April 25, 2005
Follow up: Berkeley Professor told Porky Pies?
According to this follow up story on the Berkeley Profeesor and the stolen laptop, the laptop hasn't yet been recovered, and the professor may have been a little, erm, economical with the truth in some of the ways he claimed it was being tracked. The Inquirer does their usual hatchet job, though: the headline "Redfaced professor made up scary story" isn't actually backed up by the story, which claims that he "may have exaggerated his story a tad.".
But strangely enough, the story that the Inquirer based it on (which was run by ABC news) seems to have been pulled: it's not even in the Google News cache anymore.
Posted by baggers at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2005
Note To Self: Never Steal A Berkeley Professor's PC
So some bright spark at Berkeley decided to steal a professors notebook PC, supposedly to gain access to a forthcoming exam paper. But what this twit didn't realize is that the professor had all sorts of private data on there, and that he'd report it to the FBI, SECC, etc... And, being a Berkeley preofessor, he was smart enough to understand how to track it using the wireless connection. And I always thought you had to be smart to get into fancy colleges like that...
Posted by baggers at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
The Remote Control Rat
According to We Make Money Not Art, researchers have wired a rat for remote control. They trigger centers of the brain with electrical impulses, then train the rat to move accordingly. Press the left curosr key, the rat moves left, etc. They've also mounted a camera on the back of the rat so they can see where it is going.
The intention is to train the rats to sniff out explosives, so a potential explosive device could be tracked down by a pack of explosive-sniffing rats. Just as long as the terrorosts don't use a dummy cheese-scented bomb, we should be fine....
Posted by baggers at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2005
This Blog is More Good than Evil
Personally, I'm surprised: I would have thought that I'd be more skewed towards evil. but I guess I'm really just a goody-goody without realizing it...
Perhaps if I posted more rude words. Like bottom...
Posted by baggers at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2005
I can see my house from here...
Have I told you how much I like Google Maps? It's a beautiful piece of web design: clean, useful and simple. Now they've added satellite imagery to it, so you can zoom in on your own house. If you look really closely at our house, you can just about make out me and Fester going for a walk...
Posted by baggers at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
French drivers should be more like the English?
I find this a little hard to swallow, having been nearly mown down numerous times in London by taxi drivers, bus drivers and various lunatics riding bikes...
French motorists are being urged to copy British drivers and their "legendary civility" during a national road courtesy day on Thursday.The government-backed campaign says the "British recipe" explains why it has some of the safest roads in Europe and far fewer road deaths than France.
Posted by baggers at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
How much is that doggy in the window? The one with the huge bat-shaped ears?
My wife sent me a link to this dog with the message "come fly with me". LuAnn is a Chihuahua & Dachshund mix who is looking for a good home, but I think she really deserves a part in a Harry Potter film...
Posted by baggers at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)
Cool type collage tool
This is pretty cool: type in a word and it builds a type collage of the word from images. It's based on the Yahoo API, which allows you to access the search engines inner workings within a script. Clever stuff!
Posted by baggers at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
Reflecting on the Moon
Thirty five years, ago, men walked on the moon. When they came back to earth, they left a few things behind (including, apparently, a number of very expensive cameras). One thing that they left is a laser refelctor that is still going strong and has just been used to prove one of the principles of General Relativity...
Posted by baggers at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)