Yesterday I thought it was funny that a writer typed an entire book on his cellphone. It seemed like a strange way to spend your time. But now there’s a contender – Dr. Jeannine Mosely, who found herself with 66,000 business cards and decided tot build a big Menger Sponge (yes, I said Menger Sponge. This isn’t a mistake), which is a fractal cubic structure. Click the link for cool-yet-nerdy photos and information.
Things People Do With Their Spare Time…
Let’s say you commute to work every day and you have some spare time. What do you do? Read a book? Listen to music? Doze off? Not Robert Bernocco, who used this time to type an entire 384-page science fiction book on his mobile phone using the T9 input method (the one where you only have the 9 numeric keys, not an entire keyboard). Now how about that for spare time usage? (via Lifehacker)
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu
Let’s see you say that 3 times in a row. This is actually the longest name place in the world. It seems like a very beautiful place, as you can tell from the picture.
Inbox Zero – Merlin Mann’s Video
My email Inbox folder at work currently holds 181 items. Most of them are there because they need some kind of a follow-up, but I can’t deal with them right now or the action to be taken is in the future. Merlin Mann is a well known figure in the productivity and GTD (Getting Things Done) world (Merlin Mann’s website). Recently he gave a great talk at Google, called Inbox Zero, which is the name of his system for handling very large amounts of email.
After watching the video and taking action I now have 21 items in my Inbox folder. Soon to be zero.
Crazy CAPTCHAs
CAPTCHA, or “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” (Wikipedia definition), is the de-facto standard of authenticating humans and telling them apart from machines on the Internet. However, some sites go way too far with CAPTCHAs, as these funny CAPTCHA examples show. (via Digg)
3D Mailbox Email Client – Good Or Bad?
3D Mailbox is an email client that visualizes the emails you get as people in a 3D environment. It is very hard to describe, so you can either read this Download Squad review of 3D Mailbox or see the 1 minute trailer (I didn’t get it until I read the review, though).
Download Squad, in a nice attempt to be impartial, interviewed the creator of 3D Mailbox, Robert Savage. It’s obvious from the interview that Mr. Savage believes his product is innovative and that outside-the-box-thinkers (and gamers) will sure like it. I guess only time will tell.
Funny Stuff That Makes YouTube Great
There has been a lot of talk about YouTube’s problem with protected (copyrighted) videos users upload to the site. However, YouTube has a lot of original content created by users. I believe that’s actually YouTube’s creators’ original intentions, but who knows.
One of these users calls himself Doctor Ashen. He creates his own original videos (all of his videos here), but I especially like his reviews of crappy electronics, both modern and oldies. Here are some examples:
- Barcode Battler
- MP4 Player
- Out Run Tabletop edition (do you remember Out Run? Great arcade game))
Complex Intersections Around The World (Including Israel)
I got this collection of complex intersections pictures and images by email before. Fortunately, someone put this on the Internet for us to see. Israel is in there, too :)
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?
The movie Matrix was based on the idea that we all live in a simulated world while being physically located inside incubator-type containers during our entire lives. Now named The Simulation Argument, here’s a website that discusses a paper on the possibility that we actually live in a simulated world and the debate that follows that paper. The abstract itself lays down the very intriguing idea:
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
Some Soft Drinks May Seriously Harm Your Health
I previously linked to an article about what happens to your body if you drink a coke. Now there’s a new study that “suggests a common preservative found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA”. Reading this was the last straw for me. Up until now I drank quite a lot of Diet Coke in an attempt to avoid the calories, but this is simply too much. A co-worker of mine classifies all these drinks as “poison”. I can see why now.
While I drink a lot of water during and after my workouts and during lunches, I still want something else sometimes. Since the health issue is more important than the calories issue, I (almost completely) switched to 100% pure orange juice. Hopefully this won’t come with a weight gain.