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Or, Reinventing The Torch.

In Doctor Who, the Master’s signature weapon is the Tissue Compression Eliminator, which kills by shrinking the target to the size of a doll (the scale of the doll is, for some reason, never specified). It’s mostly used by the Master as played by Anthony Ainley in the 1980s, and in those stories takes the form of a thick ( Read more... )

Interesting story on the BBC web site, with video, about a serious attempt at a modern airship, hybridised with a flying wing. (Its airship ancestry is more obvious.) You may have seen pictures before, as it’s a project that’s been resurrected in a new form, but interesting to see it within a hop, skip and a jump of becoming a commercial reality. ( Read more... )

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Channel 4 is doing an evening of programmes about psychopaths, and have a handy-dandy test where you can assess your own level of psychopathy.

Uninterestingly but perhaps reassuringly, it turns out I’m a teddy bear, scoring 21%:

You are warm and empathic with a heightened awareness of social responsibility and a strong sense of conscience. You ( Read more... )

A Harvard University human motor systems test that attempts to guess your age knocked 16 years off me today!

The test is based on how quickly you can click on dots on the screen - it’s a bit like that eye-test where spots of light are shone on the inside of a hemisphere and you have to react to them. I wouldn’t say my reactions are particularly ( Read more... )

I spent the first few weeks of January in California. Because I was particularly keen, msinvisfem and I caught a train into Los Angeles to go and visit this place:


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Sometime this month, I think I passed the milestone of 20 years of owning a PC.

I wasn’t particularly exposed to computers while I was school, nor even much at university. A friend had a BBC micro, on which I played Elite a few times, and I learned to write S-algol on the University VAXen. The closest I came to a PC was one Physics lab that ( Read more... )

Apparently the sonic screwdriver has been developed right here in Dundee! (Usual hyperbole applies, but it’s still an interesting development.)

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