Croaky Boo Redux

Sunday Links

• Twice as Nice - Red Panda Babies at the Dublin Zoo Tanuki Twins on ZooBorns
• Infographics and Data Visualizations A useful source of infographics
• Bedazzled!: Derek's 45 of the Week Another excellent music blog, this one focussing on singles
• Samuel L Ipsum When you need some motherfucking random text to go on your motherfucking website, and you don't want no more motherfucking latin Lorum Ipsum shit
• Trust Issues How a thousand year Methuselah trust could destroy the world economy in 2936.
• The past and the future of famous logos
• Quotes from the Doctor The best quotes from the current season, randomly served up for your quoting pleasure
• olduse.net The news groups of 30 years ago, updated as they happened : a real-time historical exhibit
• Casey Jones The Movie A fan film, dealing with a minor character from the early comics - very well done
• Women In Art The changing depiction of the female face in art
• NASA - Station Spacewalk Game Take a spacewalk around the ISS
• SteamBirds A line drawing, steampunk themed aerial combat game

Today I am mostly black

Croaky Boo

Sunday Links

• Two New Chicks Add to Saving Micronesian Kingfishers ZooBorns
• THE CURSE OF TINA Essential reading and viewing from Adam Curtis
• Bill Bailey live session: How I covered … Gary Numan's Cars With old fashioned car horns. In French. :-)
• Astronomy Photographer of the Year
• Crypto CD-ROM Simon Singh's introduction to cryptography, as a downloadable cd-rom
• BBC News - Glowing cats shed light on Aids
• Fela Soul A whole album of Fela Kuti mixed with De La Soul. Afrobeat, funk, hip hop and a smidge of jazz - mash-ups don't get much better than this!
• Business card RPG A complete RPG on the back of a business card. Genius.
• Learn With Portals Portal is free this weekend, as part of an initiative to use physics based puzzles in education. You have no excuse - download it now!
• Video Games as Penguin Book Covers
• Nerdy Day Trips
• How to Celebrate the Nerdy Passing of Time
• The evolution of the web
• 1996 vs 2011: The Internet of Yesterday & Today
• Was Nicolas Cage a vampire during the Civil War? This $1,000,000 photograph holds the answers
• Historypin Old Photos, overlaid on the present day

I can has taco?

Autumn Boo

Podcast Thursday

• The Unsigned Side Sally (from off of Sally's Gig Reviews) is doing an internet radio show, showcasing the best unsigned, local talent. I'm not sure if there is going to be a podcast of this, but I think it will be well worth tuning in from 8 - 10 on Thursdays.
• Andrew Collins and Josie Long now have a podcast of their very own - hurrah! I love the bit about the made up band 'Dublin Robot'.
• In Our Time The most erudite show on Radio 4 is back with a programme about The Hippocratic Oath - essential listening.

Haikusday

Now we know what lies 
Underneath the Chancellor's 
Sadistic mien 

Fifteen hundred words 
Critical analysis 
Is a slow process 

Light from a dead star 
In a distant galaxy 
A long time ago

Sunday Links

• 9/11: The Photographers' Stories
• The Horror, The Horror Neil deGrasse Tyson's first hand account of 9/11

• Baby Beaver Twins Start Swimming Lessons ZooBorns
• めめぼん Move over Maru - it's Memebon!
• Well this looks delectabuhls Tiny Turtle action on Cute Overload
• ARKive - Osprey Stunning video of an Osprey catching fish
• The Evolution of 'Star Trek' 45 years of Star Trek in one handy infographic
• If Charles Darwin Had Studied Pokémon...
• Introduction to Arduino in comic form
• How do we know we live in three dimensions?
• A nearby supernova is reaching its peak brightness tonight - here's how you can see it
• History of Vegas in neon BBC News - Audio slideshow
• Open Learning Free short course from the Open University
• A Study Of Horror Games And Their Players Which game is scariest? There's only one way to find out ... a rigorous biometric study!

Everything's Gone Orange

Of Burns and Bears Boo

Back in the Dark

It's dark in the mornings when I get up now, necessitating switching the lights on so I can see to make my morning cup of tea. The cats are never far from the back door either and need little encouragement to come in for their noms. The dog, on the other hand, just sighs heavily and puts his head under his blankie until a more sensible time.

The traffic is building up from the easy summer levels too. It's noticeably busier, even at a quarter past seven when I hit the road. I think it's a combination of people returning to work after summer hols as well as the drizzle and gloom slowing things down. Just to add an extra edge of piquant frustration to the mix, there are roadworks in both directions that I can take - the gas board are digging up the road down the hill and the water company are limbering up to replace a main pipe in the other direction. Oh joy.

Blogging has been somewhat sparse as well, for which I apologise. I'm still working on my end of module assessment, which is slow going. I'm getting in from work and doing a bit each night, before falling asleep in front of the telly. At least I have arranged things so that I will have a bit of free time before my next course starts in November.

Haikusday

Half past midnight
Lurking horror captured and 
Defenestrated


Wind, rain, dark morning
Dog refuses to go out
I don't have that choice


Researching WiMax
Conflicting figures given
For range and bandwidth


Evenings drawing in
And the nights growing chilly
As the summer fades

Sunday Links

• Baby Ring-tailed Coatis Play Ring Around the Rosy ZooBorns 
• Compressed 02 Soap bubbles plus exotic ferro-magnetic fluid make for a compellingly strange bit of video 
• Uncomfortably Sexual Company Logos Hours of puerile sniggering to be had! 
• The Yakuza BBC News - In pictures 
• Two AI chatBots attempt to have a conversation with each other 
• It's Almost Count down to anything 
• World's first realistic simulation of the formation of the Milky Way Everything you need to know about the internet 
• Life in the Gorbals Iconic Photos 
• Bad Opinion Generator 
• Time spent using Tupperware Analysed 
• BLA BLA An intriguing interactive web project from the National Film Board of Canada

Circular

Lap Cat Boo

Podcast Thursday

• Chain Reaction - a simple concept for a chat show - somebody is interviewed, and then the following week the interviewee becomes the interviewer and picks the next guest in sequence. This week's episode featured the actor Kevin Eldon interviewing the comedian Mark Steele, and I'm intrigued to see who Mark Steele will pick for his subject next week.
• Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast - or, as all the cool kids are calling it, RHEFP. This has finished its run now, and been a remarkably successful and adaptable format, notwithstanding the fabled lost episode that failed to record properly. Particular highlights for me included the shows with Sarah Millican, the veteran Barry Cryer and Six Music alumnus Adam Buxton.
• The Moth - I'd not thought of Milli Vanilli for years, and had always assumed that the whole lip synching scandal was a bit of storm in a teacup. In this story, we hear the other side of the tale as told by Fab Morvan, one of the (non) singers.