Take a look at (what I hope is) the Internet’s ultimate list of case mods or computer case modifications. These labors of love are the ultimate display of geek chic, creativity, and hardware prowess!
Please help build the Net’s ultimate list of case mods on Neatorama: Link
OpenCola has published its 7X Top-Seekrut™ formula, so you can make your own open-source cola!
As it turns out, mixing up a batch of cola’s pretty easy. Finding the ingredients is damned hard. Most of this file is about finding and handling ingredients so as to produce a tasty bevvy without blowing up your kitchen, melting your flesh off your bones, or poisoning yourself
If you’re tired of regular, boring houses, you can now live like Ewoks with Free Spirit Spheres. From the website:
Free Spirit Spheres can be hung from the trees as shown, making a tree house. They can also be hung from any other solid objects or placed in cradles on the ground. There are four attachment points on the top of each sphere and another four anchor points on the bottom. Each of the attachment points is strong enough to carry the weight of the entire sphere and contents.
The spheres are made of two laminations of wood strips over laminated wood frames. The outside surface is then finished and covered with a clear fibreglass. The result is a beautiful and very tough skin. The skin is waterproof and strong enough to take the impacts that come with life in a dynamic environment such as the forest.
In 1984, a bioterrorist attack using salmonella typhimurium bacteria in salad bars in restaurants in Oregon was traced to a cult led by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (known also as Osho).
It was the first known bioterrorist attack of the 20th century in the United States.
Here’s an interesting the story of the rise and fall of the Rajneesh cult:
Cane toad is such a big problem in Australia that they start to offer free beer if you turn one in…
The RSPCA, Coopers Brewery and the Cavenagh Hotel have teamed up in the name of animal welfare and the result is that toads can be turned into beer.
In a move designed to turn seasoned Top End beer drinkers into lean, mean, toad-catching machines, the three Darwin organisations have got together to set up a toad-for-beer exchange.
“No coupons for squashed toads,” Mr Wilkinson said.
He was keen to make it clear he wasn’t starting a roadkill collection. “Healthy, live, no squashed cane toads,” he said.
The RSPCA will then humanely dispose of the pesky toads.
Matt Robison, an apprentice piercer at The Pit Studio in Ottawa township, 60 miles from Peoria, Ohio, set a new world record by getting pierced 1,016 times in one sitting!
Robison, a Marseilles resident who graduated from Ottawa Township High School, originally planned to get 1,000 piercings, 400 more than the 600 that Kam Ma of Britain got in one sitting in 2002. But apparently the British record holder heard about what Robison was planning, because last week he broke his own record by getting pierced 1,015 times in one sitting.
That prompted Robison to increase the number of piercings he planned to get up to 1,200. But after experiencing the pain of hours of piercings all over his back and arms, he decided to settle for the world record and not go any further.
Before Saturday, Robison had 26 piercings on his body. After the record was set Saturday, 1,015 of his new piercings were removed, leaving one in his body — the record breaker.
Posted by Alex in Art on March 26, 2006 at 2:05 am
Andy worked on the CGI animation for the Matrix movies. CGSociety did an interesting article titled "Once a Mathematician, Always an Artist" on Lomas’ artwork:
Although long interested in art forms created with genetic algorithms, Lomas began working on the software for “Aggregation” only two years ago. “I was scuba diving in Hawaii,” he says, “and seeing corals and other beautiful natural things underwater. That was the inspiration. I began thinking about how simple a rule could be to generate a complex form.” The inspiration for the rule came from a base algorithm called “diffusion limited aggregation” invented by physicists T.A. Witten and L.M. Sander in 1981. “It’s essentially a random fractal generator,” says Lomas. “A simple physics environment for a digitally simulated growth process.”
Apparently, some people get their kicks by dressing their Roomba up in funny costumes!
This one on the left is Roor the tiger, made by myRoomBud, a company "started by kids, built by kids, and run by kids" – the whole thing started when they wanted to buy Mom some cowboy boots for christmas.
Joel Haas makes whimsical garden decorations, he said:
I make whimsical animals for the garden. Most pieces are welded and forged together from scrap steel parts and painted with rust-resistant primer. The final colors are applied with sign-painters’ lacquers which won’t fade in sunlight.
Some people have asked me if there is any serious or deep meaning to my work. I say, "I hope not. There’re already enough serious and deep meanings in the world to keep thousands of art critics busy."
Checkout his artworks – I particularly like the birds: Link
Update 3/28/06: Joel wrote and suggested a couple other interesting links:
I really think my more interesting web site is www.sculpturewalk.org since it is an "open source" art project. That is, I work with my neighbors to exhibit my sculpture. I can make pretty much any size art work I want to and know it will have a place to be exhibited. This has enabled me to be free of having to deal with galleries, curators, etc. because now my neighbors and neighborhood is my gallery and my neighbors are my curators and helpers in moving, cleaning, and showing my artwork since much of it is in their yards on permanent loan.
I encourage other sculptors to try out this model –adapt it, let me know how it works, etc. Frees us from the gallery and size limitations.
Download the 6 page walking guide and if you’re ever in my neighborhood, walk the tour–it’s up 365 day a year dawn to dusk.
One of the neatest things about the Neighborhood Sculpture Walk is some Chinese art curators visiting relatives here in Raleigh saw it in late 2004 and I wound up being invited to Taiwan three times to create sculpture there! (You can see the photos of the first trip at www.joelhaasstudio.com/NEWS.htm and the other two trips at www.flickr.com/photos/joelhaas
Stories behind the creation of some of my sculpture (and just plain odd ball stories, too) can be found on my blog at http://joelhaasstories.blogspot.com
Diving beetles engage in such exhausting, uncomfortable sex that these insects have actually evolved two different types of females, as well as unusual variations among males, according to a new study.
The find adds to the growing body of evidence that sexual conflict between males and females influences evolution. In many cases, individuals over time develop characteristics that are appealing to the opposite sex.
For diving beetles, however, researchers believe females have tried to avoid the painful sex for so long that some have actually evolved a feature that enables them to spurn most suitors.
The pic above shows Carl E. Walz playing a Yamaha PSR282 keyboard on the International Space Station. You can buy a PSR282 for about £45 on eBay, but getting a 11½lb keyboard into space would have cost NASA around $115,000.
The picture comes from NASA’s Space Station Notes about playing music in space:
A lot of astronauts play instruments. There’s even an astronaut rock-and-roll band. And a surprising variety of musical instruments have found their way into space: in addition to the keyboard, there’s been a flute, a guitar, a saxophone, and an Australian aboriginal wind instrument known as a didgeridoo.
Posted by Alex in Music on March 25, 2006 at 2:03 am
Harold and Darrel Allen are twin brothers in Athens, Georgia, who both own septic tank service company. Harold and Darrel recently recorded a new song about their experiences, called "The Honeywagon". The songs are getting lots of airplay in Georgia, and the twin brothers have become local legends.
In 1943, the Navy embarked on Project X-Ray to develop bats as bomb carriers:
The theory was that the bats would be released just before dawn with incendiary devices with timers attached to each bat. As daylight approached, the bats would head for dark recesses of wooden Japanese houses. When the bats were safely asleep, the incendiary devices would ignite, thus producing a conflagration of unprecedented proportions.
A test run of this theory was carried out in the southwestern United States. However, the advent of the atomic bomb rendered this experiment moot.
Mac Weakly caught a 25-pound, 1-ounce bass that would have been a world record.
But Weakley and his crew, longtime buddies Mike “Budda” Winn and Jed Dickerson, knew something was missing from a catch that, if somehow approved by the International Game Fish Association, would shatter the Joe DiMaggio-like “unbreakable” mark of bass fishing, the 22-pound, 4-ounce bass caught by George W. Perry at Montgomery Lake in Georgia in 1932.
“It’s a great day, but it’s a bad day,” Weakley said at his home in Carlsbad. “It was a valiant effort. We’ve been trying and trying to catch this fish for years. It’s the world-record bass. Unfortunately, it was foul-hooked.”
…
Weakley can be heard on the video saying, “Hurry up, get it back in the water.” And the world’s largest bass ever caught was released.
“We figured that was the right thing to do,” Weakley said. “I didn’t want to put it on the dock, measure it and then take a chance it would die.”
The conventional wisdom of the twitchy nervous liar who touch his nose and play with his hair is bunk.
Samantha Mann and colleagues monitored 130 volunteers as they were asked to lie – she found that liars actually tended to stay still as they were aware that their body language might be giving them away!
She added: "People expect liars to be nervous and shifty and to fidget more, but our research shows that is not the case.
"People who are lying have to think harder, and when we think harder we tend to be a lot stiller, with fewer movements, because we are concentrating harder."
She added: "As soon as we know that we are lying we suddenly become very aware of our behaviour.
"Most people tend to refrain from making movements at all."
Niagara Falls Daredevil Museum has a neat collection of photos, barrels, and other memorabilia from people who took the plunge. This one above is of Bobby Leach:
The infamous Bobby Leach plunged over the Falls in a steel barrel. Bobby broke both kneecaps and his jaw during his daring event. Years later while touring in New Zealand, Bobby slipped on an orange peel and died from complications due to gangrene !
Police stopped Shawn Leflore, 33, for having an expired registration sticker. Shawn decided to run instead – he ran off road and got stuck in the mud, where he died of exhaustion and cold.
"He thought he was wanted. That is why he ran," Peritz said. "But it turns out he wasn’t wanted for anything, except his driver’s license was expired."
Leflore ran about 700 yards off the road, where he got stuck in the mud, Peritz said. The weather was windy, and temperatures were in the upper 30s in the dark field, which had been saturated by heavy rain.
Posted by Alex in Politics on March 24, 2006 at 2:02 am
Turkmenistan’s president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov announced on state television that anyone reading his philosophical work three times would be assured a place in heaven.
"Anyone who reads the Rukhnama three times will find spiritual wealth, will become more intelligent, will recognise the divine being and will go straight to heaven," Niyazov said Monday.
Niyazov, known as Turkmenbashi (Leader of the Turkmen Peoples), has set up a bizarre personality cult, including erecting gold statues of himself and his deceased parents in strategic spots across his largely-desert country.
Edmund Brodie of Indiana University and Mathias Kölliker of University of Basel, Switzerland discovered that baby insects signal their mom that they’re hungry by stinking up.
To find out, the team looked at parental feeding behavior in burrower bugs (Sehirus cinctus). Adults are about the size of a pencil eraser, and the youngest babes–there can be up to 100 per brood–look like bright red pinheads. The researchers separated the babies into two groups: One got plenty to eat, while the other was underfed. They then collected the volatile chemicals wafting from each clutch. Finally, using a "smell-o-tron," the researchers blew these odors toward mother bugs.
Moms receiving odors from ill-fed babies immediately set to finding more food. Mothers gassed with sated-baby odors, on the other hand, slowed their food search.
Two hundred and forty people in Switzerland set a world record of making 100 igloos in 12 hours by hand. When lit up at night, the igloos look very beautiful. Link (via Cellar IOTD and Boing Boing)
Mathematical analyses of humpback whale songs reveal complex grammatical rules!
Although the researchers say these songs don’t meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language, this is the first evidence that animals other than humans use a hierarchical structure of communication. Whales have also been found to sing in dialects.
During mating season, which lasts six months, all humpback males sing the same song to woo the ladies. Over time, the group’s song becomes progressively more complex, although researchers don’t know quite why.
Presumably, as one whale finds mating success by tinkering with the song style, the rest of the guys imitate it to better their chances, said study co-author Ryuji Suzuki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow.
Posted by Alex in Travel on March 23, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Neatorama Reader Lisa Poirier pointed us to Super Tour’s website:
Similar to the concepts of Microsoft Virtual Earth, SuperTour.com lets you navigate you want to go. With virtual earth, you drive, but with SuperTour.com, you walk around the streets of Miami and Las Vegas, exploring the beach or some cool hotels and restaurants. The site combines the overview of Google Maps and the cool factor of Virtual Tour to create an ultimate travel guide.
Very cool indeed – right now you can only walk around Miami Beach, Florida and PIsa, Italy in panoramic goodness. Link (Thanks Lisa!)
Vivi (full name Champion Bonhem C’est La Vie) ran away from her airport crate after winning the Westminster dog show last month.
Her tale of life-on-the-lam has captivated New Yorkers, and now psychics have been brought in to help.
Four agreed the dog was inside a building, an insight which Mr Lepiane described as "a huge breakthrough". Beatrice Lydecker, of Portland, Oregon, assisting in the search, said she believed that Vivi could see yellow machinery and was hiding under folded boxes.
"She said Vivi could hear a person calling to her, but she didn’t recognise the voice," said Honi Reisman, a friend of the owners. "They are telling us that she is alive and they are telling us she is warm. They are saying she’s in a building, but there are hundreds of buildings." The dog’s co-owner Jill Walton, 39, from Los Angeles, was distraught, fearing that Vivi might have drowned in the marshes near the runway.
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