Alien-like Squid With "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site

"A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" Magnapinna squid. (See photos of Magnapinna.)" 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081124-giant-squid-magnapinna.html 

Learning languages 'boosts brain'

"Learning a second language "boosts" brain-power, scientists believe.

Researchers from University College London studied the brains of 105 people - 80 of whom were bilingual.

They found learning other languages altered grey matter - the area of the brain which processes information - in the same way exercise builds muscles."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3739690.stm

Health and happiness is all down to a roll in the dirt

"Forget the spring-cleaning. A study has found evidence that bacteria common in soil and dirt could improve people’s spirits.

According to the research, the action of Mycobacterium vaccae (M vaccae) on the brain is similar to that of some commonly used antidepressants.

The bacterium, which is related to the microbe that causes tuberculosis, appears to work by stimulating the body’s immune system. This, in turn, prompts certain cells in the brain to produce more serotonin, a hormone associated with feelings of wellbeing."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1596735.ece

Five Whys

"... asking why five times.

When something goes wrong, we tend to see it as a crisis and seek to blame. A better way is to see it as a learning opportunity. Not in the existential sense of general self-improvement. Instead, we can use the technique of asking why five times to get to the root cause of the problem."

http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/five-whys.html

Dydd Llewelyn yr Ail - 11th December

Dydd Llewelyn yr Ail - 11th December

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd or Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (c. 1223 – December 11, 1282)—meaning Llywelyn, Our Last Leader—was the last prince of an independent Wales before its conquest by Edward I of England. He is sometimes called Llywelyn III of Gwynedd or Llywelyn II of Wales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llywelyn_the_Last

A Simple Snow Effect Widget for Blogger Blogs!

"Here is a simple snow effect widget which you can add to your Blogger powered blog in just one click! This widget does not use images to generate the snow effect: instead it uses plain white text (full stops and apostrophes) to act as snowflakes which trickle down the page. You can see this widget in effect here on Blogger Buster over the holiday period."

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2008/12/simple-snow-effect-widget-for-blogger.html

Lotus Symphony - Best Desktop Application

"Lotus Symphony acts much like Microsoft Office, which is good if you are looking for something to replace Office at a fraction of the cost (free!). It's not so good if you are looking for something entirely different from Office, but there aren't many free suites that accomplish that yet. There are plenty of individual applications out there, but most office productivity suites at the moment are, more or less, Office clones."

http://lotussymphonyblog.com/blog/symblog.nsf/dx/best-desktop-application-wow

Picidae - The web in pictures

"The World Wide Web, the nervous system of a simultaneous communication and the platform for global data exchange, is quite a diverse heterogeneous formation. Many nations have an active Internet censorship. Government, Internet providers and Internet Services are observing, controlling and even blocking content. Therefore the Internet appears in different forms: tidied up, and in other ways trimmed or fragmented."

http://www.picidae.net/artproject/


http://pici.picidae.net/

BASH Shell: For Loop File Names With Spaces

"BASH for loop works nicely under UNIX / Linux / Windows and OS X while working on set of files. However, if you try to process a for loop on file name with spaces in them you are going to have some problem. for loop uses $IFS variable to determine what the field separators are. By default $IFS is set to the space character. There are multiple solutions to this problem."

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/handling-filenames-with-spaces-in-bash.html

Gmail Tasks

"One of the most requested Google features is adding task management to Gmail or Google Calendar. This feature is now available as part of Gmail Labs and I predict that this will be the most popular experimental feature."


http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/12/gmail-tasks.html

Hidetext

"Hidetext.net lets you convert text to an image. This means you can hide passwords, personal messages, pieces of code, or any kind of private information on forums, blogposts, emails, irc, msn-aim chats,.... "

Example

http://www.hidetext.net/

10 ways to reduce removable media headaches in Linux

"For many new Linux users, removable media can be a deal-breaker. Anyone coming over from Windows knows you simply insert the CD, use it, and eject it. With Linux, it isn’t always that simple. In fact, with Linux, removable media has always held a completely different philosophy.

In the old days of UNIX, removable media was seen in the same light as the PC itself — multi-user. So when you inserted some form of media (usually a floppy disk, back then), it had to be mounted to a mount point (such as /mnt/floppy) and was then made available to all users on the system. Because of this, the removable media synchronization wasn’t “on demand.” It typically worked by caching the data until the media was unmounted. Upon unmounting the media, the data was written and the media could be removed.

Linux has caught up to the needs of today’s user and, in many cases, the media mounting/unmounting is automatic. But not every situation is the same. Here are some tips that should make your Linux life with removable media better."

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=457

Quickly share your screenshots with JShot

"With the JShot screen capture and uploader utility, you can quickly put all or part of your screen on the Web and send a URL to it to a friend. JShot is free for noncommercial use, and is great when you want to show people a screen capture and don't want to have to deal with file names and upload permissions."

http://www.linux.com/feature/154655

Life before email: A look back at the 'vacuum post'

"Long before the delivery of the first email in 1971, while most of the world was happy to wait around for snail mail, the Germans were busy blasting letters to each other at high speeds.

The tubular post, or pneumatic telegraph, was a Victorian invention that conveyed letters rapidly over short distances. It was once popular in shops — it survived in some London stores late into the 20th century — for conveying bills, memos and money from floor to floor quickly and securely.

But Germany took this technology a stage further by linking networks across the country so post could be sent speedily backwards and forwards. At first coaches and then trains made up gaps in the network."

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39563443-1,00.htm