Typing lessons and piano lessons have a love child
Click “activate keyboard controls” and use your keyboard to play the, um, keyboard. Here’s the code for Hey Jude: LJ JLQH HJKE EWLQLKJ LQQ QREWEQL GHJQL LKJFG And Star Wars: …s h gfdl h gfdl h gfgd …s...
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Would you have invested?
Apparently, this is a picture that’s been circulating through email forwards for a few years, but I’d never seen it until it was linked to as a throwaway citation in a Wired piece. So, I know it’s the...
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Water-based computer calculates everything an economy needs
A blog post at the New York Times points me in the direction of the “Phillips machine.” Using water in place of cash, it is an intricate assembly of pumps, pipes and valves, mimicking the economy. But...
View ArticleA quarter-century of addictive falling blocks
Yes, it’s 25 years of Tetris. Hooray! There’s a pretty interesting writeup at The Guardian about it, but I figured heck, people just want to play the game, right? Sorry about destroying your workday!...
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Love skimming the news? Love SuperBreakout? You’re in luck with NewsBreaker
Like a grandparent’s worst horrifying nightmare of how kids these days will get their news, MSNBC now offers an online game called NewsBreaker. Ripped from any context, disembodied headlines float...
View ArticleComputer virus? Bah! Try computer bacteria
Scientists have harnessed the power of bacteria to create a “computer” that’s capable of solving specialized math and logic problems. Explains the Guardian: The research, published today in the Journal...
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Use a shredder? Now those documents can be put back together
Using an ordinary office-grade scanner and some simple character recognition, at least one company promises to recreate shredded documents. That’s just one of the things I learned in this Slate...
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Magic Mouse: Brief hands-on review
Well, I happened to stop at an Apple Store yesterday, specifically to take a look at the 27″ iMacs and even more specifically to get my grimy little fingers on a Magic Mouse. I’ve had lengthy thoughts...
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I like simple desktop backgrounds
And now I have a repository to download them from. Check out SimpleDesktops.com for a selection of highly usable desktop backgrounds, like the one above Frankly, I just don’t understand how people can...
View ArticleNewspaper watch: What will next-gen journalists do?
I just wrapped up teaching a couple of intro journalism classes at Brandon University, and the best part of it (besides the inquisitive, engaged students) was the time that I got to spend delving into...
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Oh dear me, there’s an app for ‘that’?
Introducing “Bedometer” — the iPhone app that tells you how many calories you’ve burned while having sex. Simply lay it on the bed beside you, start it up, then, when you and your partner start things...
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Trim down your SIM card with a meat cleaver
There was a bunch of confusion when Apple announced the iPad, because they’d unilaterally decided to embed it with a custom microSIM card, instead of a regular SIM card. That meant that your cellular...
View ArticleA printer worthy of note
I just bought a new printer. Although I like it very much, I wish I had the know-how and time (but mostly know-how) to create a printer like this one. (Thanks to BoingBoing!)
View ArticleUpgrading from MS-DOS to Windows 7
Astonishingly, you can install MS-DOS 5.0 on a virtual machine, “upgrade” to Windows 1.0 and then follow the Microsoft upgrade path through all the major Windows versions — including 3.1, 95, Vista...
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To Apple: Take this man’s advice for the next OS X
Sometimes, ’tis the simplest mash-ups that are the best.
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