Guitar Hero UberSkillz

This video made me smile, the skill is insane, I can't imagine the time thats gone into perfecting this song on Guitar Hero. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3srkOPOR5UA[/youtube]

I would be a mass kitten murderer

But then I don't believe in God, so I think the kittens will be fine.

WiFi is eating your children

One of my favourite programs Panorama has broadcast an 'expose' on the dangers of wifi.Unfortunately the show has no science whatsoever behind and in fact 31 studies have shown no link between symptoms and electrical sensitivity, none of these are referred to in the Panorama program. It's incredibly disappointing when a program that you otherwise respects does such incredibly bad science. This is being well covered on Bad Science on BoingBoing and numerous other places in the blogosphere.

My MacBook Pro is back

Just picked up my repaired MacBook Pro from the apple store in Kingston. The principal reason for taking it in was because of dark blotches on the screen, see pic. It had also started to have problems with the trackpad being unresponsive. Ultimately they replaced the screen, top cover, trackpad and the logic board. As much as I love my laptop, it does make me think that this particular one was a real friday afternoon job.

500 years of portraits of women

This beautiful video uses morphing to show how women have been painted over the last 500 years. It's fantastically done and well worth watching. Finally something on youTube that doesn't involve kittens or people hurting themselves, or both at the same time. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs[/youtube]

Gemma

Went out with Gemma last night. She is a 5'11'' model, that I met with Dom in the big chill a week ago. She seemed pretty nice at the time and I was quite keen to catch up again. After a week I got in touch over myspace and tried to set up a date, a carefully crafted mix of art and beer, unfortunately for me that went wrong when she had got a shoot at the last moment and we switched nights. I of course had nothing to wear, so went shopping and bought an over priced merino top that was on sale. We met at the big chill bar and then proceeded through some of my favourite places in Shoreditch. Commercial tavern for a drink upstairs, then Great eastern to watch the champions league. Probably the highlight of the evening was seeing Gemma dissing the italins in italian, her accent sounded great. Ended up in Dragon, being kissed and learning that she also works in Stringfellows, which was a surprise. Why do i always get blindsided by women and get kissed rather than do the kissing.

Orange Deep Vee's

Oh yeah now we know, now we know.

Great vanity plates

22/05/2007 Originally uploaded by jkprime.

These might just be the best vanity plates I have seen. I only hope they belong to a Shakespearean actor. Anybody know who they do belong to?

Meet Ted the Tree

Outtakes and behind the scenes with Ted the Tree [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPEHSXFi-0E[/youtube]

Dom del Torto's moo cards at Spooge

AACS DRM cracked before it's release

After the copy protection on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray were cracked earlier this year, the AACS licensing authority revoked the keys that had been used. New discs would not play or be succeptible to the crack, however 6 days before these discs are due to hit the market the protection has been cracked again. Cory Doctorow sums it up superbly.

This raises the question: what will AACS-LA do now? Key revocation doesn't work. Suing the Internet doesn't work. DRM doesn't work (this DRM took years and cost millions, it was broken in days, for free, by hobbyists). Pirates who download movies don't ever see DRM. Honest customers who buy media are the only people who ever get restricted by it -- and it's clear that a lot of people aren't willing to pay money for movies that are less useful than the pirate versions they can get for free.

I only hope that DRM is a transient phase it doesn't work, hasn't ever worked and only inconveniences those that buy the genuine product. Link

Salvador Dali on what's my line!

This is a fantastic clip of Salvador Dali appearing on the TV quiz show What's My Line. He keeps answering yes to all their questions, and it gets funnier and funnier. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A[/youtube]

Wearing a cycle helmet causes drivers to pass more closely

A psychologist and Avid cyclist in bath conducted an experiment to see if wearing a helmet whilst cycling affected the behaviour of drivers passing him. He used ultrasound sensors to measure the distance between passing cars and his bicycle.

His findings, published in the March 2007 issue of Accident Analysis & Prevention, state that when Walker wore a helmet drivers typically drove an average of 3.35 inches closer to his bike than when his noggin wasn't covered. But, if he wore a wig of long, brown locks—appearing to be a woman from behind—he was granted 2.2 inches more room to ride.

Link

The power of satire

Roy Zimmerman is a fantastic satirist, who has in the past written and performed songs about Dick Cheney, Creation Science and The War on Terror. Here he is making beautiful music about the hypocritical gay evangelist Ted Haggard. Warning he rhymes schism.

CRASH!

It had to happen eventually, but did it have to be so entirely my fault? I crashed riding home from work on Tuesday. Cycling through Putney I looked up and was shocked to see a parked van only a few meters ahead, traveling at speed it was far too late to avoid. I managed to turn my shoulder into it and struck it square on the back door with my left shoulder. At that moment I was sure that I had broken something, or at the very least dislocated an important part of my body. From my vantage point lying on the tarmac, I was impressed to see stars spinning around in my field of vision, something I thought was reserved for cartoons. Concerned citizens rushed to my aid and called an ambulance, obviously the crash was as spectacular as it felt. I was impressed that nothing seemed to be poking out at weird angles or hanging off unusually. After a few minutes the ambulance arrived and looked me over. I managed to set off the cardiac alarm as my resting heart rate was below their alarm threshold, but other than that there was little wrong with me that a strong cup of tea, a days rest and some anti-inflamatories wouldn't fix.

Nokia Sports Tracker

Used the Nokia sports tracker to log my ride in this morning. It creates very nice Google earth files in which you can plot your speed as altitude on the path. See the screenshot for details. If you are running Google earth you can view and fly around the path by clicking on this link: Cycle 26.4.kml If you are not using Google earth you can and should get it here: [Link]

Canadian professor denied entry into the US for taking LSD in 1967

A vancouver, Canada based psychology professor crossing into the US from Canada was denied entry after a border crossing official googled his name and found.

article from the Spring 2001 'Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts.' In it Feldmar describes two acid trips he took under the supervision of his graduate advisor in psychology -- in 1967. This turns out to have been enough to earn him a life-time ban under the grounds of 'admitted drug use.'

"Feldmar *was* told he could apply for a waiver, and that after a year, and at a cost of around $3,500, he had a '90% chance' of its being granted.

This quite honestly horrifies me, it is so punitive and pointless. What exactly are they protecting America from. Feldmar is not alone in being excluded from the US on tenuous grounds.

When Feldmar was barred from entering the U.S., he joined the ranks of other intellectuals and artists. Pop singer Cat Stevens was turned back from the U.S. in 2004, after being detained. Bolivian human rights leader and lawyer, Leonida Zurita Vargas was prevented from entering in February of 2006. She was planning to be in the U.S. as part of a three week speaking tour on Bolivian social movements and human rights. The tour would have taken her to Vermont, Harvard, Stanford and Washington D.C., but she never got beyond the airport check-in at Santa Cruz, Bolivia where she was informed her ten-year visa had been revoked because of alleged links to terrorist activity.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied Professor John Milios entry into the country upon his arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport last June. Milios, a faculty member at the National Technical University of Athens, had planned to present a paper at a conference titled "How Class Works" at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Milios told Academe Online that U.S. officials questioned him at the airport about his political ideas and affiliations and that the American consul in Athens later queried him about the same subjects. Milios, a member of a left-wing political party, is active in Greek national politics and has twice been a candidate for the Greek parliament. Milios's visa, issued in 1996, was set to expire in November. The professor had previously been allowed entry into the United States on five separate occasions to participate in academic meetings.

[Via] [Link]

GreenPrint Viral

Here is the first GreenPrint Video. Created in Portland By Ben Olberg and Elena Rudnick. Fantastic work.

The phantom lubricator

I have a pet hate unlubricated drivetrains. They make a horrible noise it's the cycle equivalent of fingernails down a blackboard. I feel like becoming a guerilla lubricator, silently riding up beside these screeching monstrosities and applying some oil, doing the whole world a favour.

Akismet

Just switched off Akismet for five minutes because of a small problem with the comments on my blog and I got more than 5 spam comments in 5 minutes. Just shows what a good job Akismet does in filtering out this crap.