Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Armored car spills $100,000 cash

Armored car spills $100,000 cash: "Chaos erupted on an intersection in Columbus, Ohio on Thursday when a bag of cash from an armored truck spilled $100,000 onto the streets."

Twilight Fans Get a New Book, Freak Out

Twilight Fans Get a New Book, Freak Ou: "Twilight fans, get your Amazon pre-orders in now: Stephenie Meyer is about to release her first book in almost 2 years, a novella called The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. On her website, Stephenie Meyer describes the new book: 'This story was something that I worked on off and on for a while, just for fun, in between the times I was writing or editing other Twilight novels. ..."

A DIY Career Change

A DIY Career Change: "Career paths can take sharp angled turns when you least expect it. One day you try something new and POW, that's it, you never want to go back. My career, if I can be so presumptious as to call it a career, happens to be in the arena of making things, figuring out how to fix things, creativity, a little photography, writing and teaching. It's perfect for me and my interests. So, here's how I took a sharp right hand turn and landed in this wonderful new world."

Firefox coders propose fast-graphics deadline

Firefox coders propose fast-graphics deadline: "Competition among browser makers is getting fiercer, and Mozilla programmers are pushing a schedule in one hotly contested area, hardware-accelerated graphics."

Build Your Own: Wall-Sized 3D Gaming, Just Like Theaters Do It

Build Your Own: Wall-Sized 3D Gaming, Just Like Theaters Do It: "When it comes to 3D, bigger is better. Forget everything anyone ever told you about the appropriate size of a TV, because 3D is a dish best served large. Let me tell you something: I have seen the future and the future is jaw-dropping, wall-sized 3D gaming, complete with full-scale cars in Burnout Paradise and man-sized zombies in Left 4 Dead. I now partake in spaceship battles so viscerally convincing that I feel as if I were traveling through the void at warp speed, lasers blazing--all of it in glorious, larger-than-life 3D. If you want to know how you can do it too, read on."

The 7 Most Motivational Quotes Ever Spoken

The 7 Most Motivational Quotes Ever Spoken: "Motivation is something you need everyday. It's motivation that pushes you forward when you want to collapse; it's motivation that lights the end of the tunnel. If life is a road trip, then motivation is the engine that will take you to your destination. Nothing happens without motivation. Have you been motivated today?"

5 Online Code Editors to Help You Code On The Go

5 Online Code Editors to Help You Code On The Go: "Flame wars over one’s choice of editor are a regular occurrence on almost all the tech mailing lists that I subscribe to. In fact, in my opinion, the amount of time and energy that is spent on debating this topic can be easily spent on researching the feature set of a perfect editor that would fit everyone’s needs."

Final Analysis: Watch Your Back, Prozac!

Final Analysis: Watch Your Back, Prozac!: "Any day now, you can open up the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR) and expect to see a whole new generation of psychiatric wonder drugs that are very specifically targeted for what ails you. Here are a few that could be in the pipeline."

How to Set Up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) Using OpenVPN

How to Set Up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) Using OpenVPN : "Imagine that in your office’s computer, there are lots of interesting files that you have saved. As long as you are in your office, you have access to all of them, but when you go home, you can’t access it. The reason is that although your office computer has internet, it’s behind NAT and therefore you cannot access it directly. This is where a VPN can really be helpful."

37 of the Best Tricks & Easter Egg Treasures

37 of the Best Tricks & Easter Egg Treasures : "Easter egg hunts are normally for kids, but every day can be an Easter-egg hunt for kids of any age in software, DVDs, video-games, and even works of art. Google has an official Easter Eggs game page, if you want to play with a bunny and eggs. Their epic April Fool’s Day hoaxes are humorous. Google isn’t the only one who offers undocumented nuggets lurking beneath the surface. Here are 37 of the best tricks and easter eggs gems . . . if you know how to unlock the hidden treasures."

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Are You Checked? Using Photography Checklists Before Shooting

Are You Checked? Using Photography Checklists Before Shooting : "Since I get a lot of how/what-to-pack questions, I thought that my preparation process is worth sharing via a post. While this may be very trivial for some, it can be a life saver for others. And even if you are doing this for a long time, it is a still a great thinking experiment.

Well the uncomplicated truth is that I use Check Lists. Read on to hear how and why."

Monday, March 29, 2010

The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in early morning dew

The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in early morning dew: "Glistening in the early morning, these insects look like creatures from another planet as dew gathers on their sleeping bodies.

Captured in extreme close-up, one moth appears to be totally encrusted in diamonds as it rests on a twig."

- Is it Time to go Off-Grid?

- Is it Time to go Off-Grid?: "I'm beginning to believe Ayn Rand was right. Her novel 'Atlas Shrugged' promoted the idea that the producers in this world need to simply drop out, quit producing, and let the socialistic consumers cannibalize each other to their ultimate destruction. Has our country gone too far down the hole? I'm beginning to think so. What do you do if you want to drop out? I looked around and came across the Simple Solar Homesteader. LaMar Alexander has written a down to eart"

Colo topless gardener complaints prompt new rules

Colo topless gardener complaints prompt new rules : "A woman gardening wearing only a yellow thong and pink gloves has brought neighborhood complaints and new rules from a housing authority in Colorado."

Superman comic sells for USD1.5 million, setting record

Superman comic sells for USD1.5 million, setting record: "he comic book which features Superman`s debut has fetched USD 1.5 million on an online auction, breaking the earlier record.
A copy of the 1938 edition of Action Comics No 1 was sold on the auction Web site ComicConnect.com."

Gangstas R Us: Why we love crime drama

Gangstas R Us: Why we love crime drama: "I’m an epistemology professor. My work involves studying how we decide what’s true. For play I have lots of pastimes, but one I must admit, is watching crime drama. I wouldn’t declare it as an official hobby on Facebook but if I look at where my free time goes I have to admit I’ve seen all of the Sopranos, Deadwood, most of the Wire, plus every higher-than-B-grade crime, con, heist, mafia, western, gangland movie ever made. Apparently I like this stuff. And why?"

UNIX / Linux: 10 Netstat Command Examples

UNIX / Linux: 10 Netstat Command Examples: "Netstat command displays various network related information such as network connections, routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, multicast memberships etc.,"

75 Ways to Secure Your Linux/Mac/Windows Systems With Open Source

75 Ways to Secure Your Linux/Mac/Windows Systems With Open Source: "With online crime on the rise, it's more important than ever to protect your systems. But you don't have to pay a lot of money for security. The open source community continues to produce (and maintain) excellent tools that fulfill a wide variety of security needs.

This year, we've once again updated our list of top open source security apps. While the list isn't exhaustive by any means, we tried to include many of the best tools in a variety of categories. We dropped a few projects from last year's list that have gone inactive or closed source, and we've added a few newcomers that are worth your consideration."

14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite

14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite: "A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph."

Sunday, March 28, 2010

5 Easy Ways to Schedule Your Tweets

5 Easy Ways to Schedule Your Tweets : "Twitter has taken over the Internet by storm. In the last year and half, Twitter has become one of those companies that even the mainstream media keeps track of. Not even a single day passes by without a mention of Twitter either in the news or in newspapers."

Five great themes for the GNOME desktop

Five great themes for the GNOME desktop: "The GNOME desktop environment and its underlying Gtk+ widget toolkit—which provide a user interface and a standard set of applications for Linux—have an elaborate theme system that enables users to customize the appearance of their desktop."

Stop Wine-ing: 15 Games for Linux

Stop Wine-ing: 15 Games for Linux: "Many believe that Wine and other Windows emulation solutions may be their only recourse for high-quality gaming enjoyment. That, however, it not entirely true. There are plenty of smaller, independent gaming houses developing and releasing premium commercial games for Linux alongside Mac and Windows offerings. Search hard enough and you’ll find games ranging from low-resource puzzle solvers to 3D first-person shooters.

Let’s have a look at some of the games recently released for Linux and a few up-and-coming prospects for the future. Stop Wine-ing. Start playing."

GNU/Linux Distros Silently Drop PowerPC

GNU/Linux Distros Silently Drop PowerPC: "At least two major GNU/Linux distributions have decided to drop PowerPC support; OpenSUSE has dropped support already, and Fedora is going to drop it in Fedora 13."

PS3 3.21 to disable Linux support on older models

PS3 3.21 to disable Linux support on older models: "Sony tonight stirred controversy by saying its upcoming 3.21 firmware for the PlayStation 3 would disable the 'other OS' feature and prevent Linux installs on older systems. While already gone from the slim PS3, the feature is allegedly being pulled from all systems as it now creates 'security concerns.' Customers could refuse the older firmware but would lose access to PSN as well as any future games or movies that required 3.21 or later."

Top 10 PHP Techniques That Will Save You Time and Effort

Top 10 PHP Techniques That Will Save You Time and Effort: "What would happen if you tried to use a mirror as a surfboard ? Well, you may succeed in taming the waves for a little while, or even a big while, but deep inside, you know that this is not really the right way to do it. Weird as it may sound, the same principals apply to php programming. I’ve heard of people trying to learn PHP by studying it for like a weekend or more, but allow me to say, this is a pretty bad approach to learning this programming language."

5 Effective Tips on Removing The Obstacles to Your Success

5 Effective Tips on Removing The Obstacles to Your Success: "One of the fastest ways to success is to remove the obstacles in front of you. These obstacles can be anything from mental roadblocks to office politics and making them move in the direction you want is not always easy and it certainly isn't fast."

Outstanding In Their Field: 10 Outrageous Outhouses

Outstanding In Their Field: 10 Outrageous Outhouses: "Outhouses… before the advent of indoor plumbing, these permanent porta-potties were a necessary evil whose use wasn’t an option. Though most outhouses in developed countries have been torn down, a rare few remain. These iconic one-room restrooms serve to remind us of those dark days when if you had to go, you had to go out first."

jQuery’s triumphant march to success

jQuery’s triumphant march to success: "Five years ago, no one had heard about jQuery. It was just an idea in the back of Javascript guru John Resig’s head. Today, jQuery is by far the most popular Javascript library in the world and is used by over 28% of all websites on the internet."

How to Execute PostgreSQL Commands Inside Unix Shell Scripts

How to Execute PostgreSQL Commands Inside Unix Shell Scripts: "With the help of the psql interactive terminal, you can execute the psql commands from the shell script. For this purpose, you should enable the password less login by pg_hba.conf, or .pgpass."

How Close will the U.K. Come to Running Out of Natural Gas in Storage this Spring?

How Close will the U.K. Come to Running Out of Natural Gas in Storage this Spring?: "Compared to previous years, this heating season in the U.K. has called for record withdrawals of natural gas from U.K. storage to balance demand. This drawdown will result in increased demand for natural gas for refilling of the U.K. storage facilities this spring/summer."

Everything you ever wanted to know about GPS

Everything you ever wanted to know about GPS: "After all, why wouldn’t you want to know more about the system that makes all of today’s cool location-based services possible? GPS has become our everyman, everyday companion now that it’s present in just about every smartphone out there."

DIY LED Cube 4x4x4

DIY LED Cube 4x4x4: "64 LEDs makes up this 4 by 4 by 4 cube, controlled by an Atmel Atmega16 microcontroller.
Each LED can be addressed individually in software, enabling it to display amazing 3d animations!"

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Sexy Female Superheroes in Bikinis The Sequel

Sexy Female Superheroes in Bikinis The Sequel: "I bring you Sexy Female Superheroes in Bikinis The Sequel. Rather than look all over the internet, here on one page are 10 female Superheroes in bikinis or rather the famous actresses in bikinis who portrayed them on TV and in the movies. I hope you enjoy the pictures of female superhero bikini beauty. Unlike Sports Illustrated, we don’t believe in using photos of women with enhancements!"

World War III Has Already Begun

World War III Has Already Begun: "Some experts believe that World War III will start 100 years after the first one and will take lives of hundreds of millions of people. Some scientists think that the war is already going on, nareing the completion of its first stage."

How to Digitally Sign Microsoft Files (.exe, .cab, .dll, .ocx, .msi, .xpi)

How to Digitally Sign Microsoft Files (.exe, .cab, .dll, .ocx, .msi, .xpi): "Sometimes Unix system administrators may end-up managing few Windows servers. If that ever happens to you, be prepared to do some basic administrative tasks on Windows. In this article, let us discuss how to sign microsoft executables and DLL."

How to Secure Your Internet Connection via SSH

How to Secure Your Internet Connection via SSH: "Wouldn’t it be great if all the Internet connection in the World are secure and encrypted and you don’t have to worry about hackers sniffing your data in the network? Apparently, that does not exist in the real world. Most of the time, when you are using a public network, you are exposing yourself to thousands of hackers who are waiting for you to hand over your confidential data to them."

Start Ad Serving with OpenX

Start Ad Serving with OpenX: "In this article by Murat Yilmaz, author of OpenX Ad Server: Beginner's Guide, we will start our first campaign and show the first banner as fast as we can by using the minimum settings of OpenX Ad Server."

Incredible Mini-Golf

Incredible Mini-Golf: "This spring Zona Tortona will literally be the playground of the guys from La Bolleur since they decided to bring their Mini Golf Club abroad! During the Milan Design Week you'll find their space at Via Vogehra 11 in Milan, Italy.
Make sure that your practise is up to Par!"

Wesleyan student was on the beach when plane crash killed jogger

Wesleyan student was on the beach when plane crash killed jogger: "Kelsey Oliverius wants to travel abroad to Spain or Argentina to study Spanish, but her mother was always afraid of what might happen in some faraway place."

A to Z of Awesomeness

A to Z of Awesomeness: "Neill Cameron put together these drawings based on suggestions from fans over a 26 day period. The results are indeed full of awesome."

Facebook 'linked to rise in syphilis'

Facebook 'linked to rise in syphilis': "Facebook has contributed to a resurgence in the sexually-transmitted disease syphilis, a health expert has claimed."

If the Atari 2600 was still around

If the Atari 2600 was still around: "These are some game prototypes for the Atari 2600 in 2010"

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Jabbing with Coccinella

Jabbing with Coccinella "Although its name sounds like that of a bacterium, Coccinella is a nice cross-platform open source Jabber client. While Jabber, and IM clients in general, are a dime a dozen, Coccinella sports a few nifty features that make it worth considering if your are in the market for a Jabber client."

Simple OpenOffice.org-based Document Management Solution

Simple OpenOffice.org-based Document Management Solution: "If you're toying with the idea of creating a document management solution using OpenOffice.org Base, you don't have to start from scratch. Sergio Corato, the developer of the nifty FastMailMerge extension, has released a beta version of a simple document management database built with OpenOffice.org Base."

Practising the Pomodoro Technique with Pomodairo

Practising the Pomodoro Technique with Pomodairo: "Looking for a new way to improve your productivity? Try the Pomodoro technique. The idea behind this technique is ridiculously simple. You break down your workload into 25-minute chunks, called pomodoros (pomodoro is Italian for tomato). During each 25-minute working session, you focus on a single task. Once the time is up, you take a break and move to another pomodoro."

'Man with the golden arm' James Harrison saves 2million babies in half a century of donating rare blood

'Man with the golden arm' James Harrison saves 2million babies in half a century of donating rare blood: "An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies."

Would You Pay a Girl to Play Halo With You?

Would You Pay a Girl to Play Halo With You? : "If you're an avid online gamer chances are you sign onto, say, Xbox Live most nights and jump into a game of Modern Warfare or Gears of War with either your friends or some random players. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the majority of gamers you encounter are dudes, and probably immature dudes at that. What if you could pay a bit of cash to play Modern Warfare with an attractive girl? Or maybe relax with a casual game of checkers while you video chat with said female? A new social service launching tomorrow, March 23, called GameCrush (www.GameCrush.com) is hoping there are gamers out there willing to pay for the opportunity to play with girls."

Office Farting

Office Farting: "Do you think that public farting is okay? Does it depend on where you are? I think it is the height of rudeness and low social graces. It should not happen anywhere in public. You know when you have to do it so you can make it to the bathroom in time!! Go to the bathroom!! Why polute the air of people around you?! And the crazy thing is that when it happens noone sayas anything at all. Conversations continue like nothing happened. CRAAAAZY!"

How to Know How Much Sleep You Need

How to Know How Much Sleep You Need: "Do you feel drowsy? Can't stop yawning? Maybe you're not getting as much sleep as you should. Or perhaps you overslept--there is such a thing, and it's not good for you, either![1] How much sleep you actually need depends on your age, activity level, and even genetics. This article will help you figure it out with a test."

Convert AAC to MP3 - Guide to Remove DRM AAC to MP3

Convert AAC to MP3 - Guide to Remove DRM AAC to MP3: "AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at many bit rates. AAC’s best known use is as the default audio format of Apple’s iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and the format used for all iTunes Store audio."

7 Best SEO Tips for Bloggers

7 Best SEO Tips for Bloggers: "Today blogging has become the most hot activity on the Internet. There are millions of blogs on the Internet and also it has become a source of bread and butter for many bloggers. So Search Engine Optimization is the most important activity for such bloggers and web-masters. Also most of the quality traffic that comes to our site or blog is through popular search engines. So one must know how to make the search engines happy to get higher search engine ranking and higher page rank."

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Avoid the Audit: Six Red Flags That'll Put You in Tax Purgatory

Avoid the Audit: Six Red Flags That'll Put You in Tax Purgatory: "Around February, my commute home starts to give me a knot in my stomach. That’s because my bus passes a tax-preparation shop where, as tax season draws nearer, a woman stands outside wearing a Lady Liberty costume and holding a sign that promotes the shop’s services. Oh, great, I think, it’s time to dance with the IRS again."

Guitar Hero + Lingerie = Total Win

Guitar Hero + Lingerie = Total Win: "You know what they say, strangers have the best candies, or something like that. In fact, I don’t have a clue what I’ve just said has to do with anything, even more when you’re not even reading this."

Using Ubuntu Linux to Rescue Windows

Using Ubuntu Linux to Rescue Windows: "We're going to use Ubuntu's LiveCD mode. Ubuntu is a popular Linux distribution that's a free and open source alternative to Windows. The LiveCD mode lets you boot into and use the operating system (OS) without installing anything on the computer. You should be able to view your files and copy them to another drive, backup to discs, or transfer via a network. Now let's get started!"

Recording an Interview with Skype using Audacity 1.3

Recording an Interview with Skype using Audacity 1.3: "If you are interested in doing more than solo podcasts with Audacity, you can always try creating interview podcasts. You can record these live in your office with your computer's internal microphone, or with additional microphones. However, you can't always perform an interview from the comfort of your office due to conflicting schedules and the location of your interviewee. Hence, let's learn how to record an interview using your phone and your computer."

Top 5 Best Databases

Top 5 Best Databases: "As part of the contest we conducted recently, we got 160+ comments from the geeky readers who choose their favorite database."

How Music Feeds and Steers Your Imagination

How Music Feeds and Steers Your Imagination: "Some people have auditory daydreams, in other words, instead of primarily visualizing a scene or creation, they hear the 'sounds of music.' Both Mozart and Tchaikovsky wrote about how they would 'hear' compositions as they took long walks or rides in the countryside."

The Basics of Cascading Style Sheets Explained

The Basics of Cascading Style Sheets Explained: "Have you ever heard the expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover?”. Chances are that you have. If you want to create nice websites, you have to understand that people DO judge books by their cover, which is why the expression exists at first place. Since looks really matter, you have to know how to use CSS in order to stylize your webpages. In this post, i will tell you some of the basic CSS programming knowledge that you need to have in order to move on with it."

Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein: Part Deux

Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein: Part Deux: "Given the great response to the article “10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein,” I’ve decided to publish the other seven lessons that I originally intended to include in that article. These were cut out because I feared the article was too long. However, I now believe that these seven lessons are even more profound than the original ten."

Living Inside Your Own Black Box

Living Inside Your Own Black Box : "Every so often I run across a lament that programmers no longer understand the systems they work on, that programming has turned into searches through massive quantities of documentation, that large applications are built by stacking together loosely defined libraries. Most recently it was Mike Taylor’s Whatever happened to programming?, and it’s worth the time to read"

Monday, March 22, 2010

Seven Signs Your Social Media Coach Is a Fraud

Seven Signs Your Social Media Coach Is a Fraud: "Ouch. Painful headline. But The VAR Guy is growing tired of social media “experts” trying to make a buck off of small businesses that are desperate to bolster their online identities. So, how can you tell a true social media expert from a pretender? Here are seven clues."

Google's Python Class

Google's Python Class: "Welcome to Google's Python Class -- this is a free class for people with a little bit of programming experience who want to learn Python. The class includes written materials, lecture videos, and lots of code exercises to practice Python coding. These materials are used within Google to introduce Python to people who have just a little programming experience. The first exercises work on basic Python concepts like strings and lists, building up to the later exercises which are full programs dealing with text files, processes, and http connections. The class is geared for people who have a little bit of programming experience in some language, enough to know what a 'variable' or 'if statement' is. Beyond that, you do not need to be an expert programmer to use this material."

Trade in your Bible for porn

Trade in your Bible for porn: "It's hard to believe, but true. An atheist group will ask UTSA students to trade in their Bibles for pornographic magazines."

How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers

How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers: "Professional motorsport is a cold, hard place. If you want to run with the big dogs, you can't just build a car in your mom's garage and show up, right? Wrong. One guy did just that. Here's his amazing story."

Check The Status Of Trademarks Before You Buy A Domain Name

Check The Status Of Trademarks Before You Buy A Domain Name: "A trademark belongs solely to the company or the individual which is regarded as an intellectual property. You should not violate the 3rd party's right. You can check the status of trademarks before you buy a domain name. This is important. You may be involved with WIPO or UDRP process to resolve the dispute. You'll lose the domain name, time and money. Check the status of trademarks before you buy a domain name."

Seven DIY Video Photography Projects For HD-DSLRers and Videographers

Seven DIY Video Photography Projects For HD-DSLRers and Videographers : "It looks like where eve we look HD-DSLRs are gaining momentum and more and more photographers are using videography as a way to express themselves, to offer services to their customers and to create art."

Sexiest Superhero Halloween Costume: AnnaLynne McCord

Sexiest Superhero Halloween Costume: AnnaLynne McCord: "Move over Batman, we'd rather take AnnaLynne McCord over you any day. So what? She may not be as strong, but she'd be nice to look at as she struggled to carry our a$$ out of danger!"

Pictures of My Ten Hottest Women of All Time

Pictures of My Ten Hottest Women of All Time: "Here for your enjoyment are my Top Ten Hottest Women Ever in their prime."

There’s a C in my JavaScript

There’s a C in my JavaScript: "This is intended to be a short guide to writing JavaScript bindings to C or C++ libraries using the V8 engine. It is intended primarily for node.js developers, though other projects using V8 may find it useful too."

Sunday, March 21, 2010

How to make Korean Rice Punch

How to make Korean Rice Punch: "In this article I will teach you how to make my favorite drink Korean Rice Punch. It took me about 2 hours to make and test this recipe on my own."

Making a Photo Story

Making a Photo Story: "Microsoft's PhotoStory 3 (PS3) is a great little program that allows you to easily create slide shows of your digital photographs with transitions, background music, etc."

How to Make a Three-Pendulum Rotary Harmonograph

How to Make a Three-Pendulum Rotary Harmonograph: "A harmonograph is a mechanical device that uses swinging pendulums to draw pictures, believed to be originally invented in 1844 by Scottish mathematician Hugh Blackburn. There are other types of harmonographs, but this 3-pendulum rotary type gives a wide variety of pleasant results, and is fairly easy to build once you've settled on a design and have acquired the appropriate materials and tools. This is a great project to do with kids and can result in endless experiments creating new types of geometric designs."

UP - "The Kitte" - 1967 Computer Animation

UP - "The Kitte" - 1967 Computer Animation: "In 1967 Russian scientists created the first animated sequence using a computer."

Strange House in Vietnam

Strange House in Vietnam: "Unbelievable, but the base of this house is a tree."

Obesity and Depression: A Vicious Circle?

Obesity and Depression: A Vicious Circle?s: "There appears to be a back-and-forth link between depression and obesity, say researchers who reviewed the findings of 15 studies that included nearly 59,000 people."

“Pornographic” Inverted Body Scanner Image Shows Naked Body In Full Living Color…VIDEO

“Pornographic” Inverted Body Scanner Image Shows Naked Body In Full Living Color…VIDEO : "The full body scanners that President Obama last night authorized to be rolled out in airports across the country at a cost of over $1 billion dollars not only produce detailed pictures of your genitals, but once inverted some of those images also display your naked body in full living color."

The world's only immortal animal

The world's only immortal animal: "The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth."

Connecting a parallel LCD

Connecting a parallel LCD: "This is a bit of a side note, there's no LCD included with the Arduino starter pack, but I figure its a popular request, so here we go!"

CPS Custom Assault Rifle

CPS Custom Assault Rifle: "I initially built the pump out of CPVC. With the correct o-rings and some duct tape I managed to make it work with a wooden stick. Unfortunately, even if the pump shaft was more than one feet long, it only had a volume between 30mL and 40mL, which isn't much for a homemade. At least it was on par with regular CPS Super Soakers."

How to use BitTorrent to send files

How to use BitTorrent to send files: "The tutorial is focused on uTorrent, a popular BitTorrent client, but it's about the same with other clients. This introduction served only to distract you while the tutorial is loading (and it should have loaded by now), so watch it and you should be able to send any file anywhere in just minutes!"

DIY High-Speed Book Scanner from Trash and Cheap Cameras

DIY High-Speed Book Scanner from Trash and Cheap Cameras: "I love books. There is some truly fantastic knowledge and information hidden out there in hard to find, rare, and not commercially viable books. I find that I want my books with me everywhere. But that's where the problems begin. Buying, moving, storing, and preserving books means environmental costs... and when I loan a book to a friend, I no longer have access to it."

Why writing software is not like engineering

Why writing software is not like engineering: "While my talent lies in software, my graduate studies were in computer engineering (designing and building digital computers). One observation always struck me: computer engineering seemed more straightforward than computer science (building software). There are a set of engineering design rules to follow and engineering projects are much more likely to work out than software projects. Yes, there are some spectacular engineering failures but, empirically, reliable and useful software is more difficult to pull off. To illustrate my point, consider the amazing space probes we send throughout the solar system. The spacecraft themselves work extremely well, often living long past their design lifetimes. Their control software, on the other hand, has to be constantly tweaked and patched in flight to keep the mission together. I am not trying to say that engineering is easy; it is not. My goal is simply to explain why software is harder to get right than physical construction projects in general and why 'software engineering' is an inappropriate term."

The World's Best Photos of spiderwoman

The World's Best Photos of spiderwoman: "Thank goodness they are no black widows."

Laser cutter, start slicing stuff for under 50 dollars

Laser cutter, start slicing stuff for under 50 dollars: "This project demonstrates a simple hack to create a large format laser cutter utilizing all the scrap electronics you may have lying around. If you have a broken scanner or two, the cost can be just about 30 dollars for the entire project."

Thursday, March 18, 2010

‘Green’ satellite fuel designed to make space safer

‘Green’ satellite fuel designed to make space safer: "On the day running up to launch when a spacecraft is fuelled, ground personnel look more like astronauts than engineers, putting on spacesuit-like protective gear."

How to Know if Your iPhone Battery is on Death Row

How to Know if Your iPhone Battery is on Death Row: "The ugly truth about your iPhone battery? It's got a lifespan of less than two years, but may not even last that long if you're careless. Here are expert tips to help you take better care of it - and then know when to send it to that recycling bin in the sky"

Cracking open five of the best open source easter eggs

Cracking open five of the best open source easter eggs: "A number of humorous yet undocumented features are hiding beneath the surface of some of the most popular open source software applications. Although easter eggs are generally easy to spot when you can look at an application's source code, there are a few that aren't widely known."

10 iPhone Apps they Haven't Invented Yet... But We *Really* Wish They Would

10 iPhone Apps they Haven't Invented Yet... But We *Really* Wish They Would: "Apparently over 100,000 individual iPhone apps have been created; and according to AdMob your average iPhone user downloads 9 apps per month.

So, you would be forgiven for thinking that the market is pretty well covered... But sadly not. We are still holding on for these babies to be launched..."

Spider Made from Scissors

Spider Made from Scissors: "The TSA officially allows scissors with blades less than four inches. But the individual officers have the authority to disallow anything they think poses a potential threat. These scissors all belong in that grey area between what should be allowed on the plane, and what wasn’t allowed."

Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web

Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web: "You’ve probably heard that Apple recently announced the iPad. The absence of Flash Player on the device seems to have awakened the HTML5 vs. Flash debate. Apparently, it’s the final nail in the coffin for Flash."

Search Engine Optimization: Selecting and Embedding Keywords

Search Engine Optimization: Selecting and Embedding Keywords: "Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of optimizing your web site so that search engines can pick up the necessary information to display your web site in their search results. When done properly, SEO can help your web site appear quite high in relevant searches on these search engines."

The Tale of JavaScript. I Mean ECMAScript

The Tale of JavaScript. I Mean ECMAScript: "The brief but puzzling story of the world's most misunderstood programming language and its unlikely rise to power, becoming both the world's most popular programming language and the world's least popular programming language AT THE SAME TIME."

Danish artist dresses her baby as Hitler, exploring the meaning of evil

Danish artist dresses her baby as Hitler, exploring the meaning of evil: "Exhibit by Nina Maria Kleivan also includes her daughter in costumes depicting Mussolini, Milosevic and Stalin."

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely: "More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments."

Get Ready For Google TV, It's Linux Too!

Get Ready For Google TV, It's Linux Too!: "Google has reportedly joined hands with Intel, Sony and Logitech to create Google TV. What is Google TV and why Google is suddenly interested in a new medium: TV?"

'powerful voices' in open source software named

'powerful voices' in open source software namedr: "LINUX CREATOR Linus Torvalds was named second in a list of the fifty most powerful movers and shakers in open source yesterday."

How to Migrate From Blogger.com to Self-Hosted WordPress

How to Migrate From Blogger.com to Self-Hosted WordPress : "One of the first blogging platforms to hit the webosphere was Blogger in 1999. It was easy to set up and start posting right away. However, some time later, WordPress came into the scene, and it changed the way people saw blogging platforms. On top of the fact that it was easy to use, users also could personalize it with themes that they could further customize with CSS and HTML. Flash forward to 2010, self-hosted WordPress is usually the blogging platform of choice. What do you do if you started with Blogger, but want to switch to a self-hosted WordPress blog? Here are the methods to migrate from Blogger to Self-Hosted WordPressm, quick and painless."

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

9 Powerful Awk Built-in Functions for Numeric

9 Powerful Awk Built-in Functions for Numeric: "Similar to awk built-in variables, awk also has lot of built-in functions for numeric, string, input, and ouput operations. Awk has the following three types of high level built-in function categories."

Aha! Moments When Learning Git

Aha! Moments When Learning Git: "Along with a book, tutorial and cheatsheet, here are the insights that helped git click"

Prince of persia in glorious lego form

Prince of persia in glorious lego form: "The guys over at LEGO-fan site Brothers Brick came across these new LEGO sets based on this Summer’s much-anticipated Prince of Persia: Sands of Time motion picture."

Fun with free maps on the free desktop

Fun with free maps on the free desktop: "Playing with open map data can be a fun pastime. Creating and editing open data can be not only fun, but also a boost for free data to go along with free software. Whether you want to view open map data or edit it, there's no shortage of applications that run on Linux and work well with OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. Here's a look at some useful mapping applications for displaying and editing open map data on the Linux desktop."

THE DAY MY ARSE DIED

THE DAY MY ARSE DIED: "Satan's Ashes are comprised of the usual things you might expect in a quality curry powder: Garam Masala, Cumin and so on but also the Dorset Naga chilli (880,000 on the Scoville scale), the Naga Morich (953,721 on the Scoville scale) and the infamous Bhut Jolokia which - at 1,001,304 Scoville units is the world's hottest chilli pepper. To put that into some kind of context, that makes the Bhut Jolokia over 100 times hotter than a Jalapeno, 20 times hotter than a Tobasco pepper and 3 times hotter than a Scotch Bonnet.
In India, Bhut Jolokia is smeared on fences to repel elephants. This noxious, possibly poisonous substance which even elephants have no truck with, was precisely what I intended to put in my mouth and eventually pass out of my arse."

Gee, officer Krupke, Krup you!

Gee, officer Krupke, Krup you!: "The Jets mock the kinds of excuses authorities use to rationalize the existence of hooligums like themselves.Sondheim's lyrics are so witty, and Russ Tamblyn is wonderful as Riff---I am not anti-social, I am only anti-work! So enjoy!"

Free Willy: Escape from Pirate's Cove? Really? WTF!

Free Willy: Escape from Pirate's Cove? Really? WTF!: "Is this the Irony life is all about?"

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

MIT building self-assembling computer chips

MIT building self-assembling computer chips: "Researchers at MIT are working on getting computer chips to 'self assemble' by coaxing molecules to arrange themselves into tiny but useful patterns, a process that could lead to microprocessors with much smaller circuit elements."

No CGI Please: Special Effects Before Computers

No CGI Please: Special Effects Before Computers: "At this year’s Academy Awards, Avatar—unsurprisingly—won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. While the effects were truly stunning, there’s something to be said for older special effects and the time and dedication put in to make imaginative masterpieces without the help of a computer. How did people come up with the cornerstones of modern film effects when the medium itself was brand new? Here are some of the most interesting special effects created before there were special effects."

Controversial Tourist Attractions

Controversial Tourist Attractions : "Here's a question to ask yourself when your travels veer off the beaten track into more controversial territory, such as the site of a great tragedy (Chernobyl) or act of inhumanity (Devil's Island). Is going there a valuable educational experience, one that forces you to confront the causes and consequences of a terrible event? Or is it morbid voyeurism, enabled and exploited by slick tour operators and T-shirt sellers?"

5 Questions To Help Organize Your Desk

5 Questions To Help Organize Your Desk: "Look at your desk right now. Is it messy? If so, don’t feel too bad. It isn’t uncommon. This post is a series of questions to ask about the stuff that is currently on your desk. Asking these questions will help you find the cause of a messy desk and give you some ideas for stopping the disorganization at its root. This is vastly more beneficial than simply taking the time to clean your desk right now, because if you don’t change your process and organization, you’ll be back in the same position in a week or so."

Cinematography Tutorial

Cinematography Tutorial: "If you are an avid moviegoer, you've probably noticed that the psychology of the movie is not only in the script and the music, but the quality of the picture as well. In simplest terms, a picture slightly reddish and/or yellowish tends to give the viewer a warm, friendly, emotional feeling and a picture with a slight bluish cast tends to give the viewer a cold, heartless, emotionless feeling. In many drama type films, the use of warm footage with cold footage helps the viewer distinguish between the hero and the villain. In this article, Jim Allen explains color temperature and how to achieve this quality in your video."

Step Behind the Scenes

Step Behind the Scenes: "From individuals to countries, we often want to persuade others to perceive things a certain way or to think a certain way. There are many standard techniques for doing this. Below are some of them. You can use these techniques to do your own persuading, and you can also use this knowledge to keep yourself from being fooled."

When tweets can make you a jailbird

When tweets can make you a jailbird: "Maxi Sopo was having so much fun 'living in paradise' in Mexico that he posted about it on Facebook so all his friends could follow his adventures. Others were watching, too: A federal prosecutor in Seattle, where Sopo was wanted on bank fraud charges."

Build Your Own Video Community With Lighttpd And FlowPlayer (Ubuntu 9.10)

Build Your Own Video Community With Lighttpd And FlowPlayer (Ubuntu 9.10) : "This article shows how you can build your own video community using lighttpd with its mod_flv_streaming module (for streaming .flv videos, the format used by most major video communities such as YouTube) and its mod_secdownload module (for preventing hotlinking of the videos) on Ubuntu 9.10. I will use FlowPlayer as the video player, a free Flash video player with support for lighttpd's mod_flv_streaming module. I will also show how you can encode videos (.mp4 .mov .mpg .3gp .mpeg .wmv .avi) to the FLV format supported by Adobe Flash."

A Computer That Processes Faster Than The Speed of Light

A Computer That Processes Faster Than The Speed of Light: "How fast is too fast? According to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a good boundary, as going beyond it opens you up to all sorts of paradoxes and space-time phenomena that are usually the stuff of sci-fi. But a couple of researchers in Austria have come up with a way to compute information faster than the speed of light."

Twitter Hoax Targets Conan O'Brien

Twitter Hoax Targets Conan O'Brien: "How can you use Twitter to spread falsehoods? So easy! So many options! Here are three"

Best Print This: 12 High-Tech & 3D Printer Design Ideas

Best Print This: 12 High-Tech & 3D Printer Design Ideas: "It’s the 21st century – so why are printers still so bulky, ugly and wasteful? The time is ripe for printers that fit into the world of iPods, cell phones and paper-thin computers, and concept designers are stepping up to the plate with incredible visions of the future. Tiny stick printers that can go anywhere, printers that use pencil stubs or even coffee dregs in lieu of ink cartridges, printers that can erase and reuse paper. Some designs go further still, transcending mere ink to produce three-dimensional objects and even food."

Cool Gloves Will Help You Photograph When It Is Freezing + Giveaway

Cool Gloves Will Help You Photograph When It Is Freezing + Giveaway: "Have you ever tried to photograph a wolf on a wild terrain when it is sub-zero outside? If you have, you must know that gloves are a photographer's friend. Of course, gloves can be a nemesis as well, if they are making you clumsy and take away your ability to press them little camera buttons."

Monday, March 15, 2010

Parse PDF files with Python

Parse PDF files with Python: "PDFMiner is a suite of programs that help extracting some meaningful information out of PDF documents. Unlike other PDF-related tools, it focuses entirely on getting and analyzing text data from PDFs. PDFMiner allows to obtain the exact location of texts in a page, as well as other extra information such as font information or ruled lines. It includes a PDF converter that can transform PDF files into other text formats (such as HTML). It has an extensible PDF parser that can be used for other purposes instead of text analysis."

Reading and Writing to Excel Spreadsheets in Python

Reading and Writing to Excel Spreadsheets in Python: "One of my primary uses of Python in the business environment is to produce reports from various data sources. The humble spreadsheet has become one of the most widely used file formats within business for its flexibility and scalability. Having the ability to produce spreadsheets using an automated system can be useful, as they can be easily integrated into existing business systems."

Sweet-toothed toddler climbs INSIDE lolly machine to guzzle sweets... and gets trapped inside

Sweet-toothed toddler climbs INSIDE lolly machine to guzzle sweets... and gets trapped inside: "Attracted by the colourful prizes of sweets and teddy bears, Cohen somehow managed to climb up inside the glass case."

Set Up a VNC Linux Server in 5 Easy Steps

Set Up a VNC Linux Server in 5 Easy Steps: "Virtual Network Computing (VNC) allows you to log into a full desktop on a remote server (as opposed to just opening windows on your local machine, as with X11 over SSH). It can be very useful, and it's very fast to set up."