An electric motorcycle, 15 minute charge gives an hour of running.
Zero to sixty in three seconds and a top speed of 75 mph
May 30, 2008
Yamaha Deus Ex Machina
May 23, 2008
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
According to This PopSci article:
Taiwanese scientists were able to genetically modify a litter of pigs with jellyfish DNA so that they would fluoresce green.
Producing glow in the dark farmyard animals, now that is a job with satisfaction!
They glow on the inside too! 
What I wonder is, can this be applied to birds. Some interesting ‘UFO sightings’ may result 
.
Genetically modified germs!
This germ could stop tooth decay
Tooth Fairy: The Streptococcus mutans bacteria shown here lives inside your mouth. It eats sugars and excretes teeth-rotting acid. But by replacing its acid-production gene with a gene that makes alcohol, one researcher found a possible way to eliminate tooth decay.
If the alcohol is drinkable, then you wonder what methods people may find to grow these in some sort of colonies, and if its not drinkable, they expect us to have them in our mouths!
Disclaimer: Obv I understand the scientific inaccuracies in the above, but it was my initial thoughts!
There does seem to be some even better uses for altering bacteria:
The salmonella bacterium thrives inside malignant tumors. By modifying these bacteria to produce a toxic enzyme, researchers hope to create a targeted cancer killer.
Penny for your thoughts, Ethical?
May 22, 2008
I went swimming again yesterday !
Was in pool for much shorter time, something like 45 mins or an hour or so, but pretty good. Was surprised to find out one end of the pool is 3.5m deep, esp considering the other end is 1.5m deep!
Much better at breaststroke, (cheers Const!), but get tired quickly cos its an unfamiliar action to keep up, and obv being as skinny as I am, I’m lacking flab to keep me afloat like others.
Front crawl much better, main problem being water coming in ma mouth, so I’m not only breathing in as I turn ma head, but also spitting out the water, which means I don’t get a proper breath and so get a bit more water in, and so on. Not pleasant, will need to rectify.
Thankfully I don’t feel the aches and pains I felt after ma last swim though
Edit: Was surprised to see how many simple errors in sentence construction etc I happen to have in this post. I would fix them, but I don’t know which to start with, so will leave them.
May 20, 2008
*drool* new tools
It turns out the guys making the new open source film happen to be creating new tools while they’re at it, and making them available!Tree Generator
I’ve been playing around with a chinchilla 3D model that I found they gave on their blog, a little confusing but cool:
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/chinchilla_mdef.blend
I’m still trying to work out some sort of story rather than ma own theories based on the few pics released.
Thankfully, the streaming version of the trailer worked!
Watch
Exciting stuff!
And OUCH, some very high res pics, and not long at all to render! Millions of hairs in a matter of minutes! Details here.
be this ‘ere a spot o’ déjà vu?
The Guardian 20.05.08 G2 supplement gave a quote from a Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall (some gay rights organisation):
‘They will go to backstreet suppliers, who are often using unscreened sperm … These women will not have children – they’ll just have children through dangerous methods.’
This is in the context that lesbians should be entitled to IVF treatment.
Personally, I wouldn’t pull together the 30 pence it costs for a guardian at the union. As one of the other chaps in the flat believes 30 pence is better spent on the said paper rather than, say, a mars bar, there is generally a few lying around.
This harks back to a time when some were trying to legalise abortion. I do, however, see a fundamentally important difference.
Those wanting abortion, may go to a backstreet clinic as a form of birth control, in order to save themselves the responsibility of a child.
Those wanting IVF treatment should be responsible enough to raise children. If willing to go to a back street clinic for children, that does seem to suggest they are willing to take unknown risks (as Mr Summerskill said ‘dangerous methods’) to get their own way, which I personally cannot see as being responsible in the slightest.
May 17, 2008
Most anticipated movie of the year!
Well, it would have been, cept I only heard about it a few minutes ago. From the makers of the excellent Elephants Dream, comes Codenamed Peach, Big Buck Bunny.
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=97
*drool* all files used in creation included *drool*
Online film release thought to be May 30-31st.
Whole point of this, is it was made entirely using free programs that are available to anyone. Mostly they used a 3D modelling program called Blender.
Space pics
Bunch of hubble pictures to mark its 18th birthday.
‘one wheeled motorcycle’
In reality, its two wheels side by side, which can raise and lower to aid turning. All control done by leaning. Like Sedgeways. Max theoretical speed is 40mph, currently not gone above 15mph, but decently thought out. Clean, manoverable.
