Archive for the ‘Interesting’ Category »
My amazing wife, knowing my obsession with geeky gadgets, made me this iPhone cake for my birthday.
She printed out a bunch of promotional images of the iPhone, from various angles, then painstakingly painted each button with colored chocolate (yes, you can eat the Mail icon)
Here are all the photos
I am so glad to write about LifeStraw. It is a great example that reminds us that there are poor nations in many continents , especially in Africa who are fighting with diseases which is a direct result of dirty water sources.
LifeStraw is an instrument which instantly purifies the water and makes it ready to drink with the chromatographic techniques and other well-known filter methods. A single personal LifeStraw gadget can process 700 liters of water in a year and usage life is 3 years. 2 liters a day is a great start to develop such products for future.
LifeStraw : The Most Humanistic Gadget Ever | Vubx.com : Coolest Gadgets, Gizmos
It’s been suspiciously quiet of late on the murderous white goods front, but confirmation that your kitchen is still out to get you comes in the form of a chilling exploding fridge attack in South Africa. According to the Pretoria Times, Adrian Coetzee, of Silver Lakes, Pretoria, “narrowly escaped death” on Wednesday when the 7am blast “ripped through his kitchen, blowing food and shrapnel from his four-month-old fridge across the room”.
South African survives exploding fridge attack | The Register
I’ve believed this for a while, and was having a discussion with colleagues on Friday on just this topic. In New Zealand, as opposed to South Africa, it’s not illegal to talk (or text!) on your cellphone while driving.
I maintain that it’s not the action of holding the phone which is the problem, but the distraction of carrying on a conversation - the fact that your conciousness is divided between driving, and communicating with the caller.
For this reason, since giving up my business in South Africa, I’ve refused to take any calls on the phone while driving. If we’re on a long trip, my wife will answer the phone and relay important information, but I won’t do anything which requires “heavy mental lifting” while I’m behind the wheel.
So to boil it down, if you phone me, and I’m driving, I generally won’t answer the call. If I do answer, it’ll be to tell you that I’m driving, and that I’ll call you back when it’s safe.
A special corner of hell is reserved for drivers who weave from one lane to another at a crawl while blithely chatting on their cell phones. Even a simple form of multitasking — driving while listening to someone else talk — disrupts the ability to navigate a car safely, a new study finds.
Science News / Shifting Priorities At The Wheel
VortexDNA has an intriguing post on "things that should be accepted as scientific but aren’t":
blog.vortexdna.com » Blog Archive » Things that should be accepted as scientific but aren’t
Dear friends and family,
For those who want to know what all this "twittering" is about, here’s an excellent video which explains it in plain english 
My Brain
We’ve been in New Zealand just over two weeks now, and I’ve noticed that lately, I’m dreaming a lot (which in itself is unusual) about things in the past, which I haven’t thought about in years. For example, I’ve dreamed about my old high school, old classmates (who I can hardly even remember), and old settings.
I think it’s my brain’s way of adjusting to the new environment.. re-organizing old data, and doing a bit of “spring-cleaning”, if you will.
I found this great optical illusion on “Mighty Optical Illusions“. What’s interesting about this one is what you see reflects your own particular culture and environment:
A “Psychological” Optical Illusion: This one has been circulating the net lately, so it would be shame if I didn’t share it with you guys as well. What is the story behind the picture below? The influence of culture and environment can have an effect on our visual perception - believe it or not. This theory was first explored by Robert Laws, a Scottish missionary working in Africa during the late 1800’s. Take a look at the picture below - what you see will largely depend on where you live in the world. After that you have examined the picture, scroll below for a more detailed explanation.
We’re flying to New Zealand via Singapore, with Singapore Airlines. When I collected my hotel vouchers at the local office, I was reminded to go online to reserve our seats, 48 hours before departure. Well, we’re at the 48-hour mark, so I’ve just been on the site, only to discover that you can book your seats at least a month in advance. This means that although we were still able to nab some good seats on the flight of out of South Africa (South Africans are not as quick online as those sneaky Singaporians, it seems), our flight from Singapore to Auckland was almost fully occupied, and we were lucky to find two seats next to each other.
Of enormous help in this process was the website, SeatGuru. By selecting your air carrier, and then the model of your plane, you’re able to see exactly where the best seats are, and which seats to avoid. For example, I discovered that the economy seats just in front of the emergency exit on the Boeing 747-400 are preferred, because they provide with slightly extra legroom, while the seats in the back row don’t recline, and are to be avoided.
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If you’re one of those Harry Potter fans now suffering from post-Potter depression in the wake of the release of the final book, and your subsequent night-long reading spree, you’ll be relieved to know that it doesn’t have to be over…
Welcome to the world of Harry Potter fan fiction!
Fan Fiction is defined as derivative works of fiction, from short stories to full-length books, created by independent authors, featuring characters and settings from the original story. Before you scoff at “home-made Harry Potter“, consider the following:
- There are over 42,000 fan written stories on www.harrypotterfanfiction.com.
- J.K. Rowling has endorsed fan-created derivative works of the Harry Potter stories, on the provisio that they be non-commercial, and of a non-sexually-explicit nature. (To avoid exploitation of fans, especially younger ones).
- One fanfic author has been contracted to write for Random House Publishing, following the online success of her (originally in spanish) fanfic novel, Harry Potter and the Decline of the High Elves.