Ah ... Melbourne!

There's an "authentic British pub" directly across from the hotel, so I figured I'd give it a shot while waiting to have dinner with an ex-colleague who is here for the same conference.

They have Old Speckled Hen on tap!

Finished tomorrow's SMH crossword far too quickly, so I have nothing to distract me from the dreaded drink for the next 45 minutes. Dave could be dining with a drunk :-).

Jake Shimabukuro

I finally got around to watching this week's episode of Spicks 'n' Specks and they had Jake Shimabukuro performing a couple of songs.

If I'd not heard him, I would never have believed that a Ukelele could be made to sound good!

Here he is, performing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

Blogging On The Go!

Finally. A vaguely decent blogging app for the iPhone.

So, maybe you'll see some semi-regular posts from now on. No promises, mind you :-).

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

This Looks Like Fun

"Lost In Austen" is a new British sci-fi drama from ITV that has a modern day woman transported into Pride & Prejudice.

From this video, it looks like it could be quite good. Hopefully, the torrents will be kind to me :-).


Thanks to io9.

Synthespians

This is a pretty amazing video. The "person" being interviewed is synthetically constructed, using a number of images taken of a real human being to generate all of the facial expressions.

It was created by a company called Image Metrics, who are the people behind the animations in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Update: I've replaced the original YouTube video, which seemed to have some kind of glitch partway through. This seems to be a superset of the old one.

Thanks to io9.

Mushroom Time Lapse

Wow, it feels like it's been a month since I last blogged ... oh, it has :-).

Anyway, here's a nice time-lapse video of mushrooms growing.


Thanks to Random Good Stuff.

How True It Is!

The Joy Of Tech has me pegged perfectly :-) ...

Kinetic Sculpture

This is pretty cool ...

Chronotopic Anamorphosis

This is a clever bit of trickery that involves incorporating lines from subsequent frames into the current one, thereby causing parts of the video to move through time.



Thanks to Neatorama.

Dumpr

Don't worry, this has absolutely no connection to that entry a couple of posts back :-).

Dumpr is a clever service that insinuates one of your own images into any of a number of interesting templates.

They provide a mechanism for publishing the result to an amazing number of other online services.

For some reason, they've gone to some trouble to stop you from simply downloading it yourself.

Fortunately, that's easy to get around, using a screen capture utility!

Caliper Radio

I'd be surprised if the sound quality produced by this radio is anywhere north of mediocre, but I just love the design.

Moving the body of the radio itself to tune in a station is seriously cute.

It's called simply "08 Radio" and is the creation of Finnish designer Mikael Silvanto.

"Take A Dump In Your Pants ..."

"... If You Need To" is an example from a collection of weird placards people have used to motivate long distance runners.

My favourite was this one.

I can imagine, though, that the subsequent running might be just a little uncomfortable ... assuming she's any good at her job :-).

Thanks to Neatorama for the link.

This Is My World

Thanks to Mathematics Under The Microscope for showing me this wonderful image by Russian political cartoonist Mikhail Zlatkovsky, entitled "Facing Eternity".

It won the Ken Sprague Fund competition at Earthworks 2008.

I loved the title of Alexandre's blog post ... "One more cartographic projection" :-).

The Unbreakable Umbrella

The title and this video say it all ...

New PC vs Mac Banner Ad

A Handy Little Site

Next time you're telling a joke while sitting in front of your PC, you may find Instant Rimshot useful ...

Well, at least if the punchline is so pathetic that it needs a little assistance :-).

The G Shot

I heard about this on a podcast this evening.

Apparently, The G Shot, also known as "G Spot Amplification", involves injection of collagen into the Grafenburg Spot, to temporarily enlarge it (for up to four months).

While the idea of sticking a needle into such a sensitive area sounds just a little alarming, I guess the outcome could make it worthwhile. Mind you, they're very careful to point out that "results do vary".

Office Synchronisation

This is just weird enough to be interesting ...


Thanks to Random Good Stuff.

97 Degrees?!

You won't be getting me on this rollercoaster anytime soon ...

The Open Source Process In Action

Via Projectionist comes this impressive animation of the Python language's development over time ...