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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Alien Abduction
Use your UFO to collect people and cars to return to your mothership before the time runs out. [via Milk and Cookies]
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Camperstrike
Shoot the moving targets in this Counter Strike inspired flash game. [via zFilter]
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Alien DJ's
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Control the decks and a large amount of different samples in this Shockwave game. The aliens do talk as well but I have no idea what they say. I'm not sure if it's a foreign language or just jibberish. [via The Ultimate Insult]
The Squished Penny Museum
"Squished (or elongated/smashed/pressed/rolled) pennies are cents that have been rolled in a special machine to create a souvenir. The penny is put through a pair of hardened steel dies, one or both of which is engraved with a design. The penny is squished between these dies, or rollers, with 22 tons of pressure, causing the design to be impressed upon the coin."
The Squished Penny Museum is a penny squishers heaven. Based in the living room of a house in Washington, DC, USA, and contains hundreds of different squished pennies. The site gives you a taster of what can be found at the museum. [via Linkfilter]
The Independent Makes Newspaper History
For the first time in newspaper history, The Independent is available in two sizes. The familiar broadsheet version is now on sale in the Greater London area alongside a new tabloid format, making The Independent the only newspaper in the world to offer its readers a choice.The handier version of The Independent Britain's only quality tabloid paper contains everything you will find in the broadsheet. That means every story, every columnist, every picture, every feature. It will have the same distinctive look and feel and will be informed by the same qualities as the broadsheet, and will be sold, Monday to Friday, in the UK at the same price of 60p.
It will be available initially at retail outlets within the M25 area, but we hope to extend distribution to other areas in the future.
I think this is great idea that I hope will be emulated by other broadsheets. In the UK people associate tabloid newspapers as being an inferior read when compared to the broadsheet newspapers. The Independent will hopefully change this viewpoint.
When it comes to buying products consumers have so much choice, they can choose between sizes, colours, quality, etc. Newspapers are the one prduct where consumers have no choice at all over what they are buying. The Independent has noticed this and has taken the plunge and will offer consumers a choice without losing out on quality or content.
The Banana Lunch Box
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A German man has invented a special lunch box for bananas. Detlef Kruse says he came up with the idea to protect his lunch time snack."I'd take a banana in to work each day, and eventually, you get angry because they end up all brown and mushed up," he said.
The curved, bright yellow container, named Banabox, measures about 9.8 inches from tip to tip and has a two inch diameter.
Priced at about £2.70p, the box is sold via the company website at www.banabox.de.
[via Ananova]
Monday, September 29, 2003
The World Black Pudding Throwing Championships
Following yesterday's post about The First Open Computer Destruction Championship, here's another weird contest.
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The Royal Oak pub in the village of Ramsbottom, near Bury, Greater Manchester, hosted the World Black Pudding Throwing Championship.Pub regular Nick Connor, of Ramsbottom, won the competition after knocking down a maximum of six Yorkshire puds with his three throws.
Organiser Phil Taylor said: "We have had a really good crowd here and teams from Turkey, Australia, New Zealand and Mongolia - sadly they're rubbish compared with the British! We still lead the world in black pudding throwing!"
Black pudding is generally described as a regional delicacy consisting of cooked pigs' blood, fat and rusk, encased in a length of intestine. It first arrived in the UK centuries ago with some European monks who first visited Yorkshire before making the trip over the Pennines to Lancashire where the food was given the name black pudding.
[via Ananova]
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Travel In Comfort
Travel in comfort with these modified and street legal pieces of furniture by the company that made the trolley for Jackass The Movie.
If you're a workaholic you can even travel to work whilst sorting out some the paperwork in your very own office car.
The Bra Ball
Facts about the Bra Ball (as of Feb 28, 2003):
Total Bras on BraBall = 10,103
Height = 48 Inches (4 feet)
Estimated Weight = Over 1,000 Pounds
Number of Bras Received = aprox. 22,000
Money Raised for Breast Cancer Research = $1,350.00
[via ATtheHeartofIT]
First Open Computer Destruction Championship
BBC: Computer crashing, Ukraine-style
Over 300 self-confessed computer addicts have participated in a competition in the central Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya to destroy their own hardware in a spectacular fashion.The event, dubbed the "First Open Computer Destruction Championship", was organised by a local FM radio station with the professed aim of raising young people's awareness of the dangers of spending too much time in front of a computer.
The competition comprised three main events - throwing a keyboard, kicking a computer mouse, and the most popular, the "creative destruction" of computer monitors.
Ironically, the winners in each event received new computer hardware.
Who thinks of these strange contests? It reminds of the Mobile Phone Throwing Championships that takes place in Finland.
Bear With Searing Gas Pain
Got a problem that you need solving? Why not ask Bear With Searing Gas Pain? [via Linkfilter]
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What is it about the sound of farting that continually makes people laugh?
Man To Complete Loch Ness Marathon Underwater
BBC: Monster underwater marathon bid
A former leukaemia sufferer has started a world record attempt to complete an underwater marathon along Loch Ness. Lloyd Scott, 41, is attempting to complete the 26-mile underwater trek in an antique diving suit.Mr Scott set a world record earlier this year by completing the London Marathon in the event's slowest time while wearing the ancient equipment.
The former firefighter will make his way along the underwater shelves and ledges that run around the banks of the loch, about 30ft below the surface at two miles a day.
He plans to emerge from the water for the last time two weeks later to cross the Loch Ness marathon finishing line in Inverness.
More information about the marathon can be found here.
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Word Stalk
Create words from the letters provided to make Jack climb the beanstalk before the Giant awakes. [via Madville]
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Magna-Doodle
Almost as good as the real thing.
Beer Not The Cause Of Beer Bellies?
The Times: Drinks all round as beer myth goes belly up
Apparently just drinking beer does not give you a beer belly. I think I'll take the results of this research with a pinch of salt.
Take a good long look at that bloke throwing darts; the one with a bulging stomach that would be more seemly on a woman about to give birth. The result of too many pints in too many public bars, you might think.But you would be wrong: drinking beer does not give you a beer belly.
Is this possible? Are our eyes deceiving us? “Our eyes are right,” said Martin Bobak of University College London, who has studied the phenomenon closely. “But it may not be the beer that is to blame. Beer drinking is linked to other aspects of diet and lifestyle that may cause beer belly.”
When his team started work, Dr Bobak’s assumption was the same as everybody else’s: lots of beer leads inevitably to a beer belly. “But we found there is little real evidence in scientific literature to support it. Some studies have shown it to be true, others have shown the opposite.”
To settle the question, the team turned to the Czech Republic, which boasts the highest per capita beer consumption in the world. The researchers, including his UCL colleague Sir Michael Marmot, found that when corrected for factors such as smoking, there was no significant link between beer drinking and beer belly — and women who drank beer tended to weigh less, rather than more, than those who didn’t.
Reporting in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the team concludes: “It is unlikely that beer intake is associated with a largely increased waist-hip ratio or body mass index . . . the association between beer and obesity, if it exists, is probably weak.”
Motorcycle Sidecar Hearse
For those that have a passion for motorbikes, this must be the ultimate way to be driven to the cemetary or crematorium. Apparently this sidecar hearse is the only one of it's kind in Britain. [via Madville]
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3D Maze Game
Terminal Decay is a 3D maze. You need to collect keys to exit the level and must avoid obstacles all within a time limit. [via Linkfilter]
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Impressive
I wonder how far the driver managed to get with a load like that? [via Kottke.org Remainders]
Friday, September 26, 2003
World's Largest Passenger Ship Sets Sail
The world’s largest passenger ship — featuring a planetarium, 22 elevators and the largest floating library — tested the open water for the first time Thursday as it began a three-day cruise off the French coast.The $800 million, 150,000-ton trans-Atlantic liner will undergo three days of tests as its operators check the ship’s stability, make sure the hull is perfectly watertight and examine other functions. The QM2 — the world’s longest, tallest and most expensive passenger ship — will accommodate 2,600 passengers on its first trip, scheduled for January from Southampton, England, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Passengers can enjoy six restaurants, 14 bars and clubs, a library, theater, pools, a disco and casino. Elevators — 22 of them — will ferry them from floor to floor. The 1,310 cabins include duplexes with private gymnasiums and penthouses with butler service. If the bright stars of the clear night ocean sky aren’t enough, not to worry — there’s also a planetarium.
In France, tickets will range from just over $1,150 per person to more than $34,500, with tickets for the maiden voyage costing even more. Prices vary among countries; in the United States, tickets for a six-day trans-Atlantic trip start at $1,499.
