Alternating between continuous light drizzle and bright sunshine today, out here on the farm 
Happy invoicing!
- Wilde in the Office - "A hundred and twenty five years ago, Oscar Wilde edited a fashion magazine, his first and only office job." Interesting look at how Wilde approached the business of, well, business, by Kaya Genç in the Los Angeles Review of Books. As one might expect, Oscar was not hidebound by convention
- Man Carries the Amputated Arm of His Twin Transplanted to His Chest - "Ryan and Dave from Phoenix, Arizona, are surely the most unique twins in the world. They do not only share the same DNA, but their bodies also. Literally. After getting tired of piercing, tattoos and implants about three years ago, they went experimenting much 'heavier' surgical modifications." By the way, how's your lunch?
- The Invisible Bicycle Helmet - "Design students Anna and Terese took on a giant challenge as an exam project. Something no one had done before. If they could swing it, it would for sure be revolutionary." After about seven years and ten million dollars, they really have come up with something remarkably clever.
- GCHQ's support to London 2012 - A day in the life - "I’ve been working full time on GCHQ’s Olympics response for three and a half years now. In the early days I was based in Cheltenham, but it didn’t take me long to realise that the focus of the Government’s response to the London Games was centred around Whitehall and Canary Wharf. If GCHQ was going to deliver a professional and comprehensive response to this huge event, we needed to be represented at the numerous security meetings there." Turns out being a spy is pretty dull.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs - "I’ve started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. I’ve invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others. I can tell you overall, though, everything I have done has been distinguished by its mediocrity, its lack of a grand vision, and any success I’ve had can be just as much put in the luck basket as the effort basket." Finally, advice on being at least a bit successful for the rest of us.
- The Bonzo Dog Band: Rare and Complete Version of "The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage" - "For Bonzo Dog fans, this is the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. The original edit and soundtrack of The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage - the rarely seen Bonzo Dog Band film from 1969. It’s the Bonzo’s own Magical Mystery Tour (yes, I know they were in that), a film with no real story, just a day-in-the-countryside, with some children and a farm. You’d probably get arrested for trying something like that now…" More good stuff emerging from the archives
- Pearls Before Breakfast - "Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out." Cool experiment by the Washington Post: take one of the world's finest classical musicians, and send him and his Stradivarius out to busk some of the most beautiful music ever written to the rush-hour crowds on the Washington Metro. How much will he make?
- Is There a Limit to How Tall Buildings Can Get? - "The race is always on. Within the span of just two years, the world's tallest building was built three times in New York City – the 282.5-meter Bank of Manhattan in 1930, the 319-meter Chrysler Building in a few months after, and then 11 months later the 381-meter Empire State Building in 1931. The era of architectural horse-racing and ego-boosting has only intensified in the decades since." Nate Berg asks the architects and engineers of recent tall buildings how high they think they can get.
- How to crawl a quarter billion webpages in 40 hours - "More precisely, I crawled 250,113,669 pages for just under 580 dollars in 39 hours and 25 minutes, using 20 Amazon EC2 machine instances." Michael Nielsen explains in great detail how he implemented his baby Googlebot, with good analysis of the many considerations involved.
- Behind the scenes of Frankenstein, 1931 - 1939 - Great collection of photos taken between shots on the sets of the classic Frankenstein movies. Time for tea:
Happy invoicing!
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