Nice article from the ever-dependable Marina Hyde in The Guardian today. She takes aim at idiotic celebrities and their idiotic beliefs. OK, deriding celebrities who are full of themselves is rather like shooting fish in a barrel, but she does it with great panache.
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Perceptual Illusion – #2
Another interesting perceptual illusion. Don’t always think you see what you think you see…Leave a comment
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Pieces of Eight!
My pirate name is:Black Tom FlintLike anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. Like the rock flint, you’re hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you’re easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!Leave a comment
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AskPhilosophers
You ask. Philosophers answer. What a good idea – and it has an RSS feed as well. Philosophy enters the 21st century.Leave a comment
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Google Earth
I mentioned the user community that has grown up around the Google Earth application earlier today. As an example of how Google Earth is being used, Frank Taylor, over at the Google Earth Blog, writes about how the spread of avian flu around the globe is being tracked by a member of the Google Earth Community. Here’s a screenshot showing a sample of the data (click to go to the original on Flickr, where you can choose higher resolution versions of the shot for greater clarity).
Update: Frank Taylor, over at the Google Earth Blog reports that Declan Butler, a senior reporter at Nature Magazine, has published a new version of the avian flu outbreak map. He advises this new map be used for accuracy.Leave a comment
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Blurring The Lines…
…between reality and virtual reality. This story, about someone who has bought a virtual space station inside of an online game, simply proves to me that I was born in another age, where fantasy was fantasy, reality was reality, and never the twain should meet.Leave a comment
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Yahoo Maps
A new version of Yahoo Maps was launched yesterday. It uses Flash technology, instead of Ajax (which is used by its rivals, Google Maps and Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.It’s a good thing it’s a beta, because it crashed on me within seconds when I tried to use my mouse’s scroll-wheel to zoom.By the way, one thing that I find supremely irritating is that Google’s use of the scroll wheel to zoom is the exact opposite of the way in which Microsoft and Yahoo use it. Google wins the Donald A. Norman award for piss-poor user interface consistency in my view. They don’t even give you the option to reverse it.Google Maps (despite the user interface cock-up) works the best for me. Microsoft’s offering returns blank map tiles too often for my liking. And all of them are either sketchy or non-existent when it comes to showing maps outside of North America.But my favourite map application is still Google Earth. The combination of the PC application fed by data from Google’s map servers is still a far richer user experience than any browser-based map application that I’ve yet seen. There’s a really vibrant user community adding data to the maps. I’ve recently been visiting all of the locations mentioned by Shakespeare in his plays. All added by enthusiastic users.Leave a comment
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Coffee-Beer
A story in the New Scientist this week about a patent that has been applied for by the Swiss company Nestlé. It’s apparently for a non-alcoholic drink that is a cross between coffee and beer. It doesn’t sound very appetising. Let’s see, the Swiss record on inventions: swiss chocolate – a hit; the swiss army knife – also a hit. The cuckoo clock – a definite miss (although as a child, I desperately wanted one – but now that I’ve grown up, I’ve put away childish things). Coffee-beer – a hit or a miss? Place your bets now.Leave a comment
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Thin? – It’s Anorexic
Thin-client computers were all the rage a few years ago, with some vendors claiming huge savings over the costs of infrastructures built with traditional PCs. Thankfully, the hype has been exposed for what it was, and thin-client technologies have settled in alongside PCs as a useful and sensible alternative in particular situations.Now Chip PC have announced the Jack-PC – a thin client so thin that it’s actually installed inside the wall socket. This is not thin – this is anorexic.Leave a comment
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The Homocaust
Through a chance posting on Usenet, I came across a site that I had not seen before: the Homocaust. It’s a site that collects together the history of the gay victims of the Holocaust. It’s a good site, full of information and links to further resources, and appears to have been a labour of love by Lewis Oswald, who has his own site here.Leave a comment
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Beams and Motes
I usually have a lot of time for Giles Fraser, team rector of Putney and lecturer in philosophy. His occasional columns in the Guardian often contain a lot of common sense (which, as everyone knows, is not very common these days). However, his latest column seemed to me to fall below his usual standard. He seems to be claiming that us atheists are not self-critical enough, and even worse, we are somehow not trendy and fashionable enough.Being the dilettante that I am, I was wondering whether I should comment on the column, but Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, has come thundering into the fray with a vitriolic response. Over to you, Ophelia…Leave a comment
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Theo Van Gogh
It is exactly one year ago that Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri. At the moment, there is a remembrance event going on in the Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam. In a typically satiric touch, in place of a bunch of flowers there is a pot with a cactus plant on the spot where van Gogh was shot and had his throat cut by Bouyeri. There will be further events throughout the day.Van Gogh was no saint, but no-one deserves to die in the manner that he did. Bouyeri has no remorse.2 responses to “Theo Van Gogh”
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loving the space! please check mine out as I am building a new anti-bullying website and need all the feedback I can get! Thanks
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Hayzbetts – thanks for the kind comment!
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Gastronomic Art
Unlike the Darth Vader carved out of butter, I think there is a genuine case for these witty images to claim the title of Art. Not great Art, but Art nonetheless.Leave a comment
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OTT Workstation
The Total Immersion PCE takes the term "couch potato" to new heights. I confess that I wouldn’t mind having a ride on it though.Leave a comment
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But Is It Art? – #4
I think we can safely say that if it is, it’s not art as we know it, Jim.Leave a comment
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Why Bother Going to the Cinema? – Part 2
Manish, over at Septia Mutiny, discusses the same topic as I visited last week. Apparently, M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t want his films to be released in the cinema and on DVD simultaneously, and appeals to the "magic" of the shared experience in the cinema. Manish holds much the same jaundiced view as I do: The movies are great, it’s the moviegoers I could do without.Leave a comment
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Murine Melodies
Lovely little story in The Guardian today about the fact that scientists have discovered that male mice sing songs. The songs are at an ultrasonic pitch, so aren’t normally heard by humans. The scientists slowed down the songs electronically to bring them into our range of hearing. I learned a new word too: murine.Leave a comment
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XBOX 360
Apparently Microsoft’s XBOX 360 has just been released. I doubt very much that I’ll be lining up to purchase one – all the gee-whizzery seems to be devoted to games of the first-person shooter variety. This is a genre that appeals to me not one jot or tittle. Perhaps it’s just me, but I get a real feeling of dissonance when I read this in Greg Hughes’ blog entry of first impressions of the XBOX:The crowd was excited. A sign is taped to the end cap where the 360 resides that says "5 minutes, please." The crew of giddy people (mostly adults by the way) quietly contained themselves and politely took turns splattering people with their virtual firearms. It pretty much rocked. Ooohs and Aahhhhs abound."Politely took turns splattering people"? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand it.And if you want to see something really depressing, then watch and listen to this video of a 9 year-old (a 9! year-old) child playing a first person shooter game. It’s linked to by PZ Myers in his blog entry here. The child is a brat, his mother is completely ineffectual. I don’t know which is worse. All I know is that I think there’s going to be trouble around him when he gets older.Leave a comment
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Autumn Woods
Yesterday we went for a ride through the Bergherbos – the woods that lie between Beek, Stokkum, ‘s-Heerenberg, Zeddam and Braamt in the province of Gelderland in The Netherlands. We were lucky enough to be invited to ride in an open carriage drawn by two black horses. Wonderful weather, wonderful day. Some photos that attempt to capture the sense of it are below.
2 responses to “Autumn Woods”
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hoi GeoffWat een prachtige foto’s weer!Kathelijne vroeg of jullie het leuk hadden op de koets.Ik heb haar de foto’s en je web-log toegestuurd.Ze was erg onder de indruk van jouw log.De foto’s gaat ze op een cd branden.Groetjes Marjon
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Ja, het was een prachtige en mooie dag! Groetjes, Geoff
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