Peter Shortland: 2006

27 Oct 2006

what happens if you assign a colored pixel to each decimal of pi?

4 Sept 2006

Making a Watch by Hand

In these days of “fast” and “convenient” He decided to commence a work of “painstaking” and “craftsmanship”, making His own wristwatch.

25 Jun 2006

Ireland Best Ice Cream

Ireland best ice cream shop has its own website.
They make their own ice cream and have some very unusual recipes including brown bread. Sounds weird but tastes brilliant!

Ice Cream Ireland

Technorati tags: Ice Cream Dingle Killarney Kerry Ireland

Kemberlee's Ramblings

15th Annual Harley Davidson motorcycle HOG European Rally Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland.

Technorati tags:
Kemberlee Harley Harley Davison H.O.G. HOG Rally HOG

20 Jun 2006

The Pneumatics Of Hero Of Alexandria

THE PNEUMATICS OF HERO OF ALEXANDRIA
From The Original Greek
Translated For And Edited By
Bennet Woodcroft
Professor Of Machinery In University
College, London
London
Taylor Walton And Maberly
Upper Gower Street And Ivy Lane Paternoster Row
1851

18 Jun 2006

Shop Horror - Ultimate Book on Funny Shop Names

Guy Swillingham's tour of the funniest shop fronts in High Street Britain. From the genuinely inventive to the truly awful, Shop Horror salutes them all.

701 Tips for e-Learning

Thanks to The MASIE Center’s TRENDS readers and Learning Consortium Members, over 1000 e-Learning tips were received, analyzed, and categorized. These tips are from senior managers and training professionals from major corporations around the world. They have been edited and compiled into 141 pages and 14 chapters covering the ABC’s of getting started to global implementation strategies.

Free digital book!

11 Jun 2006

Programmable Beverage Containers

pifini's Programmable Liquid Container technology employs buttons on the container's surface that release additives (flavors, colors, fragrances) into the liquid. Additive buttons allow for the consumer to choose variations of the liquid in the container at the point of consumption.

The Six-Stroke Engine

The clever new six-stroke design was developed by 75-year-old mechanic and tinkerer Bruce Crower, a veteran of the racing industry and a the owner of a company which produces high-performance cams and other engine parts. He had long been trying to devise a way to harness the waste heat energy of combustion engines, and one day in 2004 he awoke with an idea which he immediately set to work designing and machining.

Things That Make Me Angry - Golf Clubs

From www.angryman.ca

Golf ClubsThis is the part of golf that I don't understand: you've got architects, landscapers, horticulturalists and diabolical former golfers working their tails off to design courses that are trickier and longer than ever before. Then you've got a bunch of metallurgists, physicists and aeronautical engineers working just as hard to make space aged titanium-graphite-polycarbon-nanotube golf clubs that can hit the ball 400 yards dead straight every single time. Of course Phil Mickelson is good - NASA made his clubs. If I was writing the PGA rulebook, every golfer would get three "clubs": a shovel, a pool cue, and a wooden leg. Let's see how Tiger does with that in his bag. A par 5 would be about 12 yards long and you could fit 18 holes in your backyard. Now that's a game.

23 May 2006

Irish Eurovision victory message hits false note - Yahoo! News

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's Arts Minister congratulated Irish Eurovision song contest entrant Brian Kennedy Monday for winning the competition -- except it was won by Finland.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

27 Apr 2006

Latest Da Vinci mystery: judge's own secret code - Yahoo! News

LONDON (Reuters) - Three weeks after a British court passed judgment in the copyright case involving Dan Brown's bestseller "The Da Vinci Code," a lawyer has uncovered what may be a secret message buried in the text of the ruling.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

20 Apr 2006

Kitchen Chemistry In The Darkroom

A century and a half of research and development in photographic processing technology has given us some mighty fine materials to work with. The ease and speed of processing high quality black and white photos with today’s materials is truly amazing. Developing agents with a wide range of capabilities are available from many different manufacturers. Could we ever manage without these commercial chemicals?It may surprise you to learn that there are a number of common household materials that can serve as developing agents, and they can produce surprisingly good photographs. In fact, developers, stop baths, and fixers can all be concocted from products found in a typical grocery store. Will the results be as good as those produced with Kodak’s fine line of chemicals? Not a chance. But it’s interesting to experiment with these alternative formulas, and the results are often impressive.

18 Apr 2006

Barred from my local....so I bought it

LANDLORD Tim Platt took matters into his own hands when he was barred from his local pub - he stumped up the cash and bought it.

17 Apr 2006

NASA - New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions

Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use antimatter as fuel for a good reason – it’s the most potent fuel known. While tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will do (a milligram is about one-thousandth the weight of a piece of the original M&M candy).

Max Headroom creator made Roswell alien

THE creator of Max Headroom, a 1980s television cyber-presenter, has claimed he was one of the hoaxers behind the Roswell film, the grainy black and white footage supposedly showing a dead alien being dissected by American government scientists after a UFO crash.

14 Apr 2006

Interesting Facts About Domain Names

You've thought up a brilliant idea for a new Web 2.0, AJAX-enabled web app, or you're about to release a thus-far-unnamed killer software app. Now you just need to find the perfect domain name for it to live at (and, in true new-economy fashion, you'll base your corporate name upon whatever available domain name you find... PILLAGEANDPLUNDR Corporation).You pull up GoDaddy and start punching in clever names, along with their many variations, only to find that they're all seemingly taken.

12 Apr 2006

Argentina On Two Steaks A Day

The classic begginer's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).

Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient

1 The claimThe word processor is a stupid and grossly inefficient tool for preparing text for communication with others. That is the claim I shall defend below. It will probably strike you as bizarre at first sight. If I am against word processors, what do I propose: that we write in longhand, or use a mechanical typewriter? No. While there are things to be said in favor of these modes of text preparation I take it for granted that most readers of this essay will do most of their writing using a computer, as I do. My claim is that there are much better ways of preparing text, using a computer, than the word processor.The wording of my claim is intended to be provocative, but let me be clear: when I say word processors are stupid I am not saying that you, if you ar

How To Be A Successful Evil Overlord

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists, or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time. With that in mind, allow me to present...The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

9 Apr 2006

Man Lets Others Decide His TV Viewing

NEW HOPE, Minn. (AP) - Aric McKeown must be a glutton for punishment. For the past few weeks, the New Hope man has allowed people to vote on his Web site to determine which TV programs he'll watch Monday through Friday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Bigs bunny: monster rabbit devours English veggie plots - Yahoo! News

Wallace and Gromit anyone??

LONDON (AFP) - In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit.

5 Apr 2006

Apple unveils software to permit Windows use - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL - news), the maker of theMacintosh computer and iPod music device, on Wednesday rolled out a first-ever software patch to run Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system on its PCs, a move that could draw millions of new buyers.By enabling the move to Windows, the world's No. 1 operating system, Apple hopes to draw people who want Macs, considered by many as easier to use and more stylish, but prefer the Windows operating system.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

26 Mar 2006

'99 Red Balloons' Video to Air for an Hour

NEW YORK (AP) - They're kidding, right? VH1 Classic will present a full hour of the English and German music videos for the 1984 hit "99 Luftballons," aka "99 Red Balloons," by German rock group Nena.The music video presentation, to air Sunday (2 p.m. EST), caps off the cable channel's "Pay to Play for Hurricane Katrina Relief," which raised over $200,000 for Mercy Corps, a humanitarian relief organization.Viewers could request one video to be played on VH1 Classic for every $25 donation. For a $35,000 donation, they could select an hour's worth of music videos from the 1960s through the early 1990s.However, one viewer chose something different for his allotted hour, requesting continuous playing of "99 Luftballons," said VH1 spokeswoman Maura Wozniak."99 Luftballons" is a Cold-War era protest song that tells the story of 99 red balloons floating into the air, triggering an apocalypse when the military sends planes to intercept them.

23 Mar 2006

Free printable cardboard lens hoods

This site contains PDF documents that can be printed and cut out to make lens hoods for a variety of 35mm and digital SLR camera lenses. Lens hoods give better quality photographs by reducing flare caused by nonimageforming light.

22 Mar 2006

Wily coyote caught in New York's Central Park - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A coyote that came to New York to dine on duck in Central Park was caught on Wednesday after leading police and park rangers on a two-day chase.The coyote, a year-old, tawny-colored male, which is thought to have made its way to the city from the countryside to the north, was tracked down near 79th Street inside the 843-acre (341-hectare) park, officials said

Read more at news.yahoo.com

20 Mar 2006

Neil Gaiman - Good Omens

First published in 1990, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s brilliantly dark, screamingly funny take on the last judgment of humankind has in the past sixteen years grown from cult favorite to contemporary classic, a book adored by fans of both of these enormously talented and successful authors. This new publication of GOOD OMENS is made even more special by the use of two different black and white dust jackets portraying the book’s central characters, the “demon” Crowley and the “angel” Aziraphale. Included with the original text is a foreword by the authors, the authors’ answers to “Frequently Asked Questions” about the book, and a piece by Gaiman regarding Pratchett, and one by Pratchett speaking of Gaiman.

18 Mar 2006

How to Cover Your Book with FlapArt

FlapArt measures about 22 inches in length and about 9 1/4 inches in height and fits most standard sized hardcover books. If your book is a little thicker, there is room on both ends to accommodate this. If your book is less than 9 1/4 inches in height, FlapArt can be folded up to an inch on the top and then another inch on the bottom to allow for a better fit. Simply take your current cover off of your hardcover book and fold the FlapArt to fit your book. You can use the cover you took off to make sure the folds are exact. Don't worry if your folding is a little off! People will be too busy laughing to even notice!

book binding yourself with instruction & techniques from the art of bookbinding

Book binding carries us back to the time when leaden tablets with inscribed hieroglyphics were fastened together with rings, which formed what to us would be the binding of the volumes. We might go even still further back, when tiles of baked clay with cuneiform characters were encased one within the other, so that if the cover of one were broken or otherwise damaged there still remained another, and yet another covering ; by which care history has been handed down from generation to generation. The binding in the former would consist of the rings which bound the leaden tablets together, and in the latter, the simple covering formed the binding which preserved the contents.Read more at www.aboutbookbinding.com

17 Mar 2006

Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars in Flames

A cow came flying out of its trailer, sent DPS and police scrambling, and left two police cars going up in flames.Talk about a wild night near Seguin."It was almost hard to believe," said Detective Sergeant Maureen Watson. She has been in law enforcement for 15 years, and says she "never had a day like this. I mean the best way to characterize this it, is it's bizarre. It's really really strange."It's strange be

Build a Better Leprechaun Trap

Ready for a little St. Patrick's Day magic? It turns out that your kids aren't the biggest mischief-makers around. This time of year, some other little people are thought to be stirring up trouble – and fun.

12 Mar 2006

How to tear Phone Books

If you ask around, the chances are pretty good that someone has seen a phone book 'being ripped in half' or knows of someone who does it, although it remains a feat of strength that almost seems superhuman. The purpose of this article is to de-mystify the tearing of a phone book and show you just how easy it can be.

9 Mar 2006

Trapped in cubicles

NEW YORK (FORTUNE Magazine) - Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity."Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence.NEW YORK (FORTUNE Magazine) - Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called "monolithic insanity."Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence.

6 Mar 2006

A fowl tale

A fowl taleSomebody in Roslindale is deeply offended by the bikini-clad rubber-chicken doggie chew toys in the window of Pet Cabaret on Washington Street. Lisa Di Pietro, one of the pet supply store's owners, reports on her Pet Talk at Pet Cabaret about a phone call from an irate man:''He asks how he is supposed to walk his children by our store and explain to them why there are naked chickens in the window."The other owner, Lisa Schlossberg, ''explained to him that all chickens are naked, they usually don't wear clothes." And the chicken ''was wearing a purple polka-dot bikini, and so was not naked.''He remained unconvinced. He threatened to call the mayor's office and report us. (I am not sure which department of Mayor Menino's office deals with rubber chickens.)"

Space station to be completed in 2010, just in time to spot the giant monoliths

The heads of the five space agencies in charge of the International Space Station (ISS) have held talks on the future of the facility.The agency chiefs from Canada, Russia, the US, Europe and Japan met at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

5 Mar 2006

Old and Interesting Gas Stations

28 Feb 2006

Basic Pancakes with Sugar and Lemon from Delia Online

Pancake Day usually heralds the end of a long winter and we can look forward again to spring. Every year there are people making pancakes for the first time, and I admit it can be a hazardous affair if you don't know the ropes. So here is my tried and trusted pancake recipe, and once you get into the swing, you can make loads extra for the freezer.

27 Feb 2006

Interruptions eat up a quarter of the workday - The Boston Globe

You sit down at your computer to get some work done.But there's an e-mail that just came in. Should you check it? Really quick?Then the phone rings. After a few minutes, you try to refocus. But the person in the cubicle nearby is talking -- loudly -- about the weekend. Then somebody stops by your desk ''to ask a quick question."

A 184-proof whisky, and that's no blarney - Yahoo! News

Following a 17th century recipe, one of the eight artisanal whisky producers on the tiny Scottish isle of Islay will produce a dozen barrels of 184-proof whisky, the company announced.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

26 Feb 2006

Digital Myths and Realities

Read any print or online photography magazine and you’d think that digital photo capture is the ‘second coming’ – that photographic history will now be divided into BD (before digital) and AD (after digital).

Read more at www.naturephotographers.net

17 Feb 2006

The Wiki History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less

9 Feb 2006

FANTASY COMES TRUE FOR THE HOGFATHER

He is the best-selling fantasy fiction author from the West whose mysterious tales are loved by millions of bookworms the world over. Now, for the first time, one of the stories from Wiltshire-based Terry Pratchett's hugely popular Discworld series is to be adapted into a TV film.

8 Feb 2006

BASIC CHEESE MAKING

INGREDIENTS TO TURN ONE GALLON OF MILK INTO ONE POUND OF CHEESE one gallon freshest milk (the fewer bacteria present, the more predictable the cheese) 1/4 cup buttermilk (or ½ cup yogurt ) 1/4 tablet rennet (Here is the front and back of the rennet package.) salt

BASIC CHEESE MAKING

1 Feb 2006

Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams

After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams.On the company's web site, if you click on "Telegrams" in the left-side navigation bar, you're taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible:

25 Jan 2006

chewing gum tax plan comes unstuck - Yahoo! News

DUBLIN (AFP) - Ireland has decided not to impose a clean-up tax on chewing gum, as recommended in a 2002 report on litter, Environment Minister Dick Roche said.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

24 Jan 2006

"Floozy in the Jacuzzi" to move downstream

DUBLIN (Reuters) - One of Ireland's most famous statues, affectionately dubbed the "Floozy in the Jacuzzi," is to be moved downstream to a new home.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

21 Jan 2006

The Four Word Film Review

The fwfr is a film review site like no other, the idea was to accept four word reviews of films

Space junk continuing to accumulate

More than 9,000 pieces of space debris are orbiting the Earth, a hazard that can only be expected to get worse in the next few years, according to NASA scientists.

Irish beach hut on market for 120,000 euros

It's about the size of a garden shed, has no electricity and a toilet with no sewage outlet.But such is Ireland's property boom that the grandly named Neptune Cottage in county Wicklow has been put on the market for 120,000 euros (82,250 pounds) -- all 200 square feett (18.6 sq metres) of it.

20 Jan 2006

THE sci-fi dream of the computer-generated virtual reality

THE sci-fi dream of the computer-generated virtual reality—so familiar to readers of “Neuromancer” and viewers of “The Matrix”—has finally come true. But, as is often the case with guesses about future technologies, it has not come true in quite the way that many people expected.

The mathematics of Sudoku

American Scientist Online - The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts "No math required!"

A few years ago, if you had noticed someone filling in a crossword puzzle with numbers instead of letters, you might well have looked askance. Today you would know that the puzzle is not a crossword but a Sudoku. The craze has circled the globe.

13 Jan 2006

Cornfield Custom Maize Custom Cornfield Maizes Maize Cornfield Maizes

Corn Maze Photos

Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter

Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter

11 Jan 2006

LED Binary Watch

This watch displays time in binary format. It uses LED lights to display the time. The watch face contains 10 red LEDs that are used to indicate the numbers of the binary sequence (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32) and the values of the lighted LEDs are added to determine the time.

8 Jan 2006

A Piece Of Ireland. Unique Irish Gift

From Macroom land Trust in Cork. A unique Irish gift Idea . This unique Irish gift is perfect for someone who has always wanted to have a "bit of the old sod". They are offering your very own corner of the Emerald Isle.

Located at Macroom, Co. Cork, Ireland
Macroom Land Trust is offering
1-foot square plots of land for sale. Each purchase comes with:

* Numbered Certificate, suitable for framing.
* Map showing location of plot.
* Photographs from the area.
* History of the area.

This would make a perfect present for Christmas, weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays.

It also makes the perfect promotional or business thank you gift.

It can be personalize to meet your requirements.

Click here for more information

Monopoly Home Rules

Just when you thought Monopoly was complicated already!

5 Jan 2006

Second chord sounds

Yahoo! News - Second chord sounds in world's longest lasting concertHALBERSTADT, Germany (AFP) - A new chord was scheduled to sound in the world's slowest and longest lasting concert that is taking a total 639 years to perform. Entitled "organ2/ASLSP" (or "As SLow aS Possible"), the performance began on September 5, 2001 and is scheduled to last until 2639.

4 Jan 2006

Texting Could Become a Lot Easier

Texting could become a lot easier if this product takes off. This lead me to:
CeBIT: Erstes Mobiltelefon mit integrierter Laser-Tastatur and then to: The Virtual Laser Keyboard

Rating System for Movie Reviews

What happens when you get someone who is a programmer an armchair mathematician and a person who loves watching Iron Chef America? A system based on pi!!

3 Jan 2006

Ditch Monkey

This started out as a project to live in the woods for six weeks in order to raise sponsoship for the woodland trust. Guy is still there!! Read more at ditchmonkey.blogspot.com

2 Jan 2006

The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!

Just when you think you have seen every idea on the web, along comes someone with a brilliant idea on how to make money! milliondollarhomepage.com

Oddly Enough - Reuters on Yahoo! News

Oddly Enough - Reuters Strange stories from Reuters

1 Jan 2006

Home of Romance Author Kemberlee

Home of Romance Author Kemberlee
Nice site here
kemberlee