Dropping like Flies

No link. Just a sad comment that Michael Crichton died on Tuesday 4th November aged only 66. Forget the newer stuff like ER and Jurassic Park, good as it is, classics like The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man and Westworld are one of the reasons I got into Science Fiction in the first place.

Amazon Window Shopping BETA

Now this is a new interface for amazon shopping. Fairly easy to figure out: use the arrow keys to move around and the spacebar to zoom in/out. I didn't like the way I was forced up to the top of a column when I moved sideways. I wanted to stay part-way down the column where I was

The "Mojave Experiment"

Microsoft are making a noise about their recent The "Mojave Experiment" where they trick people into testing a "new" operating system and then when they like it, telling them it was really Windows Vista all along. Vista has a bad reputation and people who have never tried it have been saying they don't like it, hence the experiment to overcome their resistance.

Countdown to Doomsday?

This article in New Scientist Space gives details about the Large Hadron Collider's switch on date and a timetable for the early experiments.

10th September 2008 First Injection and testing of the LHC starts

The protons might get just a few metres into their 27-km circuit before veering off course and being lost, so the operations team will adjust the magnets and try again with a fresh beam until they have systematically threaded the protons around the entire machine. That could take from a few hours to a few days with a crew working around the clock. Then, the team will have to do the same for the beam in the other direction.

The next challenge will be to get the beams in a stable orbit for several hours at a time. Only then can CERN contemplate ramping up the energy to 5 TeV and finally bringing the counter-rotating beams head on at a collision energy of 10 TeV.

If luck is on their side, that should take place around the time of the official LHC inauguration on 21 October.

In early 2009, the protons are set to collide at the full energy of 14 TeV.

Aluminium Foil Helmet's anyone?

Are you an idiot?

On first attempt I didn't even make the first level. On second attempt I end up as Smart but not fast.

Cuil - Hot or Not

New Search Engine launches about a week ago. Some nice features and some poor results. Has sparked some interesting comments and articles http://www.wxpnews.com/?id=339

Ooh, I found something shiny

While trawling through the forums for xkcd I found a reference to drawball and wondered what it was. Turns out it's a Flash application that allows anyone to draw on a ball (actually a circle), which sounds fairly naff but isn't.

To draw, you have to zoom in - the zoom level is 4096 times the size of the full circle. You get given a limited amount of ink and can change nib size and colour using simple controls. The amount of ink you have available decreases as you draw and increases over time. Many people are drawing on the ball at the same time and because of this, nothing is permanent.

There are some surprisingly good pieces of art considering the rudimentary tools available and there is a showcase of these at the drawball hall of fame.

Finally a new feature is the drawball playback which shows a history of what the ball looked like at a speed of 40 hours per second.