Category: Uncategorized

New startup video blog digest thing, inexplicably on the front page sidebar of Ars (unflagged advertising placement?). Like Rocketboom, but with two very important differences. Firstly, it’s shorter. Secondly, it’s just about watchable. It’ll be interesting to see if they inherit Rocketboom’s highly flexible format, or stick with a quick blog overview.

(and for the record: I think Joanne Colan is a distinct improvement on Amanda Congdon, but still needs to work on slowing down a little, and on softening the more strident edges to her voice. I so want to like Rocketboom and their quirky story choice and format, and I drop back every few months, but I don’t think I’ve ever managed to sit all the way through one of their episodes.)

There’s a story going round about physicists in St. Andrews having a theoretical dodge for the Casimir effect. Which, if it turns out to have practical realisation, is goodbye friction for nanomachinery, hello brave new world. Or something like that.

The same group, apparently, were amongst those who posited theoretical frameworks for invisibility, a little while back. Curiously, of the four research groups who’ve suggested approaches for this, three are in Britain. Which leads to the inescapable conclusion:

Our aliens are better than your aliens.

Two things:

1. That’d make a great T-shirt, &
2. As a phrase, it doesn’t appear in Google.

Dibs!

[update: “Their aliens are better than our aliens” doesn’t appear either. Astounding.]

[update 2: this post took less than 10 minutes to show up in Google. Searches for these phrases are no longer empty. Impressive.]

[update 3: Dang. There’s one existing Google hit for the phrase “Our aliens are better than their aliens“, to a mailing-list archive post from 1999, that appears to be a Google ad honeypot.]

[update 4: “My aliens are better than your aliens“: no Google hits.]

This is interesting[1]: tomorrow (er… today – Tuesday) Apple have a press do for ‘Macintosh-related announcements.’ Right now, both the US and UK online stores are quoting delivery times as follows:

• Mac mini: 24 hours
• iMac: 24 hours
• Mac Pro: 24 hours
• MacBook: 24 hours
• MacBook Pro: 7-10 working days (15″)
• MacBook Pro: 24 hours

Now, normally one can guess which models are likely to be replaced through the lead times. Anything around a week or so, and it’s a newbie nestling in the box when you finally receive it.

In this case, however, the MacBook Pro has been tweaked only a couple of months ago. The case didn’t change, but everything else did, and while this wouldn’t be the first time Cupertino has given a model such a short shelf-life there’s not much new one can see being done. Slimmer case? HD disc burner? 4-core CPUs? Really? [2]

Every other Mac, however, has been on the market long enough to be refreshed tomorrow.

Upshot: we know jack all.

[1] If you like this kind of thing.

[2] You’d be right to assume I’m hoping this is prophetically bad.

Ogle Design. Designed the Reliant Scimitar GTE, the Bond Bug, the Leyland Road Train… and the Bush TR82 radio.

Also the Raleigh Chopper, and they built Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder.

Shiny.

Amongst the 140+ items of junk mail I’ve received in the last 24 hours (a marked reduction on recent history – catch-alls really are bad news, in case there was any doubt), the very latest bears the line:

Subject: Rascally freight train

I rather like the idea of a freight train that’s a bit of a lad. A little bit whoa, a little bit wahey. Sneaking up on sidings and cheekily dumping 400 tonnes of aggregate on them, or progressing insouciantly slowly up a gradient with a train full of commuters champing at the bit behind it.

The junk mail is, of course, something to do with enlarging one’s penis. But at least the random generator threw up a pleasing subject line for once.

Nice article about Evel Knievel. Where are the crazy ones, today?

Aha! Emailing a chum, I’ve found a new, stark way of describing SciCast. I think this may be the new elevator pitch:

Five years ago, the UK spent about £1m a year on science video aimed primarily at children. The bulk of that money was spent by me, on two television series, The Big Bang, and How2. They were good shows; lots of people watched them; they came back year after year. However:

Today, we spend – nothing at all.

I think we can achieve similar impact for about 10% of the spend initially, rising to 20% through a five-year expansion plan. That plan is called ‘SciCast.’

The big issue is: that original million quid came from ITV, who were essentially forced into spending it by the government (public service TV, blah blah). So nobody else has ever had to face up to whose responsibility it might be to do this.

My generation talks about Johnny Ball and his shows. The generation of ten years ago won’t talk about my shows in quite the same way – we didn’t have a ‘face’, and what we were doing wasn’t as radical a departure – but they’ll still talk about the shows I made.

What will the current generation of kids talk about?

That’s what SciCast is for.

I like Howtoons, despite the name being perilously similar to a series I loved even more. I like their artwork style. Things I like less:

1. What can I do with their downloads? Duplicate and hand them out in a school workshop? Come on gang, CC licenses, please!
2. There’s even more work in doing this than there is in making video. At this rate, they’ll be retreading very familiar ground for months to come. What’s the plan to avoid that?

Update: poking around the site more, the nearest they come to a copyright page is this, which asserts (by omission) all rights reserved. Merde. But that makes sense when they’re apparently preparing a book.

Ah, well. It’s another children’s cartoon science book. An unusually thoughtful and pretty one, but a book nonetheless.

Great new video from Junior Senior, using quick cuts of clips sent to them by fans. Like the reverse of a YouTube lip-sync video; very clever, and saccharine fun.

Chatting with The Gupta, we had a genius idea. Remember those dancing prisoners in the Philippines?

Superbowl halftime show.