Oklo

How on earth didn’t I know about the natural nuclear reaction at Oklo? It’s this sort of enlightened but sadly non-useful trivia that I tend to specialise in. Fascinating stuff, in case you’re worried that this means the world is about to explode, a properly scientific comparison with modern nuclear reactors should set your mind at rest (essentially there just isn’t a high enough percentage of fissile uranium about anywhere anymore to get natural criticality, that’s why you have to enrich the stuff if you want to build a bomb, reactor or just make your hand glow). »

Hoary

“Ubuntu” is an ancient African word, meaning “humanity to others”. Ubuntu also means “I am what I am because of who we all are”. The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world. Ubuntu (Hoary Hedgehog) 5.04 does everything that something should do right, right. It supports my wireless out of the box, tomboy is only a click away and it does frequency scaling on my processor so it doesn’t use as much power (or make as much noise) when it doesn’t need to. »

Tube Map

Continuing the theme of the last post slightly here’s a few cool links about the tube map: LUL ‘real underground’ to abstraction comparison-ator. Geographically accurate tube map also some strip maps of a few lines. Tube map overlaid onto a big satelite photo of london warning: huge jpg. Andy on Harry Beck for the Tube Magazine. Good general background for those not in the know. Also includes a really cool picture of the original sketch behind it all. »

Open Data

Superb article on weather data and public access in the FT last week. A couple of excerpts: Take weather data. The United States makes complete weather data available to anyone at the cost of reproduction. If the superb government websites and data feeds aren’t enough, for the price of a box of blank DVD’s you can have the entire history of weather records across the continental US. European countries, by contrast, typically claim government copyright over weather data and often require the payment of substantial fees. »

Animal Crossing

This is awesomely cute and supports my thesis that Animal Crossing is in and of itself the pure essence of love: In the game, Adam traveled to Sarah’s town to write and deliver the letter. GameCube controller in hand, he typed: “I love you Sarah Dane Buck. Will you marry me?” He then shot back to his own town to save. On Valentine’s Day, Adam told Sarah to boot up Animal Crossing so they could see the game’s special Valentine’s celebrations. »