lowculture: HMM, THAT WAS A BIT QUICK, WASN'T IT?

I'm with Tania on this one

Bastard!

Christopher Ecclestone has quit as Doctor Who after just one episode of the new show, and just as it is confirmed a second series has been commissioned.

"Actor Christopher Eccleston has quit as Doctor Who after just one episode of the new series has been screened, the BBC has confirmed.
Eccleston, whose first appearance as the ninth Time Lord attracted around 10 million viewers, feared being typecast. "

You have to ask yourself what the hell he took the role for in the first place. Surely he realised that there would be an expectation that there would be several series of the show. It hardly bodes well for the future if withon one season of the show they are already replacing the leading man.

Have GPS will travel

Now that doctor who has had a bit of a comeback, why not use those GPS units you got for Christmas and never use to track down one of the 237 remaining Police call boxes dotted around the country

There's even a Geocaching competition to track them down

How cool is this??

Sonycameras save pictures by default with the prefix DSC00

Here's a Google image search that lists a yheap of these saved to the web

Knight Moves Problem

Knight Moves Problem

Goddess with 100ft breasts to rival Angel of the North

Sculptor Charles Jencks plans creating a giant Goddess of the North from waste material generated by open cast mining.

The Sunday Times - Britain



March 27, 2005

Goddess with 100ft breasts to rival Angel of the North
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor



FIRST came the Angel of the North. Now motorists using the A1 are to be confronted with the far earthier figure of a giant reclining “goddess” stretching her curves alongside nearly half a mile of the dual carriageway.
The woman, with breasts and hips up to 100ft high, will be created 10 miles north of Newcastle from the waste material generated by open-cast mining, with each of her enormous curves concealing millions of tons of mining spoil...

The idea for the goddess emerged when the Banks Group, a mining and property company, realised there were millions of tons of valuable coal lying under farmland on the Blagdon estate near Shotton, Northumberland.

The site was, however, sandwiched between the East Coast main railway line and the busy A1. With more than 100,000 motorists and rail users passing by each day there were guaranteed to be protests if the landscape were scarred by mining.

They contacted Jencks after his landscaping for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art won the 2004 Gulbenkian prize for museum of the year.

Jencks said: “When most mining companies finish at an open-cast site, they fill it and turn it back into farmland. We wanted to do something that would give back something positive to the community.”

The huge scale of the goddess, particularly the millions of tons of spoil that will have to be moved to create her face, breasts, hips and thighs, would make the project impossibly expensive if it were attempted anywhere else. Open-cast mining, however, relies on some of the biggest earth-moving machinery ever made and Banks has pledged to allow Jencks whatever he needs.

A Banks spokesman said the figure would become the centrepiece of a “land-art park” with footpaths wending their way over and around the goddess.

I think that's a fantastic idea. Open cast mining creates a horrible amount of waste and this seems a really good way to deal with it.

I particularly like the fact that the resulting earthwork could last for thousands of years - who knows, in a thousand or more years time people may wonder about our beliefs as exemplified by the Goddess

British Heart Foundation - Sponsorship Page

We finally got confirmation from the British Heart Foundation that we have a place in the London - Brighton Cycle ride on June 19th, so all the training to date has been worthwhile.

I have set up a sponsorship page, where anyone can make an online donation to this great cause. Please give generously so that I can raise plenty of money.We finally got confirmation from the British Heart Foundation that we have a place in the London - Brighton Cycle ride on June 19th, so all the training to date has been worthwhile.

I have set up a sponsorship page, where anyone can make an online donation to this great cause. Please give generously so that I can raise plenty of money.We finally got confirmation from the British Heart Foundation that we have a place in the London - Brighton Cycle ride on June 19th, so all the training to date has been worthwhile.

I have set up a sponsorship page, where anyone can make an online donation to this great cause. Please give generously so that I can raise plenty of money.

Photography | Erik Lacson

Fancy some cheery heartwarming pix for Easter - how about Philipinos nailing themselves to crosses for Holy Nailing Day.

You see that's the trouble with holy books, they always incite copycat violence

They should ban it. Otherwise we'll have the children doing it next

Netdisaster.com

Have fun firing disasters at webpages

Yahoo! Search - Creatively Common

Yahoo have created a search engine for searching creative commons content.

Not sure why I would use that rather than Creative commons' own search facility, but there you go

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou
Originally uploaded by whoozee.

Testing this cos my m8 Paul's setting up his blog and needs to know how to post pix

Remains of ancient Egyptian seafaring ships discovered

The first remains of ancient Egyptian seagoing ships ever to be recovered have been found in two caves on Egypt's Red Sea coast, according to a team at Boston University in the US.

They seem to think that the items, found in man made caves, date to the reign of Queen Hatsepsuut, who allegedly made a naval journey to a mysterious incense producing land called Punt

1984 Apple Newsweek Advertising Insert

Interesting little flashback to the Macs of 1984

In the Fall of 1984 Apple published a 16-page (with fold-out) advertising insert in Newsweek magazine. For many, this was the first “up-close” experience with a Macintosh — detailing the radical features of this new computer. The Macintosh was obviously evolving during the production of this insert as applications, icons and even hardware change from one photo to the next (and are often different from what actually made it to the shipping product). Also, in stark contrast to more recent advertising, this brochure actually makes direct comparisons to the competition with ample text to go along with the pictures.

Pimp My Safari

Don't know about you, but Safari's my main browser at home (not at work where I'm cursed to work on Windows and IE 6.0).

I've tried Firefox, but somehow it isn't quite aquafied enough for my liking, although I do like the plugin architecture and it's the only thing I really wish Apple would add to Safari.

Well here comes a site that aims to help in this direction

Fur up your iBook

Go on, you know you want to - I'd love to, but I'm too poor to own one. Does anyone want to donate one to me??

Go on, you know you want to

Worried that Big Brother might be watching you

Use the virtual browser to bypass firewall and proxy limitations - dead useful

Matt Facer.com - Finger Twister

Have a go at playing finger twister on your monitor - loads of fun

Budding musicians take note

Anyone with Garageband can now enter a competition to come up with the best song using 100 Apple loops from Tune media. The best bit is that the loops are free

Guess which arrogant bastards need a slap

Of course, you guessed it, it's everyone's favourite evil empire run by Darth Gates himself, it's Microsoft.

After hearing from Microsoft's competitors, the EU's antitrust office found that the system the company had set up to improve the interoperability between its Windows server and other software companies was insufficient, the AP report said.

"Based on the market tests, it doesn't seem to be working at all," EU spokesman Jonathan Todd was quoted as saying.

More fun with Flickr

Something else you can do with Flickr - you get a colour wheel and can pick picturs based on their predominant colour cast

Lunar Wheel Calendar.

The years getting on a bit, so it's a bit late, but how's this for a different idea for an age old problem



Quite a neat alternative calendar

PostSecret

Ever wanted to get something off your chest? well now you can. Pop it on a postcard and send it to Post secret who will put it up on their website.

Peggy's Antiquated Recipes

Have a look at some truly awful recipes from the past.

Where's Santa Deliana when you need her?

Flickr Postcard Browser

This is quite nice - type in some random words and this page will display a heap of pictures that have been tagged with the words in Flickr - cool

Effect of fluoridation of water on teeth

Now I thought Fluoride was supposed to be good for your teeth, but now it turns out it's not

So did all those water companies and toothpaste manufacturers lie to us in order to keep dentists in business - the bastards

Hours of fun and laughter for your children

What do you get the child who has everything??

How about a doll that simulates a baby hooked on drink and drugs and goes through nightly cold turkey.

"The dolls simulate the appearance of babies born with foetal alcohol syndrome and addicted to drugs
They shake and scream as they go through withdrawal and teenagers in the area will be asked to look after them single handedly for two nights…

… Linda Porter, from the charity on Teesside, said: "They are very much thinner than the normal baby doll, the chest is very caved in and internal organs are a lot smaller and the drug baby goes through withdrawal symptoms …

… Ms Porter said: "The teenagers beg quite often but the dolls can't be turned off.

"You can tell young people many times about the effects of drugs and drink and then they are given these babies and see the effects for themselves."

Sounds like a laugh a minute. Guess we won't be needing tiny tears any more

Say hello to Frankenmouse

Scary scientists in the US are planning to breed mutant mice with human brains…

Well, nearly - they have already succeeded in breeding mice with approx 1% human brain cells now they are planning to produce mice with 100% human brain cells to better understand the development of brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimers.

The ethics of it are a bit cloudy, let alone possible worries should any of these animals get loose in the wild.

"Should two such 'chimera mice' mate, it could lead to the nightmarish scenario of a human embryo trapped in a mouse's womb. William Cheshire, a neurology professor from the Mayo Clinic in Florida and a Christian activist, has called for a ban on any research that destroys a human embryo to create a new organism."

100 and 1 uses for an ASBO

Britain, it seems, is in love with issuing ASBOs to people to stop them engaging in antisocial behaviour. The BBC has a list of ASBOs and threatened ASBOs.

My favourite is the Scotsman who has been banned from Tesco garages for sniffing petrol fumes and dancing around the forecourt.

Brian Taylor, 36, terrorised staff and customers after cutting pipes, sniffing petrol and dancing unnervingly. His habit of slashing hoses didn't particularly help his case after customers ended up soaked in fuel.

Dances unnervingly … what on earth could that be?

Take that you no-good bio-pirates

Nice to see there's been a big setback for bio-pirates, those companies that raid traditional knowledge and patent anything worthwhile.

The European Patent Office has disallowed a patent on the medicinal properties of the Neem plant

But the Indian government successfully argued that the medicinal neem tree is part of traditional Indian knowledge.

The winning challenge comes after years of campaigning and legal efforts against so-called "bio-piracy".

Leading the campaign in the neem case was the EU Parliament's Green Party, India-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).

This historic precedent must be further developed

Linda Bullard, IFOAM
"Denying the patent means upholding the value of 'traditional' for millions of [people] not only in India but throughout the South. The free tree will stay free," said RFSTE director, Dr Vandana Shiva.

How arrogant can you get??

Over 100 Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) have signed an online petition that demands Redmond resume development and support of "classic" Visual Basic, a-k-a VB6.

This is because VB7 or .Net as it knows breaks all the programs written on earlier versions of VB.

Interesting that if Microsoft is this casual with it's most valuable professionals, how's it gonna treat the rest of us.

If any of these professionals had any sense they'd look to see if there's an open source alternative and ditch Microsoft for good

Listen to a serial killing whacko

Here's some nice light audio to fall asleep to. Serial killer Ted Bundy talking to the police