SXSW 2007 - 739 free songs!

South by Southwest (SXSW, Inc.) is a private company based in Austin, Texas, dedicated to building and delivering conference and festival events for entertainment and related media industry professionals.

Since 1987, SXSW has produced the internationally recognized Music and Media Conference & Festival.

The music event has grown from 700 people in 1987 to nearly 10,000 in 2006. In 1994, SXSW added a film and interactive component to accommodate these growth industries. SXSW Film and SXSW Interactive events attract approximately 7000 people to Austin every March.

They've made a bittorrent available, containing 739 MP3s (3.1GB) showcasing SWXW artists. I'm hosting it, so if you can't be bothered to download it, bring a blank DVD with you next time you see me :-)
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From the 'You Couldn't Make It Up' department

Thanks to Toffee Squares & Major Look for this article, taken from Private Eye, via Derek N. Hartley, via the Otago Daily Times, 18-19/11/06. Disclaimer: Sensitive cat-lovers might find the third paragraph distressing. Less sensitive readers might find themselves laughing so hard that food comes out of their nostrils...

When the constable arrived at the house, Detective Inspector Bernie Hollewand told a press conference in Auckland, he found a heated domestic dispute taking place between a husband, his wife, and their teenage son.

After remonstrations with the couple proved futile, he decided to use his Taser weapon to disable the man. But unfortunately these electronic stun guns are still in the trial stages among frontline police in Auckland and Wellington.

His first 50,000 volt shot from the Taser missed the husband and hit the cat, killing it outright. The second hit the teenage son, knocking him to the ground. A further shot also missed the target, and when the constable tried to remove the Taser's spent cartridges, he forgot to wait for the five-second discharge cycle to complete, and inadvertently blasted himself with another 50,000 volts.

When he had recovered and reloaded, he fired two further shots, both of which hit the ceiling. At this point he abandoned the Taser, and took out his pepper spray in another attempt to disable the husband.

Unfortunately, this also missed its target, and instead hit the couple's twenty one-year-old daughter who had just entered the room.

Luckily, at this point the husband decided to give himself up, and an arrest was made.
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Vanuatu cargo cult marks 50 years

BBC reports [edited]

One of the world's last surviving cargo cults is celebrating its official 50th anniversary on Tanna island in Vanuatu.Villagers believe the spirit of John Frum sent the US military to their South Pacific home to help them. Devotees say that an apparition of John Frum first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s. He urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and instead said they should put their faith in their own customs.

World War II and the arrival of American troops on Vanuatu was a turning point for the John Frum Movement. Villagers believe that their messiah was responsible for sending the generous US military and its cargo to them.

Speaking in local pidgin, the movement's head, Chief Isaac Wan, said that John Frum was a god who would one day return. He's "our God, our Jesus," he said. Islanders are convinced that John Frum was an American. Every year they parade in home-made US army uniforms beneath the Stars and Stripes.

They hope one day to entice another delivery of cargo. This 50th anniversary marks the formal establishment of the John Frum Movement. It also recognises the day when villagers raised the American flag for the first time in this isolated corner of the South Pacific.
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Ice pix

Fantastic pictures of the results of spray spontaneously freezing.

Click here for a 'Coffee Break Friendly™' slide show.

Thanks to John Nack for the link.
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Farmer-ceuticals

Wired reports: [edited]

With its tranquil ponds and rolling fields, the GTC Biotherapeutics farm in Charlton, Massachusetts, looks like a typical pastoral retreat. But its 1,400 goats don't produce butter or cheese. Instead, the animals are sophisticated drug incubators, with millions of dollars of potential profit accumulating in their udders each day.

GTC Biotherapeutics is perfecting the art of "pharming" - genetically modifying animals to churn out drugs for disorders like haemophilia and cancer. The first government-approved drug from transgenic animals, GTC's anti-clotting agent ATryn, was approved in Europe late last year, vindicating biotech's years-long quest to move animal husbandry in entirely new directions.

The technique offers a way to produce large quantities of drugs that are otherwise difficult to develop. It involves genetic modification of an animal embryo's genetic makeup, or genome. Just after fertilization, "pharmers" insert into the embryo a human gene that codes for a particular protein - usually one that's produced naturally in humans, but that's lacking in people who have certain diseases.

They attach that DNA code with a gene that codes for a sugar found in mammalian milk, insuring that the therapeutic protein will be expressed only in the animals' milk or eggs.

GTC's ATryn contains the human protein antithrombin, which helps prevent blood clots that could lead to a stroke or heart attack. About one in every 5,000 people has a genetic deficiency of this protein. The drug is also administered during surgery because excessive bleeding can lower blood levels of the protein, leading to clots.

Antithrombin is typically extracted from human blood plasma donations, but it's present only in very small quantities. That makes soliciting donors and extracting proteins from the plasma expensive and labour-intensive.

But now that GTC's goat herd has reached critical mass, the protein can be harvested in massive quantities. "Each of our goats can produce a kilogram of antithrombin each year," Cox says. "It takes 50,000 people to donate that same amount."

Catherine Willett, a science policy advisor for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, stressed the welfare issues.

"Genetic engineering is responsible for a skyrocketing increase in the numbers of animals being used in laboratory experiments," she said. "(and) is likely to have drastic long term ill-effects in the animals themselves."

But Origen scientist Marie Cecile Van de Lavoir said the potential human health benefits justify tinkering with nature's plan.

"If a transgenic animal produces a great cancer therapy," she says, "I won't hear anyone saying, 'You shouldn't do that.'"
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Homes for the confused & bewildered

Reached this old Newsweek article via Boing Boing: [edited]

Most people, in choosing a new home, look for comfort: a serene atmosphere, smooth walls and floors, a logical layout. Nonsense, says Shusaku Arakawa, a Japanese artist based in New York. He and his creative partner, poet Madeline Gins, [have designed] a small apartment complex in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka that is anything but comfortable and calming.

"People, particularly old people, shouldn't relax and sit back to help them decline," he insists. "They should be in an environment that stimulates their senses and invigorates their lives."

With that in mind, Arakawa and Gins designed a building of nine apartments known as Reversible Destiny Lofts. Painted in eye-catching blue, pink, red, yellow and other bright colors, the building resembles the indoor playgrounds that attract toddlers at fast-food restaurants.

Inside, each apartment features a dining room with a grainy, surfaced floor that slopes erratically, a sunken kitchen and a study with a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places on the walls so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out.

You constantly lose balance and gather yourself up, grab onto a column and occasionally trip and fall. Even worse, there's no closet space; residents will have to find a way to live there, since the apartment offers only a few solutions. "You'll learn to figure it out," says Arakawa.

Ten minutes of stumbling around is enough to send even the healthiest young person over the edge. Arakawa says that's precisely the point. "[The apartment] makes you alert and awakens instincts, so you'll live better, longer and even forever," says the artist.
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The floodgates open...

As the Apple faithful count the days until the iPhone is released, the predicted wave of 'flattery' has begun.

The Samsung Ultra Smart F700 promises:

- Touch screen AND a QWERTY keypad (why both?)
- Vibration feedback from the touch-screen
- Camera: 5.0-Megapixel with Auto-Focus
- Display: 262,744 TFT (440 x 240 pixels)
- MMS / Email / Java / WAP 2.0
- Bluetooth / USB (no WiFi!)
- Flash UI / Document Viewer
- Full HTML Browsing
- Expandable Memory: microSD
- Size: 104 x 50 x 16.4mm
- Weight: unspecified!
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Religion in China

BBC reports: [edited]

The number of religious believers in China could be three times higher than official estimates, according to a survey reported by state media. A poll of 4,500 people by Shanghai university professors found 31.4% of people above the age of 16 considered themselves as religious.

This suggests 300 million people nationwide could be religious, compared to the official figure of 100 million.

The poll was carried out by professors at the East China Normal University in Shanghai. Their methodology was not made clear in the state media reports, neither was it clear whether people are becoming religious, or becoming more prepared to say so. But the official China Daily called their work the "country's first major survey on religious beliefs".

The survey found that Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Christianity and Islam are the country's five major religions - China considers Catholicism as separate to Christianity, which covers Protestantism.

About 200 million believers "are Buddhists, Taoists or worshippers of legendary figures such as the Dragon King and God of Fortune", the China Daily reported.

The survey also found a significant rise in Christianity - accounting for 12% of all believers, or 40 million, compared with the official figure of 16 million in 2005.

Professor Liu Zhongyu, who helped carry out the survey, attributed the rise in religious belief to growing freedoms in the country as well as the upheaval of rapid social and economic change. He said the average age of religious believers had fallen, with two-thirds of those in the poll who considered themselves religious aged between 16 and 39.

"This is markedly different from the previous decade, when most religious believers were in their 40s or older," he said in the Chinese-language Oriental Outlook magazine, which published the survey.
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7 deadly sins, extrapolated

Boing Boing reports: [edited]

If you arrange the 7 Deadly Sins around a heptagon, label them A-G, and connect each corner, you get 21 secondary sins. For instance Sloth + Pride = Slackers.

And, as a comment indicates, it doesn't have to stop there. By using the binomial coefficient you could extrapolate 127 ways to put together any number of the seven sins. Or 120 ways, if you don't count each of the seven sins individually.
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Concertina seating

Saw an article about an expanding piece of furniture on BoingBoing. Then Aaron emailed me to say he'd seen it as well. There was no information about it, but after a lot of Googling, I found a Chinese Engadget article, a Google translation follows: [not much edited it is]

"Want to plug the chair before you welcome the review of reproducing sofas, chairs iRocker rock and chairs robot. Underneath will introduce to you the products based on the winning design-paper nest chairs.

"This industrial design students from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Design and Development, known as "wishful chairs" green paper chairs. and the honeycomb material is the main plank of paper recycling. Designers flexibility with the use of honeycomb paper is very good to resist pressure characteristics of this chair for the change is stretching the capacity. Wishful can normally chairs contraction into 30 cm size of small rooms that few would not be crowded. When a group of friends and family to visit the same time, the chair can be extended to a maximum of 720 cm. 16 adults sitting at the same time."

If you want to see the furniture in action, there is an entertaining video on YouTube.
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Superbowl air traffic queues

Corporate aircraft traffic (i.e. private small jets) departing after the Superbowl, 10am EST, February 5, 2007, from Opa Locka, Miami, and Ft. Lauderdale to all destinations.

For a larger image click here
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Panasonic DMC-FZ8

DPreview has just released an in-depth review of Panasonic's latest long-zoom compact.

As the introduction to the review states:

"Almost exactly a year after the introduction of the DMC-FZ7, Panasonic's popular compact super-zoom camera, comes its replacement; the Lumix DMC-FZ8. Where the FZ7 was a fairly major upgrade to the camera that came before it (the FZ5), the FZ8 is, perhaps inevitably, more evolutionary. The body design and operation is almost identical - no bad thing, given the huge improvements made over the FZ5 - and the only really big news is the inclusion of Raw shooting and a much better electronic viewfinder.

"More controversially the new model squeezes even more pixels onto a 1/2.5-inch sensor, and uses the latest Venus III processor, which has had - to put it kindly - a mixed reception from reviewers and users alike. We are assured by Panasonic that the Venus III has been tweaked for the new Lumix generation (based, perhaps, on the less than stellar reviews and comments), and that the noise reduction system and sensor in this camera are delivering significantly better output. So let's find out if Panasonic has got it right with the DMC-FZ8 - and if it really has solved the few (admittedly important) issues we had with its predecessor."
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iPod to become the new CD?

Wired reports on an idea originally mooted by Jeremy Horwitz at iLounge: [edited]

On Monday, Apple Inc. and the Beatles' Apple Corps announced that a 15-year legal spat over the "Apple" trademark had been settled in Steve Jobs' favor.

The new contract clears the way for Jobs to sell iPods loaded with music. Imagine a whole range of inexpensive, special-edition iPods branded with popular bands containing a new album, or their whole catalogues.

Apple was prevented from doing this until now by the 15-year-old contract between Apple Corps, the Beatles' music company, and Apple Computer. This contract precluded Jobs' Apple from acting as a music company and from selling "physical media delivering prerecorded content".

That's why the U2 special-edition iPod ships with a voucher for downloading the band's catalog online. The Beatles contract prevents Apple from pre-loading the U2 iPod with U2's music.

Apple [could] also start loading sample tunes onto all new iPods, as Microsoft's Zune currently does. Getting a band's new single loaded onto a hot-selling iPod could prove so desirable that a new type of payola is born.

These album iPods could be sold at bus stations and airports: instant music, no computer required. Bands could sell pre-loaded iPods at concerts, maybe containing the concert they just played. There could be Broadway show iPods, movie soundtrack iPods and iPods burned at retail stores with custom play lists.
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Sony release iPod accessory - hell freezes over!

Yes, the unthinkable has happened, Sony has released an iPod dock/amp/speaker combo ('iPod not included', but look at the size of that transformer!).

Whatever next? A Sony-branded range of Nintendo DS and Wii accessories?
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Create your own objects

New Scientist reports: [edited]

Rapid prototyping machines are already used by designers, engineers and scientists to create one-off mechanical parts and models. These create objects by depositing layer upon layer of liquid or powdered material.

These machines typically cost from $20,000 to $1.5 million, says Hod Lipson from Cornell University, US, who launched the Fab@Home project with PhD student Evan Malone in October 2006.

The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free.

"We are trying to get this technology into as many hands as possible," Malone told New Scientist. "The kit is designed to be as simple as possible." Once the parts have been bought, a normal soldering iron and a few screwdrivers are enough to put it together. "It's probably the cheapest machine of this kind out there," he adds.

Unlike commercial equipment, the Fab@Home machine is also designed to be used with more than one material. So far it has been tested with silicone, plaster, play-doh and even chocolate and icing. Different materials can also be used to make a single object – the control software prompts the user when to load new material into the machine.

Adrian Bowyer, who is also working on rapid prototyping machines at Bath University, in the UK, agrees that the technology could have mass appeal once the equipment is cheap enough. One of his own machines can even make some of its own parts.

"Fab@Home is an interesting idea; it should be easy for anyone in the world to build," Bowyer says. "Once you've used one you never want to go back, it's liberating and enormously fun." Bowyer believes the technology could one day even replace traditional models of manufacturing.

Bowyer adds that the Fab@Home machine could probably already be used to make many cheap injection-moulded products already on the market: "I can imagine people swapping plans of things to make online, or paying to download them instead of going to the shop."
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Broken bulbs

Kevin Tieskoetter has a day job working for Adobe, working on their new Lightroom program. In his spare time, he photographs the dying milliseconds of broken light bulbs.

In his own words: [edited]

I was inspired by a similar image I saw on photo.net and thought it would be fun to give it a try. I had the most luck with the candle flame shaped frosted bulbs, mostly because they have a more interesting design to their elements, they're dirt cheap, and I can break the bulb with a pair of pliers.

Once I lit the bulb, it would burn for 1-2 seconds, but the interesting shots were at the start of the process as the mushroom cloud was rising. An 8fps camera makes a big difference here.
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Multi-monitor madness

Andrew Sabri reports: [edited]

Here {is] the new 50-monitor display prototype developed at the Gigapixel Lab at Virginia Tech. The display is comprised of 21" touch-screen monitors driven by a cluster of 25 shuttle PCs. The setup has a resolution of 12800 x 5120 (65,536,000 pixels).
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Pimp my blimp

PersonalBlimp.com reports: [edited]

Since 2002, Skyacht Aircraft has been developing the Personal Blimp. The goal of this work has been to create an aircraft capable of quiet, steerable, sustained, and affordable flight.

The Personal Blimp is a hot air balloon that can be manoeuvered in near silence. Passengers in a Personal Blimp have a serene experience of flight unavailable in any other type of aircraft.

The Personal Blimp can be deflated and folded for storage. The combination of buoyancy control and rapid deflation eliminates the need for hangars and ground crews required for helium airships.

With the engine/propeller mounted on the tail, the Personal Blimp can use vectored thrust for steering. This allows greater manoeuverability, particularly for hovering.

Since its first flight in October, the Alberto has completed the FAA's required 10 hours of Phase I flight testing. Our work now focuses on both refining its systems and further expanding its capabilities.
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Vista: resistance is futile

The Toronto Star reports: [edited]

Vista, the latest version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, has finally made its] consumer debut. While reviews have focused on Vista's new functionality, the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print."

Vista incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software.

Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, remove software rated "high" or "severe," even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

Microsoft reserves all other rights. Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software."

Last December, Peter Guttman, a computer scientist at the University of Auckland released a paper [that unravelled] numerous limitations in the new software seemingly installed at the request of Hollywood interests.

Guttman focused primarily on the restrictions associated with the ability to play back high-definition content from next-generation DVDs (referred to as "premium content"). He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors.

Thanks to Conrad for the link.
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iPod Shuffle, now in colour

Was there some extra production time available at the iPod Nano anodising plant? Or are they making these out of recycled 'nano cases?
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Asimo's progress

The 2007 Honda ASIMO is the eleventh incarnation of a project that has been running since 1986.

Officially, the name is an acronym for "Advanced Step in Innovative MObility". Honda claim that it has nothing to do with Isaac Asimov, and in Japanese, the name is pronounced 'ashimo' meaning 'legs also'.

One of Asimo's unique features is that it can walk up and down stairs (although this all went spectacularly wrong at a demonstration last year). He did better at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

For more videos, visit YouTube and search for 'asimo'. And if you're hungry for more, Honda's official site has stacks of information sheets and hi-res pictures.
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Printing in 3D

Carvewright has produced a computer-controlled woodworking machine that allows the automated routing of wood in a laser printer-size unit.

The website has a video of the CarveWright in action, and it is fascinating to see wood being carved with the same kind of ease that an inkjet printer produces photographic images.
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Beautiful nature images

Nature Photographers Online Magazine have published their yearly 'Editor's Pick Awards'. Well worth a browse.
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Olympus release 18x zoom camera

Olympus have just announced the world's first 18x zoom camera. The SP-550 UZ ultrazoom goes from a wide-angle 28mm, to 'super-zoom' (read 'you'd better have steady hands') 504mm range. Fortunately for those of us 'tremblies', it also features CCD-shift image stabilisation, and an ISO range that extends to, wait for it, 5000!

At 365g it's not a lightweight, and its 116 x 78.5 x 78mm won't fit in your shirt pocket, but managing to squeeze an 18x zoom into a package that small is quite an achievement. Visit dpreview for full specifications and more detailed images.
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Cyphochilus holds key to whiter whites

Scientific American reports: [edited]

Scientists have identified the source of the dazzling whiteness of a beetle called Cyphochilus, and harnessing that knowledge could help make everything from paints to t-shirts more blindingly white.

Electron microscopy revealed the scales are made of a tangle of seemingly randomly orientated filaments, each about 250 nanometers wide. A random microscopic structure is key to producing a white colour, which results when all wavelengths of light scatter equally from a surface.

The brightness of the colour results from gaps of air between the filaments. Light scatters every time it passes between two materials that differ greatly in the speed of light through them, also called their refractive index. Like facets in a diamond, the more places light can scatter, the brighter the ultimate colour.
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New interface video

In August, I blogged a fascinating demo of Jeff Han's user interface ideas. Well, he's still around. Ignore the (15 second, but seems MUCH longer) preliminary ad, and see that he's taken things a few steps further.

If you want to read more about it, and can bear the 'gosh, wow' style of reporting, there's an (overly long) article at fastcompany.com.

According to the article, Han has sold his first wall screen to the US military, and has a lot of other deals in the pipeline. With his obvious love of publicity, we'll probably be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
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Nanobots prepare for a 'Fantastic Voyage'

Wired reports: [edited]

An international team of scientists is developing what they say will be the world's first microrobot - the width of two human hairs - that can swim through the arteries and digestive system (the motor, ringed in red, is the size of a grain of salt).

The scientists are designing the 250-micron device to transmit images and deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body outside the reach of existing catheter technology.

It will also perform minimally invasive microsurgeries, said James Friend of the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia's Monash University, who leads the team. The researchers hope the device will reduce the risks normally associated with delicate surgical procedures.

Funded by the Australian Research Council, Friend's team is tweaking larger versions of the device, and expects to have a working prototype later this year and a completed version by 2009.

The scientists say stroke, embolism and vascular-disease patients should be the first to benefit from the new technology.

The tiny robot, small enough to pass through the heart and other organs, will be inserted using a syringe. Guided by remote control, it will swim to a site within the body to perform a series of tasks, then return to the point of entry where it can be extracted, again by syringe.

The microrobot's design is based on the E. coli bacterium, complete with flagella that will propel it through the body. Scientists will make the flagella out of human hair in the preliminary research stages, eventually they want to use Kevlar.

The piezoelectric materials vibrate a twisted microstructure inside the robot at ultrasonic frequencies. When the twisted structure is compressed against the rotor, it untwists and the rotor turns. As the compression is released, the twisted structure unwinds back to its original shape, while the rotor slides.

Thanks to John for the link.
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Download The Abominable Snowman, free!

For those of you scarcely out of the womb,'Choose Your Own Adventure' was the title of a series of books published by Bantam from 1979 to 1998. It is one of the most successful series of all time, selling over 250 million copies.

Each story was written in the second-person, with the reader playing the role of the main character. The innovative feature was that the reader was given choices of how the story should progress, e.g. "If you want to enter the room, turn to page 17. If you want to turn back, turn to page 23."

CYOA have now made the stories available in iPod format, and one of the titles, 'The Abominable Snowman' is available for free download.

Read by R.A. Montgomery, it contains the original 116 pages of text, colour illustrations and sound effects.
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Casio announces compact camera with 7x zoom

Casio has recently announced the elegantly monikered EXILIM Hi-ZOOM EX-V7: [edited]

In recent years, a number of compact, high-performance digital cameras have appeared on the market, but there was a direct trade-off between zoom power and camera size. Users who wanted to capture subjects at a distance were forced to buy bulkier cameras or sacrifice zoom range for portability.

The camera introduces an innovative function for reducing photo blur, utilising mechanical CCD shift technology. It also combines Casio’s Anti Shake DSP with new motion analysis technology that selects the most appropriate ISO sensitivity and shutter speed to capture a moving photo subject.

It will be available in the States around March, for about $399.99.
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Go! Team tracks, free!

Reloda has a couple of free tracks from the Go! Team, a multi-national bunch of musicians who sample, mix and homage everything from pop to electroclash, 70s TV themes to Bollywood, cheerleading chants to hip hop... with everything louder than everything else.

And, if you needed any more convincing, there’s four drummers in the group. That's like having the Glitter Band (without Gary, natch) AND Adam Ant's rhythm sections in the background (and very often the foreground!)... the drumming sometimes gets so messy that I find myself smiling out loud. Give 'em a try.
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Cool toaster

George Watson has designed an elegant and functional toaster. He writes: [edited]

There has been little development of the toaster since the start of the century, while other appliances have developed and improved, incorporating new technologies and thinking, the toaster has remained relatively untouched.

When the toaster was first invented eating toast was a social activity that took place at the breakfast table. These days, toasters have been relegated to objects hidden away in the kitchen landscape.

This toaster is designed to engage the user, re-invigorating the social context of toasting by questioning everything about what we toast with today. I was also keen to make a playful object that you would be proud of having on your breakfast table.

Slip-moulded bone china allowed me to create this intricate and sculptural form, but also provided the material longevity that I required. This is a toaster that brings life and joy to a stagnant domestic appliance.
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Mega-murals

Eric Grohe was born in New York City in 1944. His professional career as a graphic designer and illustrator began in Seattle in 1961, briefly interrupted by a tour of duty in Vietnam. Back at home, Eric was hired as a graphic designer by a national architectural firm. Later he worked with the Cambridge University archaeology department, illustrating digs in France, Greece, Israel and England. Returning stateside, Eric worked in New York City as a freelance illustrator.

In 1973, he was asked to design graphics for Expo’74 in Spokane, Washington. At this time, he began receiving commissions for his artwork, which have continued to grow in scope and size, leading to today’s large-scale trompe l’oeil murals. Throughout his 43-year career as a professional artist, Grohe has received national recognition for his work, which is now focused on painting figurative and architectural murals for clients throughout the United States.

Pay his site a visit, the quality and scale of the murals is breathtaking. Thanks to Chantal, via Gareth, for the link.
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Shout if you want to go faster!

Christopher Paretti has found a way to link voice patterns to the acceleration controllers on electric slot car tracks. So, the louder you yell, the faster your car goes... and if you stop, so does the car!

It's one of those ideas that probably seemed like a good idea at the time. However, I can see the novelty wearing off fairly quickly once you have a room-full of overexcited kids all screaming at the top of their lungs.

He doesn't say whether he's planning to turn his attentions to solving the major challenge for anyone playing electric slot-cars... the ubiquitous broken connections that plagued my youthful experiences with this particular activity!
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300 miles of music: 6.30pm - midnight

London - Lincoln
Cler Achel - Tinariwen
Open #20 - Dustin O'Halloran
The Sadness - Ryan Adams
Daddy Sang Bass - Johnny Cash
Chuck E's In Love - Rickie Lee Jones
Little Bitch - The Ordinary Boys
Fool To Cry - The Rolling Stones
Love Resurrection - Alison Moyet
The Wedding - Michael Card
Everybody Gonfi Gone - Two Cowboys
Crush - The Violet Burning
Dream Some - Shelby Lynne
Breathe Deep (The Breath Of God) - Lost Dogs
Heal Over - KT Tunstall
Faith - George Michael
Love and Loneliness - The Motors
Animal Nitrate - Suede
Ruby Baby - Björk
One (B-side, Miss Sarajevo) - U2
Comfortably Numb - Scissor Sisters
Feel A Whole Lot Better - Teenage Fanclub
Baby Please Don't Go - The Amboy Dukes
I Want To Be The Boy - The White Stripes
I Got Stripes (live at Folsom Prison) - Johnny Cash
Disappear - INXS
Wolves - Garth Brooks
Portland, Michigan - Mary Lee's Corvette
Handy Dandy - Bob Dylan
Mr Bojangles - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Let's Leave This Town - Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
These Four Walls - Irma Thomas
Love You Madly - Cake
Purple Snowflakes - Matt Harding
Tommy - Kelly Joe Phelps
Apparition #13 - Thea Gilmore
All About Eve - The Wedding Present
Oops I Did It Again - Britney Spears
See Line Woman - Nina Simone
Where Is My Mind? - Pixies
Land Down Under - Spunge

Lincoln - London
Chicken Payback - The Bees
Tandem - Halcali
Herculean - The Good The Bad And The Queen
The Monkeys Are Breaking Out The Zoo - Belle & Sebastian
Little Red Corvette - Prince
Hey Gravity - Mass
What You Waiting For? (live) - Franz Ferdinand
Life Could Be A Dream (Sh-Boom) - Crew Cuts
Gold - John Stewart
Leslie Parlafitt - Bromheads Jacket
Boom-Shak-A-Lak - Apache Indian
Feuer Frei - Rammstein
The King's New Clothes - Danny Kaye
Pull It to Pieces - Elektralow
Who Do You Love? - George Thorogood
Surrey Girls and Samsung Ringtones - Bromheads Jacket
Goodnight Sweet Prince - Brandtson
War of the Worlds (New Version) - Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
One Fine Day - The Shirelles
Patience - Take That
The Rejection (Album Version) - Dangerous Muse
My Pretty One - Cliff Richard
I Should Get Up - Teddy Thompson
Goldyloppers And The Three Bearloaders - Stanley Unwin
Telstar - Tornadoes
What If I'm Right? - Sandi Thom
Red Alert - Basement Jaxx
Grazing in the Grass - Friends of Distinction
My Town - Armor for Sleep
Superfreak - BeatFreakz
Calling Baton Rouge - Garth Brooks
Shoot the Runner - Kasabian
Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
Nice Legs, Shame About the Face - The Monks
When You Wasn't Famous - Bromheads Jacket
Happy Doesn't Have To Have An Ending - They Might Be Giants
1 2 X U - Wire
Tongue Twisters - Danny Kaye
Rock Steady - All Saints
Can't Take My Eyes Off You - Manic Street Preachers
My Dingaling - Chuck Berry
Superfreak - Rick James
Lips Of An Angel - Hinder
Get Stoned - Hinder
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nano-rodin

LiveScience reports: [edited]

Korean researchers have crafted a 20 millionths of a meter high version of Rodin's famed sculpture The Thinker. That's only twice the size of a red blood cell (and 93,000 times smaller than the original).

For more than a decade, researchers worldwide have experimented with lasers to fabricate elaborate 3D creations. They start with a resin that hardens when exposed to certain frequencies of light. Using overlapping beams of lasers, they solidify a sculpture with details measuring less than a wavelength of visible light.

While the skins of these sculptures are hard, their innards remain soft. This leaves them vulnerable to surface tension, the same force that causes water to bead up into droplets. The surface tension of the fluid in which the sculptures are immersed can cause them to deform.

To solve this problem mechanical engineer Dong-Yol Yang at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, and his colleagues use multiple laser beams focused at and below each spot on the surface of the sculpture.

The new technique could help develop biosensors and other complicated microscopic devices.
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Dubious name, great program

The *nervous cough* Rasterbator is an online tool where you can upload a JPEG (up to 1MB) and it will produce a half-toned PDF version that you can print on many sheets of paper to make a bigger, tiled image.

It is fun and intuitive to use. You can either upload a file from your computer or specify its URL. After you have cropped the image and selected the size and number of pages you want to print, the tiled images are constructed as a downloadable multi-page PDF file.
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iPhone announced

Steve Jobs has ended years of speculation by announcing the iPhone.

It is an elegant looking unit, about the size of a medium-size Pocket PC. It does all the mobile phone, iPod, email and web-browsing stuff. But the jewel in the crown is that they've given it a decent operating system (Mac OSX).

The bad news is that it isn't due for release until June in the States, and Europe has to wait until Christmas!

Now I've got to keep my Nokia 6210 working until I get my hands on one.

To find out more, click here
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Yep

Yep (Mac OSX only) is a free (at the moment) program that helps you organise your PDFs.

In the words of the site: [edited]

Every computer has loads of PDF files.

Use Yep to search, view and manage these documents.

Think of Yep as iPhoto for your PDF documents.
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Post Office Pictionary

The Sun reports: [edited]

Paul Bates sent a Christmas card to a long-lost pal in this envelope with NO street name, NO town, NO postcode — yet it arrived!

The steel worker, 48, had forgotten the name of the town workmate Peter O’Leary moved to from Neath, South Wales, three years ago.

But he recalled Peter had pointed it out on a map. So he put a dot on a sketch of the South West Peninsula, wrote “somewhere here” and hoped for the best.

Amazingly the card arrived at Peter’s home in Bude, North Cornwall, nine days later — after his postie recognised the name in a local sorting office.

The pals are now back in contact and plan to meet soon. Peter, 48, now a driving instructor, said: “It was very inventive.”
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Hard drives go solid state

Sandisk has begun production of a 1.8", 32GB flash-based hard drive.

Intended for high-end PDAs and ultra-light laptops, the disk is:

- more robust than a conventional hard drive (mean time between failures of 2 million hours, or 229 years!)

- more energy efficent (0.4 watt during active operation versus 1.0 watt for a conventional 1.8" hard drive)

- faster (sustained rate of 62MBps) more than 100 times faster than HDDs for random 512B reads

(all figures supplied by Sandisk)
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Stunning portraits

Steven McCurry is a superb photographer.

Be prepared to spend more time than you planned browsing his site!
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Reasons to be cheerful?

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

Each year, it asks a single question and publishes the responses online.

The question this year was

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

The 150 responses cover a wide range of subjects, from string theory to intelligence, cancer to climate. Among the contributors are such luminaries as Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Ray Kurzweil and Steven Pinker.

Visit Edge.org for a quick browse (or a lengthy perusal) of their answers. You'll find stuff that gives you reason to smile, along with material that will have you reaching for the nearest throwable object.

But it will make you think.
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The importance of correct spelling

The Register reports: [edited]

Tobi Gutt left Germany in high hopes on Saturday, dressed in T-shirt and shorts for the Australian summer, but instead of heading towards Sydney, Australia the 21 year-old ended up en-route to Sidney, Montana.

Initially Gutt reasoned that it was possible to fly to Australia via the United States and it was only once he was on board a commuter flight to Sidney, an oil town that's home to around 5,000 people, that the terrible truth dawned on him. Up to that point he's flown to Portland, Oregon and on to Billings, Montana with mounting concern.

"I did wonder but I didn't want to say anything," Gutt told the German newspaper Bild. "I thought to myself, you can fly to Australia via the United States."

He was left stuck middle of nowhere with only a thin jacket to keep out the cold. Fortunately after three days his family and friends were able to send him the €600 he needed to book a new ticket to Australia.

"I didn't notice the mistake as my son is usually good with computers," his mum, Sabine, told Reuters.
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Brett starts a new blog

Brett Jordan's two penn'orth reports: [edited]

Last year I started a blog [yes, this one, ed]. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed maintaining it, and how many people enjoyed viewing it. It is essentially a 'I found this cool stuff and thought I'd share it' kind of site, and I'll continue publishing it until I get bored with it.

A number of people have said they would like to hear a little more about what I think of life [no, really, they did] . This will be the site for them. The aim will be for it to publish a couple of ideas a week based on my own personal experience. The topics will be unashamedly 'Brett-shaped', and will make no claims to be scientific or exhaustively researched.

Comments are enabled, and welcomed.
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