Around 80 guests attended a lavish wedding in Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex, England. Louise Harris hired a wedding planner who oversaw the flowers, decorations, food, and security for the £20,000 ($32,000US) affair. The wedding was for Louise's six-year-old Yorkshire terrier, Lola. Lola wore a £1000 specially-designed wedding dress, decorated with Swarovski crystals. Harris has thrown lavish birthday parties for her dogs, but this bash outdid them all.

Louise who runs dog boutique and grooming parlour Diva Dogs, in Essex - ran an online competition on her DivaDogs website and Facebook page to find the perfect husband for her princess Lola.

She received hundreds of entries of would-be suitors for Lol but whittled it down to a final six potential partners.

But much to her surprise, Lolas obvious favourite was Mugly, previously voted Britains ugliest dog, owned by mum-of-four Bev Nicholson, 47.

See another picture of Mugly here. After the ceremony, guests enjoyed a sumptuous buffet and a six-foot tall chocolate fountain. The dog guests had their own specially-made treats. The bride and groom will not live together, but will visit once a month. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Barcroft Media)

EP Industries manufactures pumps, dry-cleaning equipment, firefighting equipment, military equipment, and other types of metal fabrication. But they have a fun side, too. Inventor and company founder Eddie Paul designs and builds mechanical sharks. And he creates custom vehicles to appear in and to promote movies, like the real-world versions of the cars from the Pixar movie Cars. Link

(YouTube link)

If you had a pet raven, what would you teach him to say? That's right, waka-waka-waka! -via b3ta

For the devout, Easter is an opportunity to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, but for many others, it’s an excuse to munch down on piles of pastel candies and chocolate bunnies. By far the most notorious of these springtime treats is the sugar-coated marshmallow masses known as Peeps. But you don’t have to love the taste of Peeps to appreciate their brilliance. The simple bunny and chick shapes open the candies up to a whole new realm of fun in the form of diorama artworks. Here are a few of the funniest and coolest we could find.

Peep Show

This classic, sexy Peep diorama is probably the most famous ever made as it has spread its way across the internet for years. The oldest version I could find comes from Flickr user Amenhotep4, but I don’t think he’s the creator of the diorama. If you know were it comes from, please let me know in the comments.

Sweety Todd: The Demon Barber of Peep Street

This diorama by Flickr user mreraser’s friends Matt and Teresa is by far one of my favorites. There is so much detail in the decorations and I can’t help but love the blood on the decapitated Peeps and the maniacal look on Sweety Todd’s face.

We Come In Peeps

This adorable diorama was created by Dan Paddock and sent in directly to BoingBoing after the site posted this bizarre and slightly scary fake magazine cover called "Rest In Peeps, Anna Nichole Smith."

Alien Peeps

Of course, not all alien travelers are peaceful as Daniel Spiess made clear in his chest-burstingly scary Peeps diorama, which was based on the movie Alien.

Artist John Martz (previously at Neatorama) brings us Trexels, a print featuring 235 characters from the Star Trek universe in pixel form, all in one place. How many can you name? The two people who can correctly name the most characters will each win a limited edition print, but you only have until Tuesday to enter at the Trexel site. After that, you can buy one. Link -via Boing Boing

Lionfish are pretty, but they belong in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They lack natural predators in the Caribbean, so lionfish have become quite the invasive species since they escaped from aquariums ten years ago to breed in the waters off the US and Central America. In Honduras, divers are not only hunting them, they are also training sharks to eat the lionfish!

"At the beginning, the divers just killed lionfish and fed sharks with them to get the sharks to develop a taste," said photographer Antonio Busiello, who observed the process in action.

"In the second step, to have the sharks develop an interest in hunting them, divers started to leave wounded lionfish so that the sharks could taste them. After a while, [the sharks] did start to hunt them and go after them."

Living up to their voracious reputations, many sharks can eat venomous prey, such as lionfish, and suffer no apparent ill effects, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Humans are also encouraged to eat lionfish, which are tasty once the venomous spines are removed. Read all about it in this gallery from National Geographic. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

(Image credit: Antonio Busiello)

(Video Link)

Yuri Volodchenkov and his horse only make one cycle of the rope, but that's a great start. A casual YouTube search suggests that Volodchenkov is an accomplished trick rider.

via Ace of Spades HQ

(College Humor link)

Carl Sagan looks at the life forms on some of the billions and billions of planets outside our solar system in this animation by Dan Meth. You may recognize some of them. -via Everlasting Blort

Pirate Pencil Sharpener - $8.45

What's better than the Pirate Pencil Sharpener from the NeatoShop? Nothing!  These Pirate Pencil Sharpeners walk, swing their arms, shake their heads and have detachable hats! You know you want one, but are ye cool enough to have one? Aye matey, me think ye are!

Be sure to visit the NeatoShop for all your Pirate needs!

I can't tell you much about this item because the information is in Japanese. The video at the link, however, shows men throwing two canisters into a burning box, and those actions alone extinguishing the flames.

Link | Product Site | Photos: Rakuten

Terry Garrett has been blind since the age of 10, but he can play certain video games exceptionally well by using in-game sounds to figure out his character's environment. Garrett is especially skilled at the game Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee:

The beep of a blinking bomb, the desperate cry of a friend in need, the pounding of a Mudokon’s hammer: They all provide crucial details that enable Garrett to get through the game’s punishing levels. When he needs orientation, Garrett listens carefully for “sound landmarks” like running water or footsteps shifting from grass to earth. And as he works his way through the side-scrolling puzzler’s world of weird creatures, Garrett pieces the noises together and sees the game’s levels laid out in his mind.[...]

Today, Garrett can beat the entire game, executing every jump and step with near-perfect precision. He’s honed his hearing to the point where he can recognize exactly which sounds refer to each object and act accordingly. He hasn’t memorized every level, but he knows enough about the sound design to beat Oddworld without dying.

“Through Abe’s sounds, I was able to figure out how to navigate the world,” Garrett, now an engineering student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, told Wired.com in an e-mail.

According to its creator, Oddworld wasn't created with visually-impaired playing in mind. But the role of sound in it makes it well suited for that purpose.

Link | Photo: Oddworld Inhabitants

Previously: Three Men Create 100,000-Keystroke Script So That Blind Gamer Can Complete a Video Game

(Video Link)

Well, it's Thursday, so it's time to clean out the cobra pit. Come'on, punch the timeclock and get to work. I'm not paying you to stand around all day.

via Nerdcore

Would you like to have pointed ears like a Vulcan or an elf? There are doctors and body modification artists who will do it for you. Doctors warn that it's essentially permanent, so be sure of your decision before going under the knife. There's a video at the link from ABC's morning show, which is labeled "Spock Ears for Kids", though they're no indication that children are getting the procedure.

Link via io9 | Image: ABC News | Previously: Pointy Ears

This is good, but the moves get really explicit once you start into calculus. If you know who's responsible for this great cartoon, let us know in the comments.

via Geekosystem | Previously: Math Dances and Other College Application Videos

In J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins became extravagantly wealthy by looting the treasure of the dragon Smaug (which he split with the dwarves). In today's value, how much money was that? Forbes' Michael Noer ran some calculations and came up with $8 billion:

To keep the math relatively simple and to avoid complications like integrating the partial volume of a sphere, we can approximate Smaug’s bed of gold and silver to be a cone, with a radius of 9.6 feet (1/2 the diameter) and a height of 7 feet (assuming the weight of the dragon will smush down the point of the cone by about a foot).

Now we can calculate the volume of Smaug’s treasure mound:

V= 1/3 ? r2 h = 1/3 * ? * 9.62 * 7 = 675.6 cubic feet

But, obviously, the mound isn’t solid gold and silver. We know it has a “great two-handled cups” in it – one of which Bilbo steals – and probably human remains, not to mention the air space between the coins. Let’s assume that the mound is 30% air and bones. That makes the volume of the hoard that is pure gold and silver coins 472.9 cubic feet.

We know that Bilbo eventually takes his cut of the treasure in two small-chests, one filled with gold and the other filled with silver, so it seems safe to assume that the hoard is approximately ½ gold and ½ silver, or 236.4 cubic feet of each metal.

Link via Nerd Bastards | Image by deviantART user Remainaery