Archives for: November 2006
2,000 year-old analogue computer
I heard about this on the CBC this morning and thought "wow". The BBC has a more complete story on the Antikythera Mechanism, but in summary the Greeks built a mechanical gear-based tool for calculating astronomical cycles. This amazes me on two levels:… more »
Delerium, "Nuages Du Monde"
As of this point, "Nuages Du Monde" is the most recent of the Delerium albums. It's also a good one. And, unlike 2003's "Chimera", it's not copy protected. Yay, Nettwerk! If you've heard one Delerium album, fundamentally you've heard them all: gorgeous… more »
Adam != Ritchie
Checking through the comment spam this morning I found a rant from one "Emmanuel Goldstein" under the post about the luxury good embargo on North Korea. Now, as much as I appreciate a flame written by a character from Orwell's "1984", I do have to point… more »
We have a new winner!
...in the ridiculously huge monitor stakes. Excuse me, I have to go sell a kidney now. more »
Novel ways to overthrow a foreign country
I have to give kudos to the Americans on this one; I don't think I've ever seen an attempt to destabilize a country by refusing to sell it luxury goods. Quote from the piece:
Experts said the effort -- being coordinated under the United Nations -- would… more »
Review: Griffin RocketFM
Summary: USB powered low-range FM transmitter
As probably noticed in other posts, I'm not much of a fan of Calgary radio. This poses a bit of a problem as I like waking up to music and if my first reaction is that I'd like to strangle the DJ, well, it… more »
Sources of music recommendations
Wired News has two articles today on internet music sources. The first by Leander Kahney is about Rhapsody, a retailer in the vein of iTunes, eMusic and Napster. His conclusion: some good ideas, but not ready for prime time. The second is by Scott… more »
Ze Frank
As a follow on from Ritchie's TED linkage, I thought I might point people at the full Ze Frank site. "Ze Frank" is a web comedian; he sticks up brief video skits on a regular basis which take the form of a face-to-face discussion with the audience.… more »
Soundtrack, "Run Lola Run"
I frequently buy soundtracks to films I've never seen, nor have any particular wish to see. A few years ago, a friend from Germany sent me a track called "Wish (Komm Zu Mir)" but no other information. I thought it was great, in a rather German… more »
Michael Brook, "Cobalt Blue"
I first came across Michael Brook while listening to the soundtrack to "Heat" which included "Ultramarine", an echoey heavily processed guitar track. A bit later I encountered "Diffusing" which was a very similar piece. more »
Aurora, "Aurora"
This 2002 eponymous album from UK band, Aurora, doesn't fit terribly comfortably into the electronica/dance-floor genre that it was released into. It's rather better than most due to a combination of cover tunes and guest vocalists. You get Shakespeares… more »
"Self Help" in Microsoft's Vista EULA
Interesting article on the Register about the process of "self-help" wherein one party to a contract can unilaterally deprive the other member of the contract. In the case of Vista, the discussion is about Microsoft's ability to terminate the user's… more »
Use of abandonware legal in the US again
Good to see the US's copyright law moving in the right direction for once:
it's now going to be legal to hack copy protection on computer software and video machines that are no longer available, including those that use hardware-based methods such as… more »
They Still Don't Get It
Electronic Arts and Atari have been pushing their new downloadable games pretty hard recently. more »
Locavore cuisine
Wired is on a bit of a roll with reporting the somewhat bizarre eating fads. First, it was Calorie Reduced Diets (BoingBoing has a good link to that bit of insanity) and now it's "Locavore" wherein one tries to eat only foods created in their entirety… more »
The director of "The Hobbit" will not be Peter Jackson
In one of those bewildering moves, New Line Cinema has opted not to employ Peter Jackson to direct the new live action version of "The Hobbit".
Nimblebrain.net: we bring you breaking news as cited by cartoon strips. more »
Concrete Blonde, "Recollection"
Concrete Blonde were an alt-rock band who appeared in the early '80s, hit their high point in the early '90s, and for all intents and purposes vanished a little afterwards. It's too bad. When good, they were very good. more »
Gender inverted Nimblebrain
Another entry in the wacky Internet tools category. Via QBlog, I found Regender, an amusing little hack that works much like Altavista's Babelfish engine; it "translates" a page by switching genders and names. Title link goes to the inverted version of… more »
Sex sells. Well, drives up the bids. Perhaps.
Apparently eBayers have been taking a page out of British lad-mags like "T3" or pretty much any motor show in the last forty years, and have decided to spice up those boring pictures of games consoles with buxom ladies. There's shallow, there's really… more »
Hole In The World
More stupid Google (TM) Tricks! This one is via Pharyngula, one of Ritchie's preferred blogging sites. It allows you to choose where you live, and then drills a hole through the world to show you what's on the direct opposite. And no, popular… more »
Your YouTube video for the day
At last we have an answer to the much asked question: what if Bollywood had made the video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller"? more »
DMCA abuse? Surely not?
Surprise. BestBuy issues a DMCA take-down on a site that publishes information about their discount pricing.
'Cause everyone knows that a free market works best with perfect information and no commercial entity would ever try to hinder that.
So… more »
Something's rotten in the state of Washington
Ok, now this is just plain under-handed and sneaky. Summary of the BoingBoing'd article is that Microsoft has some patents that Novell, owner of SUSE Linux distribution, has licensed from them; in turn, Microsoft is now claiming that all other varieties… more »
The best Vista box is a... MacPro??
Ok, lots of bias here, but there's an interesting article by a Microsofty about running Vista. The machine of choice is the quad-core MacPro and he's very impressed. I can't say I approve of a) Vista; or b) Desecrating a Mac with it; but it runs, and it… more »
Finnish Song Of Disguntlement
Truly, this YouTube video deserves to be the next internet big-thing. more »
Amazonian Shenanigans
Over the years I've migrated from buying the majority of my CDs from stores to buying online. The move is mostly due to availability of obscurities; I've bought pretty much all of the easy to find stuff and these days I'm after back catalogue, deleted… more »
The Big Score
Over at Kottke, there's a post about getting the big score, the post that drew the most people to the site -- the one that made the weblog what it is.
Over here, my big hitter with a grand total of 114 views as of this writing (yup, that's it!) is… more »
Laptop battery fire
Latest arrival from the link-meisters at Engadget is this display of what happens when a laptop battery explodes. Unlike previous recorded fires, this one has been set up deliberately and gives a much better view of the progression as each battery cell… more »
Dolphins Cover the "Batman" Theme
Occasionally science reaches new heights; it attains unexpected successes; it moves forwards human knowledge, not merely by a step, but by a mile.
This isn't one of those things. On the other hand, a big woohoo for operant conditioning and pop culture! more »
Gracenote on CDDB
A week or so ago, I made an offhand comment critical of Gracenote, the developer of CD recognition tool CDDB, about them taking a publically generated database commercial. I objected to this based on the fact that at the time no one knew they would be… more »
MacBook Core2Duo Out
Looks as if Apple's moving towards a more PCClone release schedule; I wasn't expecting this to be out until February. If reviews of the Core2Duo version of the MacBook Pro are correct, this'll give you about a 10% speed increase over the earlier version… more »
Best electioneering slogan from the US today
Nice to see that the Republicans still have a sense of humour even while going down in flames:
Republicans have been simultaneously informing voters about the confusing process to vote for Negron—whose name doesn't appear on the ballot—and expressing… more »
Arguing on the internet
There's a joke that's been going around for a while -- typically Fark Photoshop related -- that arguing on the internet is a bit like competing in the Special Olympics; even if you win, you're still retarded. Having watched enough flamefests online, I'm… more »
Election tampering
Over at QBlog, British computer scientist, Richard Bartle, points out an interesting conundrum about tamper tape on voting boxes. The summary is this: can you throw an election by tampering with a container such that it and its contents become suspect?… more »
"Ready, Aye, Ready"
As we approach the sombre memorial of November 11th, Remembrance Day, I thought I'd take a moment to comment on the title I chose for the weblog.
"Ready, Aye, Ready" is a very Canadian term. It's been used a number of times in Canada's political… more »
A Case Study In DRM Music
The summary of the story is that Microsoft is discontinuing their old MSN Music store, and the DRM'd files it sold are not compatible with anything else. While the story quotes Microsoft saying that tracks could be burned to CD in this case, I've seen… more »
Automated music recognition
A little while ago, I posted a question about how one identifies unknown music.
Apparently there is some software that -- in theory -- can do this Too bad it only seems to be deployed to restrict music listening, rather than to help identify it.… more »
