On November 23rd last year, [Dhairya] attended a little shindig at MIT. Three drinks into the night, he blacked out and woke up in the hospital the next day. It was an alcohol-induced blackout, and like all parties at MIT, there’s an ingenious solution to [Dhairya]‘s problem.
[Dhairya] came up with an alcohol-aware ice cube made of a coin cell battery, an ATtiny microcontroller, and an IR transceiver are molded into an edible gelatin ice cube. The microcontroller counts the number of sips per drink, and after one glass of adult beverage changes the color of the flashing LED from green to yellow. After two drinks the LED changes from yellow to red, signaling [Dhairya] to slow down.
If [Dhairya] feels the night is too young and keeps on drinking, the IR transmitter signals to his cell phone to send a text to a friend telling them to go take [Dhairya] home.
Less than three weeks after waking up in the hospital, [Dhairya] tested out his glowing ice cubes at another party. Everything performed wonderfully, even if he admits his creation is a little crude. A neat piece of work, and we can’t wait to see an update to this project.
Nova Colliander with her 'intergender' partner Vio Szabo.
Sweden has taken a long-overdue step to end the requirement that transgender people who wish to update their sex identification on legal documents undergo sex reassignment surgeries that require them to sacrifice their ability to have children. This is thanks to a court judgment that now applies to the whole country circumventing the sterilization law, which is set to be rewritten and removed from the books by July 1, 2013. Sixteen other countries in the European Union require transgender citizens to undergo the surgery, which many trans people do not want or require.
Last year, liberal and moderate members of Sweden’s Parliament were prepared to change the law, but were initially blocked by conservative political groups led by the Christian Democrat Party. Nova Colliander, a trans woman opposed to the sterilization requirements, expresses the pain of sacrificing her reproductive ability and her bitterness that it’s taken so long to change the policy [edited via Google Translate]:
COLLIANDER: It was an assault, a rape. The state gave an ultimatum I had to accept. The alternative was to die, which I felt so strongly. I do not know how many wills I wrote as a child… I am terribly disappointed that it took so terribly long.
Being transgender is considered embarrassing and unimportant in society. They would rather hide us, it’s hard to even talk about us. Therefore, it has taken time… It’s lucky that I can feel joy for others. Otherwise I would have been driven to madness by the bitterness.
Sweden has an infamous history of eugenic sterilization that took place between 1934 and 1976, with over 21,000 forcibly sterilized and another 6,000 coerced into a “voluntary” sterilization. A governmental inquiry into the misdeeds of the past ended in 2000 that paid out damages to the victims. Sex identity changes remained the last form of forced sterilization in the nation, but it remains unclear if the government will consider a new set of reparations.
Joel Alioto, 44, an Iraq war veteran who lives in the area, said he recently sold an AR-15 rifle at a gun show for $1,700, more than three times what he had paid for it. “I think the shooting in Connecticut was a terrible thing,” said Mr. Alioto, who is unemployed. “But before the shooting the gun was worth 500 bucks. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I wanted to get my teeth done, get a computer and pay for my first year of Bible college.”
Social bookmarking service Delicious is not what it once was, but since getting out from under Yahoo the service has been working to restore its features and win back users. To that end, Delicious.com has just launched a major redesign — both visually and under-the-hood. The interface has been streamlined and is meant to match the recently-released iOS app (and forthcoming Android app) and offer easier discover of content that's been shared by the community. That comes via a new right-side widget that shows other users or content that's similar to your selected bookmark. It also pulls up a quick image and preview of the link, as well, making it easier to preview and cull any links you may have saved.
A number of churches around the Puget Sound area have at least considered changing their schedules Sunday so parishioners can be home to watch the 10 a.m. game against the Atlanta Falcons. Other churches across the country have faced similar decisions, and the question is sometimes posed: Is that reaching out to popular culture — or pandering to it?
At Crane's North Sound Church in downtown Edmonds, the schedule of three Sunday services has been replaced by an 8 a.m. "12th Man" free tailgate breakfast, open to the community. After breakfast, a one-hour service is planned in which Crane will show Seahawks video clips, draw on football as a metaphor, and even shoot blue and green giveaways out of an air cannon. And the whole congregation gets home in time for the game.
Not everyone approves.
Saturday's Delia Derbyshire Day brings long-awaited recognition to a bright spark who was once told: 'The recording studio is no place for a woman.' Chloe Glover reports
The godmother of British electronic music who helped to create one of the most recognisable TV theme tunes of all time and pioneered the genre through her work in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is to be commemorated in an inaugural one-day celebration of her work in Manchester.
The event will include the showing of Cara Blake's award-winning documentary The Delian Mode, an expert panel discussion on the scope and influence of her work and the concert premiere of three specially commissioned works by the Delia Darlings. Attendees will also be treated to previously publicly unreleased archive material.
It is both a timely nod to this year's 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and the extensive Delia Derbyshire attic archives, which are on permanent loan to the NOVARS institute at Manchester University for research from BBC Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres. The tapes of her recordings were delivered to the university in unlabelled cereal boxes in 2007 after being found in her house following her death in 2001.
A true seamstress of sound, she turned organic and everyday material into some of the earliest modern British electronic compositions. Yet although her work was played in the majority of British homes and minds during her three decade career with the BBC she never became the true household name that she rightfully deserved to be.
Her career has inspired untold numbers of musicians – such as Aphex Twin and Orbital – and her music has been sampled by the likes of Pink Floyd and the Timelords (aka the KLF). Initially employed as a trainee studio manager in 1960, Derbyshire asked to be moved to the newly created Radiophonic Workshop. This was considered a bizarre choice as it was a department to which workers were generally assigned rather than volunteering themselves, but it was the start of a studio romance.
Fascinated by "concrete" sounds, those recorded and modified electronically, she used voices, white noise, and everyday sounds picked up from microphones and musical instruments to make her soundscapes. She cut, mixed and spliced the analogue tapes used to record her efforts and employed studio equipment to loop and distort them as well as experimenting with square wave oscillators to help build intricately-timed rhythms to form the base of her pieces.
She delighted in the opportunity to be a founding pillar of the Radiophonic outpost which was created initially to satisfy demand for producing forward-thinking music to accompany new types of programming during the early 1960s. Electronic musician and sound engineer Caro C (Caroline Churchill), one of the women behind Delia Derbyshire Day and the associated Delia Darlings musical project, classifies her music as being basically "synthesised without the synthesisers".
In a long article explaining the genesis of the theme tune, Mark Ayers explains:
There being no "synthesisers", the Workshop needed a source of electronic sound. They found this in a bank of twelve high-quality test tone generators, the usual function of which was to output various tones (square waves, sine waves) for passing through electronic circuits for testing gain, distortion and so on ... Each sound in the Doctor Who theme was individually created using these instruments, and recorded to magnetic tape ... Now the fun really started. They had all the sounds, all the notes, and now had to create the music. So each individual note was trimmed to length by cutting the tape, and stuck together in the right order.
On first hearing the theme Derbyshire had arranged, Grainer asked: "Did I really write this?" She replied: "Most of it."
Derbyshire not only made her mark on increasing numbers of BBC productions but directed and participated in groundbreaking projects under a variety of pseudonyms - a requirement for Radiophonic Workshop staff who were not credited under their own names. She worked with colleagues to organise one of the earliest electronic music concerts in London under the joint alias Unite Delta Plus, while her personal favourite was Li De La Russe, the name she used to help produce the incredible White Noise album An Electric Storm. She also helped set up the Kaleidophon Studio, which, in conjunction with composer Guy Woolfenden, arranged the score for the notable Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth in 1967.
Way ahead of her time in regards to her craft, she prospered in an industry that still today exhibits a relative dearth of women. Notably, she was derided by major recording label Decca Records, who replied to her 1959 studio job application by stating that "the recording studio is no place for a woman".
This use of avant-garde work within the mainstream had the effect of introducing more and more people to her work, although most remain unaware of the extent of her contributions to electronic music and popular broadcasting theme tunes. The reliance on pseudonyms meant that she was never fully given the recognition she was due, even for her work on the Dalek-busting theme.
Despite being revered by the relative few who knew her true identity she quit her role at the BBC in 1973 after becoming disillusioned with the direction the genre seemed to be heading, including the increasing reliance upon electronic synthesisers. After a short stint at the Electrophon studio she left the industry entirely. She only made a professional return shortly before her death in 2001, when she collaborated with Sonic Boom on their experimental audio research.
Derbyshire Day has attracted £10,000 and £5,000 funding respectively from Arts Council England and PRS along with an Arts Council Montreal grant to enable Canadian filmmaker Kara Blake to fly over to talk about her documentary on Derbyshire. It has also earned the support of Manchester University's David Butler, who helped bring her archives to the city, and the Delia Derbyshire estate.
Caro, who came across Derbyshire in 2007, enlisted musicians Ailís Ní Ríain and Naomi Kashiwagi to help raise awareness of her work and its physical presence in Manchester through the Delia Darlings collective. She says of Derbyshire's work:
It was a lot more free, daring and experimental sonically than what you hear nowadays. Listening to her archives I got really humbled by how graceful the sound was, especially her production efforts, in a pre-synthesiser age. She had to create tones and overtones without relying on advanced machinery. I think we've lost that grace in a lot of modern music -there's too much technology and processes. It warps the original ideas.
Caro cites her favourite Derbyshire compositions as Blue Veils and Golden Sand and the Delian Mode, calling them "sublime and very ambient pieces which I can hear echoes of in Aphex Twin's Ambient Works. He gets somewhere near that grace in the album but I don't think it's very often that this happens nowadays."
Talking about the Delia Darlings, she reveals that they intend to continue their inspiration's preoccupation with the avant-garde by collaborating with artists who specialise in diverse genres.
I didn't think it would be that interesting to have three electronic artists on the project as Delia's work was so experimental. I wanted people who had creative angles and were dedicated to their craft.
The Delia Darlings will be taking celebrations of her work to other parts of the north this month in a mini-tour that includes Newcastle, Sheffield and Liverpool to showcase her talents. The group are unsure where the project will lead them next but Caro has expressed hope that Derbyshire Day becomes a regular event - or even a national holiday in tribute to this most undervalued nurturer of electronic music.
Tickets for Delia Derbyshire day are £12 for the full day (symposium and concert), symposium only £6, and £7.50 for the evening concert, and can be bought at the Band on the Wall website. More information can be found at: www.deliaderbyshireday.wordpress.com Trawling YouTube for the Timelords, White Noise and many others will enjoyably eat into your day ...
Unofficial Map: Partizaning.org “Guerrilla” Moscow Metro Map
Last year, the Moscow Metro introduced a completely new official map, which featured 30-degree angles. Put simply, it went down like a lead balloon (link in Russian), forcing the authorities to hastily organise a competition for another brand new design.
However, some people decided they didn’t want to enter what’s essentially a no-spec design “contest” (there’s no payment for the winner, just thanks for a job well done) and set about designing their own map independently… and then covertly placing them on Metro carriages.
Reading the imperfect Google translation of their project website reveals their design goals: to bring the map back to a geographical grounding - showing the distance between stations better and how they relate to the physical landmarks of the city, especially the river. Connections to commuter rail are also shown, to better visualise usage of all transit in the greater Moscow area. All lines under construction have been excised from this map to bring greater clarity to the services currently offered.
Despite my own preference for diagrammatic system maps, I actually quite like this map. There’s some lovely work here, and the transparency effect applied to the route lines is quite beautiful. As seen by the last picture, it looks great in a real-world setting, and I’ve heard that the designers have enlarged the type size for better legibility since this first foray into the real world.
Our Rating: As much a political statement as it is a map, but undoubtedly good. Three-and-a-half-stars.
Gene's Chinese Flatbread, hidden down a lonesome road in Chelmsford, is one of the very few purveyors of X'ian cuisine in the New England area (if only we had a Xian Famous Foods!). There you'll find savory noodle soups, flatbread, and his hallmark: ribbony hand-stretched noodles, which usually sell out every weekend. The affable Gene himself shows off his noodle-pulling skills next week as part of the Lowell Folk Life Series.
Learn how Gene works his magic (his hand-stretched noodles are available on weekends only, so this is a prime weekday peek), and maybe even taste some of his handiwork. Admission on January 28 is free; read all about it here. And, if you can't make it, definitely check out his tiny little restaurant at 257 Littleton Rd. in Chelmsford.
maijc writes "Computer activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York City. He was 26 years old. Swartz was 'indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them.' He is best known for co-authoring the widely-used RSS 1.0 specification when he was 14, and as one of the early co-owners of Reddit."
It’s 20 or 30 years ago. You’re working on a videogame. You don’t get any credit for your work, blogs don’t exist, there’s no internet and no fanboys. It’s just you, a crusty old terminal, and got a few spare bytes left in the ROM. What now?
> Type Secret Message
OK. You’ve hidden a secret message in the ROM, to be uncovered many, many years later, and posted on the incredible website, The Cutting Room Floor.
Here are some of my favorites. Click any game’s title to read more.
CONGRATULATION ! IF YOU ANALYSE DIFFICULT THIS PROGRAM,WE WOULD TEACH YOU. ***** TEL.TOKYO-JAPAN 044(244)2151 EXTENTION 304 SYSTEM DESIGN IKEGAMI CO. LIM.
I had no idea Nintendo didn’t program Donkey Kong. Ikegami Co Limited didn’t stop there — they also worked on Popeye, Radar Scope, Sky Skipper, Zaxxon, and more.
For fun, my friend Noby tried to call this number. Sadly, they can no longer teach you:
DIVINE PROTECTION BY =THE MIGHTY GOD= WRITE TO ME: boberg@lysator.liu.se FINALLY YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO A REAL COMPUTER ===== GOD! =====
Stefan Boberg is now the technical director at EA DICE, working on the Frostbite engine, so I think he fully qualifies as a godgineer.
Stefan catches us up: “LOL, 18 year old me… I was trying on bullying, didn’t honestly think it was unbreakable. Although my first version was uncopyable — as in, uncopyable by the duplication plant!” Ah, the dangers of aggressive disk protection tricks. He didn’t remember anyone e-mailing him: “I didn’t expect more than one or two people to read it to be honest, and it’s written accordingly. It’s a message from a parallel universe or something. Things are so different today!” Of course, I know this parallel universe well — one where we would meet up at pizza parlors, bring our big old computers and monitors, set them up, and copy games, like Alien Breed, between stale bites of pepperoni — so Stefan’s message makes perfect sense, and feels like another lifetime entirely, all at once.
I’ll warn you now that this game has a LOT of protection, so it will be a few late nights for you lot. It’s a mugs game anyway, you should be writing games and making loads of money like me (you too could afford a 16V Astra GTE). […] In the meantime I’ll be thinking of you when I’m in Florida, spending some of my dosh.
Developers often resorted to psychologically shaming crackers, often using the “I have money and you don’t!” angle. I think probably it missed the point of a cracker’s motivation and likely only made the crack more fulfilling.
For the record, a 16V Astra GTE cost £9499 on launch, and looked so awesome:
And Dave Jones did OK: he went on to make Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto.
Next, Tatsuya Ōhashi. Yes, you, you bastard. Don’t give me your flippant sh*t — coming in late on the day we ship the ROM like nothing’s amiss. You can give me all the porn you want; I’m not forgetting that one. All that f***ing weight you put on. No wonder you paid out 18,000 yen and still got nothing but a kiss out of it.
AS FOR GETTING RICH, IT JUST AINT TRUE IN MY CASE. (GOING BROKE MAY BE MORE LIKE IT!) OF THE PRODUCTS I’VE DONE IN THE PAST (M.U.L.E., SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD, HEART OF AFRICA AND ROBOT RASCALS) ONLY SEVEN CITIES MADE ANY MONEY AND HEART OF AFRICA JUST BARELY BROKE EVEN. WHAT THIS SAYS TO MY PUBLISHER IS THE MARKET DOESN’T WANT MULTI-PLAYER STRATEGY GAMES! BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IT.
Danielle Bunten was a prolific developer and M.U.L.E. is largely considered one of the most influential strategy games ever written. I’m very surprised to see it revealed in this message that it didn’t make any money. I want to know more, but quite sadly, Danielle died in 1998 due to lung cancer.
Moto Roader
****************
Thank you very much for purchasing this game.
Did you enjoy it?
But who are you, to be able to read this message?
If you don’t mind, please give me a call.
NCS 03-486-6588 (Ask for Suzuki)
Or, I also use a computer connection, so you can contact me there, too.
NCS NET 03-499-5996 7:00pm to 8:00am
****************
I just like that you could’ve either phoned Suzuki-san, or called his BBS, which has classic “Mom, don’t pick up the phone!” house hours.
You RETARDS say one thing, then something else later all the time. You’re a sound company; quit ignoring pachinko sounds and trying to put these weird sounds in instead! Do you WANT it to be this hard to hear the balls?! I’ve left the PREVIOUS sounds, so edit this if you want to hear it. Set hex address AFFC to 1FAF and AFC4 to E0EE to get decent sounds.
Wow. So management decided to tinker with the sounds in the game, forcing the programmer to play an annoying high-pitched wavering tone almost constantly during gameplay. The programmer didn’t like this and, in protest, provides instructions to ROM hackers on how to revert the sound.
So I busted out my HEX editor. Here’s management’s version:
And here’s the programmers version:
The alarm-like sound is lower and more Pac-Man like, but, well, still pretty annoying.
ANNOUNCING –
Jessica Louise
Ettinger
July 19, 1988
3:25 a.m.
Welcome To The
Fun And Games!
Way To Go, Linda!
Pixar movies, by tradition, have a section of credits for “Production Babies” — babies born during the making of a film. This got me wondering: what’s the earliest “Production Baby” credit in a video game? Is this it?
I asked Jessica about this message. She wrote back:
“I found out about this probably after I started college. Up until then I didn’t know what my exact time of birth was since my mom couldn’t remember and I was too lazy to find my birth certificate I guess. I at least know my birth was noted to the galaxy in some small way!”
And then, some words from Steve himself!
“Yes, I put messages to my kids (and wife) in all of my Intellivision games. This one was obviously from the birth of my daughter – her two older brothers are featured in hidden messages in each of the games that preceded her birth.
I put messages into each of these games: Hover Force (1986), Slam Dunk (1987), Chip Shot (1987), Body Slam (1988), Spiker! (1989), Deep Pockets (1989). My typical ‘cheat code’ was to hold down 23 on the left [Intellivision] controller while simultaneously holding down 26 on the right controller and then pressing reset while holding them down. Admittedly a bit of a contortion act, and not easily replicated on an emulator as it turns out.
I kept the source code for many years for all of these (and more) games, but sadly with a hard drive crash and a neglected back-up I lost them, so I can’t retrieve the code and have to try to remember how to trigger these messages from memory…”
Hey, ROM hackers: sounds like Steve could use your help! Exciting to know there are more hidden personal messages yet to be discovered…
This game sucks. The music is great but the game itself is not how we wanted it unfortunately. I mean, it is a good game, but some things could be polished, as well as sped up. Could use another month to finish this thing off AFTER all the bugs are fixed. oh well, woh is me.
David Pridie died in 2001. According to a memorial site, due to his now-infamous Tetris Rant, “he got himself and H2O in quite a bit of hot water with Nintendo. He figured it was his small piece of immortality and that no one would find it for years, if at all. It took the hardcore gamers about 3 days to find it and post it on the internet.”
See if you can retrieve them from this ROM. If you do, you win the prize. Please.. call (609) 466-2092 (in New Jersey, USA) if you have been able to view the two .GIF pictures, located in the rest of the upper 6 Megs of this ROM. We will have a nice reward..
for you…….Good Luck!….Roger W. Amidon..
Call this number today, and you’ll get… Roger Amidon!
“Good grief! It was over 12 years ago, but yes, that’s me. I have no idea what I was thinking about at the time for a prize!”
The tiny hidden image in the ROM is of Roger and his two sons:
В КНДР говорят, что рождение троен - примета процветания страны. Рождение тройни считается радостью как семей, так и всей страны.
В КНДР функционирует стройная государственная система воспитания троен. Государство полностью берет на себя наблюдение и уход за здоровьем троен с момента их рождения вплоть до окончания школы. Если будет выяснено, что беременная родит тройню, она тут же перевозится в Пхеньянский роддом, где будет находиться под строгим наблюдением.
В дни госпитализации женщинам предоставляются все наилучшие медицинские услуги для сохранения беременности и послеродового ухода, всякие тонизирующие средства и питательные продукты.
Чон Ен Хва из города Манпхо провинции Чаган, которая в Пхеньянском роддоме родила 100-ю тройню говорит:
- Живо помню дни госпитализации в Пхеньянском роддоме. Врачи высокой квалификации заботились о здоровье роженицы и эмбриона, давали мне дорогие лекарства. Мне казалось, что нахожусь у родной матери. Когда родила тройняшек, от кувеза с ними денно и нощно не отрывались 9 сестер.
Забота государства о тройняшках и их мамах продолжается и после их выписки из роддома.
Государственная система наблюдения и ухода за здоровьем в научном и комплексном порядке обеспечивает жизнь и здоровье тройняшек. За счет государства тройни будут расти в провинциальных детдомах, пока им не исполнится 4 года. К ним закрепляются врачи и няни. До 16 лет для них специально назначают врачей, которые регулярно организуют медосмотр. Государство дает родителям троен субсидию. Тройням и их родителям дают в знак благословения серебряные кинжалы, золотые кольца, разные тонизирующие средства и бытовые предметы, новую квартиру, уделяется глубокое внимание их жизни.
Вот что говорит Мун Гван Сам, отец 100-й тройни.
- В капстранах, где всем правят деньги, рождение тройни считается приметой гибели семьи, а у нас в социалистическом строе - приметой процветания страны. И государство так заботится о них. Не знаю, как выразить чувство благодарности. В Пхеньянском роддоме первой родила тройню Ли Мен Ок из уезда Сакчжу провинции Северный Пхеньан, в нем родились более 400 троен.
В окружении особого внимания и теплой заботы государства все тройняшки и четверняшки КНДР растут здоровыми.
If pre-Prohibition cocktails are on your list of favorite hobbies, chances are you’ve heard of the Corpse Reviver #2.
The name “Corpse Reviver” actually refers to a style of drink, one meant to “revive the corpse,” or, in other words, cure a hangover. A sip of the concoction and it becomes clear that day-time cocktails of the 1920s and '30s were a lot harder to swallow than today's Bloody Marys and Mimosas.
Though there are three Corpse Revivers, Corpse Revivers #1 (a mix of brandy, Applejack and sweet vermouth) and #3 (a shaken concoction of brandy, Campari, Triple Sec and lemon juice) are rarely, if ever, seen on bar menus today. Why? Well, they simply aren’t very good.
The Corpse Reviver #2, though, is a drink that’s tasty and timeless, floral enough for a lady to sip but strong enough for a man to order with confidence. The lively punch of citrus and gin, paired with the herbal notes of absinthe and the sweetness of Cointreau, make for a refreshing and well-balanced libation.
A warning: In The Savoy Cocktail Book, published by barman Harry Craddock in 1930, he writes of The Corpse Reviver #2: “Four of these taken in swift succession will un-revive the corpse again.” Sip with caution.
The Corpse Reviver #2
1 oz. gin
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. Lillet blanc
1 dash absinthe
Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a citrus peel.
*Note: For a more herbal nose, you can add the absinthe to the coupe glass first, swirl to coat the glass and then pour the other shaken ingredients in.
If you've bought a popular music CD (you know, those plastic discs with music on them?) from Amazon over the last 15 years, you may now be able to download those MP3s for free via your Amazon Cloud Player. Amazon announced its new service called "AutoRip" on Thursday morning, allowing customers who buy AutoRip-compatible CDs to automatically receive free digital copies of their music. The policy not only applies to CD purchases since 1998—it applies to any AutoRip-compatible CD you buy from this point forward.
The MP3s come in 256Kbps form and are currently available for more than 50,000 of the most popular albums since 1998, "including titles from every major record label," says Amazon. The downside is that it may be difficult to find AutoRipped MP3s for indie titles, though a quick search by Ars revealed that several indie CDs (purchased in 2000) were indeed available via AutoRip. AutoRip-compatible albums are automatically uploaded to your Cloud Player library and don't count against the Cloud Player storage limits.
It's clear the goal of AutoRip is to push more users to take advantage of its Cloud Player service, in addition to pushing them to buy more physical CDs. The move undoubtedly allows Amazon and the record industry to double dip when it comes to sales and download numbers, but it's hard to deny the convenience to customers as well. Cloud Player libraries can be played on any device that Amazon supports—including iPhones and iPads—as well as the Web, or they can be downloaded and transferred to any MP3 player.
The bottom of Lake Akan in Hokkaido Japan is inhabited by miraculously spherical rare algae called “marimo.” In 1921 they were declared a “Japanese Natural Treasure” and the public’s interest in Marimo was stirred. Many Japanese have Marimo as pets in their homes and offices. They are beautifully soft and smooth like velvet and are very easy to care for.
Marimo are happiest when they are in filtered water. Just change their water once a week.
Marimo like baths! Sometimes you will see cloudy bits of filth clinging to the Marimo. Simply run the marimo under the kitchen sink and he will be clean and very thankful.
Marimo can thrive wonderfully in artificial light but they do NOT like direct sun light. When you receive your Marimo it will probably float for a while on the surface, this is the Marimo’s natural way of getting lots of light and then once its had enough he will float down to the bottom.
In the waters of lake Akan the Marimo bounce around in the lakes current and the current helps them grow into their nice spherical shape so they like to be poked, and moved around. This also helps them get even lighting. its perfectly safe to hold Marimo. Marimo are great pets for children.
Marimo grow 5mm a year and live to be over 100!
Look no further, the Marimo i care for are the greenest and healthiest. no chemicals are used in their aquarium.
In Boston, the Catholic Archdiocese has told priests they could suspend the offering of communion wine using a shared chalice and bow rather than shake hands while exchanging the Sign of Peace, a Christian greeting.
A gigantic yellow giraffe pokes its heads out from the roof of this nursery and childcare centre in Paris by French studio Hondelatte Laporte Architectes (+ slideshow).
The larger-than-life statue appears to act as a supporting column, as its body pushes up through a cantilevered upper storey so that only legs, a long neck and a head can be spotted by passers-by.
The aptly named Giraffe Childcare Centre accommodates a 60-bed childcare facility and a nursery for up to 20 children, in addition to playgrounds on each of its three levels.
As well as the giraffe, the playgrounds feature a white bear and a parade of huge ladybirds, all constructed from concrete. "Through their affable form, the lively animal sculptures invite us to live our dreams," say the architects.
The centre is located beside Jean Nouvel's Horizons offices, in the riverside Boulogne-Billancourt district in the south-west of the city.
The entrance is positioned at the end of the building so that visitors have to walk through the giraffe's legs on their way inside.
The architects used corrugated metal cladding for the whole exterior, creating a series of bright white elevations.
The Giraffe childcare centre is located in the C1 block of the Seguin Rives de Seine district in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburban area of Paris. The program houses a 60 bed childcare centre and 20 bed day nursery. The building has been awarded the green "zéro Energie Effinergie" label. This public building is located next to Jean Nouvel's "Horizons" tower, at the junction between the "Vieux pont de Sèvres" neighbourhood, built in the 70s, and the new area called "le Trapèze". The high density of this area gives it a rugged skyline. To be integrated into this particular urban landscape, the building is composed of three tiers. Each of the south-facing playgrounds is in continuity with the interior spaces and is identified by a unique concrete animal sculpture. Viewed from the surrounding towers, the regular sequence of terraces offers a real "fifth facade" to the neighbourhood.
The facades of the building are made out of white corrugated iron that provides a minimal background to the wild animal sculptures. The idea is to animate the urban landscape by using a child's imagination. The wild animals appropriate the space; a giraffe appears to be peacefully eating the leaves of the trees from the neighbouring park, a polar bear tries to clamber up the steps, while a family of ladybirds climbs the façade in an attempt to reach the interior patio.
Architecture turns into storytelling. The building changes its identity and becomes a landscape in its own right, a metaphor for the urban jungle. The animals and the trees link the building to nature and motion. The giraffe has become a banner for the nursery since it is visible in the surrounding area from all angles. We walk through its legs to enter the building. Through their affable form, the lively animal sculptures invite us to live our dreams. These playful and dreamlike sculptures introduce a little bit of fantasy into the routine life of the town in order to inspire our lives with a bit of poetry.
Client: SAEM Val de Seine Aménagement
Program: 60 bed childcare centre and 20 bed day nursery.
Lieu/Location: Boulogne-Billancourt (92) - France
Competition: January 2009
Delivery: 2012
Area: 1450 sq m
Cost: 3 744 000€ HT
Construction companies): SPIE SCGPM (general contractor), AAB (animals sculpture)
Above: site plan - click above for larger image
Above: ground floor plan - click above for larger image
Above: first floor plan - click above for larger image
Above: second floor plan - click above for larger image
Above: roof plan - click above for larger image
Above: side elevation - click above for larger image
Above: front elevation - click above for larger image
Above: side elevation - click above for larger image
Above: rear elevation - click above for larger image
Above: long sectional elevation - click above for larger image
Above: cross sectional elevation - click above for larger image
Twenty of the Inukjuak villagers were tasked with doing much the same: they were going to remove the broken ice around the area and use chainsaws to enlargen the hole, which was getting increasingly smaller.
Adam Czarnota, who sent in the link, noted that "'Enlargen' put me in such a good mood that I got a chuckle out of 'increasingly smaller', too".
?a1425(c1400) Mandev.(1) (Tit C.16) 28/20: Egypt is a long contree but it is streyt..þei may not enlargen it toward the desert for defaute of water.
ME usage apparently also included the collocations enlargen the herte, "to make kinder or more generous", and enlargen with abundance, "provide abundantly".
The 347 comments on that NBC News article are, I note with interest, dominated by angry screeds about the NRA, Al Gore, global warming, and media bias.
"The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons: The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it. The Administration does not support blowing up planets. Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"
If you were one of over 30,000 individuals who requested the US government to secure funding for the construction of a Death Star in a petition, you'll have to move along and go about your business. In an official response entitled "this isn't the petition response you're looking for," the White House outlines a few reasons why the construction of a Death Star isn't a great idea for the taxpayer. The White House estimates the cost at $850 quadrillion, a figure that would expand the deficit, not reduce it.
Other reasons include the fact the administration "does not support blowing up planets," and the risk of the Death Star being exploited "by a one-man starship." While you might find the lack of enthusiasm for a US-sponsored Death Star...
(For Part 2 of this interview, in which McAfee talks about sex and money, click here. For Part 3, in which McAfee talks about dealing with the news media, click here.)
Portland, meet your newest resident: software millionaire John McAfee.
Yes, that John McAfee. Until late last year, McAfee had been best known for the
anti-virus software company that bears his name. But last fall he became an overnight star of
his own strange media story involving a murdered neighbor, poisoned dogs
and elaborate strange tales of government plots and intrigue.
Authorities in Belize, where McAfee
has lived for several years, want to question him about the
murder of his neighbor, American ex-pat Gregory Faull. McAfee, 67, denies he had anything to do with it, and says crooked cops
harassed and blackmailed him and even committed murder themselves, all
because they wanted his money. (He also claims they poisoned his dogs.)
With international media attention on him, McAfee crossed into Guatemala. There, authorities arrested and deported him to the United States—specifically, Miami—for
illegally entering their country.
McAfee has spun an increasingly bizarre
tale of corruption and power that culminated when he wrote a post on his blog Jan. 3, accusing officials in Belize of partnering with Hezbollah
to train Lebanese terrorists. He also claimed he launched a convoluted counter-surveillance campaign by loading laptops with
keystroke-monitoring software and giving them to his enemies.
He’s been called a modern-day Col. Kurtz, a pimp, a spymaster, drug-addled, and just plain crazy.
McAfee has helped fan the media attention—in part, he says, by acting
crazier than he really is. McAfee has not been press-shy, giving plenty
of interviews in Belize, while on the run, and after he returned to the
U.S. McAfee's own writings were posted on Gizmodo in November. (His journal included accounts of living with eight former prostitutes.) Wired magazine, which had been working for months on a long profile of McAfee, decided to publish the article instead as an ebook.
We were as surprised as anyone when, on Jan. 9, he showed up in
Portland, posing for photos to accompany a British newspaper profile with dancers at Mary’s Club.
WW tracked down McAfee at his hotel, and he agreed to sit for a video interview at Coffee Division in Southeast Portland, where he told us he
is looking for a home and plans to live for the next year and
a half while he collaborates with local artist Chad Essley on a graphic novel
about his life.
In these two clips, McAfee talks about moving to Portland and looking for a house. (Essley was also present and can be heard in the video as well.)
UPDATED: We've added this clip to our site and we'll post more of our interview soon.
Inspired by sacred geometry and Islamic patterns, Adam Hoets has created a collection of illuminated sculptural pendant lamps titled ‘Mandala’. The massive illuminated sculpture (1000w x 1920h mm) transforms the patterns into three dimensions through the extrusion of the complex interlocking geometry. Made from lasercut stainless steel frames, chrome plated or lacquered solid brass [...]
