Thursday 30 September 2010

Superman, hulk and batman, life past retirement

According to a study by Barclays Wealth, British people are more likely to carry on working after retirement age than any other nation.

The study found that over 60 per cent of people under 65 intend to work past retirement age, and those numbers will probably increase over the coming years, as 70 per cent of these are under 45, in the study they said "i would always be involved in some kind of work."

Ireland was second with 59 per cent,

Spain the number was 44 per cent,
Japan 46 per cent, but in Switzerland,
only 34 per cent plan to carry on working!





The Desciples

Ok so i always thought that the Desciples were old!

In Matthew there is a story that talks of Jesus having to pay temple tax and only Paul and himself have to pay, Which means the Desciples were all under the age of 17!!

Those guys did some amazing things according to the bible and they were soo young!


Friday 20 August 2010

This photo won the London Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award for 2009.



Then, several Spanish photographers recognized that wolf, and revealed the chance image was a setup.

Im not sure if i care because this image looks amazing.

Thursday 19 August 2010

Another fox related link but a bit more obscure

Karen O'Leary creates hand-cut city maps from paper. She just finished Paris!

This is just too amazing!

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Saw this and loved it

I saw this and loved it i have a couple of friends who will love this




You can actually buy this from www.thinkgeek.com



Im so sorry matt.

I recently discovered Fox-Tossing, a 17th/18th century European pastime that is exactly what it sounds like.
People would go out in a field and set up a little fenced-in court. Then high-society types would stand, in pairs, holding slack ropes. Then a bunch of foxes would be released into the court. When the foxes ran over the ropes, the players pulled the ropes tight, launching the foxes up into the air. Repeat until all foxes are dead.



Fleming's Deutsche Jaeger (published in 1719) produced this
image, and commented on it saying "Skilled male tossers could toss a fox 24 ft. high. At a famous fox-tossing in Dresden there were tossed some 687 foxes, 533 hares, 34 badgers, 21 wild cats, and at the end 34 young wild boar and 3 wolves...."

This is both funny and wrong!

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Richard Smith, a 41-year-old care worker from Carlisle, England, has legally changed his name to Stormhammer Deathclaw Firebrand: "It's just a strange name I like the sound of." English and Welsh name-changing procedures are much simpler than US equivalents: the ancient tradition of "deed-poll" name change has made it possible for people to change to all kinds of wonderful and wacky things

Freedom of speach but not of music

In 1940 Igor Stravinsky re-orchestrated 'The Star Spangled Banner' for the Boston Symphony. Someone alerted the Boston police, who arrived at Symphony Hall, confiscated the instrumental parts to the Stravinsky orchestration and arrested Stravinsky for 'tampering with public property.
Igor Stravinsky



The Hunch back of Notre Dame, fact or fiction?


New evidence suggests that the iconic character of Quasimodo was not entirely the brainchild of Victor Hugo, author of the famed 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).

Historians recently found references to a "hunchback sculptor" working at the cathedral in British sculptor Henry Sibson's memoirs, now in the Tate Archive. From The Telegraph:

In one entry, he writes:

"the French government had given orders for the repairing of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and it was now in progress ... I applied at the Government studios, where they were executing the large figures for Notre Dame and here I met with a Mons. Trajan, a most worthy, fatherly and amiable man as ever existed – he was the carver under the Government sculptor whose name I forget as I had no intercourse (no this does not mean sex) with him, all that I know is that he was humpbacked and he did not like to mix with carvers."


In a later entry, Sibson writes about working with the same group of sculptors on another project outside Paris, where he again mentions the reclusive government sculptor, this time recalling his name as "Mon. Le Bossu". Le Bossu is French for "the hunchback".

He writes: "Mon Le Bossu (the Hunchback) a nickname given to him and I scarcely ever heard any other. "


William Dieterle's 1939 version of the Hunch back

Wednesday 11 August 2010

See its out to get us one by one

The Akansha Food Products unit in Lucknow, India has claimed its 6th victim.
A worker slipped into a 6 foot vat of Tomato Ketchup. The woman was unable to swin to the top so five other workers jumped in to save her, these workers were overcome by the fumes and also died. Two workers are still critical in hospital.

Moral of this story is donteat Tomato Ketchup as you are killing innocent people.

Sunday 1 August 2010

A little geek history

The idea for a laptop was first developed in the late '60s, Alan Kay of Xerox then wrote about coming up with a 'personal, portable information manipulator' in a 1972 paper, calling it the 'Dynabook'.

Alan is credited for conceiving the idea of a portable computer in 1968, when computers still weighed over 100 pounds and ate punch cards.

His concept was a very thin, highly dynamic device that weighed no more than 2 pounds, which would be an ideal tool for children to learn programming and science. Alan’s Dynabook was never made, but characteristics of his concept can be seen in the mobile computers we have today.

Steve Jobs (mr apple) took a tour of Xerox PARC in 1979, and some say that his visit is still unfolding with the release of the iPad, which resembles Alan Kay’s description of the Dynabook.

Steve Jobs this month personally mailed an iPad to Alan, who praised Apple’s tablet as “fantastically good” for drawing, painting and typing.

The first commercially available portable computer was the IBM 5100. The first flip laptop appeared in 1982 and was the GRiD Compass 1100, which was used by NASA scientists and cost $8,150.




IBM 5100



GRiD Compass 1100

Thank you Mr Alan Kay


Saturday 31 July 2010

Light speed!

Light doesn’t always travel at ‘the speed of light’ (299,792,458 metres per second). It only travels at that speed when travelling through a vacuum; when it passes through matter, it slows down. The slowest light has ever been recorded moving at is a 38mph, while passing through an ultracold gas of sodium atoms.

So if you have been down the M1 you van say you have travelled travled faster than light!

Twins!

Twins are always born at about the same time.

But the world record for the longest gap between one twin being born and its sibling emerging is held by American Peggy Lynn, who gave birth to twins on November 11 1995, and February 2 1996 - an incredible 84 days apart.

I have been away for a week so a small catch up

According to MBT a shoe company, flip-flops 'injure 200,000 people a year'.


The injuries range from trips and falls, joint pain and other conditions linked to long-term use, and it costs the NHS £40m a year! Yes these innocuous looking pieces of cheap, flimsy plastic are death traps in disguise.























Thursday 22 July 2010

Fillip, not just a boys name

I found this one intresting, a brief thank you to Tom Brennan for telling me this.

A fillip is the act of clicking your fingers. So you dont click you fillip!


Its been a while

Its been a while and I am really struggling. Most days I try to work out if something i have learnt is worthy of blogging or just a silly bit of trivia. Both sides interest me but this journey is definitely pushing me to try harder with the things I am blogging. So this is the 1st of my belated posts .

The Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, stands at 325 m high and is the seventh tallest building in France. Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, had a successful career as an architect despite having dyslexia and a paralyzing fear of heights.

Gustave also helped design the Statue of Liberty!!


Sunday 18 July 2010

Life would have been so different

In a very early draft of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones carried brass knuckles instead of a bullwhip.




Man on the moon

The last person on the moon was Eugene Cernan. He and fellow explorer Harrison Schmidt left the moon at 5.40, December 13th 1972 and no one has been to the moon ever since.

This black and white picture was taken from a color television transmission made by the color RCA TV camera mounted on the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules in lunar orbit.
Harrison is in front with Eugene behind.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

pukey lukey

Ok, I have failed already!

I was going to try and do this every day but have not managed it! Today i have a great one!



I have spent a lot of my life being called names that rhyme with mine, 'puke' being one of them. Today i have found out where the birth of 'puke' came from



The first recorded use of the word 'puke' in the English language comes from William Shakespeare, who used it in the 'All the world's a stage' speech in As You Like It - where he refers to 'the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.'



Who knew puke was such a poetic word?



Wednesday 7 July 2010

Weblog, web log, we blog and blog

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April 1999.

The term blog became used as a noun and a verb "to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog" by a guy called Evan Williams from a company called Pyro Labs.

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Peak 15

In 1852 a young Indian mathematician called Radhanath Sickdhar became the first person to calculate the height of the Mount Everest, then named Peak 15, at 29,000 feet exactly. He belived people would think he had guessed the height, as it was too much of a round figure so he added 2 extra feet.

Since then China and Nepal have argued about the actual height. Nepal say it is 29,029 feet high and China say it is 29,016 feet high.

and a little extra

Mount Everist is named after Sir George Everest but his last name was pronounced eeverest

Monday 5 July 2010

Can you work it out.

Wingdings has a history of controversy. In 1992, only days after the release of Windows 3.1, it was discovered that the character sequence "NYC" in Wingdings was rendered as a skull and crossbones symbol, Star of David, and thumbs up gesture. This could be interpreted as a message of approval of killing Jews , especially those from New York City.

Microsoft strongly denied this was intentional, and insisted that the final arrangement of the glyphs in the font was largely random. (The character sequence "NYC" in the later-released Webdings font, in turn, is rendered as eye, heart, and city skyline, which could be interpreted as "I Love New York". Microsoft has stated that this is intentional.)

Short but sweet

The first cash machine to be installed in England was installed in Enfield 43 years ago by a Mr. Shepherd-Barron. He was chilling out in his bath when he though about a machine that could give you your money.


Thank you Mr Shepherd-Barron!


Saturday 3 July 2010

The Davison medal

So around the 1800, Nelson was was working for the government, going into battles and plundering enemy warships.

Nelson would commendeer the enemy ships, bring them back to england and sell them to the government. He would recieve a lumpsum which he would give half to his crew to split between them and he would keep the other half.

Davison was Nelsons agent. He felt that putting the men into battle and paying them so little was wrong.

Davison decided as extra incentive he would create the Davison medal. It was awarded to sailors when they came back from battle.



Thursday 1 July 2010

Strange but true

Ok so it is no secret that i have a phobia of tomatoes. It is compleatly irrational, and contrary to belife my fear of tomatoes does not extend to all tomato based products, it is just the fruit that freaks me out!

I wondered about others types of phobias.

So here is a small list;

Lockiophobia
A fear of childbirth

Arachibutyrophobia
fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth!
Barophobia
Im not sure how this works but... a fear of gravity

Bibliophobia
Not a fear of bibles as i first thought but a fear of books.

Blennophobia
Luckily the Ghostbusters were not afraid of this because it is a fear of slime

Soceraphobia
My current favorite. A fear of parent-in-laws
And here is one reason why im scared of tomatoes...

Wednesday 30 June 2010

What do file types stand for?

We use them all the time but do you know what they stand for?

.jpeg
Joint Photographic Experts Group
It is pronounced "jay-peg". JPEG is a colour image compression technique. It can reduce files to about 5% of their original file size. However, the more you compress a jpeg the more detail is lost.


.tiff
Tagged Image File Format
Much like the JPEG, TIFF files are used to compress images. It was developed to standardise desktop scanner file formats. The format was developed by Aldus (which has since been acquired by Adobe Systems) in the mid-80s and is now the most common form of image storage.

.png
Portable Network Graphics
It is an approved file format by the World Wide Web Consortium as an alternative to GIF files

.bmp or .dip
Bit Map Picture or device-independent bitmap
This is pronounced bitmap. This is the standard bit-mapped graphics format used in the Windows environment


.gif
Graphical Interchange Format
This is pronounced giff (hard g). It is bit-mapped graphics file format used extensively on the World Wide Web. GIF supports color and various resolutions. It also includes data compression, but because it is limited to 256 colors, it is better used on scanned images such as illustrations rather than color photos.


ok so here are a few. I may add a few more. It funny how when you are under pressure to remember something you use every day your brain freezes up i really struggles to get past JPEG!

Tuesday 29 June 2010

R.I.P Disneyland

55 years after Disneyland opened, Disneyland still claim that no one has ever died in their land.

This may not be so true, as Disneyland actually transport people who have died off their property before proclaiming them dead!

All in the vein attempt to keep Disney a dream world.

Sunday 27 June 2010

MacMacMac

It is a well known fact that Apple are the most stable of computers as they rarely crash and they dont get viruses, mainly down to the fact that for every 14 computers there is one Apple computer. That in itself is a pretty cool fact.



Today i was informed that apple; the untouchables are going to release an anti virus which is big news for all us mac users as they may soon become as unstable as PCs.

I have added a brief time line for apple.... for all you geeks out there




Saturday 26 June 2010

Boys Watch and Learn

It was a beautiful day in Worthing today. I woke up late which rocked!

I went into town with my wife; we went to a friends birthday; we then met up with my wife's family and then met up with some friends.

The latter part of the afternoon we sat in our friends garden, drinking pink lemonade and eating Mars ice creams. We got onto the conversation about the internet and i said i was doing a blog. After explaining what this blog was about and why I was doing it, they started to tell me things that they had learnt; which is exactly what i hoped doing this blog would do. They told me about sayings such as 'the wrong end of the stick' and 'coffee pot calling the kettle black'.

One of them is a teaching assistant and was telling me about everything he is learning.... which made me a little jealous as I had just been saying how hard it was to find something I had learnt day in day out. Even after all the interesting, disturbing and weird things I found out, one conversation stuck out for me.

One of the converations was about giving birth; this freaks my wife out and I completely understand that! Our friend was regaling us with her horror story of giving birth, whilst i watched my wife's face turn an odd shade of off white, i heard our friend say "boys watch and learn" and she told us how eleven student doctors turned up to watch her give birth.

Now this may seem like an odd post but what i learnt in real terms today is that bad/painful stuff can happen and you may feel like there is no light at the end of a tunnel but good can always be found. In this case, hours of labour, complications and a stubborn baby but at the end of it a child that they love dearly

This is something i have been told time and time again but it just clicked today!

Friday 25 June 2010

The rule of thumb

This will be a short one.

I enjoy sayings and play on words...so i have made it a small task of mine to try to find out the meanings behind them.

My first one is a cheat. I have know this for a while but i was reminded today!

"A rule of thumb"
This is a victorian saying. It is a measurement for what thickness of cain you are allowed to hit your wife with! so if it is a thumb in diameter or less you are ok to hit her, any more than that and you are not allowed.

This is a fairly dark subject but not as dark as the one my wife suggested "the black dog". Here is a little competition: who coined the phase "the black dog" and what does it reference?

Thursday 24 June 2010

Its getting hot in here, so hot! so learn what extinguishers to use!

Ever thought what are the different classes of fire? well here they are.

Class A fire = solid fire e.g. wood
Class B fire = liquid Fire
Class C fire = gas fire
Class D fire = metal fire
Class E fire = electical fire
Class F fire = cooking fat

Wednesday 23 June 2010

I'm not sure how i managed to get so far in my life with out knowing where a basic full stop should go

So for people that don't know me, I am terrible at punctuation and spelling. Not that kind of bad that is just forgetting every so often, but that kind of bad that leads me to think "I'm not sure how i managed to get so far in my life with out knowing where a basic full stop should go". I did Primary, Secondary and multiple colleges and still i am apparently at a basic primary school level.

This has been my main avenue of focus for a while and most of it goes in one ear and out the other but i think im going to try bit by bit. So my first is the semi colon; it is used when the second statement is along the same lines as the first statement but the first statement in itself could be a complete sentence.

So im opening this up does any one have any other reasons for using it?

I'm sure there will be more punctuation based blogs so get swatting!

Tuesday 22 June 2010

This is hard

Is finding this learning thing harder than i thought. But i have learnt alot today, so here is my learning.

Setting yourself a target makes you accountable to yourself, to people who know you set a target and people who may join in later in the target.

this may seem lame but this is how im feeling right now and it is only day 2

Monday 21 June 2010

Ok day 1

So already im feeling the pressure of writing this, but im excited too.

Ok...i am one of three children. My mum is profoundly deaf and both my sisters and I are hearing. Whilst at church i was introduced to a lady who is married to a deaf man. During the conversation she refered to me as a 'Coda'; a term i have never heard before in my 25 years of being alive. I finally swallowed my pride and asked "what is a 'Coda'?". She smiled, as if i was asking just to be polite to the people around me from hearing families, and said 'Coda means Child Of Deaf Adult'.

Its odd i have always felt different, being part of two cultures, both hearing and deaf. Now i know that i have a title, i feel part of a small club that i have never seen or heard about. I have since found forums, websites and support groups for 'Codas'.

I think its wierd that something that is so normal e.g. being the child of my mum warrents having a little sub culture.

Thursday 17 June 2010

This is the start, but not the beginning

This is an exciting day for me.

I am starting a blog which i have never done before; i have bought a new wedding ring, to replace my original one which i managed to keep hold of for all of 5 weeks! and it is a beautiful day outside.

This blog will hopefully be updated daily, with things i have learnt that day, or things i am looking into. There will also be images, links and video's of intrest.

As the Title says this is the start, but not the beginning i am writing this on a sunny thursday and i will start this on the following monday which will be the 21 June.

I hope this will be of intrest to other people, but untill monday this is where i will leave it!

Lots of love