The sounds of space.

This site has a great collection of recordings of outer space, and natural phenomena on other planets. Among the recordings you will find the sound of lightning in the atmosphere of Saturn and the sound that Saturn’s solar wind makes when it collides with its magnetic field, along with recordings of the radio signals emitted by the record-setting solar eruptions of October 24th and November 4th, 2003. If esoteric crackles, pops and eerie whistles are not so much your interest, you’ll also find recordings inspired by the sounds of space, including Terry Riley’s “Sun Rings”, performed by the Kronos Quartet.

In Riley’s own words, “Space is surely the realm of dreams and imagination and a fertile feeding ground for poets and musicians. Ancient astrologers were aware of the significant influences of planetary movements on our lives. I feel these influences are somehow responsible for this amazing collaboration which has been so enthusiastically undertaken by all the participants responsible for its outcome. Do the stars welcome us into their realms? I think so or we would not have made it this far. Do they wish us to come in Peace? I am sure of it.”

Email fun – how many of these movies have you seen?

One of thos surveys you got by email from friends with too much time on their hands…how many of these movies have you seen?

 

I have seen…

Paint like Pollock.

This web page lets you paint like Jackson Pollock with your mouse. It’s a simple to use, but wonderfully effective piece of flash programming. Simply move your mouse around the page to draw lines of colour. The longer you hover in one place, the larger the splotch will be. To change the colour of your paint, simply click the left mouse button.

As far as I could see, there wasn’t any option to save what you create on the web-page, so you’ll need to Print Screen and paste into your image editor of choice. My minimalist effort is on the left. Give it a go, and post your picture in the comments. If you need a web host to store your pictures, I recommend Photobucket. Click here to get painting. If I had young children, I’d show them this site in an instant and get their creative juices flowing.

10 great websites which have (*sniff) been closed down.

 

Do you remember OLGA? Ever heard of Lik-Sang?

 

Websites and online services being closed or threatened with lawsuits is pretty much de rigeur (Youtube, anyone?) nowadays.

 

The folks over at Mashable have a restrospective of 10 great websites that bit the dust, either at the hand of the long arm of the law, or through dot-com company neglect.

The best flash games on the web, part 1 of infinity.

 

Part one : The Three Monkeys by Ferry Halim.

 

Like most of Ferry Halim’s games, this game has cutesy cartoon graphics, a minimalistic interface and uncomplicated controls.

Like most of Ferry Halim’s games, this game is utterly addictive.

 

The premise is simple; you control three monkeys, arranged along the bottom of the screen. From the top of the screen fall either fruit or bombs. You must catch ALL of the fruit. If you miss a banana or orange, or catch a bomb my mistake, you lose one of your five monkey lives. You can tell your monkey to stretch out his hands or duck and cover by simply clicking on him.

 

The learning curve here is fair. After a relatively innocuous beginning, with hardly any bombs mixed in and fruit falling leisurely ito your monkeys’ hands. After a while though, the fruit and bombs come filling thick and fast, and you have to keep your wits about you to

a) catch ALL the fruit.

b) avoid ALL the bombs.

 

It’s that simple. And that hard.

And so addictive.

National Anthems on Google Maps.

 

 

 Another Google Maps – YouTube programming combination. With this one, you can navigate your way around the globe. Click on a national placemarker and you’ll bring up a YouTube video of that country’s national anthem. The selection is by no means exhaustive, but the anthems for approximately thirty countries are currently available.

 

Click here to go there.

Travel the world with Google Maps and YouTube.

 

 

 

This neat combination of the Google Maps and YouTube APIs allows you to view videos around the world.
It’s a light-weight site with low loading times. At first glance it looks exactly like Google Maps; you can zoom in and out, drag the map around and there are placemarkers dotted liberally around. Click on one of these placemarkers however, and up pops a video hosted on YouTube, taken in that very location for your viewing pleasure.

 

Click here to go there.

The Hero Machine 2.0.

 

 

 Create your own super-hero with this flash app from UGO. Pretty much everything is customisable, from animal companions to underwear, beer guts to six-packs.. Add wings, dual katanas, medallions of all shapes and sizes, even extra arms.

 My creation is to the left side of your screen. Unfortunately, the only way to save your creation is by PrintScreening and pasting the results into your image editor of choice (pssst. Here’s my choice).

I can see this being popular among users of online RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons and the like.

Click here to get creating.

Sn 2006gy – the brightest supernova ever recorded.

“A massive star around 150 times the size of the Sun has exploded in what is the brightest supernova ever seen, Nasa scientists have said.“

 

 

Full BBC story here.

 

Lukla Airport.

Lukla Airport is a small airport in the Town of Lukla in eastern Nepal.
The airport is quite popular as Lukla is the place where most people start their trek to climb Mount Everest.

The paved tarmac is only accessible to helicopters and small fixed wing short takeoff and land (STOL) aircraft such as Twin Otters. There is a dramatic 700-metre (2,000 ft.) angled drop at the end of the runway to the valley far below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s one take-off and one landing video from YouTube: