BBC News – Gravity satellite yields ‘Potato Earth’ view
It looks like a giant potato in space.
And yet, the information in this model is the sharpest view we have of how gravity varies across the Earth.
The globe has been released by the team working on Europe’s Goce satellite.
It is a highly exaggerated rendering, but it neatly illustrates how the tug we feel from the mass of rock under our feet is not the same in every location.
And so did the builder of this car it would seem. It’s very retro, though I think the metalflake paint has been augmented with the colour shift stuff found on TVRs (and Nissan Micras, for some reason).
I doubt it goes to many shows in Germany.
It makes me want to buy some old issues of Custom Car or Street Machine.
Most o0f the pictures I took at the indoor classic car show on Sunday are quite noisy because I didn’t use the flash or think to go to full manual and tinker with ISO, aperture etc.. However, there are a few of them in this Flickr set.
Lionsgate UK Remaking ‘The Professionals’ – Deadline.com
The UK arm of Lionsgate will start pre-production on its big-budget remake of cult 1970s British TV series The Professionals this fall. The action series about secret agents was a hit across Europe and in Australia but never made it to the U.S. The series was hatched by The Avengers creator Brian Clemens and made local stars of actors Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins, who played the agents. Gordon Jackson — best known as the butler in Upstairs Downstairs — played their dour Scottish boss.
Ford Escort RS2000 Cosworth. Total boy racer car which isn’t at all practical and would struggle to carry my bike (one of the key functions of any car I’d buy). But it is cool in its own silly way.
Scottish gnome, in fact.
I sall be returning to the space between Deansgate,and Castlefield with my proper camera some time soon. The area is ripe for an architectural wander.
Because he can’t get in to the beer festivsl either.
On a statue of sheep. His card has the old blogspot address on it.
Porcelain hands with a special grip. Perhaps they’ll hold candles, to up the innuendo potential.
13 Assassins by Takashi Miike.
Takashi Miike’s films tend to be absolutely nuts, running on their own, very bizarre, logic. From the trailer this one appears to be almost normal, though still awesome.
Here are a few of the ideas I’ve been sketching for the cover of Slashed. I’m thinking of going with one of the ones featuring the mask. Scream 4 is released next month and I reckon I can get the book out at about the same time and be cheeky and milk it a little.
As a bit of off the wall promotion for Slashed I’ve decided to have a go at creating miniature figures of as many of the characters as possible. These will be based upon existing 28mm gaming figures adapted and painted to suit. So I’ve had an enjoyable few hours this week surfing gaming sites and ordering the first few figures. I’d just like to recommend Heresy Miniatures and Hasslefree Miniatures, both of whom turned around my orders quickly and got them to me within a couple of days. They also packed sweeties with the deliveries, and that sort of thing works for me every time.
Manchester Blitz – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Manchester Blitz (also known as the Christmas Blitz) was the heavy bombing of the city of Manchester and its surrounding areas in North West England during the Second World War by the Nazi German Luftwaffe. Manchester was an important inland port and industrial city during the war, and Trafford Park in neighbouring Stretford was a major centre of war production.
A few weeks ago my lovely friend Charlotte signed me up for My Single Friend. Unfortunately it seems that I’m just as shy about talking to new people online as I am off. Today my not so lovely, but still loveable, friend Dan has been haranguing and embarassing me into sending some messages out. How do you sound interesting and not creepy by email?
The Asus Eee Slate 12.1 Inch Tablet PC
By the time I can afford to seriously consider a tablet there’ll have been another generation or two of them and the choices will be wider still.
Hormesis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hormesis (from Greek hórmēsis “rapid motion, eagerness,” from ancient Greek hormáein “to set in motion, impel, urge on”) is the term for generally-favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A pollutant or toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses as in large doses. A related concept is Mithridatism, which refers to the willful exposure to toxins in an attempt to develop immunity against them.
In toxicology, hormesis is a dose response phenomenon characterized by a low dose stimulation, high dose inhibition, resulting in either a J-shaped or an inverted U-shaped dose response. Such environmental factors that would seem to produce positive responses have also been termed “eustress”.
There’s a lot of discussion of radiation from the Fukushima plants, along with comparisons to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Radiation levels are often described as “
A new report, the Adriaenssens Commission, has come out on the scale of child rape by Catholic Priests within Belgium. The results are horrific, with reports of children as young as two being abused, three quarters of parents being afraid of the consequences of reporting the Priest to the authorities, sexual abuse in every congregation in Belgium and evidence that even now cultural barriers are preventing many cases from coming to light.
Of course, you wouldn’t know this from the statements made by the Pope. One of the most offensive and infuriating parts of the Catholic Church child rape saga is the complete inability of the Catholic Church to admit that the Church has causative responsibility for the abuse. Instead they acknowledge that abuse is bad, but in the same breathe blame homosexuality and “a few bad apples”. The Church must know that the first excuse is a blatant scapegoating attack and the second excuse is the entire reason that the child rape saga has continued since time immemorial.
I’d rather like to do some timelapse photography, but I’m not very organised. What I’d like to see is a timelapse box. There’d be a camera, of course, but it would be stuck in there with a processor and memory.
I’d be able to mount the box where I wanted to, set a few basic parameters and leave it be. It would take photos at the intervals I choose, save them and even stitch them together into an ever growing video. What I’d also like it to do is generate a composite photo from a set of shots. For example, one shot is taken at the same time every day and a sliver of pixels- proportional to that day’s share of the image width- is added. At the end I’d have a version of the normal view but with a sampling of every day’s conditions. It would work best if the photos were taken at 5 or 6 in the morning so you’d get a sunrise/sunset effect.
Obviously the box would be accessible over a home network and possibly the internet, so I could check in and take backups. I know this is basically a glorified webcam, so it may already exist. If so, can anyone tell me about it.
Beretta Cx4 Storm – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Beretta Cx4 Storm is a pistol-caliber carbine aimed at the sporting, personal defense and law enforcement markets. Seven different models accept full-size Beretta magazines from the 92/96, Cougar, and Px4 series pistols in 9×21 IMI (its original caliber), 9x19mm Parabellum, .40 S&W and .45 ACP.
The Beretta Cx4 Storm is the civilian version of the Beretta Mx4 Storm.[1]
So excessive, in fact, that it has eaten through the cans in several places. I might have bagsy’d them otherwise.