mssv

  • Life online

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    1–2 minutes

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    Putting your life online – recording and organising all of your emails, conversations and other life events on a computer to serve as a supplemental memory system. This isn’t a particularly new concept, but it is likely to be the first decent implementation. Very interesting stuff – I wonder how it’ll affect kids growing up…

  • Wiki-wiki-wah!

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    1–2 minutes

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    I’ve finally done something I’ve been meaning to do for months; set up a wiki. Or to be exact, three wikis. Wikis are webspaces in which any material can be edited or added by anyone; a bit like a community whiteboard with hyperlinking, if you will. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but after…

  • Army of Penguins

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    1–2 minutes

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    4 comments on Army of Penguins

    Such is the power of Google; I go to a lecture by Steve Jones tonight, and five minutes after I get back I can find the exact same image of a bull elephant seal surrounded by its army of penguins used by Steve.

  • Eyes for you

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    2–3 minutes

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    This optical illusion has been making the rounds on the Internet recently, and most people are astonished to find that the A and B squares are the same shade, to the extent that they consult Photoshop to confirm that A is not darker than B. The explanation for this is simple – the eye is…

  • Guardian best blog

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    The Guardian has released the results of their ‘Best UK Blog’ competition, in which I was pleasantly surprised to see mssv.net on the shortlist. Also check out the related Metafilter thread for more comments.

  • Salon

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    1–2 minutes

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    I just renewed my subscription to Salon.com. Salon is one of only three places on the web that I’m prepared to pay to read (the other two are Kuro5hin and Metafilter – both of which I’ve donated a few dollars to). I don’t visit Salon quite as much as I used to in the past,…

  • A potential problem averted

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    1–2 minutes

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    There’s been a bit of a disturbance on the New Mars forums I administrate. In the past two days someone has signed up and made 40 posts, all of which are hostile to space and Mars exploration. People got upset and complained (very politely though). I decided to do a bit of research. One peculiar…

  • The BA Festival of Science

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    9–14 minutes

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    No comments on The BA Festival of Science

    Thanks to a generous grant from Trinity College at Cambridge University, I was able to attend the full week-long British Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Festival of Science in Leicester this year, from September 9th to 13th. This is a brief report of what I learned there.

  • Email

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    1–2 minutes

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    It used to be that I’d reply to all personal email as soon as it arrived. Those days, alas, have been gone for some time now. While I do receive more personal emails, response time has not increased proportionally – more likely it’s increased logarithmically. I’m not entirely sure why this is so. It’s not…

  • iainbanks.net

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    Iain Banks has a shiny new website completely devoid of content, apart from an extract from Dead Air (it’s not bad). Oh, and the covers of his non-SF novels have been updated and become quite respectable now.