A Welsh View

Fiat 500 Voted Sexiest Car

According to Top Gear magazine, the Fiat 500 is the most sexiest car It tops a list of 100 sexiest cars because the mag claims anyone behind the wheel “looks sexually charged” — even a nun.

Contributing editor James May defended the bizarre choice yesterday, saying: “The Fiat 500 advertises nothing about its owner, except that it’s someone who doesn’t need to try.”

Top Gear’s top ten sexiest cars:

1. Fiat 500; 2. Aston Martin DBS; 3. Maserati Quattroporte; 4. Chevrolet Camaro; 5. Citroen C6; 6. Lincoln Continental; 7. Bentley Continental S1 Fastback; 8. BMW M1; 9. Rolls-Royce Phantom; 10. Sally the Porsche 911 Carrera (from the animated film Cars).

Chinese Pharmacy

The picture above shows a Chinese 'pharamacy'. On offer is a falcon, snakes, flattened lizards and seahorses. Anyone know what the falcon cures? [via]

Video: Hit By Car

A half-naked drunk tries to run over a moving car. [via]

The 10 Coolest Technologies You've Never Heard Of

The 10 coolest technologies you've never heard of including chaos computing, silicon brains and bacterial photography.

Computing In 1981

What computing was like back in 1981. The video includes an interview with a young Steve Jobs and a look at IBM's 'small' computers. [Thanks David]

Video: Syrup Chug

A crazy guy chugs a whole bottle of syrup. [via]

What Podcasts Do You Listen To?

My iPod is used almost exclusively for podcasts and video podcasts and the music that I listen to on it arrives via podcast. The podcasts that I listen to religiously are Buzz Out Loud from C|Net, TWiT, KFI Tech Guy, Inside the Net, Floss Weekly, Security Now and Ogrish.

As you can see I'm a big fan of the tech podcasts with many of them being produced by the great Leo Laporte.

What podcasts do you listen to or recommend? If my selection of tech podcasts is not your taste, how about taking a look at the nominations for the Podcast Peer Awards.

Old American Concept Cars

The title says 1938-1981 but the page only lists concept cars from between 1938 and 1969. Contains some pretty weird cars along with some by Pininfarina who designed the Ferrari in an earlier post.

Welsh Happenings

Man Hits Wife With Hammer Because Someone Ate His Chocolate Cake
A man hit his wife with a hammer and threatened his children with a snooker cue after he got mad because someone ate his chocolate cake.

Spoof Ad 'Best In The World'
Swansea's spoof advert for Tango has been named the world's best soft drink ad this year. And nearly four million people worldwide have so far seen it. Heven't see it? Go here. [Link via]

Doctor Who Turns Cardiff Into Winter Wonderland
The BBC show Doctor Who has turned a sweltering Cardiff street into a winter wonderland complete with snowmen, Christmas trees and January sales. (w/ pics)

Monopoly Adds Payment By Debit Card

Monopoly has moved into the 21st century with a version that has replaced the cash with a fake Visa card. It even comes with a 'Chip n Pin' machine for verifying your card.

The game is in response to a YouGov report that showed that people were using cash less and less. The game costs £24.99 which is £12 more expensive than the regular version. [via]

Ferrari P 4/5 by Pininfarina

Valued at an estimated $3m, the new Ferrari P 4/5 by Pininfarina is one hell of an expensive, but nice looking, car. [via]

Famous Logos Web2.0-ified

A great thread where well known logos have been redone in web2.0 style. Expect lots of pastels and reflections. [via]

Video: Man Steals Puppy

A man has been caught stealing a puppy by stuffing it down his pants and walking out of the store.

Unfortunately for the criminal, but fortunately for us, he was caught in the act by the security camera.

"We count the puppies every 15 to 20 minutes," said pet store owner Larry Silvey. "We check the cribs, and we realized the puppy was stolen, so we went back, checked on the camera, and there he was, stealing the puppy."

Bizarre Fish

A strange and rare discovery near Seaside was puzzling marine scientists Monday. A nearly six foot long King-of-the-Salmon washed up on the beach.

It’s a member of the Ribbonfish family normally found 1,600 below the surface of the ocean, from Alaska to Baja and along the coast of Chile. They can grow up to, and possibly exceed six feet. [Thanks Jason]

Kinda Related: Ugly Almiqui [Thanks Alex]

Israeli Target Practice

Without trivialising the terrible conflict that's going on in the Middle East, did the Israeli pilots who bombed this Red Cross van use it as target practice?

Video: Cubicle War

Cubicle War is an amusing video of a pair of programmers who play pranks on each other. This video has been so popular it was being downloaded at a rate of 10,080 times per hour! [via]

Weird Roundup

Here are a few weird stories from the last few days including a penis removal story. We haven't had one of those for a while!

Drunk Wins Bet, Loses Penis
A 30-year-old man who was drunk made a bet with his friend for $2,360 that he would cut off his penis, and he wasn't lying. Luckily for him Latvian doctors were willing to stitch it bak on - the first such operation in the country's history. It is not known whether his mate gave him his money.

Attacker Bites Chunk Out Of Mom
A Durban woman will have to undergo cosmetic surgery after her Margate holiday turned into a nightmare when an attacker bit a piece of flesh from her cheek. The chunk of flesh that was chomped out of her cheek was the size of a R5 coin

Woman Killed By Own Dogs
An autopsy has shown that a woman bled to death after being mauled by a pack of nine wolf dogs that she had raised as pets and was so devoted to that she once told a neighbor they "give me unqualified love."

Man Robs Fudge Shop Wearing Women’s Underwear Ask Mask
I don't know what's more amusing - a man so desperate for fudge that he holds up a fudge shop or a man so desperate for fudge that he wears a pair of flower panties on his face whilst holding up said fudge shop.

Scissors Thrown From Highrise Lodge In Woman's Skull
An elderly Hong Kong woman was rushed to hospital after a pair of scissors thrown from a high rise window lodged into her skull. And in an unrelated incident a 28-year-old man was also injured by falling scissors. Click to view an un-gruesome pic of the woman.

Woman Drives With Body On Roof After Accident
A woman who hit and killed a pedestrian drove for miles, seemingly unaware the victim’s body was dangling from the roof. Investigators believe the driver was under the influence when she struck the pedestrian.

Drunk Man Drives Into Restaurant
A drunk driver drove his car into a Denny's restaurant, injuring three women seated at a booth. He claimed that he hit the accelerator instead of the break.

Game: Arrow Tag

Arrow Tag is a very original game in which you have to have to do various activities using your mouse. [via]

What Is 82 x 82 x 82 x 82?

Daniel Tammet can tell you the answer...without using a calculator! Just like Kim Peek - the man who inspired the movie Rain Man - Daniel Tammet is a savant and has the extraordinary ability to memorise large amounts of informaiton and perform mind-boggling calculations. Tammet uses a system of colours, textures and emotional resonance to memorise numbers.

"The number one is a brilliant and bright white, like somebody shining a torch beam into my eyes ... Four is shy and quiet, like me. Eighty-nine is like falling snow ..."

He holds the British and European record for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 decimal places. But, like most savants, life beyond memorising information can be very difficult. Until he was 8- or 9-years-old he didn't realise that other children had thoughts and feelings and still finds going to the supermarket a difficult experience. Here are some facts about Tammet.

# He can speak 10 languages, including Lithuanian and Welsh, as well as his own invented language, "Mänti", which has about 1,000 words.

# As part of a documentary that was made about him, called 'Brainman', Tammet learned Icelandic in a week, in front of the cameras. The culmination of the challenge was a live interview on Icelandic TV, which he coped with brilliantly.

# He can recognise every prime number up to 9,973.

The Guardian also has an article on Tammet that was published last year.

Technorati's New Look

Technorati have a shiny new look which makes the site a lot easier to read although I'm not too keen on the pink elements of the site.

Age 57 Is Heaven

A poll of 1,000 people has revealed 57- year-old men and women are the most content. When asked to rate how happy they were their lives, including friends, family and work, those in their late 50s rated themselves the highest — mainly because their families had flown the nest and they had more disposable income.

Plastic Frog Travels 10,000 Miles

A plastic frog that was one of 28,000 that fell into the Pacific Ocean during a storm in 1992 has turned up on a Scottish isle.

Most of the frogs are thought to be still in the north Pacific. This particular frog is thought to have broken away from the others early on and travelled 10,000 miles to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

Legendary Paint Sniffer Caught Again

Remember the paint sniffer from a few years back? He's been arrested for doing the same thing again.

Patrick Eugene Tribett was arrested on July 14th after police received calls that someone was sitting in a car sniffing paint.

Whils this is nothing special, it is a good excuse to post this amusing picture again. I wonder what his choice of colour was this time.

Read more.

Video: Newport's Jumpin In July Concert

All this month there are events happening in Newport. Last night a concert was held on High Street featuring The Fabrics from Bristol. As you can see from the video, it wasn't as successful as it could have been.

Video: Live Scorpion Kebabs

Anyone up for a live scorpion kebab? I hear they are crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Mmmm. [via]

Bird's Eye View of Famous Homes

Take a bird's eye view of famous homes such as the Playboy Mansion, the apartment block in Friends and the Happy Days house.

I used Zillow a long time back but didn't realise that they had introduced this this neat new feature where you could viewhouse details alongside a bird's eye view of the same area.

The 100 Greatest Music Videos

Stylus Magazine presents the 100 greatest music videos of all time. Each entry includes the music video and a description.

Related: 999 music videos. [via]

What Is The 1% Rule?

"It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it."

This is based on statistics from sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia in which the vast majority of people consume the information on a site with just a tiny minority of people creating the content.

Whilst I'm a content creator (or perhaps content regurgitator), I too am guilty of going to sites and simply consuming content rather than contributing.

World Leaders In Their Youth

Photos of world leaders 'before they were famous'. The three above should be pretty easy to recognise. [via]

Game: Comboling

I originally posted the puzzle game Comboling back in March, 2004. The game's been updated with better graphics but is still just as hard. The first few levels are easy but then gets difficult.

Bacon Martini

Anyone for a delicious bacon martini? If you want to make one of your own here are the instructions...

Perfect Bacon Martini
Lightly mist martini glass with vermouth, and rim the edge with bacon grease. In a cocktail shaker, mix 3oz vodka, one dash tobasco, and one dash olive juice. Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. Skim excess bacon grease from surface of cocktail. Garnish with one slice of bacon.

Video: Lion Kitty

You may remember seeing pictures of cats with the Lion Cut here a while back. Here's a video of a kitten who's been shaved to look like a lion. Poor kitty. [via]

Animal Controlled Pac-Man

An experiment in animal controlled computer games in which the ghosts in Pac-Man are controlled by cockroaches in a real-life versin of the maze. The site has videos of the game in action. [via]

Welsh Happenings

Barking Dog Cost Owners £1,000
Dog owners been fined £1,000 after their German Shepherd Dog continuously barked when left alone. They were fined after being issued four Noise Abatement Notice over a two year period.

Stuffed Toys Keep Appearing In Forest
Over the past few months dozens of teddy bears and soft toys have been appearing in a remote wood in South Pembrokeshire. (w/ pic)

Can We Fix It? Ie, Ni'n Gallu
Bob the Builder has learnt Welsh. For the first time, the popular children's show will be broadcast in Welsh in the autumn. The show will likely be called Bob Y Bildar.

Voodoo Ceremony

A National Geographic pictorial showing a voodoo ceremony taking place in Benin, West Africa. Warning: contains some images of dead animals. [via]

Need A Phone Number? Italian Convicts Can Help

The next time you call directory inquiries in Italy, you may speak to a convicted murderer. Telecom Italia have opened up a new call centre within a prison where 24 inmates spend the day giving out telephone numbers and addresses.

"This may seem like a boring routine job, but for people who would otherwise spend the day sitting in our cells and doing nothing, it actually gives a sense to your life," said 34-year old Salvatore Striano, who has been convicted for Mafia crimes and also works in the call-center.

The detainees get paid 12 cents ($0.15) per call answered and on a normal day each one of them deals with around 200 requests for information.

The prisoners cannot dial outside the jail and the company's computerized switchboard randomly directs each call to any one of Telecom's 45 call centers scattered across Italy.

Video: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Trailer

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are back...in CGI form. Check out the teaser trailer here. I wonder if the UK can use 'ninja' instead of 'hero' this time around?

Manhattan Rooftop Porch And Garden

A family in Manhattan have created a roof-top paradise after building a front porch and garden on top of their six storey apartment. They decided to build it after a visit to their friends house 8 years ago.

“We were sitting on the porch, the lake was only 20 feet away, and I said, ‘That’s what I want — I’d love to have a porch,’ ” said Mr. Puchkoff, who is in his mid-60’s.

The 1,200sq/ft garden contains thousands of plants in 7" of lighweight soil which doesn't strain the wiehgt-bearing capacity of the roof.

The link should work but if you need to log in use BugMeNot [via]

Ozum Latest

It's been a while since I gave an Ozum update so here's the skinny on what's been happening.

We are currently working on a project with the newly formed Welsh Six Sigma Network which is a Welsh Assembly funded project to help promote Six Sigma in businesses in Wales. This is a great project to be involved with as it involves the local university and local government.

The project includes creating a logo and dynamic website for the organisation. Not being graphic designers we had to contract out the logo design to a local design company. He came up with a great logo that both us and the client were pleased with.

The site itself is still being built and is being built using ASP.NET and will be compliant and accessible. Here's a screenshot of what the site currently looks like. The site is due to launch on September 1st.

We've also had some great feedback on a site we built for a local solicitors. They already had an existing site but was very poorly constructed. We rebuilt their site using the existing content and added some relevant stock photography. Since launching the new site they have noticed an increase in enquiries through their website and a businessman from the US who was looking to sell flats in Newport chose the company because their site looked better than others in the area.

That said, business is a little slow and we are meeting up with a marketing bod to help us get a marketing campaign set up. We can build websites and applications but we're useless when it comes to selling them.

Stay tuned for the next update.

Google Accessible Search

Google Accessible Search, a new project from Google Labs, aims to make the search experience better for visually impaired users. The search results maintain their relevance like the normal Google search but Accessible Search further sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts.

From the official Google Blog...

In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully--that is, pages with few visual distractions, and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off.

Ironically, whilst the site favours accessible sites, the search engine itself is not accessible!

Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped has created a tool to compare the regular Google search with the new Accessible Search.

The Pirate Bay Is Raking It In

The Pirate Bay charges €20,000 per day for it's biggest ads and so far has sold 4 of them. On average it sells around €60,000 worth of ads per month. With revenues like that it's no wonder that the RIAA have been trying to shut them down. More.

The Amazing Ronaldo Toy

The amazing Ronaldo toy with 'unique uppy-downy action'

From A To CraZy

Can you complete this puzzle? I couldn't get past 'bee' wihtout some tips from Digg.

Video: Boob Explosion

Why men should shave...or why you should avoid fake boobs with a five o'clock shadow. Very funny. [via]

Star's 4 Million MPH Explosion Captured By Astronomers

A team of astronomers from the UK and Germany found a nuclear explosion on the surface of a star 5,000 light-years from Earth. It resulted in a blast wave moving at over 1,700 km per second (one thousand miles per second or almost four million miles per hour).

The discovery was made by bringing together many of the world's radio telescopes into arrays capable of seeing the aftermath of the explosion in incredible detail. The star was in an area of sky on 5 millionths of a degree – the size of a football seen from 2,700 km (1,700 miles) away.

The Times has an artist's impression of what the explosion may have looked like.

Candy Scabs

Sweet manufacturers must be running out of ideas if they are starting to come with 'Candy Scabs'. [via]

Dog Sign

Are all Canadian signs as humourous as this? [via]

How To Win At Monopoly

Tips on how to win at Monopoly. The guide is for the US version of Monopoly but I think that it aplies to all other versions. [via]

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

The Magic Message Mirror was designed by the animatronics guru that produced the King Kong ride at Universal Studios Florida and contains Basil who will let you know what's happening in your house. The mirror is rigged up to camera and triggers in your house and when an alarm is triggered Basil awakes to alert you. The mirror is aimed at rappers with too much money and as such the pricing hasn't been disclosed. [via]

Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Worked

The 10 dumbest online businesses that turned into successes such as the goggles for dogs, the Million Dollar Homepage and designer diaper bags.