In At The Deep End

No news, just a couple of nice videos (with music).

Via Astronomy Picture of the Day, to mark International Year of Astronomy: Sky in Motion.

Via Open Street Map: how OSM has grown during 2008.

Silly video. These are the droids you are looking for. Sorry to be late with this, but I didn’t want to let timeliness get in the way of silliness.

It’s been a while since I posted a link to a TED video, so here’s one. It’s longer than usual because they included the questions and answers session at the end, which is worth watching too.

Another day, another TED link. No, it’s not Laurence Fishburne teaching you kung-fu, it’s a thought-provoking talk on well, many things.

Blog upgraded to 2.6.2 last night as my ISP is about to disable any blogs running old versions as some of them are very vulnerable to invasion by pond life, and my upgrade to 2.6.1 didn’t count apparently.

No, not a report on how the workshop clearing is going – Fantastic contraption.

Metallica

J wants me to post this for the other J to watch

Now I’ve finally got the spiffy new WordPress walking to heel properly, here are some links I’ve come across recently that I liked that at least some of you might also like – sorry if they’re old news. In no particular order:

• For those who take lots of digital photos, here’s a reason to take even more: Photosynth. It stitches together lots of photos taken of the same place / thing. I haven’t installed it yet, so I don’t know what it’s like, but there is a very groovy demo video on TED from one of its creators. When I see amazing technology like this, I sometimes wonder if there are people working on classified projects for governments who did this ages ago but can’t tell anyone.
• Talking of TED, I have no idea how he does this – 30 minutes of genius.
• If you start taking loads more photos, you’ll need somewhere to store them. A colleague is thinking of buying this neat gizmo, which seems to be hard disks That Just Work.
• I often get fed up when people say how the Internet is going to change the world, how we’re going to order pet food online from specialist pet food web sites, how the world is going to be a better place etc. However, when Clay Shirky talks about the internet it’s usually thought-provoking and often seems perceptive and accurate. He’s written an another article on social participation and the internet with parallels to the past, which is much more interesting than it sounds, and there’s a good introduction by Tim O’Reilly.
• The internet isn’t going to save the world, but people like Amy Smith and her International Development Design students might.
• More stuff to make me ponder, but in a different way.

Otherwise known as Sulphur Hexafluoride. It’s amazing stuff, a colourless gas that’s denser than air i.e. like helium but the opposite. My colleague Rick pointed me to the first video below, and the magic of YouTube presented me with the other one.

With it you can

• Appear to defy gravity
• Get Darth Vader to give the traffic report on a radio programme.

I know the tension is unbearable until Busy Days parts 1, 2 and 4 arrive, but what the hey. In the meantime, here are some links that made Katy and me laugh till we cried.

The perils of bugs in your e-commerce site.
Words fail me (you may have seen this one before)
A fireman and his hose
Another one where words fail me
The perils of ordering over the phone

All but one were made by professionals, for money.

The periodic table of videos, from the University of Nottingham. Warning, it’s addictive. I love the low production quality coupled with the love of the subject from the slightly dotty mad professor (CBE) and his lab-coat-wearing assistants.

It’s part of a bigger thing called Test Tube.