Someone's made a fantastic Lego model inspired by Singularity Sky...



More info here.

Hope someone brings this to Charlie's attention!

Make sure you check out Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Apparently it's what Joss Wheaton did to keep himself busy during the writer's strike.

It will disappear at midnight on Sunday, only to be replaced by a pay-for download, so make sure you watch it while it's free. I expect I'll be buying the DVD when it comes out.

Fantastic stuff!

Anyone going to Zombiecon looking for a room mate?

If your not currently planing to go it's going to be utterly brillint so don't miss it.

If you haven't heard of it, find out more at http://www.zombiecon.co.uk.

Just home from a work do. It was in a bar overlooking a marina where a number of volunteers took part in water sport activities.

Activities included kayaking, paddle boarding (standing on a kind of surf board and propelling it forwards with a paddle), and some strange cross between a surf board and a bicycle.

We ended up with a relay race with teams of three, with each person piloting a different craft. I ended up taking the paddle board as I'd had got a bit stuck in the practice session, and drifted off to the far corner of the area, so I'd got quite a bit of practice paddling back and was almost competant by the end of it. It's a rather strange device, since the recommended pose is with feet side by side facing forwards. It's a little awkward, as you tend to need to keep swapping the paddle around for strokes on either side.

It was all good fun, particularly as my team won. It's a bit of a shame that we could only muster a dozen volunteers out of a department of over 150 people.

After a much needed shower we retired to the bar for some much needed food and a few beers.

How cool was that?

( There may be spoilers. )

Must watch again.

Okay, I can't resist sharing my thoughts... ( Technically these aren't spoilers as I have no inside information, but you have been warned. )

Argh! How many days till Saturday?

After making occasional use of my parents' Wii Fit for the last couple of months, I've gone and bought my own.

Hopefully the hour I spent tackling some of the overgrowth in the garden, combined with the hour of Wii Fit will at least begin lower my current level of unfitness.

Now I just have to keep it up.

Still waiting on a proper snowboarding game for it (I know there's one in the balance games, which I'll report on when I unlock it, but I want a proper dedicated snowboarding game that uses the fit board. That will be awesome.

( Possible Doctor Who Spoilers )

I don't think Douglas Adams would have been proud of the fact that Britain is a little bit less free tonight.

Wow.Best Doctor Who story ever.

Of course, I always regret saying these things after I've watched them a couple of times.

I wonder how long before Professor River Song becomes a regular character?

And is she any relation of River Tam?

Stephen Moffet is clearly a genius and the series is in good hands.

I've been really enjoying my Eee PC, and its Linux Desktop. An estimated 75% of users have been keeping the Linux installationn (sorry, should have a source for that).

And why wouldn't they? Out of the box the machine does pretty much everything that the majority of users want. It seems to be billed as an appliance that comes with everything you need, and doesn't facilitate adding extra software (apart from OS updates). This would seem to be a deliberate decision, as it avoids the situation many Windows users find where their machine becomes so full of applications and forgotten processes running in the background, that it eventually becomes unusable.

However, it's not ideal if you want an extra program or two. There is a way around it, but it involves a bit of hacking. No problem if you know what you're doing, but not something the Linux virgin wants to face alone.

For most Eee users who want to surf the web and do a bit of word processing this isn't a problem, but for Linux to make the big time it will have to do better.

Of course other distros are much better in this regard, but more about them in another post.

I'm loving the new series of Doctor Who but ( Spoiler Warning )

It may be slightly sitting in the Apple store taking advantage of their free WiFi on my Eee PC (I can justify it by sitting through their presentations on Garage Band, iTunes/iPod, and switching from PC to Mac).

However, I'm amused by how many people came over to look at my Eee PC.

We clubbed together to buy my Dad a Nintendo Wii and the new Wii Fitness Board for his birthday. so naturally I had to have a play.

The board sits on the floor and integrates into the Wii controller system by pressing a sync button. Lots of space around the board is recommended, though. Starting up the game brings you through an introduction and gets you to take an initial fitness test, after which it estimates your "fitness age". The board can show you very accurately where your center of gravity lies, and asks you to shift your weight to move it to the desired area. Most of the exercises involve carrying out actions while keeping your center of gravity within a given zone.

Apart from general fitness, I can see potential for using this theraputically. Being able to show patients where their CoG lies, and help them to correct their posture could possibly help with some spinal and muscular problems.

But while the included game is fun and should help with people's fitness, I really hope there will be other games that make use of it. This could be the perfect system for any activity that is controlled by shifting your weight. The obvious ones are things like snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing and skiing, but I'm sure there are less obvious ones - sumo wressling?

I had a board controller for the Playstation, but it used the movement of the board to press microswitches that replaced the controller buttons. That's not how you steer a snowboard! But this is different. This measures how you shift your weight, so it could give a very accurate simulation. This could be very useful for learners as they could get the feel of the right posture and mivements without the pain of falling on your arse.

Watch live footage of a 10 metre colossal squid defrosting in New Zealand here:

http://www.r2.co.nz/20080427/matrix.htm

Although this is the largest ever found, it could be just a minnow, as it's beak is considerably smaller than ones that have been found in the stomachs of sperm whales.