Oh I Say!
Monday, 2 January 2012
via MightyGodKing and Retronaut.
Don’t miss Buzz Aldrin’s Space Rainbow Tennis and It’s Fucking Checkers from the same series.
Space, Valley-Style
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Great long article from Andrew Chaikin on Elon Musk and SpaceX. I love the business & engineering posture, sticking it big time to an ageing industry driven by pre-conceived ideas:
Mueller recalls asking a vendor for an estimate on a particular engine valve. “They came back [requesting] like a year and a half in development and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just way out of whack. And we’re like, ‘No, we need it by this summer, for much, much less money.’ They go, ‘Good luck with that,’ and kind of smirked and left.” Mueller’s people made the valve themselves, and by summer they had qualified it for use with cryogenic propellants.
Origins of the Moustache
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Mr Jones reports:
Last week I travelled to Kiev on a fact finding mission to research the origins of the Mustache.
Mustaches were of course invented by Ukrainian farmers in the 5th century as a way of keeping flies out of their Borsch in the Summer, whilst allowing the sun and a cool breeze to reach the otherwise bead-clad chin of the winter months. The Mustache was then popularized by King Vladimir Sviatoslavich the Great in the 10th Century, who was gifted a mustache by the people of Kyiv after he brought Byzantium christianity to the realm.
In later years the Ukranian Mustache was heavily utilized by the Soviet space program, where Ukranian men were offered incentives to grow large bushy mustaches to be harvested for their thermal efficiency in the development of heat shields for the Soyuz re-entry capsule. Proud and nationalistic Ukranian men quietly abandoned years of mustache heritage and went clean shaven significantly impacting the soviet space program.
In modern Ukraine, the traditional Mustache can still be seen, here is a Kobza minstrel sporting the traditional Ukrainian Mustache.
[Movember]
You can donate to Andy’s Mo here and support research into prevention and cure of prostate cancer.
Robot Helicopter Warsaw Riots
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Warsaw riots on independence day (11/11/11), as seen from a remote camera mounted on an RC helicopter.
Phoebe B. Peabody Beebe
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Some truly awesome (real) names, courtesy of Futility Closet.
DB Safari Extension
Monday, 17 October 2011
Wouldn’t the world be better with more Dan?
Click here to download the DB Safari Extension and make your day a happy one.
BMW Privacy Fail
Friday, 14 October 2011
Go to enter your contact details on the BMW Australia website, and by tabbing into the first field, you can get the addresses of everyone else who has entered their contact details.
“Computer…”
Monday, 10 October 2011
When I first heard about Siri, the new personal assistant technology built into the new iPhone 4S, my immediate reaction was, “Oh no, not again.”
People have been trying to put voice recognition and voice command into computers for years, but despite massive advances in the quality of these systems, and their ability to understand reliably a variety of accents and speech patterns – you no longer have. to. talk. like. a. robot. – they haven’t surpassed the keyboard as the primary means of communicating with the PC. Why? Well, I think it’s largely because people don’t like looking and sounding like a total dick, frankly.
Take a look at this introduction video. OK, I buy the guy talking to Siri in the car. He’s by himself. Fine. But the guy jogging? Can you imagine jogging next to this guy? Would you be thinking anything other than, “What a wanker!”
Mind you, I suppose that’s exactly what we used to think about people talking loudly on their cellphones before they became ubiquitous.
Perhaps this is just another somewhat awkward step forward. We’ll feel a bit like dickheads to begin with, but soon, when everyone is doing it, the dickhead factor will disappear and we’ll wonder how we ever lived without it.