These are a pair of fun Beatles Mash Ups.
The Beastles and Let It Beast.
More Google Maps Hacks
As a matter of fact, there is a blog dedicated to Google Map Hacks (who would have thunk it?)
One of the links is to Pillows and Pancakes – a searchable list of B&Bs around the county, with a Google Maps display!
Very Nice.
High Tech Dumpster Diving
From the Make: Blog:
This is a great Google map project – when you’re out and about in New York City and spot something cool destined for the dump, take a photo with your phone, send a description and an address! The photo and location will show up on Garbagescout.com, there’s also a RSS feed! Dumpster diving just went Web 2.0
Underwater Photography
Zena Holloway is a photographer who takes photos underwater.
“So what?” you might ask? Well, she takes artistic photos, not photos of fish.
These are hauntingly beautiful.
She also apparently takes photos of infants underwater and has won a silver medal for her waterbabies photography.
From her bio on the UrchinRock site:
Zena Holloway is at the forefront of underwater photography and film in the UK and abroad. Her highly acclaimed images of babies swimming underwater have featured across a wide range of media campaigns including the front cover of The Radio Times, Paris Match, The National Enquirer and the BBC Human Body series. In 1998 the Royal Photographic Society awarded Zena the prestigious Silver Medal for her “Waterbabies” entry in the International Print Competition.
onsale.com sucks ass
On January 25th, The Consumerist posted a link to a deal listed on SlickDeals. Onsale.com had a backpack for laptops on sale for $30 with a $30 rebate.
I was getting tired of lugging my current bag around, so I jumped on the deal and ordered one.
Then I waited.
The next day I got an email from Onsale.com stating that my order had been received and was in process.
The day after that I got an email stating that my order had been processed and giving me an order number so I could check the status on line.
Then I waited some more.
After a week with no further communications, I decided to check my order progress online. I logged in and it said it was “in process”. Hmm. Pretty slow.
So I sent an email in asking what the deal was.
No answer.
Today (more than two weeks later) I checked the web site and it said my order had been canceled! WTF?
So I called them. I have to admit that they got on the phone pretty quickly. Maybe two minutes before I was talking to a customer service agent. And he was pretty helpful, I’ll admit that too.
I gave him my order number and explained the deal. He looked it up and said that there had been a problem with my credit card and that they had sent me an email about it. Since I hadn’t replied to the email within 48 hours, they automatically cancelled the order.
I never got an email about my credit card.
He verified my email address. It was the same one that I had received the other two emails at.
He apologized and asked if I wanted to place the order again. Considering that the rebate coupon stated the sales receipt had to be dated between 1/15 and 1/30, so I wouldn’t qualify for the rebate, I declined his offer.
I can’t say I’m a happy customer at this point.
And yes, I checked my spam folder to see if it had caught the email about my credit card. It had not.
And yes, I probably should have called after the first week, but why should I have had to?
I won’t be trying to buy from onsale.com again.
Hard Drive Crash Dance Music
Gizmodo had a contest where they asked people to make dance tracks using the sounds a Hitachi hard drive makes while it’s failing.
They say:
There were well more than 100 entries in this remix competition—and picking the winner was a tough tough decision. It’s clear that the challenge of making music based on the sound of Hitachi hard drives failing was as much a reason to take part as winning the Tokyoflash Equalizer watch.
There is some really good stuff here!
My hard drive crashed
My hard drive crizz-ashed
Man, that’s where all my good porn was stizz-ashed
Awsome Flying Cats!
What a great Flickr stream! 125 awsome photos of cats flying though the air.
I sooo need to take some more pics of my cats.
A Lego Difference Engine
Total insanity.
Before the day of computers and pocket calculators all mathematics was done by hand. Great effort was expended to compose trigonometric and logarithmic tables for navigation, scientific investigation, and engineering purposes.
In the mid-19th century, people began to design machines to automate this error prone process. Many machines of various designs were eventually built. The most famous of these machines is the Babbage Difference Engine.
Because of engineering issues as well as political and personal conflict the Babbage Difference engines construction had to wait until 1991 when the Science Museum in London decided to build the Babbage Difference Engine No.2 for an exhibit on the history of computers.
Babbage’s design could evaluate 7th order polynomials to 31 digits of accuracy. I set out to build a working Difference Engine using LEGO parts which could compute 2nd or 3rd order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits.
From Boing Boing of course
Stellarium – Way happenin’
Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. It renders the skies in realtime using OpenGL, which means the skies will look exactly like what you see with your eyes, binoculars, or a small telescope. Stellarium is very simple to use, which is one of its biggest advantages: it can easily be used by beginners.
It’s Beautiful!
A classic chestnut
TOP 12 THINGS LIKELY TO BE OVERHEARD IF YOU HAD A KLINGON PROGRAMMER
12. “Specifications are for the weak and timid!”
11. “This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!”
10. “You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.”
9. “Indentation?! — I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!”
8. “What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software ‘releases.’ Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.”
7. “Klingon function calls do not have ‘parameters’ — they have ‘arguments’ — and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.”
6. “Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.”
5. “I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.”
4. “A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!”
3. “By filing this PTR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!”
2. “You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!”
1. “Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!”