fun
clock | July 28, 2008Mike made me do it:
My Liberal Identity:
You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what's known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
clock | July 28, 2008Food-shaped USB flash drives. Pizza for me.... [Via]
Under The Effluence. Human sewage used for cereals?!
Great Opening Sentences From Science Fiction. Any other suggestions?
Another surgical liveblogging experience: Which Is the Safe Side?
clock | July 28, 2008Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D:
stoat | July 25, 2008Our first proper "late" row, since we're now proud mebers of division 2. Time at the start to say hello to Amelie before being rudely interrupted by the 4 minute gun. I was busily trying to plaster up my hand having torn a callus off and... oooohhh, it did hurt a bit. Meanwhile, back at the rowing. Tabs 7 were sandwich boat, but we knew we were faster than them, and anyway they were tired after rowing over; they faded away after about 20 strokes. So our aim was tabs 8, who we chased unsuccessfuly on the first night. But we knew that ahead of them was St Ives, who they had failed to catch the…
stoat | July 24, 2008A good night last night: we got X-press 4 after about 40 strokes fairly well as expected, and we rowed about as we expected: a fast start then a bit splashy then just beginning to settle when it was time to stop. Which left us sandwich boat into division 2. Only a little tired we spun and had a good long rest at the start while the rest of the division came up. The next race was a lot harder, cantabs 7 were some real opposition at last, and they held us off at a length all through the gut (from this pic you can see why) though we may have closed slowly. We got a better line out, really…
clock | July 24, 2008I finally found some time to go and see a movie theater from the inside. My daughter and I went and saw Wall-E tonight.
Like everyone says, it is a beautiful movie.
Get some popcorn and sit back.
Take in the fantastic graphic design.
Play the "spot the cultural reference" game.
Enjoy the sweet love story.
Laugh.
Leave the social analysis for later, if you insist on doing one at all.
stoat | July 23, 2008Or thereabouts. Might have been 15, might have been 25. Barring disaster we were always going to get robs 6, and they knew it just as well as us. Good turn out on the bank to watch us as well, so all the more satisfying. X-press 4 were 1, so assuming they didn't bump up into M2 (unlikely, since they are reckoned to be slow) the plan is to catch them tomorrow and be sandwich boat ourselves.
Meanwhile, lower down the division, M3 rowed over after being overlapped briefly - they have a slow start. They will catch the boat ahead of them, if only they can hold off. W2 went down, W1 rowed over,…
stoat | July 22, 2008Then you may like gmane.comp.security.full-disclosure/62146 (hat-tip: PW).
Or be up to date: pwnie-awards.org/2008/ Ooooh.. wordpress.
Stoat: the obscure blog. Or at least, I try.
stoat | July 22, 2008So: we took 1/2 a length off tabs 8 on the start, but they held us long enough to get robs 6, who were by all accounts rather slow. tabs 8 did a poor job of clearing the river so after 40 strokes we ended up jammed behind them. City 4?5? cruised past several lengths down, and appeared to be celebrating at the beer tree, but we are optimistic of a technical row over on the grounds of being impeded.
Other news: our mens 3 in the same division wear the willow; our ladies 1 rowed over as head of w2 and bumped up into w1, very exciting. w2 and m1 both rowed over. m1 rather flogged themselves down…
clock | July 21, 2008These are adorable!
This one for PZ.
This one for Amanda and the Thumb crew.
My kids are getting one each, right now!
clock | July 19, 2008Periodic Table of Videos on YouTube:
This channel has a video about each element on the periodic table.
With help from some clever chemists, I've done all 118, but I'm not stopping here.
Now I'm updating and improving all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.
Please subscribe to follow my progress.
Or visit the main website at Periodic Table of Videos
clock | July 19, 2008Everyone is posting these movies and e-mailing me the URL - so here it is (is there a way to enbed these?) for your enjoyment (btw, geeky me, Doogie Howser, M.D. was my favourite show when I was a kid)
clock | July 17, 2008I am currently reading - and enjoying very much - The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat by Eric Roston.
He was recently interviewed for DC Examiner and they ran a picture of him wearing a familiar t-shirt ;-)
Recently, Eric was quoted in TIME and lambasted by Rush Limbaugh, which, as Tom notes, means that Eric made it Big Time!
stoat | July 17, 2008A meme I heard somewhere - I forget where. Likely suspects are welcome to remind me and get credited. The version I didn't see but have just found is by Scott Butki (thats one of those American names like "Peentangler" that sound so funny to us old folks). Anyway, where was I? Oh yes - that one cites a song was going to: "Family Snapshot" by Peter Gabriel. Hung off the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1972 (I had always thought it was about the JFK assassination, but apparently not, or maybe, who knows, it doesn't matter, ah well blogging can sometimes be informative), it…
clock | July 10, 2008Antony Williams, who I had a great time with over coffee yesterday, alerted me to his blog post about a new chemical with some amazing properties - shining UV light onto the solution turns the liquid green instantaneously, and removal of the UV source results in instant change of color from green back to transparent.
Aaron Rowe and Kyle Finchsigmate also blogged about it.
You can see the chemical structure here:
See those two rings with nitrogens highlighted in blue? See the bond that connects those two rings? That bond is broken by UV light and immediately rebinds once the light is gone…
stoat | July 9, 2008Cycling back through the rain of the english summer, I was turning over in my mind who knew what in our firmware group, and thought of one person who had "aboriginal" knowledge. And immeadiately thought that the word is now perjorative, most clearly when reduced to "abo" by the Strines. But what I meant was what it originally meant: someone who has been there from the beginning, and has the kind of knowledge you only get as you make and watch the thing being built up around you.
Thats a bit brief, isn't it? So let me point you at David Appells rant against the blogosphere. The G8 deserves…
clock | July 5, 2008Last night I thought I had fun, hearing both thunder and fireworks, but these guys could not just hear but also see not two but three spectacular things simultaneously - fireworks (left), comet McNaught (center) and lightning (right). And this was all captured in one of the most exciting photos I have seen recently, bound to win all sorts of "Picture of the Year" contests come December:
Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning, picture taken by Antti Kemppainen:
Click here to see it really big!
Explanation:
In January 2007, people from Perth, Australia gathered on a local beach to watch a sky…