Gene Kelly Breakdancing in the Rain [Quicktime]
_{Elsewhere as the body double? (hat tip: Stu)}

Ubuntu Live CDs
_{These CD images allow you try out Ubuntu Linux without installing it on your computer. Great stuff.}

Londoner jailed for making a donation using Lynx
_{If this is true and not an alibi, it’s shocking.}

Stewart Lee interviews Alan Moore [Realaudio]…
_{…for Radio 4’s Chain Reaction. Next week, Alan Moore interviews Brian Eno.}

Artist Cornelia Parker explores her ground-breaking (literally) work Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View which involved getting the army to blow up a garden shed in order to re-create the first moments after the creation of space and time.

Dark Matters [Realaudio]
BBC - Radio 4 – Relatively Einstein

Hyperscape 1 is an installation using 10 networked Mac Classics running Hypercard.

The HyperCard program simply creates a list of variables and passes this list as a single variable to each of the other computers. On receipt of a new set of variables the other macs then draw on the same information as the controller, but with a 1 in 10 chance of deciding not to.

Interesting stuff. Wired is running an article about it.

My viral marketing radar is telling me that this site for Lunkwill & Fook Universal Solutions – containing screensavers based on Deep Thought – is something to do with the Hitchhiker’s film being released in May.

By linking to this, I suppose I’m now an agent for the virus. So be it; I don’t mind supporting what looks to be a good film.

Wikipedia > Susan Sontag
_{I didn’t know she died at the end of last year.}

The Introduction of the Mac in 1984 [Quicktime]
_{The style and content of Jobs’ keynotes remain exactly the same today, except, of course, for his attire.}

Group Fiction Writing using SubEthaEdit

Robert X. Cringely’s take on the Mac Mini
_{“I think the Mac Mini is a fixed component in a system that will extend iTunes to selling and distributing movies.”}

Stephen Fry to be the Voice of The Book
_{Fry has always been a fan of Douglas Adams and I’m sure he’ll do a great job.}

The major Search Engines together with Weblog tool developers have developed a simple way of deterring comment spammers. Simply by adding the attribute rel=”nofollow” will stop Search Engine Bots from following the link, thus denying spammers the PageRank gained from being linked. The Google Weblog has an entry with more information about it.

Disturbing images of Bill Gates in 1983
_{Be warned}

Woman Jailed for Haunting House
_{And she would have got away with it if it wasn’t for that pesky Landlord}

At one of the ESA press conferences, the audience was played a clip of audio produced by converting radio echos received by Huygens into sound, after which the conference announcer said it was ‘the best techno music I’ve ever heard’.

Using the raw image data from Huygens, I thought I’d make a video for the track. I used wget to download all 367 images and added them to my iPhoto library. From there I could easily edit them together with the audio using iMovie.

The raw images reminded the of those received by the Russian Venera-9 probe after it landed on Venus is in 1975; they are glitchy and have low resolution. Of course, they are like gold to the ESA scientists but without processing, it’s difficult to discern anything from them.

The video is perhaps an obvious interpretation of the sound and images from Huygens, but I had fun making it. It’s shorter than the original audio clip released by ESA because I couldn’t think of a way of ending it without giving the viewer a headache (if it doesn’t already). However, I might finish it one day.

• Huygens Descent Video Mash-up (Quicktime MP4 - 1.3MB)

Watching the press conferences and interviews with ESA scientists over the weekend, there was clearly a discrepancy between what the news media were expecting to see and learn and what the scientists could deliver so early on in the mission. One particular scientist – Martin G. Tomasko, principle investigator for the descent imager – seemed to be showing the burden of expectation on him and his team to deliver detailed images of Titan straight away.

Easing his burden, it seems that amateur descent imager investigators have started to process the raw image data themselves. Anthony Liekens’ website contains many of his compositions showing Titan’s surface in detail, as well contributions from other people. Some notable ones include:

• Colour 360 degree view from above Titan’s surface
• High altitude view looking straight down – I believe all of the composite images were taken using a single downward facing camera, and the reason they’re in a circular arrangment is because Huygens was spinning during its descent.
• An excellent infographic showing Titan’s landing spot

The raw image data that both the amateur and ESA scientists are working with is available at an Arizona State University homepage.

The introduction of the Mac Mini saw not only the release of a small and inexpensive desktop computer, but also an extremely versatile machine that can be used as a Web and Mail server, Jukebox or Home Theatre unit. Its silent operation and small form factor mean that you can put it anywhere and leave it running.

I’m sure the release of the Mac Mini has given online stores such as mini-itx.com something to think about. To buy a Mini-ITX bundle with a similar spec to the Mac Mini from mini-itx.com, you need to spend

Sounds from the Huygens ‘Microphone’
_{Music of the Spheres}

NASA’s Huygens Descent Page
_{Images of the descent will be published here.}

Huygens Descent Timeline

ESA Cassini-Huygens
_{Huygens has landed and transmitted its data successfully. Amazing stuff.}

• iPod Shuffle
• Mac Mini

The First Mac Rumour

iTunes User Sues Apple over iPod
_Sosumi