Living The Dream: Swiss "Fusion Man" Flies Over The Alps with Rocket Wing.
Posted on May 15, 2008
Filed Under Gadgets, Living The Dream | Leave a Comment
Who doesn’t dream of strapping on a set of jet wings and rocket pack to take a quick flight from time to time? Switzerland’s Yves Rossy stopped dreaming and took to the drawing board to build his own jet-powered wing set-up, earning his name "Fusion Man" apparently. I’m not sure the fusion comes in, but Rossy, now 48 was a professional pilot in the Swiss military so he must know what he’s talking about. Maybe he hit to many legal barriers with the overused Rocket Man or something.
Anyway, it’s pretty impressive to be able to use kit like that in the first place, but taking on the Swiss Alps can’t be easy, and certainly proves his kit is more durable then just a gimmicky sideshow. Dropping out of a plane at 7,500ft, reaching speeds of around 180mph, and finding time to pull of a 360 degree roll "That was to impress the girls" his journey over the mountains took just half an hour start to finish. And Yves claims it’s not more stress on the body then riding a motorbike.
More at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/15/swiss_birdman_backpack_jet_stunt/
Google Trends Contains TV Spoilers!
Posted on May 13, 2008
Filed Under Blog, TV, The Internet | Leave a Comment
Thanks to a link from the Get Visible SEO Blog I had a bit of a peak at today’s Google Trends pages, not thinking much of it at first beyond it was a pretty cool way to get a feel for what the world is thinking about I had a bit of a peek a some of the previous data they had.
Of course, what the world spends most of it’s time thinking about is TV I can tell you with out even knowing what I’m talking about that Shayne probably won ABC’s “The Bachelor” - Though it might have been Matt or is that his boy friend? With the number 32 term been “Are Matt and Shayne still together” who knows; I might just be making it up, I really have NO clue about what the show is even about.
Now for the most part I don’t care about TV, particularly reality TV which is most likely to create spikes in interest like this - However, going just one day back to the 12th of May and it’s full of people looking for marshallandlilyselltheirstuff.com - Which OMG must be a spoiler of sorts for How I Met Your Mother! Damn it. Okay, not a major spoiler (I hope), but since I haven’t seen any of season 3 yet, it did make me realize the power even just snippets of data like this have. Coupled with the fact HIMYM does a lot of website tie ins to the show that make it obvious it’s relevant to the show some how. That, and err, why can’t people type URLs into the URL bar, and not Google? Seriously.
Moral of the story, if you haven’t watched the latest episode of The Apprentice, or the Big Fight last night, then you might want to avoid looking at hot topic data like this.
Video: The Big Lebowski - The Short Fucking Version
Posted on May 12, 2008
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This had me in stitches! In fact, I feel the urge to run out and watch the full version of the film again, since I’ve not seen The Big Lebowski for a while and I really should have it as part of my post-party collection of DVDs.
Music Video: Ben Folds Covers Such Great Heights (Postal Service)
Posted on May 11, 2008
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Such Great Heights is one of my all time favourite tracks, and one that has been covered in some really interesting ways that always seem to work the song in a new way. So coming across a cover from Ben Folds was curious, and the little intro only serves to build up that curiosity, and doesn’t fail to impress.
So here it is:
I really liked it anyway ;o)
Live The Dream: Emergency Party Button
Posted on May 11, 2008
Filed Under Gadgets, House Stuff, Living The Dream | Leave a Comment
Normal the various D.I.Y projects you see crop up around the interwebs fail to impress me, but today I saw what could be the best idea ever: The Emergency Party Button. (With Video)
Just insert then turn the key, press the big red button and the lights go out, party lights come on, music starts and smoke floods in. If I was looking to settle into a house right now I’d be ordering parts to make one of these rather then writing this. It really is a fun collection of gizmos that anyone would be privileged to have in their house.
One day perhaps I’ll have myself a little set-up like that. For now I guess I’ll stick with changing a light bulb by hand and manually setting up a few extension cords.
Testing Windows Live Writer
Posted on May 8, 2008
Filed Under Software | Leave a Comment
After a flood of comments in a Lifehacker article about the Top 10 Blogger Tools all came out and praised Windows Live Writer it seemed like I really should check it out and see what all the fuss is about.
First impressions after installing it are very impressed - for a start, the WYSIWYG editor actually uses my sites CSS theme so it looks much closer to the end result then the native WordPress editor does which alone seems to be worth the install.
I haven’t had much time to sit around and play around with the other options, but there are a healthy number of plugins listed on the site, so I’ll try using it for a week and see how it all pans out.
Site Notice: WordPress Upgrade In Progress
Posted on April 17, 2008
Filed Under Site News, WordPress | Leave a Comment
I’ve been upgrading Protocol80.net, and in will in turn continue to my other blogs so they all run off their own standalone versions of WordPress 2.5, rather then an older verison an a hybrid of the Multi Blog and Multisites plugins that allowed me to use one install for multiple domains. Which on paper was Ace, but in reality just didn’t fully work as I’d like and the end result was much more messing around then I needed, coupled with an inability to upgrade the core software.
Now I’m up to WordPress 2.5 though I’m very happy, the install as always worked like a dream, and the configuration is easier then ever, the whole backend seems much more polished now.
If anyone has an RSS reader pointing here however they may see some duplicates occurring, I’m not sure if the import feature prevents that or not. If you do see repeat posts - sorry!
Video Blog I’m Enjoying: Imogen Heap
Posted on April 12, 2008
Filed Under Links, Music | Leave a Comment
I can’t remember when I started watching this, but for a while now I’ve been really enjoying Imogen Heap’s video blog she posts up onto YouTube. Turns out as well as creating some amazing music, she’s a really funny gal and her blog gives a very interesting insight into how she works and how the life of someone in the music industry goes behind the scenes.
I think what makes me enjoy it the most is she seems like a really sound, down to earth person who goes though life like most people, working hard and partying as needed, only “work” for her is making music. And it seems a lot more down to earth then some insights I’ve seen, it’s a very personal project rather then a publisher created promotional effort.
Worth a watch not just if you’re a fan, but if your curious how someone working with music goes about life.
Link to her latest blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSXKCiQbFro
Installing Flock 1.1 on to the EeePC
Posted on April 11, 2008
Filed Under Gadgets, Software | Leave a Comment
With a little bit of hassle - but not to much - I got Flock up and running on my Asus EeePC last night. For the most part it was just a case of extracting the files, replacing the plug in directory with a link to the currently installed Mozilla Firefox path which takes care of flash and so on, and in theory it should work.
I used the following links to hobble together a working solution:
http://greenhughes.com/content/installing-flock-asus-eee-pc
http://www.flock.com/faq/show/30#q_9069
As it happens it wasn’t that simple, as for some reason it kept seg faulting on launch, but a quick Google search revealed that could be fixed by launching the application with the following command:
Not sure what that line actually does, but it fixes things so it’s all good in my book.
It’s not perfect, as just one or two of the windows don’t fit nicely on the Eee PC’s small screen, and at times it gets a bit slow and needs a moment to catch up with it’s self. But for the most part it works well, so I’ll try it for a little while and see how it goes. Though I think with a slightly larger screen I’d be totally sold on it.
Tags: Flock, Software, Linux, Install, Technology, EeePC, Asus
Interesting Distraction Of A Game: Shift
Posted on March 2, 2008
Filed Under Games, Links | Leave a Comment
Shift is a fun little flash platformer with an interesting twist, when ever you hit the shift button the level flips upside down and inverts what is solid and what is space. - It makes sense as soon as you’ve played it I assure you.
The game wasn’t overly challenging, but I had fun with it and there were a few surprises later on that kept it interesting and enjoyable to the end.
Worth 10 minutes of anyone’s time: Play Shift
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