Hmmm...

Thanks nana!

Make your own.

Waterless Washing Machine!

Two Industrial Design students from the National Univeristy of Singapore (NUS) are the first Asians to win the Design Lab Award at the international Electrolux Design Lab 2005 competition! Their product? A waterfall-inspired washing unit that require neither water nor detergents.
Called Airwash, the waterfall-inspired washing unit is waterless and does not use detergents. Instead, it utilises negative ions, compressed air and deodorants to clean clothes. By using atmospheric air and negative ions-a natural cleansing agent-it fights dirt and bacteria with nature's own weapon. Airwash is also designed to be placed anywhere in the home, instead of the designated laundry area.
Read full article.

How To Deal With Impossible People - Wiki

Wikis are very interesting. A wiki is a group of Web pages that allows users to add content, as on an internet forum, but also permits others (often completely unrestricted) to edit the content. The term wiki also refers to the collaborative software (wiki engine) used to create such a website. The term comes from the Hawaiian term wiki, meaning "quick," "fast," or "to hasten". However, wiki is sometimes interpreted as the acronym for "What I Know Is:", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function.
For example, Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia anyone can edit; JotSpot is an application wiki you can use at jot.com.
Found this interesting article at WikiHow:
We all know difficult people. They all generally share three main characteristics - they cannot be reasoned with, they believe they can do no wrong, and they are convinced that everything is someone else's fault. If you haven't had some first-hand experience in dealing with such people, even a brief conversation can raise your blood pressure through the roof. Here are some insights and steps for dealing with highly difficult people.
Read full article.

Do You Want a Dog?

From email:
Please.... I need a favor !!
My neighbor has a puppy he's giving away (FREE!).
It's a Dachshund, it's house broken, and it's great with kids.

He's giving it away because his wife says the dog 'stares' at her when she is undressing, and that gives her the 'Heebie Jeebies'. I think she is just weird !

Warning Label Generator

Create your own warning label.

Duped Hearts

(image from thomas haagen light sculpture: broken hearts can be healed through the right light!)

It's not easy finding love in cyberspace, and now some frustrated online daters say they were victims of fraud by two top Internet matchmaking services and have taken their complaints to court.
Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive, is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.
In a separate suit, Yahoo's personals service is accused of posting profiles of fictitious potential dating partners on its Web site to make it look as though many more singles subscribe to the service than actually do.
Yahoo did not respond to requests for comment.
Read full article.

Australia To Standardize Fish Names

(image from SAIS Galactic Guidebook)

A research group said Friday it hopes a list of standard fish names in Australia would be nationally accredited by Christmas.
Seafood Services Australia has been compiling the seafood list for five years with the aim of resolving confusion over the way imported and local fish are sold to processors and the public, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The new system will clarify the difference between types of fish like snapper and squire, according to Allen Snow, of Seafood Services Australia.
Read article.

Have Geeks Gone Mainstream?

(image from blog.outer.court)

Slashdot reports:
An anonymous reader asks: "Recently, I've been seeing more and more news stories about how 'geek' has gone mainstream. There have been a slew of articles with titles like Geek Pride and Geek Chic, which discuss how movies like 'The 40-Year Old Virgin' and 'Napoleon Dynamite', as well as television shows like 'Beauty and the Geek' have made it cool to be a geek...."

Recklessness Online!

CNET reports on how reckless teens can be in posting personal information online. Nah, it's not just the teens; most of us have no idea of the hazards that lurk in cyberspace for those who are careless.
CNET features a unique visual tool to show how this report also relate to other issues and how it fits in a 'big picture'. Very interesting!

USBee

Gizmondo says, buzz. This little baby is packing 130 honeycombs of storage data and transfers data at a blazing 300 buzzes per second. Puns are fun!

The Things They Say

Contact Music has a funny section on some of the things famous people blurt out. For example:

"Everything's better with bacon or brown sugar." Keen cook REESE WITHERSPOON offers a couple of culinary tips.

"It's just a bunch of letters that you don't recognise." GEORGE CLOONEY on learning Arabic for his new movie SYRIANA.

"PARIS wanted to be a veterinarian when she was younger... and she hates shopping." NICKY HILTON reveals two of her famous sister's top secrets.

Will Sony Make Amends for Infecting our Computers?

This is the question asked by Sory Electronics, a site that calls on Sony to apologize and make amends for its systematic infection of over 500,000 computer networks with a malicious trojan-horse rootkit that is sneakily installed on your PC when you try to play a Sony BMG CD.
Read article in Boing Boing.
Go to sory electronics/ website.
Timeline of the sony fiasco so far.

Cartoons

Tons of cartoon can be found at Amid Amidi's blog, Cartoon Modern.

Just Off My Head...

been tagged by blogginbizatch so i guess i gotta do this. off my head...here goes:

1. i am an incomplete human being - (bad) surgeon took my gall bladder.
2. i dont like chicken anymore. i hear they stuff them with antibiotics and growth hormones. i only eat spaghetti when there's nothing else to eat.
3. i can eat eggs and fish everyday.
4. my wife and i love horror and suspense movies. i like scifi, war and historical movies.
5. this blog helps keep my mind sharp and me updated. sedentary lifestyle has its way of making you feel you are deteriorating. dont wanna die an imbecile.
6. i love computers; love multimedia editing; recently fascinated with html.
7. i was so small in high school, in a soccer game where i was the goalie (foolish me), i caught the ball kicked by this huge forward, but the ball and me went inside the goal.
8. i wish i was an epidemiologist and a brilliant virologist. i'd get my hands on that darn h5n1 virus. i almost freaked out as i watched a bbc feature on bird flu several nights ago.
9. when we were young we had cats everywhere in the house. we played with them, slept with them, no, never ate with them.
10. i love sunsets. and i always have a deja vu when i see a red, cloudy sunrise by the sea - even on my might & magic 6 game!
11. ahhh....hungarian sausage and baked potatoes! and ice cream must have nuts and marshmallows.
12. i just hate computer viruses and spywares. i had to setup several of our office computers last month alone - that's everything: operating system, softwares, network, peripherals, etc (i even did one computer 3 times because it kept getting hit! beware of downloads).
13. im mostly silent; i have a few friends; but i love my wife's family and extended family. we such great time together as we gather regularly - uncles & aunties & nephews & nieces & children & grandchildren & inlaws & papa & mama & bros & sis...
14. im a christian and i want to be a good and commendable one. i respect other people's faith or beliefs. i want to live out my faith in such a way it benefits others and not cause harm or (as much as possible) offense.
15. im a collector. the 2 pages of my blog are collections of things that interest me.
16. melikes: bill oreilly, hannity & colmes, batista, john cena, jennifer connelly, wesley snipes, russel crowe, kate hudson, scarlett johannsen, hugh jackman, jessica biel, leonardo dicaprio, john travolta, anna kournikova
17. i don't dance
18. i dont like basketball
19. i dont like gamehouse online games - so boring
20. i dont like chatting - chatrooms are full of liars and useless chatter

Bird Flu Scare

Images from nana's blog.

Pet Eating Predators

Weasel-like predators called fisher cats -- voracious housecat-eating cousins to the ill-tempered wolverine -- have reportedly returned to Massachusetts.
The predators were largely eliminated in Massachusetts during the 1860s, but sightings have become increasingly common during the past decade.
The fisher cat weighed 11 pounds and was 23 inches long, with a bushy 15-inch tail.
Along with foxes and coyotes, the nocturnal animals pose a threat to cats and small dogs.

Changing Time Measurement?

Greenwich Mean Time would become an "irrelevance" if proposals to redefine how time is measured are accepted, an historian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, UK, has warned.
US scientists want to change the current system, which keeps clocks in sync with solar time by adding a leap second every 18 months or so.
UK scientists believe the meridian's role in time-keeping is under threat.
The Prime Meridian, which runs through Greenwich in south-east London, became the basis for the world's time-keeping in 1884. The decision stemmed from the work 200 years previously of the first English Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, who calculated that the Earth rotated on its axis once every 24 hours. That discovery meant that time could be defined by the Sun's position relative to a point on the Earth - in this case the meridian running through Greenwich.
It turned out that the Earth's rotation is ever so slightly slowing down. Since 1972 that anomaly was corrected by adding a so-called leap second when necessary.
read full article...

Ugly Cat?

Poor thing! No lovelife ahead.

A.I. and Face Recognition for Pictures

Wired News reports:
The field of online photo-sharing sites is becoming pretty crowded, but a new service hopes to distinguish itself by automating the tedious job of tagging pictures by using artificial intelligence and face-recognition technology.
Riya has developed software that can automatically recognize who is in a picture and tag it with their names.
I think that's just amazing!

How Stuff Are Being Made Videos - Weekly

Every Saturday, the National Association of Manufacturers of America (NAM) releases a video showing how their products are made.
Every Wednesday, they also feature a new poster (image).

Buffy and Lara See Female Sci-fi Viewers Outnumber Males

(scifi image from Dooffy World)

Female science fiction fans in UK now outnumber men for the first time - at 51 per cent.
The rise in "girl geeks" could be attributed to the proliferation of heroines such as Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena.
Adam Roberts, a science-fiction author and a professor in English at Royal Holloway, London University, said fantasy television programmes and films were becoming more character-led. "Programmes are moving away from the emphasis on machines and zombies in the 1960s," he said. "More women are tuning in to see the relationships develop between wittily-written, complex central characters they can identify with. A film like The Matrix attracted female viewers partly because it was about complicated concepts of life and death. It also had Keanu Reeves running around in leather, which helped."
There has also been an increase in positive female role models, whereas in Star Trek, all the women were either aliens or wore short skirts.

Fattening Up Skinny Toddlers Risks Heart Health

Toddlers who are skinny at age two, and then rapidly put on weight, are up to three times more likely to develop coronary heart disease as adults than their chubbier playmates, a new study suggests.
Read entire article.

'Start of Life' Gene Discovered

(Douglas Cootey's fractal called "Birth of Life")

Scientists have found the gene responsible for controlling a first key step in the creation of new life.
The HIRA gene is involved in the events necessary for the fertilisation that take place once a sperm enters an egg.
Faults in this gene might explain why some couples struggle to get pregnant despite having healthy sperm, say the researchers from the UK and France.
A slight mutation in the HIRA gene means that life does not even get started.
Although their work in Nature is based on fruit flies, the same genetic processes are present in humans.

How to Exercise An Open Mind

(image from Practice Based Evidence.)

Found this really helpful article:
Simply put, all one needs to grow his/her brain is to do unique, random, different, and ridiculous things as often as possible. One hour of increased brain activity via thinking a lot or experiencing new stimuli can make you smarter, more energetic, more creative, and more sociable. Here are some of activities they listed that can stimulate your brain:
1. Stimulate your ears differently. Try different music you haven't tried before: Classical, New Age, Zouk, Rap, Mariachi, Country. You don't have to like it at first, but if you keep an open mind, you can still find it interesting. Listen to a radio station you typically don't listen to.
2. Stimulate your eyes in new ways. Look at different art sites. Go to a cheap or free art gallery. Even if it's bad art, it can still be stimulating and thought-provoking.
3. Learn about different people and lifestyles. A great gateway into this is Wikipedia, where you can read articles on a wide variety of practices, such as Swinging, Wicca, the Green Party, Sunnis, Tutsis, and the Yakuza. Remember that these cultures of lifestyles may look absolutely ridiculous on the surface, but consider how many members they have worldwide.
4. Take unusual classes. Find a community college near you, pick up a catalog, and open your mind to learning things like Art History, Underwater Basketweaving, First Aid training, or Business Ethics. How about courses on Vampires and Werewolves, Meteorology, Nutrition, Japanese Pop Culture, etc.?
5. Open your mind to other political points of view. If you are a conservative,listen to Air American, read Alternet and watch some films of Michael Moore. If you are a liberal, listen to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, read the Washington Times or the InstaPundit, and watch Fox News. You may find it hard to stomach at first, but in time you might find a grain of truth in what your nemesis has to say. Even if you don't, you'll be able to argue with one of "them" much more intelligently.