Total solar eclipse in australia

Well it was waaay up north, the best spot was Cairns to catch it. It seems like a lot of the vision of it was thanks to Panasonic. Despite the cloud, it was still impressive..
here it was:
 
Video streaming by Ustream

GIF is the freakin' word of the year!

This is from the MacOS Dictionary
I hope that is pronounced GIF and not Jif

Oh good grief, the folk in the offices of the American Oxford Dictionary really must have been spending too much time on tumblr or something. GIF for freaks sake managed to get an update in their dictionary.  According to Yahoo news:

 "GIF celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun," said Katherine Martin, head of the U.S. dictionaries program at Oxford.

This is what tumblr user gifhound had to say about it:

Can you GIF that for me please? oh sure:)

Freakin' super 50+ SPF sunscreen!

30+ is soon to be no longer the max.
Hey wait this one keeps away bugs too!

50+ SPF ( or should that be Sun Protection Freakin Factor)  factor sunscreen is soon to be out there protecting us fair skin folk from that giant plasma and fusion reactions some 8 light minutes away from us, oh yeah they call it the sun for short.

It's something we might be seeing in Mid January reports are saying, oh wow, surely that will be too late by then, what SPF 30 is not enough?

The SMH reports tl;dr mostly but this bit on the end was handy...

The last change in standard, from SPF15+ to SPF30+ was in 1997. Professor Diona Damian of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, says the latest change allowed by the TGA is an overdue step "but not a radical one".

Who is this TGA? oh that's just the Theraputic Goods administration, it's kinda like the FDA(Food and Drugs Administration) in the US. Oh dear they combine Food and Drugs. I guess what goes in you might kill you.

Yes Obama wins, we get it

Another hang out for the next 4 years

OK so yeah Obama wins another 4 years hanging and chillin' in the Whitehouse down in the D.C area.  But the overkill of coverage on the TV from about 3pm local australian time seemed to borderline on the extreme. Well I guess it's a kind of spectator sport...of a political kind. Now on with the rest of the news.

Annoying writing styles

Write so we don't have to
 spend so much time reading.
 Get to the point please. Now. Thank you.

Just read an intriguing headline on SMH, actually it's the dailylife.com.au subsection.

The headline reads: The one thing no parent talks about.

OK, so that's a great headline grab. We want to read more to know what that 'one' thing is about.  But oh, no, it's never going to be that simple is it.  The first paragraph goes

 "There is a secret nobody ever tells you about kids. We've all heard the parents of young children protesting about how they never get to go out and have fun anymore, and about how they have to spend every waking moment running around after their children - every moment that the child is awake, that is, which often coincides with moments when the parent would much rather be asleep.

Oh for freak's sake!! still NO indication what this story is about... Even the second paragraph says ZERO about what that "One thing is" . I suppose this is just a form of clever editing. Clearly I have time to even write about this.

Anyway the answer, on the FOURTH Paragraph down, as it turns out, is that parents don't talk about "they actually are having fun with their kids" .... Four paragraphs of rambling??? get to the point please, stop setting the scene!. We are too time poor. We want to know now. Not amble through a whole 4 paragraphs of boring blah blah blah...

Anyway I suppose that's the style of that Magazine website.

So yeah, there's a freaking storm and flood

Hurricane Sandy being freakin' big at night. image: NASA

In case you didn't notice, there's a giant storm going across most of the US East coast. The local australian TV, Yes Channel 7 sunrise, seems to be going a bit overboard. Yes we get it. Floods and stuff. Where are the Men in Black to chase away the storm, wait I saw this happen in a Godzilla movie once some storm surge but with a giant monster behind it. Well same kind of effect. Yes , even the subway like here in this video, but this was from a thunderstorm a few years ago, gets flooded.

 Yeah and crane fell over. Looks good on TV with blurry drops of water on the camera adding to 'drama' for us viewers at home. Yeah sure it's annoying and stuff but hey, OK, get some sleep now.

Sandy franken storm closes pretty much everything in NYC

Well it looks sturdy enough to handle a bit of wind and rain.
May be a bit tricky for the people to get there. photo:wikipedia

Yep , that Franken freakin' monster of a storm Sandy, has pretty much led to the closing down of most of , if not all of NYC, including The New York Stock Exchange! that must be a pretty intense storm to do that kind of messing up.

So there'll be no trading, may be not even until Wednesday, oh nos! how will the economy survive? pretty sure keeping people safe might be a bigger priority.

The LAtimes mentions this too, and mentions a bunch of other business sand bagging up for that big' ol storm. Batten down them hatches...

Top ten critters that David Attenborough quite likes

So the SMH is reporting on what creatures that Sir David Attenborough quite likes. Well actually he thinks they deserve to be put in his own Ark. What, to whisk away, store and so forth, may be in space?

Olm salamander... just cause it's such slimy goodness!

For the complete list and wiki entries too...

Be soo lucky Britney!

lucky magazine

What the? people actually pay attention this? Well news.com.au has noted that Teen magazine called 'Lucky'... seriously a magazine called Lucky for teens? anyway... has apologised to Britney Spears for making a horrible cover with her on it? It's just a bad hair day or something?

Fans seem to be whining about her hair looking like a wig or something or photoshopped in or... well yeah there's some criticism, at least people seem to be paying some bit of attention. She still seems perfectly fine, I guess even the editors thought so at first glance.

Freakin' Franken storm for the US

Frankenstein's monster as portrayed by Boris Karloff

Hey did you see what I did there? Freakin' Franken storm? Actually it was just a variation on the Yahoo News headline which just soooo nicely fits into this news blog. They said "'Frankenstorm': Worse than sum of its parts'. Of course Yahoo News actually comes from the AP (Associated Press). Well their report even included the phrase "freakish". But want to know why exactly? well then read on.

Gollum gone fishing at NZ airport

My precious fish says gollum, well may be not the fish
but look he's trying to catch fish!

So clearly NZ takes their LOTR ( Lord of the Rings) stuff pretty seriously! there is a giant statue of Gollum trying to fish in the Foyer of a NZ airport! which airport? let me check on that for you... yep Wellington airport. It's an OK airport as far as airports go, don't really know...

So what's up with a freakin big weird statue , I mean if people' weren't freaked out about flying, now they can have " My precious, my precious hovering over the top of them"

Yeah I did see this first at geekologie so not even sure who gets the pic...

Breast freakin pot to baby

Well now this is some literal freakin' news from the BBC. They  are reporting that a woman in NZ pleaded guilty to giving her three month old baby cannabis via her breast milk. It's a legal first in NZ, so not sure where else in the world that happens. The charge was for giving a person under the age of 18 a controlled substance, so it's pretty much a form of child abuse. That's freakin sad.

Freakin' apple news

Apple fun time with an iMac, i think therefor iMac,
 lol, oh sorry to Descartes of course!
Cogito ergo sum didn't have a ring to it

So since Apple Inc, seems to live in the headlines so much and it's such a fun topic to read headlines I've created a separate blog for Apple stuff. So if you want some sort of sarcastic commentary about Apple news and related bits and bobs then check it out freakin' apple news ! It's funnsies of course. Of course you might be bored to death with Apple being in the headlines every fives minutes, but then again sometimes they take a break from time to time.

Are we freakin' slaves to technology?

The Scream: Really is that what technology is doing to us?

So, just browsing the smh.com.au as a nice handy source of information, well mostly headlines actually and this one pops up. "How to stop being a slave to technology" Well the article it self doesn't seem to be a quick how to guide, there's no step 1 step 2 as a starting point. It's just a series of quotes from some various authors. The main one mentioned is Mark Pesce who just makes a series of observations which may all well be true. But the title, the title of the article would suggest it should be about "how to!"


It's pretty obvious really step 1, turn off your gadget, step 2 sleep do something else.  Yeah I think they mentioned that point, but not until the end of the article! Technology is just a tool really, what ever, yeah people might get a bit carried away sometimes, but eventually the novelty wears off. So just sit back and freakin' calm down! puhlease! just chill freak down.

Cockroach eating man dies

Well this was sure to end quite badly according to some bizarre reports... yeah lets go to South Florida

Wikipedia cockroach image

 and go into a competition of eating cockroaches, then die. That's pretty much happened to this one dude  according to reports. Ordinarily roaches would not be toxic to eat, at least according to

"Michael Adams, professor of entomology at the University of California at Riverside, who added that he has never heard of someone dying after consuming roaches."

But who is to say wtf actually those buggers were rolling around in before hand.  

iphone 5 or 6 or something...

Soo, well if it isn't that time again for the update of the iphone. Oh yeah it's like the 6th generation or so that's what techos will tell you. essentially it is a little bit stretched, makes it a tad better to watch widescreen movies. Oh yeah there's something about the new iOS 6 dumping Google maps and how apple is trying it's somewhat shaky hand at it's own map app. Yeah they apparently bought a bunch of mapping companies to do this too. How did that work out? not so great it seems.

Wild speculation about apple iCamera or something

Well the usual favourite apple rumour websites are going with some wild speculation about Apple, may be possibly in the process of developing some kind of stand-alone-point-and-shoot camera.

Well it is vaguely possible since Apple did in fac create one of the first digital cameras ever a QuickTake 150 or something. Anyway this new idea comes from some story in a seriously LARGE pdf document from iLounge ipad buyers guide.

Read on to see what else might be in the offers of this speculation...

Freakin' Large TV screens for the future

A Panasonic display at 145inches (3.68metres)

MASSIVELY large screens for the future of TV screens , but you need to wait about 2020.  What are these systems going to even cost? How do you move them into your house or apartment? Are these just for corporate board rooms?

What's an Apple TV like, may be?

A mock up idea for an Apple based TV from Appleinsder

Call me, may be, this might sound or seem crazy... but yeah the rumour mills are suggesting an Apple
Branded TV of some kind. The details of the rumours are, well you know the usually, someone said this then retracted it from some high and powerful contractor that makes stuff for Apple like foxconn(sp?) . Anyway! what ever the deal is. What should it have?

Aussie radio astronomer on google main page

Google doodle for Ruby Payne-Scott

Interesting to note that Google today has honoured Ruby Payne-Scott, a pioneering Australian radio astronomer who was born 28 May 1912 died 25th May 1981.  She was one of the first people to recognise the usefulness of radio as important to astronomy...

Here is the wiki entry

A facebook smartphone?

Seriously? can this situation get any stranger? Reports are coming out that facebook has ideas of a smart phone dedicated to facebook?

Square kilometer array of radio astronomical finding goodness

Artist's impression of the SKA from wikipedia

FINALLY a massive, most likely arduous and boring committee has decided that the SKA( Square kilometre Array), should be built in both South Africa AND Australia.

Faking a storm

So a Romanian weather reporter probably thought there was not enough storms happening so decided to FAKE a storm with his assistant. Except the assistant was still in camera frame.  Awkward! It was a windy day but it all settled down a bit so some exaggeration was deemed important... gah!

New iphone likely to be a fraction bigger

There really doesn't seem to be
 much difference in sizes. credit

If the constant rumour mills are anything to go on the new iphone, may be due out later in the year, it may be fractionally longer, making the screen a little bigger, apparently making it closer to the same ratio as a wide screen tv, the famous 16:9 ratio. There is some potential whining about app developers needing to fix up stuff for a different screen size, oh nos!

A private rocket blasts off for the first time to ISS

The Falcon 9 Rocket blasts off in a test launch
image: wikipedia

Woo! yeah at last space rocket launches are going private. Well private in the sense that no government funded the launch.

 It still costs an insane amount, but it's the principle of the matter. It kind of sets one those 'mile stones' that says private money is willing to fling stuff into space.

Well of course it might just mean that the government is broke. But isn't that what it is supposed to be about? This firm SpaceX wants to go it along and may be exploit some amazing stuff in space... mine an asteroid anyone?

This launch, actually is set to launch a module to connect with the International Space Station.

more details from the LA times (interestingly under the headings for business)

Traffic jam of climbers on everest

Mount Everest, in more pleasant weather. Credit: wikipedia

So well, that's the headline now, there is apparently a "traffic jam" of 150 climbers going up Mount Everest , mostly due to in a break in the weather and they are spotting lots of dead climbers, about 4 or so apparently about the place along the way. Well go up the tallest mountain and there's bound to be a risk, considering there's very little oxygen up there. Hopefully they don't leave all their trash up there, or at their camp bases...

more details at SMH via AP

Solar eclipse - annular style

Well if you happen to be up north, northern hemisphere,  mostly in the northern pacific if you look at the path, but luckily you can see it along the US west coast near sunset...

it kinda looks like this if you were on the ground

Steve Jobs bio pic is called jOBS

Well if that is the most painful title of a biopic(biography picture) yes you read that correct jOBS. Are the producers really trying to be that clever? Seriously that title makes most people's eyes water or at worst bleed.  Surely something simple like iJobs or may be jobs, of wow , there are just so many other possibilities " i, Jobs perhaps"?  This is the biopic starring  Ashton Kutcher.

9to5mac has a fraction more detail about this, including most user comments feeling quite disturbed by the capitalisation of the title

It has it's own website too thejobsmovie.com

Literal blow jobs - ha!

A photographer has decided to do a blow job on his subjects, photographing them with a ridiculously high speed fan blowing in their faces.

The results are well, extreme, if you ever bother to stick your head out of car travelling at over 80km/h, you'll know what it is like, just guessing that speed, no word on the actual wind speed. Apparently is was all fun to do.

Done by Lithuanian photographer Tadas Cerniauskas from the Tadao Cern studio in , well the capital Vilnius Lithuania


Yahoo has the story and a few more pics too...

Bar coding apps freak out stores

The Ubiquitous barcode can now be
scanned by your 'smart' phone

Could those new bar code apps on your smart but actually pretty irritating phone really make people want to shop 24/7? Who really knows, it seems that the fad now as reported on SMH is that people can do a fast comparison of yet a another useless set of items in a shop for stuff people don't really need. Using an app to scan barcodes of products is apparently, for no really good reason it seems, is called "showrooming" seriously? Ebay has had this function on their app for quite sometime now.

SMH makes a mild report on it

Common birthdays, you all ready knew that

Well this seems to be doing the rounds today on gizmodo, geekologie and buzzfeed, it's the how-common-is-your-birthday chart. Well guess what lots of people born 9 months after the new year!, hmm, suspicious much? Well given the data comes from the US it seems pretty likely being cooped up during winter may get people a bit frisky. It's data from 1973-1999.

Commenting on the news can be hard

SMH screen grab of headlines for today

Somedays it is hard to comment on a daily news website like the SMH.com au . Just look at what makes headlines today at about 3.30pm. The usual financial collapse of stocks, oh nos to BHP, child custody case? the drama of it all makes it a headline. 

Political figures in trouble but may be it's not so bad for the bloke. Vogue editors fired left, or rearranged? hmm I wonder why, the article says " The Australian fashion industry is in shock following the sudden exit of Vogue Australia editor-in-chief Kirstie Clements after 13 years at the helm of the magazine." Shock really? how do they figure out the shock of this situation? no one died, is it really going have an impact?

Shakespearean? Well it makes an intriguing headline doesn't it? it's actually the man's name, Shakespeare! it's got nothing to do with the style of his con surely, unless he was just inspired. But no, it's most real state scamming.

 Go read it yourself... if you must

Car ads don't seem to work on facebook

Well it seems that the biggest motor car manufacturer in the US, GM, doesn't like the facebook ad strategy, oh well boo hoo, well may be because the peeps on facebook don't drive cars much! may be they do but they just don't really care about car ads in weird locations on a facebook feed. Well that's a bummer for the facey trying to go live on the stock exchange for silly amounts of money.  GM still kinda likes facey and will keep it's free pages la la la...

Yahoo news has the Reuters official version

Greek tragedy as per usual

An ancient Greek mask reflects the current sentiment
source: wikipedia

Well the usual panic headlines abound this morning with Greece being hassled as the cause of the latest drop in the values of everything in the share market including the Australian dollar going below parity. Suddenly the econofreaks are realising that may be Greece shouldn't have been part of the Eurozone in the first place. May be the economists should have thought about how countries make money first and then figure out something. Oh well...

Read more ramblings on the Sydney Morning Herald site

Siri knows what the best cell phone is

Well news.com.au has a story that shows up something odd about the way iPhone 4S siri answers the question "What's the best cell phone ever?" that story reckons it produces a result from wolfram alpha from a review site showing some Nokia windows phone. Then when I tried it just then it has a better sense of humour with the response "You're kidding right?"

The left is my version the right is the one reported on news.com.au.
So who is telling the truth here?

So it's tough to know what is going on... of course I can't really be bothered to ask siri a dozen times the same question. Oh and one more after the break...

World's largest box of spaghetti

Big, really big! it's like over a ton of the stuff, assuming it is over 1000kg, in a giant box . You can buy it from a supermarket in Turkey.
The idea came from a teaming of Itay's Barilla pasta maker and Turkey's Migros Ticaret supermarket chain.  Yes and the usual award from the Guinness World records applies to this giant box for being the biggest box of pasta. So if you happen to be around Istanbul, Edirne and the resort port city of Bodrum, you can find it there. At least proceeds of sales goes to a good cause UNICEF.

check the original Yahoo odd news article for other spaghetti details.

Surrealism day today

It's surrealism day today! Well salvador Dali's birthday 11 May 1904. One of his most famous works is the painting "persistence of memory" Famously it was interpreted in a simpson's episode.

more on Dali at wikipedia

The usual lets-copy-apple and defend it

So HP goes and releases it's latest range of ultra-books. Hmm Ultrabook, what is with  that "Ultra expression"? what's so freakin' ultra about these designs! even the tech specs are standard, sure sure, there is a fancy pants new processor inside that goes gagillions of Ghz, or is that just Giga Hurts! Oh wow yeah, well may be dump the ultra, it's just a damn computer a laptop haven't they been around for ages now? I'm sure I saw one these back in the 90s.  Oh yeah back to the point which is that this HP Spectre XT ( wow a James Bond Villain perhaps?) it's a wedge shape pretty similar to the Macbook Air.

 Read below and check the rants...

Creepy funny with dark shadows movie

Creepy funny stuff from the new Tim Burton Johnny Depp movie Dark Shadows, oh yeah it's based on a 70s TV show of the same name. But it is yet another vampire themed flick. What is it with all this undead stuff? At least this is more funny than sad.  

Hit the break below for the trailer and other stuff, if you can't be bother going to see it.

Where the wild things are author dies

(© Maurice Sendak/Harper & Row)

Well, that crazy wild thing story author has died,Maurice Sendak, probably now literally with where his wild things are now chillaxing away on an awesome island with amazing creatures and awesome adventures. Maurice was 83.


A more sensible account and bit from his life , find it at ABC online

Want your very own frozen carbonite figurine?

Han solo as lego, eventually placed
 in carbonite like you can too!

Well you guessed this was surely likely to come crawling out of the starwars franchise at some point.  From Disney's  Star wars weekend . Remember Han Solo got stuck in the stuff, carbonite, you know it's fictional? Well now you can get your very own personalised version , presumably with your own FACE in it.

Oh yeah, it's just what you need. They scan you with a laser beam to figure out your 3 dimensions. But only at 8 inches (20.32cm) is it really worth the $99? Go fans!woo! may be, well yeah... cricket goes chirp chirp

Of more amusement is the wikipedia list of fictional substances of which carbonite is included

Yahoo news has the full low down if you want it

Battling budget

Who doesn't love a good government budget? well in Australia the media gets pretty excited by it for some reason. They are pretty much all the same, This budget wil be tough, there will be some winners and losers blah blah...

This will effect families in this way or that, some government sectors will lose jobs, some tax goes up, some tax goes down and there's often a  lame catch phrase meant to appeal to someone or some demographic of the electorate, this time it's the "battlers!" what? who where? oh ok poorer, low income families, hmmm in Australia even a poor family has an amazingly high standard of living, what ever...

Go to the ABC online 2012 budget to wade through what it may or may not mean

Witty trilingual vacuum cleaning bot

A screen grab from the promotional video, with the theme
from 2001 Space Odyssey

Oh oh oh how quaint a robot vacuum cleaner, you know the ones you sometimes see in the junk mail catalogues or in the super stores? Well it looks like this one can speak three languages and has a few witty phrases up it's nozzle, wait it doesn't have a nozzle, anyway so far it can say "Long time no see" and "Hello" in Japanese, Chinese and English, what no Spanish, French, German or Russian, you can just imagine. May be it says more too..

What to do with old floppy disk drives: Play Dr Who!

Well, this is pretty damn insane, well possibly if you really have spare time in a basement (or spare bedroom) and computer parts from the 80s and 90s.

Behold this composition of digital whirring madness of floppydisk drives that, by some clever trick of programming, manages to get out a Dr. Who theme!

Thanks to Geekolgie and some random guy who told them about it.

Check out the tube video below...

Lets do the facebook show!

Marky mark of the Zuckerberg variety is 'on tour' trying to upsell the IPO of facebook, wtf is IPO anyway? it means Initial Public Offer when the Facey first gets slapped onto the stock exchange, it's kinda like "ooh who wants in first?" me me me!! says some other bunch of random super rich corporations and investors not really sure where to put their money from other people.. hmm well. Yeah well it's worth apparently BILLIONS (77-96 Bill's),  so lets go on a show. Don't forget the wear-your-hoody fashion too that the Mark is famed for. That will impress those gangsta rapping investos . But some investo folk are a bit paronoid about this sort of thing all worried about 'future growth'. Wanna facey share? just need to pay probably between $28 and $35 or so they reckon... well it's still heaps cheaper than apple shares at $569 a pop,  if you are into that sort of thing.

The important journos at Reuters have a more sensible take on this with official sounding ramblings from important folk

psychos have different brains, oh really?

An MRI scan of a brain! hmm brains...
well thanks for your brain wikipedia

Well guess what, psychopaths have different brains to others? Well der! I mean seriously how much more obvious can you get? well now they have a pretty good idea why and where their brains are different. Neuroscientists in the UK scanned brains of violent offenders and compared them with 'normal' folk and wow, ! LESS grey matter in the psychos! Yeah well there is now some suggestion you can just scan the brain of some crazy and can figure out officially if they are psycho, may be good for job interviews too..."hey sorry you don't have enough grey matter or you got waaaaaaayyy too much" get me the hell out of here now! oh no, do they know where I live now?

The ABC news online reports on this in more sensible detail and makes some mutterings about current killers on trial.

Farting dinosaurs killed themselves

They kept pet saurapods in museums around the world,
but they are FAKE!

Obviously various theories have been going around for years for what wiped out a large number of dinos, like volcanoes and insanely large asteroids obliterating a large chunk of the earth kicking up a massive plume... now it turns out the dinosaurs, well some of them at least, farted themselves into extinction, most likely.

Investors and stock market traders freaking out

The entrance the Australian Stock Exchange, thanks wikipedia!

Yes they seem to be literally freaking out because of mad economic issues around the place, probably Greece, as per usual, some worry about the new elections in France too with a potential socialist big spender on the loose , but  no doubt other weird financial peculiarities of a somewhat bizarre system in the first place. They reckon about 27 Billion suddenly just DISAPPEARED from the stock exchange, like what magical cave did it go into? Can't they just leave it all alone for just five minutes?

Well the mining industry seemed to have been dumping shares like they are digging themselves into a bigger hole, or is that hiding away the dirt in another pile to dig up later? whatever the stock market looks insane, lots of fingernail biting probably going on.

SMH has more of  the low down, in case that floats your boat

Commonwealth bank dumps staff

Clearly there are less mortgages about because the Commonwealth Bank is off loading over 100 mortgage staff in Melbourne, like they needed that many staff in the first place, isn't all of it just computerised these days? May be the bank just uses an excel spreadsheet to calculate that you need freakin' billions of dollars for a tiny house anyway... more rambling after the break

Apple wants that iPhone5 domain name

Like you've never seen this phone before?
Seriously, the new version might actually be thinner!

As per usual, or not usual, because sometimes Apple just can't be bothered, this time they've gone out and are nabbing the iphone5.com domain name before people start doing weird shit with it, like a discussion group that is TINY!. Yes well lets make some forum already for it. Another useless domain for another , yes ANOTHER,  version of the iphone actually version 6 but who's really counting.

The case is active!
Macrumors gives more details