Aug 28

Scientists Use Google Earth to Watch Cows

Okay, this is fascinating in a geek kind of way. Scientists have used Google Earth to watch grazing cows and have made an astonishing discovery, cows are basically compasses.

News.com.au (Follow the link for the full story) reports that scientists used Google Earth software to study the alignment of 8510 cows in 308 pastures around the world and 2974 red and roe deer in 241 locations in the Czech Republic. They found that grazing cows tended to align themselves with Earth’s north-south magnetic fields.

This phenomenon has gone unnoticed by everybody until now.

The study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America says, “Because wind and light conditions could be excluded as a common denominator determining the body axis orientation, magnetic alignment is the most parsimonious explanation.”

I’ll be keeping my eyes on this neat story. I guess the moral here is, if you get lost in the wilderness, look for a cow!

Aug 28

Olympic Ceremonies – Fakery or Necessities?

A couple of things came up over the 16 days of the Beijing Olympics that I just thought was ridiculous. The three issues that jump to mind are all from the opening ceremony: the “faked fireworks”, the “lip synced little girl” and the “children of diversity”.

People started reporting in newspapers how the Chinese had faked these events and aren’t they terrible. Well, no, in my opinion. These events were all “produced” to put on a good show. That is what the opening ceremony is, a show.

The fireworks of the feet heading towards the Birdsnest Stadium looked fantastic, it was later reported that they were a special digital effect and they should not have been faked. They were not faked. The fireworks did indeed fire and form feet marching to the stadium. Unfortunately, it was to hard to catch this event on TV and flying a helicopter down into the path of the feet would have been to dangerous. So, for the TV broadcast, they created a digital version and seamlessly blended that footage into the broadcast for the audience at home. Cleaver as far as I’m concerned.

The child lip syncing the song. Okay, China was trying to make an impression and they did change the girl because they thought the new girl was prettier. Do I agree with the decision? Not really, but the show must go on. I feel sorry for the original girl who didn’t get to perform but it wasn’t an earth shattering problem. What seems to have everybody’s testicles in a knot is the fact she was lip syncing – “it was a fake!”, you all scream. Well today in the news it comes out that the Sydney Symphony Orchestra mimed to a backing tape for the 2000 Sydney opening ceremony. The justification from them was that you don’t want anything to go wrong when you are being watched by millions of people worldwide. You can read the article here.

Now the last one is just stupid. During the opening ceremony, a bunch of kids came out in all the different costumes from all the different ethnic regions of China. It was sweet and pretty. Well, now it would seem we are mad because it has come out that the kids all came from the same place and were not actually all the different ethnic origins!! Oh come on! It was suppose to represent all the different ethnic origins, does it really matter if they actually were the costumes that they made? If we did this in Europe and paraded a bunch of kids out in all the different national costumes, nobody would even bat an eyelash if they found out all the kids were German or French or Italian, you would say it was a nice representation.

Let’s get over this. The opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics are not sporting events, we are not looking for cheats here, they are a theater performance.

Well, that’s my two bits worth.

Aug 27

Apple Ordered by Courts to Not Show TV Ad Again

This was an interesting little titbit in the news today. In the UK a judge has ordered that Apple can never show a particular iPhone 3G ad again. The advertisement in question claims that, “you’ll never know which part of the internet you’ll need” and “all parts of the internet are on the iPhone”. Because the iPhone does not support Java or Flash, the judge ruled that the ad was misleading.

Apple argued that all websites were accessible even if the technology to display the page correctly was not supported and this was different from other mobile phones that use special mobile only or crippled web pages.

The Judge didn’t buy the argument and Apple is forbidden from showing that ad again in its current form.

The full article can be read at www.news,com

Aug 26

Geek Actually Episode 4 – What is a Geek?

Geek ActuallyIn this nice short episode, David tries to define Geek and reviews the DVDs “The Wrong Man” (AKA “Lucky # Slevin”) and “You Kill Me”. Little Geek joins in to talk about “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and finally David talks about the changes coming to future episodes.

Info on “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” can be found at www.starwars.com

Listen or download it here or subscribe to it on iTunes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

(This post edited 25th May, 2009)

Aug 20

Geek Actually Episode 3 – The Two Hour Super Sized Episode!!!

Geek ActuallyIn this super sized 2 hour episode I am joined by Jacob Oberman (independent Producer – Palais Pictures) and Mirren Lee (writer/actress/creative coach/ex- actor’s agent). Jacob and I discuss the Apple Fire, iPhone 3G problems and The Gloriously Wonderful Bad List. We also review Tropic Thunder, Taken and In Bruges (it’s in Belgium). We are joined by Mirren via Skype (poor thing is in her sick bed). She shares all sorts of delirious weirdness with us, including Madonna’s birthday present and Julia Robert’s underarm hair! – I did tell you she was sick, right?

This all adds up to one big show full of geeky goodness.

Little Geek is still sick and does not appear in this weeks show, he’ll be back next week with a review of Star Wars Clone Wars.

Listen or download it here or subscribe to it on iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This episode contains frequent bad language. Listener Discretion is advised.

Show notes:

  1. Mirren Lee’s website – www.mirrenlee.com
  2. Internet Movie Database – imdb.com
  3. Box Office Mojo – boxofficemojo.com
  4. The Apple Fire Story – macworld
  5. The iPhone 3G woes – Sydney Morning Herald
  6. Trailer for Tropic Thunder – Apple
  7. Trailer for Taken – ign.com
  8. Trailer for In Bruges – Focus Features
  9. Trailer for Lifeforce – YouTube
  10. Leo Laporte’s Netcasts – Twit.tv
  11. Channel Flip – Channel Flip

(This post edited on the 25th May, 2009)

Aug 18

Podcast to Netcast

Hi, I have made a change to the site, I have gone through and changed a lot of the references of “podcast” to “netcast”, why? A study in the US showed that 98% of users thought that you could only play a podcast on an iPod, that is not the case.

You can play a “netcast” (or “podcast”, they are the same thing) on any device (computer, iRiver, Zen, Zune, mobile phone, in fact any mp3 player), the term just refers to a show that is downloaded rather than broadcasted. Leo Laporte now uses the term “Netcast” exclusively and so will we. I can’t go back and change every single blog post reference but I have changed the category and page references.

So, from now on we will not be using the term podcast on this site, from this point on we will only use the term “Netcast”. Thanks for your understanding.

I know the forum has “podcast” all over it, I’ll fix that next.