Courtesy of slashdot I found this site. It contains a number of mpegs (1 to 1.5 Megs each) documenting the abilities of a new robotic visual tracking system that has been developed in a Japanese laboratory. Basically these videos show…
Author: onestring
Avarice
There is one thing that I envy about people who have insatiable avarice: Unlike for most of us where the answer to the question “What do I really, really, really want?” is tinted with shades of grey and changes with…
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride is one of those movies with something for everyone. I mean everyone. And I don’t mean the completely stupid “something for everyone” family movie crap that Disney churns out (like The Country Bears, for example). This is…
The Bavarian Purity Law of 1516
Germans have been brewing beer for over 800 years and in the year 1516 Duke Wihelm IV enacted the Bavarian Purity Law, ostensibly for the purpose of eliminating suspicious ingredients. It stated that beer can only be brewed from natural…
Favourite War Movies
To my mind, what makes a good war movie aside from the standard stuff that makes any movie good are two things: technical realism and a distinct lack of that American-style Hollywood bravado crap. A war movie without either of…
The savings saviour
The latest ING Direct television ad makes its pitch by appealing to viewers insecurity regarding the money (or lack thereof) they have tucked away for a rainy day and starts something like this: Experts say that you should save three…
Signs
This latest production of M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) is a brilliant work. If you haven’t seen it you should do yourself a favour and go. Humourous, nailbiting, and profound. I, for one, am going to pay to…
There’s one born every minute
As I’ve mentioned I keep an eye out for humourous (from my atheistic perspective) or otherwise moronic taglines posted on church billboards. This one was a doozy: “Believing in the good will of others saves so much time.” I wanted…
Rapturous Sinners
There’s a bumper sticker I’ve seen many times and every time I’ve seen it, something about it has rubbed me the wrong way. You’ve probably seen this bumper sticker too, as it seems to be staggeringly popular: “Warning! In case…
The nature of creativity
I don’t know if anyone has given much thought to this and I haven’t done any kind of research to determine if there is any clinical data to back it up, but for a long time now I have held…