Be Advised…

Be advised. This blog may come back to life without warning (maybe even with a second writer!). That is all for now.

Oh, and if you want to enter a drawing to win a free Wii from UneasySilence (a blog), take a look at this drawing. The rules say you have to mention it somewhere and link to where you mentioned it in the comments of that post, and I just so happen to want a Wii. Smart publicity/contest rule idea, I think.

2 More Blogs I’m Adding

I’ve been overwhelmed with work, so I haven’t been posting much, but rest assured, my feedreader’s “flagged items” list is overflowing with goodies I’ll mention soon (maybe after AP exams). For now, two blogs I’ve come accross:

• First, Cute Overload! This is a site laden with gratuitously cute animal pictures that explores theories of cuteness such as the importance of the small ears-to-head ratio, paws-up,and more. I came accross this one a while ago but rediscovered it recently (probably via BoingBoing, where I think I found it in the first place…) and found the RSS feed for it.
• Second, (via Popgadget) I like the look of this science blog called InkyCircus. It’s basically a blog about interesting science news. Give it a peek!

That’s all for now, but I promise I’ll keep

Eye Surgery In the Comfort of Your Home?

I'm finding this site a bit hard to believe, but I've barely looked at it yet. Still something about the fact that, in the picture, the doctor holding the device is wearing glasses makes me question the authenticity…

[Via OhGizmo!]

Asterisk and Unusual Business Ideas That Work

My father sent me a link to this article about the author of Asterisk, the open source phone system. This system lets you do amazing things with phones and computers; I hope to get a chance to play with it sometime, as I've heard great things about it. As I usually do when I read an interesting article on a blog, I went to the main page to look at what else it has. This one is a very interesting blog for anyone interested in business, startups, and disruptive ideas.

Software I just installed: Qnext

Qnext is a cool application that connects you to people in just about every way imaginable! It's got text, audio, and video chat (it supports AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and ICQ too), but also music streaming, picture sharing, file transfer, multiplayer games like chess and go, and even remote computer access! I've just started playing with it, so I'll try to follow up with a real review soon. So far, it's great! It's a big download (about 30 mb I think) and people have reported it using a large amount of resources, but I haven't had any trouble so far, and I'm on a Fujitsu T3010D tablet with 512mb of ram and a 1.4GHz Pentium M which occasionally freezes up under Firefox, so it's working beautifully as far as I'm concerned ;-). The only trouble I've had so far is with being unable to remotely connect to my computer from my computer, but I'm sure I'll figure that out soon enough. Let me know what you think of it if you try it out!

Computer-controlled muscle movement: The first bionic man?

Take a look at this video to see how researchers managed to let this victim of a spinal cord injury walk again! It's really remarkable!

[Via Wetware Hacker] 

Do you feel uncomfortable at the disco?

Do you feel like you have two left feet? Haven't even broken in your bell-bottoms? Well, let the wonderful Ake and Leena Blomqvist of Finland (Disco capital of the universe!*) show you the intricate ins and outs of being the star of the flashing disco dance floor! Check out his easy lesson here!

[Via The Red Ferret Journal] 

*The Flying Spaghetti Monster told me.

Brainhacking (possibly more binaural beats)

Here's a blog post that talks about influencing brainwaves using sounds by listening to a different tone in each ear. I suspect it may be related to binaural beats, but I'm not sure. I'm definitely going to be trying this out, but I'll have to be careful, as some of it may easily be a placebo effect. I'll try it and see what happens.

[Via Gizmodo, Lifehacker]

UPDATE: Yes, this is also a binaural beat generator, but it's not free. There is supposedly a 30 day trial period after which you have to purchase a $40 license, but, strangely, mine expired after 10 minutes. 

Stuck on Magnetism!

I have to thank Keith for getting me hooked on Magnetism! This is a fun game where you have to think about how to drop a ball into a bowl without letting it be affected by gravity and various types of magnets. It’s quite nicely made.

2 blogs I’m adding to my feed reader

First, the Optical Illusions blog. I can't remember how I got to this one, but I think it was through a reference from one of the blogs I read.

Second, The Neurophilosopher's blog. I came accross this one because WordPress.com has a social tagging feature that allows you to see who else has used a certain tag. Needless to say, The Neurophilosopher has a pretty strong domination of the Neuroscience tag :).

I'll try to remember to put up my full blog reading list at some point, maybe as an OPML file.