Archive for May 2006
Stardust Holiday is the blog of a woman spending three months in bed as part of a NASA-sponsored study.
i’m currently participating in the NASA-sponsored bedrest study at the Cleveland Clinic. these are the chronicles of three full months of bedrest, in addition to the craziness leading up to it, and the who knows what afterwards. edit: this is now a team blog with more than one bedrest subject (or potential bedrest subject) adding entries!
Update: Oh and the official release says (ever so generously):
Room and board for the period of bed rest, together with initial post bed rest days, will be provided free of charge.
[Via Jason Kottke]
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Two extraordinary things on the NASA website:
A film of the descent of Huygens
And an image that is apprently the most detailed ever taken of the earth.
[Via Reddit]
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These statistics from the binary search tree are fascinating if you’re interested in search engine crawlers and spam. Don’t be put off by the text at the beginning – scroll down to the pictures!
[Via Waxy]
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Possible Tsunami -Update: Warnings Cancelled
No comments · Posted by Splasho in Uncategorized
CNN reports on a possible tsunami
Tsunami warnings were issued for Fiji and New Zealand after a massive earthquake measuring about 7.8 in magnitude shook the southern Pacific Ocean.
The quake’s epicenter was about 153 kilometers (95 miles) off the coast of Tonga, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Update: Warnings Cancelled
[Via digg]
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OHR has a number of fascinating questions and answers on what is and isn’t permissible on Shabbat.
What you can and can’t do:
Velcro – is it tearing?
Lifts (elevators) – there are special Shabbat lifts
Glow in the dark toys – is moving electrons allowed?
Motion Sensors – as long as you’re careful
Scrabble, Monopoly & Chess – Chess but no Chess clocks
Emailing across timezones into the Shabbat – depends on the server
Origami – nope
A light dilemma – special automatic lights are available
Brain waves(!)
[Partially via Waxy]
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The time will later tonight be
01:02:03 on 04/05/06
(Americans should have already celebrated this about a month ago)
[Via BoingBoing]
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The Guardian reports on a (since closed) security flaw that allowed anyone who got hold of your discarded boarding pass to access your passport information. It mixes it (without quite explaining the link) with concerns about identity cards, particularly RFID.
This readable system, known as Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, has recently been installed in new British passports. The Home Office says the information can be transmitted across a distance of only a couple of centimetres because the chips have no power of their own – they simply bounce back a response to a weak signal sent from passport readers at immigration points.
However, the suspicion is that the distance over which the signal can be read relates only to the weakness of the signal sent out by the readers. What if the readers sent out much stronger signals? Potentially, then, criminals with powerful readers could suck out your information as you passed by. The Government denies that this scenario is viable, but, in January, Dutch security specialists Riscure successfully read and de-encrypted information from its country’s new biometric passports from a distance of about 30ft in just two hours.
[Via Reddit]
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Google has in my opinion simply tried to stir up more anti-Microsoft feeling by criticising Internet Explorer 7 for setting MSN Search as default.
In this article Marissa Mayer is quoted:
The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on the quality of their search services [...] We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.
ValleyWag chips in:
By accusing Microsoft of playing dirty by making MSN the default search tool for Internet Explorer, Google’s Marissa Mayer takes a stand against default search engines in browsers. Oh, don’t worry, Google’s still the Firefox default. Let’s clarify: Google’s Marissa Mayer takes a stand against default search engines other than Google in browsers.
Also, Google launches a European Code Jam: Link, BBC article
[Via Digg]
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[From Pictures I like for a Variety of Reasons]
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PawSense is a program designed to protect your computer from your cat.
Even while you use your other software, PawSense constantly monitors keyboard activity. PawSense analyzes keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing. PawSense normally recognizes a cat on the keyboard within one or two pawsteps.
If a cat gets on the keyboard, PawSense makes a sound that annoys cats.
This teaches your cat that getting on the keyboard is bad even if humans aren’t watching.
Via Philipp Lenssen who has had the intelligent idea of removing his caps-lock key. I never use it and it causes me no end of grief.
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I was looking at Waxy and saw this link featuring fashion pictures, not having read the description I was surprised by its seemingly inappropriate title, ‘I dream of cake’. I was just about to click away when I realised: they’re all cakes!
[Via Waxy]
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The Saddest Thing I Own is a blog to which people submit pictures and a short amount of text on the saddest thing they own, photographs, letters, etc.
Not for the depressed.
Link
[Via BoingBoing]
Vaguely similar PostSecret
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