Suspiciously dry out there. I can only assume the rain is being held back so there's enough for a proper deluge when I want to go out
Happy invoicing!
- Safebreaking - a concise History - "This is a condensed history of the British safe, the development of which came about mainly as the safemaker's response to the Victorian cracksmen whose skill and ingenuity with basic handmade tools was quite admirable." Interesting site on the evolution of safe design by John Mitchell; he also has a site on the use of explosives to crack safes, Peterman. Both of these found via Tim Hunkin's excellent lecture on the subject, Illegal Engineering.
- The Fantastic Machine That Found the Higgs Boson - Great gallery of images of the construction of the LHC.
- He’s throwing sandwiches. - Strange tale from Tottenham Court Road tube station: "I’m on the platform waiting for my central line train, and there’s half a dozen other people around – suits and briefcases, same as me. The odd newspaper. It’s quiet. A guy appears, just at the entrance to the platform. He appears sideways. In fact, he skids into view. And as he does so he lets out a phrase I will never forget, because he uttered it with such horror. He cries out: 'HE’S … THROWING SANDWICHES.'"
- The Great EBS Goof of 1971 - "At 10:33AM I heard the teletype machine ring ten bells. I'd heard a couple or three bells before, telling me of fairly common weather situations in the Central Texas area...tornadoes and such. But not in February. Ten bells was definitely not good news. I ran over to the next room, the news studio, and watched this come in..."
"EAN Message One" was the one announcing the commencement of nuclear war
- Just Another Day.. - Police blogger @TheCustodySgt recounts a typical day at work: "I park my car and enter the main building and then the airlock that grants access to the secure area. I open the second airlock door and enter the cell area. The ever present smell of bad feet, body odour and general uncleanliness assaults my nostrils. After 10 minutes, unless someone is particularly noisome, you become acclimatised and don’t particularly notice it."
- Where are you? - Interesting little challenge from Google researcher Daniel M. Russell: "Imagine the following situation: You've had a sudden episode of amnesia while on a trip and have suddenly just woken up in a strange place. You have no idea where you are. All you know is that this is the view out the window:
"Question: Where are you? Can you find the street address, in what building, in what city?
"For today's extra credit--can you figure out what office number and floor to send the medicine? How about the phone number? "
Here's his solution. It's jolly clever
- PHP The Right Way - "There’s a lot of bad information on the Web (I’m looking at you, W3Schools) that leads new PHP users astray, propagating bad practices and bad code. This must stop. PHP: The Right Way is an easy-to-read, quick reference for PHP best practices, accepted coding standards, and links to authoritative tutorials around the Web." Useful stuff.
- A New Computational Universe - Fredkin's SALT CA - "Edward Fredkin believes that a final grand theory of everything would be computational - that the universe is a computer. Now we have an example of an extremely simple computational system - a Cellular Automata - that has particles that attract and repel, orbit and decay with a half-life law." An interesting avenue of research.
- The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia - "How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape." Matt Taibbi on a significant financial corruption case. The usual suspects are all implicated ("GE, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more...").
- Grand Finale 2010-11 - McLean Fahnestock shot video of every Space Shuttle launch. Here they all are in one go
Happy invoicing!
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