Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

In the spirit of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy and the various schools science TV shows of the 1970s, we bring you Monstrous Wildlife's first episode: The Graboid.

Monstrous Wildlife from Frank Robnik on Vimeo.

We can only hope for more.

Link time, as Scott Adams skewers the whole stolenlost iPhone 4G saga in two delightful strips. Sadly his buffer at the syndicate is so long, the earliest they could have run was the middle of June, by which time the story wouldn't have been funny.

As Scott says, "Take a moment to marvel at the fact that I didn't need to add anything to the story as it has been told in the media. All it really needed was Wally. I don't think any of us will ever know what really happened. I based the comic on the media's speculation of events. Remember that I'm in the parody business and not the truth business."

Is anything made funnier by adding Wally? I think we need to experiment...

We'd heard a few rumours from sources in the security community that something "really bad" was going down, but it seems that the news is out at last.

Someone has leaked Santa's Naughty List to the Internet at large.

Arweena, a spokes-elf for Santa Claus, admitted a few hours ago that the database posted at WikiLeaks yesterday is indeed the comprehensive 2009 list of which kids have been naughty, and which were nice. The source of the leak is unclear. It may have come from a renegade reindeer, or it could be the work of a clever programmer in the Ukraine. Either way, it's a terrible black eye for Santa. Arweena promised that in the future, access to this database would be restricted on a “need to know” basis. And you know who that means!

So, are you on The List?

It's Monday, so why not start the way we mean to go on, and by that I mean "with something completely nuts"?

For your daily recommended dose of insanity, here's something I found on IO9 this morning, a remixed trailer for Roland Emmerlich's 2012.

"Run away from plot! Run away from character! You just want some... Disaster!"


2012: THIS IS A DISASTER from Garrison Dean on Vimeo.

Gotta love those bongos!

Here's a fascinating Fortean Times piece on two Italian radio fans who managed to tap into the Russian (and American) space communications networks back in the early 1960s. In between charting the triumphs of the space race, they also recorded the last words of several cosmonauts - names and faces that have been erased from history.

A rather amazing story:

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed.

The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of flats. Grabbing their assorted pipes, along with a large toolbox, the two brothers ran up the stairs to the rooftop. Moments later, the city’s silence was rudely broken once more as they set to work: a concerto of hammering, clattering, sawing and shouting.

Suddenly, an angry voice rang out; the man who lived on the floor below leant out of the window and screamed: “Will you stop that racket, I’m trying to sleep!”

One of the young men shouted back “Sorry sir; the Soviets have launched a satellite and we’re trying to intercept it!”

Well worth a read. And well worth a pause for a few moments to remember those nameless pioneers.

"If Edward Gorey had written the Trouble With Tribbles"

"By Friday afternoon, the population had risen to a somewhat alarming number."

Check out comicbookdb.com, it's an IMDB-style catalogue and index for comics and graphic novels. As the site says:

ComicBookDB.com is the fastest-growing comic database on the web. The first goal of this project is to catalog every comic, graphic novel, manga, creator, character and anything else that could possibly relate to the field of comics.

They're looking for additional input, so if you've already catalogued your collection why not feed in the details (yeah, I know I need to do it to our collection, just to weed out the dupes). Let's hope it avoids the curse of the wiki, and turns into a useful resource.

Still, if you want to track down all the Stan Lee Spiderman issues, or attempt to track down the soap opera plot weavings of Chris Claremont's X-Men, this looks to be a place to start...

Link via digg

Need to complain about someone calling a number that is registered with the Telephone Protection Service?

Just click here for the official complaints form. It's worth bookmarking in case you need to get at it - and remember always ask for the name of the company calling you. Googling them can help fill out the form details quickly and easily.

Registering for BT's Privacy At Home will automatically put your number on the register, as well as enabling caller ID.

Sorry folks - it's UK only

I could never solve Rubik's Cube. Not even with a book.

If only the online Cube Solver had been around in the '80s. It'll even do 4x4x4 cubes. For added fun, there's a Java applet 3D graphical cube solver too. Scarily that will handle up to 6x6x6...

They'll take away my geek credentials for this...