That's How It Happened

When the Nose of El Capitan was first climbed, in 1958 it took 3 guys, and 47 days. Watch and marvel as some guy called Dean Potter, solos it in 8 minutes 39 seconds. There are obviously some substantial cuts, but it's an education in modern rock climbing techniques. For comparison, it took Jack Osbourne, 6 days and nights.

Tonight the whole of Reykjavik are sitting in the dark, so they can enjoy the night sky without light pollution. This is so cool, but could never happen in London.

Long Tinker Hatfield interview in french, from LaMJC. Even sneakers sound intellectual in French.

Fantastic Game n Watch GUI for a racing game called inexplicably, The Kung Fu Yoga Race 2006.

Last Thursday was the busiest ever day since I started this blog. I wasn't really watching the stats counter, and as a result have no idea why this happened. If anyone does know, do leave me a comment.

Hi-res image of the sun shot by amateur astronomer Thierry Legault, featuring a silhouette of the ISS. (via)

Pingmag explore the fashions of Japanese construction workers.

Pong projected on to a building, with the ball "bouncing" of the architectural features.

Why retro food brands are back in British supermarkets.

Tags: pong, iss

Of all the skills I was supposed to acquire in medical school, fundoscopy was the most challenging. A fundoscope is a small torch, with a lens, that allows you to focus your eyes on the patient's retina. You get to look at the blood vessels running across the retina, and at the state of the optic disc. The only trouble is that most patients can't stop blinking and moving their eyes. Today my optometrist showed me his new retinal photographing equipment. It uses a Nikon D70, hooked up to an incredibly complex set of lenses to make these great images of your retinae. The picture is of my left retina, showing in amazing detail my macula (the darker splodge), and my optic disc (the lighter bit where the vessels converge). You can click for a much enlarged view of the part of me that is responsible for half my sight.

Yesterday I took part in the premier event in all of urban golf. I came through the public selection with a wildcard place in Group B, teeing off just behind the organiser, Jeremy Feakes, and DJ Shaun Keaveny. The GF bravely volunteered to caddy for me, and we looked mighty dapper in our matching blue jumpers and tweed hats. Our foursome included semi-celeb Cheeky Pete, who had secured the services of a brace of Eye Candy Caddies, to porter his clubs. Urban golf is not just about aesthetics though. The Old Course is laid out across the whole of Shoreditch, with tees adjacent to the key bars of the area. The luxurious blue carpeted "greens", sometimes hundreds of yards distant, require precision driving and chipping. Each hole is an open drain, conveniently flagged in the centre of each green. The roads were closed for the event, but parked cars, windows, and pedestrians are all under fire for the firm hacky-sacks that serve as balls. Four hours of hacking my way round the course would have been strenuous enough, even before the mandatory Jameson's and ginger beer at every hole. My complete photoset is here and more photos are piling into flickr.

Tags: shoreditch, golf

I'm playing in the Shoreditch Open tomorrow, teeing off from around midday. If you are around town, drop by to lend support, and scream "Get in the hole". You'll find me somewhere around the course, which is downloadable here as a handy Google Earth walkthrough. You'll recognise me from my natty blue plus fours. The afterparty is at the Tabernacle "Clubhouse" on Leonard St from 6.30pm.

Since September 8th a lot of fuss has been made about Jason Fortuny's "Craigslist Experiment". He posted an ad on Craigslist, posing as a submissive female, and then republished, in full, complete with personal details, all the replies he got. Understandably, many people felt this was somewhat sociopathic. I haven't linked to it, because I think the people that replied to his ad, deserve whatever is left of their privacy.
Then on September 13th, The Smoking Gun published mugshots of women who were arrested for soliciting using Craiglist Philadephia. I'm not linking to that either, because they deserve their privacy too.
So my point here, is that there is an incredible double standard at work. Prostitution is illegal in Philadelphia, but the sex acts Jason Fortuny was suggesting are also illegal in several states. I personally don't think there's anything inherently immoral about selling your body. So I guess this whole debacle has made me reconsider The Smoking Gun. It started out as a pioneering crusade to publicise accessible official documents, but now too often it's merely providing titillation. I'm going to censor myself, by not reading it anymore.

Tags: thesmokinggun, craigslist

That's How It Happened 2.0 has left private alpha, and is now available for beta testing. 95% of it is stolen from fimoculous.com, and the 5% that I wrote doesn't work. Feel free to check it out here. Comments aren't enabled over there, so please check back in here to tell me how much it's broken in your browser. Or email me: rufus at howithappened.com.

Q: How much wood would Chuck Norris chuck if Chuck Norris could chuck wood?
A: A round-house kick to the face.

Q: Why can't the Dalai Lama hoover under the sofa?
A: Because he has no attachments.

Tags: joke

Smart Monster Truck

breathing earth, a global visualisation of births, deaths, and CO2.

Top 10 most dugg youtube vids of the year.

Is there any reason not to go ahead and make this money clip credit card, from perhaps a less essential credit card?

Great research on rumble strips that play music as you drive.

Wikipedia musings about the stormtrooper effect and the inverse ninja law.

It had to happen: glow in the dark Dunks. (Prompts intense bout of Hypercolour nostalgia).

"On the best days, you see something that you are absolutely positive you will remember for the rest of your life."

Mr Jalopy, at Jalopy Junktown, has an incredible impassioned post, about the intangible joys of "heirloom" possessions. He really digs the Royal Copenhagen Hippopotamus Service:

"May we all have something in our lives that is so profoundly meaningful we would choose to commemorate it on a 144 piece set of porcelain dinnerware."

...according to Google:

Should marriage only be between a man and a woman?
What is man's freedom in relation to society?
What do we plan to do with the genetic engineering techniques we have mastered?
Are you the one, Jesus?
What’s in it for me?
What ethical and social obligations do we have as global citizens?
How can we reconcile people and their planet?
Where were you on the morning of September 11th, 2001?
Should you capitalize the word "Google" when using it as a verb?
Hey, how are you?
What is the greatest video game of all time?

And my answers:

No
Not sure, but it's going down.
Pink mice and blue cats
No
Nothing but pain and boredom
None
Ban Humvees. That's got to be enough, right?
A&E at University College Hospital London
No
Pretty good right now
This is the toughest of all, but I'm going to go with Civilisation II

Tags: questions

Smart Pox is uber-2.0. It lets you create 2d barcodes, linked to url/images etc, and then scan them with a mobile phone app. I'm not sure that the possibilites are endless, but there could be a "killer app" (or more correctly "killer implementation") for this idea.

Banksy strikes again, at Disney. Wired recently proposed "Crocheted replica of subway map cracks DRM on collection of old video games" as the perfect boingboing post, but actually "Banksy infiltrates Big Thunder Mountain to plant handmade shackled Guantanamo sex doll" is the perfect Cory/Xeni post.

Wikipedia random page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage

Headline of the day: 10 Stingrays Killed Since Irwin's Death. Quote: "there is still no need to ... kill or mutilate these important animals."

Another good 9/11 diagram by Ben Schott, in the NYT (via).

Ever notice how the word undeniable (Google meme watch) is oxymoronic in its own right? Anything "undeniable" just begs to be refuted.

Actually scratch that; it begs to be confuted. Great WOTD, meaning to refute conclusively.

Kottke's review of Beautiful Evidence got me interested in really great diagrams. You might have seen this great map of Golden Gate suicides that has been doing the rounds lately. Today the Guardian published an amazing map / Venn diagram of deaths from terrorism, overlaid with deaths from the war on terror. It's only available with a subscription to the Guardian's pdf service, but I thought I'd host it here for free. Download and enjoy:
Page 1, Page 2.

Tags: guardian, waronterror

Word of the day 1: greensward, any grassed area of land.

Word of the day 2: Coldharbour, a common UK place name. It turns out to have been a word for a wayside shelter, dating back to the 14th century.

Tags: wotd

For the first time ever today, I had keys that needed cutting, and shoes that need new soles simultaneously. While-I-waited for both jobs to get done, I pondered why the two businesses frequently coexist on the same premises. Some thoughts:
1. Both key cutting and shoe heeling are dependent on high passing foot traffic, and need only small premises, because they don't carry stock. This makes them ideal for low rent kiosks.
2. Both businesses require employees with rudimentary mechanical skills, and a disregard for personal safety. Watching the key machine generating sparks without eye protectors was terrifying. Equally the guys rivet-gunning my soles on, really ought to know better than to do it by hand.
3. Probably most important is that resoling shoes is a very seasonal activity. If heel bars are going to keep going through the dry summer months, they need a steady secondary business like key cutting, to keep the cash flow up.

Tags: keycutting, heelbars,

My vertical jump height sucks. I am several feet short of being able to dunk. Taking inspiration from this best of parkour vid, I'm going to learn to backflip off a wall, before I turn 30.

Tags: parkour, lebron

If you are reading this in the Americas or Australasia, you've probably never seen one of these before, since there are none native to your continents. It's a hedgehog, specifically Erinaceus Europeaus, which is sometimes kept as a household pet. They've been domesticated since Roman times, but are no longer considered edible. I found this one at a big country house, where it was being used as an organic pest controller. Ironically it was covered in fleas, which have now migrated to my suit. (See also the time I found a ferret)

Tags: hedgehog

I hadn't been to Greece in more than a decade, and some things have changed. The Greek alphabet appears to be under heavy attack from the Latin alphabet on all public buildings, billboards, and street signs, perhaps as a direct result of the Olympics.
It only takes about 10 minutes to learn to read the Greek alphabet, (although admittedly stylised capital letters are slightly harder), so having to depend on Latin alphabet signs is really lazy. I couldn't help feeling that this was an unwanted cultural invasion. The situation is perhaps not being helped by the wearing of "Go Hard Big Dick" t-shirts. Maybe as a response to this, a rather iconic Abu Ghraib stencil is currently plastered across half the classical monuments in Athens.

Tags: athens, dickinson,