool places to swim that are far from dull to keep you happy and entertained. Consider a bit of travel to visit theses 14 places to swim, from the bizarre to the beautiful."

How to Be Childlike

How to Be Childlike: "Start by deciding to abandon caution and to give this a try. Start by identifying the qualities of children you’d like to emulate: curiosity, play, living in the moment, abandoning worries, imagination, creativity, pure joy."

Find Flaws in your apps with Flawfinder

Flawfinder Home Page: "This is the main web site for flawfinder, a program that examines source code and reports possible security weaknesses (``flaws'') sorted by risk level. It's very useful for quickly finding and removing at least some potential security problems before a program is widely released to the public. See ``how does Flawfinder work?'', below, for more information on how it works."

How To Take Great Close-Up Photos

How To Take Great Close-Up Photos: "Taking great close-up photos is much easier than you think. Based on the multitude of blurry detail pictures I've seen on ebay and craigslist, it must be a skill many don't possess. With these skills I've become that guy at work they come to when someone needs a good picture."

Not Photoshopped: Just Incredible Forced Perspective Photography

Not Photoshopped: Just Incredible Forced Perspective Photography: "From Gulliver’s Travels to Alice in Wonderland, the idea of people shrinking and growing has proven endlessly fascinating. What if, we wonder, we were that big or that small? Then along came mass produced cameras, and easy as eating a cake that says “EAT ME”, the more adroit shooters among us were able to realise just such size-shifting exploits – or at least the illusion of having done so. Places around the globe provide backdrops for these fine examples of forced perspective."

Disney's Fantasia FX

Michael Sporn Animation - Splog » Fantasia FX: "Herman Schultheis was an effects animator who worked on Fantasia. He kept a tight record of the effects they were creating from 1938-1941 and a photo display of how they were done. Schultheis disappeared in 1954 while trekking through Central America, and the notebook was forgotten until his wife’s death in the early 1990s, after which it was discovered by Howard Lowery behind the couple’s bedroom wall."

Finding the way through the semantic Web with HBase

Finding the way through the semantic Web with HBase: "doop Database (HBase) is well suited for creating a semantic Web and for extracting existing or computed knowledge. Learn how to represent RDF/XML assertions in an HBase database for scientific articles, and discover how HBase and Bigtable are promoting a new approach to storing and processing data."