The ultimate 'how to' site

My first suggestion for a site (thanks, Linda !) - VideoJug is a great site with 'how to' videos on just about everything that you could possibly think of. They have categories for food, drink, health, beauty, DIY, House & Garden, pets and leisure. The entries range from 'How to perform the perfect golf swing' to 'How to unblock a toilet' to (my personal favourite) 'How to get out of a car without showing your knickers' ! Surely something for everyone at this site.

Today's time waster

I don't know why, but this little game really appeals to me. It is so simple, but very clever nonetheless. All you do is draw a line from top left to bottom right and then press play. Then a little scarfed figure sledges down the hill that you have just created. If you make it too steep or bumpy he will come off. Sounds not very exciting, but it's reall quite fun. Try it out here.

Teddy bear slaughters 2,500 trout

File this under "Weird story of the week" ! There's no words that I can say that will be able to do better than the title, so I'm just going to say click here.

Incredible bike control

This guy is amazing ! I am not into mountain biking (or any other form of biking for that matter !), but just watching this guy makes you question how he does it. His balance and control is phenomenal. Take a look at him in action here.

GroupLoop - a place to share

Now this I think is an idea that has potential - GroupLoop is website for any group of people who want to share ideas, share files, share calendars, have group discussions, etc. It seems to be very simple, but done very effectively. This could benefit all sorts of people and is well worth a look.

Model making - in the extreme

I remember making models as a youngster, but nothing quite like this. Pierre Scerri of Avignon has built a 1:3 scale model of a Ferrari 312PB. But this is no ordinary model - this is exact in every single way. He even learnt how to make glass so that he could get the exact pattern lens for the headlights and learnt how to make rubber so that he could mould his own tyres.

Incredible story - read it here.

Compare size of something before you buy

Sizeasy (not a great name) is a website that visually lets you compare the size of something with familiar objects (a pack of cards, a wine bottle, etc). It's a great idea and works really well. You get front view, side view, top view and best of all a 3D view. Simple and very effective.

Great News !

Someone pointed me to a really good News Reader called (aptly enough) GreatNews. As well as being a first class newsreader, GreatNews has two distinct advantages over it's competitors:

1. It is very competitively priced - FREE ! Can't say fairer than that.

2. It needs no install. That's right - all you need to do is unzip the files to somewhere - your hard drive, network drive, usb stick, etc and then run it. This is especially good for those wanting to run this at work where we are often prevented from installing things.

For those of you that haven't tried a News Reader before, they are great things - they allow you to pull all sorts of feeds into a single place. Take a look at Wikipedia for more information on them here. You can even add this blog as a feed and be updated automatically whenever there is a new post. To do that, just add http://stuffyoumightlike.blogspot.com/atom.xml as the feed URL.

Make your surfing so much easier

I have recently come across an application called Browster which I can safely say will revolutionalise the way that you surf. What it does is provide a small icon next to links when you hover your mouse over them. When you then mouse over the icon it will pop up that link in a hovering window. You can follow links in the window and scroll up and down, but when you mouse away from that window it disappears. You can go through a page of links in seconds without having to open up new windows (or tabs if you use Firefox) each time - saving you so much time and effort.

I think it is fantastic - give it a go. The one version works with both IE and Firefox (sorry, no Opera or Safari right now).

Parking practice

Here's something to fill in a few spare minutes and to practice your parking at the same time - very simple, but quite fun.

Find the wine you're looking for

Wine-Searcher.com lets you search for any wine in any country. I haven't tried other countries, but the UK side of it certainly works. Very cool idea and they have kept it simple. Give it a try.

Your very own igloo

I so want one of these ! In the US, they have produced a 15ft high inflatable igloo for the pool. Three sides of the igloo have grips for climbing and the fourth side is a gigantic slide. As the guy in the article says "If only I had a swimming pool and $8,860, my life would be complete."

The ultimate Lego rubber band gun

Engadget has got a story of the making of the ultimate Lego rubber band gun (this, of course, works under the premise that there have been countless Lego rubber band guns made before this one - this is certainly the first that I have seen). I have to say that I would never be dedicated enough to actually make one of these, but take a look at the video, because it looks "way cool" in action.

This site can read your mind...........

http://www.20q.net/

Inventor Robin Burgener programmed a simple neural net on a DOS machine 1988. He taught it 20 questions about a cat. He than passed the program around to friends on a floppy and had them challenge the neural net with their yes/no answers to the object they had in mind. The neural net learns only when it plays a game; no data is added except for the yes/no answers of visitors. So the more people who test it, the more they teach it. In 1995 Burgener put the now robust neural net onto the new web where anyone could play it (that is, train it) 24 hours a day. And they did. Burgener's genius was to turn the hard tedious work of training a neural net into a fun game for humans.

Last year, after 1 million rounds of 20 questions online, the neural net had accumulated 10 million synaptic associations. It has a 73% success rate of guessing what you thought.

Give it a try - it's quite uncanny !

Suicide squirrel in opera-hating kamikaze bike spoke mangle

From The Register:

A Helsinki squirrel dived into the bicycle wheel of passing opera singer Esa Ruuttunen, hospitalising him and killing itself.

The squirrel - apparently not an opera fan - ran headlong at Ruuttunen's spokes. Alarmed, the bicycling bass baritone hit the deck.

Instead of attending rehearsals for new Finnish opus Kaarmeen hetki (Hour of the Serpent), Ruuttunen attended casualty with concussion and a broken nose.

Fans of Scandinavian-language "passion-laden thriller[s]" looking forward to the aforementioned "wild drama delving into the soul of a woman" needn't begin a candlelit prayer vigil for Ruuttunen's recovery though. A Finnish National Opera spokeswoman told Reuters: "He is not yet singing in rehearsals, but thinks he will be able to perform at the world premiere."

Jesus is a tough act to follow !

From WorldNetDaily.com:

An evangelist who tried replicating Jesus' miracle of walking on water has reportedly drowned off the western coast of Africa. Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle, and he attempted it from a beach in Gabon's capital of Libreville.

"He told churchgoers he'd had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus," an eyewitness told the Glasgow Daily Record.

"He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat. He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."

Some very clever ads

Take a look at the following: http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/clever-ads-p1.php - some very clever ads from around the world. It just goes to show that when it's done well, advertising really is an art form.

Scream !

OK, file this one under....................just plain weird ! Scream! is a little app that sits quietly away in your system tray doing nothing until you get frustrated with your computer/software/colleagues/ whatever and you start yelling at the computer (don't say you've never done that !). At that point it uses your computers in-built microphone to detects these and makes your windows react accordingly - scream a little and they will shake a little, scream a lot and they will really go to town ! Absolutely no practical use whatsoever, but fun nonetheless !