Interesting Drug

Google announces hosting for open source projects:

“some badly needed competition for Sourceforge; an example project [via]’”

How to make a Tampon Blowgun (Misc.):

“Shoot tampons not bullets.”

Spaceinvaderstan:

“If only you could pick up one of these on your next trip to Kashmir (via Boing Boing):

Of course, if you’ve seen Fanaa you’d probably spring for a Half-Life weave. (That joke will be gotten by the world’s only other Bollywood-watching gamer.)

You can also play Space Invaders and Galaxian in your Web browser.

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Video: You can now watch “Star Wars” on Telnet:

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Video: You can now watch ‘Star Wars’ on Telnet. CNET News.com’s Nicole Girard shows you the command line to unlock a viewable ASCII version of the classic movie ‘Star Wars.’ So sit back, grab a tub of popcorn and enjoy the show.

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The 10 worst technologies in Q2 2006:

“Like with a bad movie that achieves cult status because it’s just that bad, we love to hate something about these unlucky products and downloadable duds from the past three months.”

How Baseball Bats are made:

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Pat writes in with this week’s ‘How it’s made’ video - ‘In honor of baseball’s All-Star game to be played next Tuesday at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, we present another video from our friends at South Carolina Educational TV of the making of that American classic, the Louisville Slugger. For fans and non-fans alike, this 9-minute video is fascinating. It traces the bats from billets (like small tree trunks) — made of white ash or maple — all the way through final sanding and branding. You’ll see the mass lathe and then the CNC lathe that cranks out thousands of custom-made bats for the professional athletes. The CNC lathe has pre-programmed requirements stored for each player. CNC — or computer numeric control — is in use in most manufacturing plants around the country, making all the latest stuff with computers. So when you settle in to watch the All-Star game, you’ll once again be watching the handiwork of America’s manufacturers. Without us, there wouldn’t be much action on the field or off.’ - Link.

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]”

Velcro being pulled apart:

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Trazy Anderson has an amazing photo @ 94x magnification of velcro, taken with Nikon SMZ1500 Stereomicroscope [via] - Link.

Related:

• More Microscopy photos - Link.
• Microscopy photo pool - Link.
• Poor man’s macro - Link.
• Science pool - Link.

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]”

Mayflies so thick they appeared on radar as a rainstorm:

“Cory Doctorow:
A record hatch of mayflies in LaCrosse, Wisconsin was so thick that it showed up on local weather radar as a rainstorm:

The bugs were so thick that they showed up as a rainstorm of mayflies on National Weather Service radar.

For about 1 1/2 hours starting at 9 p.m., the insects drifted north, with the radar showing them blanketing areas along the Mississippi River.

‘They were dive-bombing in the root beer floats,’ said Gary Rudy, owner of Rudy’s Drive-In, whose family has been slinging burgers and soft drinks since 1966.

Link

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

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The Steven Seagal Emotion Chart:

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Indian American kid breaks Pi record:

“Excerpt: ‘Gaurav Raja, a 15-year-old Indian American high school student, has memorised 10,980 digits of pi, a mathematical term representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to the diameter, to break a North American record.’”

Photographer sues after pic shows up on Burundi currency:

“Xeni Jardin:

Snip from a Photo District News story:

‘Freelance photographer Kelly Fajack claims in a lawsuit that one of his photos was reproduced without his permission on a currency note circulating in the central African nation of Burundi.’

Link (Thanks, xavier)

Reader comment: Rhys says,

If you do a google images search for ‘Burundi School’ the image in question is the 3rd to appear. It seems likely the bank note designer just did a google images search for inspiration! The google image search database is not updated nearly as often as the main database so it’s unlikely this result is a side effect of your story.

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Etch-A-Sketch art by George Vlosich III:

“David Pescovitz:

George Vlosich III creates insanely detailed Etch-A-Sketch illustrations, mostly of celebrities.
Link (via Drawn!)

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10.4: Run a Dashboard widget without installing it:

“Did you know that you can run a widget without permanently installing it?

After downloading (from Apple’s site or others) and expanding a widget, a double-click launches the widget installer. A dialog then appears with two options: Cancel and Install. Click Cancel, and nothing happens; click Install, and the widget is moved to your user’s Library/Widgets folder, ready for use in Dashboard.

However, if you hold Command and Option when the dialog is onscreen, the Install button will change to Run, allowing you to only run the widget. Select this, and it opens in the Dashboard layer, but it’s not moved to your Widgets folder. Ta-da!

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[Video] Funniest. Whose. Line. Ever:

“Yahoo“

Apple to Unveil New Leopard OS in August:

“Max Fomitchev writes ‘Looks like Apple is going to reveal its new cool and fast Mac OS code-named ‘Leopard’ in the upcoming World Developer’s Conference in August. Good news for Apple! And terrible news for Microsoft. If ‘Leopard’ is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient, in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple’s remarkable market share gain next year.’

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Barcodepedia - a Social Network Barcode DB:

“Thor Larholm writes ‘Barcodepedia is a community-based online barcode database, where everybody can contribute whichever barcodes they have lying around on their crowded desks simply by holding it in front of your webcam. The database is completely free to use, and everyone is invited to participate. The site should be available in French, Russian, German and Swedish within a week, so get all your friends and go to your local store with a laptop for massive fun. Donations of cuecats and other specialized scanners are welcomed.’ Anyone who’s read Bruce Sterling’s book Shaping Things may immediately think of Sterling’s concept of ’spimes’ — for those who haven’t, Sterling’s 2006 SXSW address explains a bit, too. (It’s easy to create your own barcodes, too — and then, not quite as easily, you can use them to control your house.)

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DIY Throwing Stars: For the Ninja on a Budget:

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Got some old blades? Are you a ninja looking to trim costs (no pun intended)? Then follow these quick and easy steps at Instructables to create some wicked, evil-looking throwing stars.

We’d tell you that you should use caution when screwing around with sharp metal, but if we have to do that, we might as well start warning you about other obvious shit, like how you can’t really walk off of cliffs and survive, a la Wile E. Coyote. Or how angry, rabid wombats should not be used as hackeysacks. So we’ll just skip that and assume (hope) if you made it this far in life, you’re okay. However, if you are that stupid, then please: oncoming buses really do want to give you hugs. Big squeezy warm ones.

DIY, metalworking, ninja“