A Mosque (1986)
A mosque is where Muslim people learn, read and pray.Where I go with my little brothers we have to pay 2 pounds each week for learning everyday.We learn the Koran and how to pray.We have to go to everyday,if we don't we are punished.We must take an excuse note to say why we didn't come.I go in a van to the mosque Then I go to a big room to learn how to pray.We stay for one hour.Each week there is a test if you pass you go to another group for lessons.After the test you go to your own class where the register is taken.Then you must read to your teacher for one hour,if you make one mistake you are punished.The punishment is a beating with a bamboo stick.When we are finished we are taken home by van.
Shelina Akther(11)
From the BBC's Domesday Reloaded project, a remarkable - if somewhat misguided - attempt to document life in modern Britain circa 1986. Cool stuff.
In 1986, 900 years after William the Conqueror’s original Domesday Book, the BBC published the Domesday Project. The project was probably the most ambitious attempt ever to capture the essence of life in the United Kingdom. Over a million people contributed to this digital snapshot of the country.
The whole of the UK – including the Channel Islands and Isle of Man – was divided into 23,000 4x3km areas called Domesday Squares or “D-Blocks”.
Schools and community groups surveyed over 108,000 square km of the UK and submitted more than 147,819 pages of text articles and 23,225 amateur photos, cataloguing what it was like to live, work and play in their community.
This was about documenting everyday life - the ordinary rather than the extraordinary.
The project used the cutting edge technology of the day, and the data was eventually presented on a special type of Laser-Disc, read by a BBC master computer and navigated using an innovative tracker-ball pointing system.
But the technology didn’t catch on and the computers became very expensive for schools and libraries to buy. Very few people ever got to see the fruits of all of their hard work.
I heart Nixie tubes
Nicaragua invades Costa Rica due to Google error
A Nicaraguan military commander recently invaded Costa Rican territory, and ordered troops to take down a Costa Rican flag and replace it with Nicaragua's. Was this the work of a brash commander, going rogue on his superiors? A new policy of Nicaraguan imperialism? Neither. The incident was caused by an error in Google Maps. [...] commander Eden Pastora blamed the incursion on a misleading border on Google Maps that was off by some 3000 meters.
La Nación points to a disparity between the borders on Bing and Google. We've highlighted the area in question:
Thanks Austin Carr.
The iMat, coming to a home and office near you
Sorry, I don't know the source for this one - Frag just sent it in an email.
I think the image is more prophetic than funny, even if the dates are probably a bit off. I can see the iBoard in classrooms, in offices and on fridges by 2015, and iWalls (OK, iMat may be pushing it) in high-tech offices and homes by 2020. And everywhere by 2030.
Apple iPad: the reaction
The market reflects my feelings exactly.
CNN everywhere
The Brawn fairytale
Andrew Benson chronicles a remarkable year for Brawn GP. Apparently (although not in the track), the car was 'a botch job':
[The Brawn car] was the fastest thing in the field by a mile, and Jenson Button went on to win six of the first seven races, the foundation for the championship he finally clinched on Sunday.
What is less well known, though, is that the car is, in the words of my source, "a botch job".
It was designed for a Honda engine, and it was not until December that the team knew they would be using a Mercedes. That necessitated some pretty crude changes.
"The chassis had the back six inches cut off to fit the engine in - the sort of thing you wouldn't normally do even with a test car," says my source. "And the gearbox was in the wrong place because the crank-centre height is different. There's a massive amount of compromise in the cars."
Google: comfortable with our true nature since 1996
First, disable any filters (moderate safe search and the like) you may have on google search - I think these should be off by default anyways. If no kids have access to your computer and yet you prefer to self-censor google search results, I suggest you take a long, hard look inside your soul and ask whether you really want to be one of those sorry people who think it makes sense to expend energy in avoiding accidentally reading the word 'fuck' or seeing an uncovered breast or two. In other words, get a life.
Now type 'my girlfriend' on google and check out the search suggestions it gives you. As of writing, these include 'cheated on me', 'is fat', 'hates me' (most search results by far), and 'is a virgin'. A martian trying to understand human nature in a hurry would be wise to use google search suggestions over any treatise on the subject I can think of.
And if you thought that was revealing, try typing 'my girlfriend won't', for suggestions such as 'shave'. Absolutely brilliant, absolutely spot on.
The law of one price: there's an app for that
This is amazing: RedLaser on the iphone will instantly scan any barcode and look up the product on amazon and google product search, showing you where you can get the best price. The entire process takes less than 2 seconds, and it works flawlessly. This is not simply a must-have app; it's a reason to buy an iphone.
And of course finding the lowest price is just one of the things you can do: you can check for book and dvd reviews, put together a shopping list by scanning stuff in your fridge - the possibilities are endless. The developer has even made the SDK available to other application developers, which means that this is just the beginning.
Take me to the next level.
Push Gmail finally available on the iphone
Here. Tested it and works great, takes about 30 seconds to set up.
Leap seconds
Did you know that 2009 is one second shorter than 2008? And you thought leap years are cool.
On related news, I find it astonishing that I have to manually set the time on my mac and iphone - and to top it all up, I have a nagging suspicion that both clocks are actually slow.
Economic growth
Between 1950 and 2000, the price of […] long-distance passenger air transport fell by 2.6 percent annually, and of trans-Atlantic phone calls by an astounding 8 percent annually.From the Concice Encyclopedia of Economics, at the Library of Economics and Liberty.
Facebook strikes back
The short story: Techcrunch messes with Facebook, Facebook gets back at them with style - who would have thought corporations can have a sense of humour? HT Popehat
These dudes rock
Just watch this video and stop worrying about the youth of today. Well done guys!
Oligopoly
The Ultimate Machine
This is brilliant:
[embedded video]
About 7 years ago I was reading an article on Claude Shannon and came across one of the funniest ideas I had ever heard. Claude, you see, was one of these incredibly brilliant engineers with an obviously great sense of humor. As I understand it, he, along with Marvin Minsky came up with an idea they called the "Ultimate Machine". Basically a plain box with a switch on the top. When you flip the switch, a hand comes out of the box and flips the switch off. Thats it.
Well, after reading the article, and laughing out loud, I decided that I HAD to build one of these boxes.
Geeks on trial, mammals that lay eggs, and other strange occurences: The incredible story of Hans Reiser
The Duckbill Platypus is a mammal that lays eggs. It also plays a key role in the defence of Hans Reiser, an iconic programmer and software visionary on trial for murdering his wife.
[Reiser's defence attorney] for the second day likened his client to a duckbill platypus, a strange-looking mammal -- a "genetic mistake" -- that was projected to jurors on a large monitor.
"I just know this is one of the great screw jobs of what happened to Hans Reiser," DuBois said. "It's easy to screw a platypus."
It is a tragic story (detailed in one of the best pieces ever to appear on Wired - well worth dedicating 20 minutes to go through the whole thing) and one of the most followed and discussed across geekland. Here's another interesting excerpt from the proceedings:
[Hans Reiser explained] to jurors that, as nonscientists, they may not understand his social ineptness.
"Scientists communicate by reference to data. I cannot communicate effectively. That's not how scientists talk. We cannot throw out assertions that cannot be supportive without data points," the 44-year-old defendant testified on his 10th day on the stand. "I have a compulsive tendency to say things that I know are true that people don't want to be true. I do this by reference to the data"
The fogscreen
This is friggin amazing. It took me a couple of minutes to convince myself it is not a hoax (if it is, then they have spent a lot of money setting it up). Watch it:
[embedded video]
I can't believe their imagination gets them only as far as billboards.
Youtube has tons more videos, here is the website (one of the main reasons I can't quite get over my suspicions).
Apple's new thing - 'All this hype for something so ridiculous!'
No, not the iphone, but the first ipod to be released back in 2001.
A loyal reader emailed me with this fascinating forum discussion at Mac Rumors right after the ipod was announced. How different things turned out to be...
I can't wait to lay my hands on one of those
Video (must watch),article, website. I really don't understand why the get one give one programme is limited both in number of pieces to be made available and location, but I can wait.
And yes, I think it's an amazing idea and will work wonders in the developing world - and beyond. More on this in an upcoming post.
This, on the other hand, is a gadget I will be getting soon - and fellow owners will find the information in the video very, very useful.
And while we are at it, David Pogue's podcasts at the NYT are simply amazing; unless you hate gadgets and technology with a passion, don't miss it.
