unique and interesting: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

Synchronized Robot Christmas Dance

(thanks Cora)

Robbing a bank is as simple as putting pen to paper. Bank Notes is a collection of bank robbery notes used in successful and unsuccessful unarmed bank robberies - accompanied by a photo of each robber and appended with details about the robbery itself.

(via Everlasting Blort)

Zeer is a food information resource that makes it easy to find safe food. It helps people save time, stay safe, learn particular diets and live better lives. Finding the right foods for a special diet can be difficult. Zeer can help.

Zeer is unlike any food information resource out there. Built upon a database of over 30,000 food items, Zeer is not a stagnant list of safe foods, but a resource that is continually updated so people can discover new food and stay safe.

Dutch airline KLM has made the latest step in what appears to be a rush by airlines to demonstrate the use of alternative fuels. The airline made what it is calling the first passenger flight using biofuel.

KLM completed the flight with one of its Boeing 747s using a 50 percent biokerosene mix to fuel one of the airplane's four engines. On board during the hour long flight over the Netherlands were about 40 people including journalists, politicians, and the Dutch director of the World Wildlife Fund. The flight was not a scheduled flight, just a demonstration of the ability to use of biofuels.

Nominative Determinism

Nominative determinism refers to the theory that a person's name is given an influential role in reflecting key attributes of his job, profession, or general life. It was a commonly held philosophy in the ancient world.

Technically 'Mr. Bunn the baker' is nominative determinism, but real examples are more highly prized, the more obscure the better. Other examples are Dr John Fish - marine biologist, Lake Speed - NASCAR driver, Lord Brain - leading neurologist, and Cardinal Sin, former Archbishop of Manila.

Putting an orange wedge in your mouth and smiling, is one of the oldest gags out there, yet anytime some one does it, they act as if they thought of it and it's hilarious. Really quite baffling.

(thanks Nick)

If you have a spare $100,000 then maybe you might want one of these bicycles for Christmas.

(thanks Danny)

The history of mobile phone technology reads like the plot from Highlander. A variety of standalone devices have been decapitated and absorbed into increasingly complex handsets.

To highlight how powerful mobile phones have become, here's a list of things that the mobile phone has made, or will make, obsolete.

Loop The Loop

Replicating the clasic Hot Wheels set, Fifth Gear TV attempts to perform a full 360 degree loop in a real car.

Created between 1868 and 1871 as part of a commission from the City of Glasgow Improvements Trust, this collection of images by photographer Thomas Annan of the working class areas of old Glasgow helped document the impoverished living conditions of the working class at the time.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

A view of the solar system as we understand it to be.

(thanks Cora)

Top 10 Mysterious People

Ever heard of Monsieur Chouchani, the Babushka Lady, Gil Pérez, or the Green Children of Woolpit? Over the centuries, history is filled with wonderful tales of mysterious people - many of whom are never identified.

This list is a selection of the most significant or mysterious people of this variety.

A blind man who thought he would never be able to read again has had his vision partially restored after being fitted with a 'bionic' eye. Peter Lane, 51, is one of the first people in the world to have electronic receivers implanted into his eye which send signals mounted in a pair of glasses to the brain.

The technology has allowed Mr Lane, from Manchester, United Kingdom, to see the outline of objects, such as doorways and furniture, and to read letters through a series of dots of lights for the first time in almost 30 years.

Your cat purrs at the same frequency as an idling diesel engine. This is around 26 purrs per second.

Seventeen Things Worth Knowing About Your Cat.

(via Look At This...)

Home Schooled

Home Schooled is a comics series by American artist Ash Jackson.
Co-writing by Silas Jackson.
The Presurfer will feature a Home Schooled cartoon every Monday. This is an absolute exclusive cooperation between The Presurfer and Ash Jackson.

Home Schooled is more or less a reflection of the wacky and occasionally interesting adventures of the artist, Ash Jackson, himself, with the aid of his friends, family, and other cohorts.

Title: Money in the Bank.

click on the picture for real size

Visit the Home Schooled Webcomic.

Cranberry Harvest

Loaded with health benefits and available in a variety of forms, the cranberry is easy to include in many nutritious recipes or as a standalone snack. Every fall cranberry bogs are flooded for the annual harvest. Go behind-the-scenes with the harvesters to learn all about the process.

(thanks Cora)

Some Japanese housing builders are now designing homes with special features for pets. Obviously a great deal of research went into the design of these beautiful spaces, from the perspective of both the cats and the homeowners.

(thanks Harry)

Christmas in Europe is a unique and distinctive holiday where people from all cultures share a diverse, yet paralleled enjoyment for legend, food, and spirit.

(via Lauren)

A flowchart that helps you decide what cereal to eat.

Ants That Count

Most ants get around by leaving smell trails on the forest floor that show other ants how to get home or to food. They squeeze the glands that cover their bodies; those glands release a scent, and the scents in combination create trails the other ants can follow.

That works in the forest, but it doesn't work in a desert. Deserts are sandy and when the wind blows, smells scatter. So how do desert ants find their way home?

Pet Rocks were a 1970s fad conceived by advertising executive Gary Dahl. His idea was to sell a pet that would not need to be fed, walked, bathed, groomed etc... The first Pet Rocks were ordinary gray stones bought at a builder's supply store and marketed as if they were live pets. During its short run, the Pet Rock made Dahl a millionaire.

Now there's the USB Pet Rock. Simply plug the USB cable into a free port and let the fun begin. People will stop by and ask you what your USB Pet Rock does. Each time, you can make up a new story; for no matter what you say, it will be greater than the truth - because these USB Pet Rocks don't do a dang thing.

Shaolin Monk Balances On 2 Fingers

It seems there are only two people in the world who can do this. And here's one of them, a Shaolin monk from Henan province in northern China.

(thanks Cora)

Cheesipidia is all about cheese. At the moment they show a catalogue of cheese, arranged by country.

I suppose they intend to add more countries in the future because the Netherlands, the largest exporter of cheese in the world, isn't mentioned yet. So you won't find any information on Gouda or Edam.

Miss Cellania of the weblog with the same name has a funny article about LOLcats turning tragedy into comedy, Shakespeare-style. It seems Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth are popular among cats.

Blogpsot Instead Of Blogspot

Presurfer reader Mercurior accidentally typed 'presurfer.blogpsot.com' instead of 'presurfer.blogspot.com.' He landed on a site for bible studies and information. Very strange! The site is part of the G.T. Ministries from St. Petersburg, USA.

But a further investigation by the Presurfer CSI team showed that you can type anything you want before the blogpsot.com domain name and everytime you'll land on the bible site.

Senseaware is FedEx's cellular-connected sensor-package. Drop it in your super-important packages (they're targeting pharma, medical devices/equipment, diagnostic kits and samples) and for $120/month it will tell you everything about that package - where it is at this very second, whether it's been dropped, how hot/cold it is, and so on.

A SenseAware device riding with a FedEx shipment can provide information about its precise temperature, its exact location, and when a shipment is opened or if the contents have been exposed to light.

(via Boing Boing)

Check out this selection of sleeping bags that make you want to spend a night under the stars.

(thanks Danny)

StarGazer

Take a spectacular trip into space watching real time-lapse images of the night sky. The video sequences are created using a recently-developed compositing technique, which adds individual still frames together, making residual light from previous frames continue on into subsequent frames, resulting in trails left by bright objects in the sky.

Many aircraft navigation lights and even a few meteors are captured in the 8000+ frames used to make this movie.

(thanks Cora)

It's always sad when your pet runs off. While we hope all the pets found their ways to safe homes, we're pretty sure these people shouldn't be in charge of anything that has a pulse and completely understand why they ran away.

Manshiyat Naser (also known as Garbage City) is a slum settlement on the outskirts of the city of Cairo whose economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city's garbage.

The garbage is brought to Manshiyat Naser by the Zabbaleen, or garbage collectors, who then sort through the garbage to attempt to retrieve any potentially useful or recyclable items. As a passerby walks or drives down the road he will see large rooms stacked with garbage with men, women or children crouching and sorting the garbage into usable or sellable.

Just as the name says. Google rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Or 80 degrees.

(via Google Blogoscoped)

Looking for help on how to use Photoshop better? Or JQuery, PERL, AJAX, Paint Shop Pro, Javascript, HTML, CorelDRAW, or Ruby?
Use the Tutorials Search Engine.

What makes the world's lasrgest search engine work>
Come inside and find out.

Sea lions are being trained to locate mines and detain suspicious divers in the fight against terrorism. America will now begin using seals at one of their top Naval bases in Washington State to patrol for terrorists as part of a drive launched after the 9/11 attacks.

It was built by Stalin's order in the middle of nowhere, deep inside Northern Siberia between Salekhard and Igarka.

It was not connected with any other Russian Federal Railway System and the purpose of it still is not very clear, so as a senseless toy it was abandoned pretty soon and is now accessible only with a helicopter.

How To Carve A Turkey

Carve a turkey expertly with these step-by-step slicing tips.

What we've all been waiting for.
The Elton John hand-painted plastic toilet seat.

(via Grow-A-Brain)

Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That's what NASA's STEREO spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the 'solar tsunami.'

Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun's surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind - a trick of the eye - but surely not a real wave.

The twin STEREO spacecraft confirmed their reality in February 2009 when sunspot 11012 unexpectedly erupted. The blast hurled a billion-ton cloud of gas into space and sent a tsunami racing along the sun's surface.

The Fort Hood shootings were shocking, but hardly an anomaly. Mass killings have had a long and painful history in the United States. The motivations for these occurrences vary and Newsweek asked experts about the various motivations that can lead to these tragedies.

From conspiracy and copycat killers to those motivated by the heat of passion, this slideshow explores the many different reasons mass killers strike.

(thanks Taylor)

The Ten Best Post-Apocalyptic Survival Vehicles

Here are the best post-apocalyptic survival vehicles.
Take a look at these zombie-fighting machines-o-war.

The Rings Of The Earth

How would the Earth look like if it had a ring system like Saturn?
A 3D Studio Max animation.

10 Weird Facts About The Brain

Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It's due to the superspeedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.

The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don't know, but here are a few interesting facts.

An aerial virtual tour of London. Use your mouse to click and drag your way over famous landmarks and buildings and give yourself a birds eye view of one of the worlds busiest and vibrant cities.

(thanks Cora)

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

The Muppets with their own version of Queen's Bohemian Rapsody.

Philadelphia artist Ed Bing Lee has been knitting for 25 years. He uses ordinary macrame to create objects that look like food.

(thanks Cora)

The challenge of Prefab 2020? Create a sensation - something more than just a working space to live. Ideas that will inspire others, to be planted within the dizzyingly dense cores of the major city centers. Use design to show the incredible potential of prefabricated, modular and small-space apartments, condos and other housing types.

The result? A series of fun, functional and futuristic designs from stackable bubble homes to fold-out, house-in-the-box architecture.

The most comprehensive list about Twitter you've ever seen.

Is 'Coma' Man Communicating Or Not?

Yesterday I posted about the Belgian man who was trapped in a 23-year 'coma' but who was conscious all the time. He is now able to communicate via a computer keyboard.

Presurfer reader dbsmall pointed my attention to an article by James Randi of the James Randi Educational Foundation who doesn't buy this story as it is told in the press. He wrote an essay (This Cruel Farce Has to Stop!) in which he explains that the man communicates via a 'facilitator' who supports the man's hand as it hovers over the keyboard. See the video.

Here's James Randi's article.

The past decade was often defined by rivalries. This rings most true in the digital world, where new products and ideas changed the way we interacted.

This list from Newsweek recounts the top ten heated rivalries of the past decade including Facebook vs. Myspace, Google vs. Everyone Else and Mac vs. PC.

(thanks Taylor)

Most celebrity-backed tech commercials of the 1980s were pretty terrible. These 10 were pretty awesome. Or at least, in some cases, awesomely terrible.

(thanks David)

From a bird boasting a paprika bikini tan to a roaster wrapped in bacon, these seven Thanksgiving turkey creations are for hosts that just want to have fun. See seven unique incarnations of this holiday dinner main attraction.

(thanks Jessie)

Voice Of Florence Nightingale

A rare historical recording of the voice of Florence Nightingale, 'The Lady with the Lamp' and a pioneering nurse, writer, and noted statistician. It was recorded on Edison's Parafine Wax Cylinder, on July 30th, 1890.

(thanks Cora)

Approach slowly. Do not startle the pony. When up close, gently stroke its head. If you have any dead mice in your pockets, feed them to the pony. This establishes trust.

How To Ride A Pony.

Man Trapped In 23-Year 'Coma' Was Conscious All The Time

A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time. Belgian Rom Houben, now 46, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound.

Doctors used a range of coma tests before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was 'extinct.' But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.

Ketchup is good on just about anything. Whether you call it ketchup, catsup, catchup, tomato ketchup, tomato sauce, red sauce, Tommy sauce, Tommy K, or dead horse, everyone has tried it, and most people love it.

Here's all the information you will ever need to know about ketchup; perhaps, way more than you have ever wanted to know as well.

(thanks Nick)

image credit

Beautiful Landscape Of Italy.

EZ Cracker

Cracking an egg is easy. Unless you're a culinary klutz. Then you need the EZ Cracker. The multi-functional EZ Cracker cracks eggs, separates egg whites and strips shells from hard boiled eggs in seconds.

(via Boing Boing)

The majority of drivers are courteous to cyclists but a small minority treat them with contempt. Here are just few of the most annoying habits we see on the road today.

(thanks Danny)

It's easy to forget about your body's needs when you're deep into your work or the net - until your body offers a painful reminder.

Save your physical shell some strain with these cheap, customizable ergonomic workspace upgrades.

How To Keep Your Mouth Clean And Shining

For this demo, I have chose Colgate Total 12 to eliminate all the germs and keep my mouth clean and shining.

image credit

There is a darkness in humanity masked under the cloaks of fine living and personified ideals, and through history those ideals were characterized as the fabric of life.

Murder has evolved over time bringing out the beast in those that see darkness. There is a certain passion that resides in these tainted individuals that seek to destroy, or rather covet what is far from their reaches, yet not unattainable.

(via Lauren)

Lichtenberg figures are branching, tree-like or fern-like patterns that are created by high voltage discharges along the surface or within electrical insulating materials.

The first Lichtenberg figures were actually 2-dimensional patterns formed in dust on the surface of charged insulating plates in the laboratory of their discoverer, German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.

(via Reality Carnival)

Sent Forever is a Britsh company that transmits your personal message (standard messages cost $15) which includes a Certificate of Transmission being posted to the receiver of your message into deep space. Once that message starts travelling, it will continue for an eternity.

Sent Forever converts your actual message into a special format and send it to British Telecommunication's satellite earth station at Goonhilly in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

British Telecom then transmit your message in the form of radio waves into deep space using a large satellite transmission dish. Using a high power transmitter allows your message to travel through space forever. The radio waves will get weaker over time, but be assured that your message will travel for an eternity.

(thanks Cora)

Robotic Ant

The A-Pod is an ant inspired hexapod robot with a total of 25 servos. This video demonstrates body movement and mandible control. The music is from Trifonic with Lies.

(thanks Sterling)

Ex libris, meaning 'from the books' is a Latin expression attached to the art form of bookplates. These are stamps or labels that appear inside books to denote ownership, and range from the simple to the decorative and elaborate, to the obscure or even bizarre and surreal.

Typically an ex libris is placed on the inside cover or the front end paper. Earlier bookplates featured coats of arms. Like everything else, there are bookplate enthusiasts and collectors with their own societies, conferences, journals, blogs, and more.

Home Schooled

Home Schooled is a comics series by American artist Ash Jackson.
Co-writing by Silas Jackson.
The Presurfer will feature a Home Schooled cartoon every Monday. This is an absolute exclusive cooperation between The Presurfer and Ash Jackson.

Home Schooled is more or less a reflection of the wacky and occasionally interesting adventures of the artist, Ash Jackson, himself, with the aid of his friends, family, and other cohorts.

Title: The Viciousest Circle.

click on the picture for real size

Visit the Home Schooled Webcomic.

Do you like having clean teeth? Do you like stellar reports from the dentist trip after trip? Do you like tasting crispy, delicious bacon? Now you can do all three at once!

Introducing bacon flavored dental floss. This standard, waxed floss comes with a special flavor coating of tasty, crispy bacon.

How Heavy Is The Internet?

Using publicly available information, for the first time in the world, we have precisely and scientifically calculated the weight of the Internet. Obviously this information is only really useful to someone attempting to work out the cost of posting the Internet somewhere, perhaps to North Korea. Still, the casual reader may still enjoy learning just how heavy the thing is.

And how much does the Internet weigh?
At least 498,438,559,990 kilos.

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Monday, November 30, 2009

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Monday, November 23, 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009