Stormcaller.net: Yarr! 'Tis ye Stormnews

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Sunday, September 19, 2004 - "Yarr! 'Tis ye Stormnews"
I'm off to Birmingham University on Tuesday (21st) to start my four-year course in "Physics and Space Studies". Not sure what'll be happening about my updates to the site over the next few weeks as I get settled, enjoy Freshers' Week and start lectures, but I'll certainly be keeping the site going in the long term and will try to get some stuff up at the weekends as usual for the time being.
> Science/Tech

Physics is all about burning things. Burn through ANYTHING using a Fresnel lens. [Details] [Details]
Why has it taken this long for someone to think of putting a telescope in an Antarctic base? [Details]
Only the Japanese would invent something that pipes music through flowers, using them as speakers. [Details]
> Geek

Your webcam might be spying on you... [Details]
Hey, another "Farscape" link. farwhat.com is a well-designed site, created by fans, which aims to bring people who don't know anything about the show up to speed. [Details]
They're making a "Doom" movie and have just announced that Karl Urban, who played Eomer in the "Lord of the Rings" films, will play the lead marine character. [Details]
New Windows flaw discovered, allowing exploits. Get your system patched - use WindowsUpdate or read this page. [Details]
A very clever webcam-based system used by some guy to allow his cat entry through its cat flap into the house based on whether it identfies as the cat, rather than some other animal, and whether it has anything in its mouth or not. [Details]
I tried an early version of a similar program called Nouse once, at least a year ago - I assume it's the same one. Nice party trick, but utterly unusable for every day browsing or anything else. Getting your webcam aligned and Nouse calibrated takes ages and lots of trial and error - and even when you do, the cursor will sometimes decide to latch on to another part of your face and follow that for a while. You have to move your nose pretty slowly for the cursor to follow accurately and not just get left behind. The blinking detection is patchy at best, though I think this was an experimental feature when I tried it. Fun, though. Of course, they may have significantly improved all of these things since I tried it. [Details]
> Stuff

Avast! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day today! Shiver me timbers, etc. [Details]
Finished the excellent "Soldiers: Heroes of World War II" this week. Haven't played such a good strategy-type game since... I don't know, "Warcraft III"? Good review of the game here. [Details]
"Ground Control II" was good too, but I haven't played it since I bought "Soldiers". In fact, I haven't even reinstalled it after my hard disk format a couple of weeks ago.
Video of rapper Fifty Cent getting bottled off stage by the crowd at the Reading Festival last month. Priceless. [Download - 6.58MB]
Real Americans hunt their deer with a howitzer. [Details]
Some brilliant photographer set out to deliberately take pictures of Olympic athletes looking stupid. Or they just came out like that. [Display]
...Better than what the SA Goons dreamed up, though. [Display]
b3ta linked this great video of a "crap ninja". [Download - 1.28MB] [Mirror]
Two hundred pints of 'spasberry' jelly. Oh dear. [Details]
Minimise the flash video and listen to the song. Excellent. [Destroy]

Replies: 1 Comment

As to "why no one put a telescope on the antartic base before" - because it's bl**dy cold out there?

Posted by Vitenka on Sunday, 19 September at 08:26 PM GMT.