Good documentaries on Google video

Mark Frauenfelder:
Alf LaMont says: "I found that Google Video has full length episodes of Nova, including The Elegant Universe (A Personal Favorite), and Also full length versions of Richard Dawkins' THE GOD DELUSION. Both very powerful pro-science documentaties, and perfectly free." Link

Reader comments:

Andrew Tonkin says:

Thanks for that. You may wish to add that Richard Dawkins' video of "God Delusion" is actually part 2 of his "Root of All Evil?" documentary; Part 1 is entitled "The Virus of Faith." Users should search under the two episode titles, not "Root of All Evil?" which is misspelled on both clips.

In "The Virus of Faith," Dawkins challenges Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church, the same Ted Haggard that resigned under sexual controversy recently. Interesting viewing.

Kane says:

You may be interested to know that google video also hosts a whole
bunch of good BBC documentaries, including all three parts of "The
Power of Nightmares"; "Tetris - From Russia With Love"; " Louis and
the Nazis" and "A War On Science (Intelligent Design and Dover)".

Eric says:

Do you have any idea how many full length documentaries are on google video? I've watched at least one every night for the last few months. I'm afraid they'll get pulled so I download them as well. Let me show you something.

That's just the beginning. I'm a slut for conspiracy theories... Google video has every conspiracy theory video you can possible imagine. From the most balls out bullshit you've ever heard (this is awesome) to all the 9/11 and peak oil stuff. Also, it appears that George Bush (daddy bush) killed Kennedy. No shit.

Right now I'm working through the UFO stuff, having already completed the free energy and Tesla archives. These last two turn up some UNBELIEVABLE stuff! I'm serious. I honest to god don't know what to make of some of the free energy stuff. Make sure you check out the Disclosure Project!

Google Patent Search launches

Xeni Jardin:

Link to Google Patent Search beta. Instant favorite new timehole. Fascinating, and infinitely better than the USPTO website (all data comes from USPTO, and results on Google do include links to the USPTO entries). No foreign patents for now, it seems, just US. Doesn't work for me in Firefox 2.0 on Mac, but IE and Safari in many variations seem to work just fine, and Firefox on PC or earlier iterations of Firefox on Mac may as well. (via Chris on Wayne's List)

Cactus building

Cory Doctorow:




Rotterdam's Urban Cactus housing project (UCX Architects) uses ingenious staggered terraces to make huge, sunny spaces, and a building profile that seems to have been parachuted in from 1945's future.

They placed the 98 residential units on 19 floors, using the pattern of outdoor spaces to determine the overall appearance of the project.

The slightly irregular pattern alternates these outdoor spaces to create what are in effect double-height spaces. Each unit then receives more sunlight than a typical stacked composition.

Link

(via Futurismic)

Geek Mafia - awesome nerdy caper novel

Cory Doctorow:

I've just finished Rick Dakan's debut self-published novel "G33k Mafia," and it was fantastic! G33k Mafia is the story of Paul Reynolds, a comic-book artist who has been forced out of the video-game company he co-founded, stabbed in the back by his partners. While drinking up his misery in a Silicon Valley bar, he meets a beautiful high-tech con artist, Chloe, who offers to help him get back at his betrayers. She introduces him to her crew of hacker con-artists, and helps him run a classic Big Con on his erstwhile partners, netting him a fortune in the process. Paul falls in with Chloe and her crew, becoming enmeshed in a series of baroque capers with a geeky twist, like forging rare comic books for sale on eBay, and on the way Paul reinvents himself as an outlaw.

The story is gripping as anything, and the characters are likable and funny and charming. I adore caper stories, and this stands with the best of them, a geeky version of The Sting.

The book is also flat-out great-looking too, the best-designed self-published book I've ever seen, thanks to Dakan's prodigious graphic design talents (he's definitely the kind of polymath that makes for excellent geekery -- he's the co-creator of City of Heroes, besides!). The entire text has been released under a Creative Commons license, so you can try before you buy, and starting today, Rick's slashed the price for the book to a mere $5 -- a real bargoon.

There's only one small niggle I have about this book and that's that it was very poorly copyedited and proofread. There's a clunker of a typo, grammatical error or malapropism on practically every page. Rick promises that this will be fixed in subsequent editions, and that he's going to get a better editor for the sequel, which he tells me he's almost finished with.

That said, this is one hell of a book. A smart publisher could do a lot worse than to get Rick under contract -- though given his smarts and marketing savvy, he may not want such a thing.

Link

Interplay Proposes Fallout MMO

Interplay might have had to sell Fallout 3 to stay in business, but it looks like they kept an ace up their sleeve, retaining rights to create a Fallout MMO. A proposal filed in late November with the US Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that the company hopes to raise $75 million dollars through various means, including sales of Interplay common stock in order to fund the massive project, with a target release of 2010.

Right now it is only a proposal, but Interplay predicts 1 million subscribers globally within the first year and revenue of $160 million after its first year in operation.

A Fallout MMO would be absolutely awesome. Just what the MMORPG market needs to escape the tried and true medieval setting and start fresh. Unfortunately it isn't up to us gamers, and Interplay's track record could very well drown out the fans' cries of joy in the ears of investors. Michael Fahey

Interplay Proposes $75M Fallout MMO?

The US Securities and Exchange Commission Filing

Radially expanding dinner table - AMAZING!

Radially expanding dinner table - AMAZING!

Cory Doctorow:



DB Fletcher's Capstan Tables are amazing, expanding round dinner-tables. When you spin them by the outer edges, they separate into sseveral pie-shaped radial slices, revealing more slives beneath that rise up to make a seamless, much larger surface. Spin the table-edge the other way and the table shrinks back again. The videos have to be seen to be believed.

Link

(Thanks, Brandon!)

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Bob Ross Game Still On, Folks

The dream is alive! Previously, we reported that the Bob Ross game was peril. Happy peril, but peril nonetheless. MTV's Stephen Totilo brings word that the game is still on. While things didn't work out with the title's previous developer, AGFRAG Entertainment Group, Bob Ross Inc. hasn't thrown in the paintbrush. Says the company's media director Jane Kowalski:

By hook or by crook there will be a game. There's no way we couldn't do a game because everybody wants one badly.

Yes, yes, hooks and crooks, YES!! So, what happened with those AGFRAG Entertainment what's-its-face?

I think they were sort of overwhelmed and they don't have the resources and the energy to tend to the huge demand that is needed. We are currently working on digging up the development team that has the swift enthusiasm to carry through.

Damn straight. This is Bob Ross, people. Publishers are swooping Bob Ross Inc. to make the title happen. The company is dead-set on getting it to the Wii and expects to make an update on progress shortly. Bring on those happy little trees. Brian Ashcraft

Bob Ross Game Back On [MTV]

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Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins

Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins

Wait! Before you watch, have you seen the film that this gives a very thankful nod to? A Trip to the Moon by Georges Melies, from 1902 was one of the first films to feature a plot, and it was most certainly Steampunk! So once you’ve seen that - this music video by the Smashing Pumpkins will seem even more charming, I think.

I’ve heard the music before - and I find it fairly agreeable, and indeed I think I’ve even seen clips from the video before - but many thanks go to Jesse Neninger for being so kind as to think of Brass Goggles and send the link in, as there’s no way I would have remembered it otherwise. It’s delightfully Steampunk - the costumes and set design are superb and if you look very closely at the steamship at the end, you may recognise the name - the father of Steampunk film.

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The Big Lebowski Miichinima

Clips: Big Lebowski Miichinima

A clever Wii gamer used the console's Mii creator, Wii Bowling and what had to be an awful lot of editing, to recreate the "pee'd on my rug" bowling scene from movie The Big Lebowski. While it's kinda funny to watch, I think this mostly proves you can't really make evocative machinima with Miis. Brian Crecente

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Geek wreath

Cory Doctorow:


The Geek Wreath is a simple and powerful idea: take a strand of lights and weave it around a wreath of all the goddamned power cables, spare USB cables, obsolete SCSI cables and whatever else you've got cluttering up your home.

Link

(via Make)

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No More Traffic Lights...

Traffic Lights Replaced By...Courtesy?

Drachten, a small Dutch city with around 50,000 residents has removed almost all of its traffic lights. Major intersections have been converted to roundabouts, smaller intersections just let drivers work make decisions on their own. Basically, it's anarchy. Anarchy that has completely eliminated dangerous crashes and road fatalities and created a surge in bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

Crashes still happen, but they have all been fender benders. The architect of the project, Dr Hans Monderman explained, "We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt." Instead of relying on a set of hard rules, drivers are asked to take their safety, and the safety of others, into their own hands. The result is that people are more aware, more careful and drive slower, but are far less frustrated while driving. Bikes and walkers now rule the roads and can pretty much travel non-stop around town

(This post continues on the site please click the title)

Contraption Video

I haven't watched this yet, but I'd like to check it out.
Rube Goldberg style contraption video

Mark Frauenfelder:I've seen a lot of videos where people set up Rube Goldberg systems, but this one is my favorite. I especially like the part where the stool seat spins down and tips a paper towel tube to make a ball roll out and go round a spiral track. Link (Thanks, Rob!)

IT Crowd

IT Crowd DVD has subtitles in leet

Cory Doctorow:

The IT Crowd DVDs have just shipped -- with subtitles in leet! The IT Crowd is a convulsively funny British TV show about sysadmins, created by Graham Linehan, who is best known for writing the classic show Father Ted.

The IT Crowd's first six episodes ran last year on Channel 4, and was widely shared online, resulting in major commercial success, critical acclaim, and a renewed contract for another season of the show.

I was privileged to consult a little on the show, and I was able to connect Graham with uber-geek Yoz Grahame, who suggested that the disc carry subtitles in leet (or 1337), the letter/number substitution code used by gamers, hackers and other net-dwellers.

The disc is region-locked to Europe, but I hear that a US version is coming shortly. Link(Thanks, Damien!)

See also The IT Crowd -- the geek comedy I've been waiting for all my life

Web Scavenger Hunt

Episode 1: Scavenger hunt!

Let’s kick things off with something a bit unusual: a virtual scavenger hunt.

At some point, nearly every web geek gets a chance to hack on some open data, usually from a government source. The buzzword here is “mashup,” but knowing how to find and consume openly available data will remain a valuable skill long after its faddishness ends.

Unfortunately, governments, and especially the US government, are often incredibly awful at providing this data. Sure, it’s available—but you’ve got to find it first.

So this question is all about finding that data. Since I’m most familiar with the USA, this question is USA-specific (but I’d love to see answers to any questions that apply to other nations).

In each case, the answer should be a URL where you can either download the data in question, or at least find a direct link to the data. There may be multiple sources for each, including ones that could be screen-scraped for the data. I’m not looking for those sources, however—just the ones with easily downloadable data in a format that can be easily parsed by a computer (i.e. CSV, XML, plain text). “Friendly” formats, in other words.

So, where can I download data to:

1. Analyze the nutritional content of foods?


2. Find the population (and other basic demographics) of my city?


3. Analyze the latest SEC filings by public companies?


4. Look at historical gas prices?


5. Look for trends in juvenile arrest rates?

Post your answers into the comments. For extra brownie points, tell us how you located each piece of data—did The Google serve you well, or were you forced to turn elsewhere?

If you really want to stretch your brain, try to write a tool to import each chunk of data into your favorite relational database. There will be a related question in a couple of weeks involving modeling one of these pieces of data, so you overachievers can start thinking about it now…

Good luck, and check back this weekend for the answers.

This article provided by sitepoint.com.

technorati tags:Site+PointScavenger+Hunt

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Presidential Speech Tag Clouds

Timeline of words used in Presidential speeches (1776 - 2006)

Mark Frauenfelder:
Chirag has analyzed "the words that presidents used frequently in their speeches shows which issues they deemed important. The prominence of 'Terrorist' in G. W. Bush's tag cloud is unsurprising while Richard Nixon was all about 'commitment' somehow. Move the slider around to see the changes in tag cloud. Link

technorati tags:President, Speech, Tag+Cloud

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DefectiveByDesign Tags on Amazon

Tagging DRM stuff on Amazon with DefectiveByDesign

Cory Doctorow:Gregory sez, "An anti-DRM activist group has initiated an effort to tag products on Amazon.com as DefectiveByDesign to warn Amazon's shoppers of the dangers of DRM. So far a few dozen Amazon users have tagged over 150 products containing DRM (Blu-ray, HD DVD, FairPlay, and more) as DefectiveByDesign using the e-retailer's own 'tagging' system."Link(Thanks, Gregory!)

technorati tags:DefectiveByDesign, DRM, Amazon

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Damn...

Stargate: LEGO

Stargate rocks(ed) well, the seasons with Lt. O'Neil/Gould... and so do LEGOs, so this is just perfect... Kelly writes - "This rotating Stargate is 19 inches tall with light-up chevrons. An RCX drives a treadmill, which spins the inner ring randomly for x seconds, then reverses direction, seven times. Won best medium space award and best brick mod at BrickFest 2005." Thanks edison142! - Link.

Related:

• LEGO projects @ MAKE - Link.

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technorati tags:Lego, Stargate, Working, Model, SG1

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I didn't realize A.S.S. had a website

American Science & Surplus - Chicago, IL

Niles sent one of his MAKE stops, he writes - "After seeing the post on Skycraft Parts & Surplus I just had to mention American Science and Surplus! They're located in the Chicago, IL and Milwaukee, WI area and are great stores to explore... Make sure to read the labels on the items, some of them can be really funny!" - Link.

Got a favorite Maker hangout? Let us know.

Related:

• More places to get stuff to MAKE @ the MAKE playlist... - Link.

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technorati tags:A.S.S., American+Science+Surplus, Parts, Random, Stuff

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New OK Go Video, and a Shrimp on a treadmill...

Shrimp on treadmill -- no, not a new OK Go song.

Xeni Jardin:

All you need to know about this link is that it contains video of shrimp on a treadmill, and that it is not the latest viral release from the band OK Go.

The shrimp treadmill, invented and built by [Pacific University biologist David Scholnick], allows researchers to measure the activity of an exercising shrimp for a set period of time at known speed and oxygen levels.

Link

technorati tags:OK+Go, Shrimp, Tredmill, Video

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Fiber Optic Lighting

Sunlight Direct Hybrid Lighting: Install It, Get a 30% Federal Tax Credit

In our quest to someday live off the grid, here's another device we've added to our list: Sunlight Direct hybrid solar lighting technology that collects sunlight on the roof and brings it inside with fiber optics. Once inside, that solar light automagically combines with your choice of the fluorescent lighting you see here, direct halogen lighting, or greenhouse lighting. On cloudy days, the electric lights are faded in, with a microprocessor monitoring the situation, keeping the light level steady whether you're using piped-in sunlight, electrical light or a combination of both.

This is a great hybrid system, and an especially nice idea for lights that might be situated in darker areas of your house. Weed growers will love this, where its reduced power usage won't be as likely to raise a red flag down at the government-supervised power company. Plus, you get a 30% federal tax credit if you install it this year or next. Can't beat that. – Charlie White

Take a look at the Discovery Channel video segment, after the jump.

Product page [Sunlight Direct, via SlashGear]

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