Photo: Flickr user lifeontheedge

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

XKCD on the discovery channel commercial

(This commercial, which I love, and could just as easily be an ad for wikipedia.)

Not only is the comic hilarious, it actually matches the syllables.

James Holman (October 15, 1786 – July 29, 1857), known as the "Blind Traveler," was a British adventurer, author and social observer, best known for his writings on his extensive travels. Not only completely blind but suffering from debilitating pain and limited mobility, he undertook a series of solo journeys that were unprecedented both in their extent of geography and method of "human echolocation".

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Reading Wikipedia on a Mobile phone

If you've got internet access on your cellphone, head to en.wap.wikipedia.org.

If you'd prefer to download all of Wikipedia at once. Pocket Wikipedia is "the widest array of material you can fit into 175 MB", packaged up for Windows Mobile (and Linux). "The articles are hand-picked...and the interface is condensed to offer quick searching and indexing on mobile devices."

You can also download "enyclopedia", which is like "Pocket" but several times as large. Handbag Wikipedia, if you will.

But geopedia is by far the coolest option. It actually sniffs out your iPhone's physical location and displays wikipedia articles related to stuff nearby. (I don't know if it works on the newest iPhones.)

(And there are more options.)

Sunday, June 29, 2008

1966 Soviet postage stamp commemorating "ten years of antarctic exploration":



There were all sorts of little competitive space-race style projects.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole (KSDB) was the result of a scientific drilling project of the former USSR. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust.