June 2009
54 posts
A library of the world’s most unusual compounds
Mark Miodownik is curator of the Materials Library at King’s College London.
Deep in the bowels of a brutalist concrete building on the Strand, long shelves are packed – crammed, really – with some of the world’s strangest substances, from the past, present and sometimes, it seems, the future. Take Aerogel: the world’s lightest solid consists of 99.8 per cent air and looks like a vague, hazy...
Fight Like Apes
Wikipedia:
Fight Like Apes are an Irish karate rock band formed in Dublin in 2006. Their members are Mary-Kate “MayKay” Geraghty (vocals and synth), Jamie “Pockets” Fox (keyboard and vocals), Tom Ryan (bass) and Adrian Mullan (drums). They are known for their elongated record titles, usually inspired by B movies. They have released two EPs, How Am I Supposed to Kill You...
Tennis star or porn star: the audio game (NSFW) →
Habitat in row over Twitter usage →
This is splendid (disclaimer, splendidness not a guarantee). Habitat - a furniture store in the UK - were spamming their official Twitter account with advertising links… and adding trending topics tags automatically to attract hits. So, for example, they advertised their new Spring catalog with #iPhone, a sale with #Iran, or how about this doozy: “HabitatUK: #Mousavi Join the database...
I’ve had a quick go on an iPhone 3G S and am now in an expensive coffee shop telling my Internet friends about it via my iPhone 3G. Drinking a grande latte. And wearing cargo shorts. I AM BECOME HIPSTER, BRINGER OF DOUCHEBAGGERY.
My lottery fantasy
If I won the lottery, or came into fantastical amounts of money via any other mechanism, I wouldn’t buy a big, fancy house, or build some piece of Grand Designs-esque oddball architecture. I would buy, or commission, an entire street of rather more humdrum, though upmarket, executive houses, each with plenty of room and with nice quality fittings. This close would be somewhere green on the...
Why I hate American documentaries
They all go like this:
Hey, coming up next, we show you THIS THING. And now… here is THIS THING. Look at THIS THING. Isn’t THIS THING swell/bad? Well, we just showed you THIS THING. But coming after the break we’ll show you THAT THING.
And now here is THAT THING. Remember when we showed you THIS THING? Wasn’t THIS THING great/bad? Well, THAT THING is better/worse! To...
From: Bob Dixon [mailto:Bob.Dixon@DockGreen.gov.uk] Sent: 21 January 2009 11:49 To: [maillist] Subject: Dear All, We have had a report of a new and worrying scam in the Dock Green area. If a man knocks on your door and asks to see your arse, DO NOT SHOW HIM YOUR ARSE. This is a scam - he just wants to see your arse. Yours faithfully, Constable Dixon.
How to tether your iPhone running OS 3.0 without... →
Is it simple? Yes. Risky? A bit. Legal? We’ll leave that to the lawyers ‘cause we know that you’re aching to give tethering a spin over your newly downloaded iPhone OS 3.0 update. We’ve…
J. D. Salinger
Wikipedia:
Jerome David “J. D.“ Salinger (pronounced /ˈsælɪndʒər/; born on January 1, 1919) is an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. He has not published an original work since 1965 and has not been interviewed since 1980.
If you haven’t published anything in over four decades, perhaps you’re not really...
Palm Responds To Apple's Warning That Pre iTunes... →
Palm has hit back at Apple’s thinly veiled threats that the Pre’s iTunes syncing ability could go the way of the Dodo with newer versions of the software. Fanning the flames as they spoke…
1 tag
Did the Shell oil company have a hand in the... →
“Then there’s the sleep indicator light. An indicator is functional only when...”
– Apple’s Macbook Pro “design” page. I can’t decide if that’s awesome or just awesomely over-engineered.
Hello, I'm not dead
I even have a bunch of things in Gmail tagged “tumblr” I should be posting. I’ll get around to some soon, I promise. Just a bit busy with real life stuff at the moment.