Sci/Tech

Girl Performs Poker Face On 4 iPhones

This girl has got some serious iPhone playing skills. Watch her perform Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ using various features on the iPhone.

Moon of Saturn is Pac-Man in Disguise?

Mimas, one of the moons of Saturn, has been caught looking remarkably like that of the video game icon Pac-Man.

The image, taken by the Cassini spaceship which is orbiting the planet, measured temperature differences across the object’s surface and produced a map mimicking the popular character.

Mimas is about 400km (250 miles) across. It has a distinctive scar called Herschel Crater which has led many to draw comparisons with the “Death Star” from the Star Wars movies.

Link

Amateur Photographer’s Space Photos Intrigue NASA

A father of three from Huddersfield has been telephoned by NASA after he took photos of space, using a cheap camera and a balloon.

New Photoshop Features Preview

Making Photoshopping easier than ever.

Mathematician Turns Down $1 Million Prize

A reclusive Russian mathematician has rejected a $1 million award for solving a problem that has baffled some of the finest brains for a century.

Said to be the world’s cleverest man, Dr Grigory Perelman, 44, lives as a recluse in a bare cockroach-infested flat in St Petersburg. He said to The Daily Mail through his closed door: ‘I have all I want.’

Perelman has a history of not accepting awards for his work. Four years ago, the maths genius failed to turn up to receive his prestigious Fields Medal from the International Mathematical Union for solving the problem.

At the time he stated: ‘I’m not interested in money or fame. I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I’m not a hero of mathematics. I’m not even that successful, that is why I don’t want to have everybody looking at me.’

Interested in what he actually solved? It’s called “Poincaré conjecture”. Try getting you head around this:

Link

Shoes That Make Everyone The Same Height

Berlin-based artist Hans Hemmert threw a party where guests wore shoe-extenders to make them all the same height of 2 meters (6 feet 7 inches).

Aside from bringing the partygoers all to a common eye level, the gathering is lent an infographic nature by the shoes: all made from blue foam, the person’s real height is read in the visual uniformity of the sole instead of at the head – like a walking bar graph.

Via Presurfer

First Ever Chain Letter (WFOTD)

The very first chain letter documented was by Daniel W. VanArsdale in 1888. It asked people to donate a dime to the education of poor children in the Cumberlands region of Tennessee, and then instructed the recipient to forward the letter to four friends.

Since then chain letters have evolved and moved from paper mail to e-mails and later to social media networks. However, chain mail nowadays usually contains some clause which pressurizes the recipient into forwarding it to other people.

Here’s an example of a typical chain mail we might receive today:

Forwarded Message:
Subj: Re: (don’t open in front of parents) (sorry guys)
Date: 98-04-25 00:29:48 EDT

<< Five people actually got killed by not sending this piece of mail.

The creator of this mail has a program that will track down everyone who sent this mail and whoever that didn't send it will DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE because this program can actually track down your address.

Send this to 15 people within the next fifteen minutes or you will die die die die die, what do you have to lose? Your life? >>

Of course this is complete nonsense, but many people still believe such threats and send it on ‘just in case’. As a result, the number of recipients grow exponentially and a worthless and pointless piece of text is spread around the internet.

This YouTube video sums up chain mail very well.

Sonic and Mario’s Awkward Reunion

Here’s a funny little video by College Humor showing what happened when Sonic met Mario at a restaurant. Sonic hasn’t been doing too well lately and it gets very uncomfortable.

World’s Largest Jellyfish (WFOTD)

The largest jellyfish ever discovered was a Lion’s Mane jellyfish. It had a bell (body) with a diameter of 2.3 m (7 feet 6 inches) and tentacles 36.5 m (120 feet) in length. It was found washed up on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1870.

To put that into perspective, the largest blue whale ever recorded was a mere 110 feet long.

Workout For Less

Top 7 Fun But Pointless iPhone Apps

iPhone apps are great. Like they say, “there’s an app for just about anything”. Well that’s very true, but sometimes application developers come up with some really stupid ideas. Here are 7 of the best pointless iPhone apps that we still love to download.

#1 – iSnort

Okay kids, this app is not cool but at least it’s better than doing the real thing. iSnort makes it appear that you are cutting up coke and snorting it. The makers say “Go on.. give it a toot… it’s virtually addictive”. Alternatively you could do something more useful and sensible with your £5, like throw it down the drain.

(more…)

Switzerland Bans Violent Video Games

Just a month after the proposals were first outlined in full, the Swiss National Council has now officially passed a law that will ultimately lead to the complete ban of any violent video games in the country.

The full implications of the new law are not yet known, however Swiss authorities now have the power to introduce any measures they see fit.

The likeliest outcome seems to be an outright ban on the production, distribution and sale of any games deemed to be unsuitable – most likely anything with either a PEGI 16+ or PEGI 18+ certificate. Until then, Swiss video gamers can back up supplies of violent video games on a hard drive, providing them with a lifetime supply of digital violence.

Do you think that this is a viable law for the Swiss to introduce? Won’t it just lead to a black market of banned video games, never mind the endless supply of violence already on the TV, internet and in movies.

Link

Hack Dice By Cooking Them

So you’re playing Craps with your friends, but you’re just not getting any luck. The dice won’t fall right for you. Here’s how you can (hypothetically) change your luck. (Hypothetically) put your dice in the oven with the numbers you want facing upwards, cook for ten minutes and then leave to cool. You’ll suddenly start getting the numbers you want (hypothetically). Why? Watch the video to find out.

Super Camera Scans A Book In Seconds

You want to find some information in a book, but you don’t know exactly where in the book that specific piece of information is. What do you do? Well normally you would have to trawl though potentially hundreds and hundreds of pages – a very time consuming and futile procedure, but that Japanese may have come up with an invention that means we would never have to do such a thing ever again.

Masatoshi Ishikawa, a professor at the University of Tokyo has created a product that lets you scan a book by rapidly flipping its pages in front of a high-speed camera – it’s called book flipping scanning. The camera operates at 500 frames per second and processes 200 pages per minute.

Ishikawa has other plans for the technology though. He and his colleagues are already working on several applications including a microscope that can track individual bacteria and a video game motion-capture system. This could make college so much easier for everyone.

Link

Data Transferred At 10Mbps Through Skin

Scientists at the University of Korea have found that skin can be used to transmit data. In fact, skin is a very good conductor of data as they were able to achieve a rate of 10Mbps using small, flexible electrodes – that’s certainly faster than my internet.

The scientists placed electrodes 30cm apart on a person’s arm and they found that the low-frequency electromagnetic waves pass efficiently through the skin with little outside interference.

Rather than wiring people directly to the internet, the team see health benefits for their technology.

It is difficult to monitor vital signs, such as blood sugar and electrical activity of the heart, in a person going about their everyday lives because it means either covering them in snaking wires connected to a recording device, or using wireless transmission.

It looks like this technology will carry on progessing and who knows – we could all be walking internets in the very near future.

Link Via Gizmodo

Will An Asteroid Hit Earth? (WFOTD)

The Torino Scale, which was created by Professor Richard P. Binzel, measures how likely it is that ‘near-Earth objects’ such as asteroids and comets will hit the Earth, and how serious the impact will be.

The scale runs from 0 to 10. A ‘0′ means the likelihood of a collision is zero, whilst a ‘10′ means a collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or oceans.

The highest level ever reached on the Torino Scale was ‘4′. This occurred in December 2004, when 99942 Apophis, an asteroid 270m away from Earth caused a brief concern, however it was later downgraded to 0. Phew!

Five-Foot Tall Blackberry Tour Made Out Of Lego

Here at Pig Jockey we love Lego, in particular the work of renowned lego artist, Nathan Sawaya. Nathan must be a big fan of Blackberrys, because his latest creation is a huge Blackberry Tour.

Sawaya built this five-foot tall Blackberry Tour 9630 using only Lego bricks. Oh, and for the icing on the cake, he fitted a flat screen TV into the model which simulates the screen of an actual Blackberry. There’s no expense spared with Nathan. Great job.

Link

The Discovery Of Oxygen Was Thanks To Beer (WFOTD)

Joseph Priestley is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen, having isolated it in its gaseous state, however beer is what lead him to the discovery.

When Priestley moved next door to a brewery he noticed that bubbles of gas were being given off by the beer vats and was fascinated that they floated to the ground. This implied that they were heavier than air.

This lead him to ask the brewers if he could do some experiments with it. From this, he was able to show that this ‘heavier-than-air’ gas was able to extinguish burning wood chips. This gas would later be identified as carbon dioxide.

He later went on to discover that the gas produced by heating a sample of mercury oxide would allow a candle to burn more brightly, and enable a mouse to live up to four times as long as in normal air.

“I have discovered an air five or six times as good as common air”, Priestly wrote.

Voila. Oxygen!

Car That Runs on 10,000 Cups of Espresso

A BBC presenter will aim to travel 210 miles, from London to Manchester, in a car that is run by 10,000 espressos.

The car features a system converting the grounds into flammable gases which fuel the engine instead of petrol.

Jem Stansfield build the vehicle in an effort to encourage young people to think about how we can tap into energy from waste products and new sources.

He said: ”Everyone recognises that coffee can give a person a bit of a boost, but many probably had no idea it had enough energy locked away to power a car.

”It’s important for kids to understand that power is not something that is mystically there, simply at the flick of a switch or by pushing a pedal.

”With the energy challenge that is facing the world, the more we encourage children to think about alternative fuels, where energy is stored and how it can be released, the better.”

Link

Blood Vessels Around the World (WFOTD)

If you could take all of your blood vessels and lay them end-to-end, they would stretch approximately 60,000 miles (96,500 kilometers) – that’s two times around the world! It would take four average human’s blood vessels to stretch all the way to the moon though.

There’s a challenge for you!

Incredible Stuntman Has An Unlikely “Real” Job

Aung Zaw Oo has become a big hit on YouTube after uploading videos of his incredibly physical stunts, accumulating over 3 million views. Aung was asked by many people what his job was. The vast majority assumed that he was a stuntman or performer of some kind, however his video response to this question was a big surprise – he’s a video game developer.

Not only does this show that we should never judge a book by it’s cover, it also shows that the coolest guy in the world is a video game developer! Who would have guessed?