mundens | Entries tagged with links

We've fixed all the bugs. Now we just have to wait to deply the damn thing. So let's clear a few tabs from my browser.

Top Ten Myths about the brain This article should be publicized on nation-wide TV! Especially the last one. (hat tip :

threemonkeys )

music by Googe. This looks interesting. Am signing up for the beta. I most interested in what their client will be like, as reportedly it will import from both iTunes and Windows Media Player.

Go Tejas! Civil disobedience against the TSA at the state level.

Big Crazy Gun! I love the design of the Chrysler TV-8

Boozy Office Party Results in Super-Conductor!

Viruses harnessed to split water This is a bit older, but it has Angela Belcher again, demonstrating a virus-templated catalyst solution.

TermKit Modern UNIX Admiinstration using WebKit

Get Your Game On Web-based Sports Administration by someone you may know

Chest of Colours Nice miniatures site.

Current Location: Wellington CBD

This cogent description of the problem with the Department of Internal Affairs censorship of New Zealand's internet feed

This article about Jack Vance and the Totality of his verbosity.

Styling your garage

"We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,”

Last night I was sitting here thinking that I should probably empty all the dead insects out of the light shade in the lounge. The problem with these new-fangled long-life low-wattage bulbs is that you don't get to remove the shade as often as you would with normal bulbs, and thus the dead insect collection becomes massive long before the bulb wears out.

I was surprised to receive an email from Avaaz recently with the title : Nuclear weapons: the only solution. You see, Avaaz are this liberal action group, and while I would fully expect to receive such an email from "Christians Wanting To Hasten The Rapture" or from a science fiction mailing list when discussing aggressive alien planetary infestations, I was intrigued to see what Avaaz would think that nuclear weapons were the only solution for. Solving the water problem in Saharan Africa perhaps?

But no, unfortunately I was disappointed. It was yet another call for "elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide". It's depressing that otherwise smart people still believe that it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle.

There have been a number of things I have run into on the web recently that I want to record as being memorable.

I would have been more excited about FilthyGorgeousThings based on it's premier issue had it not turned out to be a teaser for a horrendously expensive monthly webziine. $19 a month ? Come on! Still it's got some good writing and some nice arty erotica, and is pretty styley for porn.

There are these visualizations based on Twitter from Mashable. I especialy like the "Just landed.." one. Then there are these pics of the Aurora Borealis from space.

And there's Paul & Storm. How can a website subttled "Music, Comedy, Occassional Nuns & Pirates" be anything but a lot of fun? I especially like The Captain's Wife's Lament, here's a couple of verses to whet your appettite, as it were

There’s seamen here in front of me
And seamen in the rear
My God—there’s even seamen
Hanging from the chandelier

There’s seamen on the windowsill
And seamen in the yard
The seamen even left a stain
Upon the Saint Bernard

Although I am a patient wife
‘Tis more than I can bear
To wake up in the morning
With your seamen in my hair

And just in via @violetblue, using sex for ~~adverising~~ education

Now onto cleaning the house.

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: Wolf Castle

Rather than curling up in bed and reading, I found myself curled up in my LazyBoy, browsing the web. In doing so I found a number of things that I at least hadn't come across before.

FetLife - A Facebook/MySpace-type site run by kinky people, for kinky people.
Open Fidelity (pdf) That's a cut down version of a new book discussing the concept of Open Fidelity. I think it's a better term for how I'm currently trying to live my life than some of the other terminology out there. Even if you don't feel that way yourself, some of the discussion in the book applies to any type of relationship. Especially entry 'E'.
Ned Rosen Erotica Some very tasteful and arty stuff.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: Wolf Castle

A new study has found that trained sexologists could infer a woman's history of vaginal orgasm by observing the way she walks. Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Wellington CBD

Disasters are getting worse
Especially floods and storms. But it's not caused by global warming, it's primarily caused by stupid people moving into harm's way.
The Death of ISO
Microsoft's actions in getting the ISO to approve OOXML have effectively killed ISO as an international standards organization. Several countries have questioned the relevance of the ISO and IEC due to their inability to remain vendor-neutral, and so now something being ISO approved will no longer automatically make it acceptable to their government bodies and inter-op discussions.

These high-speed pics are fun
Tigh/Roslin 2008
Passing on from elfs for the Galactica lovers.

Typewriter Art
Great Balls of Energy
A new design for wind turbines
Rise of the Machines
As The Register says : US aerospace colossus Lockheed Martin says it has taken an important step towards the inevitable rebellion of heavily armed, highly intelligent slaughter machines bent on the elimination of humanity.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Wellington CBD

Autonomous black helicopters?
Well no, actually they're red! But it's certainly impressive, as anyone who has ever tried to pilot a remote helicopter would know!
Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers!
Watch Out For Google Chrome!
There's nothing there yet, but It should be out in a few hours. Meanwhile, you can read a Scott McCloud comic about it.
Be Careful What You Put Round Your Penis
Top Ten Endangered Languages
According to Peter K Austin. Who?
455 Free Items on DriveThruRPG.com
Just in case you didn't know and wanted something free.
Builders Out Of A Job?
Print your house in concrete, or if you prefer grow it from a tree.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Wellington CBD

There's an intersting article on ridiculously lavish (and quite geeky) home theatres. It makes me think what one might be able to do with the downstairs "play room".

One might be able to construct something that could perform multiple functions. Looking at the "Titanic" or the "Nautilus" themed rooms, my mind imagines a design that could be used as a Victorian/Edwardian/bordello environment for LARP's and watching movies, with a 60-inch or larger screen hidden behind stylistically appropriate panelling, perhaps wood or a combination of wood and rich flock wallpaper, and decorated with easily disguisable dungeon equipment for play parties. It should also still be usable for potential wargaming and table tennis.

This idea gives me something to plot upon... but first I'd have to get rid of all the boxes and old books, etc. And I should fix the sink and kitchem, and do my bedroom and associated hallway, before such frivilous expenditures. This is just so much more fun to think about!

Detecting Cancer by Laser
...by smelling breath samples, dogs identified breast and lung cancer patients with accuracies of 88 and 97 percent, respectively, as reported in the March 2006 issue of Integrative Cancer Therapies. The evidence is clear—gas phase molecules are uniquely associated with cancer.
...McCann saw an opportunity to use mid-infrared laser technology to help elucidate the relationship between specific gas phase biomarker molecules and cancer.
Super-soldier Serums
This summary of related articles talks about sports-related uses, but I keep thinking "Captain America"...
Cell Conversion Techniques
I immediately think of revolutionary cells or cell phones, but no, they're talking about converting one type of biological cell into another via "transcription factors". Look for the term cell conversion transcription factors in a zombie movie soon!
Curing Blindness

The Muppet Show Returns!
It's terrible! Some of it is average. Actually I quite liked that bit. Amazing!

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Wellington CBD

"Pill" Causes Divorce and Damages Our Evolution?
Basically, human females are sexually attracted by smell to genetically different males. When they start taking the pill, female's sexual preferences change to more genetically similar males thus reducing our genetic variation. Also, it's reportedly well known among marriage counsellors that one of the main complaints from females is that they no longer find their partner's smell attractive.

Room-temperature Quantum Memory
The Würzburg team suggests that with the InAs quantum dot functioning as a floating gate, the memory could be operated at room temperature. “From this structure, field emission is reduced drastically and we are able to observe the memory effect at room temperature.” One of the more interesting things about this set-up is that the InAs quantum dot is actually self-assembling...

A Public Service For Printer Operators
How to stop your printer lying to you about being out of ink/toner and other useful printer hacks.

Arcologies become cool again?
I wish this image was available when I was setting up High&Low!

Very Long-Term Backup
Like, say, 10,000 years?

A NZ Judge Lets The World Know He's An Idiot
Like, he's supposed to have written a book on internet law, and he doesn't realize he stands absolutely no chance of enforcing this ban? In fact, his ruling practically guarantees that the names of the accused will appear many more times on the internet than they otherwise would have, as cypherpunks replicate the names worldwide just to thumb their noses at him! Unless, of course, that was what he wanted... :)

Beware the terrorist hordes of... squirrels?
The Register asks "how many squirrels does it take to knock out Switzerland?" Can you guess the answer?

Anatomy of a Malware Scam
This sequence from The Register's "Jesper M. Johansson" is a lovely dissection of a common web malware scam. And a classic example of why, in the words of the article, "Advocating that you should stop using anti-malware software is irresponsible". However, I still don't like McHaffee or Norton, I'd recommend AVG Free, or Kasperskey if you want to pay money. Or Linux. :)

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Wellington CBD

I may play with this guide on making Ubuntu Hardy Heron look and act like Mac OSX Leopard, because it sounds much easier than actually installing OSX. :)

Digg also found this really cute little collection of sysadmin tricks from IBM, including how to tunnel SSH thru a company firewall, and then tunnel VNC thru SSH... *grins evilly*

Purdue has come up with a cheaper way of manufacturing LED's meaning that LED-based light bulbs may soon become cost competitive with CF ones. You can already buy LED light bulbs, which have a much longer life than CF bulbs, use less power, and become bright faster (though most don't give off as many lumens as a CF bulb at present), but currently they are mainly made only to support US voltages and are generally more expensive than CF bulbs. As the article says, consider not having to change a bulb for a decade, and using only 3W of power instead of the 10 - 18W of CF bulbs. LED bulbs are the way of the future, and if anyone's looking at a market to get into I reckon this one is going to sweep away CF before it even becomes fully established.

For the techno-lovers, Delia Derbyshire of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, responsible for the ground-breaking Dr. Who theme song, died in 2001, but recently tapes have been discovered in her attic, and the BBC is making some of them available on it's web site, including a techno-sounding track that could have been released now. There's a good list of what's available on Noise Addicts.

In other news, I recently bought a USB video capture device from offtheback.co.nz with the idea of transferring a few old videos on to digital. The first video I dug out to test iit on happens to have the Kapcon XII Twelfth Night LARP on it (the archive site is in bad repair at present, one of the many things I need to fix). That was in 2003, only five years ago. Lots of people on it in great costumes, I've noticed

vizi,

exiledinpn,

superlate,

andymacdaddy,

jenni_talula's brother, and

evie_fae so far. I will now take bribes to not release this video on you tube! :)

Actually, you won't have to worry for a while yet, the capture device and associated software (ULead VideoStudio 10.0) doesn't seem to be able to maintain a smooth capture rate, at least not with my old work lap-top, and raw video in AVI format really chews up hard drive space!

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Wellington CBD

Old Sisters in high rotation on the phone.

Saw something this morning on the train. Seems the Samoan Church wants to charge each member, including all babies, twenty dollars. Now the congregation of the Samoan church tends to be Samoan. Who tend to be at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Who often have large families. How can a church put that sort of load on their members?

I have no real issue with the overall goals of the Family Violence - It's Not OK campaign, though I do sometimes wonder what will happen when we're all spineless wimps and we get invaded by a country that hasn't emasculated itself. But I do take issue with the way it emphasizes males as perpetrators, with all four of the campaign "faces" being male, even though statistics show that the majority of child abuse is carried out by women, and that there are almost as many beaten husbands as there are beaten wives. So I'll add my own line to it : "It's Not OK to continue to propagate the myth that men are the only perpetrators of domestic violence". They need at least one female abuser to add to their line up of four males, if not more, to help represent the reality.

However, I find the idea of women sending used panties to the military dictators of Myamar extremely amusing. Of course, as Asylum points out, it may backfire, as there's a market for used panties in Japan and elsewhere.

There's a lovely NT times article on some old scientific books going up for auction at Christies, including a 1543 edition of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and a copy of the first ever telephone directory (Connecticut, 1897). Some of the contents of that are lovely to read through, and it contains, amongst it's instructions for using the phone, the gem : "When you are not speaking, you should be listening."

Our owners (HP) have just release this piece of lust-creating technology, a 30-bit colour accuracy, 1 billion colour, 1920 x 1200 pixel 24" wide screen LCD

House is remarkably clean for a week-day. Slept poorly. Woke up several times during the night. Not sure why. Got up late but still managed to squeeze all normal morning's activities in the reduced time, and leave earlier than normal. Even made bed. Far more cars are parking at the Silverstream station in the morning these days.

Tonight I play Corwyn of Jerbiton, somwewhere. Tomorrow lover arrives in town ! Squee! Then there will be Sweet Mother's Kitchen with French-speaking folk Friday, followed by flat-warmering and other stuff.

P.S. : Here's a little bit of technical education on the OO concept of polymorphism passed to me by a work colleague. Warning : It contains words of a sexual nature, thus making it easy for non-technical types to understand it.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Wellington CBD

xkcd is now mainstream. Glad they can make a living from it, it certainly amuses me.

Case mods

Go to Japan and collect your free cannabis.

Shooting the Moon

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Wellington CBD

"How you appear in the virtual world could affect your behaviour in real life" says Stanford's Bailenson (5min audio)

How does that work again? :) Oh, it was so hard to choose which icon to use for this! I spent a while tossing up between Tyler Durden, Captain Jack, the nekkid cat girl, the Desert Peach, the Power of Three, Death, etc... in the end I decided Shirows' cheeky fairy was most appropriate!

In other news, workers in Guangdong, China discover they are making "Free Tibet" flags after seeing them in protest on TV. I'm now waiting for the other, ironic, news story, referencing that one, about how workers in a Guangdong factory have been arrested for watching a TV showing "Free Tibet" flags.

RallyPoint, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, has developed a sensor-embedded glove that allows the soldier to easily view and navigate digital maps, activate radio communications, and send commands without having to take his hand off his weapon. (my italics).
Heh heh heh! We can all imagine what that's going to be used for!

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Wellington CBD

The Office of Government Commerce in the UK makes an unfortunate logo from their initials. And El Reg makes fun of them

Wiis are more green than X-Boxen & Playstations

True devotion to Net Neutrailty, good if you're a virgin anyway

Finally, for those HP fic fans on my flist, (in case they haven't seen it, because I really think they should,) trickofthedark's present

Current Location: Wolf Castle

Had a fun BBC/TNC last night, the presence of both

adrexia and

allyn resulting in some significant reminiscing seeing as the last time that happened was about three years ago just after

allyn arrived in country and

richdrich also providing much amusement value. I sure can't eat as much as I used to be able to though!

Found out today that due to a big win, all next week is "Casual Friday". Damn annoying really, I may actually have to buy some casual clothes.

The sort-of famous Ami Cusak wants to find "a sweet Kiwi guy and settle down. Sweet, another HBB to look out for around town! Someone else to look out for is the Facebook sex addict

Having a book collection is reportedly a useful thing when trying to pick up women, as long as it has the right books. I have to agree, though I seem to have had more luck with my comic collection. :)

A discussion we had a while ago about DRM in a world of replicating technology is will become far more relevant when these self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRaps) start hitting the shelves.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Wellington CBD

So if you read \. or Digg you'll have seen these, but

I guess we need robots for Ronny.
The interesting thing in the linked article, for me at least, is not that there are a lot of robots in Japan, but that it is government policy to replace their workforce with robots, and that the reason for this is the rapidly shrinking workforce as Japanese age. It makes stories like BubbleGum Crisis and Chobits even more interesting and it also shows the lack of research on the part of the author when he states that in Japanese anime and manga robots are normally portrayed as friendly helpers or the good guys. Sure, there are your Haro's and the like, but for every story with friendly helpers there's one where robots are vicious killers. Perhaps the balance is better in Japanese media, but there is no shortage of threat!

Mind control of PC's now commercially available
\^/007 !!! i c4|\| |-|45?

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Wellington CBD

Sounds like pr0n, but I'm actually describing the first two stories in a fun little article on the stories of several famous toys.

The same site, Mental_Floss has a number of other fun articles, such as this one on home decor of a morbid kind. I've seen the knife block in a shop in Christchurch with

seraphs_folly, and for the drunkards amongst us, a whole passel of historical drinking tales. Can't vouch for the accuracy, but I love the reason for the name of Manhattan Island

Via a series of links I ended up at Chris Jordan's site. His work Running the Numbers : An American Self-Portrait attempts to visually demonstrate what some of those numbers that you hear bandied about in TV statistics really mean, like "two million plastic drinking bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes..." (Scroll down a bit to see that picture). Jordan has a number of other interesting photo essays too.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Wellington CBD

The Truth Machine - mind-reading by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI):
He cannot tell what the undergrad is looking at just by peering at the dance of neuronal firings inside his head. So Tong extracts the data from the scanner, takes it back to his lab and runs it through his processing software. After several hours he has a prediction: The test subject was looking at a penguin. As it turns out,Tong was right. His accuracy for this kind of mind reading is 70 to 80 percent. “Our ability to guess what a person is thinking about binary decisions is not super dramatic,” he says. “But we’re doing it with really crude image resolution of samples from the brain. If we could access every neuron, and spent long enough analyzing the data, we could figure out in great detail what a person is seeing or thinking.”

Robots Vs Pirates - armed USVs to patrol the waves

Australian Defence Forces to wear powered clothing
The CSIRO’s Flexible Integrated Energy Device (FIED) ... which will be designed to resemble ordinary garments, will be used to store and provide energy over a continuous period of time. It can be charged by either vibration energy harvesting or through plugging into an electrical power point.

Laurel gives you ten. Laurel also tells me why I like spicy food :

University of New York at Buffalo scientists found that capsaicin (hot-factor in chilis) triggers the pain receptors in your mouth,causing your brain to release endorphins and improve your mood.

Current Mood: horny
Current Location: Wellington CBD

Recently I posted about the Father's Day present

wasup_bro gave me. Go and have a look at it, and then go look at this Lamborghini.

So

wasup_bro, if you get tired of being a vet, you can always get employed to paint Lamborghinis!

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Wellington CBD

Profile

mundens

December 2018

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

1: Leaving the 'Book
2: The Scott Card Superman Boycott
3: First Kiss on Neptune
4: (no subject)
5: Fifty Years On
6: NZ File-sharing Law Makes Using Your Browser An Infringement
7: Long Time, No Update
8: Small Group PSychosis
9: #LOFNOTC is #LOSNOTC night for us...
10: Worse Than s92A : Cease & Desist Orders

Style Credit

Base style: Modular by branchandroot
Theme: Andúnë by nornoriel

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 20th, 2026 06:37 am

Munden's Bar

Where nobody knows your name

Entries tagged with links

Slow Day

Things I want to remember

Dead insects and secret chimps

Linky

Walk This Way...

Friday Morning Boredom

Links Before Munch

Potential Life Styles of the Not Yet Rich & Famous

Linkage

Somewhere Between The Soul & Soft Machine

With a Gun for a Lover and a Shot for the Pain

Link dump

This is my rifle, this my gun...

The other post

Friday : Fish?

Secret Chimp

Slinky and the Mysto-Erecto

More interesting (to me, anyway) Links

Need an excuse to eat more chocolate?

An Artistic Future?