A Welsh View

Video: Channel 4 Broadcasts Live Television Advert By Honda

Channel 4 have broadcast an ambitious advert by Honda which shows a group of 19 professional skydivers spelling out the company's name live from the skies above Spain. The team had just three minutes and 20 seconds to execute the advert and managed to do it without a hitch.

The advert itself is pretty uneventful but it was the first live television advert to be broadcast in Britain. I was unaware that it was going to be broadcast so was little confused when it appeared.

The Guardian has more about the advert and Idents.tv has the advert in a variety of formats.

Peculiarosities

Man backs over squad car after getting ticketed (w/ photos)
Bizarre frog can break its own bones to produce cat-like extendable claws (photo)
Deadly snake bites man's penis (w/ photo)
Monkey's brain controls robot arm (video)
652 people take part in Britain's largest ever game of Twister (w/ photos)
Smiling Bumble Bee? (w/ photos)
Man catches 30-stone Halibut (w/ photo)
Woman who spent nearly 60 years in iron lung after power failure (w/ photo)

100 Photo Effects Photoshop Tutorials

ThePhotoshopRoadmap.com has compiled a great collection of Photoshop tutorials focused on photo effects such as ghosting, pop art, and movie effects.

Incredible Photos Of One Of Earth's Last Uncontacted Tribes

The Daily Mail has some photos of a tribe located in the Amazon on the Brazilian-Peruvian border that may never have had contact with the outside world.

The tribes people are painted in bright red and black and live in primitive huts. They were photographed from a plane which they may well have thought was a large bird. View the photos here.

Video: Master The Internet

Peculiarosities

Cops and robbers break into same house
Australia opens world's first goat museum
Japanese Schoolboy Finds Two-Headed Turtle In School Playground (w/ photo)
Two friends shake hands for 9.5 hours to set a new world record (w/ photos)
Girl of four saves man from fire in his flat
Japan man stalks toll-free line to hear woman's voice
Dog Electrocuted by Light Pole

Video: Music Made From Windows XP & 98 Sounds

A surprisingly good piece of music composed from alert sounds from Windows 98 and XP.

There are also some remixes here and here. [via]

Video: Why Every Guy Should Buy Their Girlfriend Wii Fit

Monopoly Facts

'Did you know' facts from the Monopoly website including...

# Over 5,120,000,000 little green houses have been “constructed” since the MONOPOLY® game was introduced in 1935.

# World records are maintained for the longest game in a treehouse (286) hours, underground (100 hours), in a bathtub (99 hours) and upside-down (36 hours).

# The total amount of money in a standard MONOPOLY® game is $15,140.

# The character locked behind the bars is called Jake the Jailbird. Officer Edgar Mallory sent him to jail.

Firefox 3 Aims To Break Software Download Record

Mozilla is aiming to make Firefox 3 a record breaker. It wants the next release of its browser to be the most downloaded piece of software in a single 24-hour period.

Download Day will begin the minute Firefox 3 is generally available and continue for 24 hours. The Download Day website is asking for people to pledge to download the browser and wants people to place Download Day buttons on their websites.

Mozilla are predicting that 1.6m people will download the browser on its launch day sometime in June. [via]

Google Earth Comes To Your Browser

During a developer conference today, Google released a new plugin that allows Google Earth to be embedded into a browser. The plugin will allow developers to create mashups using imagery from Google Earth (and Google Sky) and will also allow existing Google Maps mashups to be converted using just one line of code.

Here's a video showing the plugin in action.

The plugin is currently available for IE6, IE7 and Firefox 2 on Windows. [via]

Man Repairs Tyre Puncture With His Feet

I bet he could fix a puncture faster than most able-bodied people. Full set of images here. [via]

World’s Oldest Living Tree Discovered In Sweden

A spruce tree in the Delarna province of Sweden is believed to be the world's oldest. At 16ft, the tree is 9,550 years old!

The worn and weathered spruce grows in Sweden's windswept tundra. But, until recently, well, recent to the tree at least, it barely resembled a tree at all. Before this last warm century, the spruce grew more like a shrub to survive the harsh conditions of its cold landscape. But rising temperatures convinced the tree to give up its shabby lifestyle, shed the majority of its needles and go with the single-trunk look.

Researchers from Sweden's Umea University found the tree growing amid the remains of four generations of spruce dating from 375 to well over 9,000 years old. Spruce trees can clone themselves by sending new trees up through the ground from established roots. When the scientists tested the current tree, they found it was genetically identical with the remains of all four previous generations. Researchers are excited about having a 10,000-year-long case study of how past climate changes affected plant growth and productivity.

Link [Image via]

Peculiarosities

Woman married Berlin Wall
Lifeguard Needed For Kiddie Pool (w/ photo)
Mother Punishes Kids With Public Humiliation (w/ photo and video)
Teenager, 16, fined for littering ... after letting balloon go at charity event
Naked man steals truck, causes pursuit
Heartbroken Taiwanese man climbs into morgue freezer
Hippo spotted 'surfing' off the coast of South Africa (w/ photo)
Breast implants among property lost on London transport (w/ photo of stuffed puffer fish)
Shark attacks boy in his bedroom (w/ photo)
Man's new house has corpse surprise
Woman Came Back From the Dead After 17 Hours with No Measurable Brain Waves (w/ video)

Happy Birthday Golden Gate Bridge

© Thomas Hawk

On May 27th, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco officially opened to pedestrian traffic. 200,000 people crossed by foot and roller skate and the following day, vehicles were allowed to use the bridge. When it opened the bridge was the longest suspension bridge span in the world and it cost $26 million.

Wired has an article about the bridge as well as Wikipedia.

The photo above was taken by the excellent photographer and Bay Area resident Thomas Hawk. [via]

Win 8 VIP Paintball Passes

A Welsh View and Ministry of Paintball have teamed up to offer all UK readers the chance to win 8 free VIP paintball entry passes valued at £200.

Ministry of Paintball is regarded as the world’s largest paintball company and renowned as the industry leader. With over 100 great paintball sites nationwide Ministry of Paintball will offer you an action-packed day out.

What is included in the VIP paintball entry passes?

• Free equipment hire.
• Free latest semi-auto paintball gun.
• Free access to 100+ paintball sites nationwide.
• Bonus free lunch at 80% of the paintball sites.
• Reward points at ministryofpaintball.com
• Free mopVIP membership valued at £100.

For your chance to win simply go to www.ministryofpaintball.com/welshview and register your details.

Winners are picked at random and the competition is open to UK citizens only.

Not from the UK? Ministry of Paintball has paintball sites in USA, Australia and other countries. Why not check out www.ministryofpaintball.com for a paintball site near you. Closing date is 30-06-2008.

For more information on Ministry of Paintball please go to www.ministryofpaintball.com

Good luck all!

Mixing Desk Belonging To World's First DJ Goes To Auction

A home-made mixing deck, created by the worlds first disc jockey is set to go under the hammer in Boston.

Ron Diggins, who died last year at the age of 90, has been dubbed as the worlds first disc-jockey by DJ Magazine.

He created the mixing deck out of coffin wood.

It was the first mobile disco that used a 25-watt amp and a wind-up gramophone playing 78s on two turntables to entertain Land Army girls and Italian POWs at a village hall in 1947.

The equipment named Diggola is expected to rake in thousands of pounds at a sale. Link

Elf Ears

This body modification is new to me.

Video: Crash Test Videos

After seeing this crash test video doing the rounds on the Net the last few days I thought I would compile a post of some of the 'best' crash test videos that I've come across over the last couple of years. Feel free to add others to the comments.

Crash Test Compilation

The Web Streaker

My blog has been hit by a streaker! It's actually an advert from Vodafone Australia in which you can enter a web address and a streaker will run across it. [via which found it on a blog about banner ads!]

Video: Sandee Westgate Reviews National Treasure 2

What did she say? [via]

Annual Cheese Rolling Contest

Image via Mike Warren

Dozens of people braved the wind and rain to chase a double Gloucester yesterday at an annual cheese rolling event.

Competitiors threw themselves 200m (720ft) down the steep and muddy Cooper's Hill near Cheltenham to try to catch the 4kg (9lb) cheese before it reached the bottom.

The event is thought to be 200 years old.

Would you be crazy enough to enter? More images here.

Video: 3D Domino Cards

Someone has got way too much time on their hands.

Phoenix Opens Its Eyes

This is one of the first images captured by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander which landed on the red planet yesterday. It touched down in an arctic region called Vastitas Borealis, at 68 degrees north latitude, 234 degrees east longitude.

The flat landscape is strewn with tiny pebbles and shows polygonal cracking, a pattern seen widely in Martian high latitudes and also observed in permafrost terrains on Earth. The polygonal cracking is believed to have resulted from seasonal freezing and thawing of surface ice.

There's another image here. [via]

Video: Grannies Jostle For Tossed Coins

"This was recorded at Kilometer Zero, also known as the centre of Moscow. When you visit this area you will often see people standing on the Zero Kilometer medallion and throwing coins over their shoulders and making wishes.

Grannies and kid, according to the many tourist brochures, line the area outside of the Kilometer Zero marker and pick up the coins after you toss them, supposedly fun for all."

[via]

The Typo Blog

Typo Hunt Across America is the blog of the Typo Eradication Advancement League, a group dedicated to eradicating typographical errors.

Can Jet Lag Kill You?

Apparently, in 1971 a woman died from jet lag after taking 160 consecutive trans-Atlantic flights.

One day in 1971, a woman called Sarah Krasnoff made off with her 14-year-old grandson, who was caught up in an unseemly custody dispute, and took him into the sky. In a plane, she knew, they were subject to no laws, and if they never stopped moving, the law could never catch up with them. They flew from New York to Amsterdam. When they arrived, they turned around and flew from Amsterdam to New York. Then they flew from New York to Amsterdam again, and from Amsterdam to New York, again and again and again, month after month.

They took about 160 flights in all, one after the other, according to the stage piece "Jet Lag." They saw 22 movies an average of seven times each. They ate lunch again and again and turned their watches six hours forward, then six hours back. The whole fugitive enterprise ended when Krasnoff, 74, finally collapsed and died, the victim, doctors could only suppose, of terminal jet lag.

Link [via]

Peculiarosities

Zimbabwean jailed for selling 'urine' cooking oil
Croc chomps on shark (w/ photo)
54 sickened by suicidal man's toxic vomit
Handcuffs fail to stop man stealing police car
Couple accidentally drive onto airport runway

Peculiarosities

Woman strips after wolf whistle
Lonegan the wonky donkey on the mend (w/ cute photo)
Man wrestles deer with hair salon (w/ photos and video)
Muslim man threatens to sue driving school for sending transsexual instructor to teach his wife (w/ photo)
Bite victim gets a 'bionic' nose (photos)
Kids picking up trash discover hand grenade
Donkey free after doing three day's jail-time
Car clocked at 163 mph held together with cable ties
Woman Loses Home Over $68 Dental Bill
Australia opens world's first goat museum
Pilots run out of fuel, pray, land near Jesus sign

Shozu's Complicated CAPTCHAs

This CAPTCHA on the Shozu website that I came across today has to be one of the most complicated I've seen. It's even more complicated than the cat CAPTCHA currently used by Rapidshare.

Alice, An Electronic Remix of Alice in Wonderland

Nick Bertke, who is too clever for his own good, has created an electronic track using sounds and images from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. You can download the MP3 for free here. [via]

Funny Things Seen On TV

Mike Sacks takes photos of the funny things he sees on TV. Some of them are actually pretty funny. [via]

Peculiarosities

Birdman 'flies' from nest on side of skyscraper (w/ photos)
32-Year-Old Woman Discusses What She Learns From 11 Failed Marriages
Woman dancing on bar accidentally sets man on fire
Tiny petite girl teenager took on five cops
British pet is 'oldest dog in the world (w/ photo)
Man admits having sex with 1,000 cars (w/ photo)

New Nokia Ringtone

Nokia has changed the default ringtone on the upcoming N78. I'm not sure if it's just for this phone or if it will be the new ringtone on all new Nokia phones.

It sounds very similar to music on this video which features music by Francisco Tárrega.

You can download the ringtone here. [via]

Google Maps Catches Shooting

Real gun or fake?

Spotted in Chicago. [via]

Shed Of The Year 2008

To coincide with the second annual National Shed Week (July 7-13), Readersheds.co.uk is running it's Shed of the Year competition. Last year's winner was Tony with his Roman Temple complete with Roman window bars, Amphora, grape lights, Roman cushions and a mosaic table.

Image via ReaderSheds

Who will win this year's contest? The Knitted Shed? The Boat Shed? The Disco Shed? If you've got a weird, unusual or fancy shed you can submit it here.

Videos Auto-playing

I've just noticed that videos hosted by Liveleak are automatically playing when you load the site. I don't think they used to do that and there are no settings in the HTML code to prevent them from playing. I'm guessing this is a bug and Liveleak will fix it. In the meantime, apologies for making the site take an age to load.

Burger King Launches A Burger For Six To Share

Burger King is to take on the pizza market by launching a '6 Pack' of burgers that are joined together allowing customers to tear them off one by one.

The 6 Pack, which costs £4.49 on its own or £5.69 as part of a meal, comprises one big Aberdeen Angus patty inside six rolls, stuck together to allow consumers to tear off portions. In one pair of rolls the burger is topped with ketchup, the second has a cheese topping, and the third bacon and cheese.

I gotta try me one of those. [via]

Video: Cat Gatecrashes Concert

An audience in Tel Aviv broke into laughter and applause when a cat gatecrashed a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The BBC has a video.

World's Thinnest Block Of Flats

[via]

Space Needle Gets A Clean

Image via KOMOTV

KOMOTV.com has an article about the Space Needle in Seattle getting a clean - it's first professional clean since 1962. It also has a bunch of photos of the cleaning which takes place predominantly at night. [via]

Japanese Monster Trees

Image via Japundit

Conifer trees in Japan covered in snow and ice and resembling monsters.

They are the Juhyo, or monster trees. Every winter the trees of Mount Zao in the Yamagata Prefecture undergo a shocking transformation. From mild-mannered conifers, these trees become hulking monstrosities of snow and ice.

Link.

Photos From A Wedding Taking Place During The Chinese Earthquake

© Dragon Photos

Dramatic photos of a wedding in China that was taking place during the huge earthquake. The site is reporting that 33 people were 33 missing in the church. [via]

Peculiarosities

Donkey jailed for assault and battery in Mexico
Woman forced to live in car with dogs (w/ photo)
Saudi wants divorce after husband lifts her veil
Man accused of stealing beer has history of 152 arrests (w/ photo)
Man tries to pay for food with cannabis
Photographer skewered by javelin (w/ photo)
Albino tadpoles found in garden pond (w/ photo)
Bull rampages through house

Video: David Lynch: Panties in my Mouth

A remix of a video that's not worth watching because it ain't going to be as weird/funny as this. [via]

Peculiarosities

Man 'sprays supermarket food with urine'
Dog receives degree from Ohio Northern University
Bees make shape of cross outside cathedral (w/ photo)
10-year-old scholar takes Calif. college by storm
Villagers turn bus stop into pub (w/ photo)
Beekeeper Allergic To Stings Vows Never To Give Up Hobby

The Ten Most Memorable Indiana Jones Moments

Image via Film School Rejects

With the next installment of Indiana Jones being released in a few days, Film School Rejects has compiled a list of 10 memorable scenes from the first three films.

Gummy Bear Anatomy

© Moist Production

And you thought that you were eating just jelly when you bit the head of that Gummy Bear. Moist Production is selling 12"x12" prints. [via]

Video: Burgers Cooked In 90-Year-Old Grease

Dyer's Burgers in Mississippi has been cooking burgers since 1912...in the same grease!

'He's Eating My Brain. I Can Feel It'

A 53-year-old man recalls how he survived a bear attack.

"He came up from behind me and started gnawing at the back of my head. It just started ripping the scalp off the head."

"He's eating my gristle and he's gnawing on my head. I was saying, 'He's eating my brains. I can feel it.' I know it's happening and I said, 'God! I hope it gets over soon'"

Link (w/ photo)