Using magic to defeat porch pirates
Personally, I think it’s time we had some real solutions for this problem such as one way locked drop boxes, but this is also pretty clever.
Scratching
I’ve posted about the amazing Japanese electronics band ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS! before with their cool CRT instruments. I also posted about a cool guy at a Japanese maker’s fair that made a barcode scratching instrument.
Well, now Electronicos Fantasticos are back with a barcode scratcher but they attached it to the bottom of a skateboard.
Here’s some of their barcode scratching music
Tornado cube bread
This cool South Korean bakery makes a unique tornado textured bread.
Or maybe just give it a visit on your next trip to South Korea:
GPU Mining cards degrade 10% every year
File this in a ‘with a grain of salt’, but odds are good there is some truth behind this research. It would be great if benchmarking tools could detect the age of your GPU and see if they can corroborate this claim.
Palit Microsystems, a Taiwan-based graphics card manufacturer, is reporting that graphics cards in near constant use on massively compute intensive crypto currency mining degrade in performance by about 10% each year. Most cards in these environments run 24/7 and often on extremely compute heavy workloads. Proper cooling, power delivery, accelerated silicon aging, or a host of other factors could be leading to this
The caveat empeter here is that Palit is a manufacturer of new graphics cards, and gets no money from the resale market. So, they do have an interest in encouraging users to buy new cards. Too bad it’s impossible to get them…
Spanish Prisoner
David Mamet films are not for everyone, but they have an unmistakable style. I remember renting The Spanish Prisoner and being fascinated by it’s styling and story. As someone that has worked at a Fortune 50 company and been privy to many a secret project or two over the years, it was a great story about working on secret projects and the shadowy possibilities of espionage and double-dealing.
While it’s not the best movie (it has some odd holes and a good dose of deus ex machina), I remember the sound track fondly as setting the mysterious mood. It’s by Carter Burwell – so give it a listen and imagine yourself in a world where you never know who is really on your side…
Cool and Unusual London Attractions
Have you ever wanted to visit some of the more nerdy, local, and historical attractions around London and outlying areas of England? Perhaps visiting a abandoned postal rail network used during WW2, walk strange city alleys such as the Man in the Moon, or unusual art shows, talks, tours, or events?
Ian Visits lists many interesting local attractions in and around London that make for a fascinating addition to your next trip. It updates every day – so it’s a great way to catch short running attractions. Give it a look!
Fighting Fantasy
I’m a huge fan of the Fighting Fantasy book created in 1982 by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. I still have a good collection of them, but my first and favorite had to be Deathtrap Dungeon.
ChrisC has a nice Youtube channel with a few good playthroughs of some of my favorite adventure books. He does a good job on his walkthroughs and is a nice, calming listen. Honestly, I don’t know why more Twitch streamers don’t read old adventure books like this and let people vote on the next choice. Perhaps there’s an idea there…
Back to the topic. My first introduction to the books was as a middle schooler and I can’t tell you how many times I checked out this white-cover Dell version of Deathtrap Dungeon. I soon found the City of Thieves, Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and many others. Before the internet, one had to visit many libraries to find more of them. There is even a great fan site that has lots of details about each book – including interesting errors.
They did a reprint series a few years back, but that has ended as well. The books can still be had on ebay, or if you’re interested in a more professional production, Eddie Marston was hired to do an interactive video series that’s had much higher production values.