Milk’s Site

Crazy Mac Fanboy iPhone conspiracy theory turns out to be worth something.

Stellarium, free open source planetarium software. Killer app, for that sort of thing.

Peer to Patent, helping the USPTO find the information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications.

INCREDIBLE NEW NISSAN AD!!!!onehundredandeleven

Poles demand more EU votes to compensate for war deaths. You started it!

How to win an argument. No mention of Godwin’s Law though..

Musical Tesla Coil

from , LOLCATS;

“Weird Tales: The Strange Life of HP Lovecraft

Geoff Ward examines the strange life and terrifying world of the man hailed as America’s greatest horror writer since Poe. During his life, Lovecraft’s work was confined to lurid pulp magazines and he died in penury in 1937. Today, however, his writings are considered modern classics and published in prestigious editions. How did such a weird, wild and ungodly writer get canonised? Among the writers considering his legacy are Neil Gaiman, ST Joshi, Kelly Link, Peter Straub and China Mieville.”

Only saw this earlier today, and the listen again link will expire tomorrow, so I ripped the Real Media stream and have uploaded the audio here for anyone who’s interested. Now, all I have to do now is get around to reading some of his work..

I can’t remember if I’ve linked to this tech before, but posted a YouTube video of a recent Bjork performance on Later with Jools Holland that features the use of a reactable, a multi-touch interface surface on which various blocks or ‘tangibles’ can be placed to create audio in the manner of a modular synthesizer. Many videos and pics available here.

It arose in conversation with the other day that she had never previously heard of or seen one of those most magical of devices, the Segway. So I showed her. In case anyone here is unfamiliar with said device, behold, links to videos otherwise easily obtainable by googling;

• Official Segway Commercial
• Bay Area Segway Polo
• ONN: In The Know: Life Before The Segway

P.S. The Onion’s new video reports are utterly fantastic.

Anyone remember the on-line petition appeal Paris Hilton backed last month before she went to jail the first time? Googling “paris hilton petition” gives it – FREE PARIS HILTON Petition [caps sic] – as the first result, with the second result being from the same site – Jail Paris Hilton. The former has 31,409 signatures and the latter 89,689, and now she’s banged up again. A true testament to the power of on-line petitions!

From BBC News: “The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear-style head to help carry injured soldiers away from the battlefield. … It is expected to be ready for testing within five years. … The 6ft tall Bear can cross bumpy ground without toppling thanks to a combination of gyroscopes and computer controlled motors to maintain balance. … The Bear is controlled remotely and has cameras and microphones through which an operator sees and hears. … It can even tackle stairs while carrying a human-sized dummy.”

Slashdot comment: “errr: Give the robot a menacing look with red eyes, a gun, 500 pounds of Ammo, and leave the troop home; Also embed an explosive.”

Also; , On Love, etc.

I recently took some time to trawl through YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video and blip.tv for Beltane Fire Festival clips, and have collated the links on the NightWatch wiki here. One thought I’ve had is that it might be an idea for BFS to solicit the general public to send in clips shot on mobile phones, etc, preferably under some form of Creative Commons license, so that they can be made available for viewing by others and/or the best can be used to create a video montage. That, I think, would be nifty.