WTF Card Stacking

Bryan Berg @ wiki Trained as an architect, Bryan Berg is the only known person to make a living building structures with freestanding playing cards. He uses no tape, glue, or tricks, and his method has been tested to support 660 lbs. per square foot.

7.6m tower: (Article)

Lenny Kuhr & Les Poppys - Visite

Wrecking Ball

Today wrecking balls have mostly been replaced by other methods. Too bad I've never seen one in action. Seems like a fun job.

Here is a time-lapse of a building being destroyed by wrecking ball over a period of 8 weeks. Didn't think it would take that long though.

More wrecking ball goodness.

Nice Optical Illusion

All identical diamonds, each with the same gradient. You can check out the image below in an image editing program if you don't believe it.

23 years of conscious coma

A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time. Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound. 'I dreamed myself away,' he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer.

The truthfulness of this story has been criticized by none other than the acclaimed skeptic Randi. Is the story real or not, or somewhere in between?

Wired article Houben has since proven able to answer yes-or-no questions with slight movements of his foot. It’s a tremendous accomplishment, and raises the chilling possibility that, as estimated by Coma Science Group leader Steven Laureys in a Monday New York Times story, as many as four in 10 people considered utterly comatose may be misdiagnosed. But the legitimacy of interviews given by Houben and his facilitator to Der Spiegel, and shown on video by the BBC, may not be as certain. “I believe that he is sentient. They’ve shown that with MRI scans,” said James Randi, a prominent skeptic who during the 1990s investigated the use of facilitated communication for autistic children. But in the video, “You see this woman who’s not only holding his hand, but what she’s doing is directing his fingers and looking directly at the keyboard. She’s pressing down on the keyboard, pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it.”

Imagine how messed up it is for this guy if he IS conscious and sees the woman typing stuff that he IS NOT thinking.

MSNBC article Most troubling about the claim that Houben is communicating are the facts that he is doing so with the help of a therapist who points his finger to the keys on a computer keyboard. The therapist, Linda Wouters, has told news reporters that she can feel Houben guiding her hand with gentle pressure from his fingers. She feels him objecting when she moves his hand toward an incorrect letter. But, given his injuries, Houben should not be able to generate any pressure in his fingers. And if he can do so, why did no one else detect this ability over the past 23 years?

There is a simple way to test this. Say or show a simple word to Mr Houben while the person guiding his hand is not there. Then have the facilitator come back and ask Houben to write that word. If he can answer Yes/No questions with his foot, then you could also ask him, are you typing these words? We need more info on this story. I hope someone gets to the truth of this. Locked-in syndrome @ wiki Facilitated communication @ wiki

Skhizein

Having been struck by a 150-ton meteorite, Henry has to adapt to living precisely ninety-one centimeters from himself.

How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

Sick, twisted and awesome music video

In the style of old school videogames.

Track is by Flairs - Trucker's Delight, graphics artist is Jérémie Perin.

Rare video of a rock slide

It is quite rare to get video of rock slides and landslides in general because they are very unpredictable.

A news article, and a picture of the aftermath. Here is older footage of a landslide in Japan

Self healing bio-concrete

Bio- concrete from the TU delft:

"Instead of costly humans having to maintain and repair the concrete, it would be ideal if the concrete would be able to heal itself. This is now possible with help of special bacteria. These bacteria are called extremophiles, because they love to live in extreme conditions. In dry concrete for example they will not only live, but they will actively produce copious amounts oflimestone. With this calcium carbonate-based material the little construction workers can actively repair occurring cracks in a concrete structure."

I saw the same kind of thinking in a Ted-talk some time ago:

here is the link

Kissing and rimming at the same time

From somethinbeautiful: A man of many faces, creates some of the most incredible masks ever seen. The eccentric face painter calls his creations “self-portraits” because he uses his own face as the canvas for his artwork. The 46-year old artist is halfway through his project to create a design for his face every day for a year, which he began in March after he was snowed in by 12 inches of snow and had to miss work. James got the inspiration from photo exhibitions of a picture a day. His 365 creations range from cartoon characters and animals to his favorite foods. More pictures

Video from the top of the Burj Dubai

At 818 m this is video from the tallest structure ever built by man. With the economic crisis and low oil prices a lot of buildings have been put on hold in the Arab world. Luckily it seems that the Burj Dubai will be finished beginning of 2010. The outside is already done.

YouTube showing full 1080p HD now

YouTube Blog We're excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube's HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today. And those of you who have already uploaded in 1080p, don't worry. We're in the process of re-encoding your videos so we can show them the way you intended.

As an example you can check out the Dark Knight trailer in full HD here. That is if your computer can run it. If you right click the video and press "show video info" you can see the amount of bandwidth and the FPS your computer runs it at. If this becomes popular it will require a staggering amount of bandwidth from YouTube. I'm quite surprised they allow it. More examples: Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus HD 1080p Trailer Prince Of Persia the Movie HD 1080p trailer Avatar HD 1080p Trailer

Cool interactive projection technology

whiteboardblog
Consisting of the LiteBoard projector and special pen/wand, the system will work on any surface—wall, screen, whiteboard, etc.—so there’s no need to mount an interactive whiteboard hardware.

The wand works by detecting patterns in the projected image that the human eye cannot see, communicating with the projector over a radio frequency to triangulate exactly where the user is pointing.

All information is passed to the computer in the same way as any other mouse/pointer device – so you could use this on any software.

Google Street View stopped by police

Bigger Map

Google Street View has added a lot of new cities in the Netherlands. But it wasn't all easy. Above you can see the street view car being pulled over by the police. You can follow the police car back for quite some distance. Apparently they weren't let go easily because the next pictures of the street were clearly taken at a different time.

3d power socket

3d drawing of how it works.

The 3d is way more cooler than the ugly distribution boxes I have in my house. This idea makes me feel stupid because I didn't think about it before them.

Kabouter Wesley

Het is slecht getekend en flauw maar ik kan er wel om lachen.

The Slingjaw Wrasse

CSI = retarded

Parodied on Red Dwarf:

scientists = arrogant gods of certainty

An opinion article in the Daily Mail regarding the sacking of Professor Nutt.

The Big Picture - Martian landscapes

A very nice collection of satellite pictures of Mars. The Big Picture is one of the most awesome photo blogs on the web. It doesn't have those annoying and slow slideshows so many other sites have. It's just one list of high quality pictures on a topic in the news.

Google Maps Navigation

Quite an awesome GPS navigator with a lot of advantages. Though I do see some disadvantages, like the high price of a phone and service plan compared to a normal GPS navigator. High bandwidth price if you don't have a service with a flat fee. Also it won't work if you don't have cell phone coverage, which may be a problem in certain areas. However this might be solved if they develop a program that determines if your route will fall outside of coverage and then caches the google maps route beforehand.

How a drop splashes in water

World's biggest cruise ship

MS Oasis of the Seas is a cruise ship in the fleet of Royal Caribbean International. With over 2,700 cabins, she can accommodate some 6,300 passengers. 360m long, 72 m above waterline. wiki

wiki While exiting the Baltic Sea, the vessel passed underneath the Great Belt Fixed Link in Denmark on 1 November 2009. The bridge has a clearance of 65 metres (213 ft) above the water; Oasis normally has an air draft of 72 metres (236 ft). The passage under the bridge was possible due to retraction of the telescoping funnels, and an additional 30 centimetres (12 in) was gained by the squat effect whereby vessels travelling at speed in a shallow channel will be drawn deeper into the water.[14] Approaching the bridge at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), the ship passed under it with less than 2 feet (0.61 m) of clearance. Video

Parking FAIL

Do not illegally park your car on the terrain of a fence building company. Article (translated from German).

Poor Piglet

This guy can do a lot of cool tricks

Douche, you still have a lot to learn.

Ares

Ares I is the 94 m highcrew launch vehicle being developed by NASA as a component of the Constellation Program. It will bring people to the ISS and the Moon (and maybe Mars). The first mission to the Moon is planned in 2019.

The unmanned Ares V, is the cargo launch vehicle. It is more powerfull than Saturn V.

Here is a comparison in height with, the space shuttle, and Saturn V,

Ares I (the first stage) was successfully test launched on October 28,

I hope they have learned a lot from the expensive space shuttle.

Nicely toned body