Barry John Williams' Blog

This reminds me the episode in Futurama where aliens in Omicron Persei 8 (about 1000 light years from Earth) in the 31st century watch TV programs from Earth's 21st century.

Few assumptions to be made - assuming background noise didn't swamp the transmissions and they were sent in all directions from Earth rather than spiralling out with the planet's rotation. Still a cool map!!

Labels: coolstuff, earth

Just bought "Crunch", a game from TerrorBull games (who also make War on Terror), the description of this game is:

As the CEO of a global bank, it's your personal responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure a comfortable retirement.

Would make my payment method quite appropriate then!!

Labels: coolstuff, games, humour

Just found out that one of my favourite books read in the last few years is to be made into a film directed by Ridley Scott; Joe Haldeman's Forever War! I bought this book a few years back from a list of top Science Fiction books (S.F. Masterworks), it was the number one on the list. One of the few books I had difficulty putting down, I've started reading through the rest and so far found them pretty enjoyable too, with I am Legend and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep 2nd and 4th respectively.

I'll be looking forward to this release!!

Original Article on BoingBoing

Labels: book, coolstuff, movie

"Uncancel your plans for the future - FUTURAMA is back!"

My preorder for the newest Futurama DVD - Bender's Big Score arrived this morning earlier than expected!! On the back the following Special Features are advertised:

Commentary
Futurama Returns - A live comic book reading by the Futurama cast
Everybody Loves Hypnotoad - A full-length episode of the future's most popular TV program!
Deleted Storyboard Scenes
A Terrifying Message from Al Gore - An animated promo for An Inconvenient Truth featuring Bender and Al Gore with Video Commentary
Bite My Shiny Metal X - A mind shattering Futurama maths lecture!
3D Models / 3D Turnarounds
The Script: Original First Draft
New Character / Design Sketches
Original 5-minute Comic-Con Promo

Inside there is an advert for the Futurama comics with headline - Resistance is Futile! and an advert for a handpainted picture of the crew playing nude beach volleyball.

The DVD packaging is very nice and a great change since the somewhat mundane TV show releases a few years back!

I've unboxed it on YouTube...

Labels: coolstuff, futurama, movie

You can now pre-order Mac OS X Leopard on Amazon UK. It's been on the US Amazon site for a few days now and now number 2 and 4 in the Amazon UK top software sellers. I've preordered and look forward to it's arrival next Friday.

This will be the third Mac OS X operating system I have purchased; Panther; Tiger and now Leopard. Each of which have been worth every penny!

I debated whether I should buy it at Glasgow's new Apple Store or online; I decided to take advantage of Amazon's discounted price instead.

Link to Apple's Leopard site
Pre-order Leopard on Amazon

Labels: amazon, apple, coolstuff, software

Following on with the Doom theme (believe me this is completely unintentional), I just discovered the phone I use (a Palm Treo 680) runs Doom. Let's be honest here, what doesn't?

Well, since my contract is coming to an end I've been scoping out possible alternatives. Possibly a Nokia N series on Three; or maybe the iPhone on O2 - unlikely, I've tried the "My iPod needs replacing" already!

Then via the palminfocenter.com I discovered ZDoomZ which is a port of the Doom engine to the Palm. It will run any Wad files - which I happen to have both Doom and Doom2 wads lying about!

It was a bit tricky to install since I had to install the Timidity MIDI engine by hand since the instructions didn't work. Doom went on fine and after configuring some keys I started Doom to be prompted by familiar music and a surprisingly smooth Doom experience - with authentic sound!!

I may just be keeping hold of my Palm after all!!

ZDoomZ at MetaViewSoft
Wikipedia Article about Versions and Ports to Doom

Labels: coolstuff, games, software

Labels: coolstuff, movie, video

I think this is a really impressive use of Google Earth and the internet (centred around Amazon's "turk" technology); a massive distributed effort using recent satellite images on both Amazon and linked to Google Earth to find the missing explorer, Steve Fossett.

Basically you log into Amazon using your normal book buying username and password and select which Turk you want to do - the Steve Fossett one is free, but many others you can get paid for. Then you are presented with an example image and the image Amazon want you to check. You simply select "yes" (there is something interesting) or "no" (move along, nothing to see here).



Go to Amazon's Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com)
Original article on BBC News

Labels: amazon, computers, coolstuff, earth, google, internet

The linked article has a great video demonstrating a "not so ordinary" train-set operating on superconductive magnetic levitation!

I want one of these! One wonders how long it would take to make these things more practical for lifesize everyday use... Imagine closer to room temperature superconductors and filling up on liquid coolant at the fuel station! Of course you'd need something to propel you too...

Link to watch video

Labels: coolstuff, gadgets, video

Recently I thought I'd dive into the 'Grapher' program provided free with Mac OS X Tiger in the Application/Utilities folder to simulate an equation I'd been given.

Writing it into the equation bar was surprising because it displays it all very nicely converting a * to a nice dot and bracketing and dividing nicely as you type! Further, I discovered an item in the context menu to export the equation as an image or... A LaTeX equation!!

Labels: apple, computers, coolstuff, software, tricks

The same year that brought you Blade Runner also brought us this $20000 (Twenty Thousand dollar) exercise cycle which "amalgamates a superior, industrial quality LaserDisc player with a video disc, a 45" rear screen video projector, and the Lifecycle electronic bicycle/aerobic trainer." Wow!!!

This "surrogate travelling" monstrosity gives you a whole 2 hours of tours, meaning it was probably possible to fly to these places and actually cycle this tours for less than the cost of this device!

Wow!

Original article found on BoingBoing

Labels: coolstuff, gadgets, historical, humour

I found this site using Stumble! and it's really impressive the amount of detail these guys have managed with balloon folding. I was impressed with a bicycle made from 10 or so balloons, but this takes it to the extreme!

Good stuff!

Labels: art, coolstuff

IMG_1667
Originally uploaded by Michael Bates.

On June 15, 1957, a time capsule and a Plymouth Belvedere were buried in a vault next to the Tulsa County Courthouse. On June 15, 2007, the car and the capsule were exhumed and unveiled.

What a shame! They probably had high hopes in '57 this would work, especially since they coated it in rust preservatives! Let's hope they do it again, but this time try to stop the seepage of ground water!

Originally found on this BoingBoing post.

Labels: coolstuff, humour, video

Quite by surprise yesterday afternoon a delivery truck came to deliver a package in Louise's name. What could it be?

Later that evening I had built up a sweat, pulled a muscle in my leg and had a sore arm. It was a Wii with Wii Sports ordered early December 2006!

My favourites so far are definitely the Tennis (despite the fact I don't like it in real life), Bowling and Baseball!

My PS2 has GTA: Vice City Stories in it - I'm about 30% through that game and I'm not sure I can go back to sitting on a chair stabbing my fingers at a controller! The Wii is just different and a lot more fun. Louise and I competed last night for about 4 hours before having to give up! Even the dog was trying to join in...

The Wii has WiFi on it, which was a breeze to setup and you get News and Weather through the first menu. The weather is quite swish - it gives you a google earth type map to play with and displays the weather and temperatures for major cities across the globe. You spin the globe using the wireless Wii controller! The news is extremely readable and looks like a newspaper. Cool stuff!

It also plays my old Gamecube games so I may just have a go at finally completing Metroid Prime!!!

You can create your own Avatar or 'Mii' which you can use playing your games - Good Fun!

Labels: coolstuff, nintendo, review, software, wii

The cooling towers at Chapel Cross Nuclear Power Station have been destroyed in a controlled demolition.

I read about this a few weeks back and the article mentioned they were going to broadcast it over the internet to try and minimise public presence at the site.

Well, they've done so and produced quite a nice site too with details of how the demolition works and a video of the towers falling down.

Pretty cool!

Link to Chapel Cross Cooling Towers Website

Labels: coolstuff, video

The HD-DVD encryption system was cracked over the last week and the AACS licensing authority is trying to take down the numbers wherever they appear on the net. They are failing miserably as a google search for the numbers yesterday revealed 30,000 results and today they're indexing 370,000 pages with those numbers!

t3knomanser decided that it was a good idea to create a colour palette containing those numbers, unfortunately when he converted it to GIF - the HEX encoding was lost.

What do you think of the pretty image I've created on this page? I quickly made it up in photoshop using some colours I thought go quite well together...

t3knomanser's blog
Originally found on Boing Boing

The above image is licenced under Creative Commons. I hereby waive the Attribution requirement on this licence.

Labels: computers, coolstuff, video

One of my favourite bands, Nine Inch Nails recently released their album 'Year Zero'. The past few singles have also been released in GarageBand format to allow remixing them. They've just released a few more tracks on their site which is cool.

Whilst reading that page I noticed a couple of things which I found quite amusing - first of all:

As a reward for stealing Year Zero, we've prepared the next batch of multitrack audio files for you to download.

Secondly for the those that don't have GarageBand, they have linked directly to a 'generic' version of the file - on thepiratebay.org as a torrent file...

Labels: coolstuff, music

I was trying a new piece of software for my mac called 'CoverSutra' which is quite nice application. It offers a little icon of the current track being played on the desktop and has Growl support.

One of the features I didn't know much about was submission to a site called last.fm which is a music recommendation site. Coversutra will automatically upload the music you play (names of tracks only) and compare it with other people with similar listening tastes. Eventually it'll recommend local concerts and music based purely on your listening history! Sounds good to me - and it's free.

If you visit my actual website (rather than reading my newsfeed) you'll notice a little icon on the right hand side which displays my most popularly listened artists over the last week! Pretty cool - this updates live too!

Check out CoverSutra - it's only 10 euros!
Link to last.fm

Labels: coolstuff, music, software, web

I found this website through 'Stumble!' and it is about pavement artist (Julian Beever) who is quite good at what he does. He paints anamorphic illusions to create the impression of 3D shapes from paintings on the floor. Check them out they are all very good, but this one got my attention the most!

Labels: art, coolstuff

Discovered this link on the net which I found quite interesting! It's a robot with four axis of movement and programmed to respond to the rhythm of music in a human way.

They have two videos on the site and they are spookily amusing to watch! The robot really does dance to the music and quite well too...

Found it originally on BoingBoing
Direct link to the article

Labels: coolstuff, gadgets, humour

I'm up for extreme activities - never done one yet, but i'd like to. This one however does look pretty terrifying! It's the world's largest swing across The Oribi Gorge (Google Earth Link).

The linked blog has a YouTube video on it demonstrating the swing - crap sound - good video though.

Original Posting on didntyouhear.com
Discovered on Neatorama

Labels: coolstuff, travel, video

Spotted this article on Boing Boing where Mass Tram America Inc. are planning to use decommisioned aircraft to create a 'highway in the sky' by suspending them from overhead tracks. Mass Tram America do state on their 'about us' page that none of the technology is new and indeed, it isn't as this was trialled once right here in Glasgow (well just outside anyway).

George Bennie announced similar plans in 1921 and actually built a working prototype in 1929. You can read about this in Wikipedia's Bennie Railplane article.



This image was taken from Rampant Scotland's Bennie Railplane article.

Labels: coolstuff, travel

Why on earth do they put these types of graphics on a toy??? Basically a Chinese company has produced what looks like quite a good toy, but the instructions on the box and the graphics are quite funny.

My favourite is the "Don't hit yourself for not buying something else" guess when baffled with an icon instruction.

Post on BoingBoing
Original Article

Labels: coolstuff, humour

I thought this was a really novel use of Google Earth, advertising your flights, destinations and affiliate hotels by use of Google Earth. This encourages something I already do - check out your destinations on Google Earth before you go, whilst being able to see car hire locations, hotel locations and flight prices right there within Google Earth!

Find the Google Earth British Airways layer here

Labels: coolstuff, earth, google, travel