All posts from Neatorama

The Chaos is a poem often used to demonstrate how difficult it is to pronounce words in English, as the spelling and pronunciation varies so. It was written by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité, who first published it in 1909, then revised and lengthened it several times before his death in 1946. More lines were added posthumously. The Spelling Society published The Chaos in its entirety. Here are the first few (and the easiest) lines:
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
The poem is now 274 lines long, meant to be read out loud. How much of it can you manage before mispronouncing something? Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

Despite the many opportunities for research in the oceans, the surface of those seas tend to get rough.  Ships being tossed around tend to do less research, so in 1962 the Office of Naval Research helped to develop the Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP).
FLIP can be used in either a drifting or moored mode, based on the science requirements, and FLIP can remain on station in the vertical position for substantial periods of time. For research requiring a stationary rather than drifting platform, a deep moor capability has been developed.
This 350 foot long contraption is towed out to the open ocean, and flipped 90° to the vertical position to become a stable spar buoy.  The 50 or so feet that juts above the waterline becomes the crew operations area, where research can be carried out in stable, calm conditions.
Link (Marine Physical Laboratory)  Photo: Dept. of Navy

Photo: Sam Javanrouh
Sam Javanrouh’s blog, Daily Dose of Imagery, features his photography, one image per day.  Today he posted many great photos he’s taken which all fall under one tricky umbrella of shooting – people on the street.  People can be unpredictable when it comes to being photographed; Sam tells of friends who have had gear broken and suffered injuries at the hands of their subjects.  But on the flip side, being a great photographer is often about seizing the moment and forgoing polite introductions.  Sam on the photo above:
When I took this I was almost certain that I didn’t even have a sharp photo. But when i saw it later I liked it. So no way to ask her now. I won’t be selling this image for stock use. And if she ever contacts me and tells me she’s unhappy about it I’ll take it off the site. Street photography is all about the fractions of a second. You have to take the shot when you think you have it (to be precise, you take the shot just before the moment. Good photographers can see the future.
And on this one, he remarks, “I still have a hard time sleeping at night, thinking what will happen to me if I’ve seriously pissed off the dark knight.”
Photo: Sam Javanrouh
Link, and… as Sam says, Happy Shooting!

Bernard H. Pietenpol had a dream. He wanted to make an airplane accessible to the masses. So in 1928, with only an eighth-grade education, he set out to design and build a simple, inexpensive plane. The result was the Pietenpol AirCamper, and his family is still selling the plans for it, just in case you’re in the mood for a weekend project.
Hobbyist Chuck Gantzer was in such a mood, and at the link, you can see in-process photos of the construction of an AirCamper, as well as of the completed airplane in flight.
Link via Make | Pietenpol AirCamper Website | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

(YouTube Link)
Sound engineer Henry Dagg built an enormous pin barrel harp with 11,520 holes that can be selected for different compositions. He calls it the “Sharpsicord.” Here is his performance of Paul McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road.”
Link via Urlesque

What better way to start off a geek fight than to ask who is the greatest movie or TV robot/android? Curtis Silver of Geek Dad did just that by comparing Data from Star Trek, to just about every other android.
For example, just to add fuel to the raging Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate:
Data vs. C3PO
C3PO can understand and translate around six million different forms of communication. Mind you, he was designed and built by a young boy. While the Midi-chlorians might have been high in young Skywalker’s bloodstream, they didn’t help him build a droid with much of a backbone. Meanwhile, in a galaxy far far away Dr. Soong was busy creating a sentient android of his own with not only a backbone, but a badass positronic brain. It’s never made clear how many languages Data can speak, but one has to assume the number is just as high as C3PO. Advantage: Data

Link
What do you think? Who’s the best robot/android that ever lived (well, in sci-fi anyhow)?

While it isn’t exactly new, security experts issued a warning over the rise of "ransomware" – a type of computer malware that hijacks your computer and and won’t let you use it unless you cough up the dough:
Turning hijacked computers into cash is still hard work for most computer criminals. They’ve got to trick the infected PC into sending spam, then trick a recipient into buying a useless product — or they have to steal online banking passwords, log onto a victim’s account, bypass the bank’s money transfer fraud controls, and so on.
It’s much easier to just demand cash directly from infected users — a crime that’s the Internet’s equivalent of kidnapping.
"Give me all your money or your computer gets it-" is the basic proposition. [...]
Luis Corrons Granel, a researcher at Panda Security, said use of ransomware by criminals is exploding — 25 percent of all rogueware in the past quarter involved a family of intimidating products named "TotalAntivirus.” It demands that users pay $50 for two years, $79 for a lifetime license. [...]
To an average user, most rogueware would be indistinguishable from other standard antivirus products. They look like fully functional software, showing Windows-like screens for firewall settings, file scanning, and every other tab you’d expect from standard antivirus products. “Total Security” even lets users choose their language — English, Spanish, and German are offered.

Link

If there’s one food that most people in China simply haven’t developed a taste for, that would be chocolate. Given that China represents over a billion potential customers, that simply won’t do, according to the chocolate industry (if there’s such a thing).
So, what do they do to promote chocolate? Behold the World Chocolate Wonderland, the world’s first theme park where everything is made out of the sweet stuff.
Damian Grammaticas of BBC News takes a look:
Up to 80 tons of chocolate was used in the creation of World Chocolate Wonderland, organisers said. The exhibition also boasts a life-size replica army of chocolate terracotta warriors, chocolate flowers and a chocolate car.

Link [Flash video]

How well do you know your computers, operating systems, and peripherals? Find out with this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. They’ll give you a question, and you deicide whether they’re talking about a Macintosh computer, or an IBM clone type computer that uses Windows. Or neither. I scored 80%! Link

The authors of an article in Focus magazine, a BBC publication, took a look at statistics in 35 countries to rank those nations according to their tendency towards the seven deadly sins. Australia was found to be the most “sin-prone” nation, with the US coming in second. Canada, Finland, and Spain rounded out the most “sin-prone” rankings.
Topping each of the sin categories were South Korea (lust), the US (gluttony), Mexico (greed), Iceland (sloth and pride), South Africa (wrath) and Australia (envy).
Of course, some question the research methods and the results. Link -via Simply Left Behind

Ten Word Wiki describes itself as “an encyclopedia for the ADD generation.” The site is like Wikipedia, but all entries are limited to ten words. Since there aren’t that many entries yet, you may want to browse the “recent changes” tab. Here is the entry for “pie”.
A savoury or sweet gloop, usually lumpy, encased in pastry.
And for “Lance Armstrong”.
Inspirational unibollocked cycling legend. Singlehandedly invented the rubber wristband industry.
Humor is encouraged, so browse at your own risk. Link -via b3ta

NASA’s Spirit rover {wiki} landed on Mars in 2004. After its planned 90-day mission, the rover kept on working for another six years. Last May, it became stuck in soft soil and could no longer rove, but continued analyzing the Martian environment. Now NASA has decided to put the rover into hibernation mode at least until temperatures rise on Mars, which could be six months.
Despite the science that can be done at the site, the probable end of Spirit’s career as a mobile unit seemed discouraging to JPL rover driver, Ashley Stroupe. A week and a half ago, the rover team changed their approach to getting the rover unstuck and experienced much greater success.
“We had a tremendous amount of hope,” Stroupe said.
In the end, though, they ran out of time. Now, their main task is positioning the rover to capture the greatest amount of solar energy possible: The rover is currently tilted south, away from the sun in the northern sky. If they can reduce the tilt, Spirit may be able to periodically communicate with Earth throughout the winter. If they can’t, it will be a long, silent winter for the robot.
Link
The image above is a portion of a fitting tribute to Spirit at xkcd. Link