Friday, January 13, 2006



This is a Harpsichord made of LEGO.

And this is what it sounds like.

What a life!
posted by Irdial , 7:40 PM Þ 



One of my flickr contacts has been listening to the conet project!
posted by meau meau , 10:32 AM Þ 
Thursday, January 12, 2006

And GoogleEarth is now out for Mac. As long as you're running 10.4 that is.
posted by Alun , 4:41 PM Þ 

Open google earth. enter: 52°20'10.62" N 0°11'44.23" W
what are the chances of seeing that over your house?
posted by chriszanf , 2:30 PM Þ 
Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Prim Minister, Tony Bliar, apologised yesterday for a series of policing targets and bureaucracy over the last 8 years which has led to a major reduction in frontline forces and focussing on performance related offences such as speeding fines.

"I must apologise, as leader of the Government, for the policies which have led to a yob culture where young children can spit in the face of old ladies safe in the knowledge that the local police constable will be at a desk filling out a report or ten in order to justify performance related funding. Furthermore I take this opportunity to acknowledge the wrongheadedness of merging and centralising police forces which would exacerbate the current problems." He gushed forth (see picture). "I also recognise that in the wider picture these children have grown up almost entirely under my stewardship of the country and thus it is similar target-led education and social reforms of my Government which have been good on paper but failed many children and contributed to this situation."

The Prim Minister promised to introduce no more new targets and measures until he resolved his addiction with power, which he has had treatment for for the last eighteen months pointing out that no new legislation had been introduced since parliament had gone into recess over the christmas holidays, Mr Bliar declined to elaborate when questioned

-

Radio 4 tonight, 21:00 Qineqt Connect looks at new surveillance technologies, advert or investigation? (archive link). And yes Q got a plug.

Also on 'tomorrow' Today has an article about the Qinetiq sell-off
posted by meau meau , 6:45 PM Þ 

Hi Barrie

That's a cool post, but that isn't the only Gibson model with a mic socket :)

You might also be interested in this video of Robert Fripp recording sounds for the new version of Windows. He's using a very groovy Les Paul type guitar with his effects setup. You might need this if you are wanting to see this on a Mac.
posted by captain davros , 1:59 PM Þ 



"By observing natural scientific discoveries through a perception deepened by meditation, we can develop a new awareness of reality. This awareness could become the bedrock of a spirituality that is not based on the dogmas of a given religion, but on insights into a higher and deeper meaning. I am referring to the ability to recognize, to read, and to understand the firsthand revelations 'in the book written by the finger of God,' as Paracelsus designated creation." Such observations make possible "revelations of the metaphysical blueprint of creation. They reveal the unity of all things living in a common spiritual primordial basis"
posted by chriszanf , 8:23 AM Þ 

Welcome to the future, where you can rock out in many more ways than before. Sweet mother do I want one of these.
From Gizmondo:

Live From CES: Gibson Digital Hands-On

gibsondigital1.jpg
Gibson is twanging about its digital guitar, and we spent some time strumming it today. This thing is amazing. It’s a standard Les Paul axe with an RJ45-out instead of the usual amp line. Along with the classic pickups, it’s got a HEX pickup (patent applied), which is really six discreet pickups (one for each string). The pickups sense both up-down and side-to-side motion—for each string. They also claim there is a separate of up to 90dB between each string.

The signal is sent via a proprietary MaGIC protocol to a BreakOut Box that is the width of one rack space and half the rack space wide. The box has 8 outputs (1/4-inch jacks), one for each string, one for the classic humbucking pickup and a pass-through for a microphone. You do not need to plug this into a computer, although that will give you even more cool things to play with.

gibsondigital2.jpg

So, what can you do with all this? Add delay to each string. Then assign each string a different channel for surround sound—it’s true, I heard it. Another option is to use just the first and fourth inputs on the BreakOut Box which will assign the lower four to one channel, the upper four to the other channel and give you instant stereo.

This guitar does so much that even the guy on hand to demo it didn’t understand it all. There is a mic input on the guitar, for one. The Gibson Digital will be available this quarter and retail for around $3,900.

posted by Barrie , 7:38 AM Þ 

{97389}{97485}How could you do|what you did to us?
{97509}{97605}The world was dying.
{97629}{97725}We took all that was good...
{97725}{97821}and made an oasis here.
{97821}{97893}We few, the rich,
{97893}{97965}the powerful, the clever,
{97965}{98013}cut ourselves off to guard...
{98013}{98109}the knowledge and treasures|of civilization...
{98109}{98205}as the world plunged|into a Dark Age.
{98253}{98325}To do this, we had to|harden our hearts...
{98325}{98421}against the suffering outside.
{98517}{98613}We are custodians of the past|for an unknown future.
posted by Irdial , 12:27 AM Þ 

Potato Chip: 1853, Saratoga Springs, New York

As a world food, potatoes are second in human consumption only to rice. And as thin, salted, crisp chips, they are America's favorite snack food. Potato chips originated in New England as one man's variation on the French-fried potato, and their production was the result not of a sudden stroke of culinary invention but of a fit of pique.

In the summer of 1853, American Indian George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. On Moon Lake Lodge's restaurant menu were French-fried potatoes, prepared by Crum in the standard, thick-cut French style that was popularized in France in the 1700s and enjoyed by Thomas Jefferson as ambassador to that country. Ever since Jefferson brought the recipe to America and served French fries to guests at Monticello, the dish was popular and serious dinner fare.

At Moon Lake Lodge, one dinner guest found chef Crum's French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork.

The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners requested Crum's potato chips, which began to appear on the menu as Saratoga Chips, a house specialty. Soon they were packaged and sold, first locally, then throughout the New England area. Crum eventually opened his own restaurant, featuring chips. At that time, potatoes were tediously peeled and sliced by hand. It was the invention of the mechanical potato peeler in the 1920s that paved the way for potato chips to soar from a small specialty item to a top-selling snack food.

For several decades after their creation, potato chips were largely a Northern dinner dish. In the 1920s, Herman Lay, a traveling salesman in the South, helped popularize the food from Atlanta to Tennessee. Lay peddled potato chips to Southern grocers out of the trunk of his car, building a business and a name that would become synonymous with the thin, salty snack. Lay's potato chips became the first successfully marketed national brand, and in 1961 Herman Lay, to increase his line of goods, merged his company with Frito, the Dallas-based producer of such snack foods as Fritos Corn Chips.

Americans today consume more potato chips (and Fritos and French fries) than any other people in the world; a reversal from colonial times, when New Englanders consigned potatoes largely to pigs as fodder and believed that eating the tubers shortened a person's life—not because potatoes were fried in fat and doused with salt, today's heart and hypertension culprits, but because the spud, in its unadulterated form, supposedly contained an aphrodisiac which led to behavior that was thought to be life shortening. Potatoes of course contain no aphrodisiac, though potato chips are frequently consumed with passion and are touted by some to be as satisfying as sex.

About

posted by Irdial , 12:20 AM Þ 
Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Another demonstration of US government trying to control events outside it's jurisdiction - it has absolutely no right to demand or unilaterally legislate in any territories it does not own on the Earth or off of it.

Indeed. Check this one:

Protecting the protectors

The Canadian navy will spend about $4.5 million to install floating barriers around warships in Halifax Harbour and at Esquimalt, B.C.

Known as force-protection booms, the barriers will stretch as far as 1.6 kilometres along the waterfront. The military hopes to have them in place by this summer.

"They’ll be about 100 metres off the jetties," said Lt.-Cmdr. Scott Tofflemire, the Queen’s harbourmaster.

"The desire would be to encompass the whole (HMC) Dockyard site from the Macdonald bridge south down to Karlsen’s wharf."

The barriers are designed to prevent terrorist attacks similar to one in October 2000 when two al-Qaida suicide bombers brought a small boat alongside the USS Cole as it refuelled in Yemen. They detonated explosives hidden in the boat, killing themselves and 17 sailors, and blasting a huge hole in the American destroyer’s hull.

"The threat is always there," Lt.-Cmdr. Tofflemire said.

.....

And the barriers are built by a US company in New Jersey. Of course. I bet it's ugly too.

My feeling is that this is a compromise with the US. We won't agree to the missile defence program, but to appease them, we will build fences around our navy. Though I don't understand why we should appease them at all. We are too generous a neighbour for them. They invite their problems to their country, and because of their proximity, they push their neurosies onto us. So lost and blind they can't open their eyes and see how their neighbours keep their house. Or is it arrogant and self-serving?
posted by mary13 , 5:45 PM Þ 

The BBQ website promotes:

Space tourists must be screened to ensure they are not terrorists, according to proposed regulations from the US Federal Aviation Administration[...]

Another demonstration of US government trying to control events outside it's jurisdiction - it has absolutely no right to demand or unilaterally legislate in any territories it does not own on the Earth or off of it. And shame on the shameless BBQ for another uncritiqued Murder Inc press release masquerading as a news story.

To be fair BBQ almost gets it right in allowing an opinion piece on overpopulation to get through. Even though it does manage to throw in the magic 3bn figure and is rather vague. When I get used to being in front of the computer/working quickly again I intend to write something on overpopulation/resource scarcity etc.
posted by meau meau , 10:44 AM Þ 
Monday, January 09, 2006

Ring a ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down
posted by Alun , 11:10 PM Þ 

Walkers Snack Foods. Owned and backed by the world's biggest snack food company, PepsiCo, Walkers has eaten up market shares on the back of a highly successful advertising campaign fronted by former football star Gary "Salt and" Lineker.

Walkers controls over 50% of the £2bn crisps market in the UK. Britons now eat over 10bn bags annually, the equivalent of 100 packs for each person every year and more than consumed in the rest of Europe put together.


posted by Alun , 8:02 PM Þ 
Sunday, January 08, 2006

Seen on the Aquarius Records new arrivals list #230:

----} also upcoming, sooner or later

v/a Conet Project II !!!!!!!!!

This is good news but I don't recall any mention on Blogdial of this... shhhhhh
posted by Barrie , 12:03 AM Þ 
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