Music
‘cool’ Archives
Putin Pretending To Be Tourist During Reagan’s 1988 Visit To Moscow
This is an amazing picture. See the guy with the camera around his neck standing behind the boy? That’s current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pretending to be a tourist when we know today that he was a KGB agent. (more...)
HOWTO: Create a bootable self-playing video disc
MoviX2 puts a tiny Linux system on a disc or thumb drive that boots up and plays almost any video file you burn it with, making a handy tool for demonstrations or less-than-capable computers. Yes, yes, we know—most people can simply use VLC Player, or burn a video to DVD. If you need to play a video on a system without a DVD drive, though, or [...]
HOWTO: Open keypad-access doors
Here's a fun little tip: You may open most Sentex key pad-access doors by typing in the following code: ***00000099#* The first *** are to enter into the admin mode, 000000 (six zeroes) is the factory-default password, 99# opens the door, and * exits the admin mode (make sure you press this or the access box will be left in admin mode!) I'm [...]
Secret message hidden in Lincoln’s pocket watch
Watchismo has the incredible story of an apocryphal anti-slavery message that a watchmaker hid inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch at the outbreak of the civil war: Dillon, working in a D.C. watch repair shop in 1861, told family members that he -- by incredible happenstance -- had been repairing Lincoln's watch when news came that Fort [...]
24 Solid State Drives in a RAID array
In a time when marketing is all around us, companies often have to come up with new and creative ways to get us excited. Some go the viral route, others hire famous spokes people. (more...)
HOWTO: Make your own background image for GRUB bootloader
No matter what distribution of Linux you’re using, the default GRUB bootloader background image is probably pretty generic. Or, maybe you just want to personalize it. Since your system isn’t booted very far, your tool set is rather limited, so there are strict requirements for the image. It must be exactly 640×480 It can only use up to [...]
Cool new Dutch coin
Matthew Dent's new coinage for the UK was pretty great, but this Dutch commemorative coin is a fully contemporary chunk of wow. (more...)
4085 square mile natural mirror
The world’s largest salt flat, the Salar de Uyuni in Southwestern Bolivia (near the crest of the Andes, 3,650 meters high), is one of the most exotic place scenery on earth. There is an estimated 10 billion tons of salt in the flats, 25 times the amount in the Bonneville Salt flats in Utah. (more...)
Kindle 2 teardown
The people at iFixit have shown that they’re still on top of their game by tearing down the new Kindle 2 eBook reader. The main processor is a 532MHz ARM-11 from Freescale. Interestingly, there isn’t any significant circuitry behind the large keyboard; it seems its existence is just to hide the battery.
$100 Linux wall-wart launches
Marvell Semiconductor is shipping a hardware/software development kit suitable for always-on home automation devices and service gateways. Resembling a "wall-wart" power adapter, the SheevaPlug draws 5 Watts, comes with Linux, and boasts completely open hardware and software designs, Marvell says. In typical use, the SheevaPlug draws about as [...]
Röyksopp’s new “Happy Up Here” video
If you were fooled (as I was) into thinking the cartoon fan vid that made the music blog rounds a few days ago was official, you've missed out: Röyksopp's actual debut video for their forthcoming Junior album is this glorious Reuben Sutherland-directed number which does real-life Space Invaders better than anything I've ever seen. (more...) [...]
Abandoned tunnel under Brooklyn
Unbeknownst to the thousands of people who walk and drive along the busy streets of downtown Brooklyn every day, they are treading on a 170 year old secret. At 17 feet high, 21 feet wide and 1,611 feet long, it is a big secret indeed, and one filled with greed, murder and corruption. Not long ago, M and I had the chance to go down a manhole in [...]
The Hofmeister Kink: A Lasting BMW Design Detail
Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest differences. They can carry powerful associations that aren't immediately obvious. Some good examples are: How your computer displays text, The $300 Million Button, and The difference a headline makes. The idea that a detail can make a big difference has always been fascinating to me. I've [...]
Google Maps uncovers the long lost city of Atlantis?
The site lies 620 miles off the west coast of Africa near the Canary Islands — a location for Atlantis seemingly suggested by the ancient philosopher Plato. He believed it was an island civilization sunk by an earthquake and floods around 9,700BC — nearly 12,000 years ago. The “grid” showed up on Google Ocean, a Google Earth [...]
Unblocking Adblock
If you’re using Firefox with the Adblock Plus extension installed what would you think of a site that implemented a site-wide script that unblocks ads which were blocked by Adblock Plus? See, a while ago, when the whole Firefox is blocked debacle was raging, I made some hand-waving statement about how easy it would be to circumvent [...]
Missile launcher: iPhone interface
Pedram sent us his USB missile launcher interface project. He happened to have some of the USB missile launchers lying around. having lost their initial draw, he wanted to do something to spice it up. He wrote an interface in python so he could control the launcher via his iPhone. We don’t see how this is any different than controlling them by [...]
Blackjack card-counting iPhone app is illegal in Las Vegas
Mark Milian of the LA Times reports on an iPhone application called A Blackjack Card Counter that has pit bosses in Vegas looking for people who keep their hands in their pockets. The $3.99 app has a feature, called stealth mode, that allows the user to easily operate the card counter with the phone concealed in a pocket. Simply press the right [...]
More copies of World of Goo sold when GNU/Linux version was released than any other day
I just noticed a small update on the 2D Boy’s announcement of the GNU/Linux version for World of Goo. Update 4: It’s only been 2 days since the release of the Linux version and it already accounts for 4.6% of the full downloads from our website. Our thanks to everyone who’s playing the game on Linux and spreading the word. Here are a [...]
Street Fighter IV Released Today
The wait is finally over. Long live the king. Debut trailer after the jump... (more...)
