A Sword Form From The Perspective Of The Sword

This is a sword form from the perspective of the sword tip. I wonder if I could make something similar.

Shift In Language

Language is dynamic and this video shows this off very well.

European Boundaries 1 to 2000 Years AD

Euratlas.net has This Page showing the history of European country boundaries from 1AD to 2000AD, at 100 year intervals. A rather interesting insight.

Scott Nickleson's Boardgame Publishing Lecture

Scott of Board Games With Scott was asked by MIT's Comparative Media Studies to talk about Boardgame Publishing. Scott puts together a fun lecture with a lot of information about himself and the industry I didn't know about. Here is a link to the lecture.

Legal Torrents

ClearBits is a website that hosts Creative Commons material for download through torrents. Have a look thought their stuff because they do have some interesting material.

Zelda Ocarina Of Tetris

OpenLase

Hector Martin is a laser hacker and has created an open source laser engine. He did a presentation at last year's Chaos Communication Congress about his engine, but he did it with lasers!



There is more information and demos on His Blog

Happy New Year!

I have a good feeling about this year.

The Best Film I Seen This Year

In the last year I have watched 128 films (a complete alphabetical list is found at the end of this post). And at the end of the year it is an easy post to write about what my general recommendation as to what the best film I seen was. To do this I first generate a short list of what I rated rated 5/5 on LoveFilm (read Netflix if in US) and then have a look at the site's meta data to see what others who seen the films thought. And then the film me and the meta data think is best is my recommendation for the year.

This year the film I can recommend to most people rather easily is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.



P.S. IGN and I am sure a lot of others as my meta data shows, will claim that Inception is the best film of 2010. I only gave Inception 4/5 because I never cared about the characters or their mission.

Tron Legacy
9
17 Again
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
638 Ways To Kill Castro
A Serious Man
Angels And Demons
Antibodies
Apocalypse Now Redux
Boat That Rocked, The
Book of Eli
Brothers
Capitalism: A Love Story
Che - Part 1 - The Argentine
Clash of the Titans
Clash Of The Titans
Coco Before Chanel
Code 46
Cold Souls
Colin
Cronos
Crying Fist
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The
Dagon
Daybreakers
Dead Man Running
District 13
Dorian Gray
Dragonball Evolution
Evangelion 1.01 - You're Not Alone
Exam
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Expendables, The
Fame
Fantastic Mr. Fox, The
Fargo
Fast And Furious
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
Fighting
Fish Tank
Franklyn
Full Metal Jacket
Girl Who Lept Through Time, The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The
Girlfriend Experience, The
Good Morning, Vietnam
Halo - Legends
Handmaid's Tale, The
Hangover, The
Helvetica
Hotel Rwanda
Hudson Hawk
I'm Here
In Bruges
Inception
Iron Man 2
Jacob's Ladder
Jennifer's Body
Karate Kid - Part 2, The
Kick-Ass
Knowing
Law Abiding Citizen
Legion
Lethal Weapon
Men Who Stare at Goats, The
Michael Jackson - This Is It
On The Beach
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
Outlander
Pandorum
Paul Blart - Mall Cop
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Platoon
Ponyo
Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time
Psycho
Quadrophenia
Rambo - First Blood
Rambo - First Blood - Part II
Rambo - III
Rear Window
Red Rock West
Resident Evil Afterlife
Road, The
Rope
Runaway Train
S. Darko - A Donnie Darko Tale
Salt
Saw IV
Saw V
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Sherlock Holmes
Sky Crawlers
Slaughterhouse Five
Sleeper
Sleepless In Seattle
Slumdog Millionaire
Smokin' Aces
Snake Eyes
Solar Crisis
South Park - The Passion of the Jew
Strait Jacket
Surrogates
Sword Of The Stranger
The 39 Steps
The Back-up Plan
The Basketball Diaries
The Cove
The Horde
The Informant
The Karate Kid
The Karate Kid 3
The Losers
The Mist
The Road
The Twilight Saga - New Moon
The Wrestler
Thirst
To Hell And Back
Toy Story 3
Up In The Air
Waltz with Bashir
Wedlock
Where the Wild Things Are
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Youth in Revolt
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Zombieland

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

Adult Fans Of Lego

This is a documentary about some AFOLs. I remember seeing some well constructed things as a kid, but what the hobby is doing now is on a new level of interesting.

AFOL A Blocumentary from AFOL on Vimeo.

Trench Run

Snowy trench run from Aaron Dabelow on Vimeo.

A Minecraft Song

I thought this was rather catchy.

Colour Wheel For Use In Web Design

Color Scheme Designer is a great little JavaScript based web tool for creating a matching colour scheme for websites. It even includes a website preview that scarily seems to look great no-matter what colour scheme you choose.

Wikileaks On Why Leaking Is Good

WikiLeaks is a website dedicated to releasing leaked information. It isn't doing anything new, leaked information has been a large part of Journalism for a while, but what is different that the leaks are delivered in an almost no edited format.

Recently WikiLeaks got hold of 251,287 leaked US Embassy Cables. These are short reports about all manor of things. I found the report on colonel Gaddafi rather interesting, but there has been a lot of criticism towards the leaks; mainly around the possibility that they would harm diplomatic relations and cost lives. Reading the reports you can see many of the names have been removed, so I am not convinced by the loss of life argument, but there was a TED talk earlier in the year with WikiLeak found Julian Assange giving his account on why WikiLeaks is a force for good.
WikiLeaks is under (government?) attack, so has several Mirror Sites setup.

Free Documentaries

Documentary-Film.net is a network that distributes documentaries for free. Most of them seem to be professional looking, that isn't to say the information is accurate or impartial in all of them, there is a good selection.

Can Less Traffic Control Be Better?

Turns out it can be.




View Larger Map

TreT The Parkour Dog From The Ukraine

Worlds Biggest Harry Potter Fan

I wonder if he has a scar.

Snub Fighter Star Wars Fan Re-edit

A really great Star Wars fan edit.

Luke snatches defeat from the jaws of victory in this re-edit of "A New Hope"
After boasting to the more experienced pilots of Red Squadron, he arrives late for the attack, disobeys orders and ignores Obi-Wan's repeated pleas to use the force. Han Solo is not impressed with Luke and must now deal with a vengeful Darth Vader and all Red Five can do is watch from above as the veteran Red Leader calmly demonstrates the correct way to fire a proton torpedo down a thermal exhaust port.

Kinect And 3D Space

The Kinect has a camera and a 3D depth sensor, so when you are waving your arms around it can translate them to an avatar in a game. However since Kinect got hacked, we will start seeing some interesting applications. This video isn't an application, but it is a cool way of displaying the two forms of visual data the Kinect is receiving.

Apple Trackpad Easter Egg (NSFW- Nudity!!)

I wonder what Steve will have to say about this when he finds out.

Apple Trackpad Easter Egg (NSFW- Nudity!!) from rj logan on Vimeo.

Game Complexity

I bought X3 Terran Conflict the other day because I felt like a complicated space simulation game. But it still feels very abstracted, I wonder if anybody will ever make a complex space sim game like DCS: A-10C Warthog.

Infinite Fire In MineCraft

This is funny.

And of course little girl still wanted to be Darth Fairy

Happy Halloween! Did any of you dress up as Darth Fairy?

TinEye Image Search Engine

TinEye might be useful on occasion if I see an image and want to know where it came from.

Flash Gravity Simulator

There used to be a game like This in one of the old Microsoft Encartas that I used to love playing with.

Laser Scanned Lightshow

The Amazing Sasuke McDonalds Toy

The quality of McDonald's Happy Meal toys might not have improved since I was a kid, but the use of them has. And This Naruto Sasuke Toy is amazing.

MineCraft Cartography

MineCraft is a simple game of Mining a randomly generated world. You Mine raw materials, create tools, build a house or a mine and fight monsters that appear at night. Some players have been very creative and built cities out of the simple blocks that the MineCraft world is constructed from. You can view one of the Australian multilayer servers Here with a Google Maps extension of sorts. This was made with a Cartography Mod.

Random Inspiration

I loved This.

Adam Savage On Problem Solving

Another brilliant talk.

Watching Films On An iPhone

I don't understand how someone could watch a film on a mobile phone. Maybe if they had time to devote to it while they are on a very long train ride or something, but I am largely with David Lynch.

Kindle Laughs At iPad For Poolside Reading

I hate monitors with glossy surfaces because they reflect everything. Amazon seen fit to make an advert showing the kindle's screen as an advantage and poke fun at the iPad's price at the same time.

An Odd Error Message For A Shop

There is a video game store called ShopTo.net. When I visited the site today with Chrome (it is my primary browser) I got the below error message.



Translation:
Dear customer, we don't support your browser so please don't use it to buy anything.

StarCraft: World Cyber Games 2005 (National Geographic documentary)

I missed this when it was first aired, but it is a very good documentary on the Korean StarCraft scene.

Excellent Miniatures Painting Tutorial

When I was younger and before YouTube I painted some miniatures, now with the internet I wanted to see what tutorials where out these and found this one hour and twenty minuet monster.

E-ink Magnified

This Article shows iPad text, Kindle, Newspaper, Magazine and Book text magnified.

I don't think this is conclusive proof that e-ink is easier to read than an LCD screen, but it does show an interesting comparative.

Random Fact

Chromium being the open source browser component of Google Chrome has an open policy for bug reports accepting all reports from any source. To help this effort they have a Reward Program where individuals reporting new security can get anywhere from a $500 to $1337 as a reward. They even have a Hall Of Fame.

The Adventures Of Mini Cannon

This miniature cannon isn't just for show, it is a fully working cannon.

Man Really Loves Rainbows

Either he really does love rainbows or he is tripping on mushrooms.

BBC Some Does GOOD Technology Coverage!!!

I like whatever happened at the BBC recently to caused their technology coverage to reach an acceptable level of quality.



However some of their science coverage still leaves a little to be desired. This Piece on meat from cloned animals just talks through the process and doesn't cover the reasons for or against the technology. Despite my love of science and my strong belief we need to spend more on science and make greater strides, I think cloning farm animals like this is a mistake. Many cloned animals are born with defects and the farm animals we have today where created through a process of selective breeding which is perfectly adequate for our purposes.

Ratings Out Of Five

I have watched many films and rated many films through film rental services and looking at how I rate films and how others rate them out of five I have come up with a breakdown of the "out of five" rating system.

1/5 A bad film, makers didn't even try.

2/5 Makers tried to create a good film, but the parts just didn't come together.

3/3 An average film, good, entertaining, but nothing more.

4/5 A film where everything comes together so well it clicks.

5/5 A film that is better than the sum of it's parts and stands as an excellent exsample of film-making.


What I like about the five point rating system is it's ability to give more detail that just a thumbs up or down, but also the ability to not judge a film too precisely and allow each viewer to experience the film on their own terms. Giving a film a five out of five rating says it is very good, but doesn't put an unnecessarily high level of expectation that a ten out of ten, or a one hundred out of one hundred rating would.

Random Fact

Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty glass.

Random Joke

I hear that Mission Impossible is being remade with cats, they are calling it Mission Inpussible.

Anime Dub Vs Sub

Normally Anime fans regard the discussion of original subtitles vs dubbed English with disdain, because historically dubs have been terrible. No terrible as in an audio quality way, but terrible because the dubbers change the script to please a younger western audience. This can mean that characters nolonger swear, subplots are removed, cultural references get a more US flair and most scripts loose their edge.

In the last ten years this however has started to change and companies performing the dubs know that fans hate it when they change things, so they have been trying to do more unabridged dubs. For me this peaked when I seen the English Dub of Beck. I was shocked to discover the Dub was better than the original sub!

The reason for this is that Beck is about a native Japanese speaking band with no knowledge of English who sing English songs. This means they have a strong Japanese accent on all the songs and for myself an English speaker this was slightly jarring, the English dub however has none of this. And with an almost completely unabridged script, it's brilliant. I highly recommend the sub all the time, but the dub is better.

Japanese


English

Tilt Shift Cameras

Of the camera lenses in the world the Tilt Shift style seem to be getting very popular and so I went searching. What I found was rather interesting:



And one of those tight focus videos:

Random Fact

Smurfs are exactly three apples tall.

Data Through Visible Light

When I heard about Data Through Visible Light, I thought it was something about fibre optics, but this is something different. This is an LED based light transmitting a data stream through alpha waves (light in the range of human vision). On the surface this might seem pointless, but it has a few tantalising applications.

Imagine an advert on television where by using a mobile phone camera you could download the product. Or if you are in a club the lights could tell you what music was playing. Or if a power LED on a product could stream detailed information about what it was doing. Imagine a situation where you have twenty or more televisions that you want to display the same image, in sync from the same video source, with current technology that would take a lot of cables, but with this the screens would only need to see the light from a single source.

The future of all electronics will be to make them wireless and this will be another tool. Wither it will be a staple of consumer electronics is yet to see, but all mobile phones have cameras.

Upside Down Dog.com

Upside Down Dog.com is a photoblog of upside down dogs. Very pointless, very silly and nobody would have created such a thing pre-internet.

Money Island 2 Out Now On STEAM

Money Island 2 Special Edition came out on Steam (Link). Playing it, it seems a lot more polished than the last Special Edition. The developers commentary is excellent too.

I was reading an article today called 10 Things You Did Not Know About Monkey Island and unlike your usual "things you didn't know" articles this was very good.

Apple Says No Thanks To Bluray

Apple computers are premium computers that are stylish and do everything in HD because when you buy a Mac you know you are buying the latest technology. But for some reason you can't get one with a Bluray player.

One might think that this was a licensing issue, but Apple isn't bothering with Blueray because users are already buying movies from iTunes.

[Crunch Gear]

Korean Android Girl (Rihanna - Take A Bow)

Simply delightful.



Rihanna's version isn't half bad either.

Super Mario Crossover

Now you can play the original Super Mario Brothers Nintendo game with Samus, Mega Man or several other classic characters in Super Mario Crossover.

The History Of PC Audio As Told By Money Island

I seen this on Evil Avatar. I started with a SoundBlaster 16 myself and the first game I had with sound was Theme Park.

Omnitech Skateboard Figure

The Omnitech Skateboard Figure is a skateboarding action figure with a control rod so it acts more like a puppet.



The below video shows how they are operated, I don't think they will catch on, but they might sell enough to keep going.

Llewellyn On Copyright

Robert Llewellyn, writer, actor and comedian got hit with the YouTube video takedown hammer recently and he has some interesting things to say on Copyright as a result.

Website Naming Disasters

One Hundred Website Naming Disasters. My favourite is the children's charity childrenslaughter.com, is it Children's Laughter or Children Slaughter?

Power Rangers And It's Japanese Twin

Power Rangers was a very popular kids TV show during the 90's and 00's, but it had a Japanese twin called Zyuranger. All the in-costume action shots where re-purposed from the original Japanese show and re-used in the American show with new story pieces filmed around them for a western audience. I always wondered what the Japanese intro was like:

Dinosaur Squadron Zyuranger:


Original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Into and Full Theme Music if you so wish.

Google Chrome Vs Opera Vs Potato

As a mindspace type ad Google put-together an odd advert called Chrome Vs Potato (see below), funny, but one does have to wonder what that has to do with performance benchmarking.



Now Opera have done a parody advert on the same idea, Opera Vs Potato. Proving that potatoes don't make for a very consistent browser speed test.

Random Fact

Horses are unable to vomit.

Harry Potter Linked To The Jewish Plot To Takeover The World

Some people on Iranian television would have it's viewers that Jews in Hollywood are using Harry Potter to take over the world. I am not sure how anybody could use Harry Potter to bring the world under their control, but I think this is a clear example that antisemitism is still very much alive in the world and not something that died with Hitler.

Octopus Guerrilla Filmmaker Steals Diver's Digicam

This Story is brilliant. Octopus steals camera, diver chases after octopus and wrestles it back.

Happy To Own

This guy seems very happy about his Neo Geo collection.

The Pink Panther:The Pink Phink

In 1964 the first episode of The Pink Panther won an Oscar for Short Subjects. I remember watching this as a kid, but unlike a lot of things back then when I rewatch them and realise how shallow they where, this is kind of cool.

Social Is Social Again

AudioBoo is the new newweb2.0/wiki/facebook/youtube/twitter revolution we have all been waiting for apparently. This fascination with the one social site to rule them all thing is kind of silly. The truth is that now and in the future content on the internet is going to come more from users than professional content producers like paid performers. And indeed putting yourself online is nolonger extraordinary, but a normal social activity, hay! look at my video! my music! my rant!

Social media is just another medium for communication, and it is here to stay. Now can we please stop calling every new social media site revolutionary and get on with life!?

Simply Inspired

This is brilliant on several levels. I don't want to deconstruct it, just watch it.

iPad used by 100 Year Old Gran

This video supports everything I have said about the iPad, in that it isn't for tech-people, it is for people who for whatever reason struggle to use a traditional computer.

Random Fact

In Italy drivers loose points for breaking traffic rules rather than gain them. The idea is that loosing good points has a stronger phycological effect than gaining bad points.

Duck Face

Is it pouting, making a kissy face or making a duck face? I don't know, but Stop Making That Duck Face is funny.

I'm Here by Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze director of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are also directs music videos and short films. And last month I'm Here was launched on it's website.

The thirty minuet short features two robots in an adaptation of The Giving Tree. And is one of the better shorts I have recently seen.

Greg Mutt

I seen Greg Mutt first after Avatar was released, he is a very lifelike anthropomorphic CGI Dog. At the time I though it was done by some Hollywood guy who had too much time on his hands, but turns out it is a short film company in Wiltshire UK called BustyKelp who are mainly know for their work on commercials.

The reason why I know this is because AudioMotion the tool they use has been using Greg to promote their tool. I just hope they make more videos now the secret is out, because Greg is cool.

A Very Long Wee

I have had long urinations, but this is something completely different. I should point-out that this isn't me.



Update: Fixed video.

The Codex Of Alchemical Engineering

This is one of those things on the internet that passed me by. Mainly because I was linked to it, couldn't work out how to play it by clicking around it's interface and so didn't bother with it. This has happened a couple of times in the last year, but yesterday when I found myself looking at it yet again (it was mentioned in An Episode Of Geek Nights on Programming) I thought I would give it a proper go. And I am so glad I did.

What I am referring to is a flash game called The Codex Of Alchemical Engineering. In it you are given a set of atom modifiers and some manipulator arms that you must use to collect basic atoms and from level to level make more and more complex elements from them. The game plays very much like a simpler version of CeeBot.

Here is a video tutorial that should help get you started.



NOTE: To rotate one of the arms you have to click and hold the left mouse button as if you where dragging it, and while still holding the left mouse button press the Ctrl or Shift keys on your keyboard to change the arm's orientation or start length. This is not very well explained in the game's instructions, the video does a slightly better job, but still doesn't spell it out.

Some of my solutions:

Level 1 (a very fast solution)
m,11,12,180,3,crol;m,3,12,270,3,orcl;m,3,4,90,3,clor;m,11,4,180,3,olcr;

Level 2
b,7,9;m,6,6,0,3,clorwwwww;m,10,9,270,1,lucdowcro;m,7,12,0,2,clolcrorw;

Level 3
t,4,11;b,6,9;m,4,9,90,3,cddloruuwwww;m,10,9,90,3,cdrwwdrolluu;m,7,6,0,2,clor;

Level 4
b,4,11;b,4,9;m,7,11,90,1,crolww;m,1,11,90,1,cludor;m,4,7,90,2,douucd;m,5,5,0,3,rcllor;m,7,9,180,1,rrcllo;m,13,9,90,3,crolww;

Level 5
c,11,13;t,9,11;t,7,9;b,4,9;m,9,13,0,3,cddloruu;m,9,9,180,3,oddlcruu;m,1,9,0,2,oruwwcdl;m,8,7,180,1,wwcruodl;m,4,7,90,1,clorwwww;

Level 6
t,9,9;t,11,11;c,9,13;c,1,11;b,4,9;b,5,7;m,1,9,90,3,cddluoru;m,11,13,0,1,cllorrww;m,9,11,90,1,llorrcww;m,9,7,180,1,dlcruoww;m,6,5,90,1,crrruodr;m,5,13,270,2,lucdruod;m,5,5,90,3,cddouuww;m,11,5,180,1,cllluodl;m,13,2,180,1,oddwwcuu;

Level 7
p,9,11;b,6,9;b,1,9;m,10,13,0,2,cdloruww;m,7,11,90,1,cloclorr;m,9,9,180,1,dwwwwcuo;m,6,11,270,1,lorwwwwwwwwwwwwc;m,2,11,270,1,rclo;m,1,11,90,1,rrollwwwwwwwwwwc;m,1,6,90,2,lorwwwwwwwwwwwwc;m,7,6,180,2,crol;

Level 8
t,3,9;c,13,11;t,11,9;b,8,11;c,1,11;b,3,7;m,13,13,180,1,crolwwww;m,8,13,0,1,wwlorucd;m,3,11,90,1,rrudollc;m,3,5,90,1,uuwwcddo;m,11,11,0,1,cludlorr;m,6,11,270,1,rclo;m,6,7,90,1,rolc;m,4,5,0,1,rclo;m,8,5,270,1,lcro;

Level 9
b,5,13;c,13,9;t,13,7;b,10,11;c,3,10;b,5,7;m,3,13,180,1,currodllcrrollwww;m,5,10,90,2,wwwwwwwwwwwcrroll;m,6,11,0,3,wwwwwwwwwc11lorww;m,11,13,0,1,wwwwwwwclorwwwwww;m,13,11,90,1,crruududlodlwwwww;m,6,5,90,1,cll22uuoddllwwwww;m,2,1,0,1,cuuodd;

PhotoShop CS5's Content Aware Fill

Like I took this photo at a wedding and cut someone off because they where outside the frame and I don't know who they are, can you fill them in?

Adobe PhotoShop CS5's Content Aware fill just might.

Random Scifi Idea

I was just thinking the other day how cool it would be to have some photo editing software that would change the season, or time of day a photograph was taken.

So you would for example load in a photograph taken in the summer and then you could change the season to winter. It would adjust the lighting, put snow on flat surfaces, even change the cloths people where wearing in the photograph to make it look like winter.

Also if you took a photo and didn't like the time of day it was taken, it would figure out where the sun is and then change all the lighting and shadows to make it look like a different time of day.

I don't have the time or money to make this software, but if I patent it then maybe my grandkids can sue whoever makes it after I am dead.

Earth Hour

Just a reminder that this Saturday from 8:30pm to 9:30pm is Earth Hour.

Failure Is Always An Option

Adam Savage who you might have seen on Mythbusters gave a talk at Makers Fair about times in his life where he has failed.



[Direct Link]

EVE Online's Dr Eyjolfur Gudmundsson

The BBC of all places did An Interesting Article about Dr Eyjolfur Gudmundsson and the role of economy in EVE Online.

If you didn't know, Dr Gudmundsson was an Academic Economist who joined CCP to help the staff with the in game economy and produce quarterly economic reports.
As the game is player driven, and all items in the game are the result of in-game crafting. So keeping the system fluid and fair is key to keeping EVE a fun place to trade. Hiring an economist seems then like a logical decision, but I know of no other MMO that has one; despite how everybody seems to realise or Write About how important a stable economy is.

And if you are so interested, you can download EVE's 2009 Fourth Quarterly economy report from Here.

During the BBC's video interview, Dr Gudmundsson talks about how pressures in real our world economy could be lessened if like EVE it was transparent and allowed people to make their own choices. But I think Jon Stewart Has Proved That Will Never Happen.

Happy National No Smoking Day

Penny Arcade's The Tester

This is just me trying to get you to watch the Penny Arcade WebTV series so if you already watch it, you don't need to read this.


Sony put together a show called The Tester which is a reality show about a group of people playing silly games in order to win the show prize of becoming a video games tester. See trailer:



Working in the video games industry is though and sucks the life blood out of many unfortunate souls. But the lowest position is that of a tester. If you work in other industries Quality Assurance can have some respect, but not in the video games industry. If the company misses a milestone payment from the publisher, before management will give-up their quilted toilet paper, some testers are going to go.

Penny Arcade captured this competition and the crushing reality of the prize in a strip titled Here's Your Reality Program.

Now the reason for this post. Jerry and Mike have a reality show of their own and last week their documentary team (2PlayerProductions) released a Video Of Them Creating That Strip.

STEAM Lies

It is post midnight and I am waiting for Supreme Commander 2 to unlock. All I have to look at is the pre-load screen and that keeps telling me that when the game is released I will be able to play it immediately. I am not sure about Valve's definition of immediately, but clearly we have a disagreement in this matter.

Identify Unknown Fonts

There is a website called Identifont that has an Identify Fonts By Appearance feature. Kind of cool since I already used it productively at work to identify a font we used as a company a long, time ago.

Home Music Systems

For a few years now I have been thinking how cool it would be if all the speaker systems in my home could sync up and play the same track simultaneously and then remain in sync. There is ShoutCast which is a free WinAmp Plug-in that will allow you to connect to an audio stream and then there are other plug-ins you can use to remotly controle winamp like iAmpRemote, but this all needs setting up.

But there is a company called Sonos that does room speaker systems that sync themselves and has a load of remote control options that are all really cool. However I don't think a lot of traditional consumers of music are going to be into Sonos because it is more tuned to the digital age.

A Different Type Of UK Plug

British plugs are large by international standards. The story goes that in an attempt to save on copper wiring in a post World War 2 Britain each plug was wired through new homes in series. This created the problem of a lot of voltage behind each socket. To help prevent people from being electrocuted the BS 1363 Standard was created. In this each plug was given it's own fuse, an earth, a socket on/off switch and a shutter cover inside the socket so that the socket would only accept compatible plugs. The result of all this is was very large large plug.

After spending my life unfortunately standing on these with their prongs pointing upwards as they tend to do I was delighted to see (by way of Engadget) a slimline British plug design.

And the designer is looking to get it into production, so we might be seeing it soon in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Botswana, Ghana, Hong Kong, Macau, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Mauritius, Iraq, Kuwait, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe (yes I just lifted that from wikipedia).

Restaurant Menu Phycology

I would have bought the fried pickles because I love to try stuff.

William Poundstone has written a book called Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value, it is about how companies manipulate prices to make you spend more. I haven't read it, but it's going on my reading list.

Zoom In On That Reflection, ENHANCE!

If you have a photograph, you can not use special software or an algorithm to zoom in on stuff that doesn't exist in the original image.

This scene from Blade Runner.


Has spawned many copy cats.


Including CSI.


But we all know how silly it is.

Azo The FreeRunner's Dayjob

I love how Azo combines his love of freerunning and animation. I am not sure which came first because I discovered him through his FreeRunning Videos on YouTube. But he has done a video about the combination with a slight plug for his current work project.

How Derren Brown Predicted The National Lottery Numbers

Derren Brown a few months ago supposedly predicted the National Lottery numbers. This was a great event and there has been much speculation as to how he did it, but now an explanation has emerged that I think is rather convincing. I don't feel cheated knowing what the fake is, I actually find this side of magic fascinating.

A good explanation of how. Do you feel cheated? I didn't.

What To Do If Your Accelerator Becomes Stuck

The BBC Has The Answer, put car into neutral and break gradually.

Predictions For 2010 to 2020

I didn't do so bad on my iPad Prediction. I thought it was going to be an eReader device, but turned out to be Apple's entry into the table PC race. But this has given me a taste for predictions, so here are my predictions for the next ten years.

• Telivision as we know it will still be around, but when someone thinks of watching television, it will be over the internet and the idea of scheduled broadcast will seem very old fashioned.


• School pupils will not spend very much time with physical paper, instead they will use an electronic tablet device much like the iPad. The devices will be made by a variety of vendors, but be powered by Google.


• There is will an international summit on plastic pollution. The result of this will be a fund to help countries clean up areas that create this kind of pollution.


• Electric cars will be the only kind of vehicle the average consumer will buy.


• Brain reading lie detection machines used in court to provide circumstantial evidence for the first time to US high profile murder trial, with someone who hasn't killed anybody yet.


• In computing we will be using single chip computers that will be CPU, GPU and BIOS combined.


• Football grounds and other events will be surveillanced with autonomous flying drones.


• Ray traced graphics will have superseded rasterized graphics engines on all platforms.


• The rich will be able to buy a ticket for a flight around the earth and moon.

RIP J. D. Salinger 2010

J. D. Salinger Died On Wednesday and I think the New York Times did a good Article on his death.

My favourite quote from Catcher In The Rye isn't by Salinger, it is a quote that he had a character read on page 169:

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one
- Wilhelm Stekel

In this quote Salinger is trying to save himself from taking a lonely path or one that results in his younger self sacrificing too much for too little. Something he seemed to do many times in his life.

Mustard Does Creep By Radiohead

Mustard sings Creep from Rex Kramer on Vimeo.

Boba Flash Dance

Mandalorian Dance
by PatrickBoivin

Apple 27th New Product Announcement Prediction

I predict that the new product that will be announced on the 27th (next wednesday) will be an eBook reader called the iBook.

Here is my reasoning:

1. This fits the rumours of a tablet like device.


2. The Kindle is Amazon's top selling product, so there is clearly a market for eReaders. This is a new device that is on a rapid upward trend.


3. Most eReaders on the market today are either rather ugly or feel like a first generation product. So there is a gap in the market for an eReader with an Apple quality feel to it.


4. Digital distribution of eBooks isn't far from Apple's core competency with the iTunes store. They could just bolt it on like they did with TV, Movies and iPhone applications.

This doesn't fit a lot of the rumours because a lot of the supposed leaks talk of an iSlate that is just a large iPhone type interface.

Science Won't Save Us

I keep hearing polaticians encuraging more spending in science to combat climate change. I think this is good because I love science, but science already has a silver bullet solution and that is Nuclear Fusion, but as Steven Cowley explains in his Ted Talk, it will be at least until 2030+ before we know how to do it properly. If we wait until that time the planet will be well into a state of rejecting us. So we need to use the techniques we have now to do as much as we can.

The Cove

Everybody should see The Cove, a very good documentery about the Dolphin Slaughtering in town called Taiji in the Wakayama prefecture of Japan where tens of thousands of dolphins are killed each year as part of a government subsidised trade. It is subsidised because Japanese people don't eat Dolphin meat and I can only assume it is preserved out of some misguided notion of historical preservation.


View The Cove in a larger map

Ending Corruption For Proffit

Corruption is a big issue in a lot of countries, where this is the case there is usually a cultural acceptance for bribes and exploitation. Shaffi Mather has had enough of corruption in India and has a plan to stop it with a for profit organisation. It sounds insane and impossible, but I think it can work.

Planet M.U.L.E.

M.U.L.E was a Commodore 64 game where players where transported to a uncolonised planet to compete on the virgin ground for profit. You place farms to make food, solar stations to make power and mine metal and crystal out of the ground to earn the big bucks.

Now it is back as Planet M.U.L.E. and it is free, online enabled, has much better graphics and I know what I am doing because of the improved interface. I don't know what the developers have planned for it, but at the moment it is a very faithful recreation of the original.

M.U.L.E. is not a balanced game, whoever lands the sweet deposits at the start of the game will most likely win; so I would like to see a reworked version to make the gamplay more strategic.

Happy New Year

I have a good feeling about this year.