A brief history of the Middle East

Flash animation that summarizes thousand of years in a couple of minutes.

The reactivity of alkali metals

Back in my school days, our favorite science video was one from the BBC that displayed the increasing reactivity of the alkali metals as you descend the periodic table. Well, that video has now been replaced by the folks at Brainiac.

Update: Apparently the Caesium reaction may have been faked. Boo.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Make Einstein write whatever you want

They are made out of meat

Awesome video adaptation of a Terry Bisson short story.

Funny song, if you're a gaming geek

You need to watch up to at least the first minute and a quarter.

Calculate your carbon footprint

A handy calculator that will help you become carbon neutral. Do it now!

Riemann Hypothesis: alleged (dis)proof

From PostSecret:

I willingly withheld the greatest discovery in mathematics from the world...It is the solution to the Riemann Hypothesis...The Riemman [sic] Hypothesis is false. The prime number 2^13466971-1 is off the critical line.

How to build an Airbus A380 in about 7 Mins

I have a feeling that this is not something you can do at home.

Scanner Frequencies

I got to borrow a TV-capable scanner for a couple of weeks, and have found interesting listening from both public services and amateur hobbyists.

Online Depth of Field Calculator

Through the magic of Javascript: tell it what camera body you have, lens, f-stop and subject distance, and it will calculate DOF and other handy parameters.

The Wireless Music Player: Do-it-yourself remotely managed music player

Oooh! The WGT634 truly is a hacker's dream.

Best Buy Receipt Check: Epilogue - die.net

Tired of waiting to get out of Best Buy, Fry's and Costco for receipt verification? It's optional! Just walk out!

Anagrammed underground

This is wonderful. I laughed long.

1999 Mazda Miata Intake Manifold Maintenance Revisited

After a bout of 24 hour stomach flu, my ElmScan ISO arrived and told me that my intake manifold needed cleaning. $4 for a can of throttle body cleaner, some easy work, and I saved myself from having the car in the shop for a day.

Convert your Xbox to a NAS

Maybe there's hope for my broken Xbox.

Now that is a cool T-shirt

Cute Nessie logo, available on a variety of shirt types.
(via Preshrunk)

1999 Mazda Miata Intake Manifold Maintenance

I hope I don't have to do this.

OGLE: The OpenGLExtractor | OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D

Take your characters in WoW and 3D print them, or insert them into Google Earth.

Reading accelerator

This speed-reading tool displays one word at a time so you don't have to move your eyes. Paste your text into the box and watch it zip by. I found the default of 400 words per minute easy; 750 is acceptable, and 1000 is hard. I seem to recall that the human eye can handle 15fps, which would translate to 900wpm on this system.

W9WI.com - TV technical information

Find the locations of TV transmitters, so you can precisely aim things at them.